Andy Frisella - Build Your Mental Toughness!

0:00So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now? maybe stunted in your progress well if you are i want to recommend a place for you to go called growth day growthday.com forward slash ed it is the number one personal development app on the planet it's got all kinds of high performance techniques in there courses accountability journaling live speeches from some of the top influencers in the world including me it's an overall environment to change your life growthday.com forward slash ed hey guys very excited to share today's conversation with andy fursella with all of you you will probably never hear a more real conversation in your life about what it takes to become successful in every area, particularly as an entrepreneur, and the emotions that come with it, the real behind the scenes, the real vulnerable raw things that come with paying the price to do something great with your life.

0:49This one is a real one. At the same time, it's got really strong language. And when it comes to my show, I always want to warn you. Andy uses strong language to emphasize his points. It's the way that he speaks. And so if you have young ears around or you're offended by strong language like the F word, this interview is not for you. If you can handle that, it'll change your life. Can't wait for you to hear it.

1:14This is The Ed Myron Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So today's a really special day for me. I get to share with you one of my best friends in the world, if not my best friend. and I'm sitting here today, brother. I told you this off camera. I think I'm sitting in the most impressive room I've ever sat in in my life. Like literally, this is probably the most impressive room I've ever sat in ever and it makes me think about when I met you seven years ago. Seven years ago, I met this man and he was already very, very successful. We were sitting in his garage. There was these four GTs and Lamborghinis behind me.

1:50I'm like, who the heck is this dude? And I remember walking from your garage to your headquarters. going, I think I want to coach entrepreneurs with this dude. This is, this dude's real. Little did I know that you'd create a show someday called real AF, but I remember thinking this dude's real. And now I find myself seven years later sitting in this room with you smoking cigars. I am at least a glass of peanut butter whiskey in by the way, everybody. And I'm really proud of you. Thank you, man. I want to tell you that I'm proud of you. I love you. And just to give you guys context, this man, when I met him was already very wealthy, but we walked from his building to the headquarters he had which was about i don't know 20 000 square feet something like that at the time yep and now you have seven years later 800 000 square feet how many employees uh about 500 about 500 employees in-house in-house and then we have a bunch of remotes built built an incredible company an incredible personal brand he's one of the most influential people on the planet and he's my partner in the arte syndicate that we coach entrepreneurs together and we're going to have a remarkable conversation today with andy frisella welcome brother thanks bro good to have you yeah i appreciate uh while i light this cigar up yeah we're gonna keep this casual today light it absolutely um look man i appreciate first and foremost our friendship and our relationship that we've built over the last has it really been seven years yeah has it since we did that fuck yeah oh that feels like a year ago i know what i'm saying yeah and um the brotherhood and the friendship and the you know it's being an entrepreneur is very difficult as you know and as a lot of you guys know and just to have you as someone that i can call and talk to during those difficult times um likewise has been aside from all the success one of the most valuable experiences i've had my entire life wow and so uh you know i look at you as a as a more experienced further down the road big brother that uh i'm very very blessed and fortunate to have to thank you bro i love you and i'm very proud of you it makes me i don't want to cry big dude here thank Thank you, man.

4:03Andy has a book out, by the way, that's brand new right now called The Book on Mental Toughness. It's incredible. And if anybody on the planet is qualified to write this book, it's my friend here. I'm just telling you straight up. He's the creator of the 75 hard program that I don't know. How many hashtags total on social media? Shit, dude. It's well over a billion on TikTok. Well over a billion. I think it's actually a few billion. Just on TikTok alone. Yeah, just on TikTok. It's in the millions on Instagram. am and you know it's become a thing where most people that do it don't even know they don't even know you're affiliated they don't even know i did it yeah i want you guys picture this so you're talking about someone's they've gone to 800 000 square feet four buildings first form is this massive brand this is someone who at a very deep level understands branding and marketing he's one of the few people that's why i partnered with him in our coaching program who's real at doing these things he's built one of the most remarkable brands on the planet in first form he's built this massive movement the biggest in the history of mental toughness and the fitness industry and 75 hard the rt syndicate our coaching program is the unprecedented leader in entrepreneurial coaching so let me ask you this to start brother i want to get into a lot of tactical stuff one thing that you and i are both known for is tactical stuff what happened like what's gone on with you the last seven years that's caused this stuff to explode like this by the way real af the top podcast in the world yeah i mean uh the mfco project before that which may or may not resurface yeah no it is it's coming back i know but i didn't know they knew right it's coming back it's coming back so like what's been some of the keys to you doing what you've done the last say seven eight years what's happened first of all i'm surrounded by killers dude like that's the thing we got to understand you know what i'm saying i've got tremendously successful smart intelligent people around me in every direction so my brother who's the ceo of first form now um my executive team the people who show up there every day these are incredible people and um they do they do the rowing of the boat right and uh the truth is what happened was is is you know everybody developed everybody leveled up everybody got better and um you know i don't think there's anything magical about it i think it's basically what we talk about all the time with people you know, which is executing day in and day out, day in and day out for, for years.

6:24And as, as things, the more, the more days you execute, the more they compound and they compound and compound and compound. And eventually the growth goes from gradual to, to steep. And I think over the course of our business life, if you own a company, you go through many of these phases where you go, uh, very slight growth or even flat for a while. And then you go up and then you go very slight growth and then you go up and you know when people think of of entrepreneurship or growing a brand or business a lot of times they think it's just a straight line or it's just straight up and and dude as we know just kind of like the meme you know it's like this yep and uh and i think we just um you know i think we figured out a lot of things on how to how to really get good at what we do and and really what it comes down to is great people doing great things to help people with what they're coming to our business for which is in my case they want to get more fit they want to get mentally better uh and you know with our affiliate program they want to make some money yeah so we do a good job at all three of those things serving the need of the customer in an obsessive way the thing i think of the most of with you is culture you're a culture builder and that culture has allowed it to grow exponentially even without you driving it all the time but you've been the driver you're giving it to sal and you're right in your businesses but the truth is like the brand has been you the driver has been you i think one of the things that you talk about better than anybody is like because of social media and most of the bs that's out there is i think people underestimate if we're just gonna have a real conversation me and you about what do we talk about behind the scenes because that's what i get asked what do you and andy talk about behind the scenes here's the truth we don't talk usually when things are going great we talk when things are not going great yeah and i think if we're going to have a real conversation that helps entrepreneurs or just humans today we need to let them into our lives like the real life i'm sitting in a room right now that's just a mind-blowing room there's 30 cars in here yeah collective value of these cars is what in this room roughly probably around around between 30 and 40 million 30 40 million dollars of cars plus the building the house that's attached to this a former president of the united states lived in grant like it's crazy right it's way harder than people think yeah it's way harder It's way more debilitating to be an entrepreneur, mentally taxing, emotionally taxing.

8:42I sent you a video a few weeks ago of a very successful guy who got asked in the interview, hey, if you had to do it all over again as an entrepreneur, would you do it? And he or what would you advice would you give yourself? And he says, I don't think I would do it. Yeah. And we both went, I don't know that I would either. If we're being really real. Yeah. Talk about that just from your perspective, how the real stuff of being an entrepreneur, mentally emotionally and physically the toll that it takes on somebody not the pretty stuff that they see everyone's in turks and caicos everyone's tan and partying and in nightclubs but the real stuff of building something great how hard is it on all those aspects i think it's harder than anybody could possibly imagine that hasn't done it um and this is why i get so frustrated with the current state of the environment of entrepreneurship on the internet yeah because we have a lot of people who haven't really built anything they've maybe built a little cash flow but not any asset or not a real company.

9:36And they tell everybody that entrepreneurship is for everybody. And unfortunately, entrepreneurship isn't for everybody. It's statistically only for seven to 8 % of the people. And only 1 % of those people actually ever become millionaires. And when we statistically break that down and we look at the way it's marketed, it bothers me a lot because I think a lot of people get sucked in who would be tremendous entrepreneurs, tremendous contributors what's an entrepreneur somebody who is a part of a brand who takes ownership of the brand who operates at a high level and cares and and helps to build whatever it is that's being built so they work inside a company yes okay yeah and i've got i'm blessed to have just unlimited amounts of those kinds of people um and i think when we talk about the mental toll and this actually leads into why the book was written okay and why 75 heart was created you know a lot of people are confused they think i'm out here trying to be david goggins right the fuck i am i'm trying to survive yep you know and um that takes a certain level of toughness and as you know contrary to what a lot of people think i struggle a lot um i have real struggles my my i struggle mentally there's a lot of pressure it's a lot of pain it's a lot of frustration and it's extremely difficult.

10:53And, um, I feel an obligation to be honest about that with people, because I feel like, because everybody looks at it on the internet as it's like, it's such an easy thing for everybody to do. What happens is, is that a lot of young people get sucked in and then they can't get it done or they can't win with what they're being told. And because they're being told a false reality of it, they have a false expectation. And so when they get in and they're like, holy shit, this is actually really hard. They blame themselves. They think it's them. And I see this every day. I see this in my DMS. I talk to people and they, you know, um, so I just feel like it's better to be honest with people about how hard it really is and what it really takes so that you can prepare yourself for the journey.

11:39And I think that's the proper way to present entrepreneurship, which is why I'm so big on mental toughness. because as entrepreneurs, you know, we are, we are actively choosing to walk the unbeaten path, right? Like we are actively choosing to do a life that most of our friends, most of our family, most people are never going to understand and they're going to attack you for it. They're going to say, Oh, you know, why, why, what do you, why do you think you're too good for everybody? What, what do you, what more do you need? Like, you know, you remember where you came from or you still mess like the amount of negativity that comes with doing things outside the norm of society as an entrepreneur is so fucking hard to deal with that you have to be prepared to deal with it.

12:24And then not only deal with it, but also learn how to leverage it. And, uh, you know, the truth of the matter is, man, and I talk with Emily about this all the time and I talk with you about this all the time. Um, it's hard as fuck and it beats the shit out of me. And like, dude, I feel at 25 years in business, first form is only 14 years old, but I've been in the same line of business for 25 years with supplement super stores. I feel like an old man sometimes. Me too. You know what I'm saying? Like I feel, I feel like, and then when I do the math, how many hours I've worked, I've worked a full lifetime.

12:58Many lifetimes. Yeah, already. Many. So, so it's, you know, I get a little frustrated. Actually, I get highly frustrated with the way that it's presented in real life. You know, there's a lot of fake shit and it really doesn't bother me from an aspect of people are cheating. People are going to cheat in everything that they do. That's the nature of human beings. But what bothers me is the good people who are honest that want to build something that gets sucked in. And then, you know, what I think about is like how many good ideas, how many good businesses, how many cures, how many good solutions are lost?

13:29Because the expectation of the path is painted to be something that it isn't. and people who would otherwise succeed if they just knew what to prepare for quit and then us as human beings in business lose out on a lot of good things yeah we're cheated out of their greatness because they've been presented a picture by the way you're exactly right the value of what you're talking about is immeasurable for everybody listening to this because being an entrepreneur is so difficult mentally physically emotionally by the way i think it's worth it yeah but and sometimes i wonder whether it is i i do too so i mean i really do and But I think this is the real talk because when an entrepreneur begins to experience these things, they're like, well, this isn't what I see.

14:13I must be doing it wrong or I'm not cut out for this or my business doesn't work because I'm feeling all these things. And we're one of the few two people, maybe the only two. There's probably somebody else. It's like, actually, if you're experiencing all of this heat setbacks, financial catastrophes, emotional catastrophes, people stealing from you, suing you like they shouldn't, you're probably on the actual right path as an entrepreneur. And all stages are difficult. So, hey, guys, as you know, I've partnered up with my good friend Brennan Brouchard, who's created the greatest personal development system that has ever been designed called Growth Day.

14:48There's everything from journaling to accountability programs, live messages every Monday from myself and other influencers. There's an opportunity for you to get courses that would cost thousands of dollars completely for free. It's incredible. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed and check it out. One thing most people don't see with you because the story becomes dated because you're so successful now is I want you just to tell the audience because they may not realize this because, yeah, we're in here with, you know, I don't know. You have hundreds of millions of assets now. You built a company that's a billion dollar plus brand.

