In the Loop with Andy Andrews

On this week's episode, I'm addressing a listener question on how you can become impervious to insult and keep the attention of your audience.

I realized by watching other comedians that some would have more problems with hecklers than others.

• Generally, hecklers keyed in on the performers who had a more arrogant attitude or a pushy demeanor. I'm not saying they were that way, but that was the perception of the audience.
• They were also more likely to put out a vibe where people wanted to challenge them.
• I decided that I wanted to be friends with the audience.

There are things in your profession that you will always have to deal with.

• The same rules of comedy apply to great teaching, for instance.
• Keep a list of things that could occur during your presentation and decide in advance what you'd say if they happened.
• Take a good, close look at how you present. What do you do physically?
• Moving unexpectedly to a different area of the room will grab listeners' attention.

Tune in to hear Andy's secret for handling a situation where someone is nodding off or focusing on something else, and find out how he gets their attention and keeps them from being a distraction.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week's episode, I'm finishing the discussion of my career pivots and how I transitioned out of comedy into what I do today.

I was on a bus with Kenny Rogers and we were talking about how we had grown up and sharing times in our lives.

• At some point I told him about the Seven Decisions, living under the pier, and Jones.
• He said, "You ought to start talking about that on stage," and I'm like, "Where on stage? It's not funny."
• He told me I wasn't a joke teller but a talker and a storyteller.
• I starting throwing it in and transitioning back into comedy, but people were telling me that the serious part was their favorite part.

I realized more people asked me to speak on serious topics than were asking for the comedy.

• This odd thing developed where I was funny, but it had a point.
• I realized that God has used all these crazy things in my life to make me into a very different kind of speaker.
• As I transitioned into speaking, I put together the Storms of Perfection books.
• Then The Traveler's Gift came along and I started writing the story that was born from living under the pier, and that developed into being more of an author.
• The writing forced me to think.
• To sit there and think, read through something, take notes, and ponder is not too hard, but people think it is and they choose not to do it.

Tune in to hear about the process of "getting to the bottom of the pool" and how that's forcing me to learn new ways of explaining the topics in the next book I'm writing.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week's episode, I'm continuing to talk about the events that have shaped my career and how I learned to be willing and ready to pivot.

I wasn't clear on my direction when I started—I had no clue this was in the cards for me.

• I was willing to endure some things I thought were useless or miserable and look for what I could learn from them.
• There are things that happened to me 40 years ago that I can now use as stories to help other people.

I never thought that living under the pier would be anything good. I was just trying to endure and get out of there.

• Normally, people don't want to be under pressure. But I can show you evidence over and over that peoples' best work happens under pressure.
• The proper perspective trumps almost everything.

I was able to tour with Joan Rivers for two years.

• Opening acts normally don't get paid much anywhere—but the huge benefit is the exposure.
• I learned how to treat an opening act from Joan.
• Joan's manager also managed Cher. So I got the opportunity to work with her as well.

Tune in to hear about:

• My experience touring with Joan and the extreme generosity she showed me.
• The night Howard Stern watched me perform.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I’m talking about how I got started in comedy and some of the events that have shaped my career in the first of a three-part series.

Tune in to hear about:

• My first public performance in a Pizza Hut
• Opening for Muse as my first paid performance, and why they asked me not to come back
• How working on a cruise ship caused me to pivot my career, but taught me to perform at my best no matter what my job was

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I’m discussing why everyone should think of themselves as an entrepreneur.

We tend to live our lives and make our decisions on the surface, where we can see what everybody is doing.

• Knowing “why” will get you to what I call “the bottom of the pool.”
• People only ask why when things go wrong. Nobody ever asks why when something is working.
• You can live your life as it is, accepting the slop on your plate, or you can eat that slop on your plate thinking in couple weeks you’ll be eating chicken, a month from now eating steak, and a year from now nothing but lobster.

People who are entrepreneurs seem to have more hope for a life they can control.

• They are creating a situation and value.
• They have a longer lasting, more controllable level of hope than people who think of themselves as, “I have a job.”
• I don’t believe we’ve been created with some of us having the lucky lottery ticket in life that gives us a better imagination or allows us to be able to get up earlier.
• People can do what they want. They may refuse to believe that, but again, they’re choosing how they think.
• If you can think of yourself as an entrepreneur, it allows for greater hope and a better awareness of the control you already have.

Tune in to hear how to think of yourself as an entrepreneur and add so much value to a company that you’ll be indispensable—indeed the first to get a promotion and the last to be laid off!

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I’m discussing why we are all in sales—even if you don’t consider yourself to be in a traditional sales position.

I am absolutely convinced that anybody who would like to make a living outside of a regular job structure, can.

• If they can manage to think of themselves as an entrepreneur, their lives will improve dramatically.
• People can be much more effective in every part of their lives by thinking and learning those entrepreneurial principles and thought processes, because they are very different from the way normal people think.

We are all in sales.

• We walk around every day wanting to sway somebody to our way of thinking.
• If you’re a mom or dad, you’re not only in a sales position but in an advisory position for other sales people.
• The essence of leadership is influence, and the essence of influence is agreement.
• The principles of entrepreneurship are controllable in a way that your job never will be; they supersede whether you’ll have your own business and carry over into all facets of life.

Tune in to learn the ONLY two reasons people ever disagree, and to hear about the wife of a United States Justice who felt Andy let someone off the hook too easily.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I’m talking about the importance of having a child start their own business and how it opens them up to communication as a teenager.

I had a conversation the other day with Joe Bullard and his son Ty who run an auto dealership “empire.”

• Joe took over his dad’s Oldsmobile dealership, and now Ty has recently taken the reins.
• I asked Ty what the smartest thing his dad ever did was, and he said it was taking a step back from City Council and other things so that he could spend time with his son.
• It occurred to Joe as he looked long-term that the best thing he could do to continue to expand the business for generations was to invest time in the person who would likely take it over.

I have had a lot of parents of teenagers say, “My teen won’t talk to me,” and the typical response is, “Well, that’s just a teenager.”

• One of the huge benefits of prompting Austin to have his own business was we put him in a position that he had to talk to us.
• Since age 12, he knew we weren’t buying him a car, so when he asked “How do I get the money?” I told him there are three ways:
• You can save the $5 and $10 you get for your birthday and in a couple years you’ll have around $400 and you can buy a $400 car.
• You can get a job at age 14 and work minimum wage for 2 years.
• You can start your own business by figuring out how to create value for other people, and the more obvious the value, the more business you will have.

Tune in to hear why this approach will make you your child’s go-to person for advice, and why this is the best time for them to struggle.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I talk about the importance of having a coach and how to increase your life results.

I think cool people have an innate desire to get better.

• They want to learn more, increase their effectiveness, be worth more.
• They’re ambitious and want to make more money for their families so there’s less stress and more that they can give.
• They want to have influence so they can make their community better.

For a long time, people have wanted me to coach them personally.

• I had to come to an understanding in myself that I know some things and have the ability to convey them in a way that could help people increase their life results.
• I want you to be fired up when we get through talking, but I don’t want you to be fired up by some emotional thing that I put on you. I want it to be real.
• The only reason you would be fired up for real is if you learned something that made a ton of sense to you.

Tune in to hear about a demonstration I do on stage with audience members that proves how coaching affects someone’s ability to complete a task.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I finish up last week’s discussion on how to decide who to vote for in this year’s election.

When we vote, we generally vote based on two things:

• Perceived integrity.
• Economics

Integrity doesn’t really mean anything.

• Integrity means “capable.”
• What we should vote on is character.

People say, “I want a moral person,” but morality can be defined as simply not doing anything wrong.

• You can lie in bed all day and be moral.
• Your kid can come home from school and say, “Everyone was picking on John today, but I didn’t do it.”
• It takes character to step up and say to those bullies, “You are not going to do this anymore.”

You can walk through a forest and tell what kind of trees are above you without having to look up.

• The leaves on the ground can tell you the kind of tree, if it’s healthy, and what time of the year it is.
• People drop leaves, too.

Tune in to hear the two ways your money can be taken from you, and why “third-party purchases” are less invested in quality and price.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

On this week’s episode, I answer a listener question on what people should be looking for in a presidential candidate.

Have you ever known something but later found out you were wrong?

• Is it possible you know what’s best?
• The best is the truth. Things can be true in a certain context, but not the whole truth.
• When people find what is true to them, they stop searching and don’t go any farther.
• You can know the truth and not accomplish the best, but you will never accomplish the best without the truth.

The only time most people ask ‘why’ is when things aren’t working.

• When they get the answer, they don’t ask anymore.
• Always keep asking ‘why’—about the things that are working as much as you ask ‘why’ about the things that are not.
• Only a principle can provide a bottom line or the truth. Principles work every time, whether you know them or not.

A wise person knows when a compromise will be useful or foolish.

• Wise compromises are made with opinions.
• You get 100% of the value of the compromise.
• When you compromise on a principle, you get zero value.

Tune in to hear Andy’s enlightening comparison between choosing a candidate and choosing from a menu at a restaurant, and learn why America is the most prosperous place on the planet.

Questions for Andy

Would you like to run something by Andy? Contact us and your question might be featured on the show!

• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews