Early internet maven. First web company in 1999. Andrea has started 14 companies, including: StickerJunkie, Delinquent Distribution (which owned the sales rights for merch on Minecraft World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and more), TEEacher, Quarantini, and Power Chick Mafia. She or her companies have been featured in Wired, Inc., Entrepreneur, Forbes, as well as on television on: Good Morning America and The Oprah Winfrey show, among others. Speaking Credits include Summit, YPO, CU Boulder, and Harvard.
Date: August 25 2020
Episode: 16
Title: Norman Farrar introduces Andrea Lake of Power Chick Mafia
Subtitle: The only way to fail is to never get up again.
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/15-andrea-lake/
In this episode of I Know this Guy… Norman Farrar introduces Andrea Lake, a business junkie, yoga chick, road trip fanatic, avid hiker, dog mom and lover of life.
She has started 14 companies, including: StickerJunkie, YogaJunkie, Delinquent Distribution (which owned the sales rights for merch on Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, The Walking Dead, and more), Quarantini, and Power Chick Mafia.
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Andrea 0:00
I thought why I didn’t really have to waste that two years thinking I was a failure and thinking badly about myself and the things that I would say to myself inside of the privacy of my own mind. I would not say to my worst, and I don’t really have enemies, but I would not say to my worst enemy, nothing that’s keeping you up at night now will even matter to you in five years.
Norman 0:26
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know this Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know this Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell is a bell?
Hayden 1:00
So dad, who do we have lined up for the podcast today?
Norman 1:02
Well, this is exciting. So Daniel Dimassa was on a few weeks ago and he said the most interesting person that he knew was Andrea Lake. Now this is really cool Hayden because he’s got this tiny t-shirt company between her and her three partners. They did over a billion dollars worth of T-shirt sales.
Hayden
Pocket change.
Norman
Yeah, pocket change. She’s also been on the apprentice, which we’re gonna get into and that’s a pretty cool story. And she also started a power chick mafia,
Hayden 1:36
some gnarly.
Norman 1:39
Wait till you hear.
Hayden 1:41
Well, that’s pretty inspirational considering I can hardly even produce this podcast. Let’s dive right in.
Norman 1:47
Well, I can’t wait. We’ve been talking about this all week. Daniel Dimassa was the person that actually recommend ed. I said, who’s the most interesting person you know? And he said, you. A matter of fact, one of the things he said , he says I have two other business partners one’s tattooed up like I am and one that has no tattoos. She looks completely innocent but we have this company and if there’s anything that goes wrong it’s not the two tattooed guys add beak up . It’s her and she’s as direct as can be.
Andrea 2:26
Accurate. But yes, those boys are just teddy bears.
Norman 2:35
tattooed teddy bears.
Andrea 2:36
They really are and they are both Daniel Dimassa from Die Epic and Dan Caldwell from Tapout and they both are trained fighters, professional level trained fighters. But if somebody has to crack the whip, I promise you that it is me. They are big softies inside.
Norman 2:52
Oh man, I love to see that. Can you just videotape that once I love to see Daniel crawling into the fetal position.
Andrea 3:01
It’s not quite that extreme.
Norman 3:05
So we’ve been really excited about having you on and we know a little bit about your backstory. There’s some incredibly interesting things like the apprentice we’ll be talking a little bit about, but you’re also this incredible entrepreneur. Just before the podcast you were talking about, you have 14 businesses going on. So are there any things that made you into this dynamic entrepreneur?
Andrea 3:31
I feel like I was just incapable of working for other people, to be honest with you. So when I was 17,18 years old, I started my first company. It was called Rhythm Sticks, and it was entirely just because I was terrified. I didn’t know how I was going to actually make a living. But I simultaneously just wanted to work for myself. I was certain of it and I was going to college at UC Santa Cruz and I really, really I was going to go and I really did not want to go and spend four more years sitting in the classroom and learning about stuff that they didn’t care about. So I didn’t even consider myself a business owner, I just started making these toys, you know those toys where you hold one stick in each hand, use the two year holding to throw a third stick around the called rhythm sticks. And I sold a lot of them. So when I was 18 years old, I made like $70,000 that year selling rhythm sticks. And I just thought, I’m not going to college, I’m always going to be able to sell some sort of a product. And I’m just going to figure that out. But I didn’t even think of myself as an entrepreneur for probably seven or eight more years. It wasn’t until way way after I made my first million dollars that I even started to think of myself as an entrepreneur. I thought I was lucky and I knew how to sell these things. And I learned how to make t-shirts and sell t-shirts and it all just happens so organically that it wasn’t some big like I’m going to be an entrepreneur idea.
Norman 4:47
So what was life like before 17? What were your interests? What were you doing?
Andrea 4:54
I was smoking a lot of weed, number one, very lot and going to high school as a high school student and I was like an honor student in high school but also a stoner so it was a very strange combination. And I grew up in San Diego, which is a phenomenally good, very lucky place to grow up. My dad was a submarine sailor and so there’s the big submarine base in Coronado in San Diego. And that’s how we ended up there. It was just easygoing like to hang out with my friends who like smoke weed my whole life and and by proxy that these sticks that they would throw people in the parking lots at different concerts would be throwing sticks and learns how to make them and sell them and I made them way nicer because I was always really into physics and yeah, so it made them way better balanced and prettier.
Norman
That’s interesting.
Andrea
That really truly was it and then I met someone when I was selling rhythm sticks that was making a million dollars a year selling t-shirts and I was like, Whoa, that is all the money in the world, I am going to do that. That’s when I was like 21 or 22. So I started anti establishment clothing, which was a fuck you t shirt company. It was like loads of offensive t-shirts. And I just started selling those. And it went really, really well. Really, really quickly.
Andrea 6:17
How did it just t-shirts, for me anyways? Starting a T-shirt company would be absolutely. I would be nervous. I mean, there’s so many out there. How did you establish this T-shirt company and have it take off so quickly?
Andrea 6:33
Well, this is 1998. So it’s actually way harder to start a T-shirt company back then. And it was way, way way more expensive because you had to actually stock inventory and stuff. I think sometimes ignorance really is bliss and I did not know how hard it was. And so I just started. I literally went and got a six pack of Sierra Nevada and sat down and wrote 200 slogans for t-shirts, that could be t-shirts. And then the next day I picked 98 of the best ones and made a catalog. It was the worst catalog that anybody has ever made in the history of design. It was designed in Microsoft Word, because it was 1998 and I sent it over to Kinko’s and got a bunch of copies printed, and then I took it to all the head shops. But the designs themselves were cool. And it was a cool font and whatever. And I got some pre orders. I didn’t know how to do any of this. I just started doing it. And they’re like, yeah, we’ll buy those. I was like, All right, I’ll go make them. And so then I went and made them and that literally is how it started. And that first year I did over 100,000 in sales in the second year I did over a million in sales.
Norman 7:46
Wow. So you just jumped two feet into the fire and just did it.
Norman7:53
I did. I had a job like a temporary job that I had taken to fund the T-shirt company as an escrow officer when I was like 22. Every morning, I would wake up at six, go to the office until four or five and then come home and from five until midnight work on the company sleep for a couple hours. And I did that for six months so that I could find the start at the company was highly motivated. And then on the weekends, all days. I just worked on the company so I was highly motivated to make enough sales that I would never have to work for anybody else again. So it was a huge, huge motivating factor for me.
Norman 8:28
Okay, so how long was the run on this T-shirt company?
Andrea 8:34
That t-shirt company started in 1988. And then it went on until about 2002 because I had transitioned into a different t-shirt company called Delinquent Distribution because my whole goal with anti establishment was to get into a Hot Topic which I did do. But then once I got into Hot Topic, which is for your listeners that don’t know a chain store in North America, it has about 1100 locations. They place huge purchase orders. I went from selling to individual mom and pop locations 250 to $500 sale to getting into a huge store that would place a $60,000 purchase order for a single t-shirt. But then they finally took my T-shirts and then they didn’t sell they wouldn’t sell through. They were like too hardcore, too offensive. So my buyer from Hot Topic, and I had a conversation. He’s like, I’m sorry, I can’t buy from you anymore. And I was like, What? Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no I can make what you want to sell, what do you want to sell? And he’s like, we just need stuff that’s a little bit more irreverent. That’s not so offensive. So I started a Delinquent Distribution, and I ended up doing a huge stream of a huge line of just slogan t-shirts for Hot Topic and Mr. Rags and Miller’s outpost and a lot of stores that don’t exist anymore, actually. And just made a ton of cash that way and then I got into licensing. I got the licensing rights on High Times Magazine just by calling them because I was advertising in their magazine and I’m like, Hey, you guys don’t sell t-shirts. You should sell t shirts through I have a licensing company like out of the fucking blue. I’m just like, I have a license. They’re like, Okay, and so then as soon as High Times gave me their licensing rights, everybody gave me their licensing rights and then I eventually moved into video gaming, which is how I got the exclusive sales distribution rights on Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty Walking Dead, all the biggest video games in the world.
Norman 10:16
When did you get involved with the internet?
Andrea 10:19
So 1998 was my first internet company and that was anti establishment clothing. I had an antiestablishment.com and then I stopped that company and somehow the domain did not auto renew so I lost the domain so whatever’s on there now is not my thing.
Norman 10:34
Oh, so 1998, fantastic. Well, you are as geeky as I am.
Andrea 10:42
Yeah, StickerJunkie, which is one of my like bread and butter lifelong companies that I’ve had. It was the first custom sticker website on the internet in 1999. I still own that company. stickerjunkie.com for all your listeners. There we go.
Norman 10:56
Let’s say that again. stickerjunkie.com There we go.
Andrea 11:00
stickerjunkie.com. That’s right.
Hayden 11:03
So both companies you mentioned kind of have an edgy feel to them. Is there any reason you settled on counterculture designs?
Andrea 11:10
It’s just because I was in the counterculture at the time. And so it was just such a natural fit. And then I could see what all of my friends were wearing and wanting to wear and would actually purchase. Yeah, so I just went straight down that line. And plus pop culture is fascinating to me. I still have a bunch of companies within pop culture.
Norman 11:30
After you finished up with the T-shirt company, what was the next thing. Another t-shirt company, of course.
Andrea 11:36
Yes. And a lot of my companies it’s not like one started in the other one finished. They just concurrently kept running forever and ever. So I had a Delinquent Distribution from 2000 until like, 2017. I had that company for 17 years and StickerJunkie I still own. So what happened after Delinquent? Oh, do you know I was on the apprentice. A million years ago, the TV show and then I started this company right around the same time called ZoCo Inc, which did subscription based websites for Best Selling spiritual authors. So that was early days and it was like 2003, 2004 or something like that. And I really liked all of the spiritual books, like Gary Zhukov and Don Miguel Ruiz, and Deepak Chopra, and all those guys, all the Oprah spiritual authors. So I did all of their websites and did subscription based platforms for them. And we were actually on Oprah with that company for the entire hour. She personally endorsed our products. Sadly, it was too early and I lost my shirts because I sell finance to that tech company and it did not work out because the internet itself was so new. So it just we just barely got new sales.
Norman 12:46
Since 1998, going through the different stages of the internet, like what were some of the challenges that came up?
Andrea 12:53
Mm hmm. Well, I’ll tell you my biggest mistake because anybody who is over like 35 will laugh out loud. But one of the biggest challenges that came up was, we had T-1 lines, which was the fastest form of internet at the time. And so we were running everything and testing everything on T-1 lines and I legitimately never considered that everybody else in the rest of the country was on Tin Can and wire Dial Up connections. So we would create these very advanced technologies and pay loads of money to get a video to play directly on the page and to have locked out access where people couldn’t just rip off and steal and download our videos. That was $750,000 to develop that and now it’s just a plug in. So there was a barrier to entry of just the actual cost of website development, which was profoundly expensive back then, which is obviously almost free now. That was actually the biggest one probably but then also though, there just weren’t that many coders there weren’t that many people that understood technology and so if they were number one hard to find number two, exceedingly expensive, well, and then also even just in the 90s, especially in the 90s. But even in the early 2000s, people were afraid to put their credit card onto the internet. So we would have phone numbers all over the websites. And most people would call up and rather give their phone number to actually visit and understand encryption and all then how safe it was, how far much safer it was to enter your information on the internet than giving it to some random person that just picks up the phone on the other end of the line. Things have changed.
Norman 14:34
I remember I was traveling, I was on holiday and reading a book and it was CD now. Do you remember them? Yes, yes. Uh huh. And the book was questioning whether ecom would ever catch on.
Andrea 14:48
Ah, ha. That’s funny. That’s funny. Yeah.
Norman 14:54
You know, and it wasn’t it wasn’t that long ago when people were afraid to put your credit card in. The internet was filled with scammers and you wouldn’t buy anything and to 180 degree polar opposites but from buying snacks online, which I was just talking about, to my family upstairs going, Oh, this is great. Now I can buy Kit Kats and have them delivered to the house instead of going out to buying really high end fashion online, where you would never buy a pair of shoes before. But now, Oh, get a couple pairs and it’s getting into that culture, especially with COVID. Now we’re going to see a lot more newbies come onto the internet that never really purchased before. So that must be exciting for you.
Andrea 15:41
It is. I think that anytime that you have significant immediate disruption in any type of economic system that is when generational wealth is made, period. I’m not just speculating this. This is factually correct through the cycles of history. I’ve been studying economics for the last 18 years and cycles of behavior in the human population as well as in currencies. And so now we’re at this precipice point where people are shifting the way that they’re spending dollars. And so if you can be ahead of that and understand where the dollars are going, you just, that’s it just like minting money. It’s crazy.
Norman 16:18
Any tips?
Andrea 16:19
Yes, sure. I sat down. I did, I really did sit down and do a document on March 3rd, about what was coming down with COVID. And with pandemics and something like this in general and the areas of hyper acceleration. So then you have the really obvious ones, right? Not just PPE, but supply chain in general, because you’re going to have one thing after another thing after another thing that needs hyper accelerated supply chain, weird stuff, puzzles, to Home Improvement stuff around the house. Just things that all of a sudden, everyone like you can’t get a green screen right now because everybody’s at home. You can’t get a good merch network right now because everybody’s on their internet so much more often. So you just think of things that everybody is gonna want the best of all of a sudden like that. So anything within the supply chain, a consumer product, good home improvement, which I just predicted, that’s going to be a short run of like somewhere 9 to 18 months. Because if you’re in your house a lot, you want everything to look pretty and be good. Number three educational products, of course, which is why we’re tripling down on one of my educational product companies called TEEacher, which we’ll talk about later. Number four entertainment. So I started a company called Quarantini because people are gonna get really tired of passive listening exercise entertainment that exists, right. So you have Hulu and you have Netflix and you have Amazon Prime and loads of other streaming services, where you’re just receiving information but you’re not interacting with the information. So I think that all forms of interactive entertainment, which also includes number five video games are going to go through the roof are just going to be huge, huge, huge areas of growth. I did seven of them. Number six was birthing centers or any type of outsourced hospital things, no pregnant woman is ever going to want to step foot in a hospital again, I predict that this is the first in many pandemics that we’re going to see over the next 10 years, this is just going to be a normal way of life for us. And then number seven, I had it a second ago, and I can’t remember but there was another one, there was another one that’s going to be a big area of growth, I guess your listeners will have to figure out that one for themselves.
Andrea 18:23
You’ll find that in the comments section.
Norman 18:29
But then there’s loads of predictable behaviors. And we were talking before we actually started the podcast that I predicted on March 3rd, that within 60 days, there would be looting and riots because you can’t have a huge segment of the population become unemployed, which was clearly coming and you have 20% of the people in the US are unbanked which means that they do not use banking systems that many of them are paid to under the table. Many of those people that are paid under the table now cannot file for unemployment because they have not been documented as employed. So people literally that are out of money out of food, no prospect of jobs and then of course, there’s going to be a huge increase in crime and violence, which means that all of the people who do have dollars who are having steady employment that they can do from inside of their home or are an essential worker are going to voluntarily want to be spending more time in their house. And so anything that occupies their time while they’re in their house is going to be a huge hyper accelerated purchase. That was very businessy, I know that this is not a straight up business podcast. But that’s I love business the way some people love football. And so that is how I think.
Hayden 19:32
Andrea, you mentioned earlier that you were checking out the history of economics. Do you have any resources that people could check out?
Andrea 19:38
There’re so many books, but it’s funny that you asked that Hayden because I have been asking all of my friends who are the most some of the world’s most well versed people on economics in the world. And there’s really not you just have to read all of the books about it and draw your own conclusions, which is terrible, but I am reading right now a book called Debt the first 5000 years which is quite fascinating.
Norman 20:02
Do you have any recommended reading that you could give to us?
Andrea 20:07
Yes, so much so for entrepreneurship, it’s an oldie but a goodie. But I do still have to recommend my friend Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Workweek. It’s just a classic and especially if someone’s just getting started in entrepreneurship. It is phenomenal. Another one that’s quite old, but also really, really timelessly good is The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. And that is specifically because Jack spent 30 years reading business books and then we consolidate the best information from the best books into two to three page chapters with exercises for people to do at the end of the chapter. So it’s actually one of the best business books still to this day ever written. And he did update it I think 10 years ago, but it’s really really it’s still super relevant and really good.
Norman 20:50
One of the parts that we love in this podcast is every guest comes on with a quote, can you explain your quote and why you chose it?
Andrea 21:00
Yes, my quote was, “The only way to fail is to never get up again”, and that is because every single entrepreneur that I know, period, all of them have had failures that were exceedingly significant to them. And lots of them, lots of us have lost everything, some of us more than once, and just bend to the bottom because entrepreneurs inherently are just putting everything of themselves into their projects. And sometimes those don’t work. So the only way that I think that people fail is to just either not try in the first place, but more likely to try and hit a wall and then just stop because it didn’t work out. It’s what holds most people back I feel like.
Norman 21:38
Yeah, I love when you take a look at a lot of these get rich quick podcast or ventures and you see the guy leaning up against the Lamborghini, or you know, the ones
Andrea 21:50
I do.
Norman 21:53
And it drives me crazy because I’d rather and this is actually one of the things that drove me to start this because I wanted to know what really made people tick. When I went to a conference, we both know this entrepreneur, his name’s Colin Campbell. And he was up on stage and all of a sudden, he let his guard down. And we know him as his very successful entrepreneur. And he let his guard down and talked about the major failures that led him to be coming that entrepreneur. And it was 1000 times more effective than somebody going up on stage and Whoo, ha, ha $200 and $50 million, I did. I really don’t care. It’s the person behind it that I’m interested in. I was talking to somebody the other day, and they asked me, Could I come up with something and I said, nobody’s ever said it but I’ll tell you what it you know, what I can come up with. And that’s an entrepreneur who is basically somebody that can get kicked between the legs until it doesn’t hurt anymore, and then get up and do their thing. And what I said to them was, it’s because what made me sweat and stress, 30 years ago sleepless nights bleeding ulcers really wouldn’t even bother me today. So it’s really learning how to be resilient and, and let any of those things just, they’re important, but you can just let them not bother you until they happen. Most of the things that happen are never as bad as you think they are. And then it’s just a learning experience.
Andrea 23:25
Yeah, unless I feel like once you get some time under you, and you get some traction, and you can see like exactly like what you’re saying things that would have taken you out at the knees, you can also see that there was a resolution to it, and that it doesn’t even matter at all, now. Even though it seems like the biggest, biggest, biggest deal in the world at the time. I’ve had times that seemed unrecoverable to me that I just thought I would never ever like I had ruined my life. It sounds dramatic, but it really did feel that way and just crushed. Fetal position curled up on the floor in a ball crying thinking that I just had destroyed my whole life. There was a time I went from within nine months, I went from $2 million liquid to $1.2 million in debt. And my companies were decimated. I saw no way to ever pay this debt off, which is ridiculous, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. And yeah, it just really wasn’t that big of a deal at all. As soon as I as soon as it took me a couple of years to even like, be able to stand it back up. But once I did, everything, in short order became fine again. But I thought, why, I didn’t really have to waste that two years thinking I was a failure and thinking badly about myself and the things that I would say to myself inside of the privacy of my own mind. I would not say to my worst, and I don’t really have enemies, but I would not say to my worst enemy. And so I think it’s just all about really being easy with yourself and being gentle with yourself and being in a trajectory where you see that like, everything really is nothing that’s really that important. Nothing that’s keeping you up at night now wouldn’t even matter to you in five years.
Norman 25:01
It’s interesting that you say how you beat yourself up in your own mind. And people don’t understand a lot of people don’t understand that. It’s what you’re saying to yourself that’s making you go.
Andrea 25:14
Well, I think that this is what actually was a turning point for me, which is why I share my own stories. The failure is that when I was at the bottom, somebody forwarded me something or I saw it in my Facebook stream of Simon Cowell, on Oprah telling her about how when he was 35 years old, and I think at the time, I might have been like, 34, or something. He had actually gone to zero below zero and had to move back in with his parents. And I thought, are you kidding me right now? Like, because he wasn’t that old when he was telling you stories only 10 years later that he’s telling that story. And I was just like, oh my god, you can move mountains in 10 years.
Norman 25:51
Oh, yeah. And unfortunately, we think of the next day, we can’t get beyond it. I’ve had some failures too where like you said, you crawl up in the fetal position, you know? And then maybe the next time it happens, yeah, you’re kind of good to your knees and then you know, you just kind of hunched over.
Andrea 26:14
And then you’re like, Oh, this is just a cycle. This is no big deal. Oh, the whole economy is collapsing around me and StickerJunkie sales just dropped by 86%. That happened two months ago. I was like, whatever generational wealth is made in times like this. I’ll come up with another idea. There’s always a million ideas. No big deal.
Norman 26:30
So I want to get into something you kind of really skipped over. The Apprentice. Come on.
Andrea
Yes. It’s mind blowing that I even went on that show because I didn’t own a television for 20 years and I did not watch television at all for 20 years. I had never seen the show. And one of my mentors, Dr. Richard Levak, he actually had offered me the second season of Survivor because he was the psychologist that did all of the vetting for Survivor and Apprentice and Amazing Race and all of the reality TV shows in the early days of TV shows. He called me up and someone had at the very last minute dropped out of Survivor. And of course, it was such a cultural phenomenon that I was aware of the show. And I was aware that they had to eat rats on the first season, which they did. They were starving. And he was like, Andrea, you would have to leave in three days do you want to do this? And I was like, Richard, there are easier ways to make a million dollars. He laughed very hard and I did not do Survivor. And so when Apprentice came around, he said, Hey, I really think that you should do this. And I was too busy, too busy, too busy for the first several seasons, because of course, I really was actually running my companies and you have to go away. You have to go away for like 40 to 50 days or you did back then to shoot a reality show and there were rules that you couldn’t have correspondence. So I kept saying no and then season 5 came around and it was allegedly going to be the last season that it was on the air and I said I legitimately cannot be, we’re doing $20 million a year in sales. I cannot contact my office for 45 days. It’s not even an option. But I would like to do it if whatever. So then they talked to Mark Burnett and he was like, okay, you still have I still had to go to like the final casting process but they pushed me through straight to the finals. And they said you can you’ll be able to have access to your office like, whatever, every other day or something and you’ll be able to if something comes up will allow you to talk to your operations chief operations officer and then I did the show.
Norman 28:23
Well, what was that like?
Andrea 28:25
It was crazy because I hadn’t seen the show so I didn’t understand reality television and the argumentativeness. I legitimately thought it was just like a straight up reality show like a straight up business show because I didn’t own a television. It’s insane to me now even that that was the case, but I really had no idea what I was stepping into. So like the second day there I was like, these people are fucking nuts I need out of here. So a producer Patrick kindly pulled me aside and was like we are going to make you look like a lunatic. If you walk out of here right now we’re going to follow you with cameras with the luggage. The whole thing will do. You will trash your credibility etc. and don’t do not do that because I can promise you it’s producers will do but I’m like that You lied to me about what this was. And so then I stayed obviously into the show, but it was interesting, because I just didn’t realize it was a game show. I assumed that everyone would be a super seasoned entrepreneur that was absolutely not the case. So it was really weird. And the thing that I took away was how good I had in life. I have been so cloistered because I’ve been almost entirely self employed since I was 18 years old. So I have never had an employee or a vendor or any client, any but I have a total no asshole rule. I’ve never had to deal with people’s personalities and people who I did not like. I would fire someone as a client or as an employee if I did not like them. So it was bonkers.
Norman 29:57
Yeah, because I mean it really they’re just putting every type of person that could clash on the show. Didn’t they?
Andrea 30:06
Yeah, it makes great television
Norman 30:08
Makes great television and a lot of them. Like I’ve watched some of the Apprentice, and it’s just you sit there and you just go, oh my gosh, this person knows nothing about business, or they just sit back and they’re just loud mouths that like to hear themselves talk. But how many experienced business people were on the show when you were on it?
Andrea 30:29
There were four including myself, and there were 18 candidates total and then those other three people have gone on to just massively excel at life. There’s one of them, Pepe. It is his nickname. Jose is a congressman in Florida now. Stacey Schneider’s, It’s just a top tier attorney, best selling author in New York and Tarik Fab who is a gold to trader in South America. Down in South American and trades cold. Yeah. Then you could just see immediately that these are the people that are going to be successful in life and then those are the ones that have still maintained friendships.
Norman 31:05
The big question, what was it like dealing with Donald?
Andrea 31:09
So he was quite different back then. And it is shocking to see his behavior to me now. But he was very funny and very charming at the time. He’s really changed like he was also a lot more coherent and cognitive in his thinking back then. And, yeah, we got along famously. We got along really well.
Norman 31:32
How far did you get in the show?
Andrea 31:35
11 out of 15. And these women, there was an alliance of three women who accused me of poisoning their food. You heard me correctly, that is attempted murder. That was attempted murder and one of them was an attorney. She accused me of poisoning her breakfast when I made them breakfast. One morning, in front of the cameras, she’s like I saw her spray something in the pan. I’m like it was Pam because they would not give me olive oil for I don’t know what reason but so I was getting, whatever. I refused to defend myself in the boardroom because I’m sitting there and I own the sales rights on Blizzard gaming for World of Warcraft and Diablo and Starcraft I just gotten that contract before I went in when companies are just doing millions and millions and millions of dollars a year in sales I have all these top tier corporations that I am dealing with. And all three of these women just didn’t really have any real business background yet. They were so young and like they just hadn’t done anything in life. I don’t know what they’re doing now. And so they could see how well I was doing. So like we have to again, and they had a whole alliance against me, which of course this show showed because it was funny and compelling to watch for TV. And so I wouldn’t defend myself because I thought, my theory was, which was accurate, If I don’t say anything, there will be no way that the production company can clip this together. I’m not going to defend myself because I also was hyper aware the production could make it look like I did try to poison these people. So I was terrified that I was going to lose all of my credibility in business. And Donald kept saying, Are you sure? Are you sure you don’t want it? And I’m like, if you cannot see the difference between myself and these three women sitting at the table, then I have nothing for you. And he went, Andrea, you fired. And then he called me when the episode aired, which was, he did, he called me on my cell phone. He does not usually do that for contestants. And he was really mad and I was at the global economic Institute, actually with Mark Burnett that day, just like randomly, we would just both happen to be at Mike Milkens’ Global Economic Institute. And I picked up the phone and it was like his secretary, please hold for Donald Trump. And he gets on the front like Andrea, why don’t you tell me? Like why don’t you tell me that that was what was going on. I look like such a fool and he was really mad. And I was like, I did tell you. He’s like you didn’t tell me loud enough. Which is a very Donald thing to say and then we both laughed and we caught up and that was it.
Norman 33:56
I’m interested in, I guess a lot of people are interested in. You were talking about editing, and how they can make things look so perfect, right? Or so bad. When you’re doing a show like the apprentice, how much of it comes across as it actually happens? People take this as reality. Is it reality or when you look at it, is it more scripted than reality?
Andrea 34:23
There’s no scripting, except for there are story writers on all reality shows, and they write what is called a story arc. And so they pick who your character is, then they take the footage that matches that character. My character was the ice Princess, which I certainly can be that way, incredibly stoic and very cold to people that I am not don’t want to hear what they’re saying right now. And especially I am not that way at all now with anybody but it was especially when I was younger, and I was annoyed at the whole situation. So you know, if they didn’t have that hard of a time editing me that way. They certainly can make things look different than they are. So for example, I have a really dry sense of humor and so I would say something that would be actually really funny that everybody would be laughing at, but then they would edit it in such a way where it looked like I was being serious. And then people’s responses to be like, Oh, shocking on like, super offended and how could I dare or they would do stuff like this where somebody would say a sentence to me and I would say a sentence back to them. And then they would say a sentence back to me and like, I’m wearing two different outfits, the responses are happening 12 hours apart, it’s just completely not what happened. But overall personality types that they’re getting, they’re getting your personality type right to the character that they want you to be in. They can make that any character like they could have just chosen all of the time. So I was being really lovely and warm and nice to someone, but that those were not the clips that were selected.
Norman 35:51
What happened afterwards, did you get a lot of mail supporting you?
Andrea 35:57
So it’s interesting because it was so long ago and social media is not the way that it is right now. And so now people just get decimated, and it’s so ridiculous and vilified. And it’s a very loud, angry voice sometimes on the internet. But what’s been consistent for all reality contestants that I’ve ever met is that people will write things in comments sections or email or whatever. But every single person that you meet in person is really, really nice. Really, there’s just some keyboard warriors out there making mean comments.
Norman 36:35
Right? Yeah, I’ve seen that quite a bit. Tough behind the keyboard, right?
Andrea 36:42
Yes, There you go. It’s like the dogs barking behind the fence and you open the fence and they’re best friends.
Norman
Right, exactly.
Andrea
And so there are psychologists on every reality show and they vet to make sure that they are not casting people who would have a predisposition to self harm if they got a bad edit. All reality shows do that. And every psychologist is very clear. Do not read the comments about yourself. And I actually was just like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. So I never never read the comments about myself. That show aired in like, whatever, 2005 or something. And then like, 10 years later, I was drinking wine with one of my girlfriends and we were like, let’s just read all the comments and it was the funniest thing I’ve ever read. I burst out laughing. Oh, my it was just it would not have been hysterical at the time, but it was hysterical. I’m like you guys are really invested in this TV show. That was interesting.
Norman 37:36
I’ve always wondered, like, you always see that villain in these real reality shows. And you wonder how they survive looking at what people are saying on social media.
Andrea 37:48
I was the villain of my season. Absolutely. I think you can see it in the steely blue eyes.
Norman 37:56
Yes, absolutely. I really liked the comment it made about firing people or firing clients. I live by that if I am tooled to have to deal with jerks, and not so much. I find that if I have to let go of somebody, it’s because of me. I’m not training them properly or something that we did in the corporation that can be better. But for clients, Ah, oh my god, I don’t even have to explain. You mean you? Yeah.
Andrea 38:30
I get it. Life’s just too short. And if you’re not having fun, it doesn’t count and there’s just no need to have a contentious relationship. And I always do it in a very loving way. I’m like, Hey this just doesn’t really, it doesn’t feel like a very good fit. And it doesn’t feel like you’re very happy with me either. So let’s just call it a day. Let’s just call it a day. Yeah.
Norman 38:49
So I understand also that you’ve been speaking at some fairly high level conferences and educational institutes like Harvard and you were speaking at the ye or YPO Summit.
Norman 39:03
YPO. And also at Summit Series, both I’ve had speaking engagements with both of those. Yes, mentored at Stanford and at CU Boulder and at Harvard. And whenever I get asked to do that it’s extra extra awesome, because I did not go to college. And so, like the first college period that asked me to speak was Harvard and I was like, Oh, look at me, fancy pants. And so, yeah, I got to go and be a guest lecturer at Harvard for entrepreneurship. And I was like, baller, what’s up now? Yeah, maybe they will give me an Honorary Doctorate of business. If anybody at Harvard is listening, and then I will become a donor, wouldn’t that be nice? I would do it. I would do it. If you’re listening, Harvard, or Stanford. There we go.
Norman 39:48
Shout out to Harvard.
Andrea 39:51
Yeah, but um, so it is extra. It is an extra big privilege for me and honor for me when I get asked to speak at University.
Norman 39:58
Do you get nervous at all when you’re going out and speaking?
Andrea
No
Norman
No? Just comes natural?
Andrea 40:04
I really don’t because I do a lot of Q&A and it actually throws me into this zone because I feel like every entrepreneur I’ve ever met in my life, including like guys that are worth billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars, all of us suffer from imposter syndrome. So then when we get asked to engage, even on a podcast like yours, or to any type of teaching environment or environment where we’re actually talking about ourselves, that doesn’t happen very often, where we sit back and talk about ourselves, or answer questions about all the business knowledge that we’ve acquired over decades, and I always walk out of there like god damn, I know more than I thought I did. Like I just always walk out of there thinking like, wow, I really actually know a very lot about business. But it just, it never even occurs to me that like, oh, not everybody sees a pandemic coming three weeks before the general public and then lays out what their response is going to be to be ahead of it. That’s not that’s not like a normal thing, except for my friend group it is so it feels like it is for everyone. And then whenever I teach, I’m like, Oh, it’s really not. That’s something that took me 30 years to learn how to do.
Norman 41:09
You know, I’ve heard a lot recently too about Imposter Syndrome. And can you tell us a bit more about that? Because a lot of people don’t know what it is.
Andrea 41:20
So imposter syndrome is where you actually are a really legitimately qualified person in the space but you do not feel that way. And you feel like you feel like everybody is going to see under the hood and see that you are really just faking it, and you’re going to call it out for being not legitimate. And I feel like all of the most successful people that I have ever met feel consistently always that way. It was best summed up to me by my friend Alex Banayan, who wrote a book called The Third Door, which is a phenomenal book on entrepreneurship. And it was that everybody else is seeing your highlight reel, but you know, the behind the scenes is how you just really like any minute you could get called out yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
Norman 42:03
So now let’s talk a bit a little bit about some of these other ventures. So you’ve got the Power Chick Mafia.
Andrea 42:11
Boom. Yes, I’ve always considered that this will be my actual Opus company. And for I’m gonna show the logo for anybody that’s joining us here on there. Yeah, Power Chick Mafia. And so it’s like a conglomeration of the most powerful women in the world. And a lot of them are just my girlfriends. And so we get together for conferences and then we’re also releasing loads of online content, online courses and stuff that teach you how to actually become an entrepreneur because I feel like right now, this is why I started Power Chick Mafia, similar to what you were saying earlier is there’s all these women who are like, I’m gonna teach you how to be an entrepreneur. And I’m always like, really, what companies have you started? So I wanted a minimum barrier to entry of women who have started $10 million dollar plus companies that are doing 10 million plus in revenue, who all started from nothing teaching what up and coming Women like you actually really can do this. And these are the legitimate actual companies that you have seen before that these other women started. Instead of like, there’s a very vague like thing that goes on with male people who are selling online courses too, but I just wanted to have the most legit availability for them. And then of course, we’ll roll out into a fund where we fund up and coming women who are starting companies, and then we’ll go into a speaker’s bureau and an entertainment arm. So it will be my overarching biggest company that I ever do.
Norman 43:31
Incredible. So it’s women entrepreneurs, over $10 million. Is it globally or just in North America?
Andrea 43:40
It’s global, Yes. And then the women that come are from all over the world and then so that’s the top part of it. And then the second part is we take those women and they teach lessons that any woman that is coming up in entrepreneurship can purchase online and learn or go to one of our live of events when we’re all allowed to be near each other again after the pandemic.
Norman 44:04
Is it similar to an EO or YPO?
Andrea 44:08
It is. Except to get into my upper end group, there is a qualifier: you have to do 10 million in sales to learn from that Power Chick Mafia woman. If you’re an up and coming entrepreneur, you do not have to qualify and you can just buy the courses
Norman 44:24
Just before the last event I went to was called the Empowery Women’s Summit. And it was empowering, the company or association was called Empowery but for Amazon and it’s kind of strange. It’s not only Amazon, but when you go to events, it’s usually just men and I’m talking not the attendance, the speakers. Believe it or not, that was the very first all women’s conference for Amazon.
Andrea 45:00
Mate, I love it. That’s amazing. Yes, and there’s the thing that happens even in Top Tier Business groups where excluding EO and YPO, where you do have to qualify in. So every single person in the room has qualified and except for that, then they allow their spouses to come to events. So I was the only woman in four years in my YPO Chapter. YPO is another group where for listeners that don’t know, you have to make $10 million a year to qualify to get into a YPO chapter. But then the spouses would come in and all the wives would come in, and their expectation was that I was going to go hang out with them. And I’m like, I’m at a business conference. I’m not doing that. And so all of the other business conferences that I have been to. These Ted and these very awesome top tier things, you can still buy a plus one ticket at Power Chick Mafia, you cannot do that. There are no spouses allowed for every single person because we do have co-ed events. But it’s the only time in co-ed event where every woman in the room is qualified to be in the room because what happens when you go to an event where it is not structured that way is most of the women there are spouses or partners. So if a man like those CEO of Netflix comes in the room, and there’s an empty chair next to a woman, and there’s an empty chair next to a man, he’s not going to sit next to the woman, because most likely, that is somebody whose wife who is not going to add value to his business. And so the women who are the Power Chicks who spent their whole lives were just treated differently. Every powerful woman that goes to these conferences knows that and it pisses them off, and I was like, I am going to do something about this. Because it’s really so much nicer when everybody is qualified in. It’s not that there’s, I mean, it’s great to have like an event or a party where everybody gets to go, but when you’re talking about a business conference, it’s not great when you go to a business conference and 20% of the women are there because their business people on 80% are there for a different reason than that.
Norman 46:46
Right? One of the things that I know you’re going to cringe at but I was going to the conference because they were great speakers. A lot of these ladies were incredible Amazon sellers. They were incredible business people and I couldn’t believe it , and this wasn’t just on the guy side but also on the woman side, people were asking me why I was going, why are you going there? You’re not a woman? Well, no, but look at the agenda. And look at everybody who’s speaking. And it’s so crazy that it wasn’t like just an all women’s conference. It was all women’s speakers. But because I was a guy and that was 500 people, there might have been five guys.
Andrea 47:37
Yeah, we have some that are just women’s conferences. We have one event annually, it’s called Magic, Sedona Magic, Even Magic, Boulder Magic, we’re going to do one in New Zealand, New Zealand magic and that one’s 50/50. And it’s always 50/50 and sometimes it’s even 60% guys, but we like woke dudes. And then it’s kind of funny because even though it is the Power Chick Mafia, it actually what it means is there is an actual equality in the room where it’s all badass men and all badass women. Not that all women aren’t badasses. No matter what they’re doing, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to be an incredibly rad chick. But at a business conference, you want to have everybody at the base playing level and it just makes more sense.
Norman 48:19
Your highest here is 10 million Do you have a second tier?
Andrea 48:24
The second tier really is just open to anybody that wants to learn because it’s a lot of online courses. And then we have a large conference that we obviously are not going to be able to do this year. That would be a 2000 person conference that anybody that wants to attend can go. It’s really just similar to a Tony Robbins concert right? If you want a motivational thing except for this is more tactical business where anybody can buy a ticket that wants to come and learn. Then they’re self selecting themselves like this is what I want to do with my life. I’m going to this conference.
Norman 48:52
Well, I will definitely pass on that information to Empowery and see if you can get more people.
Andrea 48:56
Yes, I would love to connect with them. And I do love to connect with other rad female entrepreneurs, obviously. So I’m surprised I don’t know them. They sound wonderful.
Norman 49:07
Now I want to talk a little bit about a teaching platform called TEEacher.
Andrea 49:12
Yes, TEEacher with two E’s. I don’t like to push against anything and I sound like I’m pushing gets but for the exact same reason that I started Power Chick Mafia. With TEEacher, I started seeing people spring up online selling, like how to start a T-shirt company. And I was like, I have never heard of your T-shirt company. And then when I would look into these t shirt companies they had made like, maybe 60 or $100,000 in sales, and they’d spent $100,000 to get those hundred thousand dollars in sales so that they could write a course so that they could sell the course and then make two or five or $10 million selling the course. And I thought, you know what’s better instead is to come to me and my business partner, Dan Caldwell, who started Tapout and Daniel Dimassa who started Die Epic and Matthew Griffin who started Combat Flip Flops. Between the founders of TEEacher we have done a billion dollars in T-shirt sales. So we actually know how to sell t-shirts. And so we take people into our course and it’s not expensive. Anybody can buy it. The book is $27. We have a starting course that’s $197. We have a no interaction course that’s $497 and then we have a course where you get to interact with us, that’s $997. So we’re not breaking the bank here. And then we teach people how to actually start to finish do t shirt companies how to get online sales, how to accomplish slogans, how to get inexpensive, graphic design, how to get sales, distribution in stores, and actually Griff from combat flip flops, who was on Shark Tank, and you know, there’s millions and millions and millions of dollars in sales started out when with us at teacher when he was $40,000 in debt and thought he might close his doors and Dan and I said we will help you and you do not have to do that. And we helped teach him how to start a teaching company. Same with Daniel Dimassa, who you had on the show. He came to us. He had myriad other companies. He started Die Epic, his clothing line. He had $6,000 In sales the first year all by himself on Die Epic while he was running a bunch of other businesses. Took our course the next year he did $400,000 in sales because he just did everything we told him to do. Because when you started a company from scratch and sold like 40 million t-shirts, you can actually teach somebody else how to do it. There is a formula to it. And so we teach the formula.
Norman 51:18
Yeah, I guess between the four of you. A billion in sales. Yeah, absolutely.
Andrea 51:26
A really big chunk. I mean, I’ve done a lot of sales, but a really big chunk of that sales is obviously Dan from Tapout who just crushed it in T-shirts and he and I have known each other for almost 20 years and and we always thought we wanted to do this company.
Norman 51:40
Wow, that’s incredible. So how do people get in touch with you regarding a TEEacher?
Andrea 51:47
Oh, you can go to TEEacher.com with two E’s. If that fails if you can’t remember how to spell it which I understand because it’s a little confusing. Just go to andrealake.com and it will link you straight through
Norman 52:00
Now if you could talk about, and I know there’s a million, just if you could isolate a success, one of your biggest successes, what would that be?
Andrea 52:11
Living a happy life.
Norman 52:14
I’m so glad you said that.
Andrea 52:19
Me too. It’s the best success. Because I feel like for a really long time, I was chasing something. And when I hit those stumbling blocks where I really did lose everything. I lost everything. I never filed for bankruptcy. I paid all that debt off. But I thought, this isn’t fun. This project has been really fucking not fun. And then it didn’t work and it wiped all of my cash out. And I didn’t have fun along the way. And I didn’t get the exit that I thought that I was working towards. And I am never ever doing another business again, that is not fun. And I was really young but I also realized that I wanted to attain this level of success and this level of dollars and this level of proving that I’m not actually really just an imposter so that I can impress people that I would not want to have to my home for dinner. And so it put me on a different trajectory of just like what’s a good life? Right? It’s good relationships with great people. It’s having a really strong friend group. It’s loving your family. It’s having a really good dog. You know, that’s really what’s important.
Norman 53:19
We touched on it before, but with every success, I hate saying failure, more of a learning experience. But in your life, what has been something? I’ll say, failure, but what was it and how did you get around it? And what did you learn from it?
Andrea 53:38
Well, I really did go from 2 million liquid to 1.2 million in debt in nine months and lost everything. I mean, I cashed out my Apple stock in 2007. Can you imagine how painful that is to look back on and I just kept trying to save this sinking ship. It was just a combination of all bad things and the economy was crashing and my sales and all my companies were decimated simultaneously. And I had a lot of overhead and when you lose all of your sales, they drop out under you like they did during that recession. Like my overhead expenditures did not go anywhere. And so all of a sudden, I was very upside down and I thought I would never win again. I blamed myself and all of the things and then I had over a million dollars in debt, which I didn’t know how I was going to pay certainly at the time, and certainly not for the next two years. It was really hard for me to get anything working again and I feel like that’s where my favorite quote comes in. Like, the only way to fail is really not to get back up. I just got back up and I just started hitting the grind. I never filed for bankruptcy. I kept reminding myself like, I know how to make money. I’m gonna make money. I’m gonna pay this off and I’m gonna win again. But it took a long time before I was able to switch my mindset and do that.
Norman 54:54
So Andrew, is there anything you want people to hear about right now?
Andrea 54:58
The thing that I’m really promoting right now it’s two things. Power Chick Mafia is coming so go get on the mailing list but if you are a power chick get on our mailing list powerchickmafia.com and of course follow us on Facebook and the other thing is TEEacher. We’re doing a huge campaign for TEEacher right now we’re going to do another massive course releases. TEEacher is myself, the founders of Tapout and Die Epic and Combat Flip Flops. Over a billion dollars in combined t-shirt sales actually teaching you how to start a T-shirt company.
Norman 55:29
And how do people get a hold of you?
Andrea 55:31
andrealake.com
Norman 55:33
Fantastic. Now, at the end of every podcast, we have one question. The question is, do you know a guy?
Norman 55:43
As a matter of fact, I do and you guys are in for such a treat. He’s one of the most badass individuals I’ve ever met before. I personally mentored this guy for years and then the student has surpassed master. His name is Mr. Travis Stephen. Lovingly, we call him Travis FM Stephen and he came to me. He was going to be a first round NFL pick. He had a career ending injury literally the year before he would have gone for the draft. Then he became a professional moiety fighter in Thailand. And then he said, this is not a sustainable living for me and he was a competitive level division one athlete. And he said, I’m studying business. He ran across a documentary that I had been in with my business partner from Tapout. And of course, he idolized Tapout years ago, like 15 years ago. And he said, I’m doing this and this and this, I’m taking the same level of competitiveness that I had from professional athletics into business. I can’t even imagine how much knowing you would hyper accelerate my journey. But I know you’re really busy. You probably don’t have time. But if you do, I would love to have a call with you and if not, I’ll see you at the top. And I was like, Whoa, what a perfect approach. I was getting hundreds of emails a day from people that wanted me to mentor them, most of which just for bandwidth I never replied to. I called him Immediately on the phone, I picked up the phone and called him. And I’ve been mentoring him for years and years and years. He sold six businesses in six years for lots of money each one. So his expertise is like this similar to mine, starting new business models, making them run flipping them. And then now he has a couple of very, very huge new ventures that he is involved in. Yeah, one in the cannabis space and then one in educational tech learning. He’s a phenomenal human being.
Norman 57:28
That’s why I love this podcast, because the interesting people that come on, have incredible interesting people that I talk to.
Andrea 57:38
A perfect combination. You set it up very well for yourself.
Norman 57:41
Oh, thank you.
Andrea 57:44
Well, Andrea, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today. Thank you and all the worlds of success for you.
Andrea 57:51
Oh, Norm. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Norman 57:54
Hey guys, and gals. Thanks for listening. For more great content, please Like, Subscribe and Follow I Know this Guy on all social media platforms.
Norman 58:05
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