Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Leadership is Always the Answer - 153

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Description:  In times of chaos and crisis , what is the cause for businesses shutting down or businesses pushing forward ? Though there are a number of variables at play the only area that you have complete control in is leadership. How you show up as a leader in the darkest of times will forecast the outcome of the crisis at hand. In today’s Empire Podcast, Bedros and Craig do a deep dive on their experience in chaos and the way in which they overcome the obstacles - inside and out.  Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:20 - Common leadership mistakes 9:08 - The systematic steps Bedros’ uses in his business in times of crisis  14:23 - How to operate as a leader in chaos  24:40 - Prioritization, the essential skill of leadership 26:45 - The Navy SEAL  mentality that is a must for perseverance in business  “Leadership is the problem, leadership is the solution” “During times of Chaos and Crisis , increase the communication to your team and customers .” “Stay in the fight until you bleed out and die or turn the corner and be there to see it” “Ask yourself with outside eyes, what would you do if this was someone you were coaching...” - Bedros Keuilian   --   Follow me on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian   Buy Man Up and get Bedros’ High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/   Subscribe to My Channel for weekly videos: http://www.youtube.com/bedroskeuilian/?sub_confirmation=1   Youtube https://youtu.be/N_QIlFMu98k  

During chaos and crisis, you have to increase the communication to your team, to your customers. And the number one thing I realize they need is hope. All right, businesses are crashing and failing, but you know what? Not all them are. A lot of them are rising to the top. And B, it comes back to a line from your book, Leadership is a problem. Leadership is the answer. So let's talk about leadership in the crisis, but I mean, really it's not just a crisis, right? It's forever. Yeah, yeah, leadership is forever. It just, we happen to be in a a crisis right now and the crisis is the virus, but very quickly here, that crisis is going to

change to an economic crisis that's just around the corner and it's going to last some time. And leadership is the solution for that as well. Well, I think that it was a crisis of leadership in many of these businesses. And so you work with a lot of businesses, not just, you know, in the fitness world, you see, you coach a lot of people, I coach a lot of people. I want you to tell me what are some of the big mistakes before we get into what works for leadership for what you've been doing, which is incredible. But what are some of the big mistakes that so-called leaders have made?

Yeah, and I'm glad we're talking about this, dude, because now today is, or at least for us here at headquarters, today's 11 weeks of quarantine, where our team has not been at headquarters. It's just been my leadership team, my team has been working from home. Our FitBody Boot Camp locations had been closed. We currently have about 62 of them open.

Two of them are mine, I think, in South Carolina. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, it's always cool to look back in hindsight, 11, 12 weeks later and go, all right, well, what all went wrong in leadership? So we're going to, let's talk about that for a moment. One thing I saw that went wrong is the leader took this wait and see approach that, hey, we're hearing it's only going to be two weeks that we have to quarantine and shut down. So I'm not going to pivot. I'm not going to make any big moves. I'm going to wait and see what happens. And, there's this term called the Udala loop, right? O-O-O-D-A, Ud-Loop.

And the whole Ud-A-Loop is about observe, orient, decide, and act, Uda. And it's literally like observe, observe, observe, observe, observe, orient, orient, orient, orient, never deciding and acting has caused so many businesses now to go out of business because they took the wait and see approach. They realized that two weeks became three weeks, then four weeks, then five weeks now.

all of a sudden, okay, how about April? How about May? Okay, now we're going to open in June. And by this point, they had started to get on the slippery slope of losing momentum. And it's easier to just throw your hands up and go, you know what, I quit. I guess Corona killed my business. But it wasn't Corona. It was poor leadership taking the wait and see approach. Yeah, those Odle loops, like, or Odle loops or whatever you call them, like Matt has been pounding on those things since the first day I met him. He loves the whole story of, and have you heard the story about John Boyd invented them? No, tell me about it. Okay, so John Void was a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and he was like, well, why are we getting shot down here, there, and everywhere?

