Competition Drives Excellence, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO29

Episode Summary

In a culture that has succumb to the insanity that "everybody wins" and "everybody deserves a trophy," Andy Frisella says that competition is critical for success. It's good for business, America, and all of life. "Big Jim" Frisella, the MFCE-DAD, returns to the studio to contribute to the discussion.

Episode Soundbytes

Competitive Mindset Is A Necessity

"Developing a competitive mindset is a necessity of being successful. It doesn't mean you focus on other people's losses. It means you focus on doing the best you can."

The Will To Want to Be Better

"It’s the will to want to be better than the next guy no matter what you're doing. Even if you're sweeping the fucking floor, you want to do a better job than the other dude sweeping the floor. You've got to make competition part of your life. If you want to be better at patience, practice patience. If you want to be better at competing, start competing. The world is set up for competition. You look at a fucking video game made for a two year old kid—it keeps score."

When Everyone Wins

"When you try to make it so that everybody wins, what you're really doing is you're taking away people's drive to be great. You've got this cooperative learning bullshit in school now where you've got two smart kids and three kids who couldn't fucking flip their booger in the right direction for the group. You've got the smart kids doing all the work because their parents work with them, and you've got the three deadbeat kids and they all get the same fucking grade? It doesn't even make sense. That's not okay. That's not America. America is hard work equals reward."

Quit Shielding Your Kids

"Quit shielding your kids from losing. Let your kids lose. Let them lose and then explain to them that if they don’t want to lose again they’ve got to get fucking better. The greatest basketball player who ever lived was cut from his junior high team. Michael Jordan was cut from his junior high team. What did he do? He had a dad and an internal drive that said I'm going to get better and this is never going to happen again. I am never going to be cut from my team again. The rest is history."

Losing Helps You Learn

"When you're not allowing people to lose, you're taking away their ability to learn. In business, the most valuable times are the times you make mistakes. It's going to be the times when you invest $1,000 when it's your last $1,000 and you fucking lose it, because that $1,000 that you invest and you lose now, that's going to be a $1,000,000 in 10 years as long as you don't quit. It saved you $990,000 if you think about it the right way. When you don't lose, you don’t understand what it means to lose or how to benefit from losing; you're not going to progress or get better. That's what happens when everybody fucking wins. Nobody loses."

Helping Your Employees Grow

"I used to try to dictate to my team what they needed to do. What they would do is they would go do it my way begrudgingly. Then, I stopped, and let them go about things their own way. People would come to me and ask if their way of action was good and if it was something I knew they were going to fuck up (and it was going to cost me a little bit of money), I let them fuck up, because it'll teach them a lesson. You're teaching somebody through delegation. I had five managers at the end of my business. I never did anything. It was boring. If you want to run an autonomous organization of dudes who will not make your life miserable and who will run shit, you've got to let these guys fuck up and make mistakes."

The Number One Complaint Among Employers

"The number one complaint among employers right now is that employees, particularly young ones, don't know how to problem solve. Why don't they know how to problem solve? They never had to compete. They've never had to face a problem because they've been shielded from problems by helicopter parents. The great, great fruit that comes out of failure is learning to overcome it and to problem solve."

The Difference Between Losing and Being a Loser

"There is a difference between losing and being a loser. What makes you a loser is when you go home from a lesson and quit. That's what people don't understand. It's not about them losing. It's about you winning. It's about you being the best possible version of yourself."

Losing Isn’t the Norm

"It's not okay to fucking lose. You could justify it any way you want. If you're a parent you could tell your kids any bullshit you want. I'm just going to say it. It's not fucking okay to lose. It's not. Okay? You should avoid losing at all costs. If you do happen to lose, you figure out why the fuck you lost and you come up with a plan and not lose again. If you accept the losing you're going to accept mediocrity. There's no other way around it. When you're sitting around wondering why your kid can't get his fucking shit together and get out of your motherfucking basement, maybe it's because you taught him that it was okay to fucking lose. I'm sorry for all you fucking liberal hippies out there that think it’s okay—get your head out of your ass."

Earn the Right to Feel Good

"You have to earn the right to feel good about yourself. You don't just get the riches. You don't get the success. You don't get the accolades for just being born which is what I think the issue with a lot of the youth is right now. The popular word is entitlement, but that's what it is. "I deserve the world because I'm fucking special." No, you're not special. You're going to find out real quick when you get to be about 25 years old."

If You're Not Doing a Good Job...

"Dude, if you're not doing a good job, you should be told you're not doing a good job. You should have enough gall to be able to handle that criticism and go out and improve your performance. I've run into this in the past with salespeople. I fucking say, "Hey, what the fuck is going on with your numbers? They suck." "Oh, Andy, you're being mean." "No, I'm not. I'm trying to get you to improve so that you could progress further in life. If you can't improve from here, what are you going to be doing in two years from now?"

Self-Esteem and Ass Kickings

"If you've got a big dose of self-esteem it's probably because you kicked ass for the last six months. Hating the fucking taste of losing is the biggest motivator on Earth that I've seen. There are far more successful people that would agree with that than as opposed to how good it feels to win."

Bottom Line:

• Don’t be a bitch. Get in the game. Be competitive.
• Put yourself in competitive situations and understand that there are winners and there are losers.
• To be competitive, start doing competitive things.
• Learn from your losses, improve, and move on

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE