Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - How to Have Habits of Self-Made Millionaires - 043

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

In this episode, Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne discuss the tangible steps you can take to become a self-made millionaire. They elaborate on the traits they developed—and that you need—to go from broke to seven figures. Watch or listen now to discover how you can turn your social media popularity into leads and revenue. “When you have money, you can help people build a legacy. ” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:33 - The 3 things all self-made millionaires have in common. 7:03 - How Bedros made his first million dollars. 10:43 - How the right coach can take you from an average business owner to a high performing entrepreneur. 11:40 - What do you do when you have the work ethic but still make bad decisions? 13:24 - The danger of chasing followers instead of adding value and making dollars. “Self-made millionaires believe they can be the architect of their own life.” - Craig Ballantyne

What if you just go hell or high water? I'm going to make it my life's mission to become a multimillionaire. And you do nothing else but commit to being a multimillionaire. You decide to become relentless. You follow the clues. You take responsibility for everything. You know what will happen? You will either die or you will be a multimillionaire.

But there's no third option. Hey, you might think that making money is all about the hustle and grind. But today we want to challenge you to include empire thinking and leadership in your ability to increase your wealth. Hi, I'm Craig Valentine, and this is Badros Koolian, and we are here with another episode of the Empire podcast show. And B, today we're going to talk about habits of self-made millionaires. Yes, sir, and I don't know anyone more qualified than you and I. Yeah, because we came from nothing. We came from totally broke, dead broke.

You came from communist Russia. And so, listen, we are going to help everyone listening understand what it really, really takes in order to go from nothing to something, from zero to hero. And that's what it's all about. And then you build these habits so that you go from not just self-made millionaire, but also self-made multi-millionaire and above and beyond. So listen, B, what do you believe in terms is like kind of a foundational habit that or mindset that people who want to make money really need to have? Sure. Well, I believe there's three specific things that all self-made millioners have. And this isn't to discount anyone who was passed down a business and was able to take that business in, you know, 5x10 exit. It's not to discount them, but all self-made millionaires that I've connected with, and you and I know dozens and dozens upon are, one, extremely relentless.

Relentless in the way they think, relentless in the way they operate. They have almost operate from this fire in the belly, chip on the shoulder. Right? Mentality that they have. And it's, there is no, what if I fail. It's just, I'm going to make it. It's just a matter of when or I'm going to die trying. So you've got to be that level of relentless.

this. Number two, self-made millionaires have an amazing belief in themselves. I found this out very early when I'm talking, and immediately now I can talk to someone and tell you if they're going to end up making it or not because of the words they use, their vocabulary. Self-made millionaires have an amazing amount of self-belief and self-confidence. They know they're going to make it. They can see the vision before they got there. They're frustrated because they're not there. Because I remember feeling this and I thought I was crazy. Like, I know what it's going to feel like when Fit Body Boot Camp is a global brand and we have all these locations worldwide. And I was angry about the fact that we only had three locations at the time, right?

And all I wanted to do was get there because I could sense it, feel it, taste it. But self-made millionaires have this belief in themselves that most people don't, that they're going to make it. And the third... Well, actually, I'll just say one thing there. I was out on the date with this girl named Vanessa and she was saying, you know, I was telling her about my business and she said, but, you know, weren't you scared? And I was like, I had never really thought of that. I was just like, I'm going to do this.

It's not even an option for me to fail. I'm going to succeed one way or another. And when I first started coaching Isabel Delos Rios, who runs beyond diet, as soon as they're on the phone, just like you said, you can tell immediately. I was like, oh, yeah, there's nothing stopping this girl. She's going to run through a wall if that's what it takes to build her business. So that is a key, key element. Yeah. Third thing.

And the third and final thing that I found about self-made millionaires is they are really good at following the clues. In other words, they know that success leaves clues, and they're very good at finding people in the industry that they want to be in or are in, and seeing who the successful are, and then finding the clues. They don't waste their time trying to recreate the wheel. And when you have that relentless belief system that you're just never going to quit, when you can see it, sense it, feel it, taste it before it ever happened, where aren't you scared? No, I never even thought about being scared because this is just something I'm going to do. Yeah. And then when you know that others have done it before you, and they've left clues, and you just have. have to deconstruct the clues, it's pretty easy otherwise to become a self-made millionaire.

Yeah, and I'd like to add one thing to that, and that is the power of personal responsibility. Every self-made millionaire I know believes in whether we move ahead as a company or not is up to me. If we struggle, it's not somebody else's fault. It's my fault first. That self-made millionaires have believe in the opportunity to be the architect of their own life. always tell these stories about how he'd be flying to Phoenix from somewhere and you know he'd be talking to the person in the seat beside him and the person would go oh you live in Phoenix wow that must be amazing oh you have great weather and all this and ah you know i live back in ohio or tupleo or something like that and you know it's just not great there and he would just sit there and he would

fume because he'd be like there's there's nothing that stops you from moving you can do whatever you want but most people are just so ingrained that they can't do this they got all these boundaries, all these shackles, but the self-made millionaire says there are no shackles on me. If it is to be, it's up to me. That's what they truly believe. Well said, that is extreme responsibility in ownership. And you know, to that point, really, you see a lot of people operating like that little elephant at the circus. We've talked about this before, where when it's a little puppy elephant, they tie it up with a little tether, and it tries to get away, and they can't. This elephant becomes a giant mammoth, and they still tie it up with a little tether,

and it won't attempt to get away. And that's really Dan Kennedy's point there, I think, which is most people have all these weird limiting beliefs that they neuter themselves. They neuter themselves. They have these limiting beliefs that they stack one limiting belief on top of another. I can't move from there. I can't start that job.

I don't have that degree. I wasn't born into a rich family. I'm not a good salesperson. What if you just go hell or high water? I'm going to make it my life's mission to become a multimillionaire. And you do nothing else but commit to being a multimillionaire. You decide to become relentless. You follow the clues.

You take responsibility for everything. You go to sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time. You build your morning rituals all around becoming a multimillionaire. Do you know what will happen? You will either die or you will be a multi-millionaire. But there's no third option. No, exactly. And so my mentor, Mark Ford, another one of my mentors, he said he was going to this

Dale Carnegie course way back in the early 80s. And at one of them, they said, okay, you got to pick your number one goal for your life. And that's when he decided to get rich, to make getting rich his number one goal. and he said, that's when everything changed. Because then he realized, oh, this extra work that I'm doing here in order to make something perfect at work, it wasn't making him rich. It was already 99% of the way there.

Making it 100% wasn't going to make him richer. And so he decided, I'm only going to focus on things that make me rich, making that decision, as you said, having that personal responsibility allowed him to build his wealth. So let's go back and ask you how you made your first million because everybody listening is going, well, I understand these guys are rich, and I guess I heard they were broke, but I don't believe it. So tell us how you went from zero to hero with your first million.

Sure. Well, it really wasn't overnight. It took four years to make my first million. You're like that bamboo. Yes. Yeah, yeah, just like that bamboo. You plant it, and then you water it for four years, and then it grows 30 feet and 30 days. There's like 30 feet and 30 days, yeah.

And so for me, what happened was I had to understand that I'm in the service of delivering a solution to problems. And so at first I was trying to create a software, and then I was trying to create a billing service, believe it or not, for personal training gyms. I was trying to do things that were outside of my zone of genius because I knew, because my client had told me that he has a software company and he takes a little bit of money from a lot of people. Great, I'll create software.

I don't know anything about software. Not that I, unless you do, you won't be able to succeed, but I had no model to follow either. Right. And so I did a little personal inventory. I said, what am I good at? Well, I was good at. I had five personal training gyms.

They were really successful. They were so successful that I, I was able to get bought out. Very rare, it's very rare for a small business owner to get bought out. Usually you either keep it and pass it along to a family member, or when you're ready to retire, you shut it down. Most small businesses just go out of business before they ever mean to. And so I was able to build my five gyms and eventually sell them for a nice chunk of change.

And when I did, and by the way, that wasn't my first million. When I did, I realized I am good at starting and systematizing personal training gyms. And so maybe what I should do is be. the guy that offers that solution to personal trainers like I needed when I didn't know anything about the business of personal training. And so it took four years to come up to that discovery and very much like that bamboo plant. It took literally in the next 90 days, I created two courses, the PT business course, the personal trainer business course, and then closed clients. The other thing that personal trainers needed, which was a sales system on how to convert

leads into paying clients. And then I discovered, Dan Kennedy, marketing. I started building an email list and a following through my email list because there was no Facebook at the time. There was no, there were Google AdWords, but there was no other social media platform. And YouTube had just started. Between YouTube and my email list, I literally spent the next year and generated a million dollars by being the solution provider to personal trainers who were struggling in their business, didn't know how to make money, get clients, and get referrals, and that's the solution I provided them, and it was a game changer for me. And so oftentimes, anyone watching this, listening to this, there's a expertise that you have right now that people are willing to give you money.

And you could do exactly what I did. Figure out what that solution is. Isolate that solution. Who is it for? Get a following of the people from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, build an email list of a following of those people who need it. And then make them the irresistible offer like I did. And when you do that very quickly, you amass your first million dollars. Yeah.

And that's exactly what I do. But in the fitness industry, selling to the end user. And I realized there's millions of people out there with this problem of not being able to exercise, being overweight. And I was like, okay, that's the problem. I know how to solve it? Now, how do I get my stuff in front of them? And I went and built the systems and was able to go and sell and sell and sell and take my products

viral and build that first million. So that's what I was able to do. And it's all about adding value and knowing there's nothing going to stop me. It was not an option to fail. And even when I did struggle, I was like, okay, I'm going to come back at this twice as hard tomorrow. I'm going to go and find those resources. I was relentless, turning over every rock. And that's what empire builders have to do.

They have to go to the source. And one of the things that allowed me to become super successful was when I hired my first coach. And I show people, like I always show the exponential graph, the hockey stick graph. That's what happened. My results were good, good, good. Hired a coach. boom, through the roof because the coach had been there and done that. They had the expertise, and they gave me that no-holds-barred accountability, so I would go out there and take action.

And that's why you and I are like, well, that's what helped us in the past. So that's why we go out and coach so many other people to building their first million. And now we've moved on because we helped so many people do that, that we're helping people build that first $10 million business in the Empire Group. Well, so I'm curious because we heard someone say this this weekend, and I want you to share your answer when someone says, you know, but I tried making my membership site for my services, and I spent $20,000 on building that membership site, and it just didn't work out, and I've lost motivation on burnt out.

What do you say to that person? Like, what do you tell them? Well, I say, you know what, you have the work ethic, you have the personal responsibility. You just took the wrong road. And we have talked about this before many, many times, that the path to success has already been trampled. It's already laid out.

Now, it's not easy. It's just like the path to climbing Mount Everest is already laid out. Doesn't mean that climbing Mount Everest is easy. We just need to go, and as coaches, what Bedros and I do is we take these high performer, high achiever race cars that are spinning their wheels in the mud. We pick them up.

We just put them on the track that's right beside it, and they go racing down the path to success. So listen, just because an avenue you tried in the past didn't work, doesn't mean that you're a failure. Doesn't mean that you're not going to succeed. It just means you haven't got the right coaching in the past. So, you know, to grow on that story, I had a client who was at my mastermind on the weekend, a different mastermind, and she said, last year I spent tens of thousands of dollars on bad coaches, and now I've found the one who is going to give me the right results because I've already made more money with you, Craig,

than I did with those coaches that I wasted all that money on. And it's because I show her the right path to success. So listen, if you're out there struggling, if you have tried a few things, it's okay. Both Bedros and I didn't make our money the first time we tried starting a business. In fact, we both struggled. But we didn't quit. And you won't either if you're going to be a self-made millionaire. Does that sound right? Very true, man. And that's really the secret is to not quit, because if you relentlessly apply effort, you will make it. Yeah. But the thing is, a lot of people these days are really going down the wrong.

road. So this is a really great opportunity for another classic Bedros rant about how today so many people are chasing followers instead of adding value and making dollars because they see on social media everybody's getting all the likes and the dopamine hits from from being popular on social media and we get strayed from our path of building a real business and we go oh what can I go and and get some likes about today, but that is just wasted energy because you're not going to grow rich if all you're doing is chasing likes, right? Stop right there, because we have an issue with that. Instagram and Facebook, and now YouTube is trying to go towards that avenue as well,

is trying to get us addicted to likes and comments and follows and all this stuff. Here's the reality of it. Listen, I want you to get all the likes in the world as possible, but you can't take likes, comments, and loves and followers to the bank. You can't. Now, you and I, compare to it. have the least amount of likes and followers and etc of thought leaders out there, right? But we monetize the shit out of our social media.

That doesn't mean that we are not good to our social media followers. That doesn't mean that we don't add value, that we don't give content. But the way I look at it is every follower, every like is a lead to me. And if you can't think of it that way, then you are there just taking little dopamine hits, hoping to put up a post and when you put up a post, how many likes can I get? How many comments can I get? And I know, I get it. It feels good.

It feels good in that moment. It feels just like it feels when I'm on stage in front of 1,000 people and I say something magical and people stand up and clap, that's a dopamine hit. That's just a thousand people giving me likes. That's fantastic. But you know what? I'm going to go and build my empire because the long-term dopamine hit that I'm looking for is consistency in money because money is a vehicle to freedom, as we talked about.

on a previous podcast, and when you have money, you can move mountains. You can help people build a legacy, inspire, teach, give away. The reason we're able to give this podcast away for free on this half a million dollar set that we've built out is because we've built the empires that fund this free content that we're giving away. So my challenge to everyone on there is stop chasing the likes and the followers. Like, I understand when I have half of them, right now I've got 22,000 followers on Instagram. When I have half a million followers, I would make more exponentially more money from those

followers, but I will give them 10 times of value the money that they're giving me. But the moment you're hooked on the comments and the likes and nothing else, you're just taking these goofy little dopamine hits, but you're broke as a joke and you're unable to help yourself or help anybody else around you, which is really unfortunate. Yeah, because you're totally distracted going down the wrong path. So let's just sum it up, habits of self-made millionaires, personal responsibility, thinking, planning, taking care of yourself, bringing your energy every day, having gratitude, and being the best that you can so you can add more value to the world. Stay focused so that you build your empire, right? Yes, sir.

All right. So listen, if you want to be a self-made millionaire like Bedros from Armenia and Craig from Canada, listen, you can do it. You can do it when you're persistent, when you have clarity of path and purpose, and you know what you want, and you know that nothing is going to stop you from getting it. So if you want more, listen to every single Empire Podcast that we've ever put out at Empirepodcast.com. And when you're ready to take it to the next level, make sure that you fill out an application that you'll find on Empire Podcast.com. And we look forward to coaching you to the next level.