Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 183. Hards Skills Vs. Soft Skills

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Do you want to learn the skills required to scale your business, make more money, and have financial freedom? Well, they're not the skills you might think. You may think these skills involve marketing, lead generation, sales strategy, copywriting, etc., but you'd be wrong.  Of course, those hard skills play a factor, but it's not the hard skills you're missing.  In today's Empire episode, Bedros Keuilian shares the difference between hard skills Vs. soft skills, the soft skills he used to grow an international fitness franchise, how your relationship with money is limiting you, why emotional discipline is vital to success, and so much more.  "Understand that hard skills alone will make you money, but you will hit a glass ceiling. When you hit a glass ceiling, each time you try to break through, you're going to find yourself falling back." -Bedros Keuilian Here's what you don't want to miss: 4:20 The journey from human-animal to human-being 6:55 How self-sabotage will creep into your life 7:40 How your childhood identity will make or break you 9:09 The results of feeding a false narrative 10:52 How a negative mindset will develop a pattern of failure 12:05 How personal relationships impact your identity 14:00 Why self-awareness is essential to overcoming false narratives 14:55 How operating under specific conditions will keep you broke 15:15 How money is the vehicle to freedom, impact, and meaning 16:40 Why the lack of emotional discipline makes you look like a fool 19:12 How confidence is a byproduct of credibility and winning Connect with Bedros Keuilian:   Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bedroskeuilian/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/KeuilianInc Twitter https://twitter.com/bedroskeuilian LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bedroskeuilian/ Buy Man Up and get Bedros' High-Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/ Subscribe to My Channel for weekly videos: http://www.youtube.com/bedroskeuilian/?sub_confirmation=1

But understand that hard skills alone will make you money, but you will hit a glass ceiling. And when you hit that glass ceiling, each time you try and break through, you're going to find yourself falling back. Could you imagine if there were skills to grow your business that you didn't even know you needed? Hey, what's happening? I'm Pedro's Cool. And I want to help you scale your business, make more money, actually have financial freedom. Now, you might think the skills I'm talking about have to do with marketing, lead generation, sales strategies, follow-up scripts, systems, processes, maybe running ads, creating funnels, copywriting, none of that.

And you're like, well, wait a minute, dude, that's the stuff that we need to grow our business. You're right, you do. But what if I said I know people who are amazingly good at all that stuff? Again, lead generation, marketing, sales, ads, funnels. However, they still don't have two pennies to rub together. Their business is constantly just barely making money or breaking even. And you might think that they're missing something, right? Guess what?

They are. But what they're missing are not the hard skills. And so today's episode is about hard skills versus soft skills. And I'm going to teach you stuff that you probably have overlooked because, well, you just didn't think to have anything to do with making money. and growing a company and leading people and making sales and dominating your industry. And I'm here to tell you that the way I grew Fit Body Boot Camp so quickly into an international franchise and we hit the Inc. 5,000 list four years in a row.

And Entrepreneur Magazine's 200 fastest growing franchises four years in a row is using the strategies I'm going to teach you on the soft skill sides in addition to the hard skills of marketing and sales and follow-up systems, funnels and processes, right? So, listen, there's enough Empire episodes on all of those other hard skills. But understand that hard skills alone will make you money, but you will hit a glass ceiling. And when you hit that glass ceiling, each time you try and break through, you're going to find yourself falling back. And you're going to be like, why am I constantly falling back when the same marketing that I

used to get me to $200,000 or $2 million is not helping me get to $300,000 or $300,000 or $300,000. 3 million. It doesn't matter what the number is. Quite honestly, you're going to have a limited experience in your growth where your business is concerned if you only focus on hard skills of marketing, sales, lead generation processes, systems, funnels, ads, and you never really pay attention to the soft skills you need. So the soft skills are actually learned somewhere different because you probably learn your hard skills. Oh, I don't know, probably going through courses, right marketing courses sales courses you know you probably come to a mastermind or a live event that i've done or Craig Ballantine's done or maybe you've done a course that Tony Robbins and

Dean Grassee O'CF put out or maybe you're using Russell Brunson's click funnels or maybe you're buying ads using a strategy that Billy Jean taught you and whatever you're using Grant Cardone sales techniques and so these are all proven people with proven hard skills to teach you and you know those skills but why does your business continue to hit a glass ceiling and then slide backwards? There's a reason for that. You're missing out on the soft skills, the skills that are necessary to really make the hard skills force multiplying their growth. So we're going to talk about that today on the Empire Show.

So welcome, buckle in, get ready to make more money and get ready to evolve as a human as well. Because make no mistake about it if all we did on this show is teach you how to make money. and scale your business, but didn't help you become a better human being, a kind of human being who is chasing impact and fulfillment and significance, well, guess what? Then I've fallen short and doing my job, doing my duty, because I get a sense of fulfillment from serving you and helping you become a better human being, right? I want you to go from human animal to a human being. That was my journey.

I went from a human animal to a human being, and that's where we're going to start today. See, most of us out there are operating like human animals. What I mean by that is we're out there searching for the hard skills only to make money because soon as I find some money, man, soon as I make some money, my problems will be over. Soon as I begin to find some money, I'll have more freedom. Soon as I find some money, my relationship problems will be over. Soon as I find some money, I won't be as stressed and depressed. Soon as I start making some more money and then fill in the blink, right?

But guess what? All those hard skills of marketing sales, funnels, ads, campaigns, copy, all those hard skills still end up creating a glass ceiling for you because you're missing out on the thing that you can't get from myself and Craig and Cardone and Brunson and Dean and all these people. And that is the soft skills that mom and dad gave you. That is the soft skills that you might have gotten from your grandparents. Those are the soft skills, well, that your teachers may have put in you. So let's talk about that. What are soft skills versus hard skills? Well, I think I made it pretty clear what hard skills are, right? The actual tactical stuff that you would do to make sales and get customers

and clients and then, you know, stimulate referrals and create processes and systems to grow your business. Cool. Check. Got it. Got it. You can buy those. But you know what you can't buy? Soft skills. Soft skills you have to develop. How about that? And soft skills are things like your money relationship. Soft skills are things like your emotional discipline. Soft skills are things like your ability to make decision and not stress out when you are under pressure. Soft skills are things like your confidence, because if you don't have confidence, then guess what? You're not about to pull the trigger and go to the next level of success. Because if you got some weird negative self-talk in there that's happening in your head, guess what? You're going to hit that glass ceiling and you're going to

find a reason to start self-sabotaging and erode your success. So I want to talk to you about the soft skills that really make the hard skills work so that you can have that big breakthrough that you're looking for in your business and your life and your relationship, whatever it is. By the way, the soft skills are always a limiting factor in any area of your life. You might be one of those people like I used to be where you're trying to get lean, you're trying to get cut, and I used to get to this place where as soon as my abs would start coming out, I somehow found a way to sabotage my diet or slow down my progress or cheese. on my workouts and then I would kind of lose my abs again, right?

Only to get depressed and angry at myself and they go, all right, just I'm going to go harder and I'd go hard. And as soon as my abs would start to come out, I again found a way to gain weight. I found a way to work out less. I found a way to eat sloppy. It wasn't a coincidence. Now, I would blame things like, well, I don't have time. I'm getting busier. Fit Body boot camp's growing.

The truth is all of those things were excuses. Really what had happened was my identity was that I'm a fat kid. And so I constantly did things to support what I felt my identity was. And that's what I want to talk to you about. When I say mom and dad have given you these soft skills, well, what I mean by that is mom and dad have put in programming, right? Thoughts, patterns in our heads that lead us to this identity. And what most people don't realize is your identity is flushed out by around

the age of six or seven years old. Believe it or not, your identity is flushed out by the age of six or seven years old, which means to that anything beyond six or seven years old, as you grow up, you begin to have this narrative of yourself. Well, you know, for example, if you were called a chunky kid with chubby cheeks by your parents and grandparents, or if you were just clumsy, right? Oh, she's so clumsy. Oh, she's got two left feet, right? Oh, she's just, she's a a slow learner, right? Well, you begin to hear that. That becomes your identity. And words are powerful. Words have meaning. And as children, we're doing a lot of kind of sponge-like effects. We're absorbing everything that the people around us say. And the people around you, when you're a

child, are the most influential people of your life. They're the people that gave you birth, that gave you life. And so, of course, you feel like they must be right. I am chubby, or I do have two left feet. I am a little clumsy. You know what? I am a little slow in terms of learning. And so as you grow up, you begin to live under that narrative of that identity. And so in times of success, you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not supposed to see this level of success. After all, I'm a little slow. So we start eroding subconsciously. Or as you start getting leaner and more athletic. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm actually chubby and chunky. That's my identity. And you start sabotaging yourself and eating foods that are fattier and more sugar-laden and skipping

workouts and, well, too, fall in line with the identity that mom and dad or whoever, when you were a kid, was influential around you, build within you. And so the skill sets I want you to start working on are the soft skill sets. For example, for me, one thing, that happened when we came from the Soviet Union to the United States is we found ourselves living in Section 8 housing. Section 8 housing is government-assisted housing. It's government-assisted housing because, while you're broke and you're a foreigner, you don't speak the language, you don't understand the culture, you don't make a lot of money. And so the government assists you by putting you into housing complexes, apartments that are usually run down

and filthy and have high crime. But, very, very, very... very cheap and affordable rent because the government subsidizes the landlord with money. All right? And so when you're living in Section 8 housing, you find yourself kind of around broke people who always talk about there's a lack of money. And then when that same conversation is happening in your household, when I would hear my own dad talk about how we would run out of money every month before we ran out of month, then the pattern was instilled in me that money is hard to come by,

money's not for us, money's not meant for me, money's meant for other people, right? And so if that is the identity in which I grew up with, that money's bad and that I have a bad relationship with money and money's not meant for me, what do you think would happen when I would start making some money as I got into my, you know, 20s and mid-20s and even late 20s and early 30s. I would find a way to back myself against a wall and I would find a way to self-sabotage and lose that money. You've probably heard the term you will always find what you're looking for. That is a very true statement. And if your identity is that I'm broke or that I'm always fat and chunky or that I'm just a slow learner, you will always find that out there, right?

Like, I can easily find people to make me feel inferior because growing up, another part of my identity was that being a foreigner and looking different, a lot of people told us that, hey, you should go back to your own country. Your parents are taking all of our American jobs. And so, fuck you and your parents go back to your own country. And so I saw the world as a negative place. and my association with white America, and I'm not even black, was my association with white America was, oh my God, they want us out of here

because they say I'm taking their job. My parents were taking their jobs. I didn't see anyone wanting to go deliver newspapers at two in the morning like my dad did. I certainly didn't see him wanting to go pump gas at the gas station after my dad was done doing his newspaper route. It certainly didn't see anyone wanting to go bus tables at a pizza room.

because those are the jobs that my dad had, all three of them, when we lived in Section 8 housing. But that was my relationship with people around me. And so, till this day, like, I'm going to be honest with you guys, I'll pull out my black card when we're out to dinner. And if I feel like someone looked at me or my black card in a weird way, I think. start feeling a certain way about it and I have to go through this self-talk like hey man relax they're not judging you they're not judging the fact that you've had a black card because in my head the whole time they were like hey these people aren't going to be big tippers this guy's a foreigner

he's not going to be a big tipper and he's you know got all these people with him at this restaurant and so I always feel like I'm being judged when they might be looking to me because I'm just a handsome motherfucker. But the funny thing is, I will interpret that as they're judging me and probably think I'm not a good tipper until I pull out my black card. And then they look at me, they look at my black card and they're like, oh, okay, well, maybe this guy's got money after all. And in my head, I create this whole narrative when I know for a fact, nothing's really happening. And that's a great example of what might be happening to you if you have these soft operating systems in your head that aren't necessarily doing you any good. Now I've become self-aware enough where I don't become

confrontational and combative with people. I realize that what I'm feeling is exactly that. It's just a feeling based on past experiences that I'm projecting when in reality they might be looking at me and be on, hey, man, I listen to your podcast or, hey, I recognize you from social media. But my interpretation, whenever I get a look, is that they think I'm broke and that I'm not going to tip well. How stupid is that, right? And I share that with you because if I operate my business under those conditions, then I'm always going to keep myself broke. Now, clearly, I'm very self-aware and I just laugh it off in my head. I'm like, hey, dude, you're being that old foreigner again, stop it, knock it off, right?

you're fine, everything's good, and that's that. And so I'm here to tell you and challenge you the three areas that I see so many people eroding their financial success and limiting their financial growth is in the area of your relationship with your money. Like, understand that money is a vehicle to freedom, money is a vehicle to impact, and money does not discriminate. You can be black, you can be white, you can be Chinese, you can be Armenian, it doesn't matter who you are, what color you are, as long as you add value and solve problems. in exchange for money, well, you will make money. And if you can solve more complex and complicated problems, you will make more money. And the more money you make, does not make you greedy.

It does not make you a bad person. Money's not evil, right? Money's not evil because I do a lot of good with money. I help Shrine in Children's Hospital. We donate a quarter million dollars every year to Toys for Todd's. We've got 97 kids adopted through Compassion International. That is all money that creates that meaning, right? But if you look at money like I used to,

that money's hard to come by, money's for the rich, money's not for me, then my life would operate in a fashion where I would constantly sabotage my ability to make money. So understand money is a vehicle to freedom, money's a vehicle to impact, money is a vehicle to meaning, and money does not discriminate. Money will come to those who work and solve problems, and money will be repelled by the lazy and those that are allergic to hard work. So that's thing number one, a soft skill, that you might want to consider redeveloping or relearning, re-conditioning yourself. Soft skill number two is emotional discipline, right? In other words, instead of being emotionally reactive towards things, being responsive.

When something happens, the situation goes wrong. Emotionally respond to the situation instead of react. When we react, we start looking like a fool, don't we? How many times has something happened where then you end up sending an all caps, multiple exclamation point text message to someone telling them off hit send and then you regret it and then you end up regretting it more when you cool off and when they took a screenshot and posted on social media and go hey look how stupid this person is and they're going off at me right that's an emotional reaction if you can just get a hold of your emotions control your shit right because there

is no room for emotional distress and a business look we're a fitness franchise fit body boot is a fitness franchise, hundreds of locations worldwide. March 16th, 2020, I calmly got on a live video with all of our franchisees across the world and I said, hey guys, we've got a social obligation to close our Fit Body Boot Camp doors for the next two to four weeks to flatten the curve. Now, back then, that's all we knew about COVID. That was this deadly virus that was killing people left and right and that we had a social obligation because we had an environment in our gym where people would gather close together and they would touch the same equipment in the 30-minute session, right? Now, later on, obviously, as we saw the two weeks become 10, 12 months and

beyond, we learned that the COVID is a different thing. And this is not a conversation about COVID, but it is to tell you that I was able to maintain emotional discipline. And by maintaining emotional discipline, I was able to lead my fitness franchise into a place where we will able to survive. And then we were able to thrive with our door shut. And then we're now in the opening and reopening process and back in the growth process again, all because of emotional discipline. Now, could you imagine if I panicked and if I freaked out and all of a sudden lost the trust of my franchisees, so I'm supposed to lead? They'd be like, man, I don't know if this guy's all together. And since he's not all together, I'm just going to shut down my doors and I'm

out of here. I'll just live to fight another day. But because I showed up as a emotionally disciplined leader, I was able to lead our franchisees and we had a minimum, minimal loss of locations, which is a huge thing, right? Because our rebound now is much better than any other fitness franchise or fitness, you know, kind of concept or brand out there. The third thing I want to talk to you about, which is a soft skill that I want you to develop, is your confidence. And remember, confidence is a byproduct of credibility, winning, winning stack Ws. And by the way, when I say winning, that doesn't mean that you, you know, if you're a franchisee like I am or franchisor like I am, you don't need to go and sell 10 franchises today to go, hey, I won.

If you said you're going to wake up at 5 a.m. because you set your alarm for 5 a.m., just get up at 5am don't hit that snooze button. That's a win. That's a win. So I want you guys to really, if you want to work on your confidence, I did a whole episode on the credibility, confidence, loop and that episode was the one right before this. So if you listen to the episode right before this episode, then you will have a better understanding on how to build your confidence so that when shit gets hard and always things will get hard, I promise you. There's going to be another housing market crash. There will be another stock market crash. Unfortunately, sadly, there will be another terrorist attack on our country. And guess what? There will probably be another

virus that forces businesses and economy to shut down. The question is, will you have the confidence to stay in the fight? Will we have the confidence to bounce back? And that confidence is a byproduct of credibility, building trust with yourself. As you build your credibility, you will build confidence. And as you build more confidence, you will become more competent in the skills you need to continue to thrive, even in the shittiest of situations, right? And so with that said, guys, I really want you to focus on the soft skills.

If you are finding yourself that you're kind of stuck at a place in your business where you're kind of pressed against the glass ceiling and no matter what hard skills that used to work for you, no longer work for you, odds are you probably have some old programming, old lessons that you need to relearn and reframe to yourself. Guess what? You're not a fat kid. You might eat like a fatty and therefore you might be fat. but no one is identified as a fat kid. No one is identified as a stupid kid. You might have a harder time learning things than the next person. I know I do. I've got ADD and OCD, man. I have a very hard time learning shit. It takes me longer. It takes me more repetitions. I have to see it. I have to read it. I have to write it out to commit something to memory. Then I look at others and they're like, man, they read it once and they can memorize whatever facts I need to memorize. But that doesn't make it. you any more stupid. It doesn't make you any more fat. It doesn't make you any more clumsy. You may just not have the dexterity of someone who's got great hand-eye body coordination. Guess what? You just got to do more sets and reps. And when you're willing to do those sets and reps, and when you're willing to do the work, with the work comes a new identity. And that new identity is what's going to help you break through the glass ceiling and start making more money

and use that money for a greater sense of meaning, impact, fulfillment, and significance. So do me a favor and share this episode on social media, tag me on it, and always don't forget to tell your mama. We'll see you later.