Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 199. Scale and Grow Through Mentorship

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

What is the importance of having a coach? It's understandable that the best athletes in the world have multiple coaches, but when it comes to business, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, the idea of working with a coach is still questionable..   Coaching and mentorship is essential in the eyes of high level entrepreneurs. In two ways, you need to get the path, gameplay, and frame of mind to break past your limits. Then, if you want to grow your team, exit the business and take the visionary role, you need to BECOME a mentor.   Bedros and Craig break down how to find a good effective mentor, and show you the ways to become a good effective mentor to your team, future leaders, and coaching clients. 00:26 - Why should an entrepreneur have a coach? 08:35 - The importance and process of mentoring your team 16:28 - The steps to growing your business by mentoring somebody to replace you.  17:00 - Changing the belief system 18:45 - Align thinking, thought processes and ideology 20:47 - Showing your mentee the battlefield and vision 23:05 - Course Correcting 26:16 - If you want to win your freedom, you need to find the shortcuts, then give the shortcuts   Connect with Craig Ballantyne :    https://www.craigballantyne.com/ https://twitter.com/craigballantyne/ https://www.instagram.com/realcraigballantyne/ Connect with Bedros Keuilian : Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/bedroskeuilian/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/KeuilianInc Twitter -

Some of the best coaches use the philosophy of tell, show, do. Tell them what they need to do to get back on track, show them how to do it, and then watch them as they do it. Tell, show, do. Craig Ballantyne, can you think of one Olympic-level athlete that doesn't have a coach? Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean, how could you possibly not have multiple coaches? Right? Exactly. Yet when you look at the sport of entrepreneurialism,

there's so many athletes in our sport, that don't have coaches and are blindly running to their financial death, and it saddens me. It's crazy. It's crazy. Because you imagine like, yeah, okay, so there's like 30-some teams in the NFL, and like, only half of them had coaches. Yeah. Those, that would, the half that didn't have coaches would be the half that was losing all the time. And it's so common sense to everyone. Like, if you're watching this or listening to this right now, you're like, yeah, duh, guys. Every athlete has a coach. Every team has a coach. Well, why wouldn't every entrepreneur have a coach or a mentor? Well, and it's not even that.

It's like every athlete has multiple coaches. Sure, they maybe have a head coach, but they have strength coach, a nutrition coach, a mindset coach, and most entrepreneurs won't even have a single coach. Or they think, how could I have more than one coach at the same time? That question is almost as absurd. Because if you don't have a coach, then you're not getting downloaded the years of experience and what works and what doesn't work, and you're not getting the connections that they can offer. They're not you you have nobody to go and talk to because you're living on lonely

entrepreneur island because you're not going to go and talk to your brother-in-law who's a doctor or lawyer or you're not going to go and talk to the people who aren't making as much money as you because they don't want to hear about you making money and you don't want to tell them that you're losing money because they're like well you all you made all that money last year so I really don't care about you so you have nobody to talk to if you don't have a coach or a mentor yeah you don't have that peer group too. And and and So we wanted to bring this topic up because quite often when I think about the success that I've had as an entrepreneur, when I think about the success that you've had, we both got to talk in and we're like, shoot, man, we had mentors pretty early on. Yeah.

We had mentors pretty early on. And when I think about it, my first mentor, I didn't even realize was mentoring me, Jim Franco, who was, I was a personal trainer. He was one of my personal training clients. I knew that he owned a company. And I, you know, and by the way, if you're a young man or woman listening to this right now and you're like, yeah, I got this client who's wealthy, and you don't know what they do and how they create their wealth and how they market and et cetera, you are doing yourself a disservice. Yeah, being a personal trainer, like, for all its horrible flaws, the fact that, you know,

most people who can afford a personal trainer are people who are successful and can teach you something. And, man, if I could go back in time and just be more of a sponge of the wisdom that they could have given me, just ask better questions. I mean, so many of them download. a lot of stuff to me, but... Dude, I remember thinking, like, two years end, thinking, like, okay, I know Jim Franco makes a lot of money, and I would tell, like, the other personal trainers, like, oh, yeah, that's Jim Franco.

