What is up, guys?

It's Andy Pursella, and this is the show for the realest, say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness, and delusions of modern society. Welcome to motherfucking Reality. Guys, today we have Q & AF. That's where you submit the questions and we give you the answers. Questions can be about anything. Usually, they're about personal development, business, entrepreneurship, how to kick ass. But if you want to throw some in there about other stuff, too, that's cool. You could submit questions for Q & AF episodes a couple of different ways. First way is-Guys, you can email those questions into askandy@andyfusela.

Com.

Or you can go on YouTube on the Q&AF episodes, drop your question in the comments, and we'll pick some from there as well. Throughout the week, we will have different episodes. Tomorrow, we will have CTI. That stands for Cruise the Internet. That is where we put topics on the screen. We talk about what's going on. We speculate on what we think is true. We speculate on what we think is not true. Then we talk about how we, the people, need to be the solution to the problems going on in the world. Then we have Real Talk. Real Talk is 5 to 20 minutes of me just giving you a little real talk. Some of you might call it a rant, depending on how you take it, but that's what it is. We have 75 Hard Verses. That's where someone who has completed the 75 Hard program comes on, talks about how their life was before, how their life is now, and how you could change your life using the 75 Hard program. If you're unfamiliar with the 75 Hard program, it is the initial phase of the Live Hard program, which you can find for free at episode 208.

That's audio episodes only. It's not on YouTube. There is a book called The Book on Mental Toughness available on my website, andyfricella. Com, which outlines the entire Live Hard program plus 10 chapters on mental toughness, why it's important to cultivate, how it can improve your life and how it will change your life. There's also some case studies of some very successful people in there as well that you're going to recognize. You don't have to buy the book to get the program. The program is available for free, but the book will explain it, Nuts and bolts, top to bottom, inside out, For those of you that need to know everything about it, which I'm one of those people. We have a fee for the show. The fee is very simple. It's not monetary. You'll notice that we don't run ads on the show. I don't like to be told what to do. That's my thing. I'm not going to run any ads on the show because I don't want to listen to shit. The benefit of that to you is you don't have to hear 30 minutes of ads or me talking about shit that I don't even use so that I can get paid.

I get paid other ways in my life. I ask very simply instead of that, that you help us share the show. We're constantly battling shadow bands and traffic throttling and censorship. If you don't share the show, the message doesn't get out. If it's a good show, makes you think, makes you laugh, gives you a new perspective, gives you some skills or some information that are helpful to you, do us a solid and don't be a hoe. Change show.

All right. Hey.

What's up, man? Happy Monday.

Yeah. What's going on with you?

Nothing, dude. Just Same old stuff. What's up with you?

Nothing much. We had a good little day Friday, this past Friday. Got to try on some stuff. You guys will be seeing that.

Oh, yeah. Dj and I got some new suits. Yeah.

Fucking pimp.

Yeah, they They are. Probably the coolest thing I've ever owned in my life.

Yeah, same. No, for sure. Yeah. For sure. Nobody's got that. That doesn't even exist.

Dude, these motherfuckers don't have no swag. That's what it is.

I know. People are going to shit their brains.

Shit their brains? Right It's right out? Right out there, nostrils. I think they already did that. No, that's true. That's true. At least 30% of society. Not our listeners.

Might be a little bit more than that. Okay. That is what it is. What's going on, though, man? Everything good?

About eight. Yeah, dude, everything's great, man. Training's going good. Finally healthy. Feeling good. Fuck, man. It's good. Let's get it. Yeah, feeling optimistic about the future, no matter what happens, Because I don't think people are going to tolerate some of the stuff going on. I feel that's coming to a head, which means that we're closer and closer and closer and moving forward the right way. So I'm excited about that.

It's like the quicker we get to the shit, we can get past the shit.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

That's a good place to be. It's a good place to be. Well, guys, Andy, as always, I got some good ones for you.

All right.

Let's do it. Let's dive into these. Guys, Andy, question number one. Hey, Andy. I've spent the last two years strategically putting myself into a position to quit my job and start my own business. The time has come where I need to put it all on the line. I'm ready. But I know from listening to this show that my expectations are not going to be my reality, and I should be on alert at all time for mishaps. My family is willing to help me with my business and everything. My concern is that because this is literally all of my money, and if something goes wrong, I will likely lose everything. So I feel as if maybe I should just do everything until I reach a point where I can afford for other people's mistakes. What are your thoughts on this?

First of all, transitioning from a career as an entrepreneur to a career as an entrepreneur is not a... It's not usually a situation where you just go from one to the other. Usually, you continue to work your main income source You take your spare time, your nights and your weekends and the time that you have outside of that, and you build your business up to a point where it's making some income that will supplement the income that you're making at your primary job. Then when it gets to a point where you can survive on the new thing, then you make the switch to full-time. First of all, you should be thinking about that. Most people that go from one to the other and do what you're describing you want to do, they end up failing. It's very, very important that you have some supplemental income while you're doing your business. If I hadn't have had that when I was coming up, I would have failed. The first six years that I was in business, I worked other jobs. I did other things to support. Yeah, people don't realize that. Six years. Six years. I ran the store from 9:00.

Back in those days, we were only open till 7:00 because we weren't busy. But 9:00 to 7:00, Then it got to 9:00 to 9:00. Then I would go to the bar, I would work at the bar, or do other things. Things that I did to make money was I promoted concerts, I did odd jobs, construction, concrete, shit that I could earn some money to be able to keep the business open. That's very, very, very common. You should not believe the people on the internet who say, go in all in on yourself today because you don't know shit, bro. You really don't. You need to have some supplemental income coming in while you transition out of that first career to the second career as an entrepreneur. Second point here is you should make really sure that this is what you want to do, because this is not easy, it's not simple, it's not quick. The glory stories of entrepreneurship are the vast, vast, vast minority. The truth of the matter is most people fail, and most people fail because they expect, like you said in your question, for it to be much easier than it really is.

The disparity between what reality is in entrepreneurship and how it's presented online, it's a million miles away, and that's just reality. You have to ask yourself, are you really willing to give everything to this? That means your early mornings, that means your nights, that means your weekends. That means everything. If you're not willing to give that, entrepreneurship is not for you, dude. You will not win because there will always be people that are willing to do that. And you, at your skillset, cannot compete with those people who are willing to do more and invest more of their time getting better than you will. So a lot of people hear this idea of entrepreneurship as freedom. It's not fucking freedom, dude. It's the furthest thing away from freedom. You don't get your weekends, you don't get your holidays. Bro, I didn't even come home for fucking probably three, four years, but maybe once a year. I was living three and a half hours away for Christmas. You miss a lot. And this is reality, dude. And it's not talked about. And the reason it's not talked about is because most of the people that are talking to you on the internet don't really have a real business if you dig into it.

So how would they know this? They're selling you ideas on how to build a real business when in reality, they never built one. So they don't tell you this shit, because if they told you this shit, they wouldn't be able to sell their shit. So it's hard as fuck, and you have to be real about what you're willing to give to it. So that's the second point. And the third point is that you You should, in the beginning, go as long as possible without bringing in outside help, unless it's technical help, a skillset that you don't know. And in that case, you should not bring them on full-time. You should pay them to do a specific job until you are pulling in enough revenue to justify a position in that situation that would be full-time. So that's my answer to that question. It's three parts. My main thing here is, dude, really be honest with yourself about what you're willing to give. Are you willing to give up your life for the next 10 fucking years to do this? If you're not, you shouldn't do it.

I want to clarify. You're saying that because it sounds like this person is basically like two years, maybe he saved up a nest egg in the last two years, and he's just trying to leave this and go start-I understand. And you're saying it's better to just make this more of a gradual transition.

