Be An Ethical Entrepreneur, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO3
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
201.37373
Summary
Andy Frisella and his co-host Vaughn Kohler discuss the importance of doing the right thing in life and in business. They discuss how important it is to do the things you need to do to be successful in business and in life.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey guys, what's up? It's Andy Frisella. I'm here with the MFCEO Project Podcast.
00:00:14.200
A little about me. We're just getting going on the podcast, so I want to kind of let you guys
00:00:18.460
know if this is your first time listening, what I'm about. I started in business 16 years ago
00:00:24.120
with no money. We started a retail store. We lived in that first store for two years.
00:00:30.000
It took us eight months to have a day over $200. And 16 years later, our companies gross
00:00:37.280
over $100 million in gross revenue every single year. So we wanted to bring a message to you guys
00:00:44.660
that was different. Something that just tells the truth. We're not going to sit here and powder coat
00:00:50.180
things. We're not going to make it nice and fluffy and dreamy. We're going to tell you what the real
00:00:55.660
deal is. So I want to welcome my co-host here, Vaughn Kohler. Hey, I'm glad to be here. This is a
00:01:02.640
beautiful weekend. Yeah, it's like perfect weather here in St. Louis. Yeah, I've got lots of plans
00:01:08.760
for the next week because I'm batching it. Oh, you are? My wife's going on a conference and my
00:01:13.680
daughter's going with her, so I've got to figure out what I'm going to do with myself. Well, you were
00:01:19.660
going to get crazy and have all the girls over? Yeah, right. No, no, I don't think so. So what
00:01:25.960
are your plans? What are you going to do this weekend? I think I'm going to hit the farm, man.
00:01:31.280
We've got a farm about an hour away. I think what we're going to do is go out there and try to get
00:01:37.180
it cleaned up for the spring, which is more like relaxation for me than it is work. So you like
00:01:43.160
manual labor. Yeah, we do. Yeah, that's good. It's what I always did until I really got into
00:01:47.700
business. I poured concrete, did construction, painted the stripes on parking lots, which is a
00:01:56.260
lot harder job than what people realize. You push a 400-pound striper filled with paint across
00:02:01.420
asphalt all day in 100-degree heat. That's what you and Chris did in college? That's how we got the
00:02:05.380
money to start a company. Yeah. We were able to put together about 12 grand over the course of a
00:02:11.140
summer. And then during the fall, we made a business plan, and then we were able to open
00:02:18.720
our first business in January. That's awesome. Basically, the end of December, 99, January 1st,
00:02:26.740
2000, I think was our first day of business. So how does that work? When you do the striping,
00:02:32.000
are you a contract employee or are you an hourly employee for some company? Yeah, you work for a
00:02:37.160
company. Yeah. Yeah. So they go out and bid the job, and then you go and, you know, basically do
00:02:44.320
the mule work, which is, that job is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I've heard that
00:02:50.640
roofing is pretty hard, too. Yeah, roofing is definitely hard. I've not done it, but I know some
00:02:57.620
guys that do it. It's hard on you, and it's a tough job. And, you know, I respect anybody that works
00:03:03.100
like that for a living day in and day out, man. It's just a different kind of work. Yeah. You know?
00:03:08.960
Well, what are we talking about today? Today, you know, one of the things that I get a lot of
00:03:13.940
questions about and that I'm big on is doing the right thing. You know, a lot of people don't
00:03:19.860
really understand how important doing the right thing is in business. And in fact, I feel like a lot
00:03:24.620
of people think that to be successful in business and in life, it's about not doing the right thing.
00:03:32.000
It's about stepping on people. It's about, you know, taking advantage of people. And the reality
00:03:36.460
is, is I feel like that's a stereotype that's perpetuated on unfounded facts. You know, I've
00:03:45.160
had this lesson literally pounded into me from the time I was about five, six years old by my mom.
00:03:53.460
Um, I, uh, it's kind of funny because when I say literally pounded, I mean, literally pounded. Um,
00:04:01.500
we were grocery shopping at the local grocery store here. And I remember we were going down
00:04:06.920
the Kool-Aid aisle and I wanted to get, uh, mountain berry Kool-Aid. I remember the flavor
00:04:12.800
because that's, that's how severe, uh, the lesson was, was instilled in me. Um, it was mountain
00:04:18.520
berry, which I don't remember how good it was because I never actually got to try it.
00:04:24.600
It's pretty good. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Cherry's a little bit over the top. It's a little too
00:04:28.800
sweet, but what is it like a mix of berries? Yeah. It's just really smooth. Yeah. Well,
00:04:33.400
I never got to try it. So this is, this is why, um, we were going down the Kool-Aid aisle
00:04:41.720
and I wanted to get some mountain berry and I said, you know, Hey mom, let me, let's get
00:04:44.940
mountain berry. And, and, uh, she said no. And I, you know, I went on and on and said,
00:04:50.180
Hey, you know, let's get mountain berry. Come on, mom, please. Let's get mountain berry.
00:04:54.100
No. No. Was there a reason that she didn't want you to, I like, we didn't really have,
00:04:58.440
uh, I'm assuming, I mean, we didn't have much money when we were younger. So like, um, I'm pretty
00:05:04.420
sure it was a financial thing. Unnecessary expenditure. Exactly. Yeah. And, uh, so anyway,
00:05:10.420
we didn't get it and I decided I wanted it anyway. So I actually just stole it. Um, I
00:05:15.460
put it in my pocket and then when we got home, I didn't think the whole thing all the way
00:05:19.040
through because I didn't know how to make Kool-Aid, you know? So when I got home and
00:05:24.700
I wanted to use the Kool-Aid, I had to have somebody make it. So I had to go to mom and
00:05:27.640
say, Hey mom, you know, make me some Kool-Aid. And, uh, when she saw that I took the Kool-Aid
00:05:32.760
home, uh, she unleashed the fire and brimstone of ass beatings upon me. Um, I had to go back.
00:05:41.360
I had to go in and return the Kool-Aid to the store. So you didn't just get in trouble.
