REAL AF with Andy Frisella - The Best Time To Start Is Now, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO106

00:00:00.000 I want to be a motherfucking hustler. You better ask somebody.

00:00:10.440 What is up guys? You're listening to the MFCEO Project. I'm Andy, I'm your host, and I am

00:00:16.700 the motherfucking CEO. Guys, as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Vaughn, the pastor of disaster.

00:00:25.620 Pastor, what's up dude? I just read a study on millennials. You want to hear something about

00:00:30.720 it? Yeah. Okay. Because we have a lot of millennials that listen to us and I wanted to hear your

00:00:36.420 feedback. But our millennials work. Yes. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Our millennials

00:00:40.220 put into work. They get it. So I guarantee you this is going to be something negative

00:00:45.400 about millennials. So if you're a millennial listening and you're already taking the actions

00:00:49.840 to listen to a podcast like this, you probably don't fall into this category. So don't cry

00:00:53.360 about it. Probably don't, but I still thought this was really funny. So I read this, you

00:00:56.680 know, defining study on millennials and it had two points. And one of them that was that

00:01:02.620 millennials are really entrepreneurial. And I was like, yes, that's awesome. And then the

00:01:08.000 point literally right after that is millennials are not patient.

00:01:13.000 Ooh, that's about as big as a, as a paradox that you could have, I guess.

00:01:18.920 I mean, which one is it?

00:01:19.900 Well, if you're not patient, you're not going to be a good entrepreneur. That's the

00:01:23.480 bottom line.

00:01:23.920 I think it has to do with how easy it is to start a business nowadays.

00:01:27.420 So here's what I think. I think that people fall in love with the idea of success. Okay.

00:01:31.880 They, they see it is, you're right. It is easier. It is. There's far less barrier to

00:01:36.960 entry. There's lots of things someone could do. Um, the options are, are virtually unlimited,

00:01:43.500 but if you don't have patience to let those, the patience part hasn't changed just because

00:01:50.300 the technology has changed. You know, it still takes time for a customer, a potential customer

00:01:55.960 to, um, accept your message, trust your message and trust your message enough to buy it and

00:02:02.800 then become loyal enough to recommend it to your friends. And that takes time. It doesn't

00:02:06.720 matter how much money you spend. It doesn't matter how many ads you buy or how good your product

00:02:11.480 is the process of acceptance into a consumer bell curve is going to take time. And people

00:02:18.000 don't understand that. I see that all the time. Look at every super bowl. We see companies

00:02:21.960 spend 20 fucking million dollars to advertise for 30 seconds. But the only ones you ever

00:02:28.220 remember are Budweiser. And that's just because, you know, they make funny commercials, but you

00:02:33.040 see new companies every year, you see the commercial, you're like, Oh, what is that? I never heard of

00:02:36.700 that before. And then you never hear of it because they blow their load on a fucking $30 0.81

00:02:40.660 million ad and they don't, they think they can buy their way into people's brains and it doesn't

00:02:46.120 work like that. So, you know, guys, it's, if you don't, the time is always a factor in how much

00:02:51.280 money you have. And that's why, like last week when we talked about not having money being a

00:02:55.020 tremendous advantage, it, you have to understand part of that is because if you do have money and

00:03:01.240 you're not patient, you're going to blow the money on shit that doesn't work. And then you're

00:03:04.480 going to be out that money. That doesn't mean you're going to fail. Just means you won't have

00:03:07.640 that initial money that you had. Right. So you gotta, you gotta be patient. It's just part of

00:03:11.360 the deal. But like you said, the people that listen to us are the outliers. Oh yeah. They're

00:03:15.580 the smartest people in the world. Of course. Speaking of which, if this is your first time

00:03:22.740 listening to the MS CEO project, guys, we're not selling anything. We're not going to ask you to

00:03:26.680 buy our program. We're not going to ask you to sign up for a, you know, our sales funnel or

00:03:33.460 whatever the fuck everybody else is asking for. What we do ask though, is that you bring it. If

00:03:39.100 you find value in the podcast, bring me one friend, bring me, you don't have to tell everybody,

00:03:43.100 you don't have to make a post about it. Tell one of your friends that may be interested in this

00:03:47.060 sort of content. That's all we ask. So that's our little fee. Um, today we have an awesome podcast

00:03:53.100 set up for you. Our script is so thorough. It's so detailed Vaughn. You did such a great job on this

00:03:58.520 script. It's awesome. Yeah. Which means we don't have a script. Right. What the fuck? I got one.

00:04:04.380 Oh, you got one. What's the problem with your internet company? Yeah. I can't, I can't email

00:04:08.360 it. Vaughn's going to be known as instead of Vaughn the Impaler, it's going to be, it's going to be

00:04:13.580 Vaughn the Excuse Maker. Isn't that right, Tyler? I thought it was already that. Oh, Tyler's just

00:04:20.380 reeling from the singer I gave him last week. By the way, I just want everybody to know this is going to

00:04:24.440 be a good podcast because Tyler is wearing his salmon shorts and everybody listening knows that

00:04:30.040 when you wear the salmon shorts, we drop some fire. So with that being said, we have a very

00:04:36.900 cool surprise for you guys. Uh, we're going to answer today. One of the questions that we get

00:04:43.600 over and over and over again from you young bucks, which is how do I actually get started? And I think

00:04:51.400 for me, you know, I'm not good at answering this question because I'm the kind of person

00:04:57.200 who sort of overlooks that step. And I think, you know, you either have it or you don't. And

00:05:02.700 if you have it, you'll figure it out. And you know, with my mentality on that, I realized there

00:05:06.980 is people that would like more direction. And for that reason, we have a very, very special

00:05:12.280 guest today that is going to talk about how to actually get started in business. And we're

00:05:18.120 going to cover specific practical tools that you can utilize to get going. All right.

00:05:24.000 And so what we did was we brought in a good friend of mine, Dan Fleischman, who is the youngest

00:05:28.500 founder ever of a publicly traded company. He's an angel investor in 24 companies. He

00:05:34.820 is the broker of influence when it comes to influencer marketing and the author of how to set up your

00:05:41.600 business for under a thousand dollars. What's up, my man? Hello. How are you? Good to be here

00:05:46.640 in St. Louis. Yeah, man. What do you think? The weather's great. Yeah. He brought the San

00:05:51.240 Diego weather with him, man. Yesterday we were, we walked outside last night and it's like

00:05:56.820 70 degrees, no humidity. And he's like, oh man, the weather is great here. It's so ironic

00:06:02.820 hearing from somebody from San Diego say the weather's great in St. Louis. Yeah. So you got

00:06:08.140 lucky. I think you brought it with you. I hope so. Yeah. So anyway, Vaughn, you know, we get

00:06:14.360 this question all the time. I always stay away from it because I, like I said, I'm just very,

00:06:20.040 you know, just figure it out. And I feel like that's a key trait of entrepreneurs and you know,

00:06:24.520 they will figure it out. I figured it out. I didn't have anybody telling me exactly what steps

00:06:28.320 to take, but, um, most people aren't as resilient as you. Well, thank you. But it was more,

00:06:35.060 it was more simple back then. It really was like, you've had a storefront, you had to get

00:06:38.900 customers. I went on and got them. Now you have all the, you have so many options to build a

00:06:43.400 business. And I think people get paralyzed by the options. They're not sure which way to go.

00:06:47.920 Right. So you wrote this really cool book, uh, how to set up your business for under a thousand

00:06:51.820 dollars. Let's start, let's start with just tell people a little bit about yourself and then we'll

00:06:56.320 get into why you wrote the book. Sure. So I started my first company in high school. I was working three

00:07:00.900 jobs, saving money for college. I was going to go to SDSU and my friend kept saying, who's your

00:07:06.700 daddy? And everybody would laugh or think it was sexual or funny or powerful. And he just always

00:07:12.320 would say it at lunchtime at the football field. He would just always say it. So I made this t-shirt,

00:07:17.880 big, ugly white shirt, which just said WID. Who's your daddy? Terrible. The way, the way that was

00:07:23.620 designed was, it was like my, my boy in school did it in art class and we sold 150 shirts at 15 bucks

00:07:30.420 each. All of a sudden we have $2,000. We're millionaires. We're like, what? Right. And, uh,

00:07:36.680 I'm working at the stadium selling cotton candy at nighttime and I'm working at a restaurant being

00:07:40.880 a bus boy and you know, I'm just doing everything I can. I'm working for a stockbroker under the

00:07:44.400 table saving the hustle in your book. Yeah. I had to because you know, we'd had no money. So

00:07:48.140 like, right. We're living off 24 grand a year for a family of four. Doesn't really work in San Diego

00:07:52.700 where the rent's very expensive. So I'm just, I'm hustling, hustling. And then I realized if 150 kids

00:07:58.240 are willing to spend $15 each, now we're millionaires. We have $2,000. Like, holy shit, this, I'm onto

00:08:03.780 something. Yeah. So we go to this convention in Vegas called magic and I'm only 17 years old. You

00:08:09.640 have to be 21 to get inside. You have to be 21 to get a hotel room in Vegas at the time. Like

00:08:13.220 there's just no, like it was silly of what we did. We went to a grocery store and printed out our badges

00:08:18.740 on a machine. Love it. That's awesome. We made these business cards. We paid like $50 to make business

00:08:25.820 cards. Like, and I needed it within 20 minutes, basically the taxi cab driver waited outside. Cause I

00:08:30.680 had no, you know, I didn't have a car in Vegas. And, uh, we go to the convention, we talk our

00:08:34.700 way in and we started walking around. There's huge, humongous booths, Ralph Lauren, this and

00:08:39.240 Tommy Hilfiger that a hundred thousand square feet. And we're just these kids with white t-shirts

00:08:43.300 that say, who's your daddy? And everybody was giggling. They just love the shirt. They just

00:08:47.200 love the name, the catchphrase. Yeah. So people were asking us, where's your booth? We're

00:08:51.600 like, yeah, yeah, our booth's right over there. Just go to the right. Obviously we had

00:08:54.220 no booth. So, uh, we get back. Um, my brother gives us advice and we trademarked the catchphrase

00:09:03.180 ended up trademarking it for 300 products and 17 different classes all over the world. And

00:09:08.140 that's what our big expense was. So the 43,000 I had saved for college, working these three

00:09:12.980 jobs for the last three years was on fire. It was gone in a month or two. And, uh, we went

00:09:20.060 and got a booth at the convention the next time, a few months later, and we actually had our

00:09:23.620 clothing. We got overcharged on our samples and overcharged on our manufacturing and overcharged

00:09:28.480 on everything you could overcharge us for. They just saw, Oh yeah, here's, here's the

00:09:32.740 mark. Here's the target. 17 year old kid, the samples that should have cost us 600 bucks

00:09:38.460 cost us $18,000 to make us like 30 sweaters. Yeah. So it was just, we went through it and

00:09:45.400 we went through the money really quickly. So we get lucky at the convention. We write over

00:09:50.440 a million dollars in orders and Nordstrom's comes up to us and offers us an exclusive.

00:09:55.300 And my brother and my friend's dad told us, come home. They're like, don't do a deal with

00:10:00.340 Nordstrom. And we're like, what are you talking about? Nordstrom is exclusive. It's the best

00:10:04.580 or the highest. They're still, they're still one of the best brands. They're like, no, if

00:10:08.780 they're willing to offer you an exclusive, you're onto something. So we went back, reconvened

00:10:14.000 and the rest was history. We ended up selling to thousands of stores. Um, when we were 23

00:10:19.060 years old, we started the energy drink version of it under the same name for two years. I

00:10:23.880 just went and met with 43 distributors, Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Pepsi. And every time I'd go

00:10:28.760 meet with a distributor, if I came to St. Louis to meet with Budweiser, I'd see them at

00:10:32.520 9am and say, Oh, at 11am I have a meeting with Ralph. So we got to make sure I got to be

00:10:37.040 out of here by 1040. So in their mind, they're like, Oh, they're thinking I'm going to meet

00:10:40.540 at the grocery store, which is true. Then when I'm at the grocery store, I'm like, Hey,

00:10:43.740 I just met with Budweiser. Uh, but at 1pm I have to go meet with Costco. So as long as

00:10:48.100 I leave here by 1240, we'll be fine. And I always said those names to edify the brand

00:10:53.920 and to make them realize they're not first. Cause the biggest, biggest fear for people

00:10:58.720 that are buyers of retail is they don't want to lose their job. Huh? It's their absolute

00:11:03.980 biggest fear. If they can say, Oh, these guys were in Ralph's or this guy, they're in

00:11:08.000 Costco. They're already in other stores. Yeah. They don't feel dumb. They don't feel

00:11:12.900 like it's their own decisions. Exactly. Right. Right. So what happened is I did that over

00:11:16.900 and over in 43 cities with 43 distributors got us into 55,000 retail stores literally

00:11:22.800 by myself. I was just every single week going city to city, to city, to city, to city. And

00:11:27.420 so I finally hired a sales team that only did the mini stores and I did all the chain

00:11:32.040 stores. So let me stop you right there and ask you a question. So you did all, you went

00:11:37.300 around and you, you talked to all these companies about carrying your product. How

00:11:42.400 many people gave you permission to go do that? Zero. Okay. So how many people gave

00:11:46.640 you a roadmap to go do that? Zero. There was no internet, right? So my point here

00:11:52.000 guys is this, is that you have to just go fucking do it. Yep. And you and I talked

00:11:58.040 about this at dinner last night. We talked about it before, you know, this, this story

00:12:03.260 that he's telling is the way that it works. No one is ever going to come along and say,

00:12:07.020 yeah, you can go do this or yeah, you should go do this or here's how to do this. Dude,

00:12:11.360 you just do it until you figure it out. Just bang on the doors. Yeah. You know, now it's

00:12:15.400 so easy with social media. I can get ahold of any buyer of any retailer on the planet

00:12:18.940 in two minutes. I just go to LinkedIn or I go to Twitter and I just, I at them, right?

00:12:24.640 And they're going to see it. If I tweeted somebody that's the buyer for a chain store, he only

00:12:28.320 has 2,100 followers. It's not like he's got a million followers. He's not going to see

00:12:31.560 it. He's not a celebrity, right? He's the buyer for Costco. And what happens if he

00:12:34.700 doesn't respond the first time? Tweet him two days later. Exactly. And I tweet his assistant

00:12:39.740 and I find out who his partner is and I find out who the president is. They're going to

00:12:43.900 see it and I'm just going to scream from the mountaintops and the biggest advantages, nobody

00:12:47.620 else is doing that. Right. My competitors aren't doing that. Andy, your face kind of had this

00:12:52.320 knowing look that came over it when Dan said he basically walked away from guaranteed probably

00:12:58.240 millions, right? With Nordstrom. You said it was Nordstrom. And I mean, maybe I'm reading

00:13:05.580 into it, but to me that was an act of faith and that was a belief in what you had going

00:13:10.380 on. And I'm curious because I saw your eyes kind of light up, Andy, when he said it, because

00:13:14.540 that seems like something that unique entrepreneurs do. When they have guaranteed money, they see

00:13:20.080 bigger. They see bigger potential. Well, you have to always look for the signs. You know,

00:13:23.820 that's what you did. You know, you look and he had some, some people that cared about him

00:13:27.640 that helped him see those signs because you know, what your, your dad and your brother

00:13:33.480 said, you know, is exactly true. Like if you've got a big company coming in and like trying

00:13:37.400 to scoop you up, that does mean you're onto something. But when you're a young guy and you're

00:13:41.260 just, you're just excited to get the business, sometimes you make decisions on the short term

00:13:45.460 that really cut off your ability to be big, you know, and, and you, you know, you were

00:13:51.820 very fortunate to have that situation happen. Yeah. But I would have taken it if I didn't

00:13:55.580 have other, other sales or if I didn't have the belief that we were going to do a lot

00:13:59.560 more, I would have taken it. I would be happy to just make a million a year and net 300,000

00:14:04.140 and just have a business. Right. But I just knew we were going to be, the reaction was too

00:14:08.460 good. I had to go for it. I had to gamble basically. Right. That's awesome, man. So what

00:14:13.760 are you onto now? So then I did that for 10 years. We, that was a great learning curve

00:14:19.140 because there was roller coasters. Obviously it's not all peachy keen. Right. He'd be

00:14:22.060 in Albertsons and do 2 million with Albertsons and then monster would come in and pay them

00:14:25.980 to drop us. He'd be in Costco and they'd drop rockstar for us. And then rockstar would

00:14:29.700 come back with $5 million check to drop, drop our drink. You know, like there was battles,

00:14:35.040 you know, we call the energy drink wars. We'd put up stickers in the windows and Red Bull

00:14:38.580 would pull our stickers down. We'd put up our, our, our cardboard cans outside the seven

00:14:42.840 11. They'd rip them down. You know, what's funny about that is that people, I think that's

00:14:48.780 in any, any industry. Like there's like a competitive nature to it that people don't

00:14:53.260 understand. And like when they find out that you're like that, like that you want to win

00:14:56.360 that bad, they think you're fucking psycho. Like, but the truth is, is that just business

00:15:00.160 is the way it goes. Like I see people all the day, all day, especially like younger people

00:15:05.240 that don't, they get into business and they have this idea that they're somehow entitled

00:15:10.100 to some sort of piece of the business. Like they open up a store and they think, you know,

00:15:15.520 Oh, well we, since we're open, you, you guys like speaking of us should just let us have

00:15:20.180 a piece of the business. No motherfucker. You're going to have to fucking fight for it.

