REAL AF with Andy Frisella
822. Q&AF: Fear Of Failing, Reframing Your Mindset & Competitors Copying Everything
Mon, 16 Dec 2024
On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on how to confront the fear of failing when setting big goals for yourself, how to reframe your mindset when trying to develop a competitive mindset, and what to do when your competitors try to steal every move you make in your business.
What is up, guys? It's Andy Frisella, and this is the show for the realists. Say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness, and delusions of modern society, and welcome to motherfucking reality. Guys, today we have Q&AF. That's where you submit the questions and we give you the answers. Now, you can submit your questions a couple different ways.
The first way is, guys, email these questions to askandy at andyfrisella.com. or you go on YouTube in the Q and AF episodes, drop your question in the comments and we'll choose some from there as well. Other times throughout the week, we're gonna have CTI. We've been on a little hiatus for a little bit, but we're gonna get right back to it. That stands for Cruise the Internet.
That's where we put topics on the screen. We speculate on what's true and what's not true. And then we talk about how we the people have to solve these problems going on in the world. Other times we're gonna have real talk. That's just like five to 20 minutes of me giving you some real talk. And then we have 75 Hard Versus.
That is 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 rebuild their mental framework and take back control of their life. Now, if you're unfamiliar with 75 Hard, it is the initial phase of the Live Hard program that you can get at episode 208 on the audio feed only.
208 on audio feed. It's not on YouTube. It will give you the entire Live Hard program, top to bottom. There is a book available. You can get it at andyfercella.com, but it's not necessary. The whole program is for free at episode 208. Check it out and get it going there. There's a fee for the show. The fee is tell a friend, all right?
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Oh, got me.
Yep.
I always try to time this shit up. I'm like, oh, I got time. Let me take a little sip-sip. What's going on, man? Nothing, dude. What's up with you? Oh, you know, man, listen. You know, I think everybody listening, they know that I don't have a good experience with the pools. Yeah. So I haven't been doing that. But I've been doing something else. What's that? Down in my basement, man.
I sent you some pictures. Yeah. I've been doing some work, man. Yeah, you're like making your own little cabinet.
Yeah, bro.
Shit's clean, too. Yeah, it looks good, dude. You inspired me, man. How so? Because you redid the bar lounge. I didn't redo it. I paid for it.
But you had it done.
I mean, isn't that the rule of life? You know how to do something or have enough money to have somebody else do it? Yeah. That's like the rule of life.
Yeah.
You know? And I know how to do it. And I fucking love that shit. And... Like, yes, I've been down in the basement, man, doing some work. A little Bob the Builder. Is that your, like, man cave down there? What is that? No, I have one room in the house. Yeah, I know. And that's just, like, that's it. And that wasn't it. No. Okay.
So that is not your room.
No, not mine. That's Alex's. Everything else is Alex and the girls, man. But, no, man, we were, like, doing some funk sway work in the basement, you know, trying to just get it all right. Because, bro, like, listen, the problem with kids, man, and I'm going to say it because I know nobody else will, kids have too much shit. That's the problem. Like, it's fucking, like, everywhere you step.
Yeah, you're stepping on Legos and shit. Fucking Barbies and fucking shit, man.
Like, dude, it's terrible.
Yeah, you ever step on a fucking Lego?
Not yet, like, but I'm sure I'll get there. That's the worst. But they got too much shit, man. So we've been, like, trying to, like, feng shui the basement out, you know, like, to make it a little bit better of a setup. And we had this, like, deep, like, corner in bed or whatever. And I'm like, we got to put something here. And yeah, man, so I've been grinding, man. Good. I've been grinding.
It looks good. It's nice to do some shit with your hands every now and then, dude. For sure, dude. It just makes me feel manly. Very manly. Yeah, man. That's about it, man. It's Monday. Let's get into it. We've got three good ones for you guys, as always. So with that being said, Andy, guys, question number one. Andy, I think I have been struggling with setting big enough goals.
This year, I set a goal in my business to do 100K in revenue, and we are going to do over 300K. I am looking to the new year and looking at setting goals, and I think I might be afraid to set even bigger goals because I don't want to fall short. Where do you find the line between setting a large goal and being realistic? It's not that I don't have dreams of the biggest goals.
