Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Fan Question: Advice to Our Younger Selves - 035

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

Are you in your early or mid twenties and wondering if you’re on the right track? Or, do you have younger people in your life who need some guidance? In this episode, Craig Ballantyne and Bedros Keuilian share the advice they would go back and give themselves at ages 14, 20, and 25. Listen closely to discover how you can find success, fulfillment, and wealth at any age.   Here’s what you’ll discover: 3:57 - How to build your confidence by getting more wins under your belt. 5:40 - Why Craig wishes he had asked his first boss more questions. 8:58 - Why Bedros wants his kids to find their first jobs in sales. 11:04 - Why Craig would go back and force himself to do face-to-face sales at age 20. 19:31 - How to put the world in the palm of your hand by thinking about other people.

It's so easy to expect results yesterday, but the truth of the matter is most of us who are successful are anywhere between 10 and 20 year overnight successes. Pick one thing, go all in, and stick to it for the long run because that's when you become a master at your craft. Hey, if you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self to be successful? Wow, that's a great question, Craig. All right, I am Craig Ballantyne. This is Baderos Kulian, and we are here with another Empire podcast show. And we're going to dive deep. We're going to have a lot of fun with this one. And it's because someone, one of our viewers, was so kind to send in a question for us. And it's funny because they were 14 years old, but they sent it to both of us. And we both answered without knowing

each other's answer. And we're going to talk about that today. So the 14-year-old on Instagram that emailed us, he asked us, hey, if you were starting a business today, what would you do? So what was your answer? Well, I remember telling him, pick one thing, go all in and stick with it for, you know, a decade, right? Because these days everyone wants to go all in for about two hours and then shift gears because, well, it didn't work out. I didn't make money. Right. And so my advice to him was pick one thing, go all in and stick to it for the long run because that's when you become a master at your craft. Awesome. And so you want to know what I said? What did you tell? It's actually quite different. So I said, do a whole bunch of things. No, I did. I did. I said, I said, I think. Because I thought back to when I was 14 years old and I was working for this really great boss, one of the best boss I ever had. He taught me so much. And I said, go into your town and find the best job you can get and work for an amazing boss and learn everything you can about owning a business. Now, it's a little bit different from your approach, but I think we both learned a lot from mentors over the years. So now let's shift it up a bit. And so let's go and have you talk to your 14-year-self. We're going to give our, advice to ourself over three time periods here. And we're going to start with what you would say to yourself at age 14 or 15 in terms of advice you would give them. All right. So you want me to go first? Yes. All right. So the thing I would tell the 14 year old Bedros, to be honest with you is, hey,

hey, buddy, look, I know you've got low confidence. I know you got low self-esteem. You've jumped around from school to school because you guys have moved around a lot in this town as you came to this country. But the number one thing you can do right now to build your self-esteem and self-confidence is to start building your body, your strength, feel confident about your body. and confidence within will grow. I was a fat kid, a chunky kid. And by the way, I know plenty of fat, chunky kids who are outgoing and gregarious.

So it's not to say that when you're fat and chunky, you're the pariah. But the thing I would tell myself because when I did, so how old was that, I was 17 years old, I started working on my fitness, lost about 30 pounds, senior year of high school. But imagine if I did that three, four years earlier, my confidence skyrocketed, man.

I started, you know, my self-esteem went through the roof. I started making eye contact with people. So for me, I would have, I would have told myself to start working out and eating right sooner. Okay. And so, you know, translating that to anybody who's young and listening, take a look at what you could do, perhaps, to boost your confidence if you're struggling with any way. If you're fit and you still struggle with confidence, maybe you go out and take up some other hobby or you're speaking or something like that? So, that's a good thing. Like if you're fit, but you're still struggling with confidence because you're 14, or maybe you're,

14, you're fit, but you have acne, right? Like, I've got a neighbor's kid who has really severe acne, and my neighbor tells me that, you know, he's just really worried about that. It affects self-confidence. Well, what other area of your life can you develop? So really what I'm saying is, if you have a low confidence, low self-esteem issue,

it will stay with you for the rest of your life unless you have some wins under your belt. So for me, the win I was looking for was a physical transformation, because I was fat, I didn't have acne. That to me, I always thought to myself, if I just wasn't fat, people would talk to me. Okay. The truth of the matter is, I needed to go and talk to people, but I felt uncomfortable talking

to them because I felt like I had this 30 pounds of fat on me that I'm unlikable, right? But anyone who's really suffering with self-esteem and self-image, low confidence, it could be from acne, it could be from a speech impediment, it could be because kids had picked on you. Go out and get a win in life. Oh, I like that. Get a win in life in another area. Become really good at playing video games. Become really good at putting puzzles together.