00:15:23.960 I'm sorry. I'm not, I'm not going to give you anything. I've worked my whole life for

00:15:27.760 this. I'm competitive. I want to win. It's not about being selfish. It's about winning.

00:15:32.020 And I have an obligation to 120 employees that I have to do the best that we can. And that

00:15:36.420 means every single transaction, not fucking let you have your fucking 20 a day just because 0.98

00:15:42.560 you're open. You know, you're not entitled to anything. And I think everybody listening

00:15:45.920 to this needs to understand that aspect that like, when you go into business, what he's

00:15:51.040 describing is not only energy drinks, it's everything. Like you're in a competition.

00:15:57.180 It is a battle. You are going to have to fight. And if you can't stomach that, you shouldn't

00:16:01.500 be in business.

00:16:02.160 Right. We always talk about shelf space. I mean, when you go in and you see these different

00:16:06.680 water brands, well, the grocery store and the seven 11s and the Costco's, they only have

00:16:11.760 so much shelf space for the water, whoever those top few players are, that's it. And

00:16:16.820 so what happens is with the energy drinks in particular, and obviously the same thing

00:16:19.740 goes to for first form versus other fitness supplements. There's only so much shelf space

00:16:24.340 in each retailer. So we called it eye level is by level. And so our competitors would pay

00:16:30.680 for eye level to pay for that shelf because I could wrap a $20 bill around my can, but if

00:16:36.680 it's on the bottom shelf, you won't pay $2 for the $20 bill because you can't see it.

00:16:40.140 And so we had to fight all the time. We're moving monster and moving down to their shelf

00:16:45.920 and putting my shelf up there. And it would only last for three days before they came in

00:16:49.140 and they would switch the shelves back, but you had to battle. It's not like I wanted to

00:16:53.120 sit there and fight with them. I had to train every single sales rep, every distributor,

00:16:57.620 everybody walking to retailer, make sure the stickers are eye level, make sure there's a

00:17:01.000 sticker at the, at the door that says push, pull every single time there had to be anywhere

00:17:05.720 you could so that the competitor wouldn't see it or they wouldn't remove it. I had to keep

00:17:09.460 re-putting it up because it's a war, right? It's a war. No matter what your product is,

00:17:12.940 it's a war.

00:17:13.400 It is. And the thing is, you know, and I would say this, there's a way to play and there's

00:17:18.640 a way not to play too, because I see what I do see from the same people that I'm talking

00:17:22.380 about who are, feel like they're entitled to some sort of business. They can't keep up

00:17:27.560 with the battle. And so then they go to Facebook and wine or talk shit about the other company.

00:17:31.900 And here's what happens when you talk shit about the other company, other people start hating

00:17:36.080 you because you look like a cry baby. You look like a loser. You look entitled. And

00:17:40.460 not only that, you're telling your people who are your loyal customers about your competitor.

00:17:45.920 Absolutely.

00:17:46.600 I mean, is there anything dumber than that?

00:17:49.460 It's always mind boggling me that every phone company commercial talks about the other company.

00:17:53.660 Oh my God, I can't stand it.

00:17:54.660 That's like, that's like rule number one. You don't even acknowledge them, man. Like that's

00:17:59.060 like how, how much is fucking AT&T paying Sprint to talk about them in their commercials? 0.70

00:18:03.400 Right. It's dude, I say, I think the same thing. I'm like, what are you doing?

00:18:07.780 I cringe. I cringe every time.

00:18:09.200 But, but on a, on a small micro level where we have all these little small businesses,

00:18:12.920 they're, they, that people get their feelings hurt and they get upset or they get frustrated

00:18:17.140 with a competitor and they go on the internet and talk.

00:18:20.140 Right.

00:18:20.460 Dude, worst thing you could do.

00:18:21.780 Yep.

00:18:22.080 Worst thing you could do. Not from a, not from, not even from a looking bad standpoint, you

00:18:26.760 are literally going to drive your customer straight to that company.

00:18:29.300 Yeah. Because if they go Google first for them and they're like, holy shit, this, these guys

00:18:32.220 got a hundred thousand square foot facilities. They're awesome compared to this little wittily

00:18:36.800 dink company. Right. All of a sudden you've got a new customer based on them crying.

00:18:40.680 Yes. First forms booths bigger than mine. Yeah. Or these guys are, these guys are out to

00:18:45.040 try to bully everybody. Like, no dude, it's fucking business. You know, you're welcome

00:18:48.800 to join our team. Right. You know what I mean?

00:18:50.900 Exactly. Be a legionnaire.

00:18:51.980 Yeah. Right. Join up, dude.

00:18:54.620 As you guys are talking, I thought of, uh, what general Patton told his troops. He said,

00:18:58.960 your job is to make sure the other guy dies for his country. And it's, it's having that 0.90

00:19:03.580 sense of competition. And it's not, it's not just the, Oh, we're fighting for our country.

00:19:07.240 It's, we want to destroy the other, the other, the competition.

00:19:09.760 Well, you get caught up with that too, though. Like a lot of people think a lot of people's

00:19:13.740 business plan is to hurt the other business. That's not a business plan. Right. You know,

00:19:17.740 or a lot of people's business plan is I'm going to do put X out of business or I'm going

00:19:22.260 to hurt X or I'm going to do this X. No, your fucking business plan is to help your customer

00:19:27.460 achieve whatever result it is. They're coming to you achieve. And people lose focus on that

00:19:32.260 because they're, you know, it's that old saying, I forget how it goes about the Yankees

00:19:35.540 pinstripes. Like people are too busy looking at the pinstripes to, to concentrate on the

00:19:39.680 baseball. Remember that saying? Yeah. Yeah. You got your computer open. Google that shit.

00:19:43.700 Well, I would, if the internet was working, I'll look it up on my phone. Yeah. But you know

00:19:49.000 what I'm saying? There used, there used to be, uh, people are so busy looking at everything

00:19:53.760 else that they can't concentrate on their own game. You have to concentrate on your own

00:19:56.620 game. Yeah. You know, and, and with the internet today, like my dad doesn't get it because when

00:20:01.100 he was in business, there was no internet. Right. So he, um, he's like, so what? Like

00:20:06.120 people just make shit up and then talk about it. I'm like, yeah, every day. That's what

00:20:09.980 they do. Absolutely. But you know, I don't ever try to argue with it because I'm like, man,

00:20:13.980 thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the, for the recommendation. Right. So, so anyway, man, uh,

00:20:20.200 let's, let's talk some practical steps. Um, you know, when you're young, you know, you

00:20:27.280 and I both grew up with that hustle, that entrepreneurship in our blood. I mean, both

00:20:31.820 of us were funny enough. We're doing the same things when we were little kids selling baseball

00:20:35.400 cards and running around doing sort of the same, same things. Um, you know, back when

00:20:43.320 I started a business in 99, you know, it was as simple as trying to find a spot, get some

00:20:47.700 product and then go out and get your customers. There was no internet there. You know, we

00:20:51.060 couldn't advertise, we didn't have any money. So all I could do was go door to door and meet

00:20:54.240 people, which I still believe in, still believe it's super effective. Um, if you don't know

00:20:58.460 what else to do and you own a business, do that because you're gonna learn a fuck a lot. I used

00:21:02.300 to put flyers on cars every weekend. We did too. Yeah. And we'd get in trouble for it every

00:21:06.280 time, but we still did it. Even at the clothing conventions, I was 19 years old. We had millions

00:21:10.160 in sales at nighttime. I would put the flyers on the cars every single night. Yep. I didn't care. I had

00:21:14.620 to, there was no Facebook ads. And so, and so like you and I look at what's going on

00:21:20.040 here. Cause we've both done, we're like in a weird group that in a group I'm thankful

00:21:25.880 to be in, but a group who has built successful business in the pre-internet area era, and

00:21:32.140 then also maintain and transition to the internet area and still succeeded and done well. Not

00:21:38.620 many people have done that. What I find is that most people either have done really well

00:21:41.700 on the internet and they're killing it or they did really well before the internet and

00:21:46.260 they're just kind of out of it now. They've done so well that they don't have to work.

00:21:49.660 You know what I mean? So it's very rare to find someone like you who has pre-internet

00:21:55.080 and then transitioned and then become an expert at how to market on the internet and build a

00:21:59.460 business. So what I'm getting at here is like a lot of the guys now that, that are entrepreneurs,

00:22:04.880 entrepreneurs, it, it really is. It's easier, but it's more complicated mentally because

00:22:11.360 there's so many things and so many options. Where do I put my attention? Where do I put

00:22:15.840 my effort? Is it Twitter? Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook? How do I run Facebook ads?

00:22:20.360 What do I, what do I need to do to, for product fulfillment? You know, there's just a lot of

00:22:24.360 like things that people are like, well, I would never know how to do that. They're actually

00:22:28.460 really simple. Right. Right. Once you like break it down. Um, so I'd like to get into

00:22:33.780 some of these practical steps for, let's say, uh, you know, somebody who's just getting ready

00:22:40.980 to get started now and they're like, Hey, I got this. I've got, you know, I, I want to

00:22:44.860 be an entrepreneur. I mean, cause that's like the hot thing, right? Yes. So it's, it's so

00:22:49.600 glory. It's so glamorous, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's better than like there's five years

00:22:53.740 when it was so cool to be a rapper. Yeah. Right. No, I have a saying I use all the time now.

00:22:57.320 Entrepreneur is a new rapper. There you go. There you go. It is the new rapper. Like

00:23:02.140 look on the internet. It's the new fucking rapper because everybody's like, well, fuck

00:23:05.520 it. I can't be a rapper. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. Well, they just keep seeing

00:23:08.800 these 26 year old having $1 billion unicorn valuations and right. You know, they don't

00:23:14.500 be me. Yeah. It's going to be nothing. Right. This guy started two years ago. Now he's got

00:23:18.220 a $4 billion valuation. Right. They just think it's so simple. Right. Um, so the real

00:23:23.260 practicality is nowadays in 2016, you can find out if your idea is people are going to care

00:23:30.920 literally tonight. If you said, Hey, let's start new watchstraps.com. Okay. We have an idea.

00:23:37.940 We're going to do new watchstraps.com. I can go on to WordPress, make a site for free. I can

00:23:43.620 go get graphics that I pay on five or five bucks for, or go on to 99 designs and pay 50 bucks

00:23:49.220 for a hundred bucks for and get 200 submissions. So now I have a real, real designer submitting

00:23:53.420 for real, a real product for new watchstraps.com. I'm spending nothing. I'm spending five bucks

00:23:59.120 or free a hundred bucks. Then I go out and I get the Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat,

00:24:05.340 Pinterest. I get every single account at new watchstraps. So now I have the same bio and

00:24:11.440 every single one. And I have a watch strap as my picture with my profile picture. All that

00:24:15.980 was free. But from the outside, looking in, if they go look me up, I look like an actual company

00:24:22.000 now. Now I go look at my competitors. I go look at, I Google everything about watchstraps,

00:24:27.520 bad watchstraps, good watchstraps, million dollar watchstraps. I Google all these different terms

00:24:32.000 and I see who did what and what more importantly in the comment section on greatwatchstraps.com on my

00:24:40.260 competitor site, what the comments are from the customers. And then I adjust. These are too

00:24:45.220 expensive. These are too cheap. Mine broke. Mine did this. Seeing those reactions, I can now adjust

00:24:51.020 to new watchstraps.com and say, we're going to be high end. We're going to be low end. We're going

00:24:55.180 to be mid tier. We're going to be both. Whatever we're going to be, I can go and figure it out and

00:24:59.080 Google search. And in one hour, be more of an expert than probably the guy that actually owns

00:25:03.620 good watchstraps.com. So now I know how much I want to be. I know what my site's going to look like.

00:25:08.960 I got designs from Fiverr or 99designs. I have a WordPress site. I have all my social media accounts.

00:25:13.820 I started making my nine page business plan. You don't need a 45 page business plan with seven

00:25:19.240 year finance. Nobody cares. I'm never going to read your 45 page business plan. I promise I get

00:25:23.640 sent 300 business plans a month, 500 business plans in a month. I'm going to read 10 to 15 pages of it.

00:25:28.800 And I should know in the first five pages, whether I care or anybody's going to care. You don't need

00:25:33.020 to do 45 pages and get so overwhelmed that it never happens. Yeah. Realize that. Realize that when

00:25:38.260 somebody is reading your business plan, that they are waiting for you to get right to the point.

00:25:42.060 Exactly. I mean, we get it. Like you don't have to tell the, the fucking glamorous story that

00:25:48.100 works in a $7 billion market, right? You're selling watch straps. You're not going to do $7 billion.

00:25:52.620 Just get right to the point, what you want to do, how you're going to do it, what you, you know,

00:25:56.700 the meat. Exactly. You know?

00:25:58.520 So basically you start writing out your business plan. It can be as long as an executive summary.

00:26:02.800 It could just be nine or 10 pages. And during that process of just Google searching what the other

00:26:08.720 competitors are doing and putting that into your business plan, you start learning whether you even

00:26:13.240 like it or not, or you love it more. You might realize that watch strap industry is only 40 million

00:26:18.020 and there's one guy doing 38 million. So I don't want to get into that. Or you might realize it's a

00:26:22.000 bazillion dollars. And now you're so excited that you're, you're working on it 17 hours a day,

00:26:26.020 just going through the process of actually Google searching and figuring out what's going on in the

00:26:31.040 industry. Again, you're getting smarter and better. Then I make my business plan,

00:26:36.700 which costs me nothing. I have my social media accounts, which costs me nothing.

00:26:39.900 You don't have to trademark new watch straps.com yet because you don't need to yet. It's not a

00:26:44.020 thing yet. You can still find out for free or for a hundred bucks, whether it's valid, whether it's

00:26:49.160 a real thing. Then the next day you wake up, your website's live, your business plan's complete.

00:26:54.900 You send it to some people that care. You're not going out and raising money. You just want to

00:26:57.740 see if people care. You're just talking to your friends. So let's point out a couple of things

00:27:01.560 as we're here. So a, you could test, this is something that was never possible before.

00:27:06.700 You could test your idea before you actually open your business. Okay. And if you're going to look

00:27:12.480 for investors, you want to have the business at least set up before you, you go pitch people with

00:27:20.020 your plan. A lot of people will send a business plan with nothing to look at. Right. I can't explain

00:27:25.520 how many, if I showed you that my DMS or my emails every single day of people asking for a hundred K,

00:27:31.380 250 K, 500 K. Do you know what I do every single time? My best way to say no is saying yes. I say,

00:27:37.740 Oh great. Send me your business plan to, and here's my email address. They won't even do that. How

00:27:42.300 many people send me out of a hundred to maybe two, maybe you know that on stage at every time I speak

00:27:48.580 an event, I give up my email and phone number on stage. How many people call me? Nobody. I call you,

00:27:54.320 buddy. And I, and I, and by the way, what's the best part is I say it on stage. The reason I'm

00:28:00.680 going to give out my email and phone number up here is that none of you are going to call me.

00:28:03.740 Well, that goes right into what we were talking about. Success zombie shit where people just

00:28:07.440 consume, consume, consume, consume, consume. And they, they love the idea, but they don't want

00:28:12.420 to do the work in that crowd every single time, which is amazing because you're, you're attracting

00:28:17.340 like you're a big deal, dude. I mean, you guys might not have heard of him yet, but

00:28:24.200 if you look into him and learn what he's done, he's a huge deal. And for somebody to stand on

00:28:29.880 stage of your caliber and say that, that's, that's crazy. They laugh at me. They all laugh

00:28:35.840 together like, ha ha ha. Like I'm going to call you. I'm going to call you. And 20 of them

00:28:38.560 say, you know, I'm not going to be like everybody else. And they all whisper to me, I'm not going

00:28:42.140 to be like everybody else. How many of them call me? None. Literally none. That is crazy.

00:28:47.060 And they, and they all need it or they want it. They all do those things. And it's so

00:28:50.760 rare. So now the next thing is you have, you have your watch straps, you have your, you

00:28:57.980 have your business plan going each time, each time you do it, you can now test with

00:29:06.320 checking out Facebook ads. And for five or 10 bucks, you can test and figure out people

00:29:12.060 that follow at Rolex or at whatever brand that you like, or whatever is going to be relevant to

00:29:18.060 your, to watch straps. You can go test for five or 10 bucks. People in Beverly Hills, New York,

00:29:24.100 Miami, and these upper end, they're this age group. They have this kind of financial demographic.

00:29:28.500 You can pinpoint for nothing. It doesn't cost you anything extra to pinpoint. And now you can test,

00:29:34.540 let's call it a hundred dollars. You go crazy. You're going to spend a hundred dollars on this

00:29:37.920 idea. And you, and you test 10 bucks, 10 bucks, 10 bucks, 10 bucks, all these different cities

00:29:41.720 that are all high end. And before you've even announced to your friends, or you've announced

00:29:46.020 on Facebook that you have new watch straps.com, you've tested to see if people care in these 10

00:29:50.980 cities. If nobody cares, don't tell your friends yet. You won't have any egg on your face. Who cares?

00:29:56.280 So now you've tested for a hundred dollars. You went crazy and you actually had 46 people come to

00:30:01.420 your site and six people bought something and they spent 20, 30 bucks each. And now you did

00:30:05.820 $182 in revenue and you broke even on your hundred bucks. Holy shit. You have a business.

00:30:10.600 Right. Now you can scale. Now you realize that something actually works. People cared.

00:30:14.540 Now you spend 250 bucks. You make your website a little bit better. You actually paid somebody now

00:30:19.380 from Fiverr or from some website and you actually paid them a freelance site, $200, $500, $300,

00:30:26.460 some nominal amount. Don't go spend five or 10 grand on your website. You don't need it at first.

00:30:30.580 See if people care later. If people care, sure. Go spend $12,000 on newwatchstraps.com and make it

00:30:36.280 some big fancy thing. But at the beginning, you don't need to raise any money. You don't need to be a

00:30:40.580 You don't need to borrow any money. You don't, you need to feel the temperature, you know,

00:30:44.040 for the product. Right. People, people, you guys, it's really, it's really simple. It really

00:30:51.740 is. Um, especially now. Yeah. But, but I could see what I could see where it would be confusing

00:30:59.000 for someone. You know what I mean? Something I noticed, and this is something that Andy's

00:31:03.260 talked about a lot is that there seems to be this paradox in an entrepreneurialism where you

00:31:09.080 have to control all the, the variables that you can control, but you also have to be okay

00:31:15.620 with the messiness and the evolution of your, of your business and how in your life and in

00:31:22.860 your work, how have you managed to strike that, that balance?

00:31:26.380 So when things fail or things get messy or things screw up, I don't care. I don't sit

00:31:36.060 on the floor and cry about it. That's the way I say it because I can't prevent that. I can't

00:31:40.320 stop that. So if all of a sudden Facebook cuts the reach and now my 4 million followers, only

00:31:47.820 400,000 people see something. Well, I can't cry about Facebook every day for the next two

00:31:51.680 months because that does nothing. Right. Literally nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact,

00:31:57.480 it keeps you from doing productive things. Right. Right. So when, when the whole poker

00:32:02.660 industry got shut down, my world got shut upside, flipped upside down. I was doing millions of

00:32:08.360 dollars in revenue, tens of thousands of new players a day. I was like an amazing business.

00:32:11.860 And then the government shuts down online poker. Holy shit. What do I do? Dan Bilzerian calls

00:32:17.160 me at 10, 10 AM and says, dude, are you in the country? Where are you? Like the poker industry

00:32:21.340 is over. I was like, no, I'm at the Bellagio. What are you talking about? Like I'm right

00:32:24.180 here. And that day should have been the, one of the worst days of my life because this business

00:32:30.300 that was an eight figure going to be a nine figure business that like just was gone.

00:32:34.640 Right. And instead I went on the offensive. I did 82 interviews that week. I said, look,

00:32:41.420 I didn't do anything wrong. I went and paid back every single player in the, where my competitors,

00:32:46.080 none of them paid anybody back. That way I could sleep at night. Right. So I paid back 41,000

00:32:49.460 people right away. And I went and did ESPN and every single interview you can imagine.

00:32:54.020 And I showed everybody bank statements and proof that everything was perfectly great.

00:32:59.640 And the response I got was mind blowing. I started getting hired by casinos to consult

00:33:05.880 for them. I started getting hired by huge financial institutions to consult for them,

00:33:11.380 paying ridiculous rates. When I had just lost effectively tens of millions of dollars of

00:33:15.840 my equity because I owned half the company overnight, I was able to turn that horrible

00:33:20.940 negative. I had no control. If I just sat on the floor and cried and I went back to Malta

00:33:24.800 and I went back to my apartment and just sat and cried on the floor. Like, woe is me.

00:33:29.340 Everybody shouldn't feel bad for me. What the hell would that have done?

00:33:32.080 Nothing.

00:33:32.640 Nothing. So I went on the offensive and showed why this is right. Why did everything proper?

00:33:38.260 Why pay everybody? Why this is what's going to happen in the industry? Why it needs to be

00:33:42.500 regulated? Why we could have prevented what my competitors did? And that being on the offensive

00:33:48.480 turned into me being the CEO of a casino for a year, me getting all these consulting gigs

00:33:54.120 because I was the only good guy in the industry. So turning the negative into the positive,

00:33:59.700 when things get messy, you just have to evolve and keep going. And I call it outperformant.

00:34:05.120 If you go out there and you outwork and you outperform it, you won't even remember when

00:34:09.000 Facebook let you get all 4 million people seeing your stuff. Right. You only remember

00:34:12.740 those days. Plus, I think a point to recognize here too is especially like within your industry,

00:34:17.160 because we've had a number of these situations happen where things, the rules change in one day,

00:34:22.380 you know, the government says no more of this ingredient or no more of this kind of product

00:34:26.660 or this or that or whatever. And dude, you know, companies, there's companies that ride

00:34:33.380 those products like that's all they do. And when the rule comes in and changes, they are crying.

00:34:40.580 They're like, oh, it's over. It's over. It's over. While I'm sitting back trying, I'm like,

00:34:44.240 all right, well, let's adjust right now. Let's move forward. And, you know, that's what's always

00:34:49.200 kept us ahead is because of that mentality of just not, it's not that you don't care. It's that you

00:34:54.900 learn to take the negative and turn it into productive action. Like anytime you're feeling bad,

00:35:00.220 you know, like, and I teach us with, with performance or business, you know, when you

00:35:06.240 feel like you don't want to do something or you feel like something bad has happened or you feel

00:35:10.000 like the stress or the anxiety of, let's say a competitor doing something that should be your

00:35:15.960 trigger to, to act in a productive way. You know, it's a pivot point is what I call it. You know,

00:35:21.440 and most people pivot the wrong way. They go down that self-pity, cry, post a negative shit on

00:35:27.440 Facebook. That shit doesn't do anything but hurt you. By, by staying busy, you don't have time to

00:35:32.560 cry. Right. Is this, is this a fair way to succinctly state what you just said? That you

00:35:37.740 shouldn't complain about the way you want things to be. You should work with the way that things are.

00:35:43.660 Yeah. You, you're never going to, I'm never going to be able to change Facebook cutting the reach.

00:35:48.120 I'm never going to be able to change the government stopping my competitors. They didn't stop me.

00:35:53.020 My site became the biggest one there was for a minute, but I, I, I realized once they stopped

00:35:57.180 them and it was bloody, bloody hell. Okay. Well, this industry is completed and I'm going to go be

00:36:02.880 a consultant for when it does get regulated. And now years later, America started regulating multiple

00:36:07.840 states and eventually it's going to be national and I'll be the one clean cut good guy that actually

00:36:12.500 did everything right. Right. And I'll be the guy that everybody comes to. You can't control if the

00:36:17.600 government says, or the FDA says, Oh, we're removing this ingredient from supplements.

00:36:21.940 Well, you're not going to change that. And if you do, it's going to take four years to change

00:36:25.900 it and you can fight it during that time. But during those four years while you're fighting

00:36:30.180 it with the government and trying to get proved to them that that ingredient should be in there,

00:36:33.820 you have to adjust on day one and day two because those four years of government is just.

00:36:38.520 And when the four years is up, you're behind the ball.

00:36:40.700 Exactly. Yeah. So exactly. Once again, though, guys, I mean, there's just an amazing paradox that

00:36:46.720 goes on where you say all the time, Andy, that to succeed in entrepreneurialism, you have to care.

00:36:52.160 You have to be passionate, but you also have to have a certain level of detachment.

00:36:55.840 Well, I think you do. I think you do care. I think, I don't think it's, I don't personally

00:37:00.480 think that it's that you don't care. I think it's just, you care so much and you're disciplined

00:37:05.980 enough to know that because I'm upset or because I'm frustrated or because I, because I guarantee

00:37:12.340 you, dude, when you got that call, you're like, fuck, you know, I cared. Right. But you, you're

00:37:17.380 disciplined enough to take that care and know that like, all right, I'm flipping it over and

00:37:21.440 doing something productive. You know what I cared about the most was those 41,000 people

00:37:25.100 that I had their money. Yeah. And I, that's why I paid them back within four days. I did absolutely

00:37:29.480 everything I could to pay them back in case something worse happened. Cause my site didn't get

00:37:34.160 affected by what happened to my competitors, but in case something did and the government

00:37:38.320 decided, yeah, we're just going to mess with him. The rest of the companies kept that money,

00:37:41.420 right? Oh yeah. They haven't paid him back. We're talking about millions and millions of

00:37:44.800 dollars. At the time it was hundreds of millions. It was insanity. Yeah. Um, but yeah, caring about

00:37:50.380 the customer meant, uh, affected me by tens of millions of dollars, but I had to, I, I, there was no

00:37:57.320 choice to me when other people were thinking, Oh, you should just continue on and just be a European 0.55

00:38:01.860 site or just be this or just be that. No, I have to pay every single person back and then figure it

00:38:07.260 out because the customer, it sounds cliche. The customer was absolutely positively the most

00:38:12.240 important thing because if I risked their money, I would be, if, if something happened and their

00:38:18.040 money got frozen, even if it was frozen by the government, it's still me that messed up.

00:38:22.120 That's right. If I didn't trust is everything, man, it is. It's net. You never, ever, ever,

00:38:27.700 ever violate that ever.

00:38:29.040 I would never have been able to walk back into a casino five years later without people

00:38:32.860 scolding at me. Right. And think of how many, think of how many opportunities that whole

00:38:38.340 situation opened up for you, not just in that, in that arena, but in like the, the conversation

00:38:44.180 like this, like, yeah, dude, Dan Fleischman did this. He's a great dude. You need to meet

00:38:47.980 him. How many people have you met because of that?

00:38:49.900 Oh, it's every week.

00:38:51.440 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:51.860 It's every week because people know that when the chips are down and things, bad things happen,

00:38:57.120 that's how, that's how I react. That's right. And that's, that will help me for the rest

00:39:01.700 of my life. It's amazing. It's amazing story. That's goes with doing the right thing. Yeah.

00:39:07.300 Always. A hundred percent. And that's why I don't mind talking about failures, even though

00:39:10.680 technically I didn't fail. It still failed. Right. I can say I failed. Yeah. Even if I didn't

00:39:16.200 physically fail and the company was doing great at the time, industry shut down, the company's

00:39:20.840 done, I failed. But I can talk about that because so much was learned through that process.

00:39:27.280 So much was done when those bad things happened and so many good things came from it. And when

00:39:32.620 it becomes regulated, I'll be, I'll be that guy.

00:39:35.100 You'll be ready to go.

00:39:36.420 Ready. Dan, you already shared some practical, practical steps for starting, but if it's okay

00:39:45.500 with you, can we back up just for a second? Because in chapter, I think it's chapter one

00:39:49.820 of, of your book, when you talk about the checklist, you, you, you stayed at 20 questions, uh, that

00:39:55.680 you need to answer before you get started. And the very first question you, you say is why

00:40:00.160 am I starting a business? And the question that popped into my head when I read that was

00:40:04.100 in your mind, is there, is there a standard answer that everybody needs to be able to supply?

00:40:11.580 Why? But to what extent can the answer vary from person to person?

00:40:15.120 Sure. So some people are starting a business, uh, to fill a void. Some people are starting

00:40:20.780 a business to make money and that a lot of times that's their sole, sole reason for it.

00:40:26.540 It's hard for that to be your sole reason because then there's no soul to it. There's no care to

00:40:30.660 it. Um, so that can't be the only reason. Can you do a business that's focused on making money

00:40:36.800 and buy things for 20 bucks and sell them for 60 and make money? Sure. Will that be a business

00:40:42.440 that's sustainable for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years? No, because you don't care and

00:40:47.340 you will never be able to convince other people to care because it's just a business for profit

00:40:51.120 that doesn't have. And why do other people have to care? Because you can't do everything.

00:40:55.460 That's right. You have to build a team. The team is, I wouldn't exist if I couldn't text my web guy,

00:41:00.720 Hey, make this free code for the MFCEO podcast. Cause I would never have, I don't know how to do

00:41:06.280 that. I think I'm a smart guy, but I don't know how to go onto a website, make a free code for a

00:41:11.960 podcast for my ebook. Right. I just don't know how. Right. I have a guy that's been fantastic for

00:41:16.940 eight years and I would, without him, I couldn't exist. Right. I have, I have Nicole. If I didn't

00:41:22.840 have Nicole for the last couple of years, she literally runs my life. Right. If I couldn't text her,

00:41:28.080 Hey, can you do this for this social media campaign? Hey, can you do this for this? Hey,

00:41:31.520 can you text this influence or this text, the celebrity, this tell the lawyer to do this.

00:41:35.500 It's not that I can't do those things, but with the other 300 emails a day and a thousand texts

00:41:40.640 today and the social media and this and that, the phone conferences and the shit just wouldn't get 0.81

00:41:44.700 done the way it needs to happen. Right. So you have a partner. I can text him. Hey bro,

00:41:49.320 can you do this phone conference today? I'll do this one at 6 PM. You do this one night. If I couldn't do

00:41:53.320 those things, none of this would happen. Right. Right. We're, I don't want to call us like a puppet

00:41:57.680 master by being a CEO because we're not, they're not puppets. No, but we're coordinating. It's

00:42:01.460 more like a symphony. Okay. Trying to coordinate everybody to get together. The outside, that's

00:42:05.540 exactly what it is. It's exactly a symphony. And, and I'm going to tell you right now, and

00:42:09.640 I bet you'll agree in my symphony, there's always half of the, half of the symphony that's out of

00:42:15.840 tune. These guys over here are doing it great. And then you got like these three, four dudes

00:42:21.660 over here. Just banging the drums. Yeah. I'm like, guys, why are you pointing at me?

00:42:26.680 But like the thing is, is, you know, it, it, it, that's a perfect example. But I think from the

00:42:31.900 outside looking in the way CEO has been presented and branded and painted with people, they think

00:42:38.640 that it is puppet master. It's not that. And if that's the way you look at it, like some,

00:42:43.800 we've talked about some people that we both agree play that role that way. And it doesn't ever

00:42:50.660 work. Nobody wants to short term. Nobody wants to work for the puppet master. No, they want to

00:42:54.580 work for the quarterback that inspires them. The coach that inspires them. Look at football

00:42:58.360 coaches. Some of them are demigods. People like talk about coaches from years ago. The

00:43:05.000 most influential people in some of these people's lives. Like you look at a guy, uh, like, like

00:43:10.120 Vince Lombardi, who's one of the most quoted, inspirational, motivational speakers. He's a

00:43:16.020 fucking X's and O's guy. Yeah. But you never heard him say things like, Hey, go

00:43:20.640 out there and fucking wish for the result. You know, go out there and kick these motherfuckers 0.99

00:43:26.920 asses. You know what I mean? And you know, if you ever watch like a urban Meyer or Nick

00:43:31.920 Saban talk, Holy shit, man, they're on another level of like just pure fire. And you know,

00:43:39.840 they always, it's always about the work. It's always about execution. It's always about just

00:43:44.120 going and doing what you know how to do.

00:43:45.840 Those football players would go out on the field and die for Vince Lombardi.

00:43:48.640 Yeah. Because he was there, like their father figure, their big brother. He was their inspiration.

00:43:52.820 And so many times you, that's what the CEO and the president need to be.

00:43:56.360 But the reason that he was like that though, is cause he fucking cared about those people.

00:44:00.020 Absolutely. He didn't go, he didn't walk out of football practice and say, Oh, fuck those

00:44:04.320 guys. No. You know, he lived and breathed and, and died all the shit they did in a different

00:44:10.640 way. And dude, that's respect, man.

00:44:12.720 He's, he's watching tapes after hours. He's there at 7am. He's, you know, and that's what

00:44:16.800 the CEO is. You come and get me early in the morning and we were together till late at night.

00:44:21.060 And that's, that's the day of a CEO. It's not, it's not optional.

00:44:24.940 It's not freedom.

00:44:25.720 Freedom.

00:44:26.320 Exactly.

00:44:26.740 Yeah. I want to, I want to start my own business cause I want to be free.

00:44:31.360 I want to be the boss.

00:44:32.760 Like, yeah.

00:44:33.260 Oh my God.

00:44:33.960 Be employee number seven. That, that, that, that is easier.

00:44:37.640 Yeah. Right.

00:44:38.100 Cause that's, there's still good money in being employee number seven. There's still, you still

00:44:41.880 have some equity. You're getting a good salary and you get some freedom.

00:44:44.780 Absolutely. Yeah. You get, you can go home at six o'clock.

00:44:47.140 But I'm owned. Like, you know, you're owned. I'm owned by our companies. Like our people,

00:44:52.320 you know what I mean? I'm okay with it. I love it.

00:44:54.080 Absolutely.

00:44:54.480 But it's not for everybody.

00:44:55.420 Yeah. It's just not, and it's not what, cause people think, Oh, cause you got the money, you

00:44:59.440 can do whatever you want. No, you can't. Cause if you want the money to keep coming

00:45:01.960 in, guess what? You got to do what's required.

00:45:03.960 You know, and it's, that's something people don't think about. So let's stay on the track

00:45:09.520 of practical, practical. So we, you know, we've got a website, we've bought, we've, we've

00:45:16.080 built a business plan, got your social media accounts. You've tested a little bit. People

00:45:20.040 care. You did your $182 in revenue. You broke even with your hundred bucks in testing. Now

00:45:25.600 that's when you can start to spend a little money. Now you can get a corporation. Now you

00:45:29.660 can trademark your name. You can get a lawyer. The great thing is you have like sites like

00:45:33.100 legalzoom.com and you don't have to go spend $10,000 deposits for a retainer with an attorney,

00:45:38.140 go spend 700 bucks on legal zoom type sites and get the things that you need. Cause you

00:45:43.880 don't need these huge drawn out agreements. I will say this. It's very important to have

00:45:49.200 the simple agreements and the simple terms of what even your own friends, partners,

00:45:54.920 I don't care if it's your dad that works for you, your mom, your, your best friend from high

00:45:58.160 school. Too many times people have a 50, 50 joint venture and they started together

00:46:03.620 in school. Right. Cause it's cool. Okay. This is going to be great. Right. Right. And

00:46:07.760 what happens is now you got to college and one of the kids becomes a 4.0 student and he's

00:46:13.160 only working at the office 10% of the time. The other one's doing 90% of the work and it

00:46:18.100 causes frustrations. If you made it clear what people's responsibilities are, who's going to

00:46:23.940 do what, what the equity is going to be. There's some times that you start your friend company

00:46:27.580 with your friend in school and you think you're just going to give them five or 10% and they

00:46:31.640 think it's 50, 50 and you never said anything about it. Now you're just, you know, you're

00:46:35.080 going to have the, the social network situation for Facebook where everybody just thinks that

00:46:38.560 they own Facebook. If things were clear, the Winklevosses would never have been able to sue

00:46:44.680 Zuckerberg. Right. If things were just clear, but because he avoided it for some, for six months

00:46:50.240 and while he was building in the background and there's all these emails, but they're

00:46:53.400 one sided, it wasn't clear. If he just said, no, I'm doing this. They had no right to sue

00:46:59.560 him. Right. They didn't ever have it built. They never built anything. Same thing happened

00:47:04.740 with his, one of his dearest friends who ended up getting his stock taken down by such a big

00:47:09.760 amount. That was the guy that loaned him the money when he needed it most. Here's your seven

00:47:13.520 grand or six grand, whatever it was. That guy went on to become a billionaire, but he had

00:47:17.560 to sue his dearest friend from school because there wasn't a basic agreement. Right. So it's

00:47:23.180 really important that I do. My brother works with me as my accountant. My mom works with

00:47:27.920 me in consulting. She helped build the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on how to be like, I have family members

00:47:33.700 and friends that are part of it and everybody has such a simple agreement. This is what you're

00:47:37.520 supposed to do. This is your scope of work. This is what your equity is or what your salary

00:47:40.960 is. And that's it. Sometimes you have to remove the emotion to remove the emotion. A lot of times

00:47:47.300 people like, well, we'll be able to work together and their boyfriend, girlfriend, or husband,

00:47:49.740 wife, or mom and son or whatever it is. And they can't remove the emotion because things

00:47:53.880 are emotional. Business is emotional. Right. You listen to Andy, he's talking with passion

00:47:57.220 and he's cursing and screaming. That's because he cares. Yeah. It's not because he's putting

00:48:00.940 on a show. He actually cares. Somebody slammed the door. He went and screamed at them because

00:48:04.800 he cares. Yeah. He's doing a podcast for a million people to listen to and an employee slams

00:48:09.100 the door. He got up and walked down and cussed at them. Why? Because this is important.

00:48:13.220 This is a part of real life, real life passion. So by putting an agreement together and saying,

00:48:17.920 this is what you do. This is what you're going to get. You don't leave any discrepancies

00:48:22.360 out. I wish I would have done that more when I was a kid.

00:48:25.240 Well, those conversations are intimidating to have. Right. You know, when you, when you

00:48:28.740 are a young man or a young woman, I mean, it really took me until I was about 30 years

00:48:33.220 old to be comfortable with conflict like that. Like everybody looks at me and they're like,

00:48:37.240 this guy has no problem with confrontation. Dude, that's something that I had to like learn

00:48:41.800 because those conversations of having, you know, my dad always told me you should never

00:48:48.820 be, you should never be embarrassed to talk about money. And he meant that literally. And

00:48:53.900 also when in a business situation, right, I'm not talking about dinner. Yeah. Fucking worth

00:48:59.040 X, you know, no, I'm talking about like, if you're making a business agreement, you should

00:49:03.820 be totally comfortable talking about the way things are going to be. And I was never comfortable

00:49:10.100 because I was always like, man, this is going to be, dude, I was so uncomfortable. I can

00:49:13.320 remember this. Our first time that we ever sold anything to somebody I didn't know. I

00:49:18.920 can remember it when I was in the store and I was like scared to ask, to tell the guy

00:49:23.260 like, yeah, this is like 30 bucks. You know what I'm saying? Like I was just going to be

00:49:27.600 like, Oh, like before you even told me the price, you know, it was 30 bucks. I was going

00:49:31.280 to be like, Oh, it's 30 bucks. But I'll give you two for 22. Like I was that big of a

00:49:35.720 pussy. You know what I mean? Like I just didn't want to, I, and I know people 0.99

00:49:40.080 are probably laughing right now because like, I come, no, I think that's a universal

00:49:43.760 struggle. No, yeah. I think you're right. But the thing is, is that you have to do it

00:49:47.720 in the, it's just like anything. The first time you jump in the swimming pool, when you're

00:49:51.120 three years old and you can't fucking swim, it's scary. You know what I mean? But now

00:49:54.680 when you're a normal adult and you get in the pool, you're comfortable because you've

00:49:58.660 done it over and over and over again. And you have to just, you know, it sets a good

00:50:02.840 precedent upfront for having those conversations because there's going to be a lot of those

00:50:07.940 conversations. It's not just on day one when you're making these agreements, there's going

00:50:11.900 to be a lot of them and you have to be able to communicate that. Like people ask like how

00:50:16.300 Chris and I have such a great relationship. Well, dude, we just lay it out. Hey, this is

00:50:21.980 that, this is this. What do you want to do? All right, we'll do this. And then we figure

00:50:25.540 it out. And that's, you know, I work with my brother every day and there's days where we

00:50:29.640 want to punch the shit out of each other, but you know what? We definitely don't shy away

00:50:34.740 from having the conversations and that's a good thing because otherwise things build

00:50:38.620 up. Right. And then there's a real explosion. Right. So I've heard it said that the reason

00:50:42.520 that you have agreements is not because you don't trust each other or you don't, you know,

00:50:47.520 you don't trust your friends and family, but be, but actually because you do trust one another,

00:50:51.120 you trust one another enough to articulate the, the, the specific nature of the, of the,

00:50:56.360 the parameters of the business agreements. Spelling it out is spelling it out ahead of time

00:51:01.540 is so much more valuable than later on down the line, having a conflict where you thought

00:51:07.220 you own 10% and I thought he owned 50% or vice versa, no matter what, there's going to be a

00:51:12.760 problem. Or you thought you were going to get X percentage of the sales, or we're just going to

00:51:16.740 split all the money that came in when there's actually expenses every single month. So you

00:51:20.080 thought we're going to make 13,000 a month net each when actually we're making two grand a month net

00:51:23.940 and we have to eat a couple of noodles because we've got to pay for this, this, this, this,

00:51:27.180 and those are all things that should be loud lined. Okay. If we, are we sharing, uh, revenue on the

00:51:34.800 profits or are we sharing revenue or are we, what are we going to do if, uh, if the legal bill is six

00:51:41.000 grand, right? Exactly. You need to like think these situations and sometimes you're not going to know

00:51:45.480 what to fucking talk about. But what I'm saying is, is start having these conversations from the

00:51:50.620 beginning because then when those situations come up, you could say, like I had to say like, dude,

00:51:55.780 we didn't pay our fucking, uh, our, uh, withholding tax for 18 months and we owe the IRS over a million 0.89

00:52:01.500 dollars. And cause we, we fucked up, you know what I'm saying? So we had to have a hard conversation.

00:52:07.860 Like what are we going to do? Okay. Well, we're not going to pay ourselves for until we pay it off

00:52:12.220 and we had to pay it off, you know? But the point of it is, is that you're going to have these

00:52:17.200 situations where you're going to mess up. It's going to cause a problem in the business. And if you wait

00:52:21.520 until then to start practicing, having the hard conversations, they're going to go really bad.

00:52:24.980 Yes. So practical point, are you saying that you should get, I mean, how formal do these need

00:52:31.940 to be? Can you, do they just need to be typed? Do you need it? You know, at the beginning,

00:52:36.520 when you don't have the money doing the bullet points is the most important, getting the,

00:52:40.820 the meat of it, the terms of it out is what's important. A lot of agreements are Googleable,

00:52:46.800 right? You just write loan purchase agreements or equity share agreements or invoice purchase order

00:52:54.640 form, sales invoice. All the things you need are on the internet. Right. 2016, six years ago,

00:53:00.340 you wouldn't know what I'm talking about. And if all else fails, make a fucking word document.

00:53:04.440 Yeah. Make a one page document. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think you can always improve it

00:53:07.920 with a lawyer later. I get people. Yeah, exactly. I get people that say people that like, I got this

00:53:13.540 the other day. Well, I got this great idea, but I don't want to tell anybody. Oh my God. I could talk

00:53:18.700 about that for an hour. Yeah. I got, what do you tell them? Because I tell them, I always say,

00:53:22.700 I will like, that's why, that's why they make agreements called non-disclosure, not, uh,

00:53:26.820 not compete. And to be honest with you, if you don't trust somebody enough not to steal your idea,

00:53:31.240 you shouldn't even talk to them. I've never once signed NDA in my life and I never will. And I tell

00:53:35.860 every single entrepreneur that cause I get asked. Well, you don't have the time to do the shit and

00:53:38.740 neither do I. I promise you from the bottom of my heart, I don't care how awesome your idea is.

00:53:43.160 Yeah. If you can't execute, it's irrelevant. A hundred percent. I don't care. That's pretty cool.

00:53:48.280 But dude, people, people fucking think that they have something and then they come to you and they

00:53:53.700 say, Oh, I don't know who I could trust. I don't know. Dude, you don't have anything.

00:53:58.040 The other thing is if your idea works and I give you $1 million and my friends all invest in you

00:54:04.140 and we make your company great. The second that you get any media, the second you get any traction,

00:54:11.000 there's going to be so many competitors that it doesn't matter. You just have to outperform

00:54:15.980 yourself. When I got into the hoverboard space, there was 40, 50 other hoverboards. I built the

00:54:21.960 number one board in five months flat and did millions of dollars in sales and retail sales and

00:54:27.560 40 grand a day online and blah, blah, blah, 160 celebrities. I just had to focus on myself and

00:54:33.600 make a really high quality product so that the competitors were over there.

00:54:37.020 You guys who saw the hoverboard on, on Instagram, which everybody saw it and you guys probably all

00:54:42.480 have one. Yeah. That was Dan's deal. He did that. And I was going against competitors that had this

00:54:48.140 idea that they didn't want to show and I just outperformed them. It was irrelevant. It's funny

00:54:52.620 how many people get caught up on that shit. Like they're like on an agreement or on a, on the legal

00:54:57.300 ease of an agreement. Yeah. Like, Oh, I like your, I really want to do business with you, but I have

00:55:01.480 this issue with this thing that might happen 17 years from now. And so for that reason, I don't

00:55:06.840 want to talk to you. It's like, dude, you're wasting my time. If you, if you pitch a venture

00:55:11.240 capitalist or an angel investor, your phantasmic original idea, which is very hard to have an

00:55:17.480 original idea because remember there's 7 billion humans that have thousands of thoughts a day.

00:55:21.940 So it's really hard for you to have an original idea. Most of the time you just have an idea with a

00:55:26.500 twist to something that already existed, which is how everything happens in the world. It all just

00:55:30.240 evolves in twists. It doesn't matter. The venture capitalist is not going to say, Oh, I'm not going

00:55:36.420 to give this kid a million dollars. I'm going to fund a million dollars myself and go start this

00:55:40.640 watchstraps.com myself and bought. No, you're pitching these money guys. You're pitching these

00:55:45.640 people because they don't want to do the work. They want to fund you because they've already done

00:55:49.000 work in the past to get their money. They're funding somebody like you to go do it. And if he goes

00:55:55.160 and does it himself, it doesn't matter. Go do it yourself and go. Better. Exactly. It doesn't

00:56:01.300 matter. There's 7 billion people. There's so many continents on the planet to go push something or

00:56:06.280 build your business online. Who cares? If I go show people new watchstraps.com and that guy's got

00:56:14.140 blah, blah, blah, watchstraps.com, they're going to buy me or they're not. If I make a better product

00:56:18.420 than them, they're going to buy here. Whether the VC funded somebody else for the million bucks,

00:56:21.520 it doesn't matter. You can only focus on your own and wasting the time on an NDA. You're going to

00:56:27.560 never start watchstraps.com. 100%. It's just not going to happen. So while we're on the subject of

00:56:31.500 legal agreements, this is probably not the most important thing in the world, but I'm just kind

00:56:35.820 of curious. You've got a section in your book on this. All of the things being equal, do you think

00:56:40.460 for starting entrepreneurs that the organization of choice is just to form an LLC? Yeah. Just be very

00:56:48.060 simple, straightforward. Again, you can always improve and change things when you have money.

00:56:52.980 What you do at the beginning is you get by and you do the things that are

00:56:57.480 open and honest and clear with the people you're working with. But when you build your first website

00:57:03.100 on wordpress.com for free, you build it. And then when you have money, you can spend money.

00:57:07.540 But if you don't ever start because you don't have the money to start, that's what the problem is.

00:57:12.960 Too many people have an uncle for the last 18 years. They're like, I'm going to make the best

00:57:16.900 fishing bait hook ever. And for 18 years, he's never made the fishing bait hook. And your uncle

00:57:22.640 saved up $146,000 working at the local construction firm. And he's got some money. He could test it and

00:57:29.460 spend $16,000 and put that aside, not affect his life and his retirement, still have his 130 grand.

00:57:34.680 And he could gamble and take 16 grand and put it into the business and go for it. And he's never going

00:57:39.080 to because he doesn't understand what 2016 is and what 2016 provides. He doesn't understand and he won't

00:57:47.880 just go through the process because he thinks he needs millions of dollars or only only 21 year olds

00:57:53.980 know how to do a Twitter and a Facebook and know how to do an Instagram marketing. They just don't

00:57:58.820 start. And so many of them don't realize that there's a 21 year old kid that'll work for you

00:58:04.260 for a little bit of equity to start fishing bait hook.com and give them some equity and they'll

00:58:10.100 go do the work and they'll start your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest. They'll

00:58:14.320 go do all that stuff for you and they'll cost you lunch money or a little bit of equity. Right. And

00:58:18.920 the uncle could do it and they don't. And that's the biggest problem in our society is even with

00:58:24.040 everything provided to us on a silver platter, cause I never had this stuff back in days and it's weird

00:58:28.340 because I feel very young, but back in the days is only five or 10 years ago. Right. That's how

00:58:33.780 fast we're evolving. It's a totally different thing. Yeah. It's completely different. And I think

00:58:38.560 that people who people are always people that are excuse guys who are excuse makers, um, or this is

00:58:49.580 why I believe entrepreneurship is something that you just have or you don't have. And people argue with

00:58:53.920 me about that. They get really upset when I say that because they think that I'm saying that

00:58:57.720 they're not one, but I do know this people who are prone to finding reasons why not to do it.

