Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - How to Give Yourself a Mindset of Abundance - 041

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

In this episode, Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne show you how they gave themselves money-attracting mindsets of abundance, even though they can from poor families. As you’ll discover here, the keys to creating an abundant mindset are surrounding yourself with the right people and reprogramming your brain to attract wealth. Listen now to find out how you can make these changes in your own life. “Money is a vehicle to freedom and lifestyle.” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 2:35 - How Bedros’s personal training clients helped him switch from a poverty mindset to an abundance mindset. 6:14 - Why you should treat yourself or your partner to a “millionaire experience” once a month. 11:18 - Why you must escape the trap of being “just a little bit better than the next person.” 15:34 - Which books Craig used to give himself an abundant mindset. 16:52 - Why gratitude is the key to growing your income. “You don’t have to spend a cent to change your money mindset.” - Craig Ballantyne

I started making the connection that money doesn't discriminate. Money doesn't hate. It doesn't love people more than others. Money flows where there's solution. If you are a solution provider, money will flow to you. How would you like to add four more million dollars to your annual income right now? Hi, I'm Bedros Kulian. Welcome to the Empire Podcast, and this is my good friend, Craig Ballanty.

And today on the Empire Podcast, we're going to talk about the abundance mindset as it relates to money. Craigie, both you and I grew up in a very. very poor poverty broke mindset. Oh, yeah. Parents had the worst. Right? Yet today we're fortunate enough, through hard work, of course. It was luck to have built two amazing empires.

And so I think this is a really good topic to share with our friends or audience because I think most people are stuck in a place. I almost look at the money mindset as a thermostat. And most people set their thermostat low. Let me rephrase that. Most people have had their thermostat set low. by parents, circumstances, television, media,

media, school teachers, right, who say just go out and get a good job. So yours and my job during this episode is to crank up that thermostat. Burning hot. So let's do it. All right, yeah, I mean, so listen, I grew up on a farm, we didn't make a lot of money.

I don't think my mom ever made more than $25,000 or $30,000 in a year. You know, and I've made that in a day sometimes. And, you know, it's really, really, really, difficult when you come from that environment of wearing used clothes to school, I had patches on my clothes and thinking, oh, well, you know, if I can just get a good job, my mom just wanted me to be an accountant, make 40 grand a year, then, you know, that's as high as I should shoot for. But that's not what you should do. And so I had to claw my way out of it. Now, fortunately, I had a little bit of that ingrained in me that I wasn't going to settle for that.

But even when I started thinking, you know, semi-abundantly, I was still not shooting high enough. So what did you do to claw yourself out of that mindset? Well, first of all, I had to recognize that I had a broken mindset. My money mind connection was so bad. You know, in fitness, we talk about the mind muscle connection, right? Like, it's so difficult for people to feel the muscles behind them, their hamstrings, their glutes, their back to feel those muscles contract. Yet you can contract your biceps.

Well, there's a mind muscle or there's a mind-money connection that needs to happen as well. Now, for me, I was under the impression that money was for the rich, money was for the famous, money was for the successful, money was for the college educated. See, I had this mental blueprint of who money was for, and the blueprint clearly showed that it wasn't for the foreigner, that it wasn't for the college dropout, that it wasn't for someone who didn't come from a rich family. So my relationship with money was broken because I looked at myself and I took pride in being blue collar.

Yeah. And I looked at money as for the white collar entrepreneur, doctor, accountant, engineer, architect. And so the way I clawed my way out of that was, thankfully, I was surrounded by successful people, not by accident, but by virtue of who my personal training clients were. Yes. Right. Now, thank God, and I would never have said this before, but thank God I was a fat kid throughout high school because the senior year of high school, I started working out so I can get in shape so I can ask a girl out to the prom. What I didn't know was by working out, I lost 30 pounds of fat, never asked her to the prom. Ironically, I was too shy.

But that changed my trajectory in life. I was supposed to be a smog technician, and instead, I ended up being a personal trainer. What's nuts about that is the handful of clients that I got in the beginning were affluent. When you're doing one-on-one personal training, your clients are affluent. They are the bank managers. They are the car dealership manager. They are the people that own the businesses in your community. And I didn't realize this, but I had built-in mentors, and they were telling me how they thought,

listen, I was selling a $600 a month personal training program that I couldn't afford, and I would ask myself in the back of my head, how are these people affording this? And one day I asked one of my clients, I said, hey, how do you afford this? And he goes, well, I have a software business, and I take a little bit of money from a lot of people. So every month, people are sending me money through my software, and I'm able to make a nice living for myself. and my 20 employees and da-da-da-da-da. So I realized very quickly, well, he makes money, she makes money, he's old, she's young, he's black, she's white, that person's Asian.

And I started- Everybody can make money. I started making the connection that money doesn't discriminate. Money doesn't hate, it doesn't love people more than others. Money flows where there's solution. If you are a solution provider, money will flow to you. If you are a person who just is entitled and expects money to come to you, but because I deserve it, not because I'm adding any value to society, money will never come to you.

And so I started living more like they did. I started thinking of solutions to improve problems that people had, and the more solutions that I fixed, the more money I got in return. And to me, that was an amazing feeling. Yeah, as soon as you can add more value to other people's lives, they will compensate you in return. And that was a key for me. And so I just realized, man, there's a lot of people out there that need help with their health and fitness. And I was just not satisfied with just doing personal training. I didn't want to own personal training studios because I'm a bit of a nerd at heart, a little bit of a bookworm. And I liked sitting behind the computer and I thought, how can I go and take my teachings and my trainings, take them to the

world? And when I was able to do that, I was able to say, you know what, now I can help thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and really over a million people to change their lives by adding value to them. And so that's where I started. But what really helped me was something that you said and you often say is that money is a vehicle to freedom and lifestyle. Money is a vehicle to freedom and lifestyle. Money is a tool. Money is a tool just like the cup that you're drinking out of, just like the fork that I use when I eat dinner, money is a tool allows you to do stuff.

And another step that really, really helped me is when I started making money, when I started adding value to other people, you know, naturally I come from a very cheap or frugal family background, but then when I started spending money and realizing that I could replace it as quickly or faster than I spent it, that was another big moment for me. And so I often encourage people to step outside their comfort zone, spend a little bit more money than they think they can on treating their girlfriend or wife to an amazing weekend once in a while, having a millionaire experience every month, that then they go, wait a minute, I was able to replace that money and more.

And not only that, but I learned some lessons about being a millionaire in the process. And you look like you want to say something. Well, I do want to say something. And it said you kind of glossed over something. And I just want to stress this that you were willing to spend money, give yourself, I guess, a millionaire experience once a month or whatever. You were willing to do that. And I think psychologically something happens. When you give yourself a millionaire experience and my first millionaire experience was actually given to me by my client who turned into a business partner, Jim

Franco, right? He turned into a business partner and he took me to a five-star restaurant and it was order anything you want off the menu. Just to give you an idea, like a year before that, I had gotten married in 2003. I'd gotten married and Diana and I went to Maui. Yeah. And of course, this is our honeymoon. And this is going to be our big honeymoon dinner. And so we're, we go to Roy's, right? The famous restaurant. Famous, yeah. Right. the Hawaiian fusion restaurant. And man, my eyes were bugged out and back in again when I saw the menu. And I looked at-

Because of the prices, right? The prices. And I looked at Diana, and she knew that we couldn't afford this, that I couldn't afford this. We both ordered something small and enjoyed the experience. And then left. Ironically, as we're going, about to drive out of the driveway, I go, hey, are you still hungry?

She goes, yeah. I go, here's a McDonald's. Do you want to just go in there and get some food so we can actually be full? And so literally a year later, Jim Franco was giving me this like millionaire lifestyle experience, right? Because it was like the first, the year that we had started our business. It was like the anniversary dinner. And we're going. And dude, I'm at this restaurant looking at how they're serving me.

It was the first time someone put a black napkin on my lap because I had darker clothes on. Right? And would put lighter color napkins on other people's. And I realized like there's a Somali. I didn't even know what a Somali is going to be like, there's a wine guy, a guy. who's just dedicated to delivering wine and explaining the wine to. And so all of a sudden I felt click, click, click. And I was like, what does that sound?

What does that sound? And that sound was a thermostat going up because the experience was so good. It was so amazing. It was something I wanted to repeat again that I found a way to make money faster to have that experience. And so what you just kind of glossed over was to give yourself a millionaire experience. But what I want to share with people is there's a psychological trigger that happens when you give yourself a million. Now, I'm not telling people to go and charge up your credit cards, right, and give yourself a millionaire experience, but give yourself a small enough millionaire experience right now.