And so they decided to go into this type of training where it was all based on Vietnam fighter pilots, observe, orient, decide, and act. And so they would do this training and put them in all these crazy situations. and they just found that when they did that, they trained the fighter faster. So that's how our marketing meetings are built. We have a daily marketing meeting called the War Room, and it's observed the Facebook numbers from the day before, orient on what's working, what's not working, decide on what to kill and then act on what new ads to put in place.

And so it works great for marketing in addition to leadership that you decided there. And you're right. The people just sat on the fence for a long time. And, you know, like, they underestimated the government's ability to be insane, I guess you would say. And that was one thing. What I saw for some people is that they allowed the coronavirus to kill their business on what they want. So I call those people the panic button hitters, you know? And they were just like, oh, no, can't do anything.

And they got paralyzed, it seems. And I don't know why they did it. But have you seen a lot of businesses do that? And what are some of the characteristics of those leaders and lessons that we can learn from them? You know what, dude? And I think that's like the fight, flight, or freeze response, right? Oh, right. And, you know, I guess truth be told and die told me this.

She goes, you know what? You just operate best in chaos. He goes, your life has had so much chaos in a sense of kid that you operate best when you're cornered and you come out with your fist swinging. And so, like, give me a coronavirus or a housing market crash or any kind of economic disaster. And that's when I performed the best. Because you invented, you invented Fit Body Boot Camp in the 2008 crash. Right, exactly. Exactly.

I was like, I'm not about to move in with my mom and dad along, you know, me and my wife and two kids. Are you kidding me? Like, I got to do something different. So for me, it's fight. I always fight. And then you'll see some people who run away, who retreat. But it's the ones, I believe, who take the freeze approach that Jason Redman, our mutual friend, the Navy SEAL who wrote the book, Overcome. And he says, get off the X.

Like, this coronavirus was an ambush. It was an ambush of economic, that led to an economic disaster. But the moment you see it, you're either going to fight your way out of it. You're either going to run away and retreat and try and regroup. Like I even commend the people who did retreat because it's like all right you're running away to retreat Let me figure out what happened at least you're getting away from or trying to get away from what's happening But the people like shutting down your business instead of being paralyzed like you meant okay I'm gonna shut it down and Instead of losing 500,000, I'll just lose a hundred thousand and I'll come back when it's safe

Exactly I'll preserve my capital. I'll go through my my Checklist of money that's going out and see what I can cut out etc like I could I could respect that if you don't want to fight at least you did a flight. But the people that froze, I think, were just, they maybe have a disposition of, I don't know if they had too much confidence in the government or. Victim mentality too. Like, oh, this, oh, man, you know, this is not fair.

You know, yeah, well, it's not fair to anybody, but everybody's dealing with it. And so if we're all going to have to deal with it, you may as well deal with it in the right way. Yeah. So that was unfortunate. man, I have been tooting your horn and saying, I've never seen a leader, you know, dealing with this as well as you have.

And so, you know, you're showing up every single day. You're doing this. You're doing that. And it's almost like, I just want to tell a quick story. Like, remember when we drove back from Phoenix and, you know, we drove back from Phoenix to Southern California. It was from Joe Polish's mastermind. And we were like, we were bored.

So it's like, instead of waiting for a flight 10 hours later, let's drive home now. We got some pork rinds. And, of course, I fell asleep because my superhuman power is falling in sleeping car. So I fell asleep. But then you listen to like your 19th Navy SEAL book. Right. And it's almost like that encyclopedia of Navy SEAL books that you read were something that was so powerful for getting you prepared for this moment.

It's almost like, man, how eerie is that? But you were just the right guy for the right situation right here. So walk us through what you've been doing that has allowed you to lead not only your team that is close, but allowed you to lead like guys like Daniel Woodrum. And I want to brag about him for a second. He's a fit body boot camp owner. He's my business partner. And that kid has become a great leader, almost through osmosis from you. So walk us through, hear from the source on what are the secrets to leadership, not only in crisis, not only in good times, but in all times.

So, and before I do that, I'm going to read a little email that we were. wrote to our team today. Every Friday, Diana will write a roundup. So you know that every Monday for the last six years, I write a Monday morning email to my team to motivate them and personally, professionally help them self-develop every Monday. And every Friday, Diana writes a roundup saying this is what we did this week in business. Here's what you guys need to know. This way communication is like, you know, on point. But to that point, one other thing I noticed for many of my coaching clients, like one of my coaching clients whose business does $13 million a year, in this time, he laid off seven people because he said, hey, what are you doing so that I can model it in my

business? I said, one, go through all your expenses and see what are all your expenses that you can cut out that are reoccurring. Like here at FitBody Boot Camp, we cut out $11,000 a month in reoccurring expenses. And there were like wacky little pieces of software, like $49 a month that we weren't using anymore or tracking pixel that we were. But those things add up, right? and when the economy is thriving, but, dude, 11 grand a month, that's like two, two regular employees that I can hire. And so, you know, I had him do that. I had all my private coaching clients do that.

And then I said, hey, now, now in your particular position, look at who are essential to the business to generating money versus essential to only keeping the money going, keeping those customers on board. He fired or laid off seven people, and now that he's back in business, he realized he He doesn't need to hire those people. So the other thing that leaders need to realize, and I do this all the time, every 90 days I review who on my team still needs to be on my team. Because it's easy to go to a certain department, especially when your company gets big and you have 20, 30, 40 employees or more, it's easy to go, hey, what do you guys need? We need one more employee.

Well, if every department, I have seven departments. If one, every department asks for one more employee, I need seven new employees here. And but do I really or are they inefficient in the way they're operating? And so you got to check efficiency in your business. And so I was shocked that this guy was able to cut out seven employees and he says, I never need to hire them back even when the economy thrives because we realized we had a bloated team. Several other of my coaching clients had two, three, four, too many employees who were just essentially sucking out revenue, but weren't really.

contributing to the bottom line. So that's another thing we need to look out for because in times of great economy, we just take that for granted. But let me read this email that Diana wrote, and I think this will be pretty eye-opening for everyone. And just to give you context, this email went to our team of 40 people here at headquarters. And by the way, they come back June 1st, so next Monday. Yeah. So she said, happy final quarantine Friday, week number 11, dream team. Can you feel it? You know, it's the same feeling of school coming back, but we're coming back to headquarters. The so-called coronavirus pandemic has defined by facts and figures reported to us by the talking heads, the number of corona deaths, blah, blah, blah.

But here's a crazy thing. She said, let me review the facts and figures that really matter to us here at headquarters. In the last 11 weeks of quarantine, we've had 76 leadership meetings. L10 meetings. Just to give you an idea, L10 is from EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System, a book called Traction by Gino Wickman.

And so we have an EOS, we believe in an entrepreneurial operating system, EOS, and every Tuesday we have an L10 meeting. Literally on March 16th, we went, I'm sorry, March 13th, we went from one leadership meeting per week to two a day, 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.

So we had 76 leadership meetings in the last 11 weeks, here at headquarters all the leads uh all seven department leads stayed the teams went we all worked from headquarters for the last 11 weeks 26 announcement videos and emails to our owners to our franchise owners and one video be used that was hilarious that doesn't matter i accidentally on facebook live to our owners i use the the goofy filters where you get like the the beard and all that stuff and i it was by accident uh 10 zoom transition uh 10 zoom for our owners on how to pivot from offline to online coaching, six team members,

six team members repositioned, right? And that's a really big lesson. Sometimes you have to reposition the team members you have based on the crisis or the chaos you're going to through. And so when we're not getting franchise sales anymore, we can take those franchise sales reps and get them to start selling coaching programs for me. And we don't have franchise support reps, they don't need, they're not dealing with any new franchisees. They went online and we literally 10xed our content on our social media. All of a sudden, our support reps were doing like content left and right on our social media platforms across many different companies that we have. Ten Zoom Zoom trainings, six members were repositioned, three Fox News spotlights.

I saw those. Those were great, man. Yeah, yeah, those helped us out a lot. We actually sold two franchises during that time. two new hashtags, FBBC Strong and gyms are essential. Two new revenue streams were created for ourselves. We launched FitBody Meals and FitBody on Demand, which is our full online coaching platform. And of course, train arise. So in the past 11 weeks, dude, we did more in 11 weeks than we would have done in a year

when you operate in crisis and when you can communicate what the new vision is going to be to your team and reposition them. And I share that because what we really did is we multiplied the communication. During chaos and crisis, you have to increase the communication to your team, to your customers. And the number one thing I realized they need is hope. Every single live that I did to our owners, I showed up with hope. Like, hey, guys, you need to lead more than ever. You need to communicate what the new vision is.

And you need to re-communicate that vision over and over again. Number one. Number two, if you feel like you're getting stressed and overwhelmed, do not disconnect and suffer in silence. That's going to be everybody's default. Reach out to us at headquarters and we'll support you. And I just want to add on that. So if you think of every single person's head as a water bucket, and I mean like every single person from the end user that goes into a fit body to the person that owns the fit body to the people that work for you, everybody's head is a water bucket. Now they're walking around and every single day that,

bucket, their head, is being filled with information. The information, where are most people getting information from? CNN, Fox News, the people that know absolutely nothing, and they're just talking crap, and then they're getting it from friends who don't know anything, who are parroting something they heard, they're getting it from Facebook, full of fake news, full of all that junk. They're getting all of this toxic stuff poured in that water bucket. And so if you don't show up with hope, light, and optimism, also, you know, The brutal facts, as the Stockdale paradox says, which was how James Stockdale got through seven years of being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

He daily confronted the brutal facts, but he had a long-term optimism he would get out and that helped him survive. Now, if you show up with a light hope and optimism, you put some of that in their heads. And, you know, again, Daniel Woodrow met in the South Carolina FitBody boot camps. He was showing up from these people. And I'm sure, Pedro, you've gotten so many of these men. messages, I've gotten these messages, and Daniel got these messages. You know, like, thank you for being consistent in your videos, for showing up every day, for being that light when they thought the world was ending.

They thought all their family was dying. They thought their jobs were gone. They thought they would be wiped out. And you show up every single day with a bit of light, hope, and optimism and direction, and you be that leader. That was huge. And, you know, huge in the number of the amount of content you put out, the fact that you were willing to go on Fox News and all that stuff.

And then I would hear from some of these other fitness franchises, you know, that had their billing shut down, that, you know, where's the CEO? Hasn't even communicated with the franchisees owners for weeks. And like, listen, you know who's going to win that battle, the people who show up and fill that water bucket with the hope, the light of the opposite. So totally agree with you. Dude, that's such a great way to put it, too, that the people's heads are really a water bucket.

And that's absolutely true. And if the water being poured in it has now multiplied and it's toxic, you as the leader have to multiply your water, your clean, pure, optimistic, hopeful water. We have to counter evil with good. The same, if they 10 exit, we have to 10 exit. And I think that's what everybody forgot to do as a leader. And it's easy to be a leader when the economy is great and everything's thriving and everything's fun. Listen, man, I had to do some lives where, like moments before I was just. I'm like telling my wife, I'm like, hunt, I'm just burnt out. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept well.

My brain is constantly processing things. But soon as that camera goes live, I have to show up with hope, optimism, and direction. Because if I don't, then they're going to follow my lead. And unfortunately, many leaders did not communicate, did not show up with hope, did not show up with optimism and direction. And their people followed the lead, which was, I guess I should do nothing. And it doesn't matter if it's a fitness franchise, a yogurt franchise. a bathtub company or whatever, that's unfortunately what happened. So over-communicating the message and having a very new vision of how things are going to look is, and then being able to tell them that we are going to go back to a normal.

Like, I hated, dude, I hated when everyone was using, this is our new normal. No, it's not. I'm not going to live out of my home and walk around with a freaking bandana around my face and see people with rubber gloves and like that grosses me out. That's not the new normal. I'm going to go back to a same or better normal because my life is only going to improve. And for people to accept what the new normal was, this is our new, no, it's not, this is a temporary thing and I had to keep reminding them.

Yeah. Don't tell anyone, but I hugged an old person last week. Are they dead now? I hope you didn't kill them. No, no, they're good. They're good. They're good. But yeah, you're absolutely right.

