Andy Audate [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous! This is episode number 246 with the amazing Andy Audate.

Andy Audate [0:07]
Hey, this is Andy Audate, you are listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:13]
Well, I am so excited to have Andy Audate on the show today you are going to have fun with him. He is a college dropout under 30 years and taking the world by storm. Today we are going to talk about the mindset of growth, which Andy really, really put onto himself. He is a published author, motivational speaker and serial entrepreneur, and Andy is widely recognized as an eminent speaker with a delivery that has high energy and human potential stimulating. He was raised in a city of impoverishment. He’s a college dropout with little formal education, but he has taken the path of an entrepreneur forcing a course of endless self education that has amounted to his successes. He now lives in LA, and he helps entrepreneurs to start and scale their businesses. I’m super excited to share his success story with you. So let’s dive right in. Well, Andy, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Andy Audate [1:23]
I don’t know if you’re more excited, or I’m more excited, but I’m pretty excited, man. I’m pretty excited.

Christine Schlonski [1:29]
I know, just looking at how you turned your life around or what you made out of your life, right? College dropout, under 30, and taking the world by storm, tell us a little bit, give us a little bit of a background?

Andy Audate [1:44]
So, so I’m originally raised on the east coast. And it’s interesting that, uh, you know, you mentioned like (a.) you know, let’s go a little bit deeper., in the beginning of our call where you were you said, hey, how do we go deeper. Let’s go deeper. are called which is, which is built because doing all these podcasts, you know, I’ll do like 40 in a month. And doing all these shows. It’s kind of like the same script that’s kind of repeated. It’s like, Oh, you know, raising it impoverished area, started a business. Left, moved to California became a speaker. And now I host tours around the country. So let’s go a little bit deeper, but that on a surface level, I was raised in an impoverished environment in the smallest state in the smallest city in that state. And it was about one square mile. So it was like a crabs in a bucket type of place. And I knew that for me, I wanted to be in a different environment that allowed me to thrive. It was very important that I that I put myself in a position where I can be in an environment that allowed me to thrive. So I started listening to personal development. And after listening to people like Les Brown and Eric Thomas, I got infused with this mindset of growth of going to the next level. And it became a point in time where I realized that you’re always growing. And if you’re not growing, you’re dead. So you’re always growing either upwards or downwards. Like you’re, you’re always going somewhere. And so that’s why, that gave me this perception or understanding that life is about progression. If you’re going up, life is about progression. It’s just about going to the next level. So there’s no success, where you end the journey. Success is a journey, and you’re always going towards something that’s what progression is.

Christine Schlonski [3:40]
Yeah, totally, agree. So how did you find personal development in that tiny place in this tiny state?

Andy Audate [3:49]
I don’t know, man. It might have been a Google search. And I said, you know, success mindset. You know, it’s interesting, right? How much I’ve been infused with personal development over the last maybe, 10 years, eight years? Probably started off with Google search of like, how to be successful, you know, like, you know, so I go from listening to rap music but what is the, what is, how do I become successful? And then you know, watching, maybe, someone’s YouTube video like, how to become successful and then they say a certain person’s name and that person I end up going to search that person on YouTube. And then I found that person on YouTube that, consume their content, and I buy their book and I listen to their podcast. Next thing you know, I’m a huge fan.

Christine Schlonski [4:35]
Yeah, I love that. So that’s for many people, you know, they have this, this drive within them, but they are in places where they, you know, where this is not nourished or where it’s not taught, you have to do something yourself to figure it out. And Google is obviously, a good place to go to start that journey. And then as you said, one thing leads to the other. So, right now you are in beautiful California. Your whole life has changed and is different. You’re running your own business?

Andy Audate [5:12]
Yeah, I run a marketing firm as well as I run all day enterprises, which is a seminar production company. And we produce seminars throughout the country. And then my business partner who is walking in the office right now, my business partner who just walked in, we run a Progression Marketing Group, which is a content based marketing firm that we edit content and we edit content based advertisement for people so that way they can grow their subscribership grow their customer base and get more exposure in front of the masses.

Christine Schlonski [5:46]
Yeah, awesome. And you did that because you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Andy Audate [5:55]
Yeah, I mean, now looking back, I don’t know if, I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur, actually. When I was 19, so I’m 24 now. So this is like five years ago, five and a half years ago. Someone who believed in me, we were leaving the gym. He was, I was working at Metro PCS. So this, let’s backtrack even a little bit more than that. I’m working at Metro PCS. I need employees. Because I was 18 years old, and I was a manager, I was a lead manager at a store. So I was doing so well in sales. And they were like, hey, let’s put this kid in a management position. Maybe you could teach these older folks how to sell. So I get into a management position, and I’m leading people who are much older than 35, 40, 26, and so on, and so forth. And I needed employees. So my only mindset, or like reach for relationships was my high school. So I hired somebody from my high school gave him a job. And we were working out one day and as we were leaving the gym, he said, man, like I believe in you, bro. Like, to the point, I think we should open up your own cell phone store. And I was like, man, I don’t think I should do that, bro. Like, I’m 19, I’m overweight. I’m a college dropout. I live in the hood. There’s no way I can become successful. Okay? And I was no, I’m obviously, laughing at myself. There’s no way to become successful. He says, dude, like, I believe in you. And you know, I’ll even work for you. Like, let’s do that I open up that business. And I’m, after overcoming some fear, overcoming some doubts, and experiencing the turmoil of like, man, I’m about to open up a business, where am I going to get the money from? I actually, realized that I save $7,000 in a college fund. And I had 200 bucks in my bank account but this fund over here that I didn’t have access to for a while, has seven grand in it. So I took that money out. And I opened up my first cellphone store within a year and a half, I made my first million dollars and I had four locations, and I had 14 people working for me. So at this time of 21 made all this money and what do you do when you live in a place that snows all the time and the people aren’t too happy? And you look around you and you’re like, man, like, this is not thriving. This is not success. This is not what invision to be success. What do you do? You go to California? You know.

Christine Schlonski [8:13]
Of course.

Andy Audate [8:14]
So I took a bunch of money I shut down the location, I said, look, I’m 21, I’m more focused on me than I am on a business. I believe I was so egotistical that I was like, yeah, I can. I can do this anywhere, cause, I wouldn’t say it was easy. But it was my first introduction to success or business. So because of that experience, I was like, okay, I’ll go, I will do it in California man, I would. But before I move, I wrote down what I called values of toil. So for your audience, you want to write this down values of toil, the values of toil was the characteristics, the characteristic of how I want to live my life, of how I wanted my business to be? So there was a few things that I had on that list that, I remember, I wrote it down. I had an office. So I had four stores and an office, like a central point where we, how all the phones, all the employees will come down for team meetings. And I’m sitting there with one of the store managers, Joe. And I say, Joe, man, like, what would an ideal life look like man? And I said to him, I said, man, I got money, but I can’t travel. I can’t really, travel the way I want to travel. And he said, I want to travel too. And so he asked me, why can’t I travel? I said, I can’t travel because I’m stuck in this state. Because I have cell phones, cell phone stores, like I’m not big enough to the point where I could just walk away and everything’s gonna be fine for two months. I can’t do that. I’m not there yet. I’m we’re doing very well for ourselves. But I still got to come in and fix problems every single day. That’s what I’m doing. I’m, I’m a problem solver for the business. So I said, I want a business where I can travel, where I’m not stuck in one state or one territory. Get it, I can go anywhere I want to, I want a business where I can have an office but people can work out of the office, but I don’t have to be there. I want a business where I’m internationally known. And I wrote down those characteristics. When I came to California and I had to choose my what I was gonna do for my life? I went back on those characteristics.

Christine Schlonski [10:23]
Yeah, that’s wonderful to get really, really clear what you want because otherwise how you’re going to take action steps if you don’t know what you want your life to look like?

Andy Audate [10:35]
Yeah, you got to be clear on the vision on the way that your life is gonna look like. You gotta get, you got to get so clear that when you don’t, when you’re not experiencing it, you start, you can, you can look at the situation and you can say, this will stay, this will leave. This will stay this will leave. That’s what we call that the difference between an ideal scene and a current scene or current situation, that, the ideal situation is that I’m traveling I this situation is you know, I have money in the bank, the ideal situation is now I have my wife, I have my kids, I have my my husband, whatever. You have a current situation which is, you know, you could be single you could be broke, you could be no employees, you could be, you know, by yourself, you could not be thriving or whatever the situation is, and what do you, what is that you got to change to get connected to?

Christine Schlonski [11:24]
Yeah. So what did you do? Just for people to understand that might be struggling in their business with their sales. What did you do to start a cell phone store? And then to get yourself to four stores in such a short time and making over a million dollars? What’s the mindset required?

Andy Audate [11:44]
So, it said get out there and I think when I say get out there, it’s different for everybody. So it might be different for me or what it was like to get out there. So when I had, when I had my first location, it was kiosk. So I don’t remember, like a few thousand bucks, or whatever it was it was like a kiosk. And in this kiosk, I had nine iPhones. And it was generic phones, it was what they call blue phones. So I couldn’t afford an iPhone because out of the 7000 bucks that I had for capital, to only buy one iPhone will cost a thousand bucks, or nearly a thousand bucks. And so imagine me having like, being, you know, just walking around with seven, seven iPhones, that’s exactly what I had. So I can allocate that money correctly. So I bought cheap phones that will cost or inexpensive phones, that cost like 30 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, you know, so on and so forth. So I had nine phones in my inventory. And believe me when I placed those phones, like, like I moved them and I placed them correctly because it was my nine phones. Now my goal, my first goal was to sell these phones because once I sell it, I can re-up, get new phones and take the profit. So what I did was I waited for people at my kiosk, to come and buy a phone. And I’m on my computer waiting for people. So I’m like, You know what? I got to get seen. I got to get in front of people. So I get, I go from behind the kiosk go in front of the kiosk. And people are walking by and I’m like, hello. Hello. How are you doing? If you were walking by? Hello, how are you? Welcome. Thanks for coming. Thank you for stopping by like, like I’m in a kiosk. So people are already walking by in the middle of the mall. But nobody stops in by the phone. Now, I got a couple of days until rents do man like this is not, this is, I gotta rent for the next month. I can’t go broke every 30, I can’t be broke for 30 days, you know? So I’m like, yo, I got to start getting customers. So what I did was I greeted, my first step is to greet. So I walk up to a customer and say, hey, I’m Andy Audate, how are you? And they say I’m good. I’m good. I’m not interested. I’m not interested. I said, Oh, no, no problem. I’ll say what phone do you have? And then they would say, oh, I have an iPhone, I would say okay, have you thought about upgrading? And they would say, no I’m not interested I’m good thank you, walk away. You know what I gotta change my tactic. So you know what? I started doing the silent grid. Because what happened is in the mall, the staff would say, hey, I’m in the mall, the executive will say, hey, you can go and grab people we can’t do that. I got 10 I can go and grab people, but but I get it because they have a whole bunch of kiosk. If everyone was going and grabbing people, people wouldn’t come to the mall. And then therefore the mobile host. So we did I did a silent grid where essentially I will lower my voice. People can’t hear me. So people are, literally, I don’t know, 150 feet away from me. And I will be like, hey, and I start mumbling. I start literally, I won’t be here to talk like this. And people are like, What are you saying? And naturally, what they’ll do is they’ll get closer to hear what I’m saying. So they’re like, wait, what do you say what do you say? So they closer to me. And then I’d say no, when I asked you was, do you have tea? And I would ask a question that wasn’t so, uh, and like so intrusive. I’m asking about data that doesn’t go into like, I’m not gonna ask you like, what, hey, what’s your social security number? Like that’s too intrusive. I haven’t built my relationship. So I started with a bigger gap in the grid is, I go for a less intrusive question. So if people are writing notes, you got to take what you got take notes on this. I asked a less intrusive question. And then the more I build the relationship, the more intrusive the question becomes. So before I ask them for their social, social security number, I asked him a huge question like, hey, do you have T-Mobile, At&t or Verizon, like, out of the big carriers? Carriers, which one do you have? They’ll say, I got T Mobile. I said, oh, T Mobile. Okay. I own T-Mobile. Which phone do you have? Is it the iPhone or the Android? And they’ll say, so now it’s very important to ask questions that? What is it? I forgot how to call it, but it’s like, they don’t have an option. Like they got to choose one of the answers. I think it’s called a tie down. And they got to choose one of the answers that you can’t be like, hey, what phone do you have? Out of all the millions of phones in the world? You can’t do like what phone you have? So you gotta give them an option. So I’ll give them I’ll give them stuff. So I’ll give them I’ll give them options like, do you have an iPhone or Android? Oh I have an iPhone. Okay, great. Hey, which iPhone you have? iPhone, iPhone six. Okay, great. How does that look like? Can you pull it out, and they pulled it out. I put it in my hand, I put it right in my pocket. I say I got something for you. I grabbed their phone. Now they’re forced to follow me. So that now I can transition to another step called copy qualified. So I’m qualifying them to see a if they’re a good fit for my product and be if I’m a good fit or if my product is a good fit for them. So I’m asking questions that would qualify them to see if this is a good fit. How long have you had your phone? Are you interested in upgrading it? Have you upgraded before? When was the last one you upgraded? So I’m qualifying them? Based on the information that I get? I’ve been presented a solution. So I agreed it, I qualify, then I present the solution. So you had the iPhone six, the iPhone x you have you heard about it before you right? Yes, I have. Okay, great. The iPhone x, based on what you shared about meeting your kids when you go play soccer based on to share that’s the most important thing that you want. So the iPhone X has a you know, this many megapixels on the camera has this many this many of quadcore processors so that way it’s going to focus on and produce your content much faster. And your current phone is, so your kid, when you take a picture. It’s actually, faster and allows you to save that memory. How happy would Tommy be when mommy having more pictures of him or he’ll be mad, he’d be really happy. I say great. Then I transition to her close. I said great. So we have two options to get you the phone today. You can finance it or you can pay upfront? Which one you want to do? Remember, I’m giving the tie down. I choose which one? I want to, I want to finance it. Okay, great. So we have $40 down payment, or $60 down payment, which one do you want? $40. Okay, great. Where’s the social security number? You see the process that I took? Less intrusive, got to the close. Greet, qualify, present and close. And so once I started doing that, and started building that confidence, that’s what, literally was able to take my business from zero to 100. Real quick.

Christine Schlonski [18:34]
Yeah. And I love how you just shared like building your confidence, figuring out what works, what doesn’t work and making sure that the service fits both parties, right? It’s a good match for you. It’s a good match for them as well. So what was, actually the very first thing that you ever sold in your life?

Andy Audate [18:55]
Ever sold in my life?

Christine Schlonski [18:57]
The very first thing you’ve ever sold in your life?

Andy Audate [19:01]
I sold my mom, me going out picking her car, you know if that’s if we’re talking about products? Man, I think one of the like, that I remember was me selling lemonade. I either saw lemonade or I sold candy. I’m pretty sure I sold candy in school. But I remember selling lemonade where my mom was not trying to give me money. And I said, you know what? I go, I went to my fridge, my fridge at the house. And there were some like plastic cups that my mom had for parties that she would just leaving the pantry. So I said, you know what, I grabbed the house lemonade. That, you know, the family was drinking out of and I took it and I went outside. I put a little table and I was just at the corner of a dead end street. My Street was a dead end street. So like six people will pass by, you know, drop the whole day. And I’m at the corner like, hey, I see people on the internet do it. That’s what happens to like people on social media, when they see like other successful people do something positive, or well, and they say, you know what, I think I could do the same thing. So, you know, I’m at a certain age, probably six grade, and I go outside and I’m on a dead end. Six people pass by the whole, entire day. So I spent an hour outside, nobody walks by. I’m like, why isn’t it working for me? You know, like, I have a lemonade. I have the cups, and I have this table with the wood chipping away but doesn’t matter table outside. You know, imagine 11 year old chubby Andy out there like looking for people like, yo, where are you? Are you guys gonna come and buy lemonade? So one of my neighbors who would walk with her daughter, they would walk around the block a couple of times for their daily exercise. She came around and she bought one and then you know, I was on my first cup of lemonade, and I got mad so I drink the rest.

Christine Schlonski [20:51]
How did it feel him for when somebody, actually gave you money for your first lemonade?

Andy Audate [20:56]
Oh like Yo man. I came out and they gave me a dollar? I’m gonna go take this dollar and make more dollars. And then there was a time that my dad, he, he came to my bedroom I was laying down. And he said, Andy, I’m going to go to New York. Do you want me to buy everything because when my dad goes to New York, that’s essentially code for I’m gonna go buy some clothes and I’m gonna go buy cheap clothes in New York. Because New York, you could buy clothes for like a, you could buy coats like $1, you know, 50 cents, stuff like that. So I said, Dad can you get me the Nike Air Forces, the black ones with the mid tops with the swooshwoosh, like the Velcro with the swooshwoosh. He can give me those. And he asked me for my size, I gave my size and then he went to New York couple days later, he comes back from New York with a bunch of clothes because he sends his clothes to Haiti now to our family back home in Haiti. So it comes with a bunch of clothes, and there’s no Nike Air Force. I’m like, yo, Dad, I thought I was gonna be the coolest person in school, like, I’m envisioning what I’m gonna wear with the Nike Air Force is you’re like, I’m, I’m gonna be with, like, swag that, I’m gonna be that guy in school. Where’s my Nike Air Force? I don’t see them in the bags. He’s like, oh, I didn’t get them. Why didn’t you get them? It’s too much money, man. It’s a $160. Yeah, but I thought you’re gonna give me the Nike Air Force? You know what? I’m gonna, I got to figure it out myself. I realized at that moment, I can’t just depend on people. I got to go get it myself. So I went across the street. It was noon at this time, and I went across the street to ask my neighbor I said, hey, John, I can shovel your yard, I can put all the snow to the corner in 10 bucks. He said, I’m all set I have a snow blower. I was devastated. I was like, man. He said, No. I went to my next door, neighbor next door. I said, Hey, Martin. Mr. Martin, can I shovel for you? He said, No. Well, I’m gonna do myself. I was like, man, I’m looking across the street at my house, and I’m saying, man, I should just go home? Then, I look at to his neighbor, to Martin’s neighbor. And I look at them and I say, you know what? I’m gonna go ask them. I go and asked, then they gave me 10 bucks. I said, okay, it is possible. That’s the first thing that I have to know number one that it was possible, number two, $10 was not enough to give me the sneakers that I wanted. So I kept on going around the block. And then I went around the block, and I went to enough properties, enough properties to get 16 deals, and I got the $160 I needed for the sneakers. I went home, I put them on my bed, and I grabbed my iron and I cleaned it. I just I just made the money look real pretty. Like I just made it look, I’m just Falttening it out. I’m imagine that this guy who’s like 10 years old, 10/11 years old, like I close my door, but my door is jacked up. So I’ll close it and locked it. You can still open it from outside sometimes. So my mom comes in and opens the door. I said, What are you doing? And I feel like I’m a drug dealer and I’m like, oh, I got the money, you know, I have the money. And I’m like, this small 10 year old guy. And, um, but I didn’t want to buy sneakers because now it was my money. I know what it took to buy the sneakers. I was like, I don’t want to buy the sneakers, man, I just want to keep the money. Then I want to scale that business essentially. So I went to my friend at school and I said, hey, man, I made 160 bucks yesterday. He said, how do you do that? I said, I went door to door. I said, why won’t you come work with me? So me and him started this business where we started shuffling people’s yard and we split the money, I was able to hit more doors with his help. Then, because I got the help. We kept it going to the fall, where we’re from, you know, from doing snow, and then the summer came now we’re cleaning up the leftover of the leaves that fell and so on, and so forth. So we’re raking people’s leaves, and so on, and so forth. So we kept that business and I became a young entrepreneur.

Christine Schlonski [24:54]
Wow, what a story. I just love it. And we’re running out of time for this wonderful episode, but I want to make sure that we send people to progressionticket.com to check out your site, and I have all the links to you also in the Show Notes. So it’s just one click away.

Andy Audate [25:12]
Yeah, Progression ticket, progression tip essentially, now that you hear that that’s kind of the beginning of my story, I did the cell phone thing. Then now when I realized that people need the opportunity to learn how to do it on yourself, like to learn how to make a million bucks like, it’s not about the money or the business actually, the mindset. So the progression conference allows people to have that mindset. So when I came to California, I became a speaker. Now I host seminars teaching the mindset of how to, literally revolutionize your life. And that’s what progressionticket.com is. And now we’re going through every city in the country and soon we’ll be coming to Germany.

Christine Schlonski [25:50]
Awesome. Awesome. I can’t wait for our next interview. I have so many more questions. So let’s send people to progressionticket.com and if that’s too complicated. Just go to the Show Notes. And you will find all the resources there. And just, you know, it’s one click away to Andy, just hop on over, click and check it out. Awesome. Thank you so so much.

Andy Audate [26:15]
Thank you progressionticket.com. Thank you so much.

Christine Schlonski [26:18]
Well, Gorgeous. I hope you have gotten some golden nuggets out of this episode I for sure have. I just love what you can do if you really, pursue your dreams. If you know deep inside you were born for more and you actually, take steps to make that true. And as Andy said, it all starts with you. And you have to learn and self educate so that you can be on that mindset of growth, and you can really, go for your dreams. So hop on over to christineshlonski.com find the podcast tab with the amazing Episode 246 The Mindset Of Growth and also we do have the opportunity to get a second episode with Andy. And I’m inviting you to come back and have a listen as well. Once you’re over there at christineschlonski.com/podcasts, also find all the links to connect with Andy. And the Resources, he has an amazing free gift, The Virtual Progression Conference Life. The link is right on the page. And also there’s a link to his book, No More Average, How to Take Control of Your Mindset, Overcome Fear, Reach Peak Performance, and Achieve Your Goals, which is such an amazing topic for every single one of us. So hop on over to christineshlonski.com and check that out. And once you’re over there, sign up for the Empowerment Notes. That’s Empowerment right into your inbox, the updates on Heart Sells! Podcast, as well as amazing content that I usually do not share on social media. So I see you over there. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for listening. If you have questions, if you have feedback, if you want to ask something that we can, actually discuss on a variety Friday, just write me an email to info@christineschlonski.com and I am looking forward to the next episode with Andy. And in the meantime, you have a wonderful day, wherever you are in this beautiful world. Bye for now.