ASK ANDY： Laser Focus vs. Serial Entrepreneurialism (and questions from Periscope), with Andy Frisella - MFQA6
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
195.51118
Summary
In this episode of the MFCEO Project Podcast, we have special guest Andy Fursella on the show. Andy is a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies over the years and has a lot of experience in the tech space. We talk about the benefits of multiple companies and why it's better than just one company.
Transcript
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All I do is work, work, work, never on the sidelines, I only, hustle, I don't ever take your day off, I only, work, work, work, I don't mess around, kid, I only, can't, can't, can't, what he never sees, gets you, all I do is work.
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I'm Tandy Priscilla, this is the MFCEO Project Podcast. I am here with my host, Vaughn Kohler. What's up, Vaughn?
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I'm doing pretty well, yeah. We're at the, like, well, I was going to say the peak of our popularity, but...
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Dude, I can't, I can't, like, I'm beside myself, I have 1,500 Instagram followers, I mean, it's crazy.
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Like, I'm Insta-famous, I mean, watch out Dan Balzerian, you know?
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Here's the deal, guys, if you're not following Vaughn on Instagram, go follow him, it's at Vaughn Kohler, spell that for him.
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And go follow him, post some rude comments and some, like, finger emojis and eggplants.
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Because that's the kind of stuff that he likes on his Instagram.
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Are we taking questions off of the Periscope people?
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I just, you know, I'm all into Periscope right now.
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If you guys aren't on Periscope, go to Periscope.
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I do daily broadcasts, basically like little mini podcasts.
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And these guys are checking out the taping of the MSCEO project right now.
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But, no, we are going to do our regular podcast.
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I'm just kind of letting these guys check it out.
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You and Gary Vee both have talked about the power of focus.
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And, of course, Gary has founded multiple companies over time.
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Could you share with me, real quick, the pros and cons of just having one company and sticking
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to it through the long haul and having multiple companies?
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But I just did a Periscope last night on this concept titled Opportunity Quicksand.
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It's one of the biggest things that kills entrepreneurs besides, I would say, the lack
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of action where people get stuck in the planning zone and then move to action zone.
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The second, besides that aspect of killing entrepreneurs, the second best thing that kills
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entrepreneurs out there is Opportunity Quicksand.
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And what that is, is that's somebody who is what they call a serial entrepreneur.
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And they look at all these different businesses out there and they decide they're going to
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open everything and do everything and be everything and focus all their energy across all these
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And when you do that, what happens is, is you're not able to focus energy in on your one bread
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and butter concept or two bread and butter concepts that you need for those to work.
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And so your energy, just like you would do if you had a wall or an amp breaker, you know,
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and it was, you had 15 plugs pulled in, they all get less power than if you have one plug.
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So you have to think about the amount of energy that's being applied to those concepts.
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And what happens is people get, you know, two or three years into something and then
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they look at something else and they're like, shit, that looks like it's easier.
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And they hop over here and then they get two or three years more in and they hop over
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here and they go from one thing to another thing to another thing and they never really
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It's a very, very, very bad disease that infects many, many entrepreneurs.
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But, you know, obviously the pros of having other things in the fire are that you're diversified.
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So we own many companies, but all my companies are vertically integrated and they all relate
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So the focus can be applied and put into the right context.
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You know, all his companies are somewhat related and they're at least related to his
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Where he's interested and he can focus those, you know, he's got the wine library and then
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he's got a, he's got a, a Vayner media and all that.
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So I would say that the pros are, you know, Hey, um, well, the, the pros to sticking with
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The cons are you're not diversified and vice versa.
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You know, the pros are, if you're diversified, that you're diversified, which makes you, uh,
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you know, if you're one business over here crashes, you still have these other ones to
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Um, but the problem with that is, is that most people are not capable of doing that.
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So I would say maybe two out of every 100 can do that.
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You know, guys like Richard Branson, most people have to stay focused.
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So I would say that if you want to diversify your business and open multiple companies,
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make them vertically integrated somehow, make them, make them all related.
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Is that what you mean by vertically integrated?
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I mean, you're in the process of all the aspects from top to bottom.
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Like for us, we, we do everything from cultivate raw ingredients to manufacturing products, to
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a wholesaling products, to distributing products, to selling products, to end users, to our own
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So everything, even though we own multiple companies, they all are related.
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That's one way to keep your focus strong and still be diversified.
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So if our retail business takes a dump, I've still got these other companies that can work
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So that's what, you know, that's one way people could keep the focus.
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But generally speaking, most people cannot focus the way it needs to be focused on multiple
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So I would say stick with what you know, and when you're ready to grow and you're ready to
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diversify, diversify within your knowledge realm.
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I'm going to actually tack on another question just because, you know, I know we've talked about
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just focusing on one question, but I'm going to add another question because this one,
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I don't think it's going to take you very long to answer.
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Plus it refers to one of my favorite movies of all time.
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Days of Thunder is the greatest movie ever made.
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The racing one with Dick Trickle or whatever his name is?
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And I'm not talking about Karate Kid with Will Smith's son.
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That movie didn't happen, as far as I'm concerned.
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You got a bunch of NASCAR fans following you, I think.
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Where Daniel learns karate from doing other shit like waxing the floor.
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Are there any specific areas of life like science, politics, entertainment?
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Where you find lessons that you can apply to business, like strategies?
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By the way, that's Eugene from Grand Forks, South Dakota.
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You can learn lessons about business in lots of different things.
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One of the biggest things that I found helpful through my journey was that I played sports.
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I learned a lot of lessons that are very relatable to business through playing sports my whole life.
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You know, things about leadership, about getting a team to work together, about, you know, I always talk about the Viking ship and getting everybody rowing the same direction.
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And if one side's rowing quicker than the other side, what happens?
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And, I mean, even if you're not an athlete, you can learn them through different things, like competing.
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You know, a lot of these dudes play fucking video games their whole life now.
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It's like, you know, they sit there with their headset and they fucking, you know, shoot people across the world through their TV screen.
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Dude, you can learn a lot about winning and losing just through that.
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I mean, there's so many lessons to learn that are applicable to business.
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You can learn many different places, even school, because a lot of these guys hate school.
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You know, and they look for reasons to get out of it without having a plan, okay?
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Don't fucking quit school unless you have a plan.
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You know, all these guys look, oh, I quit school.
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You're going to have the NEA after you, you know?
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All those teachers are going to be really ticked off of you.
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It's just, you know, I quit because I had a business that was four or five years old that needed my attention.
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You know, unless you're in that, you know, do something.
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So we were talking about how great your fans are, and I got to say that there's this one fan in particular.
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He very, very, very much wants to win this, you know, come be with Andy for a day.
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And I got to admit, he's been persistent enough.
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And, and, and Instagram and he, and he's emailed like a billion times.
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So I am going to, I'm going to condescend to mention him on the radio, or I guess we're not on the radio, but you know what I mean?
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So he's from the Bronx, I think, or some part of New York.
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But I think he's a personal trainer or something, but.
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Vinnie Logs either sounds like real gangster or like, I ate like chili last night.
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Part of the reason that I'm actually, you know, giving him a shout out is that I'm not entirely sure he's not going to like show up at my house with an axe and, and, you know.
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We're talking about you live on the MSCEO project.
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Now tell him so that everybody hears, basically the selection process for this whole thing about, you know, you bringing people out here.
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They're going to, okay, first of all, I think I'm going to bring a second person out.
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So I'm thinking about, you know, maybe doing another scope later on today about that.
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I haven't decided for sure yet, but what we're doing is we're bringing somebody out, okay, one of my Periscope followers.
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And this is why it's cool to follow me on social media, because I'll do shit like this sometimes.
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So they've got to click 500 hearts, okay, on Periscope that qualify.
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You know, it's pretty easy to hit those hearts.
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It's all my friends that don't give me any hearts.
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And all the guys that work for me, they really like give me fingers instead of hearts.
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But the point is, is that, so I came up with the idea of, hey, we're going to bring somebody in to come sit in on the MFCEO project to be a part of the show, go to lunch, go to dinner, hang out, and then basically spend some hours mentoring them on how to, you know, improve where they are in life.
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Whether they're an employee of a company or a manager or a CEO or just thinking about getting in business, you know, we want to spend some time with them getting their plan cleared up.
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So basically, you know, it would just be a situation where we help somebody in person.
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So I announced it through Periscope kind of off the top of my head, and we're going to do it.
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So we're going to pick, and it might be a regular thing.
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So, Vinny, if we don't pick you this time, you know, we're going to keep doing it, I think.
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I'm not drinking right now because I'm in my diet zone.
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But, dude, that's how I'm going to celebrate my diet zone.
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So evidently, somebody sent you granola that I was supposed to get some of.
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So one more question, and then we'll wrap up this one.
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Guys on Periscope, ask me a question for the MFCEO project.
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While you're looking or waiting for the question, I will mention to other people, I've been saying
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that we're going to announce these review winners the first week of September.
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So if this broadcast comes out, we might have already announced them.
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I think you'll announce them on your Instagram.
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If not, it's going to be very shortly after this broadcast.