I understand he has a nest egg, bro. But when you start opening a business and there's all these different expenses, especially when business owners are inexperienced at marketing and advertising. This is where they usually fuck up because they think that they can spend a whole bunch on marketing, and that will bring them all kinds of business. And they don't really understand that when you start to advertise or run ads or however you're going to do it, it takes multiple impressions for people, whether that's television, whether that's radio, whether that's print, whether that's digital. It takes multiple impressions. And if you go out and think that you're going to... And this is just a fundamental reality of building a company from bootstrap level. Now, if you were able to get $200 million and raise cash, this is a different fucking story. But I'm talking about this situation, specifically. The way that people mess up their businesses in the beginning is they think that they can go out and gather a thousand customers in one ad campaign. And that's just not really how it works, dude. You need to be thinking about building your business, literally one customer, one relationship at a time.

Because if you build it one customer at one relationship at a time, and you do a great job The exponential effect of that, of gaining multiple customers, is much quicker than you trying to go out, and it's much more profitable than you trying to go out and get like a thousand customers for some big ad campaign. Because, dude, here's what happened. That guy has this big nest egg, and he goes out and he runs this ad, and it doesn't work. And he's like, Okay, the copy was wrong. So he goes out and he runs another big campaign, and it doesn't work. Okay, the copy was wrong. Now they start saying he's running out of money, right? Because the problem really is they're not getting enough familiarity and they're not getting enough impressions to become intrigued enough or interested enough. And you don't have the word of mouth out there working for you, so it takes even longer. All right? So What these guys do is they go out, they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the business actually works. They think they can blow their business up with ad campaigns. And then what ends up happening is they don't work.

And then the reason they don't work, they're completely missing. They don't understand. It takes all these impressions to get familiar. And so they change their copy from here to here to here to here, and they change their branding from here to here to here to here. And what happens is the familiarity can't happen because they're not consistent in their fucking message or their brand. So they suicide themselves by going through all their cash. And that's what I'm trying to help this individual avoid.

I would also imagine, too, when you guys were started, there were probably a bunch of hidden costs that you didn't even know. Oh, of course. You know what I'm saying? Like phone bills. You know what I'm saying? So it's like you're trying to put this money into a business at the same time.

Wait until you start figuring out how much tax they take from your business. Wait until you figure that out. That'll be a lesson for you. People think, Oh, you buy this for nothing and sell it for a lot, and you just fucking rolling in dough. And dude, you don't understand how hard the government makes a business to actually scale. If they actually remove the tax restrictions on businesses, the economy would go fucking crazy. But they don't want to do that because they want us to be suppressed because as people get wealthy, they get more leverage, they get more power, and they don't like that.

So Yeah, it's real shit, man. Love it. Let's get to question number two. Hey, Andy. Andy, I just started a podcast, and I've been doing it for almost a year now. I post four episodes a month. The problem is I'm not seeing any traction. How long should I go on this before I call it quits? I know the space is super competitive, and I see other podcasts popping up and becoming overnight success. Why isn't this working for me?

Because you probably suck. You probably aren't good enough to do it. Okay? That's the answer. The answer is the market dictates the result. And if you're good, the market responds. And if you're not good, the market does not respond. And I would say that most likely, if I'm guessing, you probably haven't done anything, or you don't have a crazy story to tell, and you don't have lessons to tell. And people are honestly tired of just these regular people having conversations with a microphone and fucking headphones. Everybody thinks they can podcast, and everybody can podcast. But having a successful podcast is pretty fucking rare. It's the hardest platform to win at, and it's not for everybody. So you may not have the skillset to do it. Now, could you develop the skillset to do it? For sure. But what I would recommend is that you go out in your life and you build something to be incredibly interesting around. Look at the guests that people have on shows. They all have an interesting story. What's your story? What's your position of authority? What are you an expert at? Why should people listen to you? Just because everybody has a microphone in their fucking social media and headphones, bro, it's become a joke, real talk.

I wish they would price microphones and headphones like $10,000 each. Just because, dude, the shit's absurd. Everybody thinks that if they do a piece of fucking content with a microphone and a headphones, they're going to get millions of views. Dude, it comes down to what you say. It comes down to your message. It comes down to how you deliver your message, and it comes down to the credibility you have. And so podcasting is very competitive. And to be great at it, you got to have a great story. You got to have done some real shit, or you got to be really great at having conversations. And you got to have a personality. And a lot of this stuff that we see online with podcast, it's gotten really hot. But yeah, It doesn't get traction. These guys are getting 30, 40 listens on their podcast. That's okay if you're going to commit to it for 10 years. I've been doing my shit for nine years, dude. You know what I'm saying? Rogan has been doing it for 20 years. You've been doing it for one. It took me 100 episodes to even get like, okay. That's another thing.

If you do have the skills and you do have a story, let's say you built a company. I don't know if you did or didn't. I don't know enough about it. But if you did or you did something crazy or whatever your podcast is about, you may not have been doing it long enough. You just may not. Year is not a long time. No, it's not. And your skill set may not have developed. This is like anything else. Reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, Did it. Or at least put you in a position to speak on things. I didn't just come on here and start giving fucking entrepreneur advice. I had built shit. My company was a $100 million company before I ever did a fucking podcast. You see what I'm saying? You got some stuff to say. Yeah. So what the fuck are you doing? What gives your fucking credibility? And that's what people miss, bro. Just because you think you got shit to say It doesn't mean anybody's going to listen to it unless it's really good shit. It's like the guys that you see that are out there doing podcasts at a high level that people are listening to and they haven't really built anything but their podcast, they're fucking funny, or they are great at conversation, or they're entertaining, and they make people fucking laugh, and they got personality.

And what I see is a bunch of you guys getting on there and going like this, You got to work hard and be tough. It's like, You got to do the thing. Yeah, you got to do the work, man. It's like, yeah, you might be saying similar shit, but the way you say it sucks. You don't have it, right? Dude- These are real variables. Yeah, bro, it's real. And dude, at the end of the day, you have to be good. You're not entitled to a fucking top podcast, bro. You're not entitled to a successful business. You're not entitled to a great fucking career. You're not You have to be good. And it doesn't matter how much work you do if you don't develop the skillset. So you could do your podcast for 10,000 episodes the way you're doing it. It's probably never going to catch because you're not good. Okay? And maybe you are good. Maybe you're the fucking best ever. I'm not trying to discourage you, but you haven't been doing it long enough. You need a fucking story. You need some unique competitive advantages that make you different. And I would say another thing, a lot of you guys who You're afraid to be authentic.

You're really afraid of it. Your best you, that's the product. I don't come on here and pretend to be something else. I know some of you guys do, because when you meet people that know me, they always tell me what you ask. Is he really like that? Yeah, motherfucker, I'm just like this in my life.True or not true?It's true. Is that true? Yes. This is me. You guys get me. You don't get some fucking bullshit shit, toned-down version of me. And I believe that's why a lot of you guys like to show. So be authentic. Be who you are. Tell people what it is. What do you really think? You know what I'm saying?

What do you really think?

What do you really think, man? How do you really feel? Just let it rip, dude.

Let me ask you this because there was a part of this question. I'm curious to see. Because obviously, you talk about, listen, there's a journey. This is going to be long. You talk about how hard it's going to be. And even still with that, there is a possibility that it still may not work.

Yeah.

But this concept, this idea of this overnight success.

Bro, that's bullshit. Let's talk about it. Yeah. This guy, like what he said, Oh, I see all these other podcasts. Like, who? Yeah, there's exceptions, bro. It looks like overnight success. Okay? Busting with the Boys, Will Compton. Will Compton has done a ton of shit, and now he fucking finally got to a point where it's great and everybody loves it. He's been doing it for years and years and years. Bobby Altaff, super popular. You know why? Because it's unique. The way she does it is unique. Nobody's doing it like that. So it catches, and she has amazing guests. So dude, what is your fucking unique selling proposition? What is that? What are you? Who are you? What do you think? What do you say? How are you How are you different? How are you different from the fucking millions of people that have bought a fucking microphone and sit on their fucking... They make reels with their fucking headset on, and it's probably not even plugged in to no shit, and they're fucking doing fake... What makes you different than that? And by the way, stop doing that shit, bro. Find a new way to do it.