Smell it, taste it, enjoy it, touch it. Do you want more of it? Go fucking make some money, right? And then when we do that, now every week and every day, every minute of my life is millionaire experiences. We were in Seattle, sitting, you know, sideline at the 50-yard line at the Seahawks game. And we got so excited into the game. We went to this high-end sushi place from the next day where,

exploring Seattle, we forgot all about our flight. First class tickets back to Southern California, right? You go, holy cow, we're an hour and a half late to our flight. We're never going to make it. So we just called the black card concierge and we said, hey, we're not making our flight. No problem. For $4,000 more, so $4,000 more will get you on the next flight first class. Great, do it. Money is a vehicle to freedom and opportunity. It's a tool. That tool helped me enjoy Seattle with my family an hour and a half longer. Now I didn't plan on spending $4,000 more. We forgot. But money solved that problem. Did I have better things to do with that $4,000? I did. But it's easy enough for me to go, wow, thank God I have money. And so I want more people to

experience this because these micro experiences of the millionaire experiences will ratchet up your thermostat and soon your expectations become millionaire, billionaire lifestyle. Yeah. And so you have your money thermostat burning. and hot right now. And the thing is, people listening are like, man, I want to have that too, but I hang around all these people that are negative, that hold me down. So I want you to rant here about crabs in a bucket and how you have to make sure that you're not being held down by the crabs in the bucket. So you can explain what that is. And then you can also explain how, you know, our parents and the money mindset that they gave us has really influenced us to hold

ourselves back as well. Yeah. Yeah. But listen, Joan, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, who was my assistant, now was the VP of our franchise, right, Fit Body Boot Camp, once told me that, hey, B, I just want to make more than $45,000 a year. And I said, why $45,000 a year, Joan? She said, well, no one in my family has made more than $45,000 a year. Some people are school teachers, some people are nurses, but no one's made more than $45,000 a year. So if I can make $45,000 a year, I made more than everybody else.

That's just a thermostat. So in life, what do we do? We just want to be a little bit better than the next person. I say, Joan, what if we cranked that up and you set your goal to six figures? because I think you've got six-figure potential, and as long as you let me coach you to your fullest potential, I believe that you can earn six figures. And here today, she's almost at six figures,

not to disclose her financial income and all that. But the point of this is that oftentimes our thermostat is set by the people around us, parents, and not because they mean bad for us, but because they didn't reach their fullest potential. In fact, they want the best for us, and so they worry about us, and they, oh, well, if you set it so high, you're going to fail,

Yes. And what if you fail? You're going to be depressed. You're going to be sad. But what if I don't fail? Or what if I fail? But I have bounced back ability and I bounce right back. And I keep trying until I make it. But parents don't want to hear that. They want you to play it safe because as parents, I get it. I'm a parent. I want my kids to have a good life and I want them to hurt as little as little bit. But in reality, I also know I don't want you to break your arm. I don't want you to break your knee. But I do want you to hurt financially a little bit. I do want you to make some bad decisions and recover from it. And I will be there to champion you, but not to financially help you. But where that thermostat is concerned, it was set by family, by experiences, by teachers, by TV, as we said earlier, and our job is to crank that up. Now, the first experience I had when I realized that we might have also people around us who don't want us to earn as much, was in 2005, again, I was fortunate enough because we had just gotten married two years earlier, that my wife's grandparents took us on a cruise to Alaska. And the boat stopped in Ketchikan, Alaska, this cruise ship,

and we get off the boat, and we're walking along the water, and there's people crab fishing, right? They throw the net out, and then they waited while they luring the crabs. And the guy had like a five-gallon, well, look like a five-gallon paint bucket, but there was no paint in it, and the lid was off. I look inside, there's like five or six crabs, each about the size of my hand, with a little bit of water at the bottom. and these crabs are slowly crawling on top of one another,

and this one crab was crawling on top of the whole pile, and he was starting to reach for the rim of that bucket. He was making a break for it. He was trying to make a break for it. Oh, my goodness. And so I said, the little crabby make it? Well, here's what happened. I said, sir, your crab's about to make a run for it,

and you might want to put that lid on top of your bucket. He goes, watch what happens next. As this little ambitious crab started to hoist itself up, All the other crabs from the bottom reached up and pulled it right down. Now, in that moment, I'm hitting my wife like, did you see that? Did you see that? That's me. That's that crab.

I'm trying to get away. I'm trying to make it. They're pulling me right down. The reality was that crabs instinctively are self-policing. Humans are very much the same way. Hey, I want you to be good, Craig, but not so good that you're way better than me. And that's just reality. I don't want bad for you, but society just says, I want you to be good, but not.

too good, right? And if your instincts tell you that you have people like that who are crabs in your life, odds are your instincts are right. Your job is to run away from them, stop their relationship. If they're family members, then edit their relationship, as my therapist has taught me, edit their relationship, don't go into the deep conversations, don't share your dreams and ambitions with the people who are crabs in your life. Share that with people who are positive, who are going to motivate you, inspire you to reach for higher, bigger, more optimistic things. But just know that there's crabs in your life that you have to get rid of and then there are thermostat settings that people have set

for you that you got to crank up and just know that money is a vehicle to freedom and nothing else. Yeah, absolutely. So now let's talk about some solutions to help claw everybody else up out of that cold thermostat for money into a burning hot money thermostat. So I know for me it all started with books. So Dan Kennedy and Mark Ford or Michael Masterson, their books, Ready Fire Aim, and, you know, And seven years to seven figures and Dan Kennedy had no BS wealth attraction. Those books are really important because both of those guys also came from broke, bad money

mindsets and they were able to overcome it. Now they're passing and paying that on forward to the next generation. So reading books like that, watching videos on YouTube, you don't have to spend a cent to change your money mindset. But then you want to go to the next level and get coaching too, right? Yeah, absolutely. Get coaching from people who have been there, done that. I mean, let's face it, I don't think there's anyone more qualified than you and I, having come from broke, poor families to coach people on their money mindset and how to think 10x instead of just 2x.

And so you've got to invest the money in the coaches and the experts who are or were where you are and now are where you want to be. Yeah, absolutely. And we see this in some of our empire clients. They put the limiter on themselves, the e-break on their money mindset. And, you know, it's just a couple of days spent with us, totally opens their mind, 10x thinking. Oh my goodness, I didn't realize I was spending time on 10% stuff instead of 10x stuff, and we get them dialed in and all set up. Now, there's something else that has been really, really powerful in terms of my money mindset,

and that's the power of gratitude, the attitude of gratitude. Tony Robbins is actually very famous for saying that gratitude is the number one factor in determining your wealth, because if you don't have an attitude of gratitude, then you won't be successful with wealth. And at first I thought, well, that can't be right. I mean, gratitude is the number one thing. And then I thought, you know what, if you're a scarcity mindset or have a scarcity mindset instead of a gratitude attitude, you actually are burning so much energy on scarcity and like, oh, and comparison syndrome and like, oh, I'm angry at this other person or jealous or envious. And it really, really can throttle you.

But if you open and you say, listen, I'm just happy for everybody else that's out there successful because, you know what, you may as well be, because it's not going to change if you're upset or if you're happy about their success. It's not going to change their success. So open your mind, be happy, be grateful, and that way you can spend your time thinking about what matters, right? That is so true. I mean, that attitude of gratitude is amazing because when you are showing grateful, there's chemical changes that take – when you're showing gratitude, chemical changes take place in your head. Just like when we're scarcity-minded, chemical changes take place in our head.

And we kind of discount the chemical changes because, oh, you know, well, I can't see it. It's not happening. There are literally chemical changes that take place in your head when you're grateful that allow you to think more clearly, think bigger and more abundantly. So why not show gratitude? What else do we have on our list of things that our friends can do to open up their money mindset? Be charitable. Go out there and give some money to charity. So both of us are involved in Toys for Tots. We give lots and lots of money to this charity that goes out and buys toys for underprivileged children. And listen, when you go out and you do that and you share your abundance, first of all, it gives you a lighter heart.

So that allows you to have that gratitude and you go out and you share it. And then you realize again, hey, when I go and give this money away to charity, somehow I find a way to make all that money back and more. So don't be stingy. Go out there and be grateful and give and give and give. Because I know that, as you were saying about the chemical changes, I know that when I'm scarcity mindset somehow gets back into me, I feel it as anxiety over my chest and under my chest.

It's just like the anxiety attacks I used to have. And then I realized, whoa, I got to change something here. And I go right into gratitude. It fixes me. It gets me right back on track so I can bring full energy and attention to growing my business. So that is key. So the last thing I'll say is just make sure that you are around like-minded, positive people. So again, we've mentioned this on other shows.

You hear this in books all the time. You see this on Facebook posted by lots of people. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you are hanging around people that don't make a lot of money, you're not going to be making a lot of money. There's no way that you're going to be a millionaire among people who are just getting by with $40,000 a year.

You might hang around people who are into charities and don't make a lot of money. That's great. You want to be around some positive people like that. But if you want to elevate your income, if you want to increase your business acumen, you have to be in the mastermind groups where you're learning from other people

who are like-minded, just like you, same ambitions, and learning the techniques, strategies, and skills to grow your wealth as well, right? Well said. Well said. So to that point, if you'd like to get coaching from myself and Craig, and you might think that the Empire Mastermind is right for you, then I highly recommend that you check out the Empire Mastermind application on the Empire Podcast.com website. And of course, if this episode gave any value to you whatsoever, we would love for you to

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