I just don't like falling short. How do you do this, Andy?
First of all, it depends on how big you want to go, okay? If you want to be big and you want to build a big life and you want to be mega successful, you got to have big goals. And the thing about big goals that aren't realistic is that big goals inspire big actions, which produce big results. And realistic goals inspire realistic actions, which produce regular realistic results.
So it really doesn't matter if how you set your goals, but you need to understand how this works. All right. A lot of people, they want to hit their goal and they want to say, oh, I lost five pounds or I made a hundred thousand dollars and that's fine. But the truth of the matter is the highest achieving people, they are resetting the bar for their goals before they even achieve the goal.
I can't tell you the last time I achieved quote unquote a goal and was like, man, I'm
is great i hit my goal that's not how high level high achieving individuals think they set a massive goal and then when they realize that they're going to hit the goal they get close to it and then they raise the bar again so it's like you never actually end up hitting the goal but you move past it every time and that's how championship people think that's how high level people think and you
We have all these people out in the world who really haven't accomplished a motherfucking thing telling everybody, oh, you got to set realistic goals and take small little actions and, you know, you got to, they don't understand it because they've never built anything of any sizable nature.
If you want to be excellent and you want to build something huge and you want to have a big life and you want to make a lot of money and you want to kick ass, You better set some big fucking goals and follow it up with some big fucking actions because you're not going to ever set realistic goals and then have the tiny little realistic actions produce the result that you're trying to get.
And I know a lot of people try to block this out along the way. They try to say, well, this is a little milestone and that's my next goal. And this is a little milestone and that's my next goal. And that's fine, except the actions that are taken in those little steps are always little. They're not massive. And we're capable
of producing massive action and building massive results like dude it's not that much harder to take action against a massive goal than it is a small goal you have x amount of energy that needs to be expended you have x amount of time that needs to be applied and the time and the and the energy that need to be expected for a small goal and a big goal are really not that much different
So if you're going to be working and you're going to be putting the time in and you're going to be sweating and grinding and be frustrated and do all this shit that you got to do, you might as well try to be the best in the fucking world at it because it's going to take the same amount of time and energy anyway. So that's how I think of it.
I think a lot of people really fuck themselves by listening to idiots on the internet who have never fucking done anything except maybe write some shit. Like we're inundated with advice from who? From who? You guys read these meme pages. You read these mental health pages. You read all these. Who the fuck are these people? They're writers. What have they accomplished?
Oh, they took a pencil and they said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, bro, we got to listen to practicality. What produces results, okay? And we are mind-fucked by the internet because there's so much information and there's so many opinions and hardly any of those opinions come from anybody with any real-world results to point at. All right. Especially with the mindset psychology shit.
Like I see so much garbage on the internet that people read and take seriously. That is terrible fucking advice. I see them repost it. I see them try to live by it. I see them try to curve their life into these ideas when the fucking advice is wrong.
i could tell you that for sure because i've been down the road right so we have all these people spewing all this and people are listening to it and they don't know what to do and one of the things that we hear the most about is setting these small realistic goals but i'm here to tell you every massively successful person in any area of life that i know sets massive goals and they followed up with massive action
Yeah, how would you address the fear part here? Because, you know, he's saying, like, even if he sets this big goal, he's scared of this falling short. But are you really scared of falling short if, you know, it's still, like, way bigger than you would have fucking landed?
What the fuck does it matter if you set a big-ass goal? Dude, there's a saying. Everybody's heard it, okay? Shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars. Okay? That's one of the meme pages. Yes. But there's actually truth to that. Yeah. Because if you set your goal to run 100 miles, do you think you're going to be able to run a marathon eventually? Pretty easy probably. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
But if you set your goal to run a marathon, you're going to get to mile fucking 19 and be dogging your balls off. OK, this is what I'm talking about. You get far better and make far more progress and win way more by setting massive goals, massive action. And you may never hit that goal. You may become 10 yards short.
But the thing is, is that when you're 10 yards short, then you make a new goal and then you pass the goal that you set. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. Yeah. Like, dude, these the fucking Internet is ruining people's ability to think differently.
and follow practical advice, because there's too many fucking nobodies who haven't done shit, who aren't qualified to give any motherfucking advice, given it.
Yeah. Let me ask you this, Andy, because this is Real AF, and you pride yourself on telling people the honest truth, right? And in this concept, in this idea of setting these massive goals, I want to ask you, because, OK, yeah, you set massive goals, take big actions, get big results. What's the catch?
What would you say, just being complete honest, what's the one thing about having that mindset that kind of sucks?
Look, dude, here it is. Action plus time equals fucking results. And everybody emails in and they ask all these motherfucking questions. And you got all these people on the internet saying all this shit. Here's the bottom line, motherfuckers. You gotta do the fucking work. You gotta do it when you don't wanna do it. You gotta do it when you're hurt. You gotta do it when you're tired.
You gotta do it when you're sick. You gotta do it when you don't wanna fucking do anything else. And you gotta do it for fucking years. And that is the real shit, okay? Everybody that asks a motherfucking question about anything is ultimately usually trying to figure out how to get out of the fucking work. And if you... You can't win without that. You can't win without it.
So, motherfucker, I don't give a fuck what size goal you set. But you better show up every day and follow a big action or you're going to be fucking broke. I love it, man. Dude, I get tired of this shit. I get tired of fucking people when I've put 26 motherfucking years into my life to build this fucking life that I have. It would be 26 years January 1st.
coming to me like, I'm burned out in six months. I've been doing this for two years. I'm burned out. Then you ain't got it, bro. Okay? Because this is a fucking long sprint. You are sprinting as fast as you can for your whole life. That's what it is. Okay? And it's hard. And you can't get around doing the work. And you're not going to figure out how to do it.
You're not the first person in the world that's going to figure out how to do it without doing the fucking hard shit and putting in the time. You are not going to do it. So you have to ask yourself, Is this the life I really want? Do I really want to pay that price? And what am I going to give for it? What's it going to cost me? Because it's going to cost a lot.
It's going to cost you a lot of the shit that everybody else gets to live with. Or am I going to go live like everybody else and not beat my dick into the dirt expecting something that never happened because I think I'm the first guy ever to fucking get around to work. You understand? Yeah. Like, bro, it ain't for everybody.
One of the biggest problems with the internet is it fucking makes people think that entrepreneurship and building a company and success is for everybody. There is a reason it's rare. And the reason it's rare is because it's incredibly fucking difficult. And it takes a long time. And it has to be the focus of your day every single fucking day. And there is no relief. It's relentless.
It'll punch you in the face a thousand fucking times in a row and not give a fuck how bad you're hurting. And if you ain't wired for that, you better figure out how to do it. That's the entire fucking point of the Live Hard program, to build you into a mentally tough individual who has the fortitude, the perseverance, the discipline, the mental toughness to kick ass on a daily basis and laugh
when the world kicks you in the fucking face. Okay? That is what you have to become. And any of this shit that you guys think, where you think, oh, I can get around doing this, or it's work smart. Okay, motherfucker. Go do it then. Go do it. Let's see you do it. And what do you see in fucking six months? Oh, they're doing this. Now they're doing this new thing.
Now they're doing this new thing here. And the reason that happens is because they think that they can get around it or it's going to be easy. And so when it gets hard, they're like, fuck, this is too hard. I'm going to go over here. Well, you guys are going to be broke. That's it. You're going to be broke. Just accept it. Just say, fuck it. I'm going to fucking go live my life.
I'm going to scrape by. And that's fine with me because, dude, it's hard as fuck. And truly let it be fine with you. Yeah. Like, you don't have to fucking drive Lambos and shit, bro. Like, not everybody has to do that. Like, you know what I'm saying? You got to weigh what the fucking cost is. There's a heavy cost to living that kind of life. And it fucking costs you almost everything.
Right.
You see what I'm saying? Right. So... I just get tired of people expecting that this is going to be fucking easy. Or you're going to be the first fucking kid at 22 years old to figure out how to get around the work. Fuck, dude. If you figure it out, fucking call me. Tell me. 26 years, I'm doing something wrong.
Yeah, right. There's actually a perfect leeway into our next question, though, because I've met a lot of people, Andy, and I would say you tackle this in a much different way than I think most people, pretty much anybody does. And it's a great flow to our second question. So let's get to that. Hi, Andy. and I'm on my second round of 75 hard now.
I felt the first time for missing the small details, forgot a photo on day 42. I've read both books and listened to every episode. You talk about loving the fact that you're the only one out there doing the hard shit, but I can't seem to find that mindset. I'm on day 48 up in Canada, and today was zero degrees Fahrenheit with a 40-mile-per-hour wind.
It was hands down the worst outside workout I've done, and it fucking sucked. I hated every second of it. How do you learn to reframe that into the mindset you talk about? I want to have that feeling of pride for doing hardship, but I can't seem to see past the suck. Thank you for everything you've done. You love the hardship. How do you not?
How do you not when it's zero degrees and there's a fucking foot of snow on the ground and you're fucking out there and no one else is out there and you're doing what the fuck it takes and you look around and you can't see another fucking human for miles. You don't see a car. You can't hear anything. How can you not stop and be like, bro? I'm the only one. I am the only one paying the price.
I am the only one doing what's required. Everybody else is sitting at home eating fucking Doritos and I am out here in the fucking snow getting better. How can you not be excited about that? If you can't get excited about that and you can't find that mindset, go eat some fucking donuts and get the fuck up.
I'm being serious because you don't have the competitive nature that is required to fucking win. Okay. To win, you have to be competitive. If you're not competitive and you think that this is going to be easy, you're going to get stumped. All right. So it's competitive nature against all humans. Where the fuck is everybody? Oh, they're in by the fire. They're under their blankets.
How do you not fucking think that? So I can't help you because I'm so wired the other way that that's just what the fuck I think. I look around. I don't see anybody. I come in here. I come in wherever I'm at. And there's everybody's got the fucking clothes on, like their coats and shit. And I'm just like, yeah, that's right. That's why I'm me. You see what I'm saying? That's what the fuck I think.
And if you don't have that little chip, if you don't have that little cockiness, if you don't have that competitiveness, fuck, bro, you ain't gonna make it. It's too fucking hard. Now, if you're just trying to gain some, you know, you're trying to build some of this shit, You know, I don't know the answer because I've always been that way. I'm a competitive person. Everything's a competition.
Yeah, like I can't put competitive into you, bro. I can't. I'm sorry. There's been an entire generation of human beings that have been ruined by fucking bad parenting strategies, teaching kids that it's not important to be competitive and that everybody gets a fucking trophy and everybody gets to show up and be celebrated, even if they turn up last. That's not reality, bro.
And if you don't have competitive nature in your heart, if you don't have it in your soul, you cannot fucking put it there. It is either there or it's not there. So I don't know what to tell you, dude, but I can tell you this. I can't not look around and be like, yeah, that's right. I'm out here. They're in there. That's why I'm me and they're them. How the fuck do you not think that?
Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the thing, right? Like, you just make it like a mini game almost, you know, with yourself. You call it test days. Yeah. Right? Like, I mean, is that a good place to start? Like, just turning that into a game with yourself, just that one... Test days is a different thing, man.
Test days is like when the shit's so fucking hard and you don't want to do it and you can't fucking wrap your mind around even getting it started and you do it anyway and you pass the test and that's a test day. You know what I'm saying? Like...
we're talking about here is competitive nature and the ability to find the mindset of doing hard things that other people aren't willing to do like i don't really understand how you could do all these things that are hard and look around and see very few people doing it and not have a sense of pride and respect for yourself. You know what I mean? I don't understand that.
So maybe you just need to audit how you're thinking about it. And maybe you need to get a little bit of a chip on your shoulder and realize like you're doing a lot of shit that nobody's willing to do, bro. That's a big fucking deal. It's not a little deal. It's a big deal. Like when you're out there and it's zero degrees and there's nobody out, you should be saying, fuck yeah, I'm the man.
That's what the fuck you should be saying.
That's definitely what you think.
Yeah. It's the truth, though. It is the truth. Whoever's willing to do the fucking inconvenient hard shit tends to win.
I love it, man.
I love it, guys.