He's my, he's my wealthy, super wealthy coaching client, or personal training client. And, well, what does he do? I'm like, I don't know, but it's an automotive space. Well, that means that could have meant anything. And actually, he was in the software space, like, when you walk into an auto parts store and you're like, hey, I want to filter for,

was 74 Toyota pickup, an oil filter, like that software that they type on and find the model number of the filter. That was him. That's him. His company created that, Autolog. And so not knowing what he did, and as he was coaching me, in between sets, he'd give me advice, start building my confidence. Have you ever thought opening up your own personal training studio or your gym?

Because you complained about having multiple jobs in addition to being a personal trainer. But when I started to actively pay for coaching, you know, then I started hiring coaches, whether it was you know, Frank Kern or Joe Polish or got a half day with Dan Kennedy. And the list goes on. Jay Abraham. Hell, you. I started to read. Hell you.

As in, as in, even though I had free access to you, it makes sense. People are like, well, why can't you just happen to your buddy's brain trust? Well, you can. But in a structured coaching environment, and ironically, I coached with you, you coached with me. And in a structured coaching environment, you both win. Yeah. Because there's a different level of accountability and support. And if you pay, you pay attention.

Yeah. Better. That's exactly it. So coaching and mentoring has been a massive influence on my life, on my business. It's helped me avoid pitfalls in business and time collapse in the journey of profitability. I can't say there was any kind of coaching or mentoring that I would have gotten to help me overcome the stress of 2020 in terms of the COVID and the impact it had on Fit Body Boot Camp. That mentoring came from, I would say, it was a byproduct of just the years of mental toughness that I built in being an entrepreneur. Because we both know that being an entrepreneur is literally one of the greatest self-development programs on the planet.

Absolutely. Right? Just how much shit you have to deal with as an entrepreneur risk you have to take, problems you have to solve. You know, decisions you have to make without knowing 100% of the information really starts building a high level of discipline and development in a human. Yeah. Has mentorship helped you in your life? Well, I mean, it's been everything because, you know, first of all, the mentorship has shown me what was possible. Like, I had no idea that it was possible to build wealth and build passive income and to have these investment opportunities. And that any of the, you know, the great life out there, I mean, I wanted it all, but I had no idea how to get there. And so the mentorship, first of all, showed me the path of entrepreneurship.

But it also showed me that, listen, you're not going to be able to do this just as a one-man shop that you're going to have to become, you know, not just good at one thing, like sitting there and writing emails to an email list, but you have to become a leader, you have to become a better communicator. You have to become a coach. Even if you're not a business coach, you have to become a coach to the team members that you have. And it's really been that personal development where, yeah, sure, as an entrepreneur, I became semi-successful, but it was the, wow, I grew into a man faster, better, more well-rounded by being an entrepreneur and being mentored through that by someone who had been there and done that, achieved what I wanted to achieve, had all that experience, was able to download that to me. And if I was trying to figure it all out on my own, I mean, it would have taken me, I don't know if I'd ever be where I am now.

And also the connections. The mentor can, you know, connect the dots, can introduce you to the people that you need to know. They open doors. They absolutely. They open doors that would otherwise take you, you know, years. If you were lucky enough, it would take you years to open those doors. More likely, probably never. Because when someone says, hey, here's a friend of mine, Craig, I want you to meet.

And the person that they're introducing you to already trust me, I get to a done deal. They're going to give you time to hear you out. And that little window of time could mean that opportunity to go into business with that person that you would have never had the ability to access. Yeah, absolutely. And then what a lot of people don't realize is that there's a flip side to what the mentor can do for you in terms of the investment opportunities, the tax savings opportunities. This is definitely where most people have no clue. And recently a mentor of mine said, Craig, you shouldn't invest like a millionaire. you should invest like a billionaire, and here's what the billionaires do.

Here's how they protect their wealth. Here's how they diversify their wealth. And you're not doing half of that. And that's probably like one of the most recent mentorships that has helped me out the most because, okay, great, I had a mentorship on how to build a network and build a business. But if you don't protect that and get your money to work for you as well as you can, again, that's not something that you're going to find out on your own. Like this information is definitely not taught to you in college.

none of this stuff was. But the reason why I want to talk about mentoring so much is because of what you've done in Fit Body Boot Camp in the last year. You've been able to build a business, massive business that most people would be content to run, but you mentored up Bryce to step into the CEO position. And just before we started this, I was joking that most entrepreneurs walk around thinking no one can do this part of the business as good as me. and we hear this from so many gym owners.

