Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - How These 2018 Business Predictions Will Grow Your Empire - 028

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

A new year brings new trends, and 2018 is going to bring some big changes to the entrepreneur world. In today’s podcast, Craig Ballantyne and Bedros Keuilian talk about the marketing and empire building predictions that are going to move the needle in your business. By the end, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition so that you can make a bigger impact and create massive wealth. Here’s what you’ll discover: 4:17 - The number one fastest way to stand out from the competition so you can have a bigger impact and make more money. 9:08 - How Bedros used Navy Seal books to become an effective leader and take action. 15:48 - Why more empire CEOs will fire themselves to move onto bigger and better opportunities this year. 18:46 - How giving out free content before you ask for the sale will bring in more clients. 23:38 - How to use social media for mass, one-on-one selling.

I don't want to add a juice bar inside of a Fit Body Boot Camp. I don't want to add a shower inside a FitBody Boot Camp. I don't want to add daycare, right? We do one thing and we do it better than anybody else. And a leader can recognize that. A founder or CEO is constantly trying to look at what is everyone else doing and how can I do it as well. Happy New Year to you. Welcome to another year of Empire Podcast Show.

My name is Pedro Coolean and this is Craig Ballantyne. And today on this episode, we're going to talk about the trends and predictions to build your empire and to amass massive wealth with our trends and predictions, of course, for the upcoming year. Craigie, what do you got? Well, listen, before we go into this, I want to explain why we do this show. Is that all right? Sure. Okay, so we go back to about 10 years ago, and I saw this guy, John Reese.

He's an internet marketing legend, and he put out this predictions for the next year of internet marketing. And I just thought, wow, this is fantastic. And first of all, what that did, it elevated his status in my eyes. And actually, as soon as I found that, I think I sent it to you. And you started sending out a predictions and trends for the fitness industry, elevating you for personal trainers. And then I started doing it for the end user in the fitness space, elevating me. And it's also entertaining because I know we're going to go on a couple of rants today, right?

Indeed, we are. All right. So that's why we do the show. And if you learn nothing else, which you will, but if you learn nothing else on this show, trust me, you will. If you learn nothing else on this show, you're going to be like, hey, I'm a leader in mind. industry. I need to be out there and saying, even if you're just a, you know, a pizza owner in, you know, Tupelo, Mississippi, hey, what are the trends for dining in Tupelo this year?

Or what are the trends in pizza this year? You can go out. You're going to get PR. You're going to get lots of great stuff. People are going to know you. You're going to become a celebrity. And that these days is often what's all about. I do have a question. Yes. Is Tupelo a real place? Yes. Tupelo is a real place. And I think it really is in Mississippi. No kidding. Yeah. It's a Dan Kendi thing. You know, he would just, Dan Kendi is a speaker. and he always tells these stories and mentions like Little Towns in America. So, and I love America and I love Little Towns in the South.

So I like that one. Got it. All right. So shout out to everybody in Tupelo. All right. Go Tupelo. All right. So I'm going to kick off with my first prediction. And this one actually comes from Elon Musk.

And so Elon Musk, even though he is selling thousands of cars, even though he wants to send people into space, he realized the power of personalization and customization, even in the Teslas that he's selling. And also just in what video game people used to call Easter eggs. Do you know what that means? Easter eggs are a little hidden gems that most people wouldn't see, right? Yes. So do you know what the hidden gem in is in a Tesla? No.

You can turn the volume up to an 11. Right. And that's a nod to the documentary Spinal Tap. Yes, exactly, exactly. So you're going to see a lot of this little extra, you know, businesses, gurus going the extra mile to do that for their end users, like giving out shoutouts to people in Tupelo. Yes, Tupelo, my people. So, you know, that is what you're going to see. Just because in this digital age, we can make the extra effort.

We can recognize people in our podcast. We can recognize places. That is, that's actually a nod to spinal tap as well because they, you remember the guy would come out and he'd look at the back of the guitar. and see what city he was in, and that does work. So customization and personalization, we're going to see a whole lot more of it, even in big industry. So that's my first one. What do you got?

Well, so what I've got is, obviously, I think most people don't realize that as a person who's building a business, you are the boss, you are the CEO, you are the founder. That's what it says in your incorporation paperwork. But in reality, if you want to turn that business into an empire, you've got to stop thinking like a boss and a CEO, even as a founder, and you've got to start thinking as a leader, right? Because a leader is someone who can take a vision and a mission and cross it, you know, across the finish line.

And so leadership, obviously, this is something that I want to beat to death, if I can, is critically important. And I can tell you from my firsthand experience, you know, I used to look at myself as the founder and CEO FitBody Boot Camp, which I guess on our tax paperwork, I still am, on our corporation paperwork, I still am. But I simply see myself as a leader of a team. And my job is to constantly demonstrate where our vision is, keep us on path to our vision, and take our team of 40 plus team members here, and make sure that everyone's on track and, you know, playing the same music off the same sheet at the same time.

And I can tell you this, that I have less anxiety, less stress, and less headaches in my life when I've chosen to become an effective leader. And, you know, as we've talked about before, being an effective leader means stop being the human bottleneck where you have to try and control. control the copy, control the marketing, control the sales, and empower those around you. In other words, bring on high-performance team members that you can empower to write the copy, to make the sales, to service your franchisees or your customers or your clients or your coaching clients, et cetera. And ever since I made that transition four and a half years ago, it's absolutely changed my lifestyle, my income, and the impact that I make in the community that I serve. And leadership really boils down to better communication, being decisive,

leading from the front, meaning making sure that you're buttoned up in your health, in your relationship, in your mindset, and in your own personal vision, because you may want to be a billionaire, a hundred millionaire. Listen, maybe that's not my goal. And so sometimes we look at who's doing one on social media, and they go, I want to be like Gary Vaynerchuk, I want to be like Andy Fricilla, I want to be like Craig Ballantin. I want to be like Lewis House.

But is that in line with your life's mission? If it's not, you know, be a smart leader and focus on the thing that is your life. life's mission. For me is to help 100 million people worldwide every single morning through our FitBiCamp franchise. That means we have to keep growing our franchises, and each franchise location has to keep growing their number of clients. And if I just focus on that, I'll be fine. Financially, I'll be fine emotionally, my team will do well, and our franchisees will do well. That's really good leadership. It's taking that vision and going across the finish line without any distractions. Yeah, staying focus. So you see people becoming better leaders and those

businesses like separating themselves from the pack essentially, right? Yeah. The number one fastest way to differentiate yourself from your competition is because, listen, we're all going to do the same marketing, aren't we? We're going to be on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and we're going to have PR and we might write a book. That's incestual marketing because we're all doing it. But really what's going to separate you and differentiate you is becoming a leader and saying,

look, this is what I'm good at. We do 30-minute workouts. We don't have any barbells at our Fit Body Boot Camp locations. we deliver twice the results and half the time, and our programs are convenient and affordable. I don't want to add a juice bar inside of a FitBody Boot Camp. I don't want to add a shower inside of FitBody Boot Camp just because our competitor did.

I don't want to add daycare, right? None of that stuff. We do one thing and we do it better than anybody else, and a leader can recognize that. A founder or CEO is constantly trying to look at what is everyone else doing, and how can I do it as well? Well, at the end of the day, if we're all offering the same thing,

that means there's only one thing left to do. you're going to drop your prices, so I'm going to drop my prices. Then you drop it, and now we have price erosion in the market space. So we don't compete on price. We don't compete on service because we do one thing. We do better than anybody else. And it's because I've finally chosen to become an effective leader, and that's helping me build my empire.

And you know why there aren't more empire as built? Why is that? Because becoming a leader is a little bit harder than trying to figure out the new Facebook strategy or coming up with a promise in marketing, right? It is. It absolutely is. It's a painful process.

I mean, you know, I've talked about very openly. I've gone through therapy, right? I've gone through 16 months of deep therapy. I've had to part ways with at least half my staff three and a half years ago, right? I've had some very chaotic stuff happen in my business and the process of parting ways with staff and business partners. And most people want to bury their head in the sand and not recognize the big decisions they have to do with either training their team members up or training them out of their facility. Having that uncomfortable conversation with your business partner or avoiding that conversation and building a resentful relationship. relationship with them. See, a CEO, a founder, a boss avoids the problems. Someone who is a leader

says, I'm on a mission. And that mission, just like what we talk about goals, has a deadline. That means I have to make sure I remove every opportunity of friction. And that means if I have to part ways with a business partner, with team members, if I have to train up team members, if I have to become a better human, not hit the snooze button, eat better, work out more often so I can be more authentic. That's what a leader does. But it is infinitely more difficult than trying to figure out the latest Facebook ad. Hey, you love reading books about Navy Seals. Do you think the fact that, like, in the last couple of years, you've really done a deep dive into those books, that that has helped you as well? I am 100% convinced of it. It's funny to say that. It was the topic

I was going to talk to you about tomorrow when we go to dinner. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it's 100%. I realize my obsessive personality, like when I lock on to something, right, like when I do those six-week fitness challenges, I lock on and I get good at rock climbing. I lock on and I get good at running. I lock on and I get good at surfing. Good of running. Well, okay. I wasn't good at running, but I did run a marathon. You were good at finishing.

I was good at finishing in a very painful way. Did I ever tell you that I was sore for over four months after that marathon? Well, you had the sore knee, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm convinced that I had like, like, hairline fractures in my shins. Maybe I didn't. So you locked on to those leadership books. So I locked on onto Navy Seal books.

And I, you know, when you start hearing, I've literally read over a dozen Navy SEAL books in the last couple years, right? And as I did, because I really wanted to see, because while we ever hear on the news and we reading the newspaper is what our conventional forces are doing. But we might hear a story about, oh, the Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. I'm the kind of guy that gets obsessed and goes, what's the details? How did it happen? What did they fly in on? What did they use?

Did they shoot them? Did they stab them? Did they choke them out? Right? And so I want to know these things. I want to know these things. And so I started doing a deep dive. Well, every single book starts off where?

at Buds. Got it. Right? And every single book starts out, and by the way, those who don't know what Buds is, is basic underwater demolition training or seal training,

which is the first thing they do before they even become a Navy SEAL. And even before they go into Buds, they kind of tell their origin story, right? Oh, I was born in Butte, Montana. True story, actually. Butte, Montana is where the operator, Robert O'Neill was born in Butte, Montana,

and he is the gentleman who shot and killed Osama bin Laden. That's amazing. Yeah. And so he talks about he was born in Butte, Montana, and there was nothing to do. He was either going to be a coal miner like his father. So you start hearing the stories. Another guy was like just, you know, born in Alaska.

But the bottom line here is you get to hear that they're average, regular people, just like you and me, who did extraordinary things because they chose to walk through the fire. They made a choice. And they chose to walk through the fire and become effective decision makers, leaders, action takers, risk takers, even in the face of fear. It's not, and they always talk about it. And this is how I learned. They go, it's not that we didn't feel fear when someone's shooting at us and we're running towards the shooting. He goes, we're just trained.

We've conditioned ourselves to run towards the shooting where everyone else would run away. And I go, well, gee, if they can run towards gunfire, I can certainly run towards confrontation instead of away from confrontation. And after reading that over and over again and over a dozen books, I guess I went through my own mental buds training

and started to adapt their behavior and said, if they can do this in war and risk their lives, I'm a fool if I can't do it in business. You know what my favorite seal story is, and I've only gotten them through osmosis from you, is when Marcus Lattrell was all shut up, and you said that they're taught that, hey, it's just going to bleed out,

so you pack the wounds full of dirt to stop the bleeding, and you just go and you keep on going on the mission. Yeah. And that made me think, like, hey, you know, what's the leadership lesson here? Well, listen, if that guy can do that, then whatever trouble is I'm going through, I'm just going to keep on leading and bleed it out.

It's going to stop me when it's going to stop me. But if I still got energy and life left in me, I got to keep going, right? And to that point, let me give you a great example, actually, right from that book, from Marcus Littrell's book, which was a lone survivor. Okay. So he's shot up, his hip is blown off, he bit off his tongue. The four Navy SEALs that he went to do this reconnaissance with, it was him and three other guys. The three are dead now. He's being hunted by the Taliban.

The predator, who's a Navy SEAL, is now being hunted by the Taliban. He's half-naked, gunshot wounds, and he's bleeding out. Now, he stuffed himself with all types of dirt and mud to stop the bleeding. And he knows that I'd rather die anyway than have these guys catch me. So I'm either going to bleed out, or I'm going to take this rock. I'm either going to bleed out, or I'm going to take this rock and try and go towards safety, which way is the U.S. forces, I'm going to go that way. So he got this rock, and he's crawling.

And he would just reach out and he draw a line with the rock. and then he'd crawl to that line. Wow. He goes, okay, I made my first goal. Draw another line and crawl until he found himself a little cave to sleep in at night, covered himself with rocks, right, and slept in, and the next morning woke up, you know, started drawing the line again. Oh, my gosh.

And crawling. And so really, as an entrepreneur, I go, what kind of a loser would I be if I know I have to make a decision that's not even life or death like Marcus Lattrell's, and I'm not making that decision? And so I'd go, all right, I'm afraid to make the big decision, but I'm going to just draw a line mentally in my head. I'm going to cross that line today. And by doing that, and that's what I talk about, and want to say, one, it's time to man up scenario at a time. I would draw the line and do it. Let me just not hit the snooze this morning.

Yep. And I'd get up. Okay, I got up. Now let me have a protein shake instead of something that's more destructive towards my body, right? Okay, I did that. All right, now let me go work out instead of spending time on my laptop and, you know, avoiding my workout and I'm feeling horrible. And one line at a time, I was able to become an effective leader because that habit continues the next day of the day after, et cetera. Oh, awesome, awesome.

And you know what? It still isn't the biggest lesson for me from leadership when you talk about this man up and making the decisions. It really comes down to personal life. And I think so many people, if you learn nothing else today and you will, you're going to learn that you can be and take this leadership to your personal life. That when you're only your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, it's date night, you don't say, oh, where do you? want to go. Where do you want to go? No, you say we're going here, we're going at this time, and you make sure it's an amazing place, and you do the work in advance. And I've been using that in my personal life being. I appreciate and thank you for it. And it's really,

it really does help. It's decisiveness, right? Because when we, it's so weird, when we stop being decisive and hymn and and highing and hand wringing, that becomes a habit as well. Then we start him and and high. And that's lower status. Right. And it's a lower status behavior. It's not a dominant behavior. Well, most people who want to build empires are usually of dominant personalities. And I believe you can build a dominant personality. And it starts by taking these steps, being decisive, clarity and communication, drawing the line and crossing it again, before you know you'll look back and you've gone 100 yards. Yeah, that's amazing. Oh, man, we can talk about that all day. We might have to do a show just on lessons you've learned from Navy Sealblins. Yeah. How great

would it be to get like Marcus Luttrell in here and have him tell the story? That'd be all right. That'd be all right. So I'm going to go with my next prediction and build off of that. And it goes like this, that in the next year, what we're going to see are empire builders firing themselves as the CEO. And I want to tell a story about one of my friends, his name is Simon Black, and he runs this business called Sovereignman.com. Really fantastic newsletter business. They have events. They help people, you know, take care of their wealth and get second passports and all this really interesting stuff that is valuable for the empire builder. Now, the thing is, he outgrew that because he was starting an agricultural fund.

He was starting all of these bigger things. He's even starting his own bank. And there's no way that he could do all of that stuff while he's still CEO of a smaller company. So he just fired himself. In fact, at our recent seminar, he did a presentation on how you fire yourself as CEO so that you can go on to bigger and better things. And I think we're going to see a lot of that in the next year from a lot of our friends, from a lot of our listeners and our readers and all these stuff who are like, I'm ready to go to the next level.

I've got this business. I'm going to bring in somebody and through my leadership that you just talked about. I'm going to grow that person to take over that business so that I can go on to my next level empire building. And I think we're going to see that a lot, a lot more. Well, you know what? One of the first people that I recognized who was doing that was Richard Branson. Oh, yeah. A great example of a guy that owns airlines, a record company, a resorts.

Now, he's not the CEO of the airlines, of the record company, of the resorts. Each one has its own CEOs. He's the shot caller, right? He's the leader. He's plugged in a leadership team, the CEO, vice president, et cetera, and those people are actually out there deploying, taking the action. So if he had to be just the leader of one business, it would have been the record company. Yeah.

I read his book, Losing My Virginity, Great book. And in it, he talks about how he was the CEO of Virgin Records. He did the best he could, but he realized, well, now I want to start Virgin Airlines, and he was having to jump back and forth between two businesses. And he was seeing that British Airways was such a dominant force that he had to put all his effort in into fighting British Airways, which means he was forced to get a CEO for Virgin Records. And he accidentally hired a leader for one business

so that he can grow the other. Then he realized, I can just replicate this model and keep doing it over and over again. And today he owns so many different brands and has so many different CEOs that are running it for him. He's no longer the CEO of any of one of his companies. Yeah, it's amazing. You know what one of his other books is called? You said one of his is losing my virginity. You know what another one is?

What? Screw it. Let's do it. I see a trend here. He likes his play on words. You know what he else he likes to do is he likes to give away free stuff in some of his promotions? I mean, this guy is dressed up like a woman and done tightrope walking and all this type of stuff to promote his businesses. and he's giving out stuff for free, which brings us to your next prediction.

Yes. So take us through that one. Yeah, so our last to final prediction here is... Well, I got one more. Oh, I apologize. My last and final prediction here is really to push that free line. And I know we've talked about, you know, give before you ask. And that's great.

And I think it was Evan Pagan who talked about push the free line, meaning give content first before you ask for the sale. Well, today with social media, with Instagram, with Facebook, with Snapchat, with YouTube, with podcasts. And make no mistake about it, podcast is social media. because people are socially connecting to us. They're connecting to our stories. They're connecting with the way we live our lives.

They're connecting with our mindset and our message, our vision, et cetera. We are actually in a position where we have to give more before we can ask for money. And I think the empire builders who are watching and listening to this particular episode need to be the early adopters and start giving more in advance. Really, when you think about what we're doing here with every podcast, we are delivering coaching. We are delivering coaching at the highest level. This is the same level of coaching that we deliver to our coaching clients. Now, the difference is we then break it down to them step by step, right, on a marker board and say, here's the exact things that you're going to do to get the outcome that you want.

Right, the exact script that you would say. But just before we recorded this podcast, somebody just sent me a message on Instagram saying, hey, I listened to the one you released recently about social selling. I went out and did it and made a sale. Perfect. Yeah. So we just coached that person through a podcast and they got great results. Now, if we were in person, we would script everything out.

for them specifically, but they did great. So that person right there who listened to the last episode that we did and went out and took action and made a sale based on what you taught them is now ripe to become a client. So you really, really we gave them advanced results, right? Results in advance. And they go, you know what, this works. So people are now becoming their own social proof. I'm a big fan of social proof, put testimonials up everywhere.

But if you can make the actual listener or viewer or follower or fan a testimonial by virtue of given them the results first, it is so much easier for you to now reach out to this guy or gal who ever reached out to you and go, hey, you know what, I'd love to help you do this at a 10x level. What do you say we get on the phone and see what, you know, if my coaching is right for you. That's amazing. I've never thought of the prospect being their own testimonial. That's fantastic.

Yeah. All right. Tell us the story about how this was something in the real world for you last night when you went out for dinner. Yes, yes. Yeah. So last night when I went out for dinner, we went to downtown Fullerton. It's a nice little downtowny area.

You walk around tiny shops, boutiques, many different restaurants. And, of course, there's some few banks. Of course, when you're out to dinner at 7 o'clock, the banks are closed. And there's valet parking, there's structured parking, there's parking on the street. But I noticed that this particular bank, and I won't name the bank, the bank had a chain across their parking lot that said, no parking in the parking lot, violators will be towed away, right? No after-hour parking, violators will be towed away. And I thought to myself...

Get off our lawn or we'll shoot you. Yes. get off our lawn. Basically, they're saying get off our lawn or I'll shoot you. Now, that was okay to say 30, 40 years ago, even 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago. Sure. Today, if that same bank said, free parking in our parking lot, after 5 o'clock, once our doors closed, enjoy the local restaurants, love the bank, right? The name of the bank. Like, what a cool note that would be. If they just had signs like that that they put up, right? I don't know, the manager puts up right as they're walking out out there. Now, I'll tell you this. I would think twice

about, gee, maybe I need to switch my business to that bank because they're doing something social. They're helping the community. I mean, gee, you got 40 spots in front of your bank. It's 8 o'clock at night. Your bank is closed. Do you really want to do that? Don't park in my parking lot or else I'll get you towed?

How about, hey, come park, go enjoy dinner. And, oh, by the way, we'd love to win your business, right? That is what social media is. That is what the current level of social selling is, and those who aren't doing it are missing out on building an empire. Yeah, and you know what? That brings it back all the way to the cost. customization and personalization. You know, that, you know, Elon Musk is building thousands of cars,

but he's having fun with it. And that bank could have had some personality. You know, years ago, there was separation between the corporate and the end user and the personality. Now there really isn't, right? No, no. We want to know who's leading the bank. What are his belief systems? Do I align with his belief systems? And do I want to do business with this bank? Like, you know, speaking of empires, I think every president of every bank should have their own Instagram account and Facebook account and should just be walking us through their day and no different thing Gary Vaynerchuk does that you do and I do because people want to connect not with the corporation but with the face and the name behind the corporation. Yeah and that goes to my last prediction which I call mass one to one

one social selling. So mass one to one social selling. So what's the best way for you to sell somebody? Well the best way for me to sell someone is to have them across from me. Right. One on one or in a group. Right. Right. Absolutely face to face. Now of course we can't do that with everybody in the world. man, with the social media and the private messaging through Facebook and through Instagram, you can do amazing job of mass one-to-one selling here. And so what I've found is, is once you get your social proof online, if you have a weight loss facility, you show some happy customers. If you have a real estate company, you show somebody who's happy after you've sold them a house

or you've helped sell their house. And once you've posted something, you're going to get likes and loves and shares from it. And then that means that those people who like love and share your stuff are interested in what you have to offer them. And then that then opens it up for you to go and have a conversation with them. And I think we're going to see this more and more often. We're seeing people starting to use Facebook bots, which is a messenger system that seems like one-on-one communication. It's not, but it can be really personalized and customized so that it feels like a great conversation. It's a great way to get started at a low-level purchase so that you can move them up.

your ecosystem and help them on a greater level. So we're gonna see a whole lot more of that. You've heard us talk about a little bit of that here on the Empire Podcasts, and we're gonna go deeper and deeper into it as we become the world's leading experts on it this year too. Yes indeed. So thanks for watching this episode. Remember, go to Empire Podcast.com for more episodes.

And of course, rate us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud. We would love all of your ratings and all of your testimonials. It would mean a lot to us. Thanks for watching.