Let's get to our third and final question. Guys, Andy, question number three. Hello, Andy. Long time listener before Roro hit. My questions are, how do you deal with a competitor copying everything you do? From social media posts, copying parts we manufacture, to even trying to poach our sponsored races from us. I work for a UTV parts manufacturer and build race cars that win.
We are one of the leaders in the UTV industry and it's every day this company shadows our moves. We make a post about us shipping parts out. Two hours later, they make the same post. We post about a new chassis we developed. Here they come with some bullshit about being an innovator and making some part.
I'm honestly deflating because I've spent 22 years building who I am in the fabrication and welding industry. Appreciate your time. Is, what do they say? Is impersonation the highest sign of what the fuck they say?
No, they say impersonation is the highest form of flattery, but it's not. It's the highest form of unoriginality. And you have to understand what ends up happening here is people try to copy and then they don't realize that they're one, two, three years behind and they can never catch him. All right. So if you're the market leader, which I don't know if you are or not.
You say you are, but I don't know if you are. If you're not, you need to become that. You need to figure out how to get more eyeballs, get more traffic, become bigger. And it's not gonna matter if they copy you or not. There's lots of people that copy everybody all day, but there's always one company that stands above and sets the trends, all right?
And if you're the company who is setting the trends, you don't worry about what they're doing. You just decide what's gonna be best and you do those things. And yes, they're going to copy. You're never going to get people to not copy you. But you have to realize that it's not going to affect you because they're behind you already.
Like if I come up with an idea and it takes a year to put into play and then another year to actually fucking really start kicking ass. And then someone over here says, oh, look at that. They're fucking two years behind already. Yeah, they're always going to lose. Okay, this is why you have to think of your company as its own thing and not focus on what everybody else is doing.
When we're in business, it's easy to focus on everybody else and, you know, try to... You know, you don't want anybody else to have any business. You know, that's what you do when you're competitive. But at the end of the day, you have to realize, dude, that... if you're the market leader and someone else is copying you, they're never going to catch you because they're always behind.
They're always behind. And if you're the copier, you have to realize that you're always going to be behind and you're never really going to make it happen. And here's another thing.
If you are the market leader and you do have someone who's copying you and they're running ads and you've already saturated the market with ads and familiarity, when customers see their ads, they're going to think of you. Right. Okay. So, Dude, we used to have the same thing happen on our radio ads here. We would have little companies. We'd do a lot of local radio with our retail operation. And...
we'd have people, you know, straight up start copying our radio ads. And then our business would go up, you know what I'm saying? Because it was like a similar app or a similar product, but we had spent so much that people associated that ad and that product with us. So then the other company came in and spent money trying to get us.
And then they inadvertently press people to us because of the familiarity. So that's why you want to become the market leader. That's why you want to make sure that you're you know, grasping the market properly to become top of mind where, you know, even if they do copy, people are gonna think of you anyway.
Are consumers smart enough to see the difference? To know the difference? Like, to know the difference between the OG, you know, Fruit Loops versus the fucking knockoff Fruity Circle?
No, I mean, look, dude, that's another thing, is you gotta remember... There's customers for every price point and every quality point. So like just because someone does something similar to you doesn't mean they're going to get your customer. There's tons of nutritional supplement companies. We got our own customers. Yeah, they're not getting our customers, right? Our customers are ours, right?
Because we're an original brand.
And that's how it works, man. Yeah. No, that makes sense. I want to ask you this with 26 years of experience. Tell me if I'm right or wrong. Because I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of this entrepreneur, right? And this may be like an immature move, but this is something I was thinking about like I would do, right? I would fucking intentionally make...
not a bad move that's going to fuck me up, but I would intentionally make a bad decision, a bad move, post it, just to expose them and the copy. No, nobody cares, dude.
It's a bad move. Yes, that is ego, small business owner, irrelevant, emotional shit. You're not focused on building the best product. You're focused on outdoing this idiot over here. That's a recipe for losing yourself. So stay focused on what you do. Do it better than everybody. And the fucking cards are going to fall where they're going to fall. You know what I'm saying?
I love it, man.
I love it. I love it, man.
That's the only way to start a Monday, bro.
Yeah, bro. All right, guys. Pretty sure we're going to hit CGI this week. We had a lot going on. So we'll see you guys tomorrow.