00:05:46.040
Oh no. You had to actually make restitution. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We went right back to
00:05:49.800
the store. That's how she is, man. Do the right thing. Do the right thing. Do the right
00:05:52.880
thing. And that, that got, that's, that lesson was so, um, first of all, like I said, the
00:06:00.700
ass beating was enough to like make you remember, but then the embarrassment of, it's one of
00:06:05.760
my first memories, honestly, cause I was like right in that age where you start remembering
00:06:09.040
things. Right. And, um, you know, that was something I've always remembered and I'm 35
00:06:14.520
now. I still remember that like clear as day. Um, and I was lucky enough to have parents that
00:06:19.460
instilled, you know, do the right thing no matter what in me. And I, and, and I think how that
00:06:25.880
ties into the, to the subject we're talking about is how I feel about successful people
00:06:32.280
in business that I've been able to, you know, been fortunate enough to be surrounded with
00:06:35.960
and, and get to know and call friends. Um, the people who are truly successful understand
00:06:41.680
what that means in the business setting. And I want to basically go through some ideas
00:06:48.120
and some topics to, to break up that myth of, you know, you've got to step on people to get
00:06:54.740
ahead or you've got to, you've got to fuck people over. If you've got to do bad shit,
00:06:58.100
you know, to people or take advantage of people, it's just not the truth. That's what people
00:07:01.940
tell you or tell themselves for their lack of success. And it goes to something like,
00:07:08.420
you know, Oh, you know, I'd like to be blah, blah, blah, blah too, but I'm not willing to
00:07:13.520
step on people or I'm not willing to take advantage of people. And, you know, they have all these
00:07:18.500
stories based around, you know, it's not morally right to, to run a business or to be
00:07:24.540
successful. And it's just, it's just not the truth. Right. Cause the truth is, is you've got
00:07:28.620
to do the right thing for people to get to that point. Right. So I'm, I'm going to be a little bit
00:07:34.560
maybe too deep or philosophical, but obviously when you talk about doing the right thing,
00:07:39.700
the implication is that, uh, there is a moral right and wrong. And I know, you know, you get into like
00:07:46.360
philosophical writings and different people and they would say, well, you know, everybody's got their
00:07:52.160
truth and everybody's got their morality. But what you're saying is that deep down, everybody knows
00:07:56.500
that there is a right and wrong thing to do in a particular situation. Is that, I think people
00:08:01.080
know that. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you don't know that you're probably in jail, you know what I
00:08:08.300
mean? I think most people understand the concepts of right and wrong on a basic level, no matter how
00:08:13.320
much they pretend to or not understand those concepts. So how does that flesh that out then a
00:08:21.920
little bit? Cause I know you and I've talked about this and there's no question you, this is a drum
00:08:26.840
that you bang a lot, which is do the right thing in business. Right. So what, I mean, what does that
00:08:32.040
mean? You know, there's a number of different ways. I think what it comes down to is just always doing
00:08:37.640
what's right. You know, I'm a firm believer that, that what you put out comes back to you. Some people
00:08:43.080
call it karma. You know, I don't know what exactly, you know, I haven't studied karma or, or I just know
00:08:50.260
that what you put out comes back. And I feel like when you do the right thing for people, um, good
00:08:55.140
things happen. And I've, I've seen that with far too much in our own company. I've seen that far too
00:08:59.620
much in other people's companies to know that that's how you build great things, you know? And
00:09:06.060
I, it's something I live by something. I believe you may not believe it if you don't good for you,
00:09:11.920
but I can promise you this. Um, you're going to, you're going to be one of those people that the
00:09:17.340
bad shit's constantly happening to you. Right. You know? Right. So, uh, so social psychologists talk
00:09:23.360
about the law of reciprocity. I mean, they even talk about that within sales, you know, it's, it's the
00:09:28.640
whole thing of, you know, you give somebody something and there's sort of this innate human, uh,
00:09:36.060
we're hardwired to say, Oh, I I'm obligated to give back. So is that kind of what you're
00:09:40.840
talking about? There's, I mean, yeah, there's two aspects to it. I mean, that's, that's one
00:09:45.020
way to look at it. Right. Um, that's not necessarily the way I was speaking about it a moment ago,
00:09:50.760
but that's definitely one way to look at it. One way to look at it is, you know, Hey, if I treat
00:09:56.260
people right, I do good things, they're going to feel, you know, a sense of obligation or loyalty
00:10:03.100
to you to repay you for those good things. Um, I would say 90% of the people in the world
00:10:11.340
that I've come in contact with operate under that. Some people don't give a fuck, you know,
00:10:15.400
some people will just, just take, take, take. And, and, and I've had that happen to me a couple
00:10:21.060
of times, you know, um, in business and those people don't work here anymore. Right. But I feel
00:10:27.040
like if you're going to build a great culture, um, which you might be starting out, you might be a
00:10:31.460
one man operation, but the reality is, is if you're not focusing on your management skills,
00:10:37.520
now you're going to have a very, uh, hard knocks learning lesson about how to manage people and
00:10:42.440
build a team, uh, slash culture within your business. And you, the reality is you can't do
00:10:48.840
it alone. Right. I mean, you can only do so much work and if you have a good team behind you, you can
00:10:53.620
accomplish a much more. And if you want to have a good team, you've got to treat them right.
00:10:57.020
Otherwise they're going to come to work and show up for a paycheck instead of come to work and,
00:11:01.620
and basically go to battle with you to accomplish something great. Right. But your, your general
00:11:06.540
experience in life is that if you, if you put, if you engage people in a positive way,
00:11:11.820
that's what you're going to get back. Yeah, I think so. I mean, what do you think?
00:11:15.960
Yeah, I think so. I agree with what you say. There are some people that are just total losers.
00:11:20.380
Yeah. Um, and it doesn't matter if you're, you know, to use a poker reference, if you're,
00:11:24.960
if you're an ace and they're a joker, it's still a bad hand, but, but yeah, I think generally
00:11:29.920
speaking, if you treat people well, they're going to treat you. I've had a few, I've had
00:11:32.920
a few that I can count on one hand over the course of 16 years that have worked for us
00:11:37.220
that didn't, they don't care what you do for them. They don't care how you treat them.
00:11:41.660
They're going to take, take, take, and, and they're going to try to, to do whatever selfishly
00:11:47.200
benefits them. And those people get weeded out. The thing about those people is, is they,
00:11:50.960
they're going to fuck you over. Then they're going to fuck the next guy over. Then they're
00:11:53.460
going to fuck that next guy over. Yeah. And eventually they're not going to have anybody
00:11:56.540
and they're, and they're going to be sitting at home, you know, basically wondering what
00:12:01.980
the fuck happened to themselves. Right. You know, I think another way of looking at it
00:12:05.320
is that you, you, you mentioned, you know, do you call it karma? What do you call it?
00:12:10.000
But we are all on some level connected. You're a country music fan, aren't you?
00:12:15.480
Yeah. What's that song? I don't know if we're going to figure out what the name of the song
00:12:19.000
is, but there's some song where it basically starts out with somebody doing something to
00:12:22.480
somebody else. And the whole song is like this cause and effect. It's a great song. I don't
00:12:27.280
know. I think it's Brad Paisley or somebody sings it. But anyway, anyway, the point being
00:12:31.340
is that. I mean, every, every country song is what it's about losing your dog, getting
00:12:35.720
drunk or losing your girlfriend. Right. Right. Big trucks. But the idea is that, yeah, I mean,
00:12:40.560
what goes around comes around. If you, if you treat somebody well, hopefully that's going
00:12:45.020
to be what comes back to you. But so that's, that's your, that's your basic principle in
00:12:49.660
life. Yeah. How you operate. Yeah, for sure. And I think in business, I, you know, I've
00:12:55.440
seen it too, too many times, you know, you have a guy who looks for every opportunity to
00:13:01.300
take from his employees or take from his customers as opposed to give. Okay. Those are always the
00:13:09.580
guys that are struggling in business. They're always the guys, you know, who can never really
00:13:13.600
get it going. I mean, they operate on a breakeven level. They, they barely get by, you know,
00:13:20.080
they might be in business quote unquote, but they're not succeeding in business. Right. And
00:13:25.360
those are always the guys that are looking, you know, to like figure out how to screw their
00:13:29.180
employee out of his commission or, you know, not take care of the customer when he has a
00:13:34.400
problem. They're doing all these things to like save a penny today, you know, and it costs
00:13:39.540
them millions tomorrow. And you have to look at it from the opposite point of view, you
00:13:45.520
know, the successful people, the businesses that grow and have abundant, gigantic, huge
00:13:52.800
success. They look at their employees and they say, Hey, how can I help this guy become a better
00:13:59.460
employee? How can I help him have less worries at home? How can I make this easier for him?
00:14:04.040
You know, they become a servant leader to their, to their staff and it's the same for their
00:14:09.220
customers. You know, um, when a customer has an issue, they, they don't just resolve the
00:14:14.600
issue and they definitely don't do it begrudgingly. They do it with enthusiasm. They're happy to
00:14:19.860
take care of customers. It's about losing the attitude that everybody's trying to like take
00:14:23.740
from you, which is kind of ironic because you know, the people who have that attitude are
00:14:30.060
the same ones that are trying to take from everybody else. So it's like, you know, you've
00:14:33.820
got to change your mindset, right? You know, if you have a tremendous customer service policy
00:14:38.680
and you're, it's costing you money, you have to look at that as an investment in customers,
00:14:43.500
not as like, Hey, I lost five bucks today because I went above and beyond for this customer.
