971. Q&AF: Leading Vs. Delegating, Dealing With Judgement & Balancing Gratitude And Growth

Yeah, went from sleeping on the floor. Now my druid box froze.
Fuck up bowl, fucker stove. Counted millions in the cold.
Bad bitch, booted swole. Got her own bank rope.
Can't fold. That's a no.

Headshot case close.

What is up, guys? It's Adrian Persella. And this is the show for the realists, saying goodbye to the lies, the fakeness, and delusions of modern society.
And welcome to motherfucking reality, guys.

Today, we have QAF. That's where you submit the questions and we give you the answers.
You can submit your questions a plethora of ways.

DJ, go ahead and tell them how they can do that. Yeah, guys, you can start by emailing your questions into askandy atandyforsella.com.

If that doesn't work for you, you can check the link in the description below and submit your questions for a chance to be on our call-ins.

If that does not work for you, you can always leave your questions in the comments on the QAF episodes on the tube. That's QAF.
Now, tomorrow, well actually tonight, you're going to see

CTI. All right.
CTI is where we cruise the internet. That's where we put topics on the screen.
We speculate on what's going on. We joke around.

And then we talk about how we need to solve these problems going on in the world.

And again, that's live now.

And you will see that at 7 p.m. tonight.
So tune in tonight and you will see that. Then throughout the week, we're going to have real talk.
Real talk is just five to 20 minutes of real talk.

We do this occasionally. we don't do it every week.
And then, occasionally, as well, we have 75 Hard Verses. That's where people who have completed the 75 Hard program come on the show.

They talk about how they were before, how they are now, and how they use the 75 Hard program to become the ultimate version of themselves.

If you're unfamiliar with 75 Hard, it's the initial phase of the Live Hard program, which is the world's most popular mental transformation program ever.

And you can get that for free at episode 208 on the audio feed. Again, that's 208 on the audio feed only.
There's also a book. The book is available at andyforsella.com.

It's called The Book on Mental Toughness.

It has the entire Live Hard program plus a whole bunch of other chapters on mental toughness, why it's important, how to cultivate, and how to use it in your life to become the ultimate version of you.

That book is not free, but it is very in-depth, and people seem to really like it. So if you're the kind of person that needs to know all the ins and outs, that's definitely the route to go.

But again, you can get it for free also at episode 208 on the audio feed. Now,

there is something here that we have an ask. The ask is very simple.

If you like the show, if it gives you good value, if it makes you laugh, it makes you think, if it gives you a new perspective, if you think it's entertaining, do us a favor and don't be a hoe.

Share the show. All right.
What's happening, dude? What's going on, dog? We got snow. Yeah, we do.
Yeah. Snow, it's cold, too.
It is really cold. Like, real cold.
But the snow makes me happy, man.

Yeah. You know,

it was nice. It was.
I like real snow, though. Like, we got like that wet, sloppy shit.
Well, usually, that's not a bad thing. No, not you.

When it comes to snow, you know what I'm saying? It's, uh, it's, it's not the best.

So,

yeah, I'm not, I'm not. Not same, same.
Yeah, I'm not down with the, with, with that kind of snow. Yeah, it does get dirty.
Yeah. It gets a little.

Then, you know, when it freezes, you got to be careful because then you got the ice out there. That's right.
That black ice. That's right.

The racist ice

get it yep yeah

that's the one that's hurting all the people

and the black ice you ever hear white ice make people fall down half of the hospital fall injuries come from black ice

13 of the ice

creating 70 of the violet falls

Anyway,

that's for tonight. Let's get serious.

This is a serious show.

Yeah, this is makes people better, dude. I do have a serious announcement.
I do have a serious announcement. The MFCEO project that you guys have been

wanting back for the last however many years that we've been working on for the last three years is coming back. And if you're interested in getting that podcast, it will not be hosted publicly.

It will be a private podcast.

You can get on the list for that if you go to andyforsella.com forward slash MFCEO.

And we will be notifying you this Sunday, December 7th, about all the details regarding that. So keep an eye out for that.

And you need to go get registered if you're interested in that because we won't be posting it public.

And the only way to get it is to be on that list.

Yeah, that's going to be so fucking sick. Andyforsella.com forward slash MFCEO.
It's going to be great. Yeah, it is going to be great, dude.
I'm excited. You know, when we switched over to real AF,

it was because i recognized that

the environment of our ability to become successful was being drastically affected uh by a lot of this push for control and

intentional poverty and all of these things have happened over the last five five years or so and we're getting back to the point where everybody's aware of it.

And I'm not saying we're not going to quit doing real AF. We really enjoy it.
But it's time to get back to some real tactics and getting people, you know,

doing the things that are going to make them successful, not just making them realize that they are the answer to the problems they see in the society. So it's going to be really, really cool.

There is, there is,

it's not just the podcast, dude. We've been building this project.

for the last three years obsessively

to what I believe will be the

one one of the biggest products in human history when it's all said and done. So I'm very excited to show it to people.

And we will be

talking to you about the first phase of that

Sunday.

So this coming Sunday. It's going to be great.
So again, AndyForcello.com forward slash MFCEO.

Exciting, man. It's going to be fucking great.
I'm excited too. It's going to be awesome.
Guys,

two, no surprise. Yeah.
I have three good ones for you. All right, good.
Yeah. We're going to do a little OG.
We've got some good write-ins, man. We got no call-ins today? No call-ins.

We're going to do some write-ins.

But we got some really good ones for you, bro. So let's make some people better, guys.
Andy, question number one.

Andy, I created a system to make the company better in my free time and was promoted for it.

Things are going great, but on projects, I'm told to scale back on the work that I do. How do I find the balance between leading from the front and not delegating enough?

So I guess now you got a leadership position. Is delegation the true,

like, is that the best thing to do when you become a leader? I mean, it's a part of it. You know,

I think a lot of people try to

do one or the other. They either try to do everything themselves or they try to delegate everything.
Yeah. And neither one of those are that effective.
Okay.

It's about finding the right balance between

what to delegate, how to delegate, who to delegate it to, and then understanding how much input and how much oversight these people need from you with the goal of eventually getting them to the point where they do these things automatically and they understand what needs to be done.

So if you run into a situation as a leader where you're constantly jumping in, you're constantly

fixing all the problems, you're constantly calling all the plays, what happens is that your team never develops. Okay.
Your team never learns

why we do certain things.

And when you don't allow them to develop their own expertise, you end up with just a bunch of doers and not a bunch of effective autonomous members of your organization that can solve problems and do things at scale.

This is a micromanaging sense.

This is a big problem with most small business owners because they cannot find that right balance.

The opposite of that is that when they delegate everything, because let's say they want to, you know, be detached from the business for whatever reason, and you don't provide any of the insight, you end up with ideas and decisions that are made that may not align with where you're trying to go because they don't understand because you're not putting in any input.

All right.

There's pluses and minuses to both sides, but the idea that you ultimately need to

come to, the realization that you ultimately need to come to is that this is a balance of both of these skill sets, and it's not one or the other. It's knowing when and why and how to delegate.

It's also knowing when and why and how to put your hands on things to make sure they're going the right direction. And this becomes

increasingly difficult for people who are not the founder, owner, equity partner, CEO, operator of the business because they start to believe, at least initially, that if they make the wrong decision, that they're going to be punished for it.

And so you have to cultivate an environment where decisions are allowed to be made, but also with enough oversight for you to teach them along the way, right?

And we just have very few leaders that understand that because typically either they want to do everything because I know best and my way is the best and I can do it better than you, which is not good leadership.

Okay. It doesn't allow people to develop.
It doesn't allow people to become

owners of the project, meaning they did the project. They feel good.
They develop. They build the confidence, which makes them better.

And then... The opposite of that is also true.
You know, when you let them run without any oversight at all, they also don't get any better because they don't have the experience.

They don't understand what's trying to be done big picture. And so what typically happens is they make decisions that are based in how they feel right now versus what the big picture game plan is.

So, you know, this is a big

balancing act, so to speak, that you have to learn the nuance of in order to become an effective leader, whether that's you're at the top or the bottom.

And as an operator, When I say top or bottom, I mean like you're, whether you're the CEO or the owner or whether whether you're upper management or whether you're middle management or whatever,

this skill set is something that you have to develop at all those levels to be valuable. And if you don't have that skill set,

you're not a real leader. That's the thing.
Okay. And

you can perform

very well and still not be a good leader. Okay.
There's lots of ways to do that. And that tricks a lot of people.

People think that when sales are going good, when things are moving in the right direction, they automatically assume that that means that they're doing everything right that they could be doing.

No, that could be a lot of other things. It could just be that the market's ready for your product.
It could be that you have the right product at the right place at the right time and it's going.

It has no reflection on you. So we have to understand that there's all these elements that can give us false feedback.

I call it feedback mirage, feedback that appears to be real, but actually isn't, that causes us to make decisions that aren't actually accurate. So when we think about this

in terms of the value

in a middle management or upper management position, the real value of that position is not just performance, but it's the most valuable thing that they can do is the ability to replicate their own skill set amongst their team.

And a lot of people don't do this because

they get a scarcity mindset in terms of leadership capital, meaning I'm not going to teach my team how to be as good as me me because then they'll be better than me and take my job that's right yeah and that's not actually true if you're in an organization that understands what you're doing if you're in a good organization and you're replicating your skill set and you're a talented individual a skilled individual and you're replicating this across the standard bro

you're the most valuable motherfucker they got because that's the rarest skill that you could have is the ability to replicate yourself into other people.

And that doesn't occur with either one of those scenarios of saying, okay,

you can run free or, okay, I'm going to oversee every little fucking decision that you make.

And then there's also times where it does require you to step in and make the decisions. Like when they get so far off track that they can't see where we're going, that's okay.

Now we've got to get back in. Or like in the beginning of an organization, when you're developing the brand, you're developing the systems, you're developing all of the

things that are going to actually build your business. You don't delegate that out to your team.
You put your hands on it and get the system set and people run inside the system.

So there's a lot of confusion around this. There's a lot of dumb shit that you read online about this.
You know, it's similar to that conversation where people say, it's not about working hard.

It's about working smart. Well, I've never met someone who works smart and not hard that is actually fucking successful.
Okay.

Most of the people, when they hear work work smart, not hard, they hear, okay, well, I don't have to work hard. I could just think my way through it.
And that's not reality. You need both.
Okay. So

to anybody who's ever achieved anything, when you see these knuckleheads on the internet say things like that, like work hard or work smart, not hard.

I mean, just frankly, they sound like fucking idiots. Okay.
Like, and it's weird to me how many people

pay other people to give them advice like this.

And

fortunately for you guys, I've developed something where you're never going to need any of them again. So that's real.
Yeah. So the reality of this is, is that it's a balance.

It's a skill set that you must develop.

You're not always going to make the right decision, but just like everything else that we talk about on the show, when you make the wrong decision, you just have to be smart enough to recognize and humble enough to recognize that you made the wrong call there and to not make that call in the same position again and make the adjustments.

So leadership, I think a lot of people are really confused by it because they think,

you know, in culture, man, we've been brought up to believe that, you know, oh my God,

you know, this guy's just such a good leader because he's charismatic. There's lots of great leaders that can't stand on stage and give a talk or be charismatic.

It has nothing to do with that. That's just an additional tool that if you have,

it'll help you. But that doesn't make you a leader.
Like a charismatic individual is not by default a leader, but a leader with charisma is much more effective.

So there's all kinds of things like this, and there's all kinds of paradoxes like this that exist.

And the only way you could know that is if you've been down the path, you know, you're not going to know that if you've not built anything real, which is 99% of these, these idiots on the internet, right?

And these young kids that don't know any better, They think, oh man, I want to be 23 and have that car and shit.

And it's just, you know, they don't see that two years down the road, that guy's going to be out of the game, exposed as a fraud, has never done anything.

And honestly, dude, it's a predatory problem that we have on the internet of bad information being sold to people that sounds good, that's not effective in reality.

And the people selling it don't even know it's not effective because they've never been down the path. So, you know, like I said, this thing that we built is going to fix all that.

But yeah, man,

it's an evolving skill set that you have to, you know, leadership is not something that you ever get to and you're like,

yeah, man, I made it. I'm a great leader.
That's not how it works, dude. It's, you know, I've been leading people for 27 years.
Okay.

I still feel like a rookie. I still analyze my leadership ability.
I still work to get better every single day. It's something that you learn over time that never ends.
It never ends.

You never get to a point where you're like, oh, I made it as a leader. I'm a great leader.

The minute you start thinking that is the minute that you fucking fall off the cliff because it's an ego problem. I love it.
I want to hit on this because I think this is big.

And I know our audience, like, got a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs, right?

Hardworking killers, right?

There's this age-old, you know, quote, if you will, that I know everybody's heard it. If you want something done right,

you have to do it yourself. Yeah.

What's the truth and reality of that? I mean, we're talking.

Yeah, if you're dumb and broke, yeah, that's what people say.

Do you ever hear a rich person say that?

Yeah,

that's a dumb, low-income, low-IQ thing that people say when they're frustrated. It's not reality.
It's just something they say when they're pissed off. I mean, dude, in reality.

Yes, there's times where you're going to have to do things yourself, especially in the beginning.

However, if that's your M.O.

for your whole life, you're never going to become an effective builder of teams and culture and people because you have already accepted the belief that no one can be as good as you, which isn't real.

Okay. You're not that good.
You have people on your team that could actually be way fucking better than you.

And if you're smart, you load your team with people who are smarter and more skilled and better than you in the position that they're in. And then you rely on them.
Okay. So

this idea, you know, yeah, I understand the saying and yes, it's been beat into people's heads, but it's not, it's not true. And it's based in this wrong think

and ego and hubris that I am so much better than everybody else that only I can solve the problem.

And if you have a leadership issue like that inside of your company or even with yourself as the owner of a company, that company is not going to do well because you can't do everything yourself.

It keeps you from becoming what you're trying to become. Nobody's built a crazy successful company without the help of other people.

And yes, we have AI now and you need less people than what you needed before, but you still need to understand how to lead people properly and get them to be consistent with, you know,

their actions towards the mission at hand. And that, you know,

that's not something that you can just do on your own. Now,

are there times where your team's going to piss you the fuck off and you're going to say, get the fuck out of the way, let me do it? Of course.

But if you're a great leader, you use that as a learning opportunity and you say, hey, come here. This is how the fuck we do it.
This is why.

This is why. Okay.
So you don't just go in and do it and walk the fuck out and not use it as a coaching opportunity.

You come in, you show, you do fix it, but you show them how you fixed it so that next time, hopefully they will remember that and they will develop. Right.

Your whole goal when you're running an organization of any size, right? And like I said, yeah, I understand, you know, AI, we don't need as many people, or you don't, you fuckers don't get it.

You're still going to need people, okay? You're going to need smart people.

You may not need as many people, but you're still going to need to lead people, paint the vision, task out what needs to happen, understand

what we're doing, how we're doing it. And you need the whole team to understand it collectively for it to work.

And if you can't do that, And you can't coach these people along the way, you can't scale. You cannot fucking scale.
You can't scale. Can't do it.
Love it.

So it's, it's a, it's not a, it's not a skill of vanity. It's a skill of necessity.

You have to have it. Yeah.

Okay. And if you, if you do everything for people, they'll never develop.
If you let them do everything, they'll run it off the fucking rails. So there is no like concrete answer.
It's about nuance.

It's not this or that. It's both.
It's this and that. Right.
I love it, dude. I love it.

Guys, Andy, question number two, Andy. Hi.

Hi, Andy. Hi.

Andy, I'm 22 years old. I currently live in Orlando, Florida.
I've been an entrepreneur since I was 20, working full-time in the fitness and wellness space.

Over the last two years, I've been growing a really solid foundation and slowly becoming a person of influence for my community and demographic.

And honestly, I've loved every second of serving others. I've had multiple people close to me approach me with concerns that I'm stretching myself too thin.

The tone almost feels accusatory. Like, I don't know how to relax, or like something is wrong with me because I'm driven.

Meanwhile, I put my head down, get the freaking work done, and maximize every waking moment with something that will produce results.

I'm fully aware that to be in the top 1%, you have to be willing to do what 99% of people will not.

And I'm actually in a season of growth, expansion, pushing myself, and getting uncomfortable on purpose.

I don't plan on taking my foot off the gas anytime soon, but when you're hearing from multiple people close to you that they're worried about you, what do you do with that?

How would you handle it when the people closest to you keep saying they're concerned about your pace or how hard you push when you know you're doing exactly what you need to be doing to build a life you want?

It's very simple. Do you want their life?

Do you want what they have? Do you want to look like them? Do you want to earn that money? Do you want to live like they live?

If you do, listen to them. If you don't, don't fucking listen to them.
Okay, you already said it in your question. 99.9% of people will not get it.

And that goes for your fucking family, and that goes for your friends, and that goes for all the people you grew up with. They are on a different path than you, period.

And for you to expect them who are committed to a different path than you to understand your path

is a ridiculous misunderstanding of how this actually actually works. Okay, it's not even logical.
Like,

how am I going to learn Chinese? And then all of my friends know Chinese when I went and learned it. That's not how the fuck this works, bro.
You're living a different life.

You're on a different path. You're going for different things than they have.
And they are not going to get it. They are not going to get it.
They're not even going to get it when you make it.

They're just going to say, I'm so glad you made it. I always believed in you.
They're not going to remember the times that they said of all of these things.

And this is important for you to understand because our biggest doubters, our biggest detractors, our biggest people in our lives that put the most hesitation into our hearts and minds are the people that we are closest to when we start on a new path.

Because all of a sudden, you've said, I'm not going to live like this anymore. I'm now going to do that.
That confuses people. They start to say things like, well, what's wrong with how we're living?

And they don't like that. Okay.

When they have to address themselves and ask themselves why they're not doing things, they don't see themselves as the problem when they look around at everybody else and everybody else is doing what they're doing.

They see you as the problem.

They see you as the person who is delusional or who doesn't understand what they're trying to do or has bitten off more than they can chew or is not humble anymore or not proud of where they came from or greedy or materialistic.

And as you go and as you become bigger, these little doubts and these criticisms get more and more and more and more and more until eventually you get so fucking tired of it that you move the fuck on from those people and you just say, fuck you.

Okay, you could be my friend. You could be my family, but I'm not listening to your shit anymore.
I'm going to go associate with people that are on the same path. And this is what we talk about.

going through the process of no man's land.

When you start out and you say, I'm going to become this, and this is abnormal to everything else that everybody you've ever known, which by the way, most people have never, ever, ever seen someone in real life go from zero to something.

They've never seen it. So how can you expect them to understand it? They're not going to.
Okay.

So you're going to move away from this group because you're so tired of them not believing in you, instilling doubt in you, putting negativity in your brain, telling you all the reasons why it can't.

And you're going to to get so fucking tired of it that you stop returning their texts. You stop returning their calls.
You stop talking to these people.

And they're going to say things like, oh, Andy thinks he's too good for us now. No, I don't think I'm too good.
You're not supporting me in what I'm trying to do in my life.

I didn't tell you that you couldn't come with me.

Okay. And that is the big issue with our first friend and family group when we start out.

If you're lucky, and when I mean lucky, I mean real lucky, you'll have someone in that group that says, no, you can do this. Yeah, you got it.
Because I've seen this happen. Okay.

But more than likely, you're not going to have that. Your parents are going to want the same for you that they have for them because it's an ego thing.
All right.

Most parents look at their kids and they say, you're going to be just like dad. Okay.
Well, dad goes to work for 60 hours a week.

makes fucking 60 grand a year, works his fucking balls off, and you've witnessed this your whole life.

And so when you start to make other decisions their ego comes into play a lot of times and it says

well he what's he doing that's not the right decision that's not that i did this that's the right decision because i did it they had they don't have the ability to check themselves and say

you know what i'm glad he's doing that because i made the mistake early on i bought into this and this did not provide what i wanted go out there son let's kick some ass that's rare okay the norm is they're going to criticize you they're going going to say you're crazy.

They're going to say you're fucking full of shit. They're going to ask you.
Are you sure? Are you sure? You know what? You're killing yourself for this.

Yeah, motherfucker, because that's what it takes. It takes that for a long fucking time.
I understand that you're not willing to do it, but

we're not talking about you. We're talking about me.
And so what happens is you start to distance yourself from these people.

And you start to find people who are on the same path as you, who want the same things you want.

And you're going to start to naturally integrate with a new friend group and the in-between part is the hard part the in-between part is the part where everybody feels alone and nobody believes in them and i'm so lonely and this and that and that's a real thing but the problem with it is that most people when they get in that zone of uncomfortable social interactions regarding where they're trying to go versus everybody else, they will naturally just go back to where they came from because it feels so uncomfortable and so odd and so foreign that they're like, I can't do this.

I got to go back. So they'll go back.
The winners in life continue to push forward. They start to integrate with a new group of friends.
And these friends are on the same path.

They have the same goals. They have the same dreams.
It might not be in the same industry or the same project, but generally they're trying to be fucking better. Hard is hard.
That's right.

Then what happens is that if you keep going, you will outgrow that group. Okay.
So if you think about it, let's just talk about it in dollars.

When you start out at zero and you're trying to make $5 million,

okay, you're going to lose the first fucking friend group. You're going to get in that first, the new friend group that is that, you know, they're all trying to get $5 million.
Okay.

And then you all get there. And then let's say you say, well, fuck now, I want 50.

Most of those guys aren't going to go to 50. They're not going to try.
So when you start trying to go to 50, they start talking like the original group did.

They start saying the same shit that the people said back in the day. They say, are you sure? You know, I don't know.
Do you think you can really do that? It might not be as harsh, right?

Because you've already proven yourself a little bit. But then you go out back into no man's land, okay? And then you get up to 50 and you find a whole new group.

And the process keeps repeating itself over and over and over again throughout your life.

The friends you have today as an ambitious young man will not be the circle of, they might still be your friends. You might still drink a beer with them.

They might still come over for your parties, but they're not going to be the people that you confide in or talk to or have deep relationships with because they do not fucking understand what you're trying to do.

When you move into that second group and then that third group, eventually you get to a point where your reputation for what it's already understood.

This motherfucker is going to do what he says he's going to do. And by the way, I want a piece of it.
Can I buy buy into this? Can I do this? Can I be a part of that?

And that's where after the time is proven, this may take, you know, 10 years. It might take 15.
It might take 20. I don't know.
It's different for everybody. But I can promise you this.

When Mark Zuckerberg was 25 years old and worth fucking $50 billion,

his friends and family weren't saying, are you sure?

They were saying, hey, can I give you 2,000 bucks, bro, and buy into your shit? And so what happens is, is your reputation starts to speak for itself. And then you don't get that shit anymore.

You get the opposite. You get the fuck anything Andy touches is fucking going, bro.
I want to be a part of it. Okay.

And things get a lot easier. Yeah.
But this is very uncomfortable because it's misunderstood because it goes against what we want to believe, right? We want to believe.

that our friends from high school and our friends from college and our family and our cousins and everybody is just going to be like, yeah,

you're fucking doing it the first time you go out and try to do something, bro. No.

And by the way, have you given them anything to believe in? Have you ever done anything? Have you ever got your ass in shape? Like, think about this.

How many motherfuckers out there are fat as fuck, okay?

But they've told themselves and their friends and family 4,000 times they're going to get in shape. It's going to be this year.
But they never do it. Okay.

So now every time they say it, people kind of like,

cool, man. Like,

you know, they stop believing because you fucking eroded the trust that you would have that's neutral. Okay.
You've now built negative trust.

And when you become proven for a long period of time in business or in life, that trust automatically, it doesn't go to neutral.

It goes to max trust where people are like, hey, dude, this motherfucker is going to do what he says he's going to do.

And that is the power of becoming a highly disciplined human being that can adhere to any path that they choose to go on. The problem with people is not that they don't necessarily know what to do.

In business, yes, you need to know a lot of shit, but just in like, let's say, getting in shape or other goals, it's not really that they don't know what to do because the information is out there.

We have free information fucking everywhere. It's that they don't have the ability to adhere to the plan in front of them.
And if you asked yourself a very real question

of what would your life look like right now, today,

if

every single goal that you ever set for yourself for the last 10 years or the last five years, you had followed through on.

If everybody's being honest, the answer is my life would look a lot different. I'd be in better shape.
I'd be making way more money. I'd have better relationships.

Everything would be better.

I'd be walking around like that version of myself that I see inside that I know I'm supposed to become, but I'm too afraid to become it because of this or that or this, or I'm too embarrassed to go.

You would be that if you had the ability to adhere to a plan. The ability and the discipline and the toughness to stick a plan through is where the fucking rub is for most people.

They do not have the ability to execute the plan. Okay.

And by the way, I built something that's going to make it dummy-proof. So there's that.
But the point is,

is that when you develop that ability and you start doing everything that you said you're going to do,

you're not going to deal with any of this disbelief anymore. People aren't going to fucking doubt you.

They might hope you don't win because they don't like you. And now you're dealing with a different type of thing.
Yeah, that's right. That's different.

And by the way, you know, there's nothing that strikes

fear in the heart of your competition as someone that fucking they know for sure that if they set their mind to something something and they're going to say they're going to do it, they're going to fucking do it.

Like it scares the fuck out of people.

It just does. What can you do? You can't do nothing.

You can't do nothing because I'll run you the fuck over. And they stay the fuck out of the way.

But you got to earn that. And that takes time.
And that takes you

looking your family in the fucking face right now. And if they persist and persist and persist,

sometimes you got to look at them, your friends and family, be like, bro, I don't want what the fuck you want. Okay.
So like, do you get it? I'm not trying to be fucking broke.

I'm not trying to be maxed out on my credit cards. I'm not trying to drive a fucking Denali and pay $2,000 a month for it, not have any money going in my fucking bank account.
Okay.

I'm not trying to be fucking look rich. I'm trying to be fucking rich so I can handle my motherfucking business.

So the next time you fucking say something to me like that, realize I don't want anything. that you have.

That'll shut them the fuck up. Let's stop talking.
Yeah. That's right.

But I mean, you know,

you do have to do that sometimes. Yeah.

You know, or you just remove them. Yeah.

Dude, it's so it's profound. And you like, it is abnormal.
It's abnormal. But like the part.
Winning is, listen, dude, winning is abnormal. Winning is not a 50-50 endeavor.
Yeah. Okay.

It's not like football. This is the one thing where

people have a hard time understanding. Football is a great metaphor for life and business because it requires the team effort.
Everybody's got to execute. A lot of translations.
Right.