00:59:05.420 There's always going to be a reason. Always. It's like people, when they say kids, if you wait to

00:59:08.900 have kids till you're ready, you're never going to be ready. You know, it's, it's the same thing

00:59:13.720 with business. And if you've got something that you want to go after or something that you feel,

00:59:18.020 um, you, you, you're not, nobody's going to come and say, Oh yeah, do this. Or this is a great

00:59:23.320 idea for you to do, or you should do this. Or here's, you know, I'm the, I'm the fishing lure.

00:59:27.720 King of the world. And I give you permission to, to, uh, proceed with this idea. Like,

00:59:32.400 that's not how it works. You just go fucking do it. And I guess that's why, like, I always

00:59:37.740 kind of skip over this step because I feel like, you know, almost every successful entrepreneur

00:59:44.120 I've ever met. In fact, I can't think of anybody that doesn't fall into this, but if this isn't

00:59:48.800 you, I don't want you to feel discouraged, but I'm just saying my personal experience wasn't the

00:59:53.340 type of guy who was out selling snow cones or baseball cards or whatever. When they

00:59:58.840 were, when they were young, I feel like it was just something I had to do. You know what

01:00:03.860 I mean? And for that reason, I'm going to try to find a way to do it. And I think that

01:00:10.740 if people, you know, if you're one of these people now, there's never been better opportunity.

01:00:17.720 It's never been easier. It's never been less expensive. Um, and if you're not one of those

01:00:23.320 people, but you want to be, and you want to make a change, I think it's become so accessible

01:00:27.820 now that it's a reality for someone to do something. And you don't, you know, we're not

01:00:32.700 talking about making a billion dollars here. You know, what if someone makes a hundred grand

01:00:36.640 or 200 grand, that's life changing. Absolutely. Making an extra three grand a month would change

01:00:41.020 most people's lives. Right. Exactly. And you can do that pretty. I mean, I don't want to use the

01:00:47.000 word easy, but the thing about it easier than it has been when I said three grand a month, that's,

01:00:51.380 can you make a hundred bucks a day? Yeah. Can you just break it down that way? Can you figure out

01:00:56.840 a way to make four bucks an hour online? Right. If you can't figure out how to make a hundred bucks a

01:01:02.820 day, then that's not a business. Well, and all of these things that we're talking about are covered

01:01:07.660 in, in your book, which is how to set up your business for under a thousand dollars.

01:01:12.140 Where, where can people buy this book? It's actually called buy this book.com. All right.

01:01:17.700 Funny image. That's why I came up with the name by this book.com because that's just a saying that

01:01:22.960 people use. Um, and we made a free code for the ebook MFCEO. There you go. Everybody can get that

01:01:29.720 for free. So if you guys, you know, we're kind of covering the, we're kind of covering the,

01:01:34.480 the, the outer skirts, the rough edges, if you will, of, of just concepts here. But I mean,

01:01:39.140 this book is short, it's easy to read and there is a ton of information in here that's practical

01:01:44.020 for you guys. So if you're bibliography is really priceless too. Oh yeah. It's really good.

01:01:49.700 It's really good. The, uh, so I just sat and researched every single platform you could use for free

01:01:54.380 or cheap and I put them into very easy to find in the back so that you can use this book three years

01:01:59.340 from now and say, Oh, who should I use for my website or who should I use for design or who

01:02:02.940 should I use for accounting? There's just all these different options in the back and they're

01:02:05.980 just the top five or six of each category. Yeah. I mean, it's worth the price. It's worth the cost

01:02:12.080 of the book just for the bibliography. And I'm not looking at that right now. That is pretty cool.

01:02:15.540 It's really good. You just put the effort into it to put it all together. But, um, I don't know,

01:02:20.720 you know, what direction you want to take this Andy, but I, I, I don't know if it's okay to just touch on

01:02:25.800 some of the things that you talked about in terms of knowing customers. We have such a detailed

01:02:29.660 script that you made here. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. So, uh, no, I mean, in the section where

01:02:34.460 you talked about your customers, Dan, one of the things that I, one of the questions that popped

01:02:37.940 into my head was you talked about knowing your customer kind of, kind of coming up with that

01:02:42.620 template and just being as detailed as you can. But the thought that went through my mind was how

01:02:48.540 much of that is affected by the nature of your product or service? Because I, the thing that

01:02:53.000 immediately popped in my head was, well, Coca-Cola wants everybody to buy it. Right. But if you're,

01:02:58.000 you know, to use Andy's analogy of butterflies, you know, if you're, if you're selling butterfly

01:03:01.940 starter kits, then you would have a more specific customer. So how would you counsel people in terms

01:03:09.080 of forming it in their minds? Like how does your product and service service depend on how specific

01:03:14.160 you need to be about envisioning your customer, I guess? Sure. So it's two different style of

01:03:18.620 businesses. If you make a product that's for everybody, like toilet paper or water or things that are for

01:03:22.920 everybody, then you're just mass marketing. You just want everybody to know the name,

01:03:27.240 the spaghetti against the wall, talk about it to everybody. If you're making the most high-end

01:03:31.260 protein in the world, you're going after guys that work out and girls that work out and people that

01:03:35.140 care about their physique and body. And you can look at those demographics. If you're making

01:03:38.920 watchstraps.com, you're looking at people that are willing to buy watches and watches that are

01:03:43.740 expensive enough that have interchangeable watch straps. So you can look at wealth, location, region,

01:03:51.040 age groups. You know that a 16-year-old is not probably buying fancy watches. And you know that

01:03:56.260 a 71-year-old woman is probably not buying fancy watches. And if they do, they're not buying ones 0.97

01:04:00.620 with watch straps. So you can gauge who fits for what. If it's butterflies, you can tell,

01:04:06.100 okay, guys that are 55 to 75-year-old males are probably not buying butterfly kits, right?

01:04:11.460 You can curtail all your marketing to who you think fits what you are.

01:04:16.680 Which has never been able to be done before now. Never, ever, ever could you do that before.

01:04:21.440 It's scary how detailed I can get on Facebook ads. I can actually target people that work at

01:04:26.440 First Form specifically. Not just like First Form, work at First Form and live in St. Louis

01:04:31.820 and are this age group where I can narrow it down where it's just going to be basically marketed to

01:04:36.660 you. And I can do that as a brand. Let's say I wanted to sell something to First Form. I can

01:04:43.160 target who's the buyer or the manufacturer or the president of the company targeted where on just

01:04:49.280 their Facebook, they're going to see the marketing. Wow. It's scary. Yeah, man. So when I go into a

01:04:56.060 market and you've never been able to do that. So think about like when I started my business

01:04:59.420 in 1999 and I had to get customers, I had to buy a newspaper ad, a radio ad or a TV ad. And that

01:05:06.580 was it. And if you bought those things, you are paying the rate for all of those customers,

01:05:12.280 which means you're paying for 90% of the people, even though they're not interested in whatever it

01:05:18.980 is you have. Useless. Yep. So I used to wrap cars, crazy 91 wrapped cars. Yeah. I loved wrapping

01:05:25.880 cars because that was my only way to get into a city. Every time I would get Budweiser, Coors,

01:05:30.400 Miller, Pepsi to be our distributor. Part of my agreement was I got to wrap at least two of

01:05:34.700 their cars and one of their semi trucks. And I would provide two Hummers to them as

01:05:39.680 a bonus. So I'd pay the leases for two Hummers for the best sales reps of the month. Got

01:05:43.940 to, got to use those on the weekends. And some of them got to use them full, full time. And

01:05:49.440 I did that because now the reps were out there working harder because they wanted to get those 0.95

01:05:53.580 Hummers. Right.

01:05:54.860 I was getting marketing from those Hummers driving around. So I don't mind paying 650 bucks

01:05:58.920 a month for the, each of these Hummers because those reps were proud to drive to the local

01:06:03.920 bar, to the grocery store, to the restaurant, everywhere they're going, they're marketing my

01:06:07.040 drink. Yeah. But they were ecstatic because these guys are making three, four grand a month. And now

01:06:11.300 they get this fancy, fancy truck back then. That was perfect for them. It was great for everybody

01:06:15.860 involved, but I had to do that micro targeted marketing because that's all I could afford. Or

01:06:21.260 that's all the way I could do it. I could only get X amount of billboards, X amount of TV,

01:06:26.000 X amount of radio. I was sponsoring NASCAR before any other energy drinks parts in NASCAR,

01:06:30.000 but I couldn't afford NASCAR. And for four years I did it. How did I do it? I would go do a $1.5

01:06:37.340 million NASCAR sponsorship, but I would get Circle K to buy $3 million in drinks to be the Circle K logo

01:06:44.180 on the side of the car. So it had my energy drink name on the top, Circle K on the side, $3 million

01:06:50.380 would make me break even because I'd net 1.5. That's the 1.5 I'd pay them. But because of that,

01:06:55.680 I would get so many other stores and I was getting so much publicity from the NASCAR that cost me

01:07:01.100 nothing. I'd go to the Utah State Fair. 16 years, it was called the Coca-Cola Utah State Fair.

01:07:07.600 And then this little kid comes in and changes the name of a Mormon town to the Who's Your Daddy 0.69

01:07:12.680 Energy Drink Utah State Fair. I love it. Two-year contract. Billboards all over town with a big

01:07:19.240 corn dog and an energy drink as the freaking billboard. They came up with that. How did I do that?

01:07:25.680 Dropping Coca-Cola, which is mind-boggling. Just saying that out loud that they dropped them for

01:07:30.900 me. But I had all nine Budweiser's in Utah carrying my drinks. I had Smith's grocery store that bought

01:07:39.380 $2 million worth of drinks, which is what I paid was $2 million for the sponsorship. And in order to

01:07:44.420 get $5 off your ticket, you had to go to the grocery store and buy an energy drink can. So people would

01:07:49.720 go there, spend $2 on a can to get five bucks off, but you could get multiple families would go do that

01:07:54.600 and it worked out for them. What happened? We ended up doing $6 million with that grocery store.

01:08:00.820 We ended up crushing it in town with the restaurants, the local convenience stores,

01:08:04.940 because they wanted it too, because there's freaking billboards all over town. I couldn't

01:08:08.680 afford any of that. None of it. I only did it by utilizing the chain store to the event to make

01:08:16.600 people come into the chain store so that they win because now customers have to come in.

01:08:19.820 I did all of it just wanting to break even because the break even, I got implied value

01:08:25.360 because now my brand was all over Utah and everything else happened because of that.

01:08:29.920 So you have to be very creative.

01:08:31.500 People, the younger entrepreneurs, I feel like they fall, you're playing the long game,

01:08:39.660 so to speak there. And that's what you should always be doing. But I feel like that's a hard

01:08:44.600 thing for the young guys to grasp. What you just said, that's like real branding. You know what I

01:08:49.380 mean? Like I'm going to do this. I'm going to use all these things I have to get exposure so I can

01:08:54.120 build a brand bigger. Right. Most people look at advertising of any form and they say, well,

01:09:00.120 I'm spending a thousand dollars for this. How am I going to get a thousand dollars back? And if you

01:09:04.680 look at it like that, it'll never make sense. Even though you will get the thousand dollars back,

01:09:10.820 it's just, you can't. You're going to be the thousand dollar guy all the time. You're not

01:09:14.780 going to be the hundred million dollar guy. Right. Exactly. You're going to be a thousand

01:09:18.020 dollar flipper. Right. And you're going to be saying, I don't know if it really works. Right.

01:09:21.240 I don't know if, I don't know. I don't know if the advertising thing really works. What the fuck,

01:09:25.100 dude? That works. For my own personal enrichment, do you all know if the, uh, the advertising

01:09:31.320 platforms on Instagram are as robust as the ones on Facebook? So because, because Facebook owns

01:09:37.900 Instagram, it's going to eventually be identical. Um, the same reason that Facebook cut the reach

01:09:42.680 is why Instagram cut the reach recently. Um, they're, they're, they're getting tens of thousands

01:09:47.740 of advertisers. So it's, it's pretty targeted. It's still not anywhere near as good as Facebook.

01:09:53.420 Um, but it will be at some point. It's evolving. It will be at some point. Yeah. The, the Instagram,

01:09:58.600 the Instagram, even before Facebook bought it has been to, if you wanted to target it, you had to go

01:10:05.880 find the influencers in that specific arena, pay them to share your post. And it's been like that

01:10:13.400 for a long time. I a hundred percent agree. And Facebook and Instagram are become exactly the same

01:10:20.140 way targeted. So with my watch straps.com, I can now go search hashtags on Instagram and see

01:10:26.420 watch strap, new watch hashtag, anything to do with watches. I can just look at the hashtags.

01:10:32.200 I can go comment from at my watch straps on all these guys pages. I mean, get a reaction.

01:10:38.580 Who better to go buy my watch straps than people that are talking about watch straps on social media?

01:10:45.020 How much did that cost me? Absolutely nothing. Cost me time and energy. And you don't have to do

01:10:50.760 it at 9am to 6pm. You can do it at one in the morning. It doesn't matter when you, before you go to

01:10:55.980 bed, after you worked eight hours that day and you worked your side job as a waiter at nighttime and

01:11:01.040 you get home and now it's 11pm, go on and search the hashtags for my watch straps for your business

01:11:06.640 that you started for a couple hundred bucks, my watch straps.com. By the way, there is no

01:11:10.020 watch, my watch straps.com guys. You were starting to convince me. I keep saying it. I was like,

01:11:15.860 wait a minute, I might actually have a business there. I think that what you just said is a huge

01:11:19.600 point that a lot of people overlook is that nowadays with the social media and with the internet,

01:11:24.280 like you don't have to do the nine to five. You can reach out to people, you know, at any time

01:11:29.880 during the whatever hour. Right. There is no offensive time on social media because people

01:11:35.980 don't have to look. You're not calling them. It was offensive if I called a buyer at a retailer at

01:11:40.120 8pm at night at home. It's not offensive if I tweet at him or comment on his Facebook or comment on

01:11:45.180 his Instagram at 1.30 in the morning. There's no, it doesn't hurt him. He's not going to get in

01:11:50.180 trouble. He's not going to be offended. It's not going to be rude. He's going to see the next

01:11:52.720 morning. So there's too much you can do. And a lot of times I tell entrepreneurs, don't quit your day

01:11:58.700 job because there's too many hours and too many things you can do after hours. If you just work

01:12:04.780 from 8pm to 11pm each night on your side project or your side hustle, my watch straps.com. And during

01:12:12.540 the daytime, you work at a construction office and you're building and you're bricklaying and you're

01:12:17.240 doing all that stuff. Three hours a day, 8pm to 11pm. That's 90 hours a month. That's a thousand

01:12:23.920 80 hours in a year. That's a lot of man hours that you put into my watch straps. During those three

01:12:30.220 hours a day, flip your phone upside down, turn, turn lost off. Don't watch TV. Don't watch this.

01:12:37.440 Focus. Just focus for three hours a day. Your focus three hours is better than most people's eight

01:12:41.560 hours of nonsense. No question. No question. Yeah. I can speak from experience with that. When I started

01:12:46.500 learning in the photography and video, I did it in the AM hours just because there were so much

01:12:51.480 less distractions. I mean, there's no stores open. I can't, nobody's texting you. Yeah. Everybody's

01:12:55.580 sleeping. Yeah. While everybody's sleeping, you can get so much done now. It's mind boggling. The

01:12:59.600 things that I get done at one in the morning, my girlfriend's sleeping, I'm sitting there on social

01:13:04.220 media or I'm on, on the internet and I'm Google searching. I love it. I love it. Let me, let me tie this

01:13:10.740 together for you guys real quick too. Okay. Because I want to talk about something that we

01:13:15.580 didn't talk about. You know, a lot of people are going to hear what you're saying and they're

01:13:20.900 going to be like, all right, I skip right to the advertising. I mean, I got this idea. I'm just

01:13:24.140 going to advertise it. It's going to work. Look, here's the thing. If you don't go through the

01:13:29.480 process that he described, testing, setting it up, maybe you don't need an investor. Okay. So maybe we

01:13:34.200 skip that step. Let's just say, you know, you go through the steps. If you just skip

01:13:39.640 straight to the advertising, you got, I want to point something out and this is a hundred

01:13:45.060 percent real world shit. If your product isn't good enough, if you're a communication isn't

01:13:50.440 good enough, if, if your ability to make an impact isn't good enough when you talk to these

01:13:54.940 people, um, if you're slow, if you're not thorough, if your shipping is slow, if you don't

01:14:02.720 know how to run your business and you go out and advertise it, all you're doing is

01:14:07.900 quickening the death of your business. So keep that in mind. The testing part of it and

01:14:13.540 learning your business is so important. It took me, I mean, granted, we're talking about

01:14:18.920 the stone age, you know, 17, you know, the nineties and the two thousands, but I didn't

01:14:25.820 advertise consistently to like, Oh, nine or 10. And the reason I didn't is because I knew

01:14:31.720 that we were not good enough to advertise. And what I mean by that is that we had problems

01:14:36.180 in our operations of business that would have, I'm thankful I was smart enough to recognize

01:14:41.600 this, but would have turned customers off. And so if you're, if you haven't gone through

01:14:46.660 the steps, tested, worked out the kinks, found the problems, you know, and worked on all those

01:14:52.320 things. When you go to pay for this advertising, you could possibly have a great idea, but your

01:14:59.060 ability to handle those transactions and the potential transactions are so, um, rough

01:15:05.660 that you turn the customer base off. And guess what? You miss out on a great idea and

01:15:10.360 they never come back. They never come back. It, it happens every day. People do that every

01:15:15.860 day because they want to skip right to the money. I want to get right to where I make a

01:15:18.800 money. I want to, I want to impact all the people I want to do. I see, I see this in our

01:15:23.220 industry all the time. People, they put out programs or things for the masses and they

01:15:30.160 don't have the ability on the back end of service. You know, it's dude, it will ruin your business.

01:15:34.600 So go through the steps, be patient. Like we talked about in the opening, right? You know,

01:15:40.060 what'd you think of that comment about there's so many millennials, there's so many entrepreneurs

01:15:45.520 and two, they're impatient. Every, the amount of people, the same idea, the amount of people that

01:15:50.960 asked me for a hundred grand and then don't have a business plan or don't have anything set up.

01:15:55.460 I literally couldn't write them a check if I wanted to, cause they don't have a bank account.

01:15:58.340 Right. They don't have a corporation. Right. They don't have a business plan. So when I say yes,

01:16:02.480 I'm saying no, because they're just not going to do it. Right. And it's scary to me how many have the

01:16:07.680 idea and they want to post about it and they want to post in front of their friends, Lamborghini

01:16:12.500 and build this image. And it's frustrating because the time you spent doing those things,

01:16:18.520 I don't mind people faking the funk in order to do a business. You have to go out there. I had to go

01:16:23.240 meet with retailers knowing that I could ship to them, but not knowing how much they were going to

01:16:30.100 order, what was going to happen. Like I didn't know. Right. I just knew I had a good product.

01:16:34.600 I want flavor of the year. It's going to be, it's a great tasting product. I didn't know if people

01:16:37.540 were going to rush to the store in the middle of New Mexico to buy my drinks. Right. I just knew that

01:16:42.480 if I get them to buy it, if I go out there and market in their town, we'll figure out how to

01:16:47.700 sell it. We're going to figure out how to sell it. Exactly. We're going to figure it out. And I

01:16:51.080 don't, I don't want people to do one of the biggest things. You can go get your product into

01:16:57.700 any retailer once. If your product is not good, they're going to drop you and it's going to be

01:17:03.700 much worse than ever getting in there. Yeah. Because now it's closed off forever. If you get a test

01:17:08.040 with 7-Eleven in 60 stores and it's exciting, you can just say you're in 7-Eleven. That's exciting.

01:17:15.520 And you're selling some new water and your water is not filtered right, or the bottle isn't there,

01:17:20.820 or it bends to something bad about it, that customers will never buy it again. And worse,

01:17:26.560 if they complain about it, you're really done. More importantly, if you get dropped from 7-Eleven,

01:17:31.860 they're going to charge you back. Yeah. They're going to ship you back your water. And you've already

01:17:35.480 spent the $81,000 that they paid you because that's what you do. Now and that, all these

01:17:40.320 dudes know each other. So you get kicked out of 7-Eleven, they're calling their buddy at

01:17:44.600 Circle K. Exactly. And at Big Boys and all these other places and saying, hey, guess what?

01:17:49.880 Yep. You know. I can't believe you carry that water. Those guys. Don't carry those guys.

01:17:54.160 I charged them back already. Yeah. It's too many times. We got to hit Buc-ee's though. I want 1.00

01:17:58.140 to talk about Buc-ee's. It's my favorite convenience store chain. I've never heard of Buc-ee's.

01:18:02.080 It's the shit. Oh, okay. I thought you were a Casey's fan. No.

01:18:05.480 I like Casey's pizza. Yeah. It's good pizza. Yes. They're famous for pizza. I know.

01:18:09.680 Too many times that people have a clothing line. I know. Fuck, dude, I'm 270 fucking pounds.

01:18:18.340 I know what good pizza is. There's too many times people come up with a clothing line

01:18:21.760 because there's 300,000 lines that ideas come up a year. 30,000 of them actually ever start

01:18:28.560 on it. 3,000 ever do more than 10 grand in sales and less than 300 ever do a million in sales.

01:18:33.600 And so people always talk about clothing lines, clothing lines. It's like a fun, easy, catchy

01:18:37.200 thing. It's because it's easy for people to do. Right. Especially now. Right. I can do on-demand

01:18:41.040 printing. I could have a clothing line shop up tonight. And if somebody says some funny,

01:18:45.540 Trump says some ridiculous line, I can make the t-shirt that talks about bad hombres and make

01:18:50.520 it a thing. Yeah. Right.

01:18:51.520 Tonight. And I could probably do seven grand in sales by the morning and then really go hard

01:18:55.800 tomorrow. I would go with the grabber by the pussy. Yeah. I'm just saying, if we're going to make a shirt, 0.99

01:18:59.720 let's just go on. Now I have a full size store. I got multiple shirts already.

01:19:04.900 You can make a fucking shirt off a store off Trump's sayings. Oh, for sure. We'll call it

01:19:09.440 Trump's. People already do, by the way. Oh, I believe it. I have guys that do on-demand

01:19:13.400 printing and they just build a Shopify store and now they're, they're a business. They have a

01:19:18.300 Shopify store on-demand printing. They're doing Trump sayings and they're doing different quotes

01:19:22.320 and that's it. And it's, and it's a business that you can start overnight. You can change that

01:19:28.220 to anything that you're working on, whatever it is you're selling. Listen, if you're selling

01:19:32.040 your time, then you just have to build yourself as a brand. And that's a whole nother discussion.

01:19:36.220 Building yourself up as a brand is really, really important because you can become an

01:19:41.620 expert really quickly. If you're going to do short, you do short sales. One of my good buddies

01:19:46.200 tattoo artists. There you go. So like, this is a good example and he's great. He's one of the

01:19:50.140 top in the world, but he's also great at building a brand. You know what I mean? His name's

01:19:53.940 Eric Marcin is in and he, you actually remind me a lot of him. Um, he is an awesome brand

01:20:02.620 builder, but you know, he understands that like, dude, I only have so much time. So I've

01:20:07.700 got to build a brand that commands the most amount of money for that time because you're

01:20:11.640 selling hours. Right. And you can't hire somebody to do your tattoos for him. When people want

01:20:16.880 to hire him, he's got to do the fucking work. And so a lot of people struggle with that sort

01:20:21.360 of business because of what I'm talking about. There's only a limited amount of ability to

01:20:25.960 earn. So building a brand in that situation is like, it is like the, the, it's everything.

01:20:33.300 It's, it's the Holy Bible. It's the alpha, it's the Omega. It's fucking everything. Like

01:20:39.000 if you can't build a brand and you're selling your hours, you're always going to be poor.

01:20:42.480 Right. So here's the practical steps to building a brand to become an expert. Go to every single

01:20:47.840 convention in your area. You don't have to go spend eight grand to go to Vegas and go

01:20:52.520 buy a $2,000 pass. Go to every convention in your area. That's drivable too. So you don't

01:20:57.080 have to spend the money when you can afford it. Go to the big ones. If you can't, I promise

01:21:00.920 you, if you look at event bright and all these events.com and there's all these local business

01:21:06.960 meetups, if they don't have a local business meetup, which they do for every category, mortuaries

01:21:12.320 have conventions. Bowling has conventions. No matter plumbers have big convention. Mortuary

01:21:17.320 one's full of a bunch of stiffs. Very excited. Um, that's a Vaughn joke right there, buddy.

01:21:22.920 That's a pretty good Vaughn joke. Um, every single industry, every single industry has a convention.

01:21:28.620 Every single one has many conventions and trade shows. Every single one has networking meetups.

01:21:33.120 If they don't have one of those things, make it yourself. Go on to event, right? Make your own

01:21:39.140 meetup once a month at a local restaurant. The restaurant will give you almost everything

01:21:43.580 for free because they just want 106 people to show up on a Wednesday night. That's slow.

01:21:49.160 You just ask them, what's your slowest night? Mondays. Okay, great. Mondays at 7 PM. I'm going

01:21:54.340 to do the local plumbers meetup or the local tech entrepreneur meetup or the local, whatever,

01:22:00.360 whatever it is you care about by you now hosting that meetup and you're the tattoo artist and you're

01:22:05.960 doing the local tattoo artist meetup. You're the guy. You're, you're automatically an expert.

01:22:10.000 You're the guy. Automatically. You host the monthly meetup for tattoo artists and 106 guys show up

01:22:14.680 and 18 girls show up and everybody talks about it and they all post pictures and guess who they

01:22:19.660 want to post a picture with? You. You're the guy. It's your event. You did something. Yeah.

01:22:25.160 It's that simple. It really is. Yeah. Do you know that you could do that in your boxers at home?

01:22:30.100 I could set up a local tattoo artist meetup tonight in St. Louis and I've never been to St. Louis in my

01:22:34.920 life. I could set up the local tattoo artist meeting tonight and within five days have 106 people

01:22:41.880 on my Facebook chat group talking about how excited they are sharing with their friends. And when they

01:22:47.200 get there, they're going to take pictures with me at the guy that just did this great tattoo meetup.

01:22:51.440 Guess what? I don't have a tattoo on my body. Hey, let's see a sample of your work,

01:22:56.980 but it's true. But I promise you from the bottom of my heart, I'll be the tattoo expert without a

01:23:03.820 tattoo on my body. Right. Because I'll Google everything about St. Louis tattoos. I'll know

01:23:07.460 about every tattoo shop. I can, I can direct message all the tattoo guys in town. I can message

01:23:12.820 all the girls that are here. I can see who who's commenting on their page, who got tattoos from 0.98

01:23:17.340 them, message them. And all of a sudden I have 106 people at this thing and they paid zero to 20

01:23:22.740 bucks to come to. You can make money from it too. You can charge 10 or 20 bucks. Right. It's not bad

01:23:27.340 business making two grand, charging 20 bucks for 106 people. It's still a business. Make two grand a month

01:23:32.340 or two grand a week. Just being the tattoo guy. Yeah. There's so many ways to make money

01:23:37.180 and so many ways to do simple things that you can do in your boxers that it mind boggles

01:23:41.880 me when people complain. It mind boggles me. And for the record folks, the, uh, the recommendation

01:23:47.580 of meetup.com is actually in the book. That's one of the nuggets of the book. Yeah. That's

01:23:53.300 really good. So where can, just before we lose track on here, where can everybody find you

01:23:57.960 on social? Uh, everything is at Dan Fleischman. So it's F L E Y S H M A N. And it's really important 1.00

01:24:05.700 for your business or for your personal to have the exact same name on every platform so that

01:24:09.560 people can find you really easily. Um, and it's also important to have the exact same, uh,

01:24:13.740 profile picture and the exact same bio because you don't know how people are going to find

01:24:17.200 you. Even if you're not an active person on Twitter, you still need to have a Twitter

01:24:20.560 account with the bio, with the picture, and just mention where your other social media accounts

01:24:25.360 are, where you're more active. If you're much more active on Instagram, you still need

01:24:28.900 to have a Pinterest and a Snapchat and everywhere else. And you're just directing them once a

01:24:32.860 week or once every few weeks. And if you don't post at all, at least in your bio, it says

01:24:36.280 where to, where your LinkedIn is, where, where your pages are. It's really critical and it's

01:24:41.800 free and you're copy and pasting. So it doesn't take any time and you're authorizing with Facebook.

01:24:47.460 So really you don't have to, we're so lazy now we can do everything with clicks because

01:24:51.720 everything's automatic and internet now. So it, it hurts me when people want to be an

01:24:56.820 entrepreneur or want to be an expert or want to be this 19 year old life coach, you know,

01:25:00.820 like, like if you're going to go do those things, do it right. Put in the work, put in

01:25:05.520 the effort and become a real thing. Don't just say you're this thing just to say it, just

01:25:10.500 to say it online. So you can impress your life. The high school girl that told you no for

01:25:14.620 a problem. Do it. No high school girl ever told me no. I believe it. Before, before time

01:25:23.460 gets too, too away from us. Let's hold on. Okay. I want to ask, I want to, I want to ask

01:25:27.400 a question. So you get contacted by literally thousands of entrepreneurs and most of them,

01:25:33.960 some of them are older, but most of them are younger. Um, what would you say just for these

01:25:39.940 guys listening? Because we have a lot of, of just guys that are the people we're talking

01:25:45.400 about. They're wanting to do something. They're not sure what to do. Okay. And guys, you do

01:25:49.520 need to read the book. Okay. So, you know, I don't recommend books very often. I only recommend

01:25:54.160 books if it's something that I feel like is worth the money that you spend on it. This book

01:25:58.120 is invaluable because you're going to be able to see practical steps, ABCD of how to get something

01:26:03.960 set up. So it takes a lot of the confusion out of the equation. Normally for me, I would

01:26:09.500 say, just go figure it out. But I realized after talking with you and reading through

01:26:15.920 the book, how valuable this is. Like this is, this is shit that I take for granted. You

01:26:19.580 know what I mean? Um, as knowing. So with that being said, out of the thousands of, of young

01:26:28.920 entrepreneurs that you talk to and speak to and deal with, what would you say that the

01:26:35.780 biggest hangup for people is as to why they don't start and what they should do to get

01:26:44.280 over that hangup? Sure. So the biggest hangup is just getting started. A lot of times it's

01:26:50.220 like an artist. They just keep painting in the background and never want to show anybody

01:26:53.080 their work. So they got this great idea. They're working on this online shop and they're going

01:26:57.280 to be, they're going to be the greatest fashion boutique you've ever heard of, or they're going

01:27:00.400 to be the greatest fitness program you ever heard of. And they don't just get started

01:27:04.980 because everybody thinks they need millions of dollars and they need this 45 page business

01:27:10.740 plan and they make everything so overwhelming that nothing happens. Right. And that's why

01:27:16.580 I made all the steps so realistic and so step-by-step because if you just first do your Twitter

01:27:23.700 account and then you make your Facebook and you make your Instagram, make your Snapchat, that

01:27:27.780 sounds like a lot of work to build all these accounts. It takes 20 minutes to do all the

01:27:32.440 accounts. Right. Okay. Now visually you look like you are something you're at fitness expert

01:27:38.740 right now. That's your, you have this great fitness online. You want to make an online video

01:27:43.800 course on fitness and you want to be at fitness expert. And you came up with the best dance

01:27:48.160 routine that is going to help. Right. Right. Well, you know how to do that dance and you know

01:27:53.100 how to teach people that dance when you don't ever actually just film it. Well, do you know

01:27:56.540 how much it costs to film stuff now? Nothing. This camera is just as good as that fancy

01:28:00.640 camera is. Look at fucking YouTube. I mean, everything, almost everything on YouTube is

01:28:04.260 shot with a fucking camera phone. Yeah. And you have people making millions of dollars

01:28:07.420 on YouTube. Absolutely. Off camera phone videos. So if you want to make your fitness

01:28:11.520 expert dance video. Let's talk about the real reason they don't do it. The real reason that

01:28:16.220 they don't do it. They're inherently lazy. Well, it may not be lazy. I agree with you that

01:28:20.680 it's most of the time lazy, but sometimes it's this. How many times do we see a guy make a

01:28:25.120 video online? I see this all the time. It drives me fucking insane. They click on the

01:28:31.920 video or the Facebook live or whatever. And they're like, well, guys, you know, I'm not

01:28:38.260 really sure what to do here or what you're supposed to do on the video. You know, I know

01:28:43.320 you guys are watching. So what I want to do is I want to talk about this. All right. Skip

01:28:47.220 that first fucking 10 seconds of what you say, because it makes you look like a fucking 0.99

01:28:50.800 ass clown. I'm in. Okay. The whole, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. The first

01:28:55.160 video I made, I didn't fucking know what I was doing. The first podcast I made, I didn't

01:28:58.980 know what I was doing, but you know what I didn't do. I didn't get on the fucking microphone

01:29:02.520 and say, Hey guys, this is the MF CEO project. And you know what? I don't know what the fuck

01:29:06.900 I'm doing. You know what I'm saying? Dude, nobody cares. There's so much content out there.

01:29:12.140 You don't, you don't have to have permission. You don't have to have somebody saying, Oh yes,

01:29:16.760 you're good on video. Cause guess what? You're probably not good, but the only way you're

01:29:20.420 going to get good is by fucking doing it. And so many people get this idea in their head

01:29:25.420 and they start off their content making with this like 10 or 20 second wine about how they're

01:29:31.680 not qualified to do it. Dude, nobody wants to hear that. That's not content. Skip right

01:29:37.940 to the meat. Let's get going. Hey, I'm Andy. I'm here to talk to you about X, blah, blah,

01:29:43.220 blah, blah, blah, and do it because dude, no one's going to come along and say, Hey,

01:29:47.820 you're qualified to do that. You get what I'm saying? I mean, how many videos do you see

01:29:53.280 like that? It makes, it makes me as a viewer second guess myself because I thought I wanted

01:29:58.140 to watch you cause you're smart. It makes me cringe. Like, like I see it on snap all the

01:30:04.180 time. Like dudes would be snapping themselves and be like, well, I'm not really sure what I'm

01:30:08.220 supposed to say. Well, all right. Delete that snap. And then you start off with what the fuck

01:30:12.340 you're going to say. Right. I mean, agree. Yeah. I mean, it's, it makes me cringe, man. Like,

01:30:18.640 dude, you guys have to get over that. You have to get over that fear. You have to get over that

01:30:23.800 hesitation. That first 10 seconds where you say all that's that shit I just said, don't say it

01:30:29.160 and then just get right to it. Right. Right. So now you've, cause think about how many people

01:30:33.220 that you're going to see you that don't know you. Of course what you're doing is you're like

01:30:36.840 telling your friends, like my, my friends, I drink beer with my mom and dad and my cousins

01:30:42.260 who really know me and I'm trying to be this expert in this other shit. So I'm like trying

01:30:46.420 to like talk to them. You're not fucking talking to them. You're talking to all the people out

01:30:50.580 there that don't know you. So be what you want to be and own it. Absolutely. So now you've

01:30:57.480 got your fitness expert dancing idea. You've been, you know how to do the dance, you know,

01:31:02.120 it's going to help people and you don't just get started because again, you have this fear that

01:31:06.280 you're gonna need hundreds of thousand dollars in production and a full video team and all this

01:31:10.220 fancy equipment and a big fancy set. Go to a local dance studio on a Tuesday at 6 PM when

01:31:17.400 they're closed and say, Hey, can I film here for a couple hours? And I'll shout out your thing

01:31:20.840 on the bottom of the video. Yes. They're not going to rent it to you. They're going to give it to you

01:31:25.400 for free because who cares? And now you have this fancy studio. It looks like it's your production

01:31:29.980 studio for free. Just to shout out at local dance studio. So you find a friend to hold your

01:31:35.920 fucking cell phone. I'm going to explain how this works. So while the friend is holding the cell

01:31:40.600 phone, there's this like red button on the phone point towards you. Yeah. You hit the red button

01:31:45.240 and the person then points at you or says, okay, or says start. Cause you can edit that out. And then

01:31:51.080 guess what? You do the fucking dance. And if you don't have a friend, you can buy a tripod for like 10

01:31:55.800 bucks. I'm going to learn how to do that juju dance. Cause like, dude, I saw everybody's doing the 0.93

01:31:59.720 juju dance. You know what I'm talking about? The runner man? Yeah. I'm going to do it. Okay. 0.91

01:32:07.340 You know how to do it? Yeah. All right, dude. I got to know. Cause like, I see everybody doing

01:32:10.820 it and I'm just like, I got to do the dance. They look happy when they're doing it. They

01:32:13.420 do. They do. Dude, every video, that song is catchy. I don't know. I saw a rock doing it

01:32:19.200 last night. I'm like, all right, it's time to learn. In the Pikachu costume. That was so fucking

01:32:24.100 funny, dude. Slide, drop. That was funny, man. The funniest one I saw was a, was a video of a guy

01:32:31.540 and a girl with a Obama and a Clinton or a Trump and a Clinton mask on. And then Obama was riding

01:32:39.140 the cart. Dude, I, I, I saved that phone on my video just to watch it a hundred times. I still

01:32:44.840 watch it. Like if I want to be happy, I watched the video. If you're listening and you're in that

01:32:50.280 video, that was an awesome video. Anyway. Okay. So your friend's pointing the camera at you.

01:32:54.940 Yeah. You're doing the dance. It's preferable if you write a script or at least the, the order of

01:33:00.660 what you're going to do. And you just write that on the glass behind the person that's filming you.

01:33:04.820 And it just says step one, step two, step three. And they're just reminders to you. Cause you know

01:33:09.460 this stuff, right? You do this dance all the time. You know, it works. You know what happens.

01:33:13.480 You just put reminders up on the glass. You just write it in big letters, do this, do this,

01:33:18.000 you're queuing yourself. Right. It's not for anybody else. Right. So you film this thing for

01:33:24.520 20 or 30 minutes, whatever the length of it is. And you make one minute as a trailer, 60 second

01:33:29.440 trailer. Okay. That 60 second trailer is your calling card for at fitness expert dance, whatever

01:33:35.840 it is. All of that stuff was free. Right. Your friend is free. Your phone, you already pay for

01:33:42.180 the dance studio was free. Writing on the window was free. Your social media was free.

01:33:46.960 All of this stuff was just you taking the action to go to the local dance studio to ask to use the

01:33:53.640 place at 6 PM until 8 PM. Don't overcomplicate it. We're talking about easy shit here. Like in a

01:33:59.080 thing, something I was thinking about when you're talking about writing the cues, this will help you

01:34:02.620 to learn how to speak too. Cause you're going to have to learn how to speak in front of people.

01:34:06.080 Dan speaks to people. I speak to people, anybody who's building anything now, you have to speak

01:34:10.340 to people. It's just the way it is. So when you make a video and you're so many people overcomplicate

01:34:15.120 that simple aspect where they write like an actual script and they're like holding the paper or they

01:34:20.000 have a friend holding paper and they're trying to read the exact. No dude, look, you know, the shit

01:34:24.960 make three bullet points that you want to cover. Talk about each bullet point for two minutes. You

01:34:30.280 got a fucking six minute video and, and, and just talk like you're a normal, you know, people get 0.91

01:34:36.080 like this anxiety about being on video. Like, Oh, I don't know what to say. It's like, dude,

01:34:41.020 just say the shit that, you know, do the fucking juju. You know what I'm saying? Like one of the

01:34:47.200 first events I ever spoke at, I was, I was about to go out there and my hands turned white and I

01:34:52.320 started sweating. And I was like, why am I nervous? I've talked to people before. I performed magic

01:34:57.680 tricks before I'm performing in front of people. And I was so nervous. And I realized that event, I

01:35:02.760 wasn't speaking about myself or my company. I was going up there to speak about like a tech conference

01:35:07.620 or something. And it wasn't like about life, real life things that I knew. And I told the

01:35:14.200 guy what the situation was. I said, Oh, I'll just change the line of question. We'll just

01:35:18.640 talk. Your portion will be about social media. I turned red. I was ready to go. There's 1600

01:35:24.280 people out there in the crowd and you killed it. I killed it. Right. And I realized every

01:35:29.640 other event since then, every other podcast, video news interview doesn't matter. I I'm so

01:35:36.360 calm. My heart rate doesn't change one iota because I'm just talking about what I know.

01:35:40.580 Right. Right. And if I mess up, who cares? And not only that, dude, that goes down to like

01:35:45.640 take. So when you start your business and it's going to hurt some feelings, but nobody cares

01:35:50.020 about nobody cares about you. They just don't. So like make your videos and nobody's going to see

01:35:54.800 them. You're going to have three fucking views. It's going to be your grandma, your mom and your

01:35:58.800 fucking sister. Yep. And you know what? They're probably going to make fun of you. But the thing

01:36:03.320 is, is that if you do those, if you do that for your first 100 videos, if that's what you

01:36:07.380 do by the, by video number one on one, guess what? You're going to be good at making videos.

01:36:12.740 Absolutely. You always look at Gary and his first wine videos and he's just talking about

01:36:16.440 wine. Yeah. And he's like, I have 12 views. And then I had 36 views and I had 44 views.

01:36:21.180 Right. And he just pushed through these wine videos because. Right. And that's what he had

01:36:25.100 to do. And I think that's the discouraging aspect for most people is like they put all this

01:36:27.840 hard, like, cause the first one's the hardest. Yeah. Like the first one is going to be

01:36:31.600 the hardest and you're going to put all this work in and guess what? You're going to get

01:36:34.860 three likes and it's going to be your grandma, your mom and your sister. Yep. And you know

01:36:38.340 what? That's okay. That happened to everybody. It happened to me. Dude, when I first started

01:36:42.620 writing motivational statuses, the reason I started writing them was because we sold

01:36:47.580 vitamins and I didn't know what else to fucking talk about. Like, Oh, Hey, remember to take

01:36:52.120 your fucking Flintstones every day. Like what the fuck you supposed to say to keep people's

01:36:55.280 attention? So like, I'm like, all right, well, people who are buying this shit, they want

01:36:59.460 to fucking work out. They're motivated to work out. Let's write some motivational

01:37:02.280 shit. And dude, my original motivational status was like, Oh, be sure to fucking kill

01:37:08.740 it today. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it was terrible. Like my first video

01:37:14.140 was terrible. And you know what? You'll never see it because it was posted online. And guess

01:37:18.340 what happened when I got good? Took the shit down. Exactly. And you motherfuckers never saw 0.99

01:37:22.160 it. So I saw that shit. Yeah. But the point is, is that that's how it works. And people

01:37:27.920 think they're going to put all this work in, they're going to put it online. It's

01:37:30.900 going to go viral and it doesn't. And then they're like, they quit because they don't

01:37:35.220 have the traction. Like, dude, the traction comes with the skill and the, and the value

01:37:38.940 and all the things that you bring, but that's developed over time. So like, do you have to

01:37:43.340 be willing to be bad? Be bad, be horrible, but you'll work it out by doing it over and over

01:37:48.340 and over again. And look at the positives too. Like what putting yourself, look how many good,

01:37:51.700 look how many great people make great videos or great content or type great things. How do you

01:37:57.320 think that you're not capable of that? You are capable of that. But that person who

01:38:02.020 you're watching, it's like that saying, don't compare someone else's highlight reel to your

01:38:06.300 real life because you're watching their 10 years of practice of making a fucking video 0.93

01:38:12.400 and you suck. Well, you're going to suck unless you put in the 10 years. It's the same thing.

01:38:17.300 So just start, just make some, do something. I mean, I think it's people's fear, man, that

01:38:24.160 holds them back. You know, they could say it's money. They could say it's, I

01:38:27.260 don't have the producers. I don't have the assistants. I don't have the, this guy's got

01:38:30.900 a production team. I have nothing. Dude, he didn't have that when he started. They built

01:38:39.280 that. Right. You know what I mean? Just because he has that doesn't mean you can't have that.

01:38:43.000 Absolutely. They're comparing their before to your after. Yes. And they think they're not

01:38:48.060 good enough. And that's, I think that fear of the funny thing. I giggle when you said

01:38:53.460 life coach thing and sort of on, but that's like a popular thing now because of the social

01:38:59.820 media. Let's, let's just address that real quick because it's something that annoys

01:39:02.920 me. Like, okay, you rent a fucking Ferrari, you go stand in front of it with a suit on

01:39:07.280 and you think you're a ball. First of all, real ballers don't wear fucking suits. Like

01:39:10.240 I wear suits when I go to bar or fucking baptisms, funerals and weddings, funerals and weddings.

01:39:14.480 Like if I'm wearing a suit, it's, it's like I was forced to put this fucker on. You know

01:39:19.140 what I mean? Second of all, just because you can go out and pretend that put this image

01:39:26.380 out means nothing. It means nothing. And to call yourself a life coach when you're fucking

01:39:32.300 24 years old and you haven't fucking built a damn thing, dude, nobody's buying into that.

01:39:39.400 It's offensive. It is offensive. And people, cause you're assuming everybody's ignorant.

01:39:43.620 You know what I mean? People are, I know 19 year old life coaches. I wasn't kidding.

01:39:46.860 And I know that they make a hundred grand a month. They're crushing it. They're kids that

01:39:50.520 did start making a bunch of money, but they're life coaching when they've never had life.

01:39:54.660 Yeah. And that's the thing. So if you want people like, let's say, cause if you want to

01:39:59.440 be a speaker or you want to be somebody who talks to people and you desire that build something

01:40:04.460 great first. And then people want to listen to what you have to say. If you're just a guy

01:40:08.660 who's like, Oh, I'm going to be this, I'm going to be this coach or become an actual

01:40:12.360 expert. If you want to become, if you want to be a great point, become a real expert.

01:40:16.000 If you want to be the short sale expert in, in Wichita, Kansas, study everything about

01:40:21.360 short sale and go work for their local real estate firm and go be at every event and actually

01:40:25.600 put the group together that talks about short sale. Once a month, you're the short sale

01:40:29.700 expert guy. And then all of a sudden you're going to be in the short sale expert podcast.

01:40:32.940 You're going to be speaking at seminars. You're going to be speaking at conventions.

01:40:35.320 You're going to be the keynote speaker. You're going to start getting 10 grand to speak

01:40:37.980 every, every month. You evolved that from being the 19 year old in Wichita, Kansas that

01:40:43.020 studied everything about short sales and you became an expert on a specific thing.

01:40:46.960 Dude, start a short sale podcast.

01:40:48.480 Amen.

01:40:49.100 You know what I'm saying? Write a short sale book.

01:40:50.920 Yep.

01:40:51.240 You know, dude, most people, that's another thing. Most people think that if you write a

01:40:55.100 book, you're JK Rowling's. It's like, look, dude, books, books are a platform for credibility.

01:41:00.060 Exactly.

01:41:00.500 They're not, they're not made like you, like I'm going to author, I'm going to make millions

01:41:04.040 of dollars. How's that working out, Vaughn?

01:41:05.800 Uh, yeah. You know what I'm saying?

01:41:07.480 Yeah, no. Yeah.

01:41:08.440 Like, dude, I'm not ripping on you. I'm just saying like, it's not a real thing.

01:41:11.160 No, it's not a real thing.

01:41:12.240 You know, put your book or your dude, write a book so that you could go talk to a company

01:41:17.460 and say, Hey, look, I'm the short sale expert. I own the short sale podcast. I wrote this

01:41:22.460 book, how to short sell your shit. 0.94

01:41:24.500 Yep.

01:41:24.760 Right.

01:41:25.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:41:25.580 Exactly.

01:41:26.040 I mean, there's another, let me talk to your people.

01:41:27.740 Yeah. I mean, there's another benefit too, other than it just being your calling card is

01:41:31.220 that in the process of writing a book, you will be coming to learn a lot.

01:41:34.640 Oh, for sure.

01:41:35.560 You will become an expert. Like if you, well, if you have the ability to like learn.

01:41:42.160 Right.

01:41:42.520 But yes, I agree.

01:41:43.640 Right. But I love the emphasis you guys are making because I think, and we've said it before

01:41:47.040 on this podcast that there's no, there's no expert fairy. So anybody can say, yeah, I

01:41:51.620 want to become the expert. But I was just noticing this the other day when people were posting

01:41:55.880 videos talking about stuff they didn't know crap about. And I thought, you know what?

01:42:00.120 It's, it is true that there's no expert fairy and that, and that you can choose to be an 0.82

01:42:04.180 expert, but if you're going to choose to be an expert, you have to do your homework.

01:42:07.340 If you're going to put yourself in front of people, you have to do your homework.

01:42:10.080 Absolutely.

01:42:10.520 It's amazing how many people dub themselves. Well, I'm going to do a podcast on such

01:42:14.520 and such, but as you're listening to the podcast.

01:42:16.160 Do the work first and then say you're an expert.

01:42:17.800 Right. Right.

01:42:19.100 Exactly.

01:42:19.980 Let's just say that.

01:42:21.640 Exactly.

01:42:22.220 Let's do the work. And then if you could teach it to someone legitimately, okay, then you

01:42:27.920 call yourself an expert. Yeah, but absolutely. Let's just, let's just go ahead and agree

01:42:31.740 that that's going to be the way we should do it. And I do have to interject ladies and 0.83

01:42:34.580 gentlemen for, for what Andy was saying about, you know, the real ballers don't wear a, don't

01:42:38.580 wear suits. I can attest to the fact that the combined income in this room is probably

01:42:43.100 between 50 to a million dollars. And I'm pretty sure Dan got that at target, got the shirt

01:42:48.400 he's wearing at target. So these guys live what they create for free for free, $50 and a

01:42:53.860 million dollars.

01:42:54.460 By the way, Dan, that's not a slam because I love target. I'm a $50 guy. Dan's a million

01:42:59.080 dollar guy. But dude, I'm, I'm, I get my shit for free. I'm the back of the fucking

01:43:04.960 store out here, man.

01:43:06.740 There was 10 years where there was not a single day I didn't have a Who's Daddy shirt

01:43:10.600 on. Yeah.

01:43:11.340 Not one day. And if I had to wear a suit, I put a patch on. Yeah. I literally, in the

01:43:17.380 victory poker days, every single outfit you ever saw me in, I was wearing victory poker.

01:43:21.360 And if I wasn't, I would put a patch on everything. I'm not saying I want to wear a suit because

01:43:26.820 I want to look cool because I like suits. Right. But I'm just saying like, get rid of

01:43:31.640 the fucking stigma in your head that that means something. Well, and the reason, the reason 0.60

01:43:34.840 I even brought up that point was that we've talked about this before, the people who have

01:43:39.040 really made it and the people who are really killing it dispense with the need to be pretentious.

01:43:43.880 They don't feel like they have to wear the suit.

01:43:45.820 They can. Yeah, exactly.

01:43:47.880 You prove it with your mouth and with your actions. Exactly.

01:43:50.040 You know, it's what it is. Anyway, look, we're running long. This has been awesome.

01:43:56.460 Dude, thank you. Listen, Dan doesn't just come and fly around to meet people. So thank

01:44:03.280 you so much for coming out here.

01:44:04.820 Thank you. This is one of my favorite podcasts.

01:44:06.220 Yeah, for sure.

01:44:06.920 Same thing.

01:44:07.500 And dude, thank you for everything that you're doing. Before we close, I would like to talk

01:44:13.020 about something that has nothing to do with what we've talked about and just let people

01:44:16.760 know about your charity and what you do, because I think it's awesome. And I'm hoping that we

01:44:22.640 can get something worked out to where we can head that up here in St. Louis. So let people

01:44:27.160 know about that.

01:44:28.020 Sure. So the charity is called Model Citizen Fund. Website's modelcitizenfund.org. We just

01:44:35.120 had our five year anniversary. And what happens is we make backpacks for the homeless. Each

01:44:39.400 backpack has 150 emergency supply items inside. Half of it's food and drinks. The other half

01:44:44.360 of it's like sunglasses and a watch and a poncho and a sleeping bag and emergency blanket

01:44:49.260 and cleaning supplies just to make them feel human.

01:44:53.040 Human. Right.

01:44:54.940 And essentially, we give it out to homeless shelters, teen abuse shelters, women abuse

01:44:58.960 shelters and orphanages, mostly in America, but we also do a little bit internationally, mostly

01:45:03.480 just try to focus here. But we've done it in Tijuana and we've done it in South America.

01:45:07.620 Um, and the reason was I kept raising six figures at a time for these other charities. And then

01:45:13.640 the day after I give them $117,000, I never hear from them again. And so I don't see, I

01:45:18.120 didn't get to see what the true cause and effect was. So I wanted something very simple and

01:45:21.680 straightforward. So we put 150 items inside for a hundred dollars and there's like four

01:45:26.460 or 500 bucks worth of stuff. We were able to get it at such low wholesale prices. It's

01:45:30.180 a hundred dollars with the backpack with shipping included and we're a 0% charity. So 0% goes

01:45:35.160 to overhead. I personally pay for every event, every piece of marketing, every piece of material,

01:45:40.960 every single, every single aspect of the business is my staff, my rent, my volunteers,

01:45:45.360 my everything. It doesn't come from the donation. Not a single penny. Right. Not one penny. Comes

01:45:48.440 out of his actual paycheck. Yes. And so for the last five years, I've always run it that way. And

01:45:53.940 I'm going to run it that way for the rest of my life because it's a very simple, straightforward

01:45:56.960 charity. If somebody donates a hundred bucks, a hundred thousand or a hundred million,

01:46:00.240 not a penny goes to anything, but making more and more backpacks. So, which is awesome.

01:46:07.480 To me, it's something that people can replicate. I don't need them to donate to me because it does

01:46:11.840 nothing for me for them to donate. If they want to replicate it themselves and they want to go make

01:46:15.860 sandwich bags full of supplies or make lunch pails or make backpacks in their local town in New

01:46:22.040 Mexico. Great. You know, I want people to replicate it because it's replicatable. It's something that they

01:46:27.500 can make a backpack or make a bag and put in supplies and give it out to homeless people.

01:46:32.140 If you want the ultimate kit with 150 items, please buy them from us. But it's, it's just,

01:46:38.000 for me, it's a factor of them going and doing the work and giving out. Yeah. So explain that. Like

01:46:42.500 that's, I think that's a key part because all of us, you know, all of my friends who are financially

01:46:48.860 successful, all are very charitable with their money. All of them. I, you know, and I think that's a

01:46:53.640 big stigma that people don't, don't understand how much money people who have money give away.

01:47:00.660 Absolutely. And it's a lot, but there's an aspect of this charity that I really like is because it's

01:47:07.320 hands-on. Sure. So let's talk about that. So there's two ways people can do it. They can send

01:47:11.440 in a thousand bucks and we're going to go give out 10 backpacks for them and 10 people's lives are

01:47:14.900 going to change. Or that same person can donate the same thousand dollars and we'll ship it to their

01:47:19.220 house and they can go give it out in their local town with their daughter or with their friends or

01:47:23.840 with their group. And what happens a lot of time is we have a lot of schools and we have a lot of

01:47:28.140 groups in different cities and they put together and they raise 3,300 bucks to get 33 backpacks.

01:47:33.220 So they raise 15 grand and they get 150 backpacks and then they pick a day Sunday at 12 PM and they

01:47:38.660 go out together and they go give it out to the homeless themselves. And the feeling you get when you

01:47:43.460 hand somebody 14 pounds of supplies, they get excited just seeing the backpack getting handed to them.

01:47:47.840 And then they feel the weight of it and it's just the reaction is it's, it's, I can't, I get chills

01:47:53.200 when I think about it. Um, because it's so real that person giving them a hundred bucks and them

01:48:00.540 spending it on anything. We don't know if it's food, drugs. We don't know what, we don't know what's

01:48:04.320 going to happen with that because that's a variable. We can't control that's based on their

01:48:08.520 situation. We don't know. Right. But I do know if we give them a backpack and now they have 14 pounds

01:48:15.140 of supplies and they have 150 items, things are going to change for that person for at

01:48:20.260 least temporary. Yeah. It's not going to be forever, but the backpack's forever. They're

01:48:23.960 going to be able to have that backpack for six years from now. Right. Cause it's a real

01:48:26.740 serious backpack. They're going to be able to use the, the sunglasses and the blanket years

01:48:30.880 from now because it's just a real thing that they have. Um, and it's really to humanize them

01:48:36.880 and to give them something to work with and something to, right, to be nimble with. Um,

01:48:42.080 cool thing. It also is they put, they, they put some books in there for them to read and

01:48:46.840 like try to help them get on the right track mentally. It's, it's, I thought that was cool

01:48:51.600 too. Yeah. So the other thing is we don't change the charity for anybody. So people always will

01:48:57.600 add in new items or if people want us to make it for women, we'll add in women's supplies to the 1.00

01:49:03.400 same backpack or we'll add in baby supplies to the same backpack. We don't change for anybody.

01:49:07.380 We keep it very simple, straightforward. We make backpacks for the homeless and that's what we're

01:49:11.040 going to do for the rest of eternity. As long as I'm alive, we're going to be doing this.

01:49:14.020 That's awesome, man. Um, because so how do we get this rolling in St. Louis?

01:49:18.880 So picking a day and making a day where the first form crew or everybody involved meets up and says,

01:49:24.760 okay, on Saturday we're going to all meet up and we're going to give out X amount of backpacks at

01:49:29.560 12 PM to the homeless shelters. But also that Saturday week, we're also going to pack lunches

01:49:34.980 and we're going to do whatever it is you want to do for a couple hours and get everybody together.

01:49:39.100 They can all do micro raises amongst their friends and raise 200 bucks and 500 bucks and 300 bucks.

01:49:44.160 It doesn't have to be tens of thousands. It can be a couple hundred bucks each and everybody that

01:49:48.540 shows up, if all of a sudden 400 people show up and they all raise 300 bucks each, all of a sudden

01:49:53.360 you got $120,000 and 1200 backpacks coming. Like you have 1200 humans are going to be affected

01:49:59.020 just as something so simple. Can 400 people raise 300 bucks each? It's not rocket science. It's not

01:50:06.420 something big, huge and overwhelming. I try to make everything in my life bite-sized, whether it's

01:50:11.220 how to set up your business or how to do your charity work, how to do things in a realistic

01:50:14.640 format. If you don't have millions of dollars, don't go, you don't have to not do charity because

01:50:20.220 you can do it with your energy, your time, your social media power. That's right. You know, if you

01:50:25.040 have 22,000 followers and you talk about somebody's charity a few times, you're helping

01:50:30.360 them. Right. And even if you have 22,000 followers, you might be the local waiter and don't have any

01:50:35.280 money. That's fine. Right. But you can do charity work by going to the homeless shelter or showing up

01:50:40.300 at the first form warehouse and going to that Saturday event and going out and actually giving

01:50:44.120 out the backpacks in person. Putting your energy and time is much more important than just cutting a

01:50:48.360 check. It really is. Well, so if I wanted to set this up in St. Louis, would I, would I just operate

01:50:56.060 under your charity or would I set up my own and just buy the bags from you? Yeah. You just operate

01:50:59.760 under us and you have your division. Well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do. That

01:51:04.580 simplifies everything. Yeah. So, so let's, I'm going to get this started with like right now,

01:51:10.260 literally right now, I'll, I'll go ahead and buy the first 150 backpacks myself. Awesome. And then you

01:51:16.960 guys can ship them here. We'll put a day together and then we'll focus on raising funds after that.

01:51:21.860 Perfect. So that'd be a good way to start, right? Absolutely. Okay. And then you just pick the best

01:51:25.900 way to do it is having the right amount of people to give out the 150 backpacks. So let's say it's

01:51:31.040 50 people, a hundred people, whatever it is. So they all give out a couple of backpacks each and

01:51:34.300 they can feel it. Yeah. And then picking that time and either dealing with a homeless shelter directly

01:51:39.620 and saying, Hey, Saturday at 2 PM, we're going to bring you 150 backpacks, have 150 of your homeless

01:51:44.980 people outside and waiting in line. I've done that over and over and over. It works really,

01:51:49.500 really well. Um, what you always want to keep in mind is the homeless. It's hard to communicate to

01:51:56.640 them because there's no marketing you can do. They don't have TVs or internet. They don't have those

01:52:00.820 things. Right. But the homeless shelters, the orphanages, the teen abuse shelters, they have

01:52:05.660 them because every day they have to check in by a certain time. Right. And so they have the ability

01:52:09.860 to communicate. And in most towns, I'm sure it happens here. There's usually strips that have

01:52:15.520 50 guys that are living out there or a bunch of families that are living out there or a bunch

01:52:19.620 of people that that's where they kind of come in. St. Louis is a real problem. Sure. Real problem

01:52:23.020 with homelessness. Same with San Diego. Yeah. Absolutely. And so all I'm saying is those are

01:52:29.320 great places to go do it and just do it safely. You want to make sure that don't show up there

01:52:33.920 at midnight. Exactly. That's not the point of this charity. The point of the charity is to get

01:52:37.900 people items to help them with their life. Right. We don't take pictures of them unless

01:52:42.720 they want to. Right. Plenty of them want to tell their story. So we have amazing videos.

01:52:46.060 I got a phone full of videos with homeless that are telling us like I used to work at

01:52:50.620 the local construction firm and I was making 60 grand a year and then blah, blah, blah happened.

01:52:55.360 I got a divorce and I had to pay. Learn a lot, man. Yeah. I mean, the stories on some of

01:53:00.240 these people that are living out there that used to have real jobs and wanted to be functional

01:53:03.900 humans. Well, it's like we talked about yesterday in the car. You know, people once a lot of

01:53:08.860 times people find success, they forget how quick and go away. Oh my God. Seriously.

01:53:12.440 Yeah. But I mean, dude, it's a great thing you're doing. It was one of the most exciting

01:53:18.600 things I wanted to talk to you about because I really we've been looking for something to

01:53:22.960 do. I know here in the wall. So what we'll do is I'll put up some posts and you know, if

01:53:28.200 some of you guys want to come help when we do this, you're more than welcome to come.

01:53:31.920 For sure. For sure. So it'll be cool. I'm excited, man. Awesome. Thanks for doing that

01:53:35.840 and putting together. It's been a, it's been five years and I'm hoping to do it for another

01:53:39.820 50 years. And I think it's the reason people get that feeling, get that excitement is because

01:53:43.960 they can see, feel and touch it. You're going to go out there and you're going to actually

01:53:47.160 give it out and your staff's going to give it out and your friends are going to give it

01:53:49.420 out. That that's priceless. Like cutting a check to cure cancer, which we obviously all

01:53:53.860 want to get cured. It's just different. Right. Right. And that really, I mean, that can

01:53:59.840 radically transform people's lives. I think people just assume that if somebody's homeless,

01:54:03.580 they're going to always be homeless. I actually know a guy who is homeless. I know a bunch

01:54:07.280 of people who, who is now an entrepreneur who's making millions of dollars. Yeah. There

01:54:11.040 was a great story just to, it was actually just last week. Uh, a guy was homeless. He,

01:54:16.400 he was a millionaire, went homeless. And then a poker player, a friend of ours, uh, financed

01:54:21.920 him to open up a healthy juice store. And now he's got a chain of them in Malibu and all

01:54:26.140 these fancy places. That's awesome. He's doing millions of dollars in revenue. Yeah. And

01:54:29.440 the picture in the story just last week is him being emaciated. He's homeless and like

01:54:34.740 skinny. Like he's just right. It looked like he was out. It was done for it. Yeah. And he

01:54:39.640 said in his article, he's like my, the reason I, I succeed is I didn't, I didn't die. Well,

01:54:45.480 the thing is, dude, is that like these people are on their own. They look, I'm a, I'm a tough

01:54:52.780 dude. You know, I talk a lot about just getting done and this and that and doing shit and doing

01:54:57.700 the work and everybody knows that. And, but at the end of the day, man, you know, there

01:55:02.440 is circumstances that have affected people in a way that are bad, that maybe they weren't

01:55:09.360 able to control or maybe they were in control and they made bad choices. Either way, at a

01:55:14.880 bare minimum, those people deserve to feel like a human being and feel like people care

01:55:20.200 about them. And I think that's one of the coolest things about what you're doing is

01:55:22.900 that like, dude, you know, Pete, they are reminded like, Hey dude, we care about you.

01:55:29.740 We haven't forgotten about you. Hopefully this will help you get on the right track a little

01:55:33.220 bit. You know, you spend five minutes talking to them. It's a big deal. You know, um, I just

01:55:39.340 think it's awesome, man. It's one of the coolest charities that I've, that I've heard of.

01:55:42.540 So I'm, I'm excited to really help get behind it here. So that's huge. Very cool.

01:55:47.500 Well, cool guys. Well, listen contest. I just got to tell people the contest is still going

01:55:52.160 on for the hundredth episode. The deadline is November 7th, which will be a couple of

01:55:56.440 days. What can they win? Uh, they can win coming out to hang with the MF CEO crew, most

01:56:01.880 notably Andrew J. Forsella. And, uh, yeah, I don't know what we're going to do yet, but

01:56:07.560 we're going to have fun. All right. And then we're going to also have, I think, I think

01:56:11.680 the, the, the secondary prizes are the videos that are, excuse me, the, um, seminars, the

01:56:16.760 video. So 100, if you're in, if you're a new listener and you haven't, um, first of all,

01:56:21.220 you should listen to episode 100 anyway, because it's a good overview of what our mission is

01:56:24.340 here. Yeah. Um, second of all, it'll talk about the contest, the MF CEO.com forward slash

01:56:29.440 contest. Go there. Yeah. Cool guys. We appreciate you. Thank you so much again, Dan, for coming

01:56:34.580 on and making the trip out here. Um, guys, we back with, uh, with an episode of Thursday

01:56:40.140 thunder coming up on Thursday and I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella - November 08, 2016

The Best Time To Start Is Now, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO106

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