Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 076. How To Become a Great Leader

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

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Leadership is the lid. Leadership determines the growth of a business, of a family, of an organization, or the degeneration of a business, family, or organization. Welcome to the Bedros Koolian Show. Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo, I was banging with a gang of instrumental. What's happening, friends? Welcome to the Bedros Kulian show. My name is Bedros Kulian.

And today we've got a great show on leadership and the four levels of leadership that you need to know to really thrive in life. So let's get started. Now, everyone on Spotify and iTunes, want to thank you all for listening to the show and watching the show. And I'm massively grateful for you guys. We are growing by leaps and bounds

on both the Spotify and the iTunes platforms. And it is because you are leaving a review, a thumbs up, and dropping a comment in there. So thank you so much. Those of you on YouTube, we are growing at a breakneck speed. And again, it is because you continue to comment, engage, subscribe,

and share. So again, massive amounts of gratitude. It is not lost on me that this is a solo show, which means I'm not bringing guests on the show that then give me the opportunity to expose my show to other audiences. We are literally growing as fast as possible. We're in the top five of podcasts out there in our genre of self-development and entrepreneurship, simply because of you subscribing, listening, sharing, commenting, and of course, engaging in the Bedroskoolion show. So thank you so much. By the way, if any of you are going to come out to the Bedrose Coolean live event taking place in September 13th and 14th, Scottsdale, Arizona, you can go to bedroseculine.

com forward slash live and you can get early bird registration tickets at the lowest possible price later this summer of 2024. right middle of July, the prices are going to go up. But you go to bedroats cooling.com forward slash live and you can get your early bird tickets to BK Live September 13th, 14th in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. Let's talk about leadership and how great leaders lead, right? Think about this. Like how do great leaders lead?

Is leadership factory installed for most people? I don't think so. And every study I've read about leadership is not factory installed. in most of us. I believe maybe there's a small handful of people in humanity where leadership could be factory installed. For the rest of us, it has to be developed like a muscle, right? So you have to first understand what is leadership, but it's not just giving orders and commands to people, right? You would think that that's what leadership is and probably from the outside, that's what leadership feels like. But as someone who has built multiple businesses and we're doing

$200 million a year in gross revenue across all my brands, it takes a lot of high level of leadership and it takes a lot of leaders across my brands and my companies to be able to run the machine and lead the people that produce the desired outcome, right? In this case, it's a quality product, whether the product is a service or a physical product or supplement or whatever. And profits, product and profits matter. And great leaders help produce that because a shitty quality product means ultimately bad reviews, bad feedback, and there go your profits and you find yourself working a jack in the box and growing those fat titties because you're eating them jumbo jacks again. All right. So let's talk about leadership and

what is leadership and what is not leadership and how great leaders actually lead, think, process and get things done. So first I want you to understand that there's a thing, there's positional leadership and then there's moral leadership, right? And you could really just take leadership away and just call it positional authority, right? That's what a leader is. They have authority over a business and a group of people that they lead into towards an action, right? So there's positional authority and then there's moral authority and we'll break that down in a second. Now, positional authority means this, right? It's a leader who is, who's got a title, right? Positional leadership, position of authority, you've got a title or someone's made you the leader to lead that group of

people. And so that group of people are going to do what you say because, well, you've got the title and that's the chain of command. But do they like you? Do they respect you? Do they feel that you make sound decisions? Do they feel that you are the type of person when you make a mistake, you're able to own up to it and take responsibility and make it right? Or are you the type of leader that says, well, it's not my fault and you blame it on something else? Most people who are in a position of kind of positional authority, they are the type of leaders that have a high turnover in their organization. You can call the organization whatever you want, a sports team, a business, right?

Now, obviously we're talking about great leadership and how great leadership actually leads in terms of through the lens of entrepreneurship, business, making more money. But make no mistake about it. You can lead your family. You can lead a sports team. You could lead in battle in the military. You could lead, obviously, as an entrepreneur or in a business, right? You could lead a church.

Why are there some big megachurches that are on the same page? And there are these tiny churches that are barely going, getting by. You could lead a charity. Like if you run a charity and you're like, man, I want the charity to make more money so we can help more kids or save more animals or whatever it is that your charity does. Again, leadership is the problem. Leadership is the solution.

And most people think that positional leadership, a positional authority, is the highest level of authority. And it's not. That's actually the lowest level of authority. Moral authority is the highest level of leadership, right? Moral authority, meaning being loved, liked, trusted, where they feel like if you were to make a mistake you would own up. And so we're going to talk about that now, now that we're able to kind of break down leadership as authority and then say, okay, there's positional authority and

there's moral authority. And we know moral authority is the higher level of leadership that we want to evolve into. So what are the four levels of leadership? Well, let's start itself. Number one, leadership of self. Because look, if you think that you're just going to go out there and lead people in a company, in your company, or in an organization, but you are unable to, you are unable to, to lead yourself to your own desired outcomes, it's called hypocrisy. And there's no faster way to be seen as a hypocrite and an imposter than by trying to lead others

without having the ability to lead yourself. And so leadership of self is that first level of leadership. It's that first, first position. And so what do you do about it? Well, think about this. If you are looking to lose weight, if you're looking to be a better husband or wife, if you're looking to be a better father, if you're looking to speak and orate better, if you want to be a better decision maker, you want to

be a better visionary, you want to have more emotional discipline, you want to have more mental toughness, and you maybe told others that, or it's obvious that you're trying to build those skills and traits. Are you actually leading yourself to that outcome? Or are you the person that says, I want to be a better father, I want to be a better husband, a better mom, a better wife, a better business partner, but then you continue to not be it, right? What if you want to lose weight and get fit? And each year you tell people that I'm on a mission to eat right and work out. But then you sabotage yourself and you still stay fat and floppy and you never reach

your goals. Well, you're seeing as a hypocrite because if you're in a position of leadership, they're saying, wow, you can't even lead yourself to the most important things that you want out of life. How can you lead this company? How can you lead us? How can you lead this department towards the desired outcome? You can't. Therefore, you're seen as a hypocrite and an imposter. So the very first level of leadership is leadership of self. And if you can't master leadership of self, you do not deserve to move on to leadership of a team, which is the next level. Level two of leadership positions is leadership of a team.

Right. And if you're listening to this and you're like, dude, this explains why I'm not a good team leader. This explains why my people don't take me serious. This explains why we have a high turnover rate in my company or my department. This explains why we continue to make a little progress and then we slide back to where we were again. Like what I'm sharing with you is going to give you a lot of aha moments, right?

because if you are unable to lead yourself, you're never going to be seen as a competent and capable leader of others. So if the next level of leadership, level two is leadership of a team, how are you leading those teams, right? Are you leading them in a way where they see you as a servant, as a mentor, as a coach, or are you leading them by telling them what to do, but never telling them why you need to do it. What I found from my own experience, when I would tell them what to do, but didn't tell my team why they needed to do it,

I would have more resistance. Because everyone is naturally curious. Now I get it. Remember, there's positional leadership. And as someone who has positional leadership, my team would do what I would ask, but it was very short-lasting because it was done with resentment. It was done with,

I don't understand why I'm doing this. they don't have the full picture in sight. Whereas when I became a better leader of teams, I realized I need to tell them what we need done and why we need it done. When you tell your team what you need done and why it needs to get done, you satisfy their need for understanding what is happening. They're able to see the bigger picture. For example, I might say, guys, we need to start creating two different marketing

departments, a online marketing department and an offline marketing department, like door knockers, people that go door to door, right? Flyers and postcards, mailers, print ads, billboards, anything that's not online falls in the offline world. So I need you guys to create those two departments, please. Well, okay, that's great as positional leadership. But moral leadership, moral authority says, here's why we need to do that. Our business has gotten more complex. We're getting more sophisticated. Competition is steeper than ever. And we're able to get clients offline and online. And I want to create two separate departments so that we can have singularity of focus online. We can have singularity of focus offline out there in the world through direct mail, print

ads, postcards and billboards and buses, et cetera. And therefore maximize lead flow into our company and crush our competitors in the next 24 months. So now I've told them why I want two different marketing departments, right? Not only did I tell them what to do, but why I want it done. They have a better understanding what the outcome is. And therefore, they can produce the desired outcome more effectively, more efficiently and without resentment and instead with enthusiasm. Level three of leadership is leadership of leaders.

You're like, wait, what do you mean? Well, in the beginning, when you're building your business, or maybe you have your family, right, you have your wife and let's say three kids and they're all children. Well, that's cool. You're leading your family. Let's say your kids get older. They're adults now. Wouldn't you say that if you led them well, they became leaders?

and wouldn't you say that even when they become adults, you still have a responsibility as a mom or a dad to continue to lead and educate and mentor your kids? So now you're leading leaders, right? And so when you are leading leaders, it's a very different way of leading. Because what you're doing is you're giving them anonymity. You're giving them the ability to, or autonomy, I should say,

ability to start making decisions on their own, making bigger decisions on their own, problem solving on their own. When you are working with leaders, you are expecting your leaders to lead the teams, right? The rank and file employees. And it is your leaders who are going to lead your rank and file employees.

So you find yourself in a position where your job is now, if you're leading leaders, your job is really mentorship, coaching, and education, isn't it? You're not really leading your company anymore. Your leaders are leading your company because they're leading,

your team members, your employees. Your job then becomes on level three to become that mentor, advisor, coach, consultant of your leaders. And there's a great book out there called Good to Great. And in his book, Jim Collins talks about a great leader needs to have the right people on the bus, like your business being the bus. And you've got to have these people in the right seats on the bus. So as a leader leading leaders, you have to know what are the strengths of my leaders? What are they good at and not good at? Maybe some people are really good at executing, but they're really bad at communicating. And so I might have them in a very different seat in my business, whereas those leaders

who are better at communicating and not necessarily executing, I might have in a different department, right? I might have leaders that have higher attention to detail. let's say they're more cut out to leading the accounting team, right, or bookkeeping team, because we certainly have that in this building with all the companies that we, that are under our brand. Then you might have leaders that are better at sales and marketing, right? They move fast, they make quick decisions, they're enthusiastic, but the attention to detail

isn't that great. Well, I'm not going to take a leader who is used to leading accountants and bookkeepers and have them oversee the sales and marketing department. Those two personalities don't mesh. And so I want to make sure that my leaders who are, if I'm leading leaders, that they're leading in the right departments that are congruent to their personality types

to what they are good at. Because I want to have them work in their zone of genius, as Gay Hendricks talks about in his book, The Big Leap. And every leader has a zone of genius, right? They have a zone of competency, things that they're good at, but then they have a zone of genius. And if I can identify my leader's zone of genius, now I can put them in the right seat on the bus, leading the right department, getting the most amount of desired outcome out of them with the least amount of friction and burnout.

Because a leader that is not necessarily fit to be in a department and lead a department, yeah, they might be able to lead it, but it's going to be short-lived. it's not congruent to their personality type, to their leadership type. So it is your job as the leader who is leading leaders to identify who do I have on the bus, what seats are they in, and who do I need to move around to make it even more efficient and effective. And then that fourth level, the fourth and final level of leadership is empowerment, empowering your leaders to create other leaders.

And so my, I, most mature or oldest company here in this building is fit body boot camp our international fitness franchise right and so i've had the good fortune of leading bryce our CEO brice leads departments each of those departments have leaders so bryce is a leader who is now forging other leaders so as fit body boot camp continues to grow worldwide we have future leaders that are being developed underneath my existing leaders, right? And I'm very hands off. I'm now in a position of Foundership where FitBody Boot Camp is concerned. I'm the founder. I'm still involved in the communication and the big, big, big macro decisions with Bryce. But he and his leadership team

make all the micro decisions that continue to grow Fit Body Boot Camp worldwide. And so if you can get to that fourth level where you've developed enough leaders who are now developing leaders themselves like man that's a very powerful place to be because you have now created leaders who feel empowered to create other leaders which means your companies can continue to grow knowing that you've got leaders ascending up to seats and different departments and why else is that important well what happens if you end up creating another company and another company and another company if you've got leaders creating leaders you can take some of those leaders into your second and third and fourth companies and plug them in. In fact, I'll give you a great example of that.

I'll give you a great example of actually my shitty leadership in the beginning stages, right? So we started Trulian supplements almost five years ago. And I know a lot of you drink the Trulian Wellness shots and the Greens and that's awesome. And I appreciate it. That's something that's like that product itself, the Trulian Wellness Shot, is something that we slaved over, something that we worked super hard to get the ingredients down perfectly in terms of the cleanliness, the dosage, the quality, nothing artificial or fake about it. Everything is natural in terms of ingredients. Well, when we created Trulene, the supplement company about five years ago, I went out

and hired a leader. And I did the best that I could in hiring that leader, making a decision, brought that leader into my company and said, I'm going to build a company around you. And he felt competent and capable to do that work. And we plugged them in. And then we said, hey, here's about a million dollars of money to a startup capital to launch the business, to create the products, to create the websites and the Shopify store and the build a team around you of three, four, five people that can really prop up fit body or truly supplements. And that leader did the best he could for a period of time.

But like many leaders, he came to a place where he started to hit the glass ceiling. He was upper limiting, as Gay Hendricks says in his book. He was upper limiting and he was too reluctant to grow as a leader, too reluctant to get past his ego. I found myself in a position now that is my company, supplement company Truling grew, I was having growing problems and I could pinpoint the growing problems directly to the leader that I had recruited a couple of years earlier and built a company around. And so I found myself in a position where I had to part ways with that leader and elevate

someone else up into the leadership position. And guess what happened next? Truling hockey sticks. over the next nine months. And then it continued to double again and double again and double again. Now, was it coincidence? No. It was a byproduct of one leader continued to do the self-work, evolve, grow, understand the numbers, be able to lead and manage and communicate, whereas the other leader was incapable of leading beyond a certain point.

This happens in many companies where someone will lead a company all the way to do in a million or two or three million dollars a year. And then they hit this glass ceiling. They begin to hit a wall and try as they might. You just now have a high level of turnover. You start falling into debt. You're creating products that no one's buying. You're doing busy work, but not productive work that's actually producing an outcome. And that's where Trulian was.

And I had to make the decision to part ways with this guy and then take his. second in command, who came from fit body boot camp, by the way, and who had been groomed as a leader years earlier, even though he had no leadership position, we continued to pour into this guy. His name is Jeff. And I want to give a big shout out, actually, to Jeff Rosenquist,

our vice president of Truling Supplements, because he came in as a website developer and graphics designer seven, eight years ago. nine years ago, maybe eight years ago. And he continued to grow in Fit Body Boot Camp. He continued to attend the leadership trainings that my leaders and myself were hosting. He had an option to not,

but he continued to force himself to continue to learn to lead and manage people and communicate and make decisions and problem solve. And then when the opportunity came to put him in, we put him into a leadership position in Trulene, and we immediately saw the difference between him and the first leader that we had recruited and brought in to Truling supplements. Now, one could say, well, it's a coincidence that, you know, this guy was able to do it and that guy wasn't.

I say not. I say that the first guy simply did not have the skill sets, number one. He had too much ego, number two. and he didn't want to grow as a leader, no matter how much I was advising, coaching, and mentoring him, right? Now, guess whose fault this was? Fine. It was my fault. It was my absolute fault because I'm the one that recruited him.

I'm the one that brought him in. I'm the one that saw him to be fit enough to run my new supplement company. But as a leader, the moment I saw that he was now underperforming and budding up into a glass ceiling and wasn't taking the coaching and mentorship to improve himself, I had to do what was right for my company and put the mission over the man. And the mission is to grow truly into the nine figures. And for this company to become a nine figure business, it's a clean supplement line, a nine-figure business, we can't have the leader at the top becoming the bottleneck.

And so try as I might to mentor, coach, and advise, I have to part ways with him and take someone else that we had developed over time and plugged him in. And so think about this. If you were not developing leaders or future leaders, because you think there's no position available for them now in your companies, you're doing yourself a disservice because you don't know if someone gets hit by a bus. if someone takes on a crack or cocaine habit and you have to part ways with them, or if they start up or limiting like my leader did for truly supplements,

and therefore after you try and try and try and correct them and course correct them, you have to part ways with him. So it is always good to have a surplus of trained and capable leaders on the wings, doing other stuff, but ready to step into an opportunity when presented. And that's exactly what happened with Jeff Rosenquist. And so I really want to stress to you how important,

leadership is. And guys, we see it now in our country, don't we in the United States? I mean, let's talk about, we talk about positional authority. Well, Joe Biden certainly has positional authority. He is the commander in chief of the military. But you ask anyone in the military, hey, how do you feel about Joe Biden? You're a commander in chief. They're like, well, he's my leader. So I have to take commands and orders from him. But I can't wait until my time is up so I can get out of the military. I despise him. I don't respect him. I don't believe he has the best intentions for our country.

Like that's not the type of leader that you want. He's got positional authority. He doesn't have moral authority. Like someone who, you know what? Just to keep it fair, we'll still stick with the Democratic Party. How about that? Obama, right? Barack Obama, who also was a Democrat, who had moral authority.

Our military, our country felt like they had a leader that they could trust, that they are proud of, that they have, that they are willing to take orders from, and they will do it with enthusiasm because he's got the best interest for our country. Now, I know no politician out there is simply looking out for the best interest of our country. I know politicians on both the left and the right, Republican and Democrat, are bought and paid for. I know they're on the take. I know that the wheels are being greased financially. And they have their highest interests as themselves. And there is massive corruption across every level of government.

But the point I'm making is, just on the macro level, if you look at two leaders in about the same timeline of history, from the same party in the same country, Joe Biden, in the Democratic Party, Barack Obama as a leader, in the Democratic Party, Barack Obama had more respect from both the left and right,

from the citizens, from the military. He was liked and trusted more than Joe Biden, who was seen as senile and corrupt and incapable. And what can we do about it? Well, guess what? Remember I told you the story of how this was my fault for putting in a poor leader in Trulene? And then I had to course correct and put Jeff Rosenquist into position as a leader for Truline who was better suited and was able to help Trulene hockey stick and overcome the debt and become profitable again.

Well, guess what? You and I are the leaders of this country. We are the ultimate decision makers and who goes into office. So while a poor decision was made in choosing Biden, and I'm not going to go into the fake fucking numbers of votes that came in for him, I'm not going to go into the potential rigging of the voting system

and how Joe Biden got more votes than the popular Barack Obama did during his election, I will say that assuming this upcoming November election is not rigged, is not corrupt, and is legit that it is our job to choose Donald Trump as the leader of this country, to lead this country like a business into greatness, into getting respect, into taking care of this $34 trillion debt that we are in as a nation, into being once again a superpower, right?

Now, I get it. Trump may not be the most ideal leader, but of the two that we have right now in front of us, and both have been in office now. Trump has been in office. And remember during his time, we literally had no additional wars that we were funding, that we were getting ourselves involved in,

and there was no balloon from China flying over the United States, a spy balloon. and it would have never happened during Trump's tenure because China or any enemy country would know immediately that Trump would take very decisive and violent action against them. And so sometimes a leader must also be feared and respected. And in a time of a country like ours where we are slowly losing, no, faster than ever, losing our constitutional rights, freedoms and sovereignty, and seen as weak like our leader, because our leader literally determines how we are seen, right? And let's face it, you've got Joe Biden licking ice cream, slobbering all over himself, sniffing the hair of young little girls, the creepiest way possible, slurring his speech,

incoherent and unable to understand where he's at in any press conference or or or or live meet and greet like he does not represent you and me as a citizen of the United States well and so this is our time to choose a better leader but understand that leadership is the lid leadership determines the growth of a business of a family of an organization or the degeneration of a business, family, or organization, or country in this case, right? And so that is how great leaders lead. And those are the four levels of leadership. Leadership of self, number one, leadership of a team, number two, leadership of other leaders, your leaders, number three, and of course, the empowerment of leaders. So those leaders can develop other leaders. And that's where you have exponential growth in a country and a family.

family and a business like ours. And guys, I appreciate you watching and listening to this episode of the Bedroskulian show. Remember that average is the enemy, that success is your responsibility and change can take place in an instant when you are willing to flip the switch. I'll see you next time. What's the difference between me and you?