Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - How to Take Your Empire from 2X to 10X - 032

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

How would you like to go from making half a million a year to 20 million or more? To impact not just thousands of lives, but millions? The first step is to stop focusing on where you are today, and start thinking about where you want to be 10 years from now. In today’s episode, Craig Ballantyne and Bedros Keuilian show you how leaders 10X their thinking, pay it forward, and zero in on their 5% to build an empire.   Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:55 - How Craig and Bedros went from 2X thinking to 10X thinking to maximize their success. 5:40 - How to stop thinking with today’s mindset and start thinking about the potential of tomorrow. 8:54 - How to cut deeper and work in your 5% so that you can focus on reaching the masses. 13:55 - How to be an effective leader and get your team on board with your vision. 19:05 - How to have “bounce back-ability” after a setback so that you can dominate the competition.

Is there another economic crash that's going to happen? Is there going to be a shift in your industry? Are your parents and maybe your spouse's parents going to get older? Are your kids going to require some kind of college if you want to send them to college? So I realized that if I really want to be able to help people, like I say I do, I've got to go 10x, 50x, 100 X. Hey, this is Craig Balenton. I'm here with Baderos Kulian from the Empire Podcast Show. And listen, we are going to talk about 10xing your thinking today.

We are going to kick the 2x thinking to the Kemp. curb, and we're going to make sure that you're not doing any 10% thinking, because that's really what holds most people back, right, B? That is very true. And, you know, you and I both kind of have the immigrant edge mentality. And a lot of people think that maybe the immigrant edge mentality is only something gifted to people who come to this country from an immigrant third world country. And that is not true. Like a third world country, like Canada. Like Canada. Yeah. In your case, yeah. But really, the immigrant edge is about being resourceful, being resilient, and having this never quit attitude, right? Anybody can have that. Anybody can have that. It's a learned behavior.

And most of the time, society has been bubble-wrapped for so long that we're weak, we're soft. And yours and my job here is to teach people this immigrant mentality, but more than that is to get people to start thinking 10x levels and not just 2x levels, because too many people think too small. Yeah, and we both started out, you know, thinking a little bit bigger, but not super big. So let's go through your background from maybe the first couple of products he created. And then when you all of a sudden went, oh, here's how to 10X that idea and where you are today. Yeah.

So actually, when I started out, here's how little I thought. I remember I was working as a one-on-one personal trainer in a big box gym and thinking, man, if I could just own one small personal training studio where I could be the trainer and maybe have a couple trainers with me, I'm set. And I remember the mentality. I'm set because I did the math. I'd make about a quarter million a year. I'm set. That grew to five gyms. And once I had five gyms, the mentality was, man, I'm set,

I'm good. I'm making seven figures now. But me, you know, making just over a million dollars a year is not much, especially after you pay your employees and you have your taxes. Right. And so it kept going to bigger thinking. Then I started coaching and consulting personal trainers. And again, three, four, five million a year. Okay, I'm set. These days, I realized it was around 2008 to 2009. in that era, right when the economy crashed, that I was not financially prepared for an economic crash. Got it. Even though I was making good money, I was not financially prepared.

Thankfully, I was one of the few. You were a rich broke person. I was a rich broke person. I was one of the few who didn't lose my house. But I saw so many people around me, friends and family members lose their house and I didn't have enough to help them. I just had enough to help myself. So I realized that if I really want to be able to help people, like I say I do, I've got

to go 10x, 50x, 100x. And this is where the idea of Fit Body Boot Camp really came about to build this international global franchise. It's not only going to serve tens of millions of people with their health and fitness goals, but it's going to allow me to make 20, 30, 50, $100 million a year to be able to really do the service that I want, which is, you know, the stuff we did with the Toys for Tots, Shriner's Children's Hospital. The list goes on, right?

And we're only able to do that, help veterans because we make a shit ton of money and served with it. Yeah, and that's through the replication of you and your brilliance, right? And your systems. So we'll talk about that in a second. I'm going to give you, or we're going to give you six steps to 10x your thinking and your results. It's not just your thinking because we want to give you guys results you'll walk away with. But I'm just going to go through a quick background of how I went from, you know, working for free as a poor farm boy to finally getting the 10x breakthrough, which I had right around the same time as you. So I was, I was going to, you. So I was, you know, was working for my old man, my father, you know, on the farm from like age eight, you know,

he had me out there in the summertime working and I was working for free and you know what, he never really had a salary because, you know, farmers don't and they just kind of struggle and they grind and they hustle and they do all the work. But then I got my first job when I was 13 and you know how much money I was making? How much? Three dollars and ten cents an hour. Wow. Yeah, and you know what I was doing? Tell me. You're going to love this. I was digging ditches. No kidding. Yeah, for three dollars and ten cents now. I'm a professional ditch digger. I know I know you're very good at it. That's why I have big traps.

Right, right. So then I went to college and I learned that the Strength and Conditioning Coach for Michigan State football made like $100,000 and this is back in the 90s. And I thought that was the biggest thing. And when I, you know, I thought, hey, if I can just do that, I'll be happy as heck. And that's small thinking. So then I went and, you know, stumbled into the world of online marketing, built turbulence training.

And then I realized through the replication, through the thinking bigger, that I could go and help millions of people, not just 20 people in a gym, 80 people on a football team, but literally millions of people. In fact, I got recognized the other day at a hotel by a guy who had watched one of my videos on YouTube, and he said, oh man, your face just looks so familiar. And I said, well, you know, I've got videos that have been watched two and a half million times, single videos. And that's because I took that 10x thinking and thought, how can I replicate myself and take it to the world? That is huge. That is huge.

So you ready to jump into the six steps to share them with everybody? Yes, sir. All right. So the first step is thinking bigger. Very simply, thinking bigger. But you know what? You can't do that when you're in reactive mode. You have to be proactive.

So let's talk about how you do your thinking bigger and how you thought bigger on your way to building Fit Body Boot King. Yeah, that's a really good segue into this. So the way I started thinking bigger was, see, most of the time, we just think about what we need today. And remember, when I had my five personal training gyms, I was a single guy, no kids, no family. My parents were younger.

And so really you're thinking, man, if I could just make a million dollars a year, I'm good. I'm happy. We want you to stop thinking with today's mindset and start thinking about tomorrow's mindset, tomorrow of five, 10, 15, 20 years from now. Is there another economic crash that's going to happen? Is there going to be a shift in your industry? Are your parents and maybe your spouse's parents going to get older? Are your kids going to require some kind of college if you want to send them to college?

I don't want to send my kids to college. But if you're going to send your kids to college, Listen, one of my clients is a dentist. Five years ago, another client, Mark Costas, said the average dentist pays $142,000 to go through dental school. Yeah. Today, and I, we just remember we met her. Yeah. Evelyn.

In one of our mastermind groups. $342,000 now is what a dentist comes out with is school debt, right? Wow. So to think bigger, you got to think about your future circumstances. No one wants to think about mom and dad or family members getting sick, having kids. cancer, having to bury them. But the reality is, or an economic crash happening again. But the reality is that shit is going to happen in our lifetime.

And you must think bigger. And then there's the, now add to the, let's take away the darkness for a minute. Let's add to you. We're all here to serve a purpose. The human psyche is happiest when we are doing good, serving, right? First, I want to fill my cup up and make sure everything's taken care of. Now I want to take care of the people around me, but then I want to give and leave the legacy. Yeah.

So who out there? Just give us a like, a lover, share. If you have donated to Toys for Tots, which is a near and dear to my heart and near and dear to your heart too. Yeah. And so anyway, where thinking bigger is concerned, if you really want to make a bigger impact, Toys for Tots, Striner's Children's Hospital, Veteran Foundation, Animal Foundations, whatever your thing is, you must start thinking much bigger than the lifestyle and the money

that you want to live today. Think about the potential of what could happen 10 years from now and make that kind of money. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, what people are thinking, well, where do I have to live? get started with this. Well, you know what? We both love the book Elon Musk, the biography of Elon Musk by a person named Ashley Vance. It's a great place to start. Really gets your wheels turning. You need to follow these big thinkers like Elon and Peter Diamondis, Cheryl Sandberg's another one. Oprah is also a big thinker. So let's just, you know, let's not just idolize these people. Let's not just see what they're

up to with their Instagram feeds. Let's actually learn from them and say, what are these people doing in terms of their thinking. And really what it comes down to is they're setting aside time in their busy days. Because let's be honest, Oprah's busier than you are, but she certainly has time to sit back and just be in empire building mode. And that's what separates the Richard Branson's from the rest. So the next step is actually completely the opposite of bigger thinking. And it really throws people for a curveball. But B, what is our second step here? The second step is to cut deeper. And I think you're the man who's going to really explain this well. Yeah, cut deeper means, listen, you have to get rid of those little things. As you call it, you're 95%. The stuff

that is a $10 an hour task, $20 an hour task. In fact, I had a mastermind meeting the other day, one of our empire mastermind meetings where somebody said, yeah, you know, I got rid of all the $20 an hour task. I'm like, you can't stop there. If you're an empire builder, you've got to be thinking, what can I get rid of that's a $50 an hour task? And that means video, editing, high quality, video shoots. You need to not be doing that stuff yourself and you need to not just hire someone cheap. You need to get someone great so that you build your legacy up. So you need to start, though, with getting rid of anything that's just a $10 an hour task that's not in your 5%. You cut, you cut, you cut, you do things that your mom would look at you and say, what are you doing

getting other people to buy your groceries? What are you doing to get other people to get your laundry? They don't have to understand it. And you can't let your parents' expectations or beliefs influence you. If you want to build this empire, if you want to grow your wealth, you have to be getting rid of that stuff so that you have more time for empire thinking. So you cut deeper to think bigger, right? Exactly true. Now I know we've got a lot of young entrepreneurs, both young in age and young as entrepreneurs, listening to this. And so they're probably thinking, look, I can't get a chauffeur yet.

I can't have someone go buy groceries for me yet, do my dry cleaning, my shopping, et cetera. What we want you to do is always take inventory because, excuse me, your income will go up and reach a new level, but you forget that now that your income has gone up, you don't have to go to the dry cleaners. Then your income goes up again, and you forget that you don't have to go to the grocery store. You don't have to clean your house. And so each time your income goes up on that income rung of ladder, your job is to figure out what is the fastest way for me to get away from this trivial stuff so I can focus on the big things, either getting more franchises in my case, right? Elon Musk, let's go to Mars and then Pluto and then wherever else he wants to go.

Because if you are working on a trivial stuff, doing your laundry, driving your own car, getting your own groceries, cleaning your own house, et cetera, you're never going to make it there. Listen, right now there's people setting up click funnels. And the easiest thing you can give away today is to go to odesk.com or fiver.com. find someone to set up your click funnels for you because just because Russell Brunson and I love them to pieces made it so easy for us to drag and drop doesn't mean that you ought to be setting up your click funnels if you know what I mean. Have someone else do it so that you can do stuff like this and influence the masses either through a podcast or live videos or whatever it takes

to make the sale happen. Yeah, absolutely. And here's another challenge that I'll give you because this is something that I do all the time. Yesterday I took three Uber rides, each where it's over an hour long and the Uber drivers couldn't understand why I didn't rent a car. And it's because I got $1,500 worth of work done at $500 an hour in the back of an Uber on my phone. And so that is the type of first step that you can take. The next time that you need to drive somewhere that's going to be a 30-minute drive, now get an Uber, get an Uber and do work in the back. And you'll realize, you know what, it didn't cost me that much, but it got me so far ahead. And that's what cutting deeper allows you to do bigger thinking, right?

Yes, sir. So step three. Yes. I'm going to let you rant on this one because this is your area of expertise. And step three is all about leading larger. And so many of us, when we go and become entrepreneurs, we get excited when we create an LLC, an S corp, a C corp. I officially have a corporation. And I get it. That makes you a boss and that makes you the president and it gives you a title of the CEO. Make no mistake about it. You are not the fucking leader at that point. You're not not a leader. You're just the boss, the CEO, you're the checkwriter. At the worst case scenario, once a year, because most of you are not going to make money as entrepreneurs. That's just the

reality of it. Once a year, you're going to pay your $800 to the franchise tax board. That's just a given. And so if you think being the CEO or the boss makes you a leader, it doesn't. What makes you a leader is actually empowering your team members, bring in on team members who aren't just thinking like an employee where they clock in a little late, clock out a little early, do the bare minimum, but you bring on members who have a unified vision, who share your vision, are on board with your mission and want the common goal, which is to win, right? And if win means, in my case, 2,500 Fit Body Boot Camp locations by the year 2020, then that's what win means. If win means getting 50 new Empire Mastermind members into our Mastermind coaching program, then that's what

win means. And I want a whole team to be on board with my vision. For that to happen, an effective leader has to, one, be very clear on what vision they have for their business and what the path to that vision is, right? Is it marketing on Facebook? Is it Instagram? Is it direct mail? Whatever the path is. So be clear on your vision, be clear on your path. That makes you, starts you off as a good leader. Then you've got to become decisive. Make decisions. Make them fast. You're not always going to make the best decisions, but when you make the wrong decision, you can course correct. Number four is to communicate clearly, openly, and honestly. There's nothing worse. than a boss or a CEO who has resentment or weird energy towards their employees and this passive-aggressive anger going on?

Right, when it's adversarial. Right. And that's when you know you're a boss because those people leave and then you're in the hole. That's what the boss does. A leader never has that happen. A leader never has that happen because a leader knows that, hey, I'm going to try and train you up. If you're untrainable, then I've got to have the open, honest communication with you to cut you loose because it's best for me. It's best for you.

At the end of the day, I don't want an employee or a team member to feel like they're drowning and constantly be in the state of anxiety. My job is not to keep people in the state of anxiety is to put people in the right seat on the bus, as Jim Collins says, and good to great, where they can thrive and flourish. Oh, flourish. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Matt Smith, business partner in mine, good friend of Bedros, he says, you put your team members in an environment where they can flourish. I just love the way that sounds and the way it works, right? Yeah, exactly. So, again, no offense against anyone right here who's listening or watching to this and thinking, well, I own a corporation, so I'm the boss, CEO, and president. That doesn't mean that you're a leader. Leaders build empires, bosses, CEOs, and president simply have a job and have adversary of relationships and have a shit ton of anxiety, which is not what I want you guys to have. Yeah, absolutely. And we see this in our clients that come to our first empire mass meeting. The very first time they walk in the room, they're still in boss mode. And we show them, hey, listen, you have to get. First of all, better people, the right people around you, but then you have to lead them. And it's just a total mindset shift. So when they come back for their second meeting, they've already done that. And they're like different people walking in the room because they realize it's no longer top-down orders.

It's, hey, we're all in this team together. And a leader leads from the front and brings along the team. And that is just a powerful shift in your business. Think about this. And here's a little acid test, and then we'll move on to step number four. But here's the asset test if you're a leader or if you're just the boss, right? If you're a leader, then you have something called decentralized command, meaning you have people who make decisions in your business for you, right?

Decentralized command. If you're a boss, then you have a centralized command, which means you are the human bottleneck, and until you make the call, the thing doesn't happen. And guess what? There used to be a time five, six years ago when I was a human bottleneck in my business. We needed sales copy. I was the one who's going to write it. We needed to make an ad for social media.

I was going to create the ad. And at the end of the day, if you don't trust your team members because you haven't empowered them, that makes you a boss. And our job as empire builders is to become a leader. Yeah. And then the human bottleneck, all the pressure builds up. And then it really hurts you physically and personally. And that's another topic for another time about anxiety.

But you need to become that leader. So we've talked about some of our empire clients, and it leads right into the next one so well. Step number four is execute faster. So after you lead larger, you're able to. to execute faster. We have a couple of great clients, Jason Phillips and Vince Del Monte, who even left our meeting just three days ago and are already out there taking massive action on their goals. They're probably about halfway to their 90-day goals already because they're executing faster than ever. In fact, Vince sent us an email saying that he's signed up four people

and he's got two more people than he needs to sign up on his high-end coaching program at $1,500 a month. Previous to that, and I hope Vince doesn't mind me sharing it, and he's an awesome guy, so he won't mind sharing this. He was at the Empire Mastermind talking about releasing a supplement line and apparel for his living large brand. That is not in line with what we set up as an empire builder from. How many fucking shirts do you need to sell? And how much are you going to compete against these big-time established supplement companies to even start carving out your own niche? On the flip side, he has a gift at teaching fitness people how to deliver online info products to the masses, how to make and deliver that stuff. So we set that as goal, got him real

aligned with his goal. And in, I don't know, just over the weekend, we saw him four days ago. In four days, he's closed four people, each on $1,500 a month reoccurring. And his goal is to get a hundred people into his mastermind. And that is a game changer. Same with Jason Phillips. Yeah. When we knew this guy about five, six years ago, he was flaky, didn't take action, would show up to one mastermind, then we'd drop out. This last time did he join the mastermind? It was a whole, like Jason 2.0 is what I call him because you can see the fire in his eyes and the chip on his shoulder and all he wants to do is take action. And every time he takes action and implements, he goes, what more can I do? It's no surprise that he's adding $20, $30,000 a month to his business.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's also because he has taken the leadership role in there as well. So the step number five is rebound higher. 10 Xers rebound higher. Now you're probably wondering, what the heck does this mean? And listen, we're all going to. stumble, we are all going to fall, even when we are building our empires. It's not just the beginning entrepreneurs that do it. We've all had our stumbles in the past, but even as you grow, there will be stumbles. But the empire builders, like they're made out of rubber, they hit the ground, boom, they rebound higher than ever. They take that lesson because it's not a loss, it's a lesson, and they turn that lesson into another X on the 10x journey, right?

Yes, exactly right. In fact, while doing a private coaching session with, someone who shall stay nameless because that's how she wants it. I told her that she's got to develop bounce-back ability. Oh, nice. And this is a phrase or a word I want to teach everyone watching and listening to this. You've got to have bounce-back ability. Because as an entrepreneur, you are going into uncharted territories. You're going to deal with things that you didn't anticipate were going to happen,

challenges, setbacks, pitfalls. But if you can picture yourself being made of rubber, each time you fall, you only rebound higher, like you said. And if you can do that, you're going to thrive and flourish a lot faster than your competition who falls and then starts feeling sorry for themselves and stays down for a while before they come up. So understand that your job is to be like Teflon and be unstoppable and then to be like rubber and bounce back higher than ever. I thought you're going to say Tesla. And it is actually kind of like Tesla because one of my favorite stories from Elon Musk's book is in 2008 on Christmas Eve. He was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Now, this is a man who had made $100 million from PayPal. He put 80 of it, I believe, into Tesla and like 10 into SpaceX and 10 into Solar City. And he was almost bankrupt, completely bankrupt. The man now is flying high, but it's only because he went as low as you possibly could and bounced up as high as he possibly could. Elon Musk has bounce back ability. Now, then finally, step number six is it's really your, you know, it's important for you it's almost like your legacy is that you have to go out and inspire greater.

So after you have started to build your empire, you have to go out and inspire people to greater levels than ever before, right? Absolutely. Listen, we're both big believers that you must pay it forward. I don't care what anyone thinks. You've got to pay it forward. There's just a universal law, call it the law of attraction, the law of whatever, the law of karma.

But when good things happen to you and you build an empire, there's other people along the way who helped you. Maybe they just said, hey, Craig, you know, job well done, when you needed it, and they didn't even know that they were motivating you, inspiring you when you needed that most. But now it's our turn to go out and inspire, give back, pay it forward. And so really, and the more you do that, by the way, the more gratitude you end up showing, right? Because oftentimes as entrepreneurs, as empire builders, there's a lot of stuff that happens in our lives and in our businesses that can create one big financial shift after another. But when you are out there inspiring, giving, showing gratitude, what do people tell you back? Hey, man, thank you for inspiring me.

I really appreciate that. They give you love back and they want to help you. And they want to help you. And for long, they reach out and how can I help you? And just then is probably when you need that help. So inspire, give more, pay it forward and you're going to see how much it comes back to you. Yeah, the other day you posted on your Instagram feed, the day of an entrepreneur and is up and down. It's a real roller coaster.

Listen, if you are out there inspiring people, you are always going to hit somebody right when they need it. Whether it's sending a thank you card like I do every day, whether it's writing a book. Don't just be a reader of books. Don't just be a person who's inspired by other people's books or inspired by other people's podcasts. Go out there and lead from the front and do the same. Pay it forward, pay it back. Pay it every single which way you can. Pay it, pay it, pay it.

And that's how you will build your empire. It's through those six steps which are thinking bigger, cutting deeper, leading larger, executing faster, rebounding higher, and inspiring greater. That's how you build your empire. And, you know, in addition to that, you want to make sure that you have not just bounce back ability, but coachability, right? So tell people about the empire mastermind group. Exactly.

Listen, you've got to stand on the shoulders of giants, and coaches can help you buy speed and time collapse so that you can get the desired outcome you want in your business. So if you think that you'd like coaching with myself and Craig and be a part of a great group of amazing people. like Super Bowl champions, Steve Weatherford, IFBBB Pro Bodybuilder, Ben Pekulski, Vince Del Monte, nutrition expert, Jason Phillips, and a host of other really smart entrepreneurs who are doing big things, then we want you to go and somewhere around this podcast link, you're going to find a button for an application. Fill out the application.

Let's get on the phone and see if the Empire Mastermind is right for you. And if it is, we'll invite you to sit in on a particular mastermind. And if that mastermind works for you, then we'll ask you to become a member. But this is an elite group of empire builders, not people who are building, you know, getting to their first 100,000. This is for people who are doing half a million to a million and want to get to $5 to $20 million over the next three to five years. That's what we're here to do. Yeah. And it's really for people that want to have that big, big impact on their families, their personal lives, and on the world outside of them.

So thank you very much for being part of another empire podcast. make sure you go over to iTunes, give us a five-star rating. We'd love that. We'd love to hear from you. Share it with your friends. And we will be back very soon with another episode.