Nobody can write the programs for my clients as good as me. And that's horrible thinking. One of our friends, Joel Marion, who is like the Michael Jordan of email copywriting, now has somebody writing all the emails in his business. Like this is the man who is like the greatest email marketer and he taught somebody else how to be 90% as good as him, which is more than good enough for him to continue growing the business.

Like that just showed me that everybody is replaceable. And so what were the steps that you take now in mentorship to your team members and your business partners and protégés? How do you mentor them up so that they can really run the business with just some very valuable guidance from you, but not you looking over their shoulder all the time? Yeah. So my plan with Bryce was very deliberate. So Bryce is still a Fit Body Boot Camp franchisee. He has several Fit Body Boot Camp location. that he and his wife were running. Now his wife runs them,

and he, for the last four years, has, was the VP of FitBody Boot Camp. So I talked him into coming in here. Now, people are like, well, how did you know Bryce was going to be it? Like, why weren't you out there looking for someone who's a VP? Because I was like, you know what? I want someone that I've mentored.

So one, I knew he was open-minded to getting mentored. Two, I know that he's an addict, and he openly talks about this, so he doesn't mind me sharing this, but he's an addict, you know, he, And I like working with addicts. People who have this OCD, this ability to lock on and get addicted to something.

In his case, it was alcohol. He has the ability to get addicted to his work and improve on it, like become the best at it. And so I've got that. He's got that. He's intense. I'm intense. I've mentored him. We've mentored him.

He was in our mastermind, in the Empire Mastermind. And he was in the Fit Body Mastermind many years now that he runs the Fit Body Mastermind. So with all that, I knew he was open to so much in terms of personal growth. in in terms of learning, marketing, and sales at the highest level, persuasion, leadership, influence, communication, decision-making. And then as he started to kind of see the same vision that I did, I was like, this guy's going to be my VP. And I knew that Andrew and Chloe were getting to an age where I needed to travel less.

I needed to be less involved in the day-to-day decisions of Fit Body Boot Camp so that I could be more of the visionary. Like, where is Fit Body Boot Camp going to go? How do we run it at 2000? locations, 2,500 locations. What does the future of our software look like? What happens if there's another world global lockdown, right? How do we enter Saudi Arabia and different parts of Europe as a franchise? And so all those things for me to do, I had to get Bryce in as a VP. And then just a few months ago, so four years of mentoring him as a VP, a couple months ago, I put him in the CEO

position and literally my workload by it got cut by two thirds. Wow. Two thirds. I travel two thirds less. I have more time to focus on the bigger things with FitBody Boot Camp that used to almost be an afterthought because I would have to be in the weeds a lot as the CEO, right? He leads the teams. He leads the FitBody Mastermind.

He leads the regional trainings called the elite trainings. He leads the World Conference. So at our own world conference last April, I was like, I was pretty much like Tim, we had Tim Grover speak, Dan Fleischman speak, Jason Redmond. I was pretty much treated like as one of the speakers. Like before I would host the whole thing for two days and it's over, you know, this is overwhelming, you're burnt out and then you still have to shake hands and make friends with people. Well, dude, now I could just, I had my speaking time and Bryce took over the stage and the team that

ran it. It was a just superb million dollar event that we put on. and I had my 90-90-minute slots of speaking. Otherwise, I was in the hallway, shaking hands and kissing babies. And that's the stuff I need to be doing with my franchisees. But when you're on stage being the MC of your own event, you can't really do that, can you? My favorite part of Fitness Business Summit back in the day was, like,

you know, it was a three-day event. And once you got through, like, the mastermind presentation, like then it was like, now I'm just like basically wearing my pajamas for the rest of the weekend. And you could just see, like, you went from, like, to, like, whew, just show up in shorts on day three. Yeah. That was, man, I love that.

And then so in terms of truling, right? Now, Truling was completely different. So FitBody Boot Camp, I started in 2010, and Bryce came on board, I don't know, four or five years ago as a VP, we kind of scaled them up. Truling, we started three years ago, and I built it around a VP. So I put a thing out on social media, saying I'm looking for someone to be a right-hand man to me, to start a supplement company. You have to be someone who's invested in self-development.

You have to be coachable. You have to have this ability to lock on and get OCD about things. True enough, yet another addict, this time a former Cokehead, right? And again, Aaron talks about it openly all the time, so he doesn't mind me sharing this. But again, I know what I'm looking for, someone who has that addictive personality, who has realized that I can take this addictive personality and channel it towards something good and I could be really, really great at it. And he's so big on personal that went through and put himself through MIT, not the Michigan Institute of Technology, but like the self-development course MIT, as well as hired mentors and stuff.

And he had his own Jim Franco, a business that he ran and then sold off. And so he moved out from Scottsdale and we built a business around him. And with Truling, I never even had to be in it like I did with FitBody. And Truling now in three years, became an eight figure a year company only because. we built a business around him. I didn't have to even install myself in. Same thing with the modern day night project. It's Ray and Steve, the Navy SEAL and the Marine,

they do the sales, they do the logistics. They run the team of the junior instructors who come in and kind of set the whole thing up that we're going to meet up with later tonight. Tomorrow, the one o'clock I show up to kick off the 75 hours. And then the five instructors, along with the eight junior instructors and two medics,

run the whole event where I can still do CEO stuff for my companies and still show up and be there. But I'm basically just watching these guys develop. I run my journaling sections, a toxic cognition and all that stuff. But it's so neat to be able to have... And by the way, people are like,

you got a Navy SEAL and a Marine to learn how to sell and to learn how to market and learn how to lead and manage people? Yep, yep. Not all those things were factory installed to them. But if you can mentor them, as long as they have the willingness and the desire,

you could literally keep cookie-cutting different businesses as long as you have people that you can mentor. Now, every single one of these people, from Bryce to Aaron to Ray and Steve, I coach, I mentor, I pour in, I make sure I have time with them. I had lunch yesterday with Ray. Two days before that, it was with Aaron.

Bryce has been out of town in Chicago for our lead training. But all this is to say, it's easier for me to pour into four or five leaders of my companies that I'm mentoring, then try and pour into 70 employees, some of which who are like in different states. So let's break it down for somebody who's watching this, whether they, you know, they run a gym and they're like nobody can write the workouts or, you know, do anything as good as me. I'll never have the trust of them.

Or whether they run an auto dealership and they don't believe their sales team is going up. One of my clients, he's a dentist. And he thought the same thing. Like no one, no one can do a crown. I've learned so much about dentistry. No one can do a crown or a bridge as good as me. And we proved him wrong.

Someone brand new out of dental school that he mentored for six or eight months. Now he works two days a week in his own dental practice. So what was the first step? I mean, aside from getting the person, I mean, I guess the first step is getting to believe them. What do you have to do there? Change the belief system, right? You have to change the belief system. And that takes a little bit of like blind faith.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing. It's like I truly believe that everybody's replaceable in any business. and as you were talking, I was trying to think of, like, what's an example? Okay, well, Batman. Remember the Batman movies? How many people have played Batman? Yeah.

And I'm a big believer that, what the heck was the name? Bateman? No, that's, no, it was... Bill. No, Bayle. Christian Baylor. But he was Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. That's why I called him Batman.

Christian Bale, I thought, was the best. But, I mean, he was still, like, the ninth Batman or whatever, and all those other guys were Batman, and maybe some people thought George Clefellius said, But it was replaceable. Same with James Bond. Right. Even before that, same with James Bond.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, if James Bond is replaceable, you're replaceable. So think about that. So, okay, you get over that, you go, okay, because I'm about to coach somebody who says, nobody can write the programs, excuse me, and I'm just trying to think how I'm going to have this conversation with them. And, okay, so you get that through that now, all right, great. So this dentist is going to be as good as me or better. I mean, I'm looking to make somebody better.

me. I don't want to be the best. I'd much rather have better people around me. What do we do that? What do we do that? We have to figure out, I guess, what are the skills? What are the skill sets? What's the evaluation of where they are right now? Yeah. How do you measure them? Was their KPIs, right? And then what's the best way for me to teach them? And what's the best way for me to challenge them? Because I guess some people, you know, there's going to be, some people do respond to that in your face. Some people don't respond to that. So it's when you're mentoring somebody, how do you figure out those aspects? Well, first of all, I found that you might want to get someone who is in line with the

way, like you connect with. Right. Right. If they're in line with the way you think and process and they're, like, for example, if you are not allergic to taking risk, but you bring in a VP who likes to play it safe, you guys are going to have very conflicting ideologies when COVID comes. And you're like, no, man, we've got to keep someone frangis. And he's like, no, man, we got to lock down all the locations and stop processing credit cards for clients.

Right? I mean, we would like butt heads if that happened. But me and Bryce were just like, no, man, we keep selling franchises. I immediately announced to our franchisees that don't even ask us to stop your franchise fee. And we're not, and we're going to tell you to tell your clients, like, don't even ask us like, keep charging your clients. And we're pivoting. And in three days, we pivoted to online coaching. And here's how we're going to help you get more clients through online coaching using Zoom, Facebook and trainerize. Facebook private. groups, et cetera. And so, but Bryce and I, so this person has to share the same ideology in terms of the way they lead and manage. If they don't have the same ideology, you're going to have a very different experience. Same with, by the way, if you get a coach, if I go hire a coach right now, and they are not high speed, intense, type A, and they're more like woo-woo and let's go sit under a tree and we're going to download from the universe, the knowledge and wisdom that you need to become the next level of leader that you want to be Bado. So I'd be like, are you fucking nuts?

I know that works for some people. That won't work for me. Right. And so all the mentors that I think about that I've had were whack jobs like me, right? Like from the outside, I think I'm normal, but I realize I'm a whack job and there are whack jobs like me. And so it's really important to find people

who kind of think and operate through in your level of intensity and sophistication or ideology. Yeah, yeah. And then in terms of putting them on a path and communicating the path to them. Like with Bryce, you brought them on VP and like did you show them the vision right away? Yeah. Immediately the vision.

Like here's the vision right now. And we are on track because we use EOS traction. Yeah. All my companies, we use EOS, which also is a great way. If you're going to, first of all, if you're going to get mentoring, get a mentor who believes in EOS and traction. and then install EOS and read the book traction first, install EOS in your business. And you and your mentor should be on the same page. If your mentor doesn't believe in EOS, then you shouldn't hire them if you believe in EOS.

So I was like, hey, man, here's the vision. We're currently on track, which means he's our daily mission to get to these number, to be able to sell seven franchises a month. We need to get 34 EOIs expression of interest in right now. But our goal is to get to 2,500 locations, which means we need to sell 12 franchises a month. And as the VP, it's your job to help us get there. Here's all the current lead sources that we have. Some of them are being maxed out. Others are not because we need a couple more sales reps. But even when you do max them out, you're still not going to get the number of EOIs in.

So being able to kind of show him the battlefield and what's happening and saying, all right, now I'm there to help you, but you also have a very capable team. And then from there, you tell me if you need more coaching. And in fact, he felt he didn't need more coaching. And we hired, who's the guy that teacher, the COOs? Oh, Cameron Harold. We hired Cameron Harold for him. Yeah. For two years, we paid $60,000 a year for two years, for Cameron Harold, who I like, I trust.

Yeah. He's very much like us, methodical in the way he does business. And all he does is train and builds people who are second in commands. Yeah. So I was like, hey, man, here's the vision. Are you on board with it? Yes, I share your vision. Be great.

Do you understand how we run the place? Yes. do you need anything else? I'm going to need someone to mentor me on how to be a good second in command because I don't think you have time be. I'm like, shoot, you're right. Because I was just starting up Trulene with Aaron, right?

So we got Cameron Harold. And so be willing to then invest in your people and get them mentored. If you can't mentor them, pay for someone to mentor them. And then in terms of the expectations, it's the KPIs and the performance. And then if something starts to go off

and like, you know, whoever everybody's watching is mentoring, how do they correct course? So if things start going off the rails and you're like, holy count, man, we're like now behind on our goal, we're behind on the number of EOIs or sales or whatever leads that we're supposed to get, step in and go, how would I fix this? If all of a sudden I'm taking your spot, how would I fix this? And then fix it and explain to them how you're fixing it. Like mentor them along, coach them along, right? some of the best coaches use the philosophy of tell, show, do.

Tell them what they need to do to get back on track. Show them how to do it. And then watch them as they do it. Tell, show, do. And when you can then course correct them, instead of saying, well, now try this. And yeah, they tried it, but they didn't do it exactly like you would have executed. So they go, hey, it didn't work. But if you tell them, show them, and then ask them to do it while you watch over them,

you go, okay, you got it? Yes, okay, that's how you fix it next time. Let's not get back off track. Yeah, so, I mean, my best book I didn't write. So Perfect Week Formula, I did not. write. What I did was I got a young guy who in line with me, very similar, same type of approach, great skills in writing, gave him the first two books to write, showed him. This is how I write books. This is how I organize it. Had him read all my emails. Then he did the emails and I would,

you know, I would go line by line through the emails, give him feedback. And then from after he wrote a bunch of emails. Then I gave him the stories for the book. He would write a chapter. I'd give him line by line feedback. And that was how he took over writing the books and the emails. And then he was actually able to teach another guy to write the emails. So I didn't have to teach the new guy to write emails. So the new guy writes the emails in my voice and everybody thinks the emails are coming from me. They're my content. They're my stories. He gets it from watching my videos and stuff like that. But I don't actually sit and write our emails anymore. Yeah.

And it's all through that mentoring system. And now we're building a, we're building a little copy university in our company so that we can bring on more and more and more copywriters because our business depends so much on cranking out the copy. Right. And as we all know, like, copyrighters are good until they're not.

Yeah. And then when they lose steam or start burning out, like you've got to have that other person to replace them with. And to that point, you know, so important to hire other mentors to coach, like, leaders in your team. if you don't have the time or desire or capability. There was a period where Aaron and I decided it was smart for him to hire you. And so Aaron worked with you and still one of the things, many of the things that you instilled in him we use,

but one of the things that I really, really love that we use is that war room. Yeah. You know, when we have that morning morning. That marketing meeting. Yeah. That marketing meeting does so much for us. And now I'm part of that. Oh, cool.

Yeah. So I get to sit in and watch and see and just, okay, this is. how why we're growing because I feel like man truly was growing so quick I started almost losing track. Oh that's great. Yeah yeah good problem to have but also being a control freak I wanted to keep my finger on the pulse so anyhow whether it's getting mentoring or or mentoring others like if you want to win your freedom financial freedom time freedom you have to find the shortcuts and that means get people to mentor you who have done what you want to do and then when you're ready to step away from what you're doing.

Because think about it, sooner or later, you're either going to get too old, long in the tooth. Dan Kennedy says, sooner or later, everyone turns lame. Yeah, right? Yeah. Is there either going to get long in the tooth or your life priorities are going to change

and you're like, hey, I don't think I want to travel so much or do this or do that? What are you going to do? Close your business down? Or God forbid, you might get sick or hit by bus. So one way or another, you're going to have to get replaced. And so you might as well find the person

to replace you and start coaching them up in the unforeseen situation that you do get hit by a bus or decide to have a life catastrophe. Should you decide to have that life? Some people do, man. Some people just like the life is too good for them and they decide to just fuck it up. Yeah, that's true. Because that was the previous podcast we did. Go listen to the one, whatever one it is.

But yeah, people fuck up their own lives because they've got nothing else to do. You create a life catastrophe. You better have a second in command who can lead the charge while you're fucking your shit up. Exactly. Exactly. I got a little blood sugar now. I'm ready to go. Yeah, me too. All right. Well, listen, last thing I'll say is that after you've found a mentor, you've got to be a mentor.

You actually, you know, the teacher learns more than the students. So make sure that you are mentoring people. It'll make you better as a communicator and make you better as a business person. And it'll pay it forward and backward. All right. So, guys, listen, if you like this episode and we know you did, give us a five-star review, comment on and comments on iTunes as well. Take a screenshot of this. Tag Craig, tag me, and tag your mama.

We'll see you later.