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So if you haven't sent in a review to iTunes, do so.
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Take a screenshot of it and email it to askandyatthemfceo.com.
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What's the biggest key to hiring quality people?
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If you're a business owner and you're paying attention to this, you need to pay really,
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really close attention to how you hire good people.
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Anybody could come in here and put on a fucking horse and dog and pony show or the fuck it's
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called and act like there's something they're not, you know, try to act like, hey, I'm a
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And a week later, you find out the guy's full of shit.
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You know, you don't know that person until they're six months in.
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Everybody's good at pretending up until that point.
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So the way that you consistently hire good people and do it in foolproof manner is by
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making sure that you instill a set of core values into your business.
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You've got to do a lot of work to get the process into play.
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But once the process is into play, you don't have to worry about hiring because it weeds
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So what I mean by this is you want to instill a certain culture.
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And so you have to establish the core values of your business up front and you have to start
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working, speaking, firing, hiring, communicating in the terms of those core values, promoting,
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you know, everything in the terms of those core values all the time with your company.
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And eventually after, you know, after some time, it could take a year, could take, you
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know, 18 months, but you will instill a tremendous culture in your business.
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And then what happens is when people come in and they fool you, then your boys and your
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girls that work for you, they will see right through that shit and fucking weed that person
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They can't do all of the shit that these people do.
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So how you hire great people all the time is not go read an interview book, not go read
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how to the right interview questions, all this shit.
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But the reality is, if you instill a tremendous culture in your business through establishing
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core values that your company lives by, the hiring and firing will take care of itself
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because the people that live and breathe, eat, sleep, and love your company and love you
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Look, hey, Vaughn, go through all the boring shit that you got to go through.
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So, yes, everyone, for every one of these podcast episodes, including the Ask Andy podcast
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episodes, we have a dedicated page on the website.
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The website is themfceo.com, and the dedicated page for this website is themfceo.com slash QA4,
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But, guys, we love it when you go to our website.
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We love it when you post comments under the blog post, or excuse me, the podcast entries.
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So, it's just good for you to go there, sign up, subscribe to the podcast, and yeah, that's
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all I need to say other than I think you know all of our social media stuff.
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I see all these people talking about the, you know, we get 10,000 downloads, 12,000 downloads
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Let's put a little more fucking work into this.
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Can I say something else, too, about something that people sometimes ask?
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Those of you who have Android phones, you guys have lamented the fact that it's tough to
00:18:14.560
Guys, there is an incredible app called Stitcher.
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In some ways, I think it's better than the iTunes app.
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It's free, and you can listen to the MFCEO on Stitcher.
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And as far as those of you who don't have an iPhone who want to leave a review for us
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You just get on your computer, go to iTunes.com, create an Apple ID, which is free, and leave
00:18:47.820
Yeah, guys, that's how we get our podcast ranked.
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I mean, if we don't get reviews, we don't get ranked.
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You know, we're trying to offer practical advice that you could take away and go improve
00:19:08.020
Early on in the podcast, I texted Andy, and I said, oh, we're doing real good with our rankings.
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And he texted back, well, how are we doing compared to the big dogs, the people who were
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And I said, oh, you know, we're doing pretty well.
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And his response was, I want to destroy everyone.
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I don't do shit that I don't want to fucking win.
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Look, I'm humbled to even be included in some of these dudes, OK?
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I see my podcast next to guys like Seth Godin and Gary Vee and these other dudes that I look
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up to and think, holy shit, these guys have taught me so much.
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Very responsible for where I am today because of the information that they have passed on to
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You know, I've met Tim Ferriss a couple of times.
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But I mean, at the same time, man, I want to fucking win.
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If you're not following Vaughn, like I said, follow him.
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I would like to add, though, when you went back to the question about core values and
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Dude, I was setting up for the podcast one day, and Andy had some of his retail managers
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here conducting interviews to work at his retail stores.
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And as soon as the guys left that were getting interviewed, I saw the managers group together.
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They literally went down the fucking core values, said no to all fucking four of them.
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I mean, Tyler started with us in a retail store and has moved on to First Form and now
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I mean, you've been here long enough to see us instill the core values, instill the culture,
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But it's just, you know, people might think that, you know, you're lying that you hire
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and fire by that shit, but dude, it's still instilled to this day.
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And there's a couple of good books about that too, guys.
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If you want to check it out, go check out Delivering Happiness.
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And it has like little plastic monkeys on the front, like those little toy monkeys.
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Look, dude, there's only two people on the face of the earth that I would stand in line
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I would not stand in line to meet anybody else other than these two men.
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So the all-in book is called, the guy who wrote it is Adrian Gostic.