Like, real talk. A lot of you guys, the shit's overplayed, man. I know that sounds weird coming from me because every single fucking clip, you see it-We don't have headphones, though. Dude, every clip everybody's ever seen of me is the exact same. I'm bitching about it. I know I sound like an asshole, but I'm just being real, man. I don't want you to waste all this time and never get anywhere. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Can you take us back to the first MFCEO episode?

What do you want to know about it?

Where were we? The first episode, where were you at?

It was terrible. It's fucking terrible. It's terrible. If I In fact, that's why I leave up a lot of the old shows because I'm like, You know what? People should go back and listen to how bad I was. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Nine years ago.

Yeah, it's terrible, dude. And that's the thing. That's why I said it took 100 episodes. It took 100 episodes for me to get even decent. You know what I'm saying? I got almost a thousand podcast episodes under my belt. A thousand. That's a fucking shit ton. A thousand and three. A thousand and three. That's a good guess. I knew it was almost a thousand. I looked at it yesterday. Yeah. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. A thousand. Okay? You got fucking seven. That's why you suck.

It's real shit though, man. I love it. I love it, man. Guys, let's get to our third and final question. Andy, question number three.

So a little backflip. Yeah, what do you say? What do you say? One episode a week?

Four episode, yeah.

One a week. Yeah, so that's 52 episodes. Yeah, bro. No shit, you suck. Real talk. Yeah. Real talk.

Just based off of strict numbers here. Yeah. Yeah.

If I were you, I'd do two a week just so you can accelerate the process of improvement. And fuck if they don't listen. If you're that committed to it, fuck them if they don't listen. You're going to improve your skill set, and eventually... Another thing you could do, dude, when you get good enough, start having guests on that have other podcasts and collab with that. You know what I'm saying? Very few people can just hold a show on their own. You know what I mean? They don't have to be famous. They don't have to be They got to be interesting. You know what I mean? All right.

I love it. Guys, Andy, question number three, a third and final question. Andy, a little backstory. I went to prison when I was 18 years old. A mix of poor decisions and surrounding myself with the wrong crowd. Anyways, fast forward. I get out as a 25-year-old man. By 30, I was a low-level manager at a demolition company. That's when I found the MFCEO podcast and eventually 75 75 Hard. I want to thank you personally because 75 Hard changed my life dramatically. I went from $60,000 a year low-level manager position to a project manager position shortly after my 75 Hard journey making six figures. Now, I am 33 years old, and I've worked my way up to be part of the ownership group at the very same demo company I started at. We've been around for 20 plus years and are currently an eight-figure business. My question is, how do I approach changing the culture at a business that has been doing things a certain way for so many years. Recently, there's been some employee turnover, all stating a quote, toxic work environment that doesn't care about their employees. Personally, I don't see this to be true, But I want to help turn my company into the go-to place of employment for anyone that wants to work in the demo space.

I'd appreciate any advice you have for me.

For sure, man. First of all, that's awesome, dude. That's what it's about. Nobody's perfect. People make mistakes. People fuck up their lives. The goal is to not fuck it up again. The goal is to be better afterwards. I just want to say that's awesome. I respect the fuck out of that. I actually respect that more than someone who never had to do that because that's an incredibly difficult thing to go through. Congratulations. It's such a short period of time, too. Congratulations on that. That's cool. Just make sure you don't go back. Yeah, dude. Vince Lombardi has a famous quote, and it's very simple. Leading by example isn't the best way to lead. It's the only way to lead. If you, as an entrepreneur, which is what you are, would like to change the culture in your environment, you have to start with yourself. You have to start behaving how you would like the culture to be. If you're having an environment where people are saying it's toxic, that means you're going to have to correct to where it's positive, and it's not that. You got to be the opposite of that, and you have to assert yourself to build relationships with the people in your company to make them feel...