15:22And even at this stage, it's not roses and bubble gum most of the time. But the first decade for you. It's harder now. Really? It's harder now than it was in the beginning. It's harder than when you were living in the back of a supplement superstore? No question. Okay, tell them about that and then tell me why it's harder now. Well, that's how we started. You know, Chris and I started in 1999 with$12 ,000 from painting the stripes on parking lots. we had a buddy who had a striping company who was gracious enough to give us a job and at that time it paid very well for a couple of young kids right we were making like 20 bucks an hour which back then was like making like 100 bucks an hour right so we were able to save a little money and start this business and um the first store we we bought the shelves at home we literally bought the shelves at home depot we built the counter out of particle board from home depot and like uh metal roofing and shit like our friends and family helped build it and uh that's how we started our first day we sold seven bucks our first inventory order was ten thousand dollars that we financed on credit cards um which we got totally screwed on i thought we were getting a good deal that was my first business lesson you know um and dude like we just started and uh and you slept in the store yeah for on and off for the first three years slept in the business what you make the first five years the first two first three years i made nothing like we didn't make anything and this is the other thing we both worked other places to kind of keep the business open stay on that yeah before we move off i think that's another thing entrepreneurs need to hear so did i i stock shelves at night the first two years i don't think enough entrepreneurs are hearing you may need to have a job outside of your business to stay in business well you know how like the young guys now they talk about side hustles right yes like so so like for me the side hustle was the store, right?

17:09If you were, if you were, if you're today in today's language, right. You would say the side hustle was the store. My main deal was doing these other jobs. And then I took the money there. Chris took the money there and we kept reinvesting in the store. And, um, you know, the first time I got paid was three years in, uh, I got paid$695 a month. And then for seven years, that's all we made$695 a month. So for the first 10 years I was in business, um, now remember this is a different era no social media no way to get your word out none of that um the first the first 10 years i made 58 380 combined combined for 10 years not a year total yep and by the way the reason that matters and the other thing you said matters just i love how our brains think similarly i think for a real entrepreneur that's still a three to six year window it may not be a decade if you're doing things right but you're going to go through two three four five six potential years of no profit potentially in order to build something that is profitable for a while.

18:09And it's not get rich quick. In fact, if you got rich quick, I see these guys getting rich in two or three years. I'm like, that's someone who won't be rich in a decade. Correct. Because you don't learn the lessons along the way. If you know the delay gratification and the beating that you take when you first start something is actually necessary because that's where you learn most of your skills. Most of the things that we teach these guys that you talk about in your show that I talk about my show and that we teach in Arte or to whoever would come ask us. Those are things we learned in the beginning.

18:36Those are things we learned when it was really fucking hard. How's that harder now that someone's looking at you, they're like, dude, you slept in the back of a supplement superstore for a few years. You made 58 grand the first decade. And then first form starts to grow. You become a brand MFC. That part was fun. Right. That part was that part felt easy. Okay. You know, like that, the, the, the part where everybody's kind of seen me in my life, that part felt easy. Okay. When I say it's getting harder now, the reason it's harder, a couple of reasons it's harder now. One, we're entering a phase of quote unquote big business, right?

19:15It's no longer 10 of us in a room or 20 of us or even 50 of us. And we can say, all right, guys, this is what we got to do. And everybody goes and does it. Now we have to coordinate a massive amount of people to go execute. Right. And as you know, coordinating a massive amount of people to execute is very difficult. And so there's that. That part is very difficult. The other part is, you know, when you get to this level of business, for me, it's almost like you're starting over because you don't know any of that shit. Like you don't know. I don't know. I didn't. I do now. But I didn't know the financial lingo.

19:49I didn't know how to, and the reality is to get to that next level, that big business level, you have to create partnerships and you have to work with people because there's, like we talked about when we did my show, you know, the 20 year room, right? There's, you have to start playing ball with the bigger players. Otherwise they keep you out of the game because these people own the market at the top of the game. So it's just, it's just different dude. And isn't it also the pressure of having the responsibility that's what i was going to get to yeah it's the the amount of like these guys who are all sitting in the room with us i love these fucking guys yeah those get those people at hq i fucking love those people yeah and like knowing that you're responsible and that they've invested in their lives in into my project that we've started so long ago our project is a tremendous amount of fucking weight to bear you know what i'm saying these people have families they have kids they have people to provide for and if like if we don't if we if i make the wrong call or we make the wrong move or we do something wrong there's consequences that are outside of us exactly and and that's that's a lot i think also as you get older that becomes more of the forefront like dude you know when you start getting to be able to take care of yourself and you know you're not starving anymore and you get to the point where you can do some cool shit like both of us have been able to do you start to like look around and you're like well fuck man all these people they got to win too yeah you know what i'm saying i think i'm gonna tell you something about you okay that's the thing i'm most proud of you is that right there is that no no wait let me just say it's real because people don't people see a side of you that's like this just in crazy intense he's pissed about what's going on on social media he's pissed about what's going on in culture they don't understand the nature of where it comes from and i'm one of the few people that can give people context, very few entrepreneurs.

21:43They don't care. They get to a point. I'm just gonna be in real. They build their company up. Then they just decided to exit. Who cares what happens to everybody else? And you have this thing about you, which is probably why you've been successful. You're really hard on people. You're a hard dude to be around. You're a hard dude to be in business with. I'm in business with you. You're a hard dude to be friends with. You are. But, but by the way, you're also, if, if my car broke down in the middle of the night, I just I said this to somebody yesterday about you. That whole analogy, I know for sure who I would call.

22:09Yeah. I know it'd be you. Yeah. And so you're also a great friend to have, but you're hard because you set incredibly high standards. Yeah. Right. And you care deeply. And the thing I admire most about you, I just want to say this to you, is that the challenge is if you're one of those people and you're nodding, you're like, I care about people too. You're in for a difficult ride once your business gets big too. Yeah. Because now you've got your customers you care deeply about. You've got the people that work with you you care deeply about. You've got society you care deeply about. And this stuff wears on people.

22:39And it's the thing about you that I admire the most. It wears on you. I think it's almost like any great leader has that, right? But I want people to know that about you. The other thing that I want, I want you to, I'm going to ask you this in real time and I want you to answer it honestly. For me, my greatest strengths are my greatest weaknesses. When I harness them, they're great. They've also been the things that have hurt me the most in my life. And then for me, I would say one of my great strengths is my intensity level. I run real hot I thought I ran the hottest of anybody I've ever met until I met you and then there's I don't know maybe I handle it differently than you I think I've been good for you you're you're you've gone through that maturity process I haven't gone through yet yeah but I see you doing it yeah but to talk about that for a minute so you're you're one of your great gifts it's not people don't know it's actually your brilliance and your marketing mind and your branding which we'll talk about in a minute but from an emotional personality trait you you got to run hot michael jordan tom brady andy frisella whoever myself at my level whoever it is elon musk you you cut open these humans they're a little bit crazy yeah right and if you're a little bit crazy you i like you but for you i want you to be as probably no one's ever asked you this before on camera that is one of your great strengths it is also one of the things that is hard for you in your life too right like this is the truth like so how do you feel about that sincerely like do sometimes you wish you could just lose it sometimes you just go i want to throw my hands up man and like i don't want to care anymore i don't or if you have accepted like i'm going to be crazy and you're going to see me at 65 years old and i'm still going to be nuts because i mean you look at these guys that are who are you like politically it doesn't matter there's like 70 80 year old dudes trying to run the world still right like there's just some people that are just wired for crazy yeah and maybe they just need to accept that's who they are and i ask you that because there's a lot of people listening to this because in their family they're the crazy one yeah their version of it in their family they're the unreasonable one they're the crazy one they may not yell and scream like you do but in their family they're like everyone's like what is wrong with you yeah right and maybe there is something slightly unhealthy about it right or wrong i had an interesting conversation with uh zoltan who's the yeah from five finger death punch he's a brilliant man i told you about this yes and we were sitting he was sitting exactly where you're sitting we were talking and he brought up we were talking about some of the issues i have with running hot because he runs hot but he's very calm and um you know one of the things that i've been working on is trying to accept that as reality because when you look around when you're wired that way and you're wired for for winning which is the truth um i hate fucking losing dude i hate not being competitive i hate being bad at shit and it's not about winning like to me it's about i fucking hate losing and um i would say that the fact, the combination of me being wired with hating losing and me being as tense as I am is the reason for the success 100 % personally.

25:53Um, but it's also the reason for, you know, a lot of failed friendships. It's also the reason for, um, you know, maybe when I was younger, I would deal with people the wrong way and actually hurt them. Um, so there's some regret that comes with that and there's also a lot of self-analyzation that comes with that that basically you know you look around at everybody else man and you see especially right now with victim culture right like you see all these people getting attention off of the things that have gone wrong in their lives and i don't talk about those things that have happened to me i don't talk about the bad things in my life like we've all had bad things i'm looking at one there's a scar on the left side of his face he was stabbed yeah most people don't know that yeah yeah and uh I think the underlying truth is that, yeah, it creates a lot of wins, but it creates a lot of difficulty too, and a lot of mental anguish because you're not like everybody else.

26:55When you're built different than everybody else and you have this desire for more and this desire for achievement and this desire to win, everybody else looks at you like you're fucked up. And they'll tell you that too. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why can't you just relax? Why can't you just do this why can't because i'm i'm just not built that way man and um as i've gotten a little bit older i've gotten better at accepting it um and it's sort of embracing the fact that this provides a lot of good but there's a lot of there's a lot of things and they make that you have to deal with that come that aren't so good it is interesting because sometimes when i'm with you i'm like i wish i could get them to wind down a little bit yeah you know and then there's this other part of me brother that i'm like i i have friends that are like different than me politically like you and i don't agree on everything politically or socially or um the personalities are different i have other friends that's okay bro because like it's it's it you can be wrong once in a while well i appreciate it but i but like i wouldn't i wouldn't i don't think i think unreasonable people change the world yeah they do and i like that there are unreasonable people no matter what form that takes.

28:05And the unreasonable people change families. Unreasonable people are the one. And so however that manifests itself for you in your life, if you're listening to this, I think weird equals rich and normal equals poor. And I don't mean that just financially. I mean, in life. Like, bro, you're a damn roller coaster. You're a roller coaster. And you know what? The ride is worth it because life would be boring without you. And the world would be boring without unreasonable, what would the world be like without Steve jobs? What would the world have been like without Henry Ford? Right. What would the world have been like without some of the great leaders we've had, you know, geopolitically around the, around the planet, great entrepreneurs, advanced culture, right.

28:47And they change families. And so if you're listening to this, stay unreasonable, but have some grasp have what I think you've had happen the last three or four years and i take credit for this some of it is you become a much more self-aware person yeah for sure and i think self-aware that's a fair that's a fair comment too like you should take some credit for that like real talk because being around you like you're one of the only people that when i do get upset you you help me work through it as opposed to just reacting and that's something that i i truly fucking appreciate thank you bro you know like the the one thing i could say about the people that uh around me is that they have a lot of fucking grace yeah you know what i'm saying they also have a lot of gratitude andy yeah and that's important look there's certain people in the world that just shake things up all the time and they're hard to be around and they win championships yeah okay that's what belichick does that's what phil jackson did that's what great leaders you saw jordan talk about it in his documentary perfect i mean he fucking was crying about it perfect because like he's out here on the court demanding the best of all his teammates and they fucking hated him for it that's right and that bothers him and now you know it bothers him and by the way some of them to this day still don't get it but you know what they got from being around him rings championships wealth notoriety which is now their whole identity correct yeah that's right do you you say something that i love and it goes to 75 hard you've then created things in your life though to give you some mental peace and fitness so not only does it develop mental toughness for you but like we'll put it up on the screen right now if you're watching youtube and if you're not i'll describe it what did you weigh at your heaviest well i don't know but the heaviest i ever saw on the scale was 350 350 yeah so probably a little bit heavier than that yeah that was once i took got the courage to get on the scale okay so you had been heavier than that yeah and now just so y 'all know like this is a what are you 245 something like that yeah 250 and he's a big dude and he's shredded and he's in great shape.

30:45So you've not only just changed your brand, you've become, you've become wealthy, you've built multiple big brands and you've changed your body. Okay. And so you've been, you, you have created a catalyst for change in your life. How is it 75 hard? Is it doing hard things? Is it cold plunges? Like what's the stuff? Is it all of that crap? Like what has changed you? Cause here's the other thing about you. I'm just going to say, I'm watching your face. You never spend any time taking any credit for it. You do not allow yourself, even as we sit here, to look around here. And where we're sitting is the most impressive room I've ever sat in in my life, okay?

31:26And you've done some remarkable things in your life. My frustration for you as your friend is, I wish you'd enjoy it more. Same time, same time success leaves clues very few humans have changed their body their finances their brand and their businesses to the extent you have the last decade on the planet listen to me on the planet okay and by the way also even though also the way that you treat people is you've always been kind behind the scenes you you're great with people bro off camera you literally said to him i heard you you just i want everyone to hear this then i want you to answer the question we were lighting up these really good cigars yeah and he asked about them and then you handed him a cigar yeah right this is this is someone that works with you that is behind the scenes on the camera and i i heard this just so you know and you literally because people that see you screaming on tv all the time okay and you literally said to him hey bro anything you ever want or need just ask me and i'll give it to you Yeah.

32:28You just said that off the camera to this guy, just so people know. So give yourself a little bit more grace and credit. Okay. But how have you changed all these things? Someone said, Andy, how have you changed these things? Your answer would be what? I'm a systems person. In business, I operate on systems. In personal life, I operate on systems. And I got very successful in one area of life on systems alone, mainly the powerless system that I talk about. Powerless system. Yeah. I know what it is. Yeah. The powerless system is, I believe it's episode 16 on real AF. If you want to go listen to it, it's just a systematic way to work through your day.

33:06Most all successful people, people think there's magic to it. There's not magic to it, dude. If you win the day, if you win one single day, if you can win one single day, you have exactly the amount of magic needed to achieve anything that you want. And every, i believe that every single person can win a day um and all i did was figure out a system to where i could track my days and see how much i was winning and so i was able to build good company and and and a couple good companies and financial success and things with that system uh but what i realized is that you know i wasn't going to be able to get to that next level without handling this the body he's pointing to his body mind body being um and and some things happened to me around the time that i i discovered and started thinking about this one of them was i was really sick i had pneumonia and i missed work for like this is like 2014 15 and this is just a first realization of what i how i came about this i realized that by i was sick i couldn't go to work and I was checking my bank account my bank accounts going up and at that time I was I thought I was rich um and by most people's standards I was um but I I was watching I was miserable dude I was sick I was watching the same movie on tv every day like 10 times a fucking week and I'm like this I had this like massive realization and it was very simple it was like fuck this is why rich people kill themselves and that's what like came on to my being and i thought about it for a second i'm like dude you have a much bigger fucking mission ahead of you it's not just take care of you it's build something that other people can have their dreams in as well and um which is something that you know you talk about a lot and so that got me started and i was always i was always mystified by people who were mentally tough i never had mental toughness i It wasn't like I was an athlete in high school and I was I was good gifted athletically, but I was soft.

35:11You know what I'm saying? And I looked at people who could stick to a program or follow through or people who could, you know, stay, keep in shape. And I always thought, why did they get that gift? And I didn't get that gift. And I thought of it wrong. I thought of it as a gift or a trait that they had when in reality, mental toughness is an actual skill that we need to develop. and once I figured out and I got my mind kind of on the on the track of like okay this is not a trait this is something I need to develop that's where like the pieces started coming together for 75 hard and live hard and uh you know I worked a couple years really hard I lost 100 pounds but I was still soft and uh and then I met James Lawrence the Iron Cowboy okay and he came on my podcast to mfceo project and he said one sentence to me that kind of made it all go together um and really kind of made 75 hard come come to fruition um he said you know to develop mental toughness you have to intentionally put yourself in hard situations on a daily basis and overcome them and that intentional hard that part of the intentional intentionally do hard shit is the part that kind of made me the pieces come together and uh and then 75 hard was born because i picked all the things that i had done over the course of my life when i was operating at the highest level um i thought about them for a long time right and then i just did the 75 hard myself i fucking got on the podcast i said hey i'm doing this thing 75 hard who wants to do it i mean a shit ton of people did it with me and they had incredible transformations and uh and that's kind of how it was born and so for me dude like when i started thinking of it as a mental thing and not a physical thing the game switched to me because dude you know how i am competitive right like i don't want to like it's it's one thing to say like okay i'm not in the best shape it's another thing to say you're not in the best shape because you're you're you're mentally soft as fuck and you're not you're not competitive in that area and so that flipped it for me when it became a mental test as opposed to a physical altering that I'm trying to do, that's what switched the perspective for me.

37:21And I think that's what switches for most people because we're told in diet culture, get in shape so you can look good at the pool or put your clothes on or go buy normal clothes. When you're 350, bro, you can't buy much clothes. And when I started looking at it, I didn't have control. Like someone could set a beer in front of me no matter what time of day, no matter what I had going on, no matter what I told myself I was going to do that day and I'm fucking drinking it. and someone like I could walk into a restaurant and I would have in my mind the meal that I should eat. But then as soon as the waitress comes over, dude, I'm ordering pizza, I'm ordering wings, I'm ordering beers.

37:55And I'm telling myself this lie in my head, which is, Hey, don't worry, dude, we'll start tomorrow. You know, you work hard, you've been successful, you deserve this. And I started becoming aware of my internal dialogue around these things. And then I got pissed off that these inanimate objects have control over me like like when i started thinking about it just at that level like a fucking beer or a piece of food has fucking control over me that offended me you know what i mean like that pissed me off i started making those things the enemy mentally and um that's where i connected it all and that and like dude i've been able to maintain it pretty pretty good you know um for the last seven eight years

38:40so you're on to something i want to ask you about by the way first off that you became aware like i said you're more self-aware so here we go this is kind of the root of what i think you stand for in your work and i know you mean this in a kind way i think when people see you yelling at everyone i think if they don't know you well they'll think this dude thinks he's got everything together and he's arrogant yeah but what i know and i mean this is a brother i'm i'm trying not to get emotional when I say this, but like, I know all your insecurities. Yeah. And I know that a lot of times you're still looking at this stuff like a fat dude.

39:13Yeah. I'm a fat dude. Right. And, and so I want to go to this work because this contradicts most of what everyone's going to hear in personal development. And here's the truth. You're right. And they're wrong. And here's what it is. Uh, you just got to love yourself as you are. It's a big thing in personal right now. You're perfect as you are. Yeah. You're amazing as you are self-love. Okay. Now, Now, you and I both know what that means. I mean, self-loathing and self-hatred is not a healthy thing. Right. But self-delusion is a more unhealthy thing. Correct. To tell yourself everything about you is perfect and you're okay.

39:51So you don't say this in an unkind way. You say this as somebody, I want everyone to hear this before he says it. He says this as someone who has lived way overweight. Yeah. Who has lived with not being proud of himself. who has lived with being ashamed of himself and angry at himself and heavy and been suicidal many times since I've known him. If I might be frank, right? So what do you say now that I've set the context to this notion of self love, love yourself as you are, you're perfect as you are, show up as you are, as opposed to being self-aware and allowing yourself some pain and discomfort because that causes you to want to move away from things about you that don't serve you, that make you unhealthy mentally or physically so speak to that well first off i think anybody that watches my content no matter what i'm saying you should understand i'm talking to other people like me i'm talking to the past version of me yeah and i'm not for everybody not my message isn't for everybody it's for people who are wired hot who want to fucking win who are having a hard time and the reality of life is this the world's fucking relentless and it will not stop beating your ass until you wake up and start beating it back and um you know when i see self-love and all this shit i do understand where they're coming from where those people are talking to people who are on the brink right and they think their entire world's crumbling and they're telling them it's okay but i actually think that's the wrong message i think the right message is this hey this is how it is if you don't go hard this is what you're going to get if you do not try hard to develop yourself and get off the bench and get in the fucking game.

41:31And I say that out of a place of love and caring for people because I want them to feel better and I want them to do better. And I know what's not going to get them better is just accepting themselves and all their shitty behavior and all their vices and inaction and procrastination and fucking low standards is creating the way you feel. And so when we tell people that self-love is just accepting ourselves who we are when who we are is a combination of unacceptable standards and bad behavior. I personally, I believe we're violating our covenant with God. I, I look, I don't have kids, but if I did, I would want the kid to be the best version of themselves.

42:16And if I were to give that kid all of his gifts and all this ability and all this, all this upside, and they were just say, well I'm perfect the way I am I would feel insulted because I put you here for a reason and that's how I feel like God looks at us when we don't capitalize on our gifts and I feel like that's what I feel like I feel like God put me here gave me some tools I think the journey's supposed to be hard but for me to do what I'm supposed to do when I'm here is required it's part of the deal that that why I'm here you know and I think that's for everybody and I think if we all live like that and we thought about that just a little bit the world will look completely different because we have a lot of people who are just coasting who are who are hearing the self-love talk right and then they're they're hearing it in the toxic way which is just accept yourself and your shitty standards and that's denying the world of gifts and and solutions and inspiration and stories and i mean do we have a whole generation of people coming behind us they got to have something to look at you know what i mean like we did and uh i just take that very seriously and i think it's real and when we break down the meaning of life you know a lot of people just see it different than me they see the meaning of life as being a fun enjoyable journey and maybe that can be for some people but i know that's not what i was here to put so when i speak and people hear me and they might say what the fuck he's too much well dude i'm too much because i fucking love you man yeah i'm too much because i know you got more in you and i know you can do better and it takes a certain kind of person to really resonate with who I am.