Harnessing Humanity： The Key to Building a BILLION Dollar Brand, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO227
Episode Stats
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Summary
This is a little old fashioned, but I wanted to send a handwritten letter to James D. Chapman to say thank you for being a part of this movement. You re the reason I do what I do, and I m so grateful.
Transcript
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I can stack them hundreds to the roof. I ain't stopping till they stack to the moon.
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Without me, my family wouldn't have food. Anybody go against me gotta lose.
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What is up guys? You're listening to the MFCEO Project. I'm Andy. I'm your host and I am the
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motherfucking CEO. This is a little old-fashioned, but I wanted to send you a handwritten letter
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thanking you. It's easy to hit like on a post or comment. It takes some effort to write it out,
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especially with my handwriting. Bro, I feel you. I need to tell you the impact your movement has
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made on me. I've owned an insurance agency since 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia market. We've been
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successful and have grown every year. I started listening to your podcast consistently around
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January of 2017. I noticed right away that your potential messages had me thinking differently
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and more aggressively. Basically, I reached down, I grabbed my balls, and I got to fucking work.
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Since that time, I've taken my company from $2.3 million to $4.8 million in premiums.
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We are nowhere near where we want to be, but we're making some serious progress and you've
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helped me realize that I'm capable of doing this. This is a fucking movement. Thank you for what you
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do and allowing me to be a part of it. James D. Chapman. That's what's up. Bro, James D. Chapman,
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you're the fucking reason I do this podcast. You're the reason that I spend hours upon hours upon
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hours a week, not getting paid, not selling a project, giving my time to help people like you,
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James D. Chapman. It's people like you, James D. Chapman, who make me realize that I'm on the right
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path. Anything that we do, anything that we attempt to do outside the norm,
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we are going to have people hate on it. We are going to have people talk shit. We are going to
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have people not like it. We are going to get frustrated. We are going to get angry. We are
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going to get pissed. We are going to feel like quitting. But things like this, this letter that's
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written on yellow legal pad paper and quite honestly, some of the shittiest handwriting I've
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ever fucking seen besides my own is what reminds me of why the fuck I do this. So thank you, James
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Chapman, because today I didn't feel like doing a podcast. I didn't feel like sitting down and
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talking about something that I was passionate about, that I care about, that I feel strongly
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about. But you changed my mind, bro. I sat down at my desk about an hour ago. I was going through mail.
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I opened up this letter. And by the way, I read all your letters. I don't respond to everyone
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because it's impossible. I can't keep up with it. The love that you guys show me is overwhelming to
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the point where I just can't do it. So don't think that I don't read the messages. But sometimes,
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just like a lot of you guys tell me, messages come at the right time. And today was one of those days.
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Today was one of those days where I was thinking about like how fucking stupid people are and how
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annoying they are and how much I want to punch everybody in the fucking mouth. And I don't
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really feel like going to record a podcast. I was feeling selfish because I was actually feeling like,
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hey, I don't really want to record a podcast because, you know, it doesn't fucking matter. And I'm not
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getting anything out of it. And that reminded me of something that I talk about with you guys all
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the time, which is providing value without expectation. All right? Lots of people these
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days will talk to you about value. Value equals dollars. Value is how you get paid. You got to
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create value. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, fucking blah. Right? We hear it all the time.
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We hear it so much that we forget what it really means. And the asterisk there is without expectation.