But one of them that doesn't is the win or the loss. Okay.
Winning comes in steps. Losing comes in little steps back the other way.
Okay. And you're constantly fighting that battle.

It's never like, oh, I just won. That's why that question that every stupid motherfucker asks on a podcast,

let me ask you something, Andy.

When did you know that you made it? The fuck are you talking about? If I knew I made it, you think I'd be in here fucking eight days a week? That's right. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't,

you never make it. You never make it because it only takes two or three bad decisions to fucking be back where you were at any scale.

And the truth of the matter, when it comes to entrepreneurship, is this.

Most of your life is going to be spent on the line, meaning you are literally on the line of making decisions. that could ruin you on a daily fucking basis or build you on a daily basis.

You never get to this point where you have so much money and so much capital and so much momentum that you couldn't fuck it up with two or three decisions.

And if you recognize that as an option that's true for Jeff Bezos. Okay.
Jeff Bezos could fucking smoke some crack and come up with some crazy ideas.

He could do all the drugs and shit and he'd be like, oh, freaking, we're going to do, and he could ruin the company in theory. Okay.

The bigger you get, yes, sometimes it's the harder it is to bust apart. But running a big company and having a lot of money is just a different version of running a small one with no money.

It's just the the stakes are higher. So like the minute you start thinking, oh, I fucking made it, that's the minute that you get crushed.
That's the minute when you fall off.

That's the story of the rich guy who had it and lost it. That's where that story starts.
It starts the minute you tell yourself, I fucking made it, period. Okay.

So all of you guys out there running business podcasts and putting out personal development content, when you have a high-level entrepreneur sitting in front of you and you ask them, how did you know when you made it?

You sound like a fucking idiot. Just so you know.

Because they don't look at it like that.

I look at my days on a 24-hour fucking basis. Did I win this motherfucking day? Period.
Because that's the only thing I can control. Tomorrow, I'm going to try to win that day too.

And that's how you look at it. You never look at it as this macro scale of, yeah, I fucking made it.
Now, are there moments where you look around and you're like,

this is pretty cool? Yeah.

But like, those are fleeting moments, dude. It's like what we talk about, you know, you're only going to feel like you win one or 2% of the time.

The rest of the time, it's like getting your balls kicked in, just like everybody else. And it doesn't change with how much money you have.
It just does, especially if you built it yourself.

It just doesn't change, bro. You know, I get that

same shit that that kid is writing in about, I get the same shit told to me, but from the other place. You already made it.
Why the fuck do you do all this? Why are you trying to do these things?

Why are you building new things? You don't have to do that. Well, dude, no shit.
But I'm a fucking builder. I'm a creator.

I'm somebody who takes ideas out of the motherfucking air and makes them real. And guess what? I like that.
That's how I'm wired. I love that shit.

Just because you see it as work, I don't see it as work. I see it as a game.
I'm playing a game that I'm going to fucking win. Okay.

And, you know, we'll have people say, well, that's not the only game. Yeah, that's not the only game.
It's definitely not the game for you because you're fucking losing. That's right.
Okay.

I like this game. Yeah, that's my game and I like to play it and I want to win at it.
So I fucking put my time into it.

Just like I would, if I wanted to be the world champion Call of Duty player, I'd play the game fucking 12 hours a day. Okay, but that's not what I'm trying to do.

And so we have this thing in society where people who do not fucking understand anything about the ambitious drive and mindset because it's so rare. are constantly feeding those people bullshit.

And the internet makes it worse because you have all these people pretending to be shit they aren't, regurgitating shit that they think sounds cool.

And then you're taking it as, oh man, these guys really know what they're talking about. And they're feeding you bad shit.
This is why you have to fucking vet who you're listening to.

If they have not built a real fucking business, you cannot listen to them. They will fucking ruin you.
Okay. So

yeah, the point of the matter is this. That never changes.
Okay.

And if you can't deal with people negative and putting doubt in your head, and I understand, I don't mean this to be rude because I understand you're young It's your first time dealing with this But for everybody else if you can't get over this you can't win.

It's fucking impossible like you have to be able to put your blinders on plug your motherfucking ears and move down the path regardless of what anybody's saying dude You know how many motherfuckers told me I couldn't do what we've done with first form when we started it fucking all of them all of them Oh, you mean you think you're gonna you're gonna start a company here in St.

Louis. It's gonna become the the world's best sports nutrition company? Yeah.

You can't do that. And that was 10 years in the business.
Yeah. That was after I had 10 years of proof in retail.
Yeah. Okay.
And the bigger and the crazier and the more insane idea that you have,

the less people are going to believe it, man. And you just got to fucking do it.

And if you don't develop that ability to plug your ears and put the fucking blinders on or address it verbally, which very few people have, especially when they're young, you can't win.

Now, when you're older,

you know, if someone were to say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm like, yeah, man,

I'm pretty sure I don't know how to win.

Let's look around here. Okay, motherfucker.
Like, I know what the, I'm not taking your advice. Sorry.
You know what I'm saying?

And like, dude, you like, now I have a little smart ass fucking comment to it, right?

You know, oh, I don't know about that. Yeah, that's what everybody else thought too.

You know, and then you get in your fucking car that costs $5 million, you drive the fuck away. That's right.
You know what I'm saying? That's right. That's right.
Yeah.

that's right dude like it doesn't matter what people say bro like you're you got to understand

being an ambitious driven human being is one of the rarest

things on the planet and if you can't understand that and you expect everybody else to be like that

you're gonna go crazy they're not there dude you're one of a thousand

You're not one of a hundred. You're one of a thousand.
Okay.

So if you speak to fucking 999 people, they're not going to fucking get it.

So the expectation that you think you're going to communicate it and they're going to get it, and then all of a sudden start cheering, dude, it's an unrealistic expectation.

And by even having it, it causes us pain, right? We have an expectation that everybody should cheer and everybody should clap and everything should be great and everybody should believe in us.

And it's such a false expectation that it causes us massive amounts of pain on the inside because we're expecting it.

We're not thinking of it logically. We're thinking about it emotionally.
Logically, it makes sense. You haven't done anything.
So, yeah, they don't believe in you.

Emotionally, you say, but yeah, I'm me. And you should believe in me because I'm me.

Unfortunately, that's not how the fuck it works. Okay.
So, and if you need to collapse beforehand, like, yeah, dude,

that's the other thing. And there's a whole, that could be a whole fucking podcast, bro.

You know, the, you know, know the old saying in sports, like, don't read your own press clippings.

You know, when you have a bad game, don't read the paper. Don't read them.

But also, when you have a good game, don't read the paper.

Okay. That is a huge part of staying centered.
You cannot buy into your own hype and you can't buy into your own lack of hype. You have to understand who the fuck you are, what it is you're doing.

who you're working to become, what you're trying to build.

And you have to understand that most people are not gonna get it. And just because you've won doesn't make you great.

Just because you've lost doesn't make you shit.

You have to center yourself. And

this is where the idea of humility really comes into play, right? A lot of people look at someone like me who's outspoken and pretty flashy with their cars and shit.

They say, oh, that guy thinks he's fucking the shit. No, I actually don't.
I think I'm just a guy that pays attention to feedback really fucking well.

And I understand that when I hit a fucking grand slam, that I could have very easily struck out. And I understand that when I struck out, I was only an inch away from hitting a fucking grand slam.

Okay. And that is a mentality that you have to cultivate as an entrepreneur or as an ambitious person.

Because when you're winning and the world tells you you're great, if you buy into that, you'll get lazy. If you're losing and the world tells you you're shit, you start to believe it, you quit.

So you got to understand who the fuck you are and you've got to be able to balance that out inside your own two years.

And this is the power of having a um a mentor that has been down the path i'm not talking about johnny schmo from the fucking internet i'm talking about dude who's built real shit yeah okay or a woman who's built real shit so

anyway yeah i love it dude the point i feel like this i feel like if you pay some somebody money like everybody talks about getting scammed i got scammed i got scammed no

You're a fucking idiot.

Okay?

Like you're the one that pulled out your motherfucking credit card and paid the motherfucker thinking that they somehow knew some shit when it's very obvious that they haven't built anything real.

They haven't done anything real. They don't have any real life experience.
And you bought into it because you wanted to be rich quick. And you should be the secret.

You should take that as a very valuable lesson to you.

I love it.

I love it. We got one more question.

It's actually. I got a little long-winded on that one, huh? No, we're good.
It transitioned perfectly. I think it's actually a great, great little final question for you, guys.

Andy, question number three.

Andy, how do you balance

feeling gratitude with how far you've come in business

with motivation to keep going and growing? I don't want to be complacent with where I am at, but I also don't want to be frustrated that I'm not where I want to be yet. Yeah.
Any advice? Yeah.

Before I answer that,

you got to understand, dude,

the ideas of meekness and humility and modesty are weaponized against the general public to make people feel bad for wanting more.

The hope is, is that if you beat this shit into people's brains, they will not try. They'll accept what they get, usually from the state, okay?

And they will say, well, I don't have much, but it's amazing.

And that is the goal. All right.
So you have to understand you are propagated to think small, be small, and act small for the sake of control. That is true.
All right.

Now,

move that conversation to the side. It's very, very important to your happiness that you do have gratitude for where you're at at the time.

If you do not have gratitude for where you're at at the time, even if you're at day one or day 1,000 or day 10,000,

it's going to be miserable. Okay, because you're always going to be looking for more.
You're always going to be wishing things were different.

You're going to be wasting your life dreaming of a version of a life that you're not living, which doesn't allow you to be present and enjoy the life that you're in.

So, gratitude is massively important.

Humility is massively important, but not the way society says so. Okay.

If you do gratitude right,

you should feel like this in the morning. Fuck, dude, I must have won the lottery, dude.
Like, I can't believe I get to be me. I can't believe that I get to wake up and be me.

Okay, that's how you should feel when you're doing gratitude right. I always felt grateful, even when I was fucking totally broke.
I was always thanking God

for everything I had,

even when I didn't have the things that I might have wanted. All right.
And that hasn't changed. And I think that's a huge aspect to people's quality of life

and their ability to succeed.

Because if you're constantly agitated and constantly unhappy and constantly thinking about what you don't have, that's energy that you're putting out that screams, I don't have it.

I want it, but I don't have it. And that sounds like a good thing, but it actually makes you miserable over time.

So

being grateful

and then being disciplined on top of it, okay, and then having a purpose, those are the three magical ingredients that create not only a successful journey, but also

a happy time along the way. All right.
People think happiness

is like legitimately like a destination that they're going to one day get to. and stay at.
That's not how the fuck it works. You have to create it through your own mental practices.

You have to create it through your own actions. Okay.
When you're disciplined and you're doing everything that you said you were going to do, you feel good about yourself.

You say, I'm somebody who can do the things. I'm committed to what I'm doing.
I do what I say I'm going to do. That gives you self-esteem.
It gives you confidence. It gives you self-belief.