00:14:48.700
You know, what's that customer going to say about your company when he leaves, right?
00:14:52.000
You know, and those all come down to doing the right things, you know?
00:14:56.160
Now, you know, I don't necessarily want to challenge you on this, but I mean, I think you would
00:15:01.400
agree though, that there are guys out there who are totally shady, who, who totally mistreat
00:15:08.460
their, their employees, who the only thing that motivates them is money, not people.
00:15:14.700
And they make a lot of money. So it's possible to do it, to be shady. Yes.
00:15:19.180
I mean, yeah, it is, you know, there is aspects to business that I feel like people that don't
00:15:26.240
really give a shit about anything but themselves can be successful. And I mean, you know, um,
00:15:30.820
the financial sector is one of them, you know, look at the collapse they've had, uh, over the
00:15:36.200
last five, six, seven years. And you know, those are guys, you know, that's almost like a perfect
00:15:42.840
example of it. You know, how much, how many of those guys got fired, how many of them got
00:15:46.220
prosecuted, you know, it's a very selfish money driven thing, but, um, I don't think
00:15:51.720
that's most people that we're going to listen to this podcast, you know, are there exceptions
00:15:56.000
to anything that I say? Absolutely. Right. Always will be, you know, I'm just kind of speaking
00:16:00.020
from my own experience. Um, I feel like those people also, you may be able to make a lot of
00:16:07.940
money in a very short term, but I think eventually, you know, those people, as they climb the ladder
00:16:13.020
of success, the people at the top are not the people that have been the most selfish. They're
00:16:16.540
the people who have gave the most, you know, there's, and those people will recognize those
00:16:21.560
qualities that are negative and they don't do business with people like that. So there's a
00:16:25.480
ceiling to where you get, you know, I mean, you look at guys that have, let's say the top of the
00:16:31.640
financial ladder, Bill Gates, one of the most, uh, philanthropic people on earth, you know,
00:16:39.020
Warren Buffett, same thing. You know, you look at these guys who are just massively huge, wealthy,
00:16:46.440
their companies have some of the best, um, employee benefits programs. They have some of
00:16:52.080
the best pay, right? Okay. They have some of the best cultures. They give some of the,
00:16:56.760
they give most, they give the most money away. Yeah. I mean, you've got to be able to connect
00:17:01.720
the dots there. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's a, I think Starbucks was one of the first companies
00:17:07.100
to offer their hourly employees insurance. That's right. I could be wrong. Yeah. And that's
00:17:11.540
why when you go into Starbucks, every single person is smiling and happy that you're there.
00:17:15.640
Yeah. You know, as opposed to being standing in the back room and saying, fuck man, there's a
00:17:21.520
customer. I don't really want to wait on him. You go wait on him. Yeah. You know, it's different.
00:17:25.740
It's a different mentality. Yeah. And you've got to trust that people are going to reciprocate
00:17:29.860
for the most part. I mean, are you going to have people that are going to dick you over? Yeah. It's
00:17:34.240
going to fucking happen, man. But you can't change your whole business to cater to that
00:17:40.240
small percentage of people and then treat the 90% of the people that are great and want
00:17:46.480
to be great. Like they're trying to take something from you. And that's where people really mess
00:17:51.620
up. They like get jaded by a bad experience or on the customer side, they get upset because
00:17:57.820
they ran into that one customer who's trying to take advantage of them. And then they create
00:18:01.200
this policy that, you know, basically says without saying that all customers are trying
00:18:08.200
to take advantage. When in reality, most customers just want their issue solved. Right. You know,
00:18:13.800
they like you, they just had an issue and they're bringing it to your attention. Right. A lot
00:18:17.380
of times customers bring it to bring issues to your attention because they care about you.
00:18:20.640
So if you treat that person has brought an issue to you because they care about your business
00:18:27.780
and they're, they're, they're trying to do the right thing and you treat them like they're
00:18:30.440
trying to fucking scam you. Think what that's going to do to your business over time. Yeah.
00:18:35.420
You know, and that comes, those principles come down to doing what's right. You know? Um,
00:18:41.420
I mean, I, I've heard some crazy shit in like business, man, even just like locally here where,
00:18:46.560
where I'm from, where, you know, somebody's grandma dies and they give them like one day off.
00:18:52.940
Right. You know, like why not like let that person just take care of their, their, their issues and
00:18:58.200
come back when they're ready. I mean, there's just things that don't really matter that people
00:19:03.120
assume are lies. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I, I, like, like some of these guys that
00:19:12.420
own businesses, Oh, that guy's want an extra day off. Cause he's trying to take advantage of me.
00:19:16.080
And that might be true, but most people will not take advantage of you on that, on that. You know what I
00:19:20.680
mean? If you're doing the right thing consistently, they're going to say, Oh man, you know, Andy's a
00:19:24.940
good dude. He let me come back when I want, you know, I'm going to try to get back to work right
00:19:29.060
away. Right. Whereas if you always are treating them like shit and trying to take something from
00:19:32.180
them, you know, customers or employees, they're going to do the same to you. Right. They're going
00:19:37.440
to say, fuck, I'm going to take an extra day off. Cause I don't want to be around that prick.
00:19:40.140
Right. So I heard probably the most comical, but also just insane story the other day,
00:19:46.140
a young woman that I know, she was going for a job interview and at the interview they were
00:19:50.300
meeting at St. Louis bread company. And at the interview, the potential future employer,
00:19:56.000
actually this happened several months ago. Uh, the potential future employer said, um,
00:20:01.700
Hey, I'm not going to get you a drink cause I don't really have it as part of my budget.
00:20:09.460
Meaning, meaning when they sat, when they met for the interview at St. Louis bread company,
00:20:14.160
company, the future employer actually said, Hey, I'm not going to buy you a drink cause I
00:20:18.540
don't have it in my budget. What's that say about your business? Well, as this,
00:20:23.960
as this young woman pointed out, she said, I was a fool because I should have known better
00:20:29.400
three months later. It's like the worst boss she's ever had. She took the job. Yeah. She
00:20:33.220
took the job. She took the job. So I mean, yeah, but, uh, in any case, so the way that you would
00:20:42.560
describe that then would be, uh, just to kind of summarize what you're saying, give what you want
00:20:47.680
to get. Yeah. And people, people choose to not believe that as truth. They choose to believe that,
00:20:53.720
you know, it doesn't matter. There's no karma. I'm not going to get back what I give. So I'm going to,
00:20:59.100
I'm going to do whatever the fuck I have to do today for me. Right. And dude, that's a very
00:21:04.420
selfish way to look at it. And when you look at it that way and you choose to believe that that's
00:21:09.620
the way it is, that's what you're going to get back, man. And it's almost like a self-fulfilling
00:21:13.760
prophecy because other people see you as selfish. They see the decisions you make as selfish. You
00:21:19.600
become labeled as selfish and somebody who looks out for themselves and then nobody wants to fucking
00:21:24.620
work with you or for you or buy from you. Yeah. You know, so you have two options. You can either do
00:21:32.560
the right fucking thing and people can look at you and see you in a way of a generous, caring, loyal
00:21:37.980
employer, business owner, or you could be a fucking asshole and always look out for yourself and
00:21:45.040
nobody will ever work for you. No customers will ever feel grateful to have you as a business,
00:21:49.800
whatever it is you do, and people will avoid you. And the people who make it in business choose the
00:21:56.940
first path. The people who get by in business choose the second path. And I'm not talking about,
00:22:01.880
I'm talking about everything. I'm not talking about one little thing like, oh, I give my
00:22:09.120
employees insurance. I'm talking about everything that you do. Right. You know, everything that you
00:22:13.940
do, you have a chance to do the right thing or the thing that probably benefits you today. Right. And
00:22:19.920
you have to be able to become, make doing the right thing a lifestyle. It's not a decision that you make
00:22:27.940
on a case by case basis. It's a mentality that you adopt, you know, do the right fucking thing,
00:22:34.520
man. That's what it comes down to. Whether it's helping, um, you know, an older lady cross the street,
00:22:40.660
helping somebody get groceries in their car, they're struggling, you know, sweeping the floor when it
00:22:46.980
needs to be fucking swept, emptying the trash can when it needs to be emptied. I mean, we're talking
00:22:51.520
about basic shit. Right. But you know, most people, when you, when you think about like, what it takes
00:22:58.760
to be a quote unquote, good person. And I realize, you know, people are like, well, what taking out
00:23:02.820
trash doesn't make you a good person. You know, it actually, in my opinion, I think it does because
00:23:07.660
it shows that you're willing to just do the right thing. And it also shows that to, to an employer that
00:23:12.500
this guy does what needs to be done. It's, it's a, it's a little bitty thing that shows that you
00:23:16.780
care. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And the problem I feel like with the do the right thing
00:23:24.940
mentality is that so many people are brought up under parents beliefs of, you know, maybe a guy
00:23:32.020
has a shitty boss, you know, and he's so beat down by that boss that he comes home from work and the,
00:23:38.400
and the little kid, you know, who's growing up, all he ever hears is, you know, successful people
00:23:43.280
step on everybody. And you know, I'm not going to fucking do that. Cause I don't get paid to do
00:23:48.380
that and blah, blah, blah. You know, and they have all these negative things that come home,
00:23:51.960
that come home for years and years and years. And they adopt that mentality. I'm not, I'm not
00:23:56.340
going to take out the trash cause that's not part of my job description. Well, dude, if that's your
00:24:00.100
fucking opinion, if that's the way you operate, you are never going to make it in life. Right. It will
00:24:04.780
never fucking happen. Right. It just won't. Right. You know, like, dude, if you're not willing to do
00:24:10.940
the little things, if you're not willing to put attention to detail, if you're not willing to take
00:24:14.940
pride in the things that you do on a daily basis, no matter how fucking small that is, dude, you're
00:24:21.260
never going to make it. Right. It's not going to happen. So I, to me, those things tie into like
00:24:26.980
doing the right thing. You know, what's something else, what's something else that you would
00:24:30.540
talk about in terms of doing the right thing? You say, you talked about, we're fleshing this out.
00:24:37.100
We're fleshing out what you mean by doing the right thing. You talked about giving what you want to get,
00:24:40.160
putting it, I mean, you kind of added just now, putting in a really solid effort. Right. Well,
00:24:46.000
it's just doing what needs to be done. You know, those things kind of go together. You know, like
00:24:49.940
here's where the, like an example of like doing the right thing. It's five o'clock. All right. And
00:24:57.540
you're getting ready to leave work and you say, Oh man, I got to go to the bathroom real quick. You go
00:25:01.640
to the bathroom, the trash can in the bathroom is just like overflowing. Okay. There's two things you
00:25:08.420
can do. You can look at the trash can and say, Oh, fuck it. I'll leave it here for somebody else to
00:25:13.980
get it. Or you could just do it. Right. Right. Because it needs to be done. Right. What do most
00:25:21.600
people do? It's at the end of the day, they just want to get out of there. Right. Yeah. And I feel
00:25:27.360
like that's why most people struggle financially. And I feel like that's why most people live in an
00:25:31.960
average home, drive an average car. I feel like that's why most people are buried in debt
00:25:36.280
because it reflects the fact that they're not willing to do the small things perfectly that
00:25:43.880
need to be done. And the things that need to be done in business are usually fall under the guise of
00:25:48.960
quote unquote, doing the right thing. You know, it's taking fucking pride in what you do. Yeah.
00:25:55.040
You know, and, and that's, that's something I believe in. It's something that, you know,
00:25:59.900
our culture is built on here. And I think all great businesses are built upon, you know,
00:26:04.560
you don't walk into Zappos or Amazon or Google and find people that don't fucking care about the
00:26:11.680
company, you know, that, that hide under their desk when there's something to be done, man.
00:26:15.840
You think that Steve jobs walked into Apple and said, Hey man, you know, I need a, I need three
00:26:23.160
volunteers to go sweep the parking lot. You don't think that every motherfucker in there would jump
00:26:26.460
up and go do that. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Greatness is built on, man. We're
00:26:30.640
talking about basic shit. Absolutely. You know, and people just don't have pride in doing those
00:26:36.460
things. And, and so, you know, we're getting a little off track because we're talking about
00:26:40.040
doing the right thing and coming back to you. But, but what does that say about you and you're
00:26:45.460
willing to do those small things in your career? You know what I mean? Yeah, no, it, it makes total
00:26:51.520
sense. It gets noticed. And people like to tell themselves all these little lies about, you know,
00:26:55.620
Oh, I'm not going to do that because he's not going to notice. And no, I'm not going to do that
00:26:58.740
because so-and-so won't notice. Dude, your job and your career, whether it be an entrepreneur or
00:27:04.240
whether it be somebody who's working inside a company or whether it be somebody who is, um,
00:27:10.500
you know, just trying to, to get by, um, is to do it the best that you can, you know, create the
00:27:18.580
most value in yourself that you possibly can. And if you're somebody working up in a company,
00:27:24.100
your, your mentality shouldn't be, Oh, I'm not going to do those things because so-and-so is
00:27:29.860
not going to appreciate it. It should be, dude, I'm going to do so fucking much that they can't
00:27:33.240
afford. They cannot afford to not have me. Right. You see what I'm saying? Right. Absolutely.
00:27:39.380
Well, I, you know, you mentioned getting off track. I don't, I don't, I don't really think
00:27:42.480
we are getting off track because you talked to, we're talking about doing the right thing.
00:27:45.140
The first thing you said is give what you want to get. The second thing you said is essentially
00:27:49.020
do the best possible job you can do. That is, that is one of the things that I'm, I'm kind of
00:27:54.860
curious about though. And, and tell me if you don't want to go this direction, but as a, as a
00:27:59.140
multimillion dollar company, part of a huge part of that is your marketing. Right. Right. And I,
00:28:04.400
you know, I know Seth Godin has the, has the book that, you know, I think it's a tongue in cheek
00:28:08.520
title, but it's all marketers are liars. Right. Right. Well, I mean, talk about that,
00:28:13.220
Andy, because what does it mean for you and, and first form and in your personal business,
00:28:17.900
what does it mean to do the right thing in marketing? Well, for, first off, I think he
00:28:25.500
changed that book to all marketers or storytellers. Is that right? Or the one was the first title,
00:28:32.140
but regardless, I've read that book. Yeah. So the book's title is, is the book's title is a little
00:28:36.920
misleading. Yeah. It's, it's meant to get you to like put your eyes on the book. Right.
00:28:41.500
Um, basically, doesn't it actually have like an X over the liar? I don't remember. Yeah. I read
00:28:46.280
that book three or four years ago. Yeah. But the point of the book is not that all marketers are
00:28:51.820
liars. It's not like this tattletale book. The point of the book is teach you how to market.
00:28:56.300
Right. Okay. And crafting a story around your brand is what's interesting to people. You know,
00:29:03.680
people don't want to just buy your product. The book is about how to create fans of your product
00:29:13.000
as opposed to just people buy your product. That sounds like a future podcast episode.
00:29:18.640
Yeah. I mean, Oh, for sure. I can talk about that for a long time. If you haven't read Seth Godin's
00:29:22.600
books, I mean, every single one of them is solid gold. Yeah. I mean, the guy's, the guy's just,
00:29:26.960
he's genius. Yeah. Um, but that's a great book. I don't know. You know, I think that here's the
00:29:35.100
reality. This is one of the greatest things about social media. Social media forces you to tell the
00:29:41.440
truth if you're marketing, because if you don't guess what happens, people find out. Right. You
00:29:47.360
know, it used to be 30 years ago before the internet, before social media, before anything,
00:29:52.820
dude, if you fuck somebody over in business, you know, they might tell a few people, but
00:29:58.200
the chances of it getting out to everybody are very small. So companies cared less. You know what
00:30:04.380
I mean? Right. But now you have, everybody's got a platform. Okay. And you don't know who has what
00:30:09.700
platform. You don't know who has a great platform, who has a small platform. It doesn't really matter
00:30:15.080
because if somebody sees something from somebody that has a small following that has a big following
00:30:20.120
and shares it, people are going to know. Right. So social media has improved business. I feel like
00:30:26.700
and it's kind of funny because the good companies, the companies doing the right thing, embrace social
00:30:33.620
media and love it. And, and the companies that don't do the right thing, they, they fucking hate
00:30:38.620
social media. You know what I mean? Cause it works for you or against you. Yeah. So it magnifies who you
00:30:44.340
are. Exactly. Yeah. So, um, you know, people can't lie anymore. If you lie in your marketing,
00:30:53.200
people are going to find out and they're going to find out today. They're not going to find out
00:30:56.540
six months from now. They're not going to find out two years from now. They're going to find out
00:31:00.640
today. You know, it's easy for me to post something online and have people all over the world,
00:31:04.980
see it instantly. Right. Which means your product has to be good, which means you have to treat people
00:31:10.260
good, which means you have to have great service. You know, the business world is changing. It's,
00:31:15.680
it's the days of having a huge advertising budget and throwing shit out there on TV and cable and
00:31:22.540
radio and then sales pouring in. It's not going to be that anymore. It's going to be,
00:31:27.480
how good do you make your products? How good is your service? Right. How good are your employees?
00:31:33.900
How much, how do, how well do you treat your employees? You see what I'm saying? Right. Absolutely.
00:31:38.080
It's, it's, it's made, it's made everything transparent, you know, and it's, and if you're
00:31:45.140
not authentic, like, and what I mean by that is if you're not who you say you are and it's going to
00:31:50.320
show. Right. You know, and if that shows people are not going to be attracted to your brand. Right.
00:31:55.340
You know, so if you, if you're one of these guys who treats your employees like shit, but stands out
00:31:58.780
in public and acts like you love them, dude, people are going to find a fuck. They're going to find out
00:32:02.680
and you're, you're going to have a bad reputation instantly. Right. You know?
00:32:06.880
So in terms of telling the truth and being honest and not lying to people and that being part of what
00:32:12.740
it means to do the right thing. Um, I know you have told me before, because I know that anybody who's
00:32:18.140
selling products, like your, your company sells products, anybody telling, selling products,
00:32:22.700
I'm sure is on some level tempted to exaggerate the results or the benefits. But I know you've told me
00:32:29.280
before that when, when a, when a guy or a girl, whoever, when a guy or girl comes into, to a
00:32:35.360
supplement superstore, uh, branch and wants to do all this, you know, accomplish all this stuff,
00:32:44.260
you know, like get, get big and lose a bunch of weight. You, you kind of put them through a battery
00:32:48.440
of questions and if, and you, you, there are situations in which you'll actually turn them
00:32:52.800
away or discourage them from buying things. So talk about that because it goes against like
00:32:57.840
every business principle there possibly is. But the reality is, is that it's too easy for people
00:33:02.820
to find out the truth now. Okay. So you can't lie to them. So whereas like we're in the supplement
00:33:07.640
business, if you weren't aware, um, I mean, we own a number of companies, but the companies that we
00:33:12.900
show publicly are nutrition, sports supplements. There used to be a time where people would advertise
00:33:18.560
for fat burning, quote unquote, fat burning products. And they'd say, Oh, you don't have to do
00:33:23.320
anything. Don't judge your diet. And you lose two, three, four, five pounds a week, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:27.520
Well, that's fucking bullshit. Right. And, and it's too easy to find that out. If there was a
00:33:32.100
product that did that, everybody would know about it. Okay. And every person that comes in for weight
00:33:37.960
loss knows that that is the truth in their heart. Can products help? Absolutely. Are there, are there
00:33:46.780
products that scientifically proven to help increase calorie expenditure and more fat? Yes, absolutely.
00:33:52.500
But if you're not following a good diet, they're not going to work. Right. So you have to question,
00:33:56.620
okay. And this is a big problem with a lot of settlement companies. They want the sale today.
00:34:00.960
So they'll tell people what they want to hear to sell today. Right. But you have to adjust your
00:34:05.140
thinking. Your thinking should be, what is the long-term result that's going to come of this?
00:34:14.160
And if you think that way, it becomes very easy for you to understand that you, there is much more
00:34:20.380
benefit for your company to solve whatever your customer's problem is, whether that be in our
00:34:25.600
business, somebody who's wanting to lose weight or get in shape, or somebody who wants a tire on
00:34:31.560
their car, that's going to last 50,000 miles. Right. So instead of worrying about that customer
00:34:36.660
and telling them, yes, that tire is going to last 50,000 miles and selling them a 20,000 mile tire
00:34:41.820
today, what's he going to do at the end of that 50,000? Right.
00:34:47.780
You know, what's that conversation going to be? You know, that your goal should be to own the
00:34:51.700
conversation of, Hey, um, where'd you get your, where'd you get your tires at? And the guy says,
00:34:57.620
Oh man, you know, I went over to Vaughn's tire shop. That guy always tells me the truth, man. He,
00:35:02.060
he, he sold me a pair of $50,000 tires. They last 70,000 miles. Okay. You see what I'm saying?
00:35:08.880
Yeah. So the word of mouth that you're, you're trying to control, um, needs to be long-term
00:35:16.040
oriented. And when you, when you think long-term you're, you're much better suited to solve the,
00:35:21.460
to solve the problems that creates positive word of mouth, people become happy, your business grows.
00:35:27.080
So is that doing the right thing? I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. You know, people cut every
00:35:32.980
fucking business on earth. It's, it's designed to do one thing. It's assault a problem. Yeah.
00:35:37.360
That's it. It's still pretty amazing to me. I mean, I, I don't know why I'm amazed by it,
00:35:42.640
but the idea that, you know, somebody comes in to a supplement store, you have the potential of
00:35:47.960
selling hundreds of dollars in supplements and you're going to tell them, dude, the reality is
00:35:53.520
if you don't eat right and you don't exercise, these aren't going to help you at all.
00:35:57.920
That's the truth. Yeah. It's the truth. But, uh, I gotta tell you, I've gone in, I mean,
00:36:03.340
I've never had a weight problem, but I, I've gone into other supplement stores before and
00:36:07.120
that's, they don't even get it. Yeah. But the thing, yeah, but here's not yours. I know,
00:36:11.020
but here's the thing. You sell that person at $300 today, right? $400. That person goes
00:36:18.500
home, doesn't get results. Right. When that conversation comes up about weight loss, which
00:36:25.700
it comes up for people who have weight problems, you know, almost on a weekly, probably a couple
00:36:31.000
times a week basis. Do you want that person to say, Hey, I went there and that, and they didn't
00:36:35.740
help me or I went there and that what they told me didn't work. Or do you want that person to say,
00:36:39.740
Hey, I went in there and I tried to buy shit and they told me to not buy shit until I got my diet
00:36:44.880
right. Those guys, you go in there, they're going to really help you. They cared about me. You see
00:36:48.800
that? Yeah. It's a different conversation. Absolutely. So what would you rather have for
00:36:52.680
your business? Oh, the, the, they cared about me enough to turn me away because that's how people
00:36:57.100
buy. People don't buy because of advertising. People buy because of word of mouth. Okay. There's science
00:37:05.160
out there that shows that, that the, the companies that advertise on the Superbowl don't sell one
00:37:10.160
extra unit for those ads. Not one. Wow. How, dude, you, you drink beer. I do. Okay. Well,
00:37:17.460
not anymore. Cause I'm gluten free. All right. Pastor Vaughn, Pastor Vaughn drinks beer. All right.
00:37:23.140
So here's the deal. Vodka is really bad. All right. Let's pretend you still drink beer. Okay.
00:37:26.980
All right. Budweiser, $30 million on Superbowl campaign. Yeah. Did you buy any extra Budweiser
00:37:33.520
because you saw those ads? I did not. All right. So I did not. Why are they spending that money
00:37:40.100
doing that? Well, I do like the horses. Oh yeah. They're cool. Yeah. But that's not resulting
00:37:45.320
in sales. You know, I would say if I, my point in saying this is this, my point is, is that
00:37:49.600
that's not why people buy. Right. You have to think about the conversation that creates opportunity
00:37:55.380
for your company or your coal or your anything to be brought up. And the only way to control those
00:38:00.220
conversations is to do the right fucking thing. Right. That's the point. That's how we're
00:38:05.140
tying this all together. So if you don't do the right thing by your customers, you don't
00:38:09.180
do the right thing by your employees. Let's take two conversations. Let's take the employee.
00:38:13.660
We just talked about the customer conversation. The customer conversation becomes, Hey, um,
00:38:18.240
I'm thinking about getting some new tires from where should I go? And they're going to say,
00:38:23.640
fuck, do you go see Vaughn? That guy, he tells me the truth. Right. Or they're going to say,
00:38:27.340
Hey, go see Andy at, at, at, uh, the supplement superstore, you know, or first form because he's
00:38:32.600
not going to bullshit me. Right. People feel comfortable because you're telling the truth.
00:38:36.160
But let's take that from the employee standpoint. You need good employees to grow, right? You have
00:38:40.900
to have it. Right. And the hardest resource for companies to find is good employees. Right.
00:38:45.520
So how do you find good employees? Well, people hear about companies that treat them well,
00:38:51.680
I guess. Exactly. Yeah. Your company, your, your employees go out into public in their lives
00:38:57.420
and they say one of two things. They say, I love my job. I love what I do. My boss is the
00:39:03.560
man. He takes care of me. He cares about what's going on. It's fun. Or they say, dude, this place
00:39:08.740
fucking sucks. I hate my job. I can't wait for this next blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.
00:39:12.960
That's it. Right. So you're talking about sales and you're talking about manpower. Both are controlled.
00:39:18.440
The conversations are controlled by doing the right thing. Right. Right. You see what I'm saying?
00:39:23.160
Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. But you've got to tie it all together mentally. And like,
00:39:26.320
I don't care what you say. You, I don't care what you say, who you are or anything. You will never
00:39:31.940
be able to convince me otherwise. So yes, that's my opinion. But here's the reality. If you don't do
00:39:36.940
the right fucking thing by your customers, you don't do the right fucking thing by your employees,
00:39:40.020
you're not going to be successful. It's not going to happen. You've got to do the right thing.
00:39:43.980
You've got to treat people right. And if you don't, you're going to be broke. Period.
00:39:47.560
Right. Okay. So playing devil's advocate, what if a guy says, listen, I mean, on some level,
00:39:51.960
I understand what you're saying, Andy, but I pay all my employees extremely generously.
00:40:02.340
I, you know, I think people are short sighted in thinking that. I think that you've got to give
00:40:08.820
your employees sense of purpose. You've got to, you know, those, those employees, if that's all
00:40:13.300
you value in your, in your employment opportunity is money, then you're going to have people,
00:40:21.120
you're training your people to always look for the next best thing that offers them $1 more than
00:40:25.500
what you're paying. You see what I'm saying? Absolutely. So if you don't treat them well,
00:40:32.540
like, can you take the, you, I think what you're saying is taking the perspective of,
00:40:36.820
I pay them to do a job, they better do it. And I overpay them to do the job so I can mistreat them.
00:40:41.580
Right. Right. Because like a lot of people think that a lot of, I see a lot of guys thinking that.
00:40:45.100
Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of like the guy that beats his wife, but occasionally gives her
00:40:49.560
flowers. Yeah. Or buys her a Mercedes. Or buys her a Mercedes. Oh, well I can beat her up.
00:40:53.320
And she stays. Exactly. It doesn't buy you the opportunity to mistreat your employees. Right.
00:40:58.360
And a lot of people think that they say, Oh, I overpay them. That means I'm going to overwork them.
00:41:02.580
Right. That means I'm going to treat them like shit and blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, is dude,
00:41:07.160
people care more about their purpose and about what they're doing and about the way they're treated
00:41:13.260
and about what their company stands for. Then they care about money. That's just the truth. Yeah.
00:41:18.960
And the reason is, and the re and this is where people fuck up like that are because CEOs,
00:41:24.320
I speak for a fair amount of CEOs. Most of them are very financially motivated. I am as well.
00:41:32.880
Okay. I'm not going to be the guy that sits here and says, Oh yeah, I, I'm in business and you know,
00:41:38.820
I don't care about making money. No, I fucking care about making money, but I've just learned that the
00:41:43.140
way that you make money is by doing Pete, the right by people, every fucking chance that you get
00:41:49.540
right. Creating the most value you can for people. Now, if you're one of these people who thinks, Oh,
00:41:54.820
I'm going to pay a guy who's worth 40 grand a year. I'm going to pay him 80. I'm going to treat him
00:41:57.900
like shit. That guy, that guy has the guy in that position. It's going to get so sick of coming to
00:42:03.860
work that it becomes torturous and miserable to where the point he's considering like killing
00:42:08.560
himself. He will leave and go back to a $40,000 job. I've seen it not in our company, but I've seen
00:42:14.240
it plenty of times. Right. You know, I've, I've had friends that have left great jobs to come work
00:42:18.320
at a better work environment. You know, if you don't create a good work environment and a good work
00:42:23.060
environment comes from doing the things that you can for your employees, quote unquote, doing the right
00:42:27.360
thing, you don't create that. There's too many other companies out there creating that they're
00:42:32.080
going to attract all the good employees. You're going to be left with the guys who only care about
00:42:34.880
money and they're going to fuck you just as bad as you fucked up. Don't you think it works the other
00:42:38.920
way too? I think people are very tempted. I know I've done it. I took a, I took a job, even though in
00:42:45.540
my heart, I knew that the guy that I was about to work for probably wasn't a great guy, but I took the
00:42:50.800
job because it promised a $20,000 increase in my salary. And boy, was that a mistake. And isn't it true that on
00:42:56.940
the flip side? I mean, on the one hand, you have the owners who think if they just pay people more,
00:43:01.040
they can, you know, treat them terribly. But then the other hand is people think, well,
00:43:06.140
I could deal with more because I'm making more. Right. Yeah. I think there is some, there's some,
00:43:10.040
there's, that's how you justify that short-term decision. You know what I mean? Um, that is
00:43:15.420
getting into a totally different subject, which I think is like why it's important to follow your
00:43:21.500
passion, which is a conversation that most people can't understand, you know, um, and needs
00:43:26.740
clarification. That's, you know, we have an episode coming up on why it's important to do
00:43:30.620
that. Yeah. Um, but I think that comes down to, you know, what you're saying. I think people do
00:43:35.960
justify that. I think the reason people justify that is because they think, Oh, $20,000 is going to
00:43:40.620
change my life when in reality it doesn't fucking change anything. You're going to go out, you're
00:43:44.800
going to, you're going to buy a car that's $200 more a month. You're going to, you're going to
00:43:48.220
fucking buy a bass boat or some bullshit that you don't even need. Right. And you're
00:43:51.680
going to be in the same fucking position that you were in before. Right. Only you hate your
00:43:55.120
job. Right. You see what I'm saying? Right. Absolutely. You know, it's just, it's, it don't
00:43:59.860
make short-term decisions in business, man. Make long-term decisions. You know, the best
00:44:03.640
thing I ever taught, the best thing I ever taught all of our employees, everybody is to see
00:44:11.620
a customer's lifetime value, no matter what. Don't think about today. Think about what
00:44:17.440
they're worth over the course of time. Think about what conversations they're going to have
00:44:22.580
about you. Think about what conversations they're going to have about your business. And when
00:44:26.800
you could train people to think that way, and you could train yourself to think that
00:44:30.440
way, dude, you, you, you just hit like 80% of what it takes to be successful, you know,
00:44:38.220
because we're in a weird position right now in, in society and business, the cultural shift
00:44:43.560
and business in general, because of social media has become one where it used to be short-term
00:44:54.040
thinking, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell all fucking day. Right.
00:44:59.220
And if you don't sell your fucking fire. Right.
00:45:02.460
To now it's almost that the business, you're not in business to sell a product. You're in
00:45:08.820
business to acquire and retain customers. And if you acquire, retain customers through
00:45:16.260
great culture and through good service, they'll buy, they'll buy anything that you sell.
00:45:22.200
You know, if we came out with a brand of first form tires right now, every fucking person
00:45:27.000
that buys first form supplements would order the first form tires. Yeah. They have nothing.
00:45:31.640
They would. Yeah. I don't doubt it, but that's because those people understand what we're about.
00:45:36.220
And then people want to buy from good people. Right. You see what I'm saying? Absolutely.
00:45:39.980
Do you not want to buy the things that you buy from people that you believe in as people?
00:45:43.620
Absolutely. You know, there's a humanization effect happening in business right now because
00:45:47.500
of social media, you know, the faceless, nameless, gigantic corporations that existed for years
00:45:53.380
and years and years and years. Those are, those are slowly fading away. Yeah. You know,
00:45:59.720
you hear about it every day. Fortune 500 companies down 40%. You see that shit every day now. You know why?
00:46:05.480
Because people want to buy from fucking people. Right. They don't want to buy from
00:46:09.860
some faceless, nameless organization that they can't relate to. Right. You know, and they want
00:46:16.860
to seem real, you know, they don't want to see some polished. There's a reason reality TV is so
00:46:21.640
popular, man. It's why, why are there not TV shows anymore? Why is it all reality TV? Because people
00:46:26.920
want to see the real shit. Right. And if your real shit is not appealing to look at, you're fucked.
00:46:32.520
That's it. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you better work on your internal culture. You
00:46:36.680
better work on being authentic and you better work on doing the right fucking thing. Because if you
00:46:40.840
don't, you're going to get smashed. Right. That's just it. What you're saying is making me think of a
00:46:46.640
conversation I recently had with my wife where I have like the best insurance guy in the world.
00:46:53.040
He lives in Kansas city and he deals with my spaciness. And like literally when I forget to,
00:46:58.840
to sign something, there are times where he's actually driven to St. Louis and just track me
00:47:06.020
down to get me to sign something. And the other day, uh, I don't know, somehow it came up that we
00:47:10.440
might be able to get a cheaper rate on our insurance. Right. And I said, my wife, I told her, I said,
00:47:15.480
honey, there is no way I am ever, ever going to get another insurance guy. Right. And it, and, and frankly,
00:47:22.180
I may be paying too much for my insurance. I'm not sure, but I don't really care. That's right.
00:47:26.800
Because he makes it easy. He makes it easy. And he just, he treats me well and he cares and he
00:47:31.460
goes the extra mile. Dude, people will pay more for that. He does the right thing. That's right.
00:47:34.920
Yeah. So he does the right thing. So when you think about like doing the right thing,
00:47:38.940
you know, at the beginning of this, of this podcast, some people were saying, Oh yeah,
00:47:43.360
everybody who's is in business is a fuck and they step on everybody and blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:47:47.780
blah. Dude, if you run your business like that, you're going to get fucking steamrolled
00:47:50.780
by companies that don't. Right. There is no longer an opportunity for you to step on people,
00:47:58.000
to take advantage of people, to sell people shit. They don't fucking need. If you do that,
00:48:02.900
you're not going to make it. Right. You know, the reality is, is you have to care about people
00:48:08.400
because people know now they could see you, they can find you, they can come talk to people that
00:48:13.580
know you. That's the power of this network that's been created. And if you haven't figured this out as a
00:48:19.560
business owner, an entrepreneur, that that's how you get ahead, you're, you're in trouble, man.
00:48:24.460
Right. Right. Right. So you're going to have to bear with me. Let me, let me, let me, let's just
00:48:28.800
take this to a basic entrepreneurial level. Yeah. I'm just sitting here. I'm just sitting here.
00:48:34.340
These things are running through my mind. Cause I could talk about this for hours and hours and
00:48:37.460
hours. Did you ever have ever in your life a lemonade stand or similar? I did. Yes. Okay.
00:48:46.320
They were very popular in the eighties. So let's talk about lemonade stand. Cause I had one,
00:48:50.560
you had one, you know, we're roughly the same age. So maybe we were competitors at one point,
00:48:56.020
we just didn't know it, but here's the reality. Lemonade stand. Simplest business ever. Yeah.
00:49:01.120
All right. You don't even have to pay fucking taxes. It's awesome. Well, the IRS did go after
00:49:05.020
one kid one time. I got in the news. I saw it on Fox news. I kid you not. They, they, it's the IRS.
00:49:10.660
I have nothing against the IRS by the way. I love you. We love the IRS. All right. But here's the deal.
00:49:15.600
Actually, that might've been a satirical story. You were a fine tax paying lemonade stand as was
00:49:23.700
I. Yes, exactly. All right. So we paid our lemonade tax. That's right. All right. Let's
00:49:28.480
edit out what I said a few minutes ago. Here's the thing. Lemonade stand. Basic you make, let's assume
00:49:38.500
that your lemonade and my lemonade are exactly the same. Right. Okay. Cause lemonade is lemonade. I mean,
00:49:42.520
I've had some good lemonade and I've had some bad lemonade, but let's assume that we're both expert
00:49:47.240
lemonade makers. Okay. And you have a, you have a lemonade stand on one side of the street and I am
00:49:53.280
on the other side of the street. And let's assume that, you know, I'm not as, you know, handsome of a
00:50:00.220
fella as I am. And let's just say we're equally as good looking. All right. All right. We'll say,
00:50:04.520
we'll say that. No, basically my point is, is this no competitive advantage, right? No,
00:50:09.520
no better product, nothing. Right. Level playing field. Totally level. Yeah.
00:50:16.120
Customer comes to my stand, tries, tries my lemonade. Says, Oh, that's great. You know,
00:50:22.080
comes back the next day, goes to drink lemonade and spills it. And I say to him, Hey, no problem. You
00:50:31.460
know, um, here's another one. Just, you know, do me a favor and let your friends know, you know,
00:50:39.960
come by my lemonade stand. All right. What's the conversation going to be between the, the customer
00:50:48.760
and his friends later in the day? Well, if, if, if he has a brain in his head, it's going to be,
00:50:54.360
I was an idiot and I spilled my lemonade, but the guy hooked me up with a new one. Yeah. Right.
00:51:00.100
Guy hooked me up with a new one at no cost. He did the right thing. Yeah. Hey, it was an accident.
00:51:04.340
No big deal. Here it is. Did it cost me a little money as lemonade stand owner to do that? Yes.
00:51:09.840
All right. Do I see a return on that today? No. Did it affect my, my bottom line for today in a,
00:51:16.080
in a negative way? Yes. Okay. Now let's take the same situation. He comes to your lemonade stand,
00:51:25.520
same guy. He goes to your lemonade stand and let's say he had never been to mine. Okay. So
00:51:31.000
we're backing up in time. Goes to your lemonade stand, gets lemonade. He likes it. He comes back
00:51:36.160
the second day. He goes to get his lemonade from a guy that he likes and he spills it. And he says,
00:51:43.860
Hey, can I get another one? You say no. Or you can, but you're going to pay for it.
00:51:48.260
All right. You got to pay for it. Yeah. All right. So the guy's like, are you serious? And
00:51:53.780
you're like, yeah, I got, I got a business to run. Yeah. No, I can't just do that. That
00:51:56.880
was your fault. If I did that for everybody. Right. Right. Exactly. If I did that for everybody,
00:52:01.120
I'd be broke. Yeah. All right. How many times we heard that stuff? Right. Okay. So that guy buys
00:52:08.800
another lemonade today because he wanted lemonade. But then later in the day, he goes to his friends
00:52:15.200
and he has the conversation. Hey man, I went to the Vaughn's lemonade stand today. I accidentally
00:52:20.800
spilled it. And can you believe what happened? That kid made me pay for another lemonade.
00:52:25.080
I can't fucking believe that shit. Right. Who do these kids think they are? Yeah. All right.
00:52:29.660
Yeah. So if you look at it from today, did I sell two lemonades when I should only sell
00:52:35.780
one? Yes. Yep. Did I make double the money I should have made? Yes. But what happened
00:52:43.600
when the conversation was told about my company and how many customers did that cost me? Yeah.
00:52:48.720
Okay. Yeah. That's the value of doing the right thing in business. Right. That's awesome.
00:52:54.120
And if people can't, if you can't think that far ahead, you're going to have a very, very,
00:52:59.520
very hard time in business. I mean, there's a lot of things we could say about that, but I could
00:53:03.560
tell a million stories just like that. And I mean, I think, I think one way to look at
00:53:08.160
that is what you're saying to people is when you're a, when you're a business person, I
00:53:11.860
mean, yeah, you have to be guided by, you know, sound principles of economics and all
00:53:15.120
that sort of stuff, but be big hearted, be generous toward people, be, be, you know,
00:53:20.480
do the right shit. It's not that hard. You know, we're talking about basic concepts of life
00:53:26.900
here. Right. Right. So you might fire me for this because I have this obsessive compulsive
00:53:34.800
desire to constantly rehash what you've said, but I want to, I want to just, for the sake
00:53:38.700
of our listening audience, I want to go through again, what you said about, about doing the
00:53:44.060
right thing. So basically it's give what you get, be honest, you know, in your messaging,
00:53:48.260
when you're talking to people about the results, you talked about treating people well, don't
00:53:53.500
cheating them, be fair and generous. Uh, don't steal from people, give them, go the
00:53:57.620
extra mile. It's very fucking simple, man. It's all it is. This is simple. Let's sum
00:54:02.280
this up. I'll sum it up. You, your job is usually keep my scrambled brain intact, but
00:54:07.680
let's just sum up that episode, do the right fucking thing. That's it. That's all
00:54:12.500
you got to do. Period. You got to live that way. Every little thing that you do should
00:54:16.260
be, you have a choice. A, the right thing. B, the not as right thing. Choose A.
00:54:22.800
If you choose A and you keep choosing A and you make that a lifestyle, success is
00:54:27.580
going to come to you. Right. It has to. Yeah. Because people are going to recognize
00:54:32.220
that and they're going to talk about you and they're going to bring you more
00:54:34.360
people. Yeah. And the more customers you have, the more, what happens? The more
00:54:39.380
fucking money comes into your business. Right. You can't succeed without A. If you go B,
00:54:45.640
you might make a living. If you, if you go A, you build an empire. Right. Okay. That's
00:54:52.580
it. Do the right thing builds an empire. Do the not so right thing for me today builds
00:54:57.160
a small mom and pop business. Yeah. Well, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there
00:55:01.620
who want to build an empire. So why don't you take a second to, uh, I know we're always
00:55:05.160
asking for feedback or if anybody has questions, so tell them how to do it.
00:55:08.600
This is a podcast new thing for us. You know, our whole goal here is to bring you the unconventional
00:55:14.060
truths of business. Uh, if you guys have questions about business, shoot us an email. Um, the MFCEO.com
00:55:20.580
is a website, go on there, contact us, hit, hit an email. It comes directly to Vaughn and
00:55:26.200
I, we don't have a staff. It's just us. If you want your questions answered on the air,
00:55:30.740
let us know. We're always looking for content. We always want to help. We always want to do
00:55:35.000
the right thing. And we want to bring content that you guys are interested in. So if you have
00:55:40.500
a question, if you have a criticism, if you have an opinion, we'd love to hear it because,
00:55:44.680
uh, unless it's negative, we don't want to hear that shit. No, I'm just kidding.
00:55:48.280
No, we do. That's a whole nother podcast, you know, learn from your critics. The people
00:55:52.140
who criticize you are criticizing you for a reason. Is there, you know, how to decide whether
00:55:55.580
it's really criticism or if it's just bullshit, you know, um, constructive criticism. But
00:56:01.460
the reality is, is guys, I don't know if I caught, if you said it or not, but did you
00:56:04.940
give the, uh, the website or your Instagram account? Yeah. Oh no. Uh, Instagram. I'm at
00:56:09.880
Andy Fursello. Vaughn, what's your Instagram? At Vaughn Kohler. Yeah. Um, hit us up, let
00:56:15.860
us know what you think. And, uh, you know, website is www.themfceo.com. Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:23.160
What's that stand for Vaughn? I'm not going to say it. Hey, listen. Oh dude, I got the
00:56:27.960
funniest story. This is so funny. Okay. Okay. Before we quit, this is a funny story. So I
00:56:32.980
got, uh, pulled over, um, on my, on Saturday night with my good friend. Uh, we were driving
00:56:39.680
and what were you driving? I was driving, uh, my Rolls, my Rolls Royce. This is the
00:56:44.440
brand new one that you said you were going to let me sit in, but you haven't done it
00:56:47.880
yet. The lights played on the car is MFCEO. Okay. So, uh, I was driving down the highway
00:56:52.560
and I got pulled over. It's like 1130 at night and they, it was two, two cars ended up
00:56:57.460
showing up and, uh, the cops came up to the window and they were like, Hey, you know, this
00:57:02.040
is after they wrote me the ticket and they were, they ended up being cool. I just told them
00:57:05.900
to write it because I was speeding. Um, I mean, you did the right thing, dude. Here's
00:57:10.800
the thing though. Those two cops ended up getting my information and they ended up coming to the
00:57:15.860
store to shop. They wanted, they, they, you know what I'm saying? I made two customers
00:57:20.520
out of it because I was polite. I made jokes and I took the ticket without bitching. But
00:57:25.360
here's the reality. They looked at the MFCEO plate and they're like, Hey, I just, we just
00:57:29.840
want to know what we, what's MFCEO stand for? We, we think we know, we're not sure.
00:57:35.900
And when I told them, dude, they were just dying laughing. That's great. So, and they
00:57:39.540
still gave you the ticket. Yeah, they did. They had already wrote it before, but it was
00:57:42.560
cool. You know, I was speeding. I was doing like 20 overs. So yeah, but anyhow, yeah, just
00:57:47.680
a little funny story. Hit us up the MFCEO.com and, uh, we'll catch you up next time.
00:57:52.560
All right. Anything else? No, that's it. Final word. That's it. All right.