Become the best lawn kid. Like you're going to mow everyone's lawns in the neighborhood. Be the best at something. And for me, it was I finally took control of my body and I was able to gain control of my self-esteem and self-image. So get some wins under your belt in another category of life. You can't fix your acne right now because that's what you're going through. Your hormones are through the roof.

Get another win. You know, be the best juggler. Right? But when you get it, when you get good at something, your confidence goes up because of that something. And then it bleeds into every other part of your life. And for me, the fat loss and the muscle gain bled into every other part of my life. And then from there, I was looking for more wins as an entrepreneur, right, as a student, et cetera. My grades even went up. Oh, that's amazing. So get that win, get that momentum, get that motivation, keep it going, keep going, keep going. Yeah, yeah. What about you? What would you tell the 14-year-old Craigie? All right, so a 14-year-old Craigie started his job at age 13. I was working for $3.10 an hour, digging ditches, doing all this crazy work. And like I said, I had this amazing boss.

This guy who was an immigrant to Canada, he had gone out on his own from a steady job and built this greenhouse business. And I realize now I had this guy with all, not the all the answers, but all this wisdom. And I didn't ask him any questions. And so I look back and I think, Craig, don't be such an egomaniac. Don't be such a know-it-all. Get invested in this. I mean, this man has given you a job.

He's given you an opportunity. I was fortunate that he did share some wisdom. But also, I learned a lot just through what he was doing by observing. And so if I would go back, and this extends really for about up until it was about age 30, I was always too smart for my own good and not asking for advice. That's something I would tell myself, go and ask. learn, learn, learn, learn, learn as much as you can about being an entrepreneur, about what it takes, about what sacrifices you'll have to make, about how you can deliver amazing results to the customer,

about how important that is, about management, about leadership. That's what I would have done, asked those questions. Ooh, that's brilliant. And now you're coming from a position of you're saying, look, I was a little bit more of an egomaniac, I was a know-it-all, but someone may not be asking questions because they're just simply shy, right? The bottom line here, really what you're saying is ask questions. If you're a 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 year old, if you are an adult watching this and you have a 13 to 18 year old in your life and they are shy, you want to know what kind of advice to give them, their self-esteem and confidence isn't quite there, they're not making the eye contact. Like, pass this video along to them, pass this podcast along to them so that they can gain the wisdom that we could have gotten earlier had someone told us.

But really, it's about find your voice and ask questions. I wish I would have asked questions at age 13, 14, 15. I had them. See, I was shy. You were the know-it-all. Right. But again, I was shy because I lacked the confidence and the self-esteem. Sure.

And so whatever the case might be, really, it's when you ask questions, you gain so much more wisdom early on in life. And, of course, that gives you the advantage that most people will never have. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let's fast forward. You then went through that amazing metamorphosis, age 17. You started training, got that confidence,

built it up. Now age 20, age 20, you're a young man, the world is your oyster in the palm of your hand, you're full of energy and excitement for the rest of your life. What do you go back in time and say, hey, 20-year-old Bedros, I got to talk to you and give you some advice. Oh, man. And right around then, right around age 2021 is when I got certified as a personal trainer. Okay. And all I wanted to learn were the muscles, you know, insert and originate. I wanted to learn the adenosine triphosphate system, the posterior chain, you know, all those great stuff, about how the human body functions. And I wish I can go back and tell myself,

listen, you're going to have to sell the service of personal training of fitness. Learn to sell, learn to communicate, learn to build rapport, learn to identify people's wants instead of their needs, find what benefits are instead of features, be able to get people to verbally commit, understand influence and persuasion.

And so the advice that I give my kids now, and I've got a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old, is, guys, I want you to find you to, find your first job in sales. And I don't care if it's Starbucks, because in Starbucks, they're sales. Yes, people come in and you're an order taker at first. I'd like my coffee, please. But I said, Andrew, Chloe, you're going to sell them a croissant.

You're going to sell them, would you like the larger size? You're going to sell them something else, right? Do you want to download the app? But I want to teach you guys to sell because when a young man or woman learns to sell, the world truly is your oyster. Because you're not just selling a product or service. I might be selling myself during an interview for a position or for college to enter a university, right? Maybe I'm talking to the whoever it is, a dean, the chancellor, whoever decides to take me in.

And so if Beidros at 20 years old knew the ability to build rapport, connect, sell, man, I think I would have been further ahead. Having said that, thank God I had a personal training client who noticed that I was a horrible salesperson, which is also why I worked at Disneyland as a fry cook and a bouncer at a gay bar while I was a personal trainer. I did get hit on a lot. Yes, I did. I'm considered a bear in the gay world. I don't know if you know this. I might guess that.

Yeah, big, muscular, beautiful, sexy men like me are considered a bear in the gay world. And, man, I love my gay friends. And we still keep in touch. Yeah, you know what I mean. Right. So anyway, having said that, though, selling is the number one. So my personal training client, by this point I was 25 years old, he goes, listen, you're an order taker, you don't know how to sell. Listen to this Tom Hopkins tape.

And he gave me a cassette tape that opened up this world of selling Tom Hopkins and Brian Tracy's and Ziglar and Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham. And now I'm listening to Tony Robbins and self-improvement and persuasion. But that changed my entire outlook. And it was a byproduct of that sales world that I was able to open up gym. So I went from working in a gym for someone else to opening up my own personal. training gyms, which was awesome. So what about you? What's the 20-year-old lesson? You know, it's very similar to both of the lessons that you shared. So I would go back and I'd force myself, and this would be really hard because even if I took this advice at age 20, I don't know

if I'd fall through on it. I would make myself do face-to-face sales. Face-to-face sales, because I was fortunate. I grew up with the Internet and was able to do all my sales through email marketing for so long, made a lot of money doing it. But the face-to-face sales skills that you develop can help you in so many areas. And now I'm using that. And I wish I would have learned it back then. So, but it's, it's also a combination of what you said earlier to yourself at age 14. Go out there and get that confidence. Because when you do face-to-face sales, you're going to be totally scared. I mean, almost, I would say 90% of people watching this are terrified of sales. But the only way you're going to get better is if you go out and do it, right? Yep. And so you have

to go. And I mean, our good friend Barry Dunlop did face-to-face sales. He's the kind of guy who loves it. And you know, he would always say to me, Craig, my first couple years of face-to-face sales, my one foot was always so much bigger than the other. And what he means by that is when you're doing face-to-face door-to-door sales, people are always slamming the door on your foot and it would swell up. I love that. But he loved it. He loved talking to people. And I would go back to my 20-year-old self and say, listen, I know you're an introverted type, you know, shy in certain situations, but get out there, take the most uncomfortable job in the world, because I was still working the same manual labor job because it was easy. And I would say, go out there, do some type of face-to-face sales and go through the pain of rejection after rejection, because eventually one day, like you found out, you will become a master salesperson.

You'll be able to write your own ticket for life. And then that just transfers over to everything. So I think a big, big lesson, overarching lesson of what we talked about so far is you have to go and do stuff. You have to go and take action so that you develop any skill because everything is a learnable skill, including sales. So if I could go back, I would force myself somehow. I don't know how to convince myself to do it, but that is something that I encourage absolutely everybody to do. You going to say something? Yeah.

Now, having said that, because I know you and I got to actually help you develop your sales abilities over the last couple of years, you're what, 42, 42, right? I'm 43, Craig's 42. And so a couple years ago, Craig and I started working together to, we've been friends and business partners a long time, but to help develop your sales skills. Right, I mean, I hired you. Yeah, yeah, because I knew the value is there. Yeah. And so anyone who's watching this or listening to this, I just want to give them the hope that, oh, man, if I didn't learn it in my 20s, does that mean I'm not going to learn it now? No, it's not like riding a bike. You can learn to sell anytime. And one of our most popular podcasts is I believe episode number 24, which is where you're in the back of a, you talk about how you're

in the back of an Uber, literally selling. You're selling via DMs now, via text, over the phone, face to face. I sell you from stage at your event. And you're super comfortable and confident with it. And it's a skill that you developed just two years ago when you're 40. Yeah. Right. And so the skill development's process is, first of all, go to an expert, have them teach. It's very much like when you train somebody. What did you say? Tell, show, do. Right. So I went to you, you told me how to do it.

You showed me how to do it. We role played a lot. The role playing was huge, getting that experience, and then going and doing it. And yeah, you're going to flub a little bit. You're going to, but, you know, if you get the right people, you're going to make some sales, and it's going to be that confidence building. You're like, yeah, I can do this. And when you say in your heart, I can do this, it's really, really powerful.

Much like when you were a young man doing that workout and going, you know, what, I can do this. I can do this. Totally changed your mindset and that is a key. So everybody listening at a young age, go out and whatever it is that you truly know you need to do, get some experience doing it. And you might get a swollen foot from some rejections at first, but trust me, it's going to be amazing in the long run. So we fast forward one more time to when you're 25 or 30 years old. What's the advice you give? That, Pedro. I got goosebumps thinking of this because had I, If I'm able to go back to me at 25, I wouldn't have ended up homeless for three months in San Diego.

Got it. And the advice is to stick to it, which is the advice I gave that 14-year-old young man. I said, pick one thing, get good at it, and stick to it for the long haul. And so I started, listen, I didn't have to go and become a fry cook and a bouncer at Disneyland. Right. Well, a fry cook at Disneyland and a bouncer at a gay bar. I was a personal trainer. Better than you being a bouncer at Disneyland.

True, true. The day Disneyland has bouncers is the day you don't want to go to Disneyland. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But truly what happened was we feel a little bit of pain. Like, oh, man, I need money. I'm unable to close people on personal training. And instead of saying, now, so let me get better at it. Let me stick to it and get better at it.

We always pivot to the path of least resistance and go, what if I can find a side job? What if I can find a side job? And that's really taken you away from your purpose. and the thing that you need to build mastery in. I see this all the time in my coaching clients who are even coaches and selling coaching. You're like, well, maybe I should do an ebook too. No, no, no, no. Back on track even though it's the hard path.

The one thing. So then what happened was, yeah, I started doing okay, but before that I started a supplement company, right? The online supplement business in 1997, Total Muscle.com. And dude, the story I tell people is it failed. The truth of the matter is it failed because I love. I let it fail because I didn't spend time mastering online marketing. And yeah, there was no Facebook and Google in 1997, 1998.

I get that. But there were still AOL and Earthlink, and I had an ability to email people. And there wasn't 9 million supplement company, so it actually could have been easier. I was probably the only one online supplement company. Yeah, I mean, I was way ahead of my time. But again, what did I do? I said, well, this is failing. My credit cards were maxing out, and I had a mental threshold on where I'm willing.

If I just said I'm going to stick to this until I die, like I do things today, I'm going to stick to growing Fit Body Boot Camp into a massive global fitness franchise or I will die. Guess what's going to happen? This will be a massive global fitness franchise. Because there's no other choice. There's no other choice. I've burnt all bridges. So stick to it, Bedros, is what I would say. Stick to the personal training.

Learn to sell more personal training, young man. Sell supplements. I know there's no Google. You don't even know the word Google is right now at 25 years old because there was no Google. But there will be Google one day and you will own it. because it will be the only supplement company, the first one on there. But instead, I went and I folded and I went back to personal training and I wasn't, didn't have enough clients and I lived out of my Toyota pickup for a whopping three months while

I was trying to get back on my feet. Oh man. Stick to it, Bajros. I love how, you know, I've heard this story over and over and over again, but every single time when I tell a story or when you tell a story, there's probably always one little detail in there. I didn't realize it was a full three months. I thought it was just a shorter time.

No, no, three months. Man, that must have been a great smell and pickup truck. You know, let's just add and have a lot of visitors in my pickup truck. Fair enough, fair enough. All right, so I guess I'll do the same for myself. Yes, sir. All right, so I'll go back to the 25 to 30-year-old age range, and I will say to myself, grow up.

Grow up. So you ended up sleeping in the truck. I ended up going to the emergency room twice because I had the anxiety tax. And I didn't grow up. You know, listen, when you're past 25 years old, going out three nights a week and drinking and staying up until 6 o'clock in the morning, you've had your time doing that. So grow up, you know, I would say grow up, Craig. It's not about you anymore. It's about the people that you can go out and help because I was, you know, I was a good boy six days a week.

And then one day of the week I just got totally. Like Satan on that one day. Right. Very hypocritical. And, you know, it ruined me for a couple days in terms of my energy. but I wasn't thinking of the impact I could have on other people. I was like, if I would have stopped that three years earlier and not been that know-it-all and hired my coach a few years earlier,

like you, had you done the right things and committed to that, I would also be so much further ahead. I would have gotten my book out earlier. I've got my programs to more people. And it really does come now when I look at it as a 42-year-old. Oh, man, you had so much opportunity to have huge impact on other people, but you were just looking at the impact you could have in your own, world in your own life. And just switching, switching that up, flipping the script in your mind

and thinking about other people, the earlier in life you can do that, thinking about how big of an impact can I have on the lives of other people for a positive benefit. Oh man, the sooner you're going to have the world in the palm of your hand. So that's what I would say there. That's great advice, man, to tell yourself to grow up because so many of us delay the process. Okay, just a couple more months of partying, a couple more months of sleeping in, a couple more months of this crappy job before I pull the trigger. But a couple more months become a few more years very quickly. Because the longer you wait, the harder it is to escape that inertia. Yeah, because it becomes a fixed habit, exactly. And you know what's funny, maybe people watching or listening to this

or saying right now, yeah, guys, but that's, listen, that's what it took. That's what made you who you are. I get it. I get it. But I don't want you to live in a Toyota pickup. I don't want you to go to the emergency room like this guy did with anxiety attacks that could have been prevented. And so if you are where we were and what I like to call Jackassville, that's really what we're talking about here. Between the ages of 14 and about 28. Because I remember watching Jackass while drinking. So yes, that's a great description. That is, it's Jackassville.

We act as jackasses instead of stepping up into our fullest potential. But if you're in that Jackassville era right now and you're watching this, don't try. trying to learn the lessons through your own experience, just learn it through ours. I wish, like Jim Franco taught me sales lessons, and this is why I became really good at sales earlier on. Now, what if I met Jim, not at 26 years old, but I met him at 23? I would have been a better sales rep, right? So at the end of the day, it's, can I learn from someone so that I can bypass the mistakes? If the answer is yes, then you'll learn from them. And I hope that our audience can take that message away from us and apply it instead of trying to learn from their own

mistakes. Yeah, and Grant Cardone had a really great video the other day. He said, ask for bigger problems. And so people watching, yeah, that, oh, you know, that made you who you are. Well, what if I had a bigger problem than that because I was more successful? That would have made me who I, who I am today, but on an even bigger scale. So on a 10x level. Yeah, don't ask for the problem of sleeping in your pickup truck. Ask for the problem of, well, how do I go from a $50 million business to 100 million dollar business? Ask for that problem instead of these little problems, these little dramas that a lot of people think, you know, make you. You don't have to go through that stuff. You are going to have failures. Everybody's going to. But you may as well make them pretty epic

ones instead of just these little things that we lived ourselves into in Jackassville. Amen. Oh, that's great. All right. So let's sum up what advice we would give to young people today. I guess one of them is just get out there and get experience, build your confidence, however you can. What else would you say? Learn to sell. Yes. Grow up. Yep. Right? And commit to that one thing over the long haul. I know with the social media world today, it's so easy to expect results yesterday, but the truth of the matter is most of us who are successful are anywhere between 10 and 20 year overnight successes. It seems overnight to you, but we have been grinding and bleeding for 10 to 20 years. I promise you. I've talked to Ed Milette a couple days

ago he was out here. Andy Fersilla last week at his place, Randall Pitch, went to Huntington Beach, me and Ed did, and every single one of these high-fluton entrepreneurs, and you and I are leaving for Scotland. Scotland! We went there. Everyone went to Scott's Dale. Yeah, we're going to Scotsdale today, later on today to be with about 60-70 multimillionaires. And in that very room, every single person, I guarantee you, has bled for 10 to 20 years before they became who they are. So you've got to pay your dues. You've got to put in the time. And if you don't, you're simply going to miss that potential that you have. All right. So commit to that one thing. That is the overarching lesson from today's Empire Podcast show.

So listen, if you like that, make sure you watch all the episodes at Empirepodcast.com. And then go over to iTunes, rate us, give us a six-star review. I think you can only give five-star, but give us six anyways. We'd love it. So straight out of Jackassville. I'm Craig Valentine, and this is my friend. Bejrose, Kulian.