It gives you all the things that make you feel good.

When you're grateful, okay, you cannot be grateful and be filled with that lack of energy at the same time. It's impossible.
Okay.

And then when you commit yourself something bigger than you, a purpose, you have the three ingredients to actually create happiness along the way. Now,

where this really screws people is

when society tells people, just be grateful for what you have. And most people hear that and they're like, yeah, you know, you're right.
I don't have much, but I, you know, I got it pretty good.

And that's okay. That's okay.
But if you're an ambitious human,

Okay, and you're somebody who does want more and you're being forced to just be grateful and be humble and be modest and be me, you're going to be fucking miserable, bro.

So we've got to understand there is a reality to these concepts and then there is a social engineering for sake of control around these concepts. Real humility is

absolutely necessary for the reasons that I talked about in the last question. If you are not humble enough to

understand when you're doing things wrong or that you could get better or that you don't know this or that, you can't get to a higher level, which is ironic because a lot of people will look at people who are very successful.

They'll be like, oh, that guy's not fucking humble, blah, blah, blah. No, dude, you don't understand.
He couldn't have got where he was without having that humility.

How the fuck would somebody go from zero to a billion dollars or more if they didn't have the capacity to understand that they didn't know what they don't know?

That they aren't as good as what they think they are. Aware of their mistakes.
Just because you see them living in a nice house and driving a nice car doesn't mean they're not humble, bro.

The true definition of humility is understanding that you are no better than anybody else and you are a result of the actions that you take.

And if that motherfucker over there on the corner had taken the same actions that I took, he'd be right where the fuck I was. I'm not better than him.
I took a different path than him. Okay.

The toxic definition of humility

is

saying like, well, I'm actually less than what I am. You know, you tear your own self down.
You put doubts in your own head. Say, you know what? I'm really not one of these successful guys.

I just come from over here. And,

you know what?

You're right. I just need to stay in my lane.
You know, there's,

that sounds miserable, man. That sounds miserable.
Bro, think if you're beat to death with this shit

and you're actually an ambitious person that knows in their heart

that they not only want more, but they're destined to be more. They know they were put here to make something different about the world.

And they never become that because because they're afraid to, because their family and their friends and society has told them, oh, you know, that's wrong. You're materialistic.
You're not humble.

You're not modest. You're losing, you're losing grip on, you've lost the plot.
You've, you know, all these things.

And then it traps you. And then you never become what you're supposed to become.
And by the way,

how many people would benefit from you becoming?

who you become it's literally a total fucking failure of your life to believe the shit that everybody else is living by and not understand that you are here for a specific reason to do a specific job, to create a specific thing inside yourself or outside that benefits the rest of humankind.

You have a gift inside of you and so many gifts, so many cures, so many life-changing products, so many... life-changing messages, so many stories of overcoming never fucking happen

because people's friends and family from the old days have beat this idea of modesty, humility, be nothing, do nothing, accept your gruel and shut the fuck up. Okay.
And that hurts society.

And by the time you're, you don't even have to be on your deathbed. Okay.

We talk about this regret thing, you know, oh, when you're on your deathbed, no, dude, you're going to get to a point where you're probably in your 50s or 60s and you're going to say,

fuck. I failed at what I was supposed to do.
I never did it. And now there's not enough time to do it.
You still got to live with that.

And now you got to live with that regret for the second half of your motherfucking life, dude. Dude, so

you have to understand, dude, all of these things,

the cultural,

everything that comes from cultural, the cultural norms. It used to be in America.
And I know we have international listeners, but I'm just going to talk about the United States right now.

It used to be when you grew up, you were encouraged to become anything you wanted. You were told you could be anything you wanted.
You were encouraged to do great things.

Successful people were celebrated. They were seen as the example of the American dream.
That is no longer the case. Okay.

Now we have a society that glorifies victimhood, that glorifies dependency, that says if you go out and try to make something of yourself, there's something wrong with you. You're greedy.

You're materialistic. You've lost,

you know, you've lost the ability to connect with people from, you know, you've changed, so to speak. These are the things

that literally ruin

human

kind because it keeps all, like, really think about this, dude.

Think about how many fucking ideas, cures, products, movements, messages, stories of overcoming that never exist because people have been indoctrinated to play small.

Dude, it's like.

You're failing your fucking purpose. That's the point.
Okay. So

you can't listen to that shit. You got to understand that there is an application for those words.

And it's not the one that everybody fucking tells you. You know what I'm saying? It's not, it's not what everybody tells you.
So practice that gratitude, but keep fucking moving. Yeah.

Because you're not where you want to be at yet. Yeah.
That's not. And it's very, it's very easy to say, I am very grateful to be where I'm at and have the opportunity.

to do what I'm trying to do, even if you don't have it. Yeah.
Right. Like, that's a great way to be grateful and still acknowledge that you don't have what it is that you want, right?

I have the opportunity to do it. Thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to try and do this.
That's a good place to start. Yeah, you know, yeah, that's real, bro.

Dude, yeah, guys, Andy, I mean,

that was three. Yep.
All right, guys, we will see you tonight, 7 p.m. CTI live.
Don't be a hoe. Shit,

we're from sleeping on the floor. Now my druid box froze.
Fuck a bowl, fuck up stove. Counted millions in the cold.
Bad bitch, booted swole. Got her own bank rope.
Can't fold, that's a no.

Headshot, case cloak, close.