Because I guarantee, if you're having all these people say the same thing, you probably got a real problem there, even if you don't see it. Because it's a commonality, dude. And by the way, culture goes up and down. Culture, once you set it in place, doesn't always stay at a high level. It goes up and down in proportion how much effort you invest in it like everything else. So if you want the culture to change, dude, you are going to have to put in the work, and you're going to have to put in the work in a way that it's noticeable. So what that means is you're going to have to be fucking awesome. You're going to have to lead. You're going to have to coach these people. You're going to have to make them feel wanted and important and recognized and seen. Eventually, what will happen is your other partners in your group will say, what's the guy's name? Is that what they say? Ben Say. Okay, Steve. They're going to say, Steve, dude, you're doing awesome, man. You're kicking ass, blah, blah, blah. Then what that's going to do is give you an opportunity to sit down with the guys and say, All right, guys, look, here's the deal.

I wanted to do this because we were getting this and this and this, and I want to transform the company into the best place of employment that we can possibly be. To do that, I've had to put in all this work. What I'd like to do is to formalize a positive culture, and I'd like to sit down with you guys and come up with a mission statement, some core values, and then really go through some leadership training together so that we can maintain this culture that I've got going because it will help us grow the business. It will help us avoid turnover. It will help us have more enjoyment and more fun doing what we do. I don't know, but blowing shit up sounds pretty awesome and tearing shit down. I like that. But the point is, you're going to have to build it on your own and then bring it to the other people. You could always bring it to the other people and then get them all to build it, but that's less of a convincing argument because they're not seeing what you've already done. A lot of times, mid-level leadership or even just not the main shotcaller in the business, will bring ideas to the main shotcaller in the business, and that will get shot down because there's nothing you can really see.

The better... What's that saying? It's better to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission. This is one of those situations where you want to go do it and then bring it. Because that way, when they notice how great of a job you're doing, you've already proven the concept to them, and it's going to be easy to get their buy-in, and then you can formalize the culture of the company.

I love that. Andy, let me ask you this. So as a leader in an organization, as even a shot call, or maybe you're just a high-level executive, whatever the case is, when it comes to addressing issues issues or things that are being brought up, how exactly do you know when something needs to be addressed? Is it one employee saying, Hey, this might be a problem? Is it two or three? You mentioned, if you got a couple of employees saying that they feel like it's toxic, okay, this probably might be an issue.

It depends on how big your company is, too. If you have 500 plus employees, you're going to have some buzzing that's not good all the time because you're dealing with people. People, sometimes, they become unhappy with their lives in some way, and they start to feel like they need to change their lives. They actually end up blaming their career for their unhappiness when their unhappiness comes from other areas. Then this is a lesson in the lesson. A lot of people fuck up their lives like this because they leave great careers because they're unhappy in other places, and they blame their career, and then they get outside that career, and they're like, Fuck, I fucked up. You need to make make sure that you understand that if you have a big number of employees, you're always going to have a few people that are upset. It may not even be a real thing. That's just a numbers game, right? But when you start to have... If you have a smaller company and you have three or four people that are saying that, it's probably a real thing. And by the way, when you have a big company and you If you have only two or three people, that doesn't mean ignore them because they might have very valid points.

So it's just important to listen. It's important to judge those things. I have a little thing that I teach my leaders, and Sal teaches our leaders. There's a difference between bullshit and real shit. Don't ever bring me bullshit. If someone's just bitching to bitch, don't bring that shit to me. Real shit, bring it to me, or handle it. If you want to be really good, handle it on your own. But if you have to, you bring it to us. We fix it. So that's a good rule to have. What's bullshit and what's real shit. And you need to become really good at figuring out which is which.

I love it, man. I love it. Guys, that was three.

All right, guys. Let's have a great week. Don't be a hoe. Show the shop.

We're from sleepin' on the flow. Now my jury box froze. Fuck a bowl, fuck a store. Counted millions in a cold. Bad bitch, booted swole. Got her on bank man. I love it. Guys, that was three. All right, guys. Let's have a great week. Don't be a hoe. Show the shop.