And so I want to actually dive a little bit deeper in your level 10 meetings because, you know, you talk about doing those daily and, well, twice daily and how important they were. And really like your leadership went to a level 10. And then also what does that level 10 actually look like without going too much into EOS's proprietary systems? But what was it? And then how did that then give the confidence to your leadership team to go and have meetings with their team and so on and so forth? Yeah, so for us, obviously we've got Fit Body Boot Camp, we've got my coaching businesses, and then we've got our Trulene supplement line.

And so we very quickly realized we had 26 leads in the pipeline early March to become Fit Body Boot Camp franchise owners. All but one of those 26 leads went away. Ghosted us, didn't want anything to do with us. They're like, everything's shutting down. Why would I even be interested in opening up a gym? We go, well, good point. You got it.

So while our one salesperson was trying to follow up with them, the other salesperson was reaching out to many people in my DMs because during times of uncertainty, entrepreneurs are willing to spend their last dollars with guys like you and me who have had a track record of going through disasters, financial disasters and economic disasters. And my coaching business was blowing up. So coaching and supplements because people also wanted to be healthy because for the first time ever, they're like, holy crap, this virus could be the great equalizer. And if I don't keep my immune system strong, I'm not going to be able to survive this thing. So our, online training went up in sales, which is why we had that 28-day.

So all of a sudden, we had, all right, guys, here's how we're going to sell supplements. Don't worry about selling franchises. Here's how we're going to sell online coaching. So we need to change our website because our website offered seven-day free trial to a Fit Body Boot Camp. Well, if not a single door is open, what do we need to do to change our corporate website in three or four days and launch a 28-day online coaching program because people were in a panic about, I need to work out, and I need to work out at home. I need to stay busy. I need to stay optimistic and positive.

And so our leadership meetings, we, in EOS, as you probably know, there's these rocks. Everybody has their rocks that they need to do, and those rocks have a deadline. We put all the rocks aside, and we said, for the next foreseeable future, until we go back to businesses normal, and we defined that. What does business as normal look like? Locations are open, and our team is back at headquarters. Until then, what do we need to do to not only stay afloat, but keep making money? We identified what the revenue sources were, online coaching, supplements, and when I say online coaching, meaning fitness, supplement sales, and then business coaching, my business coaching. And we said, all right, we divided up the seven leaders, and we said, just focus on those three revenue streams and nothing else.

And we met twice a day, every day, and then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we would meet, I would do a live to our Fit Body Boot Camp franchise. owners at 12 noon right after our 11 a.m. meeting. So we would meet. We would say, all right, guys, here's what you're going to promote. We wrote the promotional emails for you. If you're willing to spend ads, ad dollars, here's the ads for you and the campaigns and the pictures and the videos. And I would literally be the messenger of hope to them and direction. And that's literally what got us through this where the entire 11 weeks now, we only lost one Fit Body Boot Camp location that said they're not going to reopen. Yeah, which is bananas. I really, honestly, when we met on week three of this whole thing happening. I estimated, I was like, guys, if we,

if we can keep it 10 to 15% location losses, like I'll be happy. We lost one. And it's because we literally identified the revenue sources for HQ, identified the revenue sources for our franchisees, and then we gave our franchisees. That's another big thing to do is we made it done for you. Send out this video, send out this email, here's the day and times you want to send it out because they went into paralysis by analysis like, oh my God, I'm overwhelmed. You're asking me to pivot. You're asking me, I've got clients asking to freeze. What's the answer to that? So we had two of our leadership team just overcoming objections. Well, why do you want to cancel? Let's put your account on the freeze. Well, why do you want to freeze? Let's put you in the online

coaching program because you still want to stay active. You still want to stay connected. You want to booster immune system. And so we literally had to not only overcome objections, because we knew that if our franchisees started to lose clients, they would come to us and say, hey, I don't want to pay my franchise royalties anymore. And that becomes the kiss of death for our brand. So it was a crazy time, but honestly, dude, systematically, if you can identify what the revenue sources are for you and then for your clients, you could just focus in on that, but you do have to multiply the communication and the action. And it'd be... Yeah, okay. So here's the analogy, you know, in an emergency room, people come in with multiple gunshots or, you know, Jason Redmond out in the field with guys with multiