Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 075. I've read 100 Books on Business- These 8 will make you RICH

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

In this episode of the Bedros Keuilian Show, I share the top 8 books every entrepreneur should read. And how you can use each book in your business and personal development journey. You may have read one of these books in the past, which is why you should read it again. You will find hidden golden nuggets you missed last time. REGISTER FOR THE LEGACY TRIBE Get the Life, Money, Meaning & Impact You Deserve https://bedroskeuilian.com/legacytribe EARLY BIRD TICKETS ON SALE NOW | BK LIVE 2024 Join me September, 13-14 in Scottsdale, Arizona for the Self-Mastery & Business Event of THE YEAR https://live.bedroskeuilian.com/bk-live-2024 JOIN MY FREE 6-WEEK CHALLENGE: Transform into a Purpose-Driven Man https://bedroskeuilian.com/challenge TruLean Supplements | https://www.trulean.com/pages/bedros Get 50% Off Trulean Subscribe & Save Bundle Use Code: BEDROS Few Will Hunt Apparel | https://fewwillhunt.com/ Get 20% Off Your Entire Order Use Code: BEDROS BECOME A MODERN DAY KNIGHT: Join the MDK Project https://www.themdkproject.com/ STAY CONNECTED: Website | https://bedroskeuilian.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bedroskeuilian Twitter | https://twitter.com/bedroskeuilian

You read a book three, four, five times. You start understanding it at a much deeper level. You start understanding what the author mean. You start getting to a place of mastery. Welcome to the Bedroskulean show. Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo, I was banging with a gang of instrumental. Hey friends, welcome to the Bedros Kulian show.

My name is Bedros Kulian, and today we've got a great show teed up for you. But before I give you the show, I want to remind you that if you are getting any value watching this on YouTube, then you, You need to know that 81% of you now are not subscribed. 81% of you who are watching this on YouTube are not subscribed. So if you get any value from this, do me a favor and subscribe.

So let's jump into the show. And I got to give you all a confession here. The confession is this. Up until my mid-20s, I did not read books. Like even in elementary school, junior high and high school, I did not read books. I hated the idea of books. I did everything I could to. not read them and if I needed to write a book report about something because they give you a book

to read until you read a book in school, I would just kind of cheat off of friends because I would rather cheat than read a book because I thought books were the stupidest things on earth. And guess what? I was wrong. I was wrong because as it turns out when you read a book, you're literally getting 20, 30, 40 years of knowledge, wisdom, expertise on a topic. or from an individual who's an expert or an authority in a what, 19 or $25 book, right? Where else can you get 20, 30, 40 years of knowledge and expertise on a topic or from an industry expert

where they've got it packed together and consolidated for you? And so for me, reading books, I felt was stupid. I didn't realize that it's the ability to time collapse. Now the books that we're going to talk about today that I'm going to recommend are eight books that I believe every entrepreneur should read if you are looking to scale your business and increase profits and then build a team so that you can buy back your time and enjoy the winnings of your business, right? Think about how many people start businesses and those businesses

do well, but now they're handcuffed to that business. They feel like, shoot, I can't take time off. I can't take a vacation. I can't take weekends off. In the evenings, I have to check my emails and all the stuff because they feel like they're having to do everything. They're sitting in every seat across the company's leadership board. And they find themselves burning out and handcuffed to a business. Well, what's the point of making good money if you don't have the ability to buy back your time and have the freedoms, right? So these eight books that every entrepreneur should read are books that have massively impacted my career as an entrepreneur. Some of these books took me from seven figures to eight figures and nine figures across my various brands like

fit body boot camp truling supplements uh some of these books we are currently using now again as we hit new levels of growth across brands like fuel hunt the shirt that i'm wearing by the way i don't know if you all know this or not but fuel hunt apparel is all american made uh since late twenty twenty three all fuel hunt gear is american made and if you support the American way, then you might want to invest in fuel hunt gear. Anyways, all that to say that the books I'm about to share with you are going to be massively transformational. And I got to tell you that I've probably over the years of my 24 year career as an entrepreneur, 24 years, holy cow, almost a quarter of a century as an entrepreneur across many industries, software,

franchising, right, with Fit Body Boot Camp, Supplements, Truline, Apparel, Fuel Hunt, coaching and consulting, experiential events across all these different industries, I've probably read, I would say, four or 500 books. The ones that I'm about to share with you here are ones that I visit and revisit frequently. And the reason for that is this. When you read a book once, you are able to discern whether it's a good book or a bad book. And you might be able to tell someone, hey, man, you're an entrepreneur, you're starting a business, or you're in this phase of business where you are in a growth phase or you're maybe hitting a

glass ceiling if you want to break through that glass ceiling, this book I would recommend, right? And you might recommend that book because when you read it, you got the concept and the ideas that this book was worthy for that topic. But I believe that there's reading and then there's something called active reading. Active reading is one when you read a book and you realize this could be transformational in my business. Don't read it just once. go back and revisit that book three, four, or five times.

I believe when you are three, four, or five times into reading a book, and active reading means actually taking notes. Sometimes I will listen to an audio book at first. In fact, all of the books that I start with, for the most part, are audiobooks. And then if I go, holy crap, this was a good book. It's going to be transformational in my life and my business. Then I'll get the physical book and I'll read it and I'll take notes along the along the page, the outside of the pages, I'll take notes for myself, or I will dog your fold

pages that are relevant to me at that time because I plan on going back to these books, a third, a fourth, and a fifth time. Why you ask? Well, like I said, if you read a book once or twice, you get the general concept of it. You read a book three, four, five times. You start understanding it at a much deeper level. You start understanding what the author means. You start getting to a place of mastery. And I believe that it is only when you can teach a book is when you can apply that book's knowledge to yourself or to your business, in this case, to your business, right? You guys, quick interruption to the Bedroskoolion show. I want to remind you about the Trulian Wellness Shot. I created the Trulian Wellness Shot because I wanted a product that was going to

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You not only get 50% off your first order, you also get free shipping. a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee so that if you don't like the product for some reason, which we have yet to meet anyone who don't like the product, we will give you your money back, no questions asked, and we will shake hands and part ways as friends. And of course, $1 of every order goes to Shriner's Children's Hospital, which is a hospital system that I've been helping and supporting for over 12 years. They provide medical procedures, medical services, surgeries to children whose families can't afford these procedures. So go to trueling.com, use code word bedros.

the Trulene Tribe, you get 50% off your first order, and then 20% off your recurring monthly orders after that. Back to the show. If you think like reading any one of these books I'm going to recommend to you just once is going to be enough and transformational, I'm here to tell you it's not. Read it three, four, five times. These are books that I've now, some of them I've read eight, nine, ten times, right? And again, I share that with you because you will be in new phases of growth in your business and leadership and problem solving and level of competition. in economic times, right? And there might be a chapter or a page or two in a book that you're about to read that is

relevant today that wasn't relevant to you a year ago when you read it, you know, for the second or third time. So when you find the winners, keep reintroducing them to your life over and over again because as you get to new phases, you will learn new stuff out of those same books. So if that further ado, let's jump into the eight books that every entrepreneur should read the eight books that have impacted my business the most and the way I lead, market, and influence. So thing number one, book number one, and this is actually a pretty recent book. So you're thinking like, wait, Pedro, how are you about to recommend a book that's kind of come

out in the last couple of years in the last few years? How are you going to recommend this when you started building your companies, you know, over 20 years ago? Well, simple. I had the good fortune of meeting the author and being in a mastermind with him. And the first book that I want to tell you about is called 10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan. And my dear friend Joe Polish ran a mastermind called the Genius Network Mastermind. And some 15, 16 years ago, I had the good fortune to sign up for that mastermind.

I was a paying member of that coaching program. And Dan Sullivan was not only a member, but Joe Polish would lean on him a lot to teach a lot of his strategies. And Dan Sullivan is a strategic thinker. He calls himself a strategic thinker. His company is called strategic coach. And so the stuff that he wrote in this book, 10x is easier than 2x, are things that he was teaching us 15, 16 years ago in these masterminds, right? And he had worksheets that we would follow along with.

And I share that with you because to learn to think at a 10x level, like a level that can you do the same work, but it'll produce 10 extra results instead of two extra results. That is how you time collapse growth. If you're wondering, what are some of the books that I recommend to my coaching clients and the domination year coaching clients who have grown their business from, let's say,

you know, $8,000, $10,000 a month to $3,000 or $500,000 a month within a two or three year period, right? Like that's a substantial hockey stick going from $8,000 or $9,000 a month. Rachel Shear comes to mind. Tony Steffen comes to mind many others. Vince Del Monte come to mind. Well, how did they go from $8,000, $10,000 a month to $200, $300,000 a month in revenue? Well, I got them to start thinking

and reading the books that I'm recommending here to you. And one of these ones are 10x. Because if you can start thinking at a 10x level, like what are the levers that I need to pull in my business to produce the 10x results? Because the reality is the same amount of effort will create a 2x result, which means if you just grow your company or your business by 2x, it's going to take a lot longer to get to your desired destination. But if you could really come up with some 10x ideas that Dan Sullivan talks about in this book, then you're going to hit a whole new stride and you're going to hockey stick. Book number two is traction by Gino Wickman.

Now, full disclosure, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book for anyone that's doing less than $50,000 a month in their business. If you're doing less than $50,000 a month in your business, you're not going to want to read traction. Traction is a great book that's going to help you go from, you know, 50,000 to 100,000, 200,000, 300,000. It helped me take many of my companies from seven figures to eight figures and eight figures to nine figures. So what does traction do? Well, Gino Wickman has this amazing system that he created called EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System. And in EOS, the model is to get rid of the org chart, the organizational chart.

In other words, traditionally you have the CEO and then the vice president and then you got all the people under them, director of operations, director of this, right? Then you got all the people under them. Well, you get rid of the organizational chart and then you create an accountability chart. An accountability chart is who are the set of eyeballs that I need to look into if I want better marketing strategies in my company? If I want better leads, higher quality leads, more leads, right? What are the set of eyeballs that I need to look into for sales? If I want more sales, I want higher ticket sales, and I want sales that are going to have a lower

probability of chargeback. When you have an accountability, an accountability system, like EOS, entrepreneurial operating system, it literally takes out the bottlenecks in your business and shines light on the opportunities that you've been overlooking. In fact, many of you know that I take equity in companies, right? So I'll buy into a company if I can, if one, I like the product or service. Number two, I have the audience to promote that product or service too. And number three, if I like the founders and the leadership of that company, right?

Because ultimately, when you're getting into a relationship, you're really working intimately with the people of that company to help grow it. And if I'm not going to have a good time doing it, I don't care how potentially profitable it could be or what a great opportunity could be for me. I'm not interested. I don't give a shit. And so assuming those three things are in line, when I take equity in a company, it is written in the operating agreement that we create that for me to take equity means you as a leader of this company must install EOS, entrepreneurial operating system in the company. They got to read the book, Traction, and then they got to read Gino's second book, Rocket Fuel,

which I guess if there was a ninth book, this would be the one to recommend, right? But Gino, Wickman, traction, and rocket fuel. And then we install EOS into that company, and it almost makes it a fail safe for me to know that that leader and the team are going to be held accountable to desired outcomes, date lines like actual you know dates when things will be produced and not just lackadaisically go well sorry we missed that goal or we have a moving target it's like you set a target you set a deadline and then you attack it and that's what EOS does really well and again this is not for businesses that are doing under $50,000 a month if you're doing more than $50 grand a month I

highly recommend your retraction by Gino Wickman again it's had a massive influence on my business, we still run all of my companies and all the companies that I've taken equity and invested in by EOS. Book number three is influence by Robert Chaldeenie. And Robert Chaldeenny talks about the six psychological weapons of persuasion. Think about this. In business, everything you do is about influence and persuasion. How can I persuade you to do what I want you to do to produce the outcome that I need? Well, there's six psychological weapons of influence and persuasion. that Chaldini has figured out. And in this book, he not only teaches you what those six psychological weapons of persuasion are,

he gives you examples of how to use them and examples of how they've been used in time and history so that you get a better picture of how you can use it in your business, when you're negotiating with a business partner, when you're trying to make a sale to one or many clients or customers, when you're trying to negotiate with your team, or you're trying to influence or persuade your team because you're going into, a new industry, you're going into a new country, you're going into a new market segment. If you can't persuade or influence the people who are going to attack with you, then you're going to

find yourself always fighting resistance. Resistance against your customers, resistance against your leadership team, resistance against your employees. And if you're always feeling resistance, then it makes your job as a founder and CEO infinitely more difficult, doesn't it? So, influenced by Robert Chaldeini, an amazing book on the six psychological weapons of persuasion that will massively help you in selling your vision, not only to your employees, to your business partners, to your leadership team, to your clients and customers, and everybody involved. Number four, expert secrets by Russell Brunson. Now, Russell Brunson wrote this book, I don't know, here we are in 2024.

I think he may have written this book five, six years ago, if memory serves right. It doesn't really matter. The point of it is it's more relevant today. Expert secrets is more relevant today than it was when he wrote it. Now, if I were to go back in time, I might change the title from expert secrets to authority secrets because the real idea is how do you position yourself as an expert in an industry so that you can have greater amounts of influence and persuasion very similar to Chaldean's book influence but in a very different way using the internet and social media and email marketing

to position yourself as the expert I like to say to position yourself as the authority or celebrity in that space, which is really about building your personal brand, because the more you can build your personal brand in an industry as an entrepreneur, the less resistance you're going to have to selling, right? When you're selling, people will buy from you if they know, like, and trust you. Well, if they know, like and trust you, it's because they see you as an expert or an authority or a celebrity in that space. And think about this. It's easier today than ever to position yourself as an expert and an authority. And Russell Brunson in this book, Expert Secrets, teaches you how to do that.

And by positioning yourself as an expert and authority, what do you do? You differentiate yourself. Because whether you have supplements or apparel or a coaching business or your real estate or finance or whatever it is that you do, odds are you have a slew of competition. So unless your product is so much more better and different that you can uniquely explain and how much more better and different it is, one of the biggest differentiating factors for you to stand up and stand out

from your competitors in your industry is for you to be seen as an expert and an authority, as a celebrity. And today, more than ever, you can build your personal brand to be seen as an expert and an authority, even a celebrity in your space, so that the resistance to buying is lower,

the desire to buy your stuff is higher, and the market share that you have is bigger. And who the hell doesn't want that, right? All right, book number five that I'm going to recommend, which is five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lincione. And five disfunctions of a team really talks about when you are in a growth phase of a company. If it's just you and, you know,

maybe your friend or business partner or maybe you and a couple other employees running your business, maybe this book isn't right for you, Although I would recommend that you get it so that as you continue to grow and your team grows, you have more employees and you have different departments like just in FitBody Boot Camp alone. We have operations. We have territory mapping. We have sales.

We have marketing. Right. We have compliance. Like five big departments with people in them. And those people make decisions. And those people have feelings, thoughts, and emotions. And those people can get this. dysfunctional if we don't solve it ahead of time, right? So in this book, Five Dysunctions of a

team, Patrick Lincione lays out what those five dysfunctions are and how to cut it off at the pass so that your team doesn't have the friction that most teams and employees have out there, which slow down growth, so that your teams aren't working in a silo, right? Because, again, that slows down growth. And so that your teams aren't necessarily losing moral, which then produces a high level of burnout, which then produces a turnstile effect in your company. You're always hiring and firing, hiring and firing. And any company that has a high level of hiring and firing does not have sustained growth.

So that's book number five, five disfunctions of a team, Patrick Lincione. Book number six, 21 irrefutable laws of leadership by John Maxwell. And John Maxwell has done such a great job with this book. This book is literally a classic in terms of leadership. Some things, you know, the 21 irrefutable laws that he shares of leadership, some things are, you go, oh, duh, that's common sense. Other things are like, holy shit, I never thought of it that way, right? Like one of the big takeaways that I got was positional authority versus moral authority,

right? And there's a lot of takeaways, but I just want to share that one thing. Like, positional authority is someone's giving you the position, the title, the role, of leadership. Well, that means the people that are following you, they have to follow you, right? But do they want to follow you? Whereas moral authority is you are liked, you are trusted, you are being followed because they want to follow you, not because they have to follow you. Now, let me ask you, if you were to hire a second in command in your company, would you want them to have positional authority or moral authority over your team? You want them to have moral authority

so that they are followed because they are liked and respected. They're seen as good. decision makers. They're seen as emotionally disciplined. And again, I'll dive deeper into leadership in the next episode that I'm going to put out for you guys. But I really want to stress the point that what John Maxwell talks about often across many of his book is that leadership is the lid. If you're like, nah, Bezos, I just need better marketing systems, better sales systems. I need to build my social media bigger and better. I don't need leadership skills. I'm a good leader. I'm here to tell you're not. Like nine out of ten, 10 times. If you think you're a good leader, those are just your ego defenses that are up.

And you're too egotistical. You have too much pride to realize you're not a good leader. And you also probably don't realize that the leadership is the lid, meaning your business can only grow to the level of leadership that you are. Right. And so if you're a, we say if you're a level six or seven leader, you're not going to be able to hire eights and nine's, right? Level eight and nine people are not going to work for a leader who's a six or a seven. And so the only way this is going to work effectively is for you to become a better leader, right, that has moral authority and not just positional authority. Of course, you're going to have positional authority because you are the man or woman in charge. But if you don't have the moral authority, you're not going to have

the longevity of keeping your best people and you're not going to have the ability to hockey stick your business like me and many of my coaching clients have done over the years. All right. Right. Number seven, man up by your truly Bedros Kulian, right? I wrote the book because I had to learn the hard way of what not to do as a leader, entrepreneur, decision maker. When I wrote the book, man up, it's not about how to be a tough guy. It's about humaning up to your higher potential. And it talks really man up is about the six pillars of entrepreneurial leadership. Like if you can dial these six pillars of entrepreneurial leadership, which, interestingly enough, a lot of you read it out there as a self-help book because it also applies to yourself. Like you read Man Up,

you know, it's Man Up, how to cut the bullshit and dominate in business and in life, right? Like, that's the full title. Man Up, how to cut the bullshit and dominate in business and in life. Well, if you want to dominate in business and in life, you've got to know these six things, right, these six pillars. And in Man Up, I had to go out and learn these. Some I had to learn the hard way through experiences of losing a lot of money, of losing a lot of time, of being massively stressed out and being on the brink of losing my businesses, right? Other things here, I was able to develop over time because I realized as my company is growing, I can't lead every department.

It is time to start developing leaders. And sometimes it's time to start recruiting leaders. Like you don't have the luxury to develop a leader when your company is growing so quickly so you have to recruit a leader. But Matt Up really goes deep into the six pillars of entrepreneurial leadership and every person that's read it tells me that they loved my book and that it's helped them and that they can relate to some of the issues because I openly talk about every stupid decision I've made that have cost me either time, money, or some kind of a relationship fracture, right? All right. And finally, book number eight that I believe every

entrepreneur should read is how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. And listen, I think if I could do it over again, if I were to go back to 1937, like that's when Dale Carnegie wrote this book. If I can go back to 1937 and go, yo, Dale, consider changing the title of this book to how to develop massive levels of influence and persuasion, right? Like I think That would be a better way to define this book than how to win friends and influence people. But maybe the vernacular in 1937 was appropriate for what he wrote. But this book, make no mistake about it, teaches you how to sell, how to influence, how to persuade at the highest level. From the stage, right?

During his time, it was from the stage to the masses, right? From the soapbox, if you will, in 1937 to the masses. Well, today the soapbox is what? a podcast like this, a YouTube show like this, a social media platform, a stage that you're going to be able to speak to hundreds or thousands of people to. And how do you win their trust? How do you win them over? How do you influence them?

How do you persuade them to your way of thinking? How do you get them to make the decisions that you want them to make that's going to be best for them and you as the entrepreneur? So how to win friends and influence people, powerful, powerful book by DeLisle, Carnegie written in 1937 as effective today as it was then and guys really want to stress this fact that active reading means you read a book more than once or twice that you read it three four five times and as your journey as an entrepreneur evolves your team grows your business becomes more complex there's

more moving parts in your business go back to these eight books and read them and reread them over and over again if you find some other books that you're like dude, these other books were very helpful in the growth of my business or my leadership or marketing or sales. If you're watching this on YouTube, drop the names of those books in the comment section because then we can create a mega list of books that every entrepreneur should read. But these are the eight that work for me. I'd love to know what books you have read that have helped you as an entrepreneur in your growth as a leader, marketing, sales, et cetera. And I want to remind you one more thing, and that is September 13th and 14th and beautiful.

Scottsdale, Arizona. I'm hosting BK Live again, September 13th and 14th in Scottsdale, Arizona. We've got an amazing lineup of speakers. I can't announce who the speakers are just yet, but you can go to bedrosecoollion.com forward slash live. The registration is open and the early bird ticket registration prices are lower than they've ever been. And once I announce the speakers and the site goes live in terms of the full-blown website to register. The prices will go up later this summer. So hoping to see you September 13th, 14th in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. If you got a lot of value from this episode and you're watching this on YouTube,

please be sure to subscribe since over 80% of you are not subscribed. And again, I want to leave you with one final thing and you know what that is. And that is average is the enemy. Success is your responsibility. and change can take place in an instant if you are willing to flip the switch. I'll see y'all next time.