Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 10X Disciplined 7 Figure Entrepreneur Formula - 161

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Gain real insights from Empire Builders Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballentyne on the areas of life you need to have discipline in and discover the mindset, beliefs and formula you must posses in order to become a 7 figure entrepreneur.   1:20 - Leadership is the problem, leadership is the solution and extreme ownership over what you can control.  4:25 Don’t bury your head in the sand and plan for everything that can go wrong during times of crisis. 17:02 OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, action) and how to apply it to your life and difficult situations. 19:53 How to handle breaking points and what Bedros two top recommendations. 25:00 What is the PROJECT and how does it truly help men level up in Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances.  38:04 Why and how MEN quite under pressure in the PROJECT.  41:25 Healthy outlets entrepreneurs must have in order to successfully cope with life and business. Be addicted to structure, accountability and goals.  44:15 What changes does the PROJECT help men walk away with? 48:02 Pick one area of your business at a time and aggressively improve it by 10%. 52:08 B talks about how to truly find your purpose.  54:12 How to never peak in your life or business. 

I never want to have it remember when. Like, I want to be like, man, the best of me is yet to come. So if the best of me is yet to come, then I cannot peak in life. All right, Babe Gross, my man. Happy birthday, dude. Yo, happy birthday to me, a big whopping four, six. Man, that's amazing. And, you know, we're going to talk about something that you say that I didn't understand when you first said it,

which is never peak. We're going to say that to the end. What I want to focus on today is what you have just been actually crushing it at lately is leveling up 10x in the leadership, and then we're going to dive into like this little 10% increases in the sales, which, you know, because they multiply up, can 10x it as well. So let's dive in here. You say in man, a really great quote that I say all the time,

leadership is the problem, leadership is the solution. When did you come to that realization? You know, I came, dude, it's such a great little phrase, right? Leadership is a problem. Leadership is the solution. and I, it's a hard pill to swallow. I realized that when I thought I had bad employees, I had bad people running my funnels,

I had bad copywriters, and I realized you can't, unless someone's colluding against me, Craig, I can't have bad everything. I can't have a bad wife who's angry at me. I can't have bad franchisees, bad copywriters, bad funnel makers, bad employees. So maybe.

Bad friends from Canada. Right. I think you were. the only guy I was actually had a good relationship with because we just click. But, dude, so at some point you start doing a little introspection. And I think, look, time, as I got older, in my early 30s, it's easy to point out to everyone else because ego says I'm good and everyone else needs to get to my level. And the reality is, as I got into my late 30s, as you know, the big anxiety attack, that felt like a freaking heart attack and going to therapy, you quickly

start realizing, you know what, my armor has a lot of chinks in it. And maybe I'm the problem. Maybe if I was a better leader, I could communicate a better marketing message to my team. Maybe if I was a better leader, I could look out for them and what's going on in their home and their relationships. And if they saw that I cared about them, that they would care about my business. And so that realization came and I realized like, holy crap, I'm the leader. Leadership is the problem. Therefore, leadership is the solution. And so the moment I became more compassionate, more empathetic, more understanding, and exercised a word that I'm still getting good at, grace, to exercise grace not to quickly lash out, but to go, okay, I understand, sure, this is a

stressful time. And just because I'm not afraid of the virus, I understand that you are, and it is a very real thing to you. That is exercising grace, you know. It used to be that you're stupid if you think that this virus is going to kill you. Like that, the old me would have said that. The new me is like, I think it's a stupid virus. I think it's all made up. But it's, so anyway, that's what I realized this. And once I realize this, all of a sudden, you have control. Because I'm like, well, I can't control my team. I can't control my wife. I can't control my franchisees. Turns out, I can control me. And by controlling me being consistent, empathetic, having a very clear vision, being very driven, very specific in my communication,

they, everything fell in line. Now, did we have to part ways with some people? Sure, because they didn't like the new version of me. But everyone else we didn't part ways with, they all leveled up with me, which was pretty awesome to see. Yeah, I think I had this conversation with somebody else recently. Like there was a lot of fallouts in their relationships. And I said, you realize, like, the common denominator is you in every single one of these relationships that has gone bad.

What's the common theme? You. So, you know, that's an eye-opening thing. And it sucks because you do have to set. the ego aside, which is one leadership failure from today, but in all times. But what else are you seeing as leadership failures as, you know, they're going to come to the forefront. The cracks in the system are really going to be exposed because the pressure is on like never before. Dude, so another leadership failure that I'm seeing is that I call it the ostrich syndrome,

which is the head in the sand. This is not happening. This is not happening. And, you know, I read a lot of military books. And you hear about, by the way, anyone who starts taking my advice and starts reading about Navy SEALs and Delta Force and Marines and da-da-da, to learn. I just did that to learn about leadership, like high-level leadership and stress. Because there are plenty of books that talk about high-level battlefield leadership and stress. And all you have to do is take the battlefield leadership and bring it to the business field. There's also great books about failures in war where assumptions were made, one of them being D-Day, right? obviously what happened in Hawaii and how our ships were attacked by Japan.

There was a lot of assumptions made that Japan wasn't going to do this, that they weren't going to get into the war, that they are kind of an ally, but we're not. So the head in the sand syndrome during times like this of the COVID virus and the lockdowns, the shutdowns, the quarantine, whatever you want to call it, and then the upcoming economic crisis, you have to stop and take inventory on a marker board and go, what are all the things that can go wrong? Like, you have to do that. You can't just bury your head and go, right now, sales are good, so they're going to continue to stay good throughout this. I started to ask myself, what are all the things that can go wrong? And one of them

was, this quarantine can go on longer, can actually go on through 2021. And I may not be able to sell more franchises, Craig. And lo and behold, as we were talking last week with our coaching clients. I stopped my focus on selling franchises. I'd rather serve my existing franchisees that I have and help them stay open, get more online coaching clients and outdoor coaching clients because we can't train people indoors. But I said, what else can I do to make money? And that's where we created that awesome wellness shot that we talked about, right? The Trulian Wellness shots, which are like completely augmenting our income right now. We were selling four to six franchises a month. We were selling four to six franchises a month, now we've sold four franchises in the last five months, dude. So if I had my head

buried in the sand, it's like my income stream is going to continue to stay the same. It's not. It's kind of like, it's kind of like on November 19th, every turkey's like, man, life is good. Right. Great analogy. That's exactly it. And then, exactly. And then boom, it's not. Right. Yeah. So. It's great until it isn't. Yeah. And yet another area where that comes in handy, the the ostrich syndrome was my team. Look, most businesses out there have at least 70% millennials, and millennials get their information from social media. Social media distorts, as far as you and I are concerned, distorts some of the facts. And so the fears that my team has is real. And I'll be very honest with you. Right now, my office is empty, but last week it wasn't.

And last week, some of my team members were walking around with masks. And one of our leaders, department leads, just made a comment like, what's the big deal? What's the big deal? Take that mask off. It's silly. And two of our team members were really offended and bothered by that. And so great leadership is not just having your head being able to be compassionate, but understanding that something that doesn't scare me might scare you and to be able to address that. Hey, I see you have the mask on. Do you want to talk about it? Would you like to work from home? Is there something we can do to make your environment cleaner, put some sanitizer near you, whatever? They would feel like, holy crap, my department lead cares about me.

Therefore, I will care more about this department and this business as a whole. And so one, we can't keep our head in the sand. Great example of that, of doing a dump of what are all the things that can go wrong? During the 2011 attack on bin Laden's compound where they killed bin Laden, all the seals who were going to be on that mission to kill him were in what's known as a planning room. And as I read it, they're talking about all the things that can go wrong. Was that Zero Dark 30 or was that a different book? That, the operator, the operator with Robert O'Neill.

Yeah, Zero Dark 30 was the movie based on that. Exactly. Yeah. And so here's the crazy thing is they just have a primary, secondary, tritiary plan for if something goes wrong, what do we do? And they even have a saying, one is none, two is one, right? because they like to have backups for everything. And at the end of talking about all the things that can go wrong, they said, what if the Pakistani army catches us and takes us to their prisons?

Are we okay? How are we going to survive there? What's the plan to break us out? Who's going to negotiate us out? Because we're not just going to blow up a prison in Pakistan because they're technically our allies. So they talk through all of that. What if we get caught?

What if we die? What if we can't kill him? What if he blows himself up and the compound? And they think they made a giant list. And so here's another leadership mistake. they made this giant list and at the end they go all right well looks like we've got everything covered that can go wrong is there anything else and the youngest seal raised his hand quietly and he said you know one of the two helicopters that brings us in can go down we don't have a plan for that

the rest of them laughed the chief who obviously has a lot more expertise and time under his belt goes, you know what? Let's talk about that for a moment. And they did. And that was the exact thing that happened. One of the two helicopters crashed in the compound, as you know, and they had a plan because they took the time to ask and listen to the youngest person. And most leaders think that I had the answer. I've got the experience. Dude, I haven't gone through a COVID shutdown, a quarantine. My youngest team member might have the answer that I'm looking for. And in fact, That's how the truly and wellness shot came to be was from one of our youngest team members. So the old me would never have asked that, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we had a really great team meeting today because it was wide open, hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? And the more that you encourage and support people to come up with ideas, I mean, I think both the old you and the old me, we used to like, I got to do it on myself. I got to make all the decisions. Nobody can write the copy. I got to write all the copy. I got to rewrite the copy somebody made.

And you just grind yourself into the ground and you do develop that adversarial relationship when you're a bad leader, right? Absolutely, man, because a few things happen. One, your team feels like every time I try and come to you, I get shut down, or you never ask me, therefore you don't value me. And if you don't value me, I'm not going to work as hard. And so you are literally doing yourself a disservice by not asking. Hell, ask. And if it's a stupid idea, say thank you for that idea. Let me think about it.

But at least they feel like you took the time to consider their opinion and feelings, and therefore they feel valued. Anyone who feels valued is going to work harder for you. Yeah. And I mean, obviously in this day and age, I mean, you live in California. You have a lot of millennials on your team. Everybody has their own voice amplified by social media. So how do you deal with that?

Because there's so many, like it's like just even if there was no COVID, you know, just the number of social landmines that you have. to navigate as an entrepreneur, particularly in California. Yeah. How do you mentally prepare for all of them? Do you make the list of all the things that go wrong? Or what are you doing and how are, what else are you doing to support the team so that they don't get a little upset about something and blow it up into something out of proportion?

So the communication is higher than ever. Just like, it's funny, right? You remember in March, we went from, and I guess I should set the scene for everybody else here. Typically here at Fit Body Boot Camp headquarters, we've got about 50 team members that work in the building, another 8 to 10 outside of the building in different parts of the country. And every Tuesday we have our L10 meeting, which is our level 10 meeting from EOS entrepreneurial operating system. So once a week on Tuesdays, 11 o'clock, we have our meetings. Soon as the COVID shutdown started to happen in early March, we went to a meeting every day at 11 and another one at 4 p.m. So we, I don't know, eight X'd our number of meetings, went to two meetings a day from one a week.

And then I went to, instead of a monthly communication to our franchisees, I went to three times a week communication live via our private Facebook group to our franchisees. So one, increased communication because when complexity happens, in complexity, there's confusion. And you and I both know this. the most successful people know how to take complex and make it simple. People who take simple and make it complex usually end up fucking things up. And so when you have a coronavirus shutdown and you're getting conflicting information, and then you have race riots, which is what we're having in the United States right now, let's not call it anything else.

That's unfortunately what's happening, being fueled by the media or social media, whoever you want to call it. There's a lot of fear and uncertainty in my team. they probably want to know what is B's position on this, right? How come B didn't put up a black thing on that Tuesday on his Instagram? And so I had to meet with my team and say, guys, putting up that thing for Black Life Matters on Tuesday and doing what everyone else does, which is then leaving it alone and moving on to my life, that's nothing.

That's nothing. I'd rather keep doing what I'm doing, but I made a video and then said, hey, all of you who put up a thing on Tuesday, on that Tuesday, the Black Square, Blackout Tuesday, you all now have volunteered and you have a social responsibility to do something come November and elect the right people fire the wrong leaders who are continuing, not only as a president, but also the governors, also the police chiefs in your communities, because if you did that to show that, hey, I'm in solidarity, by God, come November, you better be in solidarity.

and that's what I'm doing different guys. And so they're like, oh, okay, we get it just because you didn't put the blackout Tuesday because all my team did. They're millennials. They do what they all do. They're very tribal. They all ebb and flow the same way. But I'm different, but I have to explain why I'm different.

And if the leader doesn't explain, it's like, well, I don't have to explain shit. The old me would have been, I don't have to explain shit. I'm the CEO. Then they're left to assume that he's a racist because that's how it operates today. We just go from a simple conclusion. I'll give you an example. You know that on my social media posts, like every other one, I'll put up a little fist bump and gorilla because I'm a hairy dude. Yeah, I saw that.

Right? I saw what that guy said. Yeah, and some idiot. And it's always a white dude. It's never a black dude that's freaking out. Oh, we all know what the gorilla means. I see what you mean. You're calling out black people.

You're calling them monkeys. You're calling them gorillas. I'm like, you asshole. And I totally called them out because I said, if you followed me long enough, you would know what that means. Right? But that's how sensitive people are, man. One use of an emoji. jump to a conclusion. So as a leader, we have to have more meetings during times of crisis and

chaos, more communication, and take the complex and make it simple by sitting them down and explaining. And so what I'm doing now that my team's working from home again during the second closure is every Friday we have a team Zoom meeting where I pour into them. Guys, here's what's happening at HQ. We have no plans on firing anyone yet. There might be an opportunity that that happens. Down the line if this continues, please continue to add value. Do not be an expense on our ledger, be of value on our ledger. I speak openly and honestly. I alleviate what fears that they might have. I think to myself, what would they be thinking? Gosh, I might get fired. Let me address that. Why would I hide behind that? And by doing that, and then I asked them,

all right, guys, now tell me what you're doing to move the needle this week. And they go, hey, I did this, I did that. I sent out these text messages, wrote those emails. Great. So they know they're moving the needle. I explain to them where the business is headed. And off we go again. See you next Friday on the Zoom. It's overcommunicate. No one's ever, like if I tell you, Craig, here's where you're going to go to get to my house. Look out for the giant oak tree. And then once you pass the oak tree, you're going to see a McDonald's.

Turn right at the McDonald's. If I overcommunicate the directions, you're not going to get lost. But if I'm like, hey, you'll see an oak tree and somewhere about 100 yards down the road, you'll see my house. You might get lost. So overcommunicate a message and you will be fine. Absolutely. So this also ties into something you taught in virtual mastermind, the UDOLU or Oda loops or whatever people want to call them.

You're big on these. Matt's big on these. Matt Smith, my business partner. So that is simply having a lot of meetings allows you to have that iteration really fast. Has that been something that you've used in any other part of the business or is it just applying to the meetings? It really applies to the Oudoloups apply to the meetings. And everyone listening, if you don't know what Oudalup is, it was something that was developed

by Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War when they would see an airplane far away in like, I don't know if that's a good guy, a bad guy, what do I do? They sometimes would hesitate, and by then it was too late. It was an enemy that gets shot down. So Uda loop. Uda stands for observe, orient, decide, act. Uda, O-O-O-D-A, Uda loop, observe, orient, decide, act. And so if you can compress your Uda loop, you will observe what's going on, orient yourself to what's happening, make a decision, and act on that decision quickly. And this goes back to the ostrich syndrome of head in the sand. If I see that this lockdown, they say it's going to be two weeks and I'm like, it's only going to be two weeks, I'm fine. I'm going to observe. Has the

government lied before? Have they been wrong before? Never mind lying. Have they been wrong before? Yes. What if it's not two weeks? What if it's two months? What if it's two years? So let me observe what's happening. Let me orient myself to what I can do. Let me start making a decision on what I could do if it does go two weeks, two months, two years. And then let me start setting action plans in place. and that's all you have to do. And the faster you can go through your ootloop, the better. And this is why, so in sports, if you really want to screw someone up or in business, keep them confused because you keep resetting someone's ootloop.

The longer you can reset someone's ootloop, the more of a disadvantage they're at. So in sports or business, my job would be to take my opposition and reset their ootloop over and over again to make them think that I'm zinging when I'm zagging. So they're trying to figure out what I'm doing while I'm making money. The same thing applies, obviously, in sports. So OOOOOOOP is very important. And at times like this, everyone's trying to figure out, like, what the hell is happening? Talk about it, communicate about it, right on the market board,

let the lowest level team members tell you their thoughts and feelings about it because they may have an observation or see things from a viewpoint that you never even thought about. Absolutely, absolutely. We actually use the OOOOOP approach in our Facebook ads where we, if you get the Facebook ad up today and you run it and you get data and you come back tomorrow, you can iterate faster and faster and faster. It's just like getting, you know, it's like split testing essentially. And so you can split test not only in your meetings, but then also in your advertising as well. So that's how we use it too. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Okay. So, you know, a lot of people are

coming up against breaking points, either as leaders, they're under a lot of stress right now. you talk to a lot of fitness entrepreneurs, whether they're personal trainers who had all their clients, don't want to come and see them. What are you seeing in terms of who is succeeding through that and who's failing, quitting, falling off, and hitting a breaking point? Yeah. So the people that are most successful versus the people who are stressing out, going into the red, and then failing, here's the difference that I've seen. Two things. The people that are failing are suffering in silence. They're not reaching out to a friend. like you and I started checking up on each other.

Hey, everything good, yes. Like, we know each other's rhythm. Everything good, yes. And then Joel reached out to me. I'm sure he reached out to you and we all reach out to each other. So one, have a network. The moment you start suffering in silence, you start kind of feeling like an island. And the brain is designed to focus and reprocess negative feelings and thoughts over and over again.

So one, reach out to someone and go, hey, man, I'm in a weird place. I've never had, like one of our friends who we had, Laira Broughton. on the Empire podcast show. He had, right? Like, he reached out, he's like, dude, all my hotels right now are empty. We're an essential business, so we're supposed to stay open,

but they're empty, I'm losing money every day. If I don't get X amount of millions of dollars in the next 30 days, Bado, so I need to close, can you help me? I was like, dude, let me connect you to some people who probably can. Now, if he didn't reach out, who knows what would have happened.

But there's a guy who's so disciplined as an entrepreneur, he's got such time under his best, that he knew the right thing to do was not to suffer in silence. And then the other piece is what you talk about and what you teach all the time, Craigie, which is the three Cs. The entrepreneurs, depending on any industry, fitness, physical therapy, dentist, financing, real estate, car sales.

Yeah. Control what you can, cope with what you can't control, and concentrate on what counts. The three Cs. If I'm going to focus on what Governor Newsom of California is doing wrong, I can't control that man. I can't control him. What I can do is control what I can, which is tell my franchisees to let's move to online coaching, let's move to outdoor boot camps, and let's talk to your landlords and put your rent on delay. Like I had my attorneys refine case law in a similar situation where, I forget the term now,

it's a legal term, where we can ask our landlords to put our franchisees rent on hold until they're reopened again. There's case law that proves it. So we crafted the letter. I'm controlling what I can control. I'm coping with Governor News some stupid decisions, right? And then I'm concentrating on what counts, which is helping my franchisees make more money. I'm not concentrating on trying to sell franchises when no one's trying to open up a gym right now. I'm concentrating on on Truline supplements because it's selling like hotcakes. And by focusing on those three Cs that you've taught me and the rest of the world, and by the way, I think that's something you've got to touch on more and more and more

because I keep going back to those. You know, it's like, good. Well, I get the FitBody franchise updates, and yeah, Bryce talks about it too. Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you what, there's, you hear about the basics, go back to the basics. Like, great marketing is always go back to the basics. Drive leads, make irresistible offers, make sure it's, direct response. Every dollar should produce another dollar or more. Follow up with those leads,

convert them into paying clients, deliver the value, increased sales, ask for referrals. Like, those are the basics. The people who want to split test 19 different things, it sounds sexy. And that reminds me of the time that you freaked out at the one guy in Las Vegas, but that's a whole different story. Vince and his kabuchi testing or whatever. That's right. That's right. But all this is to say that the basics of how to cope with this situation is the three Cs. Control what you can. Cope with what you can't control and concentrate on what counts and then do not suffer in silence. Like there's got to be a person or two or three that you can reach out to and go, this is what's happening. They may not have the answer, but they can go, dude, I hear you and that sucks. And just saying, no, it's not

your fault. This is out of your hands. Like, like do what you can control. Yeah. And I think the control thing, you know, one of the things that you mentioned there with Larry and then what you did when you wanted to get on Amazon, you reached out to me is we control reaching out to people. We don't control whether to get back to us. But imagine if you're in a troubling situation, you reach out to 10, 20, 30 people. I mean, there's going to be something in there. So like Pedro said, don't suffer in silence. Because I guess when you suffer in silence, that's when you hit the breaking point, right? Oh, absolutely, dude. Because the brain is not designed to be positive and optimistic and find hope. It is literally programmed to find problems, threats, and defeats as a mechanism of survival.

But once you go into that dark place and going to that, again, oot loop of thinking over the same negative thoughts over and over again, holy crap, you're only going down. You need a pattern interrupt. So you need a positive person to interrupt that negative pattern. Yeah. And, you know, one of the ultimate pattern interrupts is we kind of change topics here is for men who are kind of struggling to go to the project,

which is something that is kind of like one of your babies these days. So talk, tell us about what the project is for people that do not know about. it and then we're going to talk about kind of the same thing with leadership. Who fails at it and who succeeds in it? Yeah. So the project is a byproduct really of a story that I told in my book, right, in Man Up, where actually you, it's funny, so many things. When you really trace back to the project, it stemmed from you. And I think the year might have been 2010 when we ran the Info Mastermind Group. Oh, yeah. Right? You were like, you're you were really like laying it to someone in the most awesome way,

and the most loving way, one of our coaching clients, you're like, look, cut your deadlines in half, and then cut your deadlines in half again. Because, like, they had a, all they needed to do was write a report, make an opt-in page and put it up on a website and drive traffic to it. And they're like, I'm going to do this in six months. And you're like, dude, cut that deadline in half and cut it in half again. And as I'm hearing you kind of give this rant to this guy in the coaching program,

I'm like, oh, my God, man. I remember telling my wife years ago that I would run a marathon with her, and it's been nine years that we've been married, and I haven't run a marathon with her. So I'm texting her under the table as you're talking. I'm like, when's her next marathon? And she goes six weeks from now. I go sign me up.

And so she's, because I literally was like, all right, I'm going to cut all deadlines in half. So six weeks from now, I trained for six weeks. And in that mastermind that we were running, you remember Jill? Yeah, run with Jill. Run with Jill.com. I don't know if the website's still up, but shout out to Jill Brewer. She was one of our coaching clients at the time. A running program is what she was making.

And I'm like, Jill, during the lunch break, I said, Jill, I said, just signed up for the San Diego Marathon, 26.2 miles. I've never run in my life, and I'm going to run it. I need you to coach me up in it. So this is also a shout out to get a coach. Get a coach and time collapse or results. She said, you are bananas, but we can make it happen. And so she wrote me a program that I followed. And while it was painful, I ran the San Diego Marathon. I did decent for myself. More than anything, I realized running that marathon, Craig, that right around mile number 14 or 15, I hit the wall. They talk about that wall that you hit where it's just your physically, your body's done. It's tapped and your mind is going to take you. And dude, I got to tell you,

and I've told you this story before, I haven't talked about it publicly too much, but around mile number 18, 19, 20, like the last eight, nine miles, they have super shuttles and they have taxi cabs, especially back in 2010. There's no ubers that have these little placards in their windows along the, along the side of the marathon that says, we'll drive you to the finish line for five bucks. Basically, if you're tapping out and you're like, I give up, we'll drive you to the finish line so you can go get your belongings and go home and give up. And I'm seeing these and I'm like, shoot, man, if I just give up right now, fake an injury and give up, right? And so I thought about it. I'm like, okay, do I just like fall and then grab my knee? Do I fall and grab my hamstring?

Do I fall and grab my ankle? Craig, and I go, okay, I'm the next mile. Just do it on the next mile. So now I'm on mile number 21, right? And I'm like, all right, dude, now you're going to do it. I'm like, no, no, no, man. Don't be a little bitch. You got this.

Don't do it. Right? Be a beast and finish it. Keep your word. And so one mile at a time, I talked myself out of it, and I crossed the 26.2 mile finish line. And I was so proud of myself, not for any amazing time that I set because I didn't, but because I did something that I did something that I,

kept trying to negotiate my way out of. And literally that same year, my business had a hockey stick year where, yeah, it had a hockey stick year. And I attributed to going through those tough moments and not negotiating my way up, but saying, just keep going. One more step. Being able to bring out the beast and crushing that bitch conversation within me. And so once I figured out to me, that was like I had stumbled upon some magical secret. And so I started doing all these six-week challenges. I was afraid of heights, so I hired a rock climbing expert. I'm like, teach me to climb a rock in six weeks, you know, climb a mountain. I know how to belay myself now and get up there. Still afraid of heights, but at least I can now get up there. I didn't know how to

surf and I lived in California. I was afraid of the water. And so six weeks of that, six weeks of MMA fighting, which ended up coming in handy when I was coming back from a trip with the family from Hawaii. I ended up, there was a guy that was a flight risk. I ended up putting him in a chokehold and zip tying him. So there's a big benefit from six weeks of MMA training and then fighting that guy in the ring for three rounds. But I still do these, here we are a decade later, more than a decade later, and I do these six week challenges because each one in the process of suffering through something new. And by the way, the reason I do it for six weeks is because it's such intense training of a new discipline three times a week for six weeks. You're always sore in

different areas and it's so frustrating to be good at lifting weights but so horrible at jujitsu and i feel like a walrus on the ground trying to find my way up where a 140 pound guy just has me wrapped around him right and so but within six weeks dude i'm like oh my god i got coach pete in a chokehold and like well he didn't tap out because he's just a badass and it doesn't he got out of it like i felt great that i got a black belt in a in a compromising position that was my my successful moment in jiu jiu jist's but i share with you because each one of those things continue to create hockey stick moments. And if you look at FitBody Boot Camp, during that time, FitBody Boot Camp continued to hit the Inc. 5,000 list four years in a row, the entrepreneur list of 500 fastest-going franchises three years in a row.

I started new companies and my income, my wealth, my personal development, all grew through suffering because suffering introduces a man to his highest self, period. And one of the quotes that I learned from our friend Larry Broughton, the owner of those hotels, and he's a former Green Beret, powerful quote. It goes, strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create bad times. Bad times create strong men. And, you know, if you want to know what's happening right now in our economy, in our system, we've had such great times economically that we have created weak men. And weak men have allowed bad times to come upon us.

And these bad times are going to create strong men again. And so I realized suffering and adversity is necessary for a man to figure out who he is and to break through limiting beliefs and have these epiphanies. Of course, that's also when I started working with the therapist, Kevin, every Monday for 16 months. Because I'm like, man, if this kind of suffering gives me these realizations, and I understand about myself, imagine what a therapist would do. All of a sudden, it wasn't taboo to work with the therapist.

I wouldn't work with the therapist. So what took me five years to develop, and I think every man should put themselves through this, I decided to create the project, which is a 75-hour experience run by a Navy SEAL, a U.S. Marine, a former SWAT operator, a former MMA fighter, and myself as the business expert. and for 75 hours we put them through mental, physical, emotional, chaos, torture, adversity, in addition to teaching them business, life structure, productivity, time management, and really setting up their four priorities, which is the four F-bombs, family, faith, fitness, and finance. And these men who graduate that 75 hours become members of the modern day, night project,

hence the name project. and we have a private Facebook group that they're a part of this network now where they help each other grow in business and family and accountability and goes back to not suffering in silence, but now having brothers who have gone through the same level of suffering that you have, which is just a powerful thing. Who fails? Dude, yeah, I remember telling you this. It's good to share this on your show. No one, not no one. Very rarely do we have someone. get up and ring the bell during an evolution when their army crawling through weeds or doing a hike with logs on their shoulders, you know, a 10 mile hike. We give them two hours of sleep one night. We give them four hours of sleep the next night. We give them an hour

and a half desk time where they learn from me. And the moment they get up from that comfortable position, either from their cot when they're sleeping or from the desk when they're seated and it's time to do another evolution, they'll look at us in the eyes, raise their hands, and go, hey, instructor Ray, so the Navy SEAL kind of modeled the project after the Buds program, which is why there's a bell to ring. And they'll look at Ray and they'll say, instructor, I don't want to do the next physical evolution. I quit. They quit because they get into their head. They're going from comfort and they're about to go to discomfort, and they start negotiating with that inner bitch again. And the project is designed to constantly

create discomfort, comfort, discomfort, comfort, to make it normal for you to be okay. with, oh, I'm going to go from comfort to discomfort. Like, we went from great economy to a shit economy, and I'm okay with it because I attack every hill in my life. And that said, we have these hills and Chino Hills you've been here. We take them on these massive hikes where there's five big hills. When we get to the hills, we run up the hills. We attack the hills.

We fast walk the straightaways. We attack the hills, and we are conditioning these guys. Then when adversity comes into your life, you lean into it and you attack it. and when you're in a place of comfort, know that this comfort is coming, expect it, invite it, and welcome it, and attack it. And the guys that quit and ring the bell, Craig, are in that moment of going from comfort to discomfort, and they go, I tap out, I'm done. And it's just a sad thing to see.

And we try and talk some of them out of it, but usually they're just glassy-eyed. And then we ask them later, like, isn't this what you see in your life? Like, when things got tough with your marriage, yep, that's why I got a divorce. When things got tough with your business, yep, that's why I gave up and turned to alcohol or pornography or whatever. But I could only help the people who want to stay. Man, who succeeds? You know, there is no like the guy who's jacked and whatever. One of the guys who I just love the pieces, his name is Jordan Thomas.

He's a potato farmer, this lovely Mormon potato farmer. And I have to explain why Mormon matters, because he's just honest as the day. day is long. Good guy, doesn't want her to fly. Eight kids. He's a potato farmer and he's shaped like a potato, but he's got heart, he's got heart, Craig, and he just gets under that log and he just moves that log, and he just army craws and tell he never looks at the bell. Obviously, the conversations are happening in his head of maybe I should quit, but you can tell that what we tell him, because we, you know, hey, are you hurt or are you injured? Well, I'm hurt. If you're hurt, if I was hurt, I would keep going. If I was injured, I would raise my hand and quit. They go, oh,

okay, okay, I understand the difference. He goes, I'm just hurt right now. It sucks. I'm getting scraped up, but I'm not injured, so I'll keep going. But some guys take hurt and use it as an injury and ring the bell. And so the guys that make it, we've got tall, skinny guys, short, stumpy guys, and some of the most jacked guys have quit, believe it or not, because, again, they went from comfortable to uncomfortable and they don't like it. But it's the ones that have heart and the ones that keep going and they only look forward to the next hour. We tell them, Just get to the next hour. Get to lunch.

When you get to lunch, get to dinner. When you get to dinner, get to the midnight coffee break. When you get to the midnight coffee break, get to breakfast the next morning. No one, if you... Well, I mean, that was what you did in the marathon, and that was what Mark Lestrell did in No Easy Day? Is that of his book? No, his was The Lone Survivor.

Oh, right. But that's what he did, right, with just one more inch or whatever? Yeah, yeah, exactly. He actually got a rock because remember he was crawling. His hip was blown up. And he got a rock and he would reach out and draw a line. And he goes, I'm just need it. I'm going to cross that line.

Then I can quit. Army crawls past that line, draws another line and keeps doing that and can tell he finds a little cave to hide himself in until he's found and discovered. But it's the guys who try and go like, oh, my God, I have 75 hours of this. And we've had guys quit in the first hour because they go, I got 74 hours left. Forget 74 hours. Just make it to lunch, man. just make it to lunch.

That was one thing I was going to ask you. Like, where do you see? So now you've run five or four? Five. Okay, so you've run five. You know, let's say that there's been 10, 12, 15 guys that have dropped out. Is there what's, what are like the most common hour in which they drop out? And what's the latest somebody's gone and dropped out?

Like, how close did somebody get when they, and you dropped out and you're like, good question. Yeah, that's a cool question to ask. So I'm giving you some of the inside secrets here. So we divide up the 75 hours into three, like thirds, right? So it's like, whatever, about, you know, 24 and a half hours, 24 and a half hours, 24 and a half hours, give or take. So we call it phase one, phase two, phase three. And phase one, really, it's negative external motivation is what we give them.

We pretty much, everyone's yelling at them. The Navy SEAL and the Marine is just like coming down on them with thunder, right? We want to create confusion and chaos and doubt in them while we have them. try and accomplish things. The next phase, the next 24 and a half hours, phase two, is about internal motivation. Like, hey, motivate yourself. We're not going to be there to yell at you. Someone can yell at you to dig a hole or to run a mile or whatever. But in life, if you can't motivate yourself, you're screwed. And then, of course, the third phase is really the fun phase, where they're shooting, you know, they're doing room clearing with pellet guns. We're doing awesome

group hikes that are fun now, not with, like, the logs. No one's ever quit in the third phase. once you make it to that last 24 hours, no one's ever quit. The quitting time is usually the highest quit rate is in the first 24 hours, phase one, where you've got an angry seal and an angry Marine just breathing fire on you. And anything you do, Craig, even if it's right, it's not. It's not. And you just have to go, I'm sorry, I screwed up, sir. If you're trying to explain to these guys who are telling you what you did wrong when you did nothing wrong, they're just telling you what you did wrong. And the whole idea there's, can you take feedback and still stay in the green because we teach them staying in the green emotional discipline ed

yeah yeah right ed that the other yeah right and so we teach them this stuff ahead of time and then we go look people in your life are going to tell you Craig you're an asshole you're a jerk you did this and you wronged me and you didn't are you going to freak out at them or are you just going to be like hey man I'm sorry you feel that way and go on about your business and so a lot of what we do in that 75 hours is a direct metaphor for life and so when during the first 24 and half hours, the seal and the Marine. Like, they had them do stuff and these guys do it pristine, on time, do it better than we expected them. And it's still wrong. And so we just turned the whole gym upside down and tear all the weights down. They got to restack all the weights over again.

Who raises their hand and quits versus going, I understand what's happening. They're punishing me for no reason to see how much emotional discipline I have. It's the guy that figures that out who's going to be good at life because your wife is going to have a bad day. She's going to freak out at you. your boss or your co-worker or your business partner is going to have a bad day and freak out at you. It's not your fault. How are you going to take that? We got a guy, I think I told you about him. Chris Barth is coming to your project, next project, I think, in September.

And so really stoked for him. He's got a lot of coaching from Daniel Woodrum. He's learned a lot from you, and he's super excited to go to the next evolution. So he is very pumped to come and hang out with you. Now, one thing that you said the other day on the virtual mastermind is that you, you know, you said like you have the addictive personality. And so what are some of the outlets that you have and that other leaders, entrepreneurs, must have to keep themselves out of trouble?

The project is probably an outlet for you now. But what are some of the things that other people can have to keep themselves out of trouble because there's a lot of temptations out there? You're absolutely right. And so especially for leaders, because once you start making money, money gives you access. And money sometimes will give you access to time where you can get involved with addictions and vices. Money can give you access to people who might lead you down the wrong path. And so where that's concerned, one of the best lessons I learned was from my therapist, Kevin Downing, who's like, hey, look, you've got an addictive personality.

And you have a tendency to want to go self-destructive. And so the best thing I'm going to encourage you to do is be addicted. to constantly creating wealth and sharing, like for Toys for Tots, which now we've given over a million dollars to Toys for Tots between what we've done with you, your organization, and mine, a million dollars north of a million dollars to Toys for Tots, Shriner's Children's Hospital, 98 kids adopted through Compassion International.

And so now I'm addicted to making money and moving that needle and the needle of our lifestyle for my family and the experiences that we have together, the memories that we make. So I'm still addicted to growth and giving and significance versus drugs or alcohol or stupidity. And Lord knows I can lean into that. But structure is the number one thing, like structure of a goal, structure of an accountability partner. Like you are one of the greatest things to me.

And quite honestly, I miss what I miss the most is our, like we'd see each other about every month, every six weeks. those dinners that we had. We'd go to a dinner and I could just vent and then you would just vent. And then I walked away with like, holy shit. Yeah, he just gave me some outside eyes and perspectives that I never really thought about. And because you know me well enough. And, you know, you're one of those dudes.

You just don't judge. You just listen. And you're like, hey, have you thought of this? And I'm like, you know what, dude? You're right. Maybe I should stop taking Vicodinin and NyQuil and actually try and fall asleep without drugs. And so it's about having structure. It's about having the right people around you.

It's about firing the wrong people. If I'm around knuckleheads that do knucklehead stuff during knucklehead times of the day, you know, then I'm more likely to do that. If I'm around people that go to sleep at 8 or 9 o'clock and are disciplined in the way they eat and carry themselves, I'm going to be disciplined in the way I eat and carry myself and go to bed at a normal time as well. So that that structure is so valuable, man. Yeah, absolutely. And then so with the one last thing on the project is what changes do these guys walk away with?

They don't so much walk away with changes. They walk away with realizations of gosh, like the project, the class five that just took place. This guy named Daniel Camero. We literally had him do what was about a quarter mile army crawl with a backpack on. and a 10-pound sledgehammer. And as you know, sledgehammer is heavy on one side, loud on the other, very awkward, and they're crawling through dirt and weeds, a quarter mile.

Now, he is in a position. Now, the thing the project teaches is communication, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving, those four things, along with the 4F bombs, family, faith, fitness finance. And so he's a young, strapping entrepreneur, and, dude, he is no joke about 60 yards ahead of everybody else, thinking like he's a badass

and he knows that when he gets to that tower that he's going to stop because that's where we told him that's where the quarter mile is. So I got up to him and I say, hey, hey Daniel, as he's crawling. I'm like, man, you're doing good. Look back. He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm doing good instructor.

I go, what do you think is going to happen when you get to that tower? He goes, I'm done, right? I go, so you're just going to sit there by that tower while all these guys suffer by themselves? No. I go, because instructor, Stephen, instructor Ray, they're going to get up your ass, aren't they?

For just being a lone wolf and not a team player. One of the four things is teamwork. And so the fact that you can go this fast isn't working in your benefit right now. Why don't you slow down, stop, and be in that group and motivate them? Since you are good at this particular evolution and you see the bigger guys aren't, what if you actually slow down and exercise leadership instead of being selfish? He goes, holy crap. He literally started army crawling backwards, crap.

to meet up with them because what would have happened is this is what Ray and Steve would have done to create this chaos because we want them also to have adversarial relationships within the group in the first 24 hours. Daniel would have finished Daniel Camero would have finished he would have likely sat there like a dumb shit We would have let him the other group would have started building resentment Steve and Ray would have gone up to the group and said look what an asshole that guy is. He's probably mocking you guys. He's drinking water while you guys are still crawling. And then they would have gone up to Daniel and said, boy, you're a horrible leader. If you lead your company this way, we're just because you're fast and high speed and low drag, you're hauling ass while the rest of your staff or your

franchisees or whoever are suffering. What poor leadership is, like they would have tore him down. They would have tore them down and create friction. And then, of course, in the two hours of sleep they got that night, they duke it out, right? And so my job is the Papa Bear is to go, hey, before this happens, what if you did this? And then so after the, that evolution after he army crawled backwards, joined the group, motivated, inspired, and dragged them all along to the finish line. Collectively, we sit him down, and that's where they have Papa Bear time with me. I'm like, hey, did you guys catch what happened? Well, yeah, he came back. Do you know why? And I explain all this to them. They're like, holy shit. There's things that

you're going to be better at, Craig, than I am. If you just haul ass and we're business partners, and you're not telling me what you're doing and how you're doing it, I'm going to feel like I'm not pulling my weight. I don't belong in this partnership. You probably think I'm a piece of shit and I'm going to quit, even though you're not thinking any of that. Or I might start developing resentment towards you. Like, you have to at times slow down to speed the whole team up if you value your team. If you value, right? And so those are some of the big lessons that are, they get taught and sometimes caught. Got it. Love it. Love it. All right, we're going to quickly do a little bit on the 10% sales stuff. You did a good rant on this in the virtual mastermind

just getting, you know, 10% better here, 10% better here. Take me through that again as quickly as you can. And then I want to wrap things up with, you know, one message we want to leave everybody with for the rest of life. Absolutely. All right. So I'll make this quick. So especially times like this when the economy is kind of wonky and customers are not spending what they're normally spending with you. And you're trying to figure out how I can make more money.

By the way, that marathon I ran 10 years ago. I haven't gotten an email from that company that puts on that marathon for the last 10 years. I got an email from them this morning. It was almost like serendipitous that it had to happen for me. And they go, hey, we've got pictures of you from 10 years ago running the marathon. We'll sell you the entire file for $7.95. That's how desperate they are. So companies now are looking for opportunities.

How can I extract a little more money to stay alive another week before I have to go under? What if that company actually was marketing to me consistently and actually had me do a few marathons in the last 10 years and had me bring a few friends along by you know give me a referral or something right instead of waiting 10 years for bad times to happen for them to figure out how they can get $7.95 for me off poor shitty picture quality where I don't even look like myself anymore. So anyway, that's a great lesson there. But that company right now can figure out something. And so there's when I tell people in a time like this, what if I can immediately increase your revenue by 30% they go it can't happen it's crazy times I go are you running Facebook ads are you in any

kind of marketing with email marketing yeah well what if your ad can convert 10% better just 10% better meaning your copy on your ad can be 10% better the image that you use gets people from scrolling stops them from scrolling 10% more your offer on the email on your email or your subject line could be 10% better and get 10% better open rates your Links can get, have better call to action to click to the sales page. Your sales page, which is still marketing, can be 10% better in converting. Oh, okay, look at all those different things. The demographics, who you're marketing to.

Can you weed it down to a better demographics, 10% better increase in leads? If you're getting 100 leads for $100 that you're spending, can you get 110 leads for the same hundred bucks? If so, move on to the next step. Can we do get 10% better at closing? If for every 10 people that you see, you're closing six of them, can we now close seven people for every 10 people that become a lead? By doing better follow-up, by doing the Gary Hubbard strategy of recency and frequency, meaning the moment they become a lead, follow up and follow up frequently until they become a prospect where you could actually try and sell them.

Can you just get 10% better at selling? Can you get 10% at overcoming objections, 10% better? Can you get 10% better at removing those objections before they come up? If so, boom, move on to the next step. Now we're 20% increase in revenue. 10% more leads, 10% higher close rate. Can you keep a client or customer 10% longer? Can you charge them 10% more?

You probably can. Make the product 10% better. They'll pay 10% more, stay 10% longer. And if you could do that, you now have 10, 20, 30% increase in your revenue. And then you don't stop there. You go back to the beginning and go, can I make marketing 10% better? can I now close eight out of 10 instead of seven out of 10 in sales? Could I get a person to stay two months instead of one month longer?

And you keep doing that until revenue continues to climb. But most people aren't tracking the metrics to be able to do that. Instead, they want to get 30% from one area. I'm going to raise my prices at 30%. No one's going to pay you 30% more. You're not going to get 30% better at closing overnight. You're not going to get 30% better at running ads. Like that's a black swan event for that kind of stuff to happen.

but you can get 10% better in three areas and increase revenues. Yeah, and that's where the business survives and then thrives against, you know, a business that dies in this time. So B, man, you got a passion for helping people and you got a purpose now. So how did you find your purpose and how can anybody find theirs? So purpose, I believe, is a byproduct of just doing things that you would do for free if someone paid you for your living expenses. So if someone's like, Craig, I'm going to pay you for your travel lifestyle, for you and Michelle to live wherever you guys want to live and your health care, et cetera, et cetera, everything you want.

What would you do for free, Craig? Well, probably what you're doing now, right? Because I know you. Right. And so that's how you find your purpose. People think the purpose is lost. It's something that you develop. In the process of doing this, like the Craig of today is not the same Craig of a decade ago.

A decade ago, this Craig was into, you're still into fitness of yourself, but you wanted to help others. So you had turbulence training and six minutes to skinny and all the great stuff. That was your purpose. You would have done that for free back then if I paid for your lifestyle. And then as you evolve and grow when you go through a new phase of life, the Craig of today says, you know what? Fitness is great and awesome. But there's also this higher level of mental development, emotional development, and I'm going to teach that. And who knows what Craig is going to do 10 years from now? Because you evolve, you're a human, but it will likely still be something that you would do for free if someone paid you for your lifestyle because you love it so much. And

the unfortunate part is most people go and try and find something that pays well. It's like I hate real estate or I hate cold calling, but I know real estate or cold calling makes money. So I'm going to go do those things. Dude, if you're not into it, don't do it. I love fitness so much. I love training out like a beast so much that I would just do this for free. And thankfully, I don't have to. And so I've got multiple companies in the self-development, fitness development, mindset, nutrition development areas that pay me money. Absolutely awesome, dude. All right.

And then finally, you know, you've painted this on your gym. You set in your emails for the longest time before I finally got it. It's never peaked the best is yet to come. What should our listeners take from that? Oh, man. So first of all, I want to give a nod to Tony Soprano for this one. And years ago when I was watching the Sopranos, Tony Soprano said,

people who have the remember when conversations are the lowest form of people. And I was like, whoa, that's a bold statement. Like, the lowest form of people are the type of people that have remember when conversations. And what he was saying is, hey, remember when I had hair? Remember when I was lean and muscular? Remember when I was popular with the girls? Meaning they peaked back then. And I was like, holy shit, that's right.

I never want to have a remember when. Like, I want to be like, man, the best of me is yet to come. So if the best of me is yet to come, then I cannot peak in life. I'm like, oh, shit, never peak. I will never peak. My goal is to never peak. And from that point on, I started to do more of these six-week challenges for myself. I started to push myself and more.

I started to go into areas of life that I want to explore and do things because I want to learn new languages. I want to be able to skateboard. I want to be able to play the guitar. I want to be able to do jiu-jitsu. Just because I didn't learn it in my 20s, doesn't mean I can't learn it in my 40s, 50, 60s, 80s, right? And there's a, I forget her Instagram handle. I think it's jujitsu granny or jujitsu grandma.

A freaking 70-some-old-year-old grandma in Orange County, California here, started jujitsu two years ago. Cute as a button. And she just does it and loves it and is getting good at it. Like there's a woman who's never going to peak. And new synapses are formed, new neuroplasticity. is developed, new skill sets. Like when people die early because of retirement, they retire out of their business, they sell their business, their job, they're whatever.

They retire and they die. It's because they lost a sense of purpose. The best of them was behind them, right? I remember when I launched that big business and then built in and sold it, now nobody knows about me and cares about it. Hey, guess what? What if you never peaked? Keep learning a new language.

Learn Rosetta Stone. You sold your company? Go to Italy and fucking live there for a year. Like, how awesome is that? And assimilate. As soon as you do that, go to Greece. But if you apply that never peak mentality and the best of me is yet to come, like, I want to take my last breath on my dying bed. And then that's like when I peaked.

Like whatever it is, I hit a new PR on a whatever it is that I would do as an old man and then die, right? And not so much like, gee, I remember in my 30s or 40s, I was the man on social media. But then I was nobody after 60. Yeah, that is so good. So good. Perfect way to end this. Never peek everybody that's listening. and you will force yourself to man up

and become the best version of yourself. Thanks so much, B, man. Happy birthday, 46 has been great, but the next 46 are gonna be even better, right? Bam, baby, thanks, bro. Good seeing ya.