Being average as a formula for failure
Have you ever felt you are living an average life, that you fail to break free and achieve the best version of yourself? In this episode Andy shares his experience walking away from people and habits that were keeping him away from achieving his best self.
With a touch of humor, Nate Catanus, interviews Andy on how to work on a vision for your life in order to improve your future and progress. But on a more serious note they also talk about how businesses are rapidly changing due to current circumstances and how to take advantage of this shift to get to the top.
You will learn:
- The importance of mentorship.
- To identify common denominators in your business in order to build systems.
- About Mass Awareness Marketing.
- How to hire Virtual Assistants to have more time to focus on what you need to do to grow your business.
Follow Andy Audate on:
Website: https://andyaudate.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andyaudate/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andyaudate/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndyAudate
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyaudate/
Transcriptions:
Andy Audate
I want to change lives. I want to show people how to progress and their money. I want to show people how to progress their mindset. I want to show people how to progress in their brand so that way they can take care of their family. Take care of the finances and experience.
Nate Catanus
I would like to welcome the show. andy audate, who is an entrepreneur founder of the progression conference and the author of the book. No more average, Andy, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Andy Audate
Brother, man. I'm amazes me. Amazing, man. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Nate Catanus
Amazingly. I mean, that's double the amazing, that's like two times.So you wrote a book so you wrote a book called No more average. First of all, what's wrong with being average. I mean, c’s getting degrees, right?
Andy Audate
C’s getting degrees
Nate Catanus
C's get degrees out there. What's wrong.
Andy Audate
Well, I'm not even talking about the school average. Now I'm talking about your life environment.
What's wrong with being a man. It's a feeling formula, the formula for failure in life.
Nate Catanus
So what's to tell me about the book? What's what sort of the message and why'd you write it?
Andy Audate
So I wrote because I came from an impoverished area and I realized that the people that were around me were holding me back. So average is holding yourself back.There's actually three levels of, of this living in life or levels of acceleration in life. The bottom level, the worst level of part, that's the 3%, that's your homeless person. That's your person. That's your friend to find out if the average is going to be in the middle of that 95%. And the top is preeminent at 2%.
So average is literally saying I'm part of the large group of people I'm living the same. I've got the same income, I've got the same mindset. I got the same goals at the same, everything, and it's not living your true version of yourself. So no more of being what other people want you to be, but being yourself.
Nate Catanus
Got it. So how do people sort of, are you kind of advocating that people would level up go through those levels in some way, or what is, what are a couple of strategies that you're sort of helping people understand?
Andy Audate
So I'm teaching people how to understand how to, how to spot when they're being pushed by other people.To go after those people's dreams. So those are called outside influencers. So it's when someone says, Hey, I want to be an entrepreneur, but their mom is saying, Hey, why don't you, why don't you go to school and go to college and things of that nature. So you're saying, Hey, I want to be an entrepreneur, but your mom was saying, go to college.Hey, I want to run my own business. But your, your, your, your husband or your wife is saying, Hey, why don't you keep a job? So it's about being true to yourself.
Nate Catanus
Got it now on your social media posts, you encourage people to have a vision. So are you advocating for people? Are you advocating for like the legalization of psychedelics and why?
Yeah. Is that, is that people do mushrooms or is that something else does that mean something else? That's fine.What, what is, what do you mean by what do you mean by people should have a vision for their life?
Andy Audate
A vision, a vision for life is his imagination for the future, but having wisdom to be able to make the right path to get there. So in, in their personal life, as far as the economic finance relationship and health.
Nate Catanus
so there's no, like we don't, we don't want to do drugs as a shortcut.
Andy Audate
Nah, we ain't trying to do no drugs on the shortcut man.
Nate Catanus
Okay. Got it. Okay. So. So you have it. So what, what did the, what is your vision look like to give us an example of your life?
Andy Audate
Right. Alright, so, I'll give you an example of a past vision that has already experienced. I'll give you an example of a future vision and a past vision.I was running down on Figueroa street, which is the busiest street in downtown Los Angeles. And I'm running on the sidewalk because I'm trying to lose weight. I live in downtown LA and then as I'm running, this was four years ago and I'm running. I see this idea or this vision of myself. Literally speaking on stages and people's lives being transformed right in front of me and then progressing.
So then I said, Hey, I'm going to become a speaker. And that's when I decided to become a speaker. And now our host, the national conference, the progression conference, where I travel around the country transforming people's lives on stage. So I started with an idea in my mind, and then it shortly became an actual experience where I am.I'm doing that full time. And then a vision for the future for my current stage would be doing that vision of hosting that progression conference internationally and bringing that event to, or the places like the UK Africa and such.
Nate Catanus
Got it. So I'll want to get into that conference. So getting to the vision that you're at right now, did somebody teach you how to do what you're doing?What were some of the things that you had to do or change in order to go from where you were? So right now.
Andy Audate
So no one really taught me how people taught me different portions of it. And so this is why it's so important to get a mentor. I would probably do so much more if I had a mentor right away who really broke down everything for me right away.So this is why it's very important to get a mentor. because of that, when you get a mentor, they're going to, they're going to kickstart. So, for example, when I ran, I ran cell phone stores and owned several stores at a young age, 19 and 19 on who believed in me. So that's it. I opened up a business. I opened up that business.And then within my first six months, I made my first hundred grand within a year later, I made my first million. So I'm now 20 years old, this generated a million bucks. And I say the reason for that was because of the people that I surrounded myself with and definitely came from mentorship. The mentor that I was learning from had already done that multiple times.So it was easy for me to go and accelerate my business growth. So no one has ever taught me that in this business. However, by getting around the right group of people that thought bigger, it allowed me to also think bigger and play bigger.
Nate Catanus
So you said you made a hundred thousand dollars selling cell phones, some cell phones, and then you made your first million doing what.That's Holy cow. I didn't know you could do that.
Andy Audate
I own, I own that. I partner with T-Mobile and I have four cell phone stores. I have 15 employees working for me day in and day out in the morals and the busiest malls on the East coast.
Nate Catanus
That's incredible.
Andy Audate
So we sell hundreds, hundreds of iPhone, Samsung, then all these other brands that are blue bar, blue phone, all these other brands that were kind of generic.We ended up being the biggest dealer for those in the Northeast region.
Nate Catanus
That's incredible, man. That's insane growth. Is that all? Was that just your sheer willpower and just making it happen or how do you know.
Andy Audate
Well, well, I remember the first time I did the math, I remember I was at one of the locations, the kiosks in the mall, and I was looking at the numbers because I was, I was just head down focused for six months straight.And then I, then at one point I looked up and actually looked at the numbers. So it's kind of like, you know, if you just head down, focus for. Five years, and then you Google yourself afterwards. So I just wanted to see how I did it was the first one I wanted to see. I remember that day to a T it was my birthday.And I said, I wonder how much I've only looked at my business from a week by week standpoint. I never looked at it from a holistic standpoint. So I look at it from a holistic standpoint when I'm looking at the whole thing and I say, wow, wow, it's $106,000. And some change I came in, this is crazy. I remember the chair fell behind me because I was in shock.A hundred grand.Evan, then I said, I want to connect that if that can do a hundred grand coming from where I come from, which is a hood impoverished area. And me being who I am, which was, I mean, I was an ex drug dealer, overweight college dropout black guy from the hood. If I can do that and then make a hundred grand.Yeah. I can do so much, so much. So I set out to make a million and I ended up hitting the target afterwards.
Nate Catanus
That's incredible. So tell me about the progression conference. So who, who attends that and what do they get out of it?
Andy Audate
So entrepreneurs are tenders to scale to start, grow, and scale their business. So people who are in a place right now, where they want to start their business, they learn the key to determining factors and strategies to be able to start their business right away and generate income as soon as possible, as well as people who want to grow their business. So definitely the solopreneur.Wants to expand and reach more people through that marketing and then scale their business is going to be the people who are currently in a place where they may be generate income. Have a couple of employees who really want to expand to the masses and the systems and strategies that are taught at this event to be able to scale their business wide.
Nate Catanus
Got it. So now, if I am a motivational speaker and I want to come to the programming conference, a speaker. Yeah. I give motivational speeches.and so what I what would I learn if I wanted to start my business or scale my business there, anything you could share sort of tease that out.
Andy Audate
Yeah. One of the things that you would probably learn as that is to systematize your business. So one of the things that we've determined that works is when you record everything and you're able to see the common denominator between like, say, for example, all your transactions, every transaction has something that's common and it could be that they got this certain email, they got to know who you are before, and they ended up liking you through your, through the content.
Now what we recognize is that this common denominator you want to systematize it. So for example, in my business, something that's common is that right before a sales call, the people who actually purchased were people who knew who Andy was through my social media. So now it's a requirement for my team members to send them the content and have them view it that way they get to know me before.So that's why I'm not spending, you know, an hour telling someone about me. They've already learned about me through the content that I've created. So. I knew that worked. So I systematized it that every phone call now everyone has to go through some content, learn about me and then get on a call with me.another thing it could, could be just learning the processes that retain the customer in a business. So you'll see that there are people who drop and there are people who stayed out of the people who stayed, what was common in between them. Hey, there was constant contact between the company. To the client.Well, how can we systematize that and make sure that every single person who watches the product gets constant contact. So that's what you're learning about scaling. And just on top of that, and then just duplicating those roles. So more people can do that in the future.
Nate Catanus
Got it. And so that's, you, people would walk away with some sort of where they actually go through that process during the conference and actually walk away with something to then act on the.
Andy Audate
step by step systems for them to actually go out and do that themselves, to be able to start their business process, to be able to grow and scale.
Nate Catanus
Got it. And are there different types of bids? Is it all types of businesses or do you work with certain types of businesses?
Andy Audate
Any business that has a product or service for sale to the marketplace.
Nate Catanus
Got it. That's a lot of things.
Andy Audate
So that's a lot. So I'm not talking about the baby says that that's awesome.That's a lot. So there's some businesses that don't sell a product or a service. They just kind of operate on their own. They may have seed money from another store and they're not selling a product. They're gathering data. That's not the businesses that we serve. We're serving the businesses. I have a product or service for sales for the market.
Nate Catanus
Got it. Got it. Now you said in a recent post on social media, I'm predicting that in the next five to eight years, personal development and business growth gurus, you follow today will nearly be extinct. And the path we'll shift into in terms of who's on top. Right? So what are you trying to say about me?
Andy Audate
What I'm trying to say about you is that you have a prime opportunity right now to win.
Nate Catanus
Okay. I thought about starting beef and we're going to do a whole online beef thing and it was gonna be kind of a cool thing but that's okay if we don't do that. That's okay. So, so what, what's the prime opportunity?
Andy Audate
The prime opportunity is literally you can imagine that the world for the last for the last. 11 years. The world has been a small group of people. Who've been able to stack their dominoes faster than everyone else. As far as finances and living an abundant life and wealth they've been able to stack the dominoes.Now what happens in the last few months with this coronavirus and the quarantine is literally the entire economy. The scout rattled so much that everyone was. Domino's came to a screeching halt and flat on the floor. So that means we all have an opportunity to affect our dominoes right now. And so in recognizing that if you go hard and you expand wide and you get known in the marketplace, you get yourself.Yeah. Your content out there. There's a system called mass awareness marketing. And in mass awareness marketing, if you decide to promote yourself on multiple streams, And have a team of support, essentially run your business for you. You will succeed. And that means just getting, getting, getting known on multiple platforms.So that way, those people who don't watch videos, but read, they can read your blogs and still become a customer. The people who don't read and only watch videos, they can watch a YouTube video and become a customer. And the person who only is only on Instagram, they can become a customer because they like the pictures.And the person who only reads stuff on Twitter, but can't read long form. They'll become a customer of yours because they learned about Twitter. So I break down how to get on all those platforms. This is a prime opportunity for all of us to win. If you're a hundred percent committed and you're ready to grow and expand the current gurus that are running a business that are well known.I mean, in five to eight years, they're going to shit. They're going to complete shit, Mark, my word 2028, 2029. The people that you know, that are big and mighty and bad, they're going to be, you're going to say, Oh, I know him the same way that it was the same way that you knew, you know, older ODB and all these other rappers and all these other entrepreneurs from the past, in the nineties, the way you knew them, it's going to completely shift in the next eight, nine it's five to five to eight in nine years.
Nate Catanus
And is that because you think the level, the playing field is leveled and everybody has the same opportunity. I mean, aren't they in lead right now? Aren't they ahead of us.
Andy Audate
They're not, they're not ahead of us to completely not ahead of us because, because the challenges, the challenges are equivalent. So if you're talking to, if you're working with someone who has the actual, the person who has the, who, the person who has the most opportunity is the group.It's the person who started out at the bottom because the person who's the biggest right now, what they're trying to do in this certain circumstance, they're trying to maintain, it's grabbing, like trying to maintain. They're just trying to, they're trying to catch their chips, go grab their abdominals that they want Paso, their energy is going on, what they currently have or what they have.So they're looking down the person who is on the uprise, they're looking up and saying, this is mine. This is mine for, to take in the marketplace. So while the other person is looking down at the big right now, the person who's on the right hand side, who's going up, is just taking it for the taking. And now they're creating a system.Here's the keys they're creating. And in an environment where the incomplete economy has shifted the way that we do business between 2019. And before those systems, that those big guys that you see have, well, not work in 10 years. Well, not working five years, they need to shift and who's going to have the new technology is the people who's looking up because they're figuring out the problems they figured out and learning the problem and the new way to market to people in the new economy.When the big guys, they just did a really good job in the old economy, we are completely in a new economy. Let the playing field be at a complete level and it's time for new people to take over.
Nate Catanus
Now. you mentioned Domino's. A lot. So should I get physical dominoes and learn how to play? Is that what you're saying?That was a metaphor. I get it now. Metaphor. Sorry. We'll slow on the uptake. You mentioned you did mention mass marketing. Is that what you call it? Mass market awareness. So is that one of the strategies of today that's different from beforeis, is mass awareness marketing? Is what you're saying is that that's a strategy for today that is different from before.
Andy Audate
Completely different from before, because here's the thing. There's new technology right now, by the way, math is new technology that allows you to run your business virtually. So what people were doing before is when they were attempting to market themselves, they were limited on resources, financial resources.So number one, many of them were playing for office space. So their financial resources, their financial commitment went to the office. Number two, they were paying employees at a high amount of, of, of income. So their financial resources were completely capped. So it took them a much longer time. And mass awareness marketing.
You're utilizing the support of virtual assistants outsourced out of America. So in utilizing the system, you can actually pay people two, three, four dollars an hour to essentially run your business. When your competition in the old economy is paying their employees 25, $30 an hour, and even their employees are, are, kind of, kind of financially stuck at $25 per hour.
What's going to happen in the new economy is what happened 150 years ago. It's the first time I'm publicly sharing this. What's going to happen in the new economy is what happened 150 years ago. Everyone was an entrepreneur. You went to the shoe Smith, go get your shoes done. You went to the gunSmith, let your gun, you went to this house, you went to the bank and you work with the actual person who owned the bank.The economy's completely shifting where we're going back to everyone being an entrepreneur. And the neck, but this is not in the next 10 years. This will be done in the next 35, 45 years where everyone will be, have their own business and need the support of a few people to run their business. But essentially everyone's going to be an entrepreneur.Majority of America will be entrepreneurial.
Nate Catanus
Yeah. I agree with that. And I think that there'll be people that aren't even just problems and gunsmiths. I think there'll be other businesses as well. Outside of that, so let me ask you this. If I wanted to level up my business using your techniques, using a virtual assistant, that sort of thing, what would be like a first role that I could outsource? Is there a role that you advocate that's a good starting point.
Andy Audate
So the first position that you're going to want to fill as your main virtual assistant, I call them the main virtual assistant. This is going to be your personal go to on a daily basis every single day. Okay. Is that your schedule or that sort of thing.This person is going to be the person who's scheduling marketing appearances. So getting you on stages, getting you on platforms, getting you on podcasts, getting you on such and such. I mean, my main virtual assistant got me on this show with you. So they're scheduling that. And then they're also setting up your appointments for you. They may maintain your calendar and they're seeking different opportunities for growth. So now you're focused on doing what you do best. So you're doing the speaking, you're doing the presenting, you're doing the work for your clients. You're doing that. If you're an insurance agent, you're doing the policies.If you're a doctor, you're doing the actual doctor work, you're doing what you do best, but your team member is the one who's running everything on the backend for you. So we're going to get to a place where your output of a human being needs to be stronger and bigger than the current output that a human being does.So in the future, an entrepreneur, and you're going to be, you're going to have to do two times the effort to be able to maintain a certain lifestyle the same way during the coronavirus. So many people are doing double the work and getting half the pay. The reason for that is this is, this is a ramp up to what to come in the future right now.This is a perfect opportunity. This is why the winners will win and the losers will lose. And the level playing field has completely shifted. So,
Nate Catanus
How have you shifted just since this thing all started, have you shifted what you're doing and how you're leveling up your business?
Andy Audate
Hmm. I was telling people to go virtual before all this happened. I was telling people to run their businesses from the laptop before all this happened. When this happened, all I owe all that got hit was one stream of marketing. See what people, what, what speakers and Brandon were doing is that they were only focusing on speaking.So their business completely relied on the lab events. So once, once the coronavirus hit, man, they got stuck. They got stuck because they couldn't have a lot of events in the master windows market. And you want to be on every stream. You want to be on social media. You want to be on paper. You want to be an audio.You want to be omnipresent on every channel that you can think of and put a system to be able to make sure that your content is consistently on that platform. So if you want to be on Reddit, if you want to be on Reddit, medium.com Pivo disrupt. If you want to be a Forbes entrepreneur you've got to get on all those platforms all at the same time.That's massive when it's marketing.
Nate Catanus
Got it. So now you are a speaker, right? You, you put on a conference and that's obviously been put on pause live anyways, right in person. So then what do you have an offering that you currently offer is virtual or how are you helping your clients right now given the fact that you can't be in the same room with them?
Andy Audate
What I share is the knowledge of how to market your business. That can be done through audio that can be done through visuals that could be done online. That could be done in person that could be done through a book. I learned, I teach people how to market their business. So brand marketing, summit.net.That's the link brand marketing at thebrandmarketingsummit.net. You'll learn the system. Of marketing your brand through mass awareness, as well as you're learning the virtual assistant system to run your business.
Nate Catanus
Got it. So people could pay to like, learn to go through this course, for example, and then on the outs, on the outside of they would still learn the same sort of systems they might learn in the end in person.
Andy Audate
For example, the exact same system that they will want to add the in person event.
Nate Catanus
Got it. Very cool. So you're, you know, we're both motivational speakers and you know, a lot of people talk about how important it is to find your own voice as somebody who presents, you know, it'd be, it'd be the best version of yourself, but I think that you can actually distract people with the right hand gestures.So my question to you is what's your favorite hand gesture to use when speaking and why?
Andy Audate
My favorite hand. Just, that's an interesting question. I've never been asked that question before in my life, but my favorite hand gestures to use is when I show placements. So like earlier in this call for the people who are early in the call, when I talked about the person going up, I was talking about the opera.Like, if you can see me visually on the, on the video call, you can see to the right hand side, I talked about the person going up to the left hand side. I talked about the person going down. And so when I'm talking about the person going down, I'm talking about. This person, I put them into a visual box and then on the right hand side, I put them into a visual box.So I love using my hands to really showcase my story and create placement or a visual perspective to my hand.
Nate Catanus
I'm going to have to start using that one. We'll cite you though.
Andy Audate
Every time you do it. You just say dash into our day. It's like, Hey guys, I'm going to teach you how to become a motivational speaker.That’s andy audate.
Nate Catanus
Andy I'll date, TM trademark.There'll be, see I'm on my hands right here. I'll wear, I'll change this pinky ring and it will put, we'll put your name on it. And then that way people will know every time I do that, they'll see it. I'll make sure that if I license that out, that you get the credit for that.Okay. We'll work that out. We'll have my, once I get a virtual assistant, we'll have them connect and then we'll work it out. I have one last question for you and it's a big one. So now you've known me for almost 30 minutes. What's the one question that you've always wanted to ask me.
Andy Audate
The one question that I always want to ask you is why the microphone, why is the microphone that's on your face?
Nate Catanus
Are you talking about this one?
Andy Audate
The one on your face?
Nate Catanus
Oh, this one it's it's so that, well, here's the thing. It doesn't work. It's not connected to anything. but I sort of, I. I believe in what I do. So right. When I decided to become a motivational speaker, I had a vision for that. And I decided that I would commit and I would double down.So I actually had this sewn onto my face. So this is actually part of this is attached physically. So I can't actually take it off now. So, you know, hopefully we'll get it fixed and it'll start working functionally, but right now it's just kind of more of an aesthetic thing. So people see me and they see nicotine as the motivational speaker.
Andy Audate
My man that's what's up, man? That's what's up? Thank you so much.thank you for having on your show brother.
Nate Catanus
Andy Audate thank you so much. And where can people check out your program and get the knowledge that you share?
Andy Audate
Go to brand marketing summit.net. That's the first place or on all social media platforms andy audate a n d y a u d a t e
Nate Catanus
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. That was super valuable. Super awesome. Can't wait to check it out and we'll see you out there in the world. All right.