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Right? I truly feel like that the more you give without expecting anything back, the more people
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feel obligated to give back to you. You know, it's like when you do a really fucking great job for
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somebody. Like if I, if I came to your house and I fucking did over the top job landscaping your yard,
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I mean, dude, it is just fucking beautiful, fucking beautiful to a point where you walk out
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and you look around and you're actually get a fucking boner looking at your yard. And for you
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girls, it would be a cloner. All right? So you're so excited about how great your yard looks that you
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literally can't fucking wait to tell everybody about it. But then I come up to you and I ask you
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for a recommendation. I get asked this a lot. I get, dude, do you, do you, uh, do you think that
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asking for a recommendation cheapens the actual chances or the actual quality of the product and
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the chances that they will get a recommendation? I think it depends on the circumstances. I think
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sometimes when you do a really, really great job, I think that if you know it, you're better off not
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asking for the recommendation. I think you just let it happen organically. Um, sometimes I think
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it's okay to ask. I think it just depends on, on how you feel. You know, um, I found really good
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success with, uh, not asking for the recommendation in my business and people just do it. Cause we go over
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the top. Now with the podcast, I have to remind you motherfuckers on a consistent basis to fucking
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push it out there because we don't advertise and we don't do anything. So I don't know. I think it
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just depends on the context. Um, but I know this, I know that you have to understand that value,
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real value is what's going to get you paid. You know, people talk about this shit all the time and
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they talk about it in, uh, I don't know, like a cheesy fucking way. You know what I'm
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saying? Like people just say that shit over and over again. I feel like it becomes almost
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like we don't even hear it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a catchphrase nowadays. Wait, who
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are you? Oh, I'm Vaughn. Why the fuck are you here? Why is Vaughn's voice sound so sexy
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now? That's true. Much sexier than Vaughn. Dude, like, I just feel like, you know, people
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get, uh, like it's one of those buzzwords that people are like driving. Do you think people
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really understand fucking value? No, I think that they just parrot that shit. I don't think
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that they actually grasp the concept of it. I mean, dude, we go around and we speak to
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fucking people. Oh, I mean, you come with me to every event. We see these people all
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over the fucking country and it seems like the same thing over and over again. Their,
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their product just fucking sucks. And I'm not talking about their product. Like they might
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have a great product, but the way they deliver it, the way they fucking present it, the way they
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go about communicating to fucking people just sucks. And that's why they can't get it to
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fucking catch, catch, uh, catch on. Or they're trying to nickel and dime and monetize every
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little aspect of it. You know, they're like, well, you know, if I, if I were to go out and
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do this, it would cost me this. And there's no return on that. And I just feel like people
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just don't grasp the idea of giving value, real value to create an experience and having
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faith enough that it's going to come back. Um, well, and I think that's where they get
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lost a lot is visualizing how it's going to come back to them. Yeah. They look at it like
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it's a, um, like I've got to pay a dollar and I've got to get a dollar back. Otherwise it's
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a waste of fucking money. And when we talk about customer experience and we talk about providing
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value, we're not talking about, uh, you know, something that's completely measurable. You
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might not be able to measure what you're doing for, for years to come because you don't really
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know what growth that's going to create. So like you might be spending X amount of dollars
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and resources. And like some of you guys are like natural born like, um, accountants, right?
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Like your bean counters. That's what you fucking are. And you cannot grasp the idea that what
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you're putting out in expense and dollars and cents to create a great customer experience
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is actually going to come back to you, but it's going to take, you know, 90 days or 180 days
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or a year for it to come back and, and, and for you to see that financial return. And I think a lot
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of people fucking discount, uh, you know, just shit like this, like, like, you know, dude, how much,
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how much time would it take? It took this guy a year to go from fucking two point, what'd he say?
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2.3 million to 4.8 million. That's fucking over double. It took him one year. That seems like a
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long time, right? Like I'm planting these ideas and that's us. I know. But what I'm saying is,
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like, I'm planting these ideas in this motherfucker's head, you know, and he's going out and executing
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them. And in one year he doubled his fucking sales. So that sounds like, you know, when you talk about
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a year from now, you're going to have a return. People think that that's forever. Like that's
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fucking fast. You know what I mean? And, uh, I don't know, man, like that's the reason we do this
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fucking shit. You know, that's the reason we, we do this podcast. But, but I think when, when you,
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when we talk about most people having the perspective of what aggressive patience means
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and what it means to be putting value out there and what it means is to drive extreme over the top
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customer experience over and over and over and over again. You know, I feel like most of these
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motherfuckers, they like do it once or twice and they're like, Oh, it didn't work. Didn't work.
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So I'm going to pull back and I'm going to fucking, you know, not do it. Dude, providing extreme value
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and building great customer experience is something that you have to fucking make a habit. You have to
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ingrain it into your culture of your business. You have to have every fucking person that puts on a
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shirt with your logo on it or represents your brand in tune with the over the top mentality.
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You know, you can't try it for a day. You can't just like try it for a month.
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It has to become what your business is and who you are. And the truth of the matter is,
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is that if you don't make this part of who you are and you don't make delivering extreme value part
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of what you are and what your business is forever, you're going to come across somebody that does and
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they're going to beat you. And that's just the fact of the game that we're playing these days.
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We're playing in a completely word of mouth driven market where customer experience testimonials,
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whether online or in person or text or fucking social media or whatever drive business.
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And if your product sucks and your service sucks or your experience sucks or something about anything that
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you do sucks, guess what? Your results are going to suck. And that's just the way it is. You know, people ask me
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all the time, when's the best time to advertise? Let me tell you when the best time to advertise is. The best time
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to advertise is after you've worked out all the bugs. Your product's good. Your service is good.
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It's responsive. It's quick. It solves the problem. Your customer experience is good. You have people
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out there who are going way out of their fucking way, like James D. Chapman did here to thank you
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for what you do, no matter what it is. You might be listening. You might be saying, well, I changed oil
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for a living. Well, if you don't figure out a way to make it fucking amazing, guess what? Somebody's
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gonna, and they're going to fucking beat you. All right. You guys who are in business right now are,
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are 98% of you are perfect examples because we're in the beginning of this shit. By the way,
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this is the beginning of this revolution. All right. What you guys don't fucking understand is that
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while social media, it seems to you to have already gone and taken off. We are really in the midst of
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something that's much, much bigger than that. And we're in the midst of a customer experience
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revolution. Okay. If people don't love to buy from you, if they don't fucking feel passionate about
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you, if they're not excited about you, if you're not doing something to make them fucking incredibly
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over the top loyal to your brand, you will not last. This is not an option. This is not something
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that you can pick and choose. Your product has to be great. Your service has to be great. Your
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experience has to be great. Your follow-up has to be great. Or you're going to fucking lose. Because
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what's happening now, and this has already happened by the way, but there's so few companies taking
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advantage of it that you have a tremendous opportunity. And that opportunity is this.
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You have an opportunity to beat everybody that you compete with in business. All right. And a lot
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of people will say, well, you're not competing with any bullshit. You're competing with a bunch of other
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motherfuckers. All right. Now the way to beat them is to focus on what you do and do it best. So when
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people say to you, oh, well, don't worry about your competition because it doesn't matter. No, it
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fucking matters a lot. What they're really saying is that you need to not worry about your competition
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and be reactive in nature. And what you need to do is to think about what you offer, how can you be the
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best? And you have to go fucking make that happen. That's what people say when they're saying, don't
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worry about your competition. It's irrelevant. No, it's fucking very relevant. But the way you beat
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your competition is by being fucking good, concentrating on your product, building the best product,
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building the best service department, creating the best experience over and over and over again on
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purpose, by design, being strategic and tactical about every single step that you take to provide
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something that makes people say, holy shit, that was the best experience, not the best experience in
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your little niche. That was the best experience I've ever had shopping anywhere. And I think if I say, hey, what
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was the best experience you've ever had shopping anywhere? Most of you can think of it within five
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fucking seconds, probably two seconds because it's so far above and over the top of everybody else.
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And what we have now is a situation where it takes literally seconds for our customers to tell every
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every single person that they possibly know from the time they were in fucking preschool until now with
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the click of a mouse, how great you are or how bad you are. Okay. Now, are you smart enough to take
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advantage of that? Are you smart enough to understand what value really means? Most of you are not. Most of you
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are perfect examples of what's wrong with society. You don't like that tough shit. It's the truth
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because here's what I mean by that. Most of you look for every little opportunity to cut part of the
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process out so that you can make it easier on yourself. That's what most people do. It's human nature.
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Okay. I've got to get from here to a hundred miles away. Well, I could walk there or I could invent a
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wheel and I can make a cart and have a horse pull me. That's what we do. We learn to make shit easy on
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ourselves. It's human nature. So I'm not criticizing you personally. It's just how we are. We as humans are
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fucking lazy and out of laziness comes pretty incredible solutions. But when it comes to running
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a business, the true value of what you offer is going to be found in the inefficient things.
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I want you to think about this for a minute. Think about what it looked like to go into a grocery
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store 15 years ago or 10 years ago. You would walk into the grocery store. There would be a
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checker and a bagger at every single fucking checkout station. If you went to Home Depot,
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it was the same thing. If you went to the bank, it was the same thing. All right. But what do we have
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now? We've got one fucking checker. What does that checker do? That checker is there to observe the
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computer system to check us out, to make sure that the computer is working properly. All right. And
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most people are like, well, yeah, duh, that's more efficient. Well, here's the thing. What if,
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what if a store were to open up next to Home Depot? Let's just say it was Lowe's. Lowe's and Home Depot
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are pretty, pretty interchangeable in my opinion. One doesn't supersede the other too much at any given
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time. What if one of them used automated checkers like they do, like they both do. And what if the
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other one were to say, fuck these automated checkers? You know what we're going to do?
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We're going to, we're going to station every single person, every single lane with a person
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who's not only going to be just checking them out, but is going to be well-trained in every project
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that's going to be there to help them have a great customer experience. That's going to be
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trained in how to, how to be polite and not be annoying and have sensory acuity to create
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awesome experience for the people that are checking out. Okay. Now I know that a lot of you like me
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fucking hate people and checking out with a computer is fine, but most people like personal
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interaction. Most people love it. And when it's being taken away more and more and more by technology
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that creates an awesome opportunity for us to create a better experience because automated experiences
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are for the most part, sterile. They're indifferent. Nobody cares. But with a person, which by the way,
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you have your ability to do this, with a person, we can create memorable experiences. We can create
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situations that people talk about and quote unquote, as Seth Godin says, sneeze about. That means they're
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going to talk about it. All right. And you guys who are inherently lazy, like all humans, look at your
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business and you say, where can I cut this cost? And where can I cut this cost? And where can I cut this?
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And what can I do here? And what can I do here? And what you're doing is you're creating a situation
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where you're no different than your competitors. And what I would encourage you is to really think
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hard about what bringing value truly means. It's not just about your product. It's about your entire
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fucking brand. And I would encourage you to really think what you could do to stand out from the
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companies that you compete against. What can you do? And the answer, luckily for you and unluckily for
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you, lazy motherfuckers, is going to come in the form of some sort of human inefficiency, meaning that
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it's going to take fucking effort. It's going to take effort like James D. Chapman did right here,
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where he took out a fucking actual pen. And instead of leaving a comment or sending me a DM,
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he wrote a fucking letter. And guess what? That got my attention. And now I've said James D. Chapman
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47 fucking times. I've said it to prove a point that inefficient things create real value.
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Inefficient things grab attention. Inefficient things make people say, wow. Inefficient things
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make you fucking money. And if you can't grasp that concept, because we are talking about going
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against the grain right now. What's the grain? Everybody's going towards automation. Everybody's
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going towards drip campaigns. Everybody has a click funnel. Everybody has this. Everybody has that.
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Everybody has this. And I'm not saying those tools aren't useful, but everybody's inherently going
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towards easiest automation techniques possible and removing the human element. And the human element
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for you, the small business owner, is the most valuable element that you can have. And guess what?
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It costs the least amount of fucking money. All right? You guys have to learn to harness the human
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element. You have to learn to make the humanity of your brand work for you from a product standpoint,
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from a service standpoint, and from a culture and overall experience standpoint. And if you want to
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know what brands are going to do for the next 20 fucking years that are going to create the biggest,
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most valuable brands on earth, they are going to be the ones that harness humanity. They are going to be the
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ones that step out from behind the logo and say, hey, we're just like you. How can we help you? How can
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we make your experience better? Hey, how are those products working out for you? Hey, are you still
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enjoying the new tires on your car? I know it's a boring subject, but look, you know, your satisfaction
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and your appreciation of that product means a lot to us. So I'm going to call you on the fucking phone
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and I'm going to ask you about it. And a lot of you guys will cop out on this shit because you think
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it doesn't fucking matter. But I'm going to tell you right now, we're going to do over $200 million
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this year. And next year we're going to do 400. And the year after that, we're going to do a fucking
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billion. And you know how we're going to do it by harnessing a fucking bunch of fucking humans that
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give a fuck about what we do and what our customers experiences are and what our products deliver
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and what the service behind our brand stands for. We're not going to do anything that is like
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sending somebody to the fucking moon or creating some sort of situation that is like so out there
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that it's impossible to fucking fathom this new technological breakthrough. We're not inventing
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a fucking wheel. But what we are doing is bringing back the value of the actual human experience.
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So when you talk about value and you hear the word value and you hear the words, you know,
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deliver value and get fucking paid from all these motherfucking gurus that have never actually built
00:24:31.560
a brand and don't actually work inside their companies and don't actually stare at a warehouse full
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of product like I do right now when I'm fucking doing these podcasts and don't actually deal with
00:24:41.280
employees every day and don't actually fucking do anything other than sell you the idea of
00:24:47.480
success. Remember that when they talk about bringing value, even though they don't know what the fuck
00:24:53.380
they're talking about, that bringing value is exactly what's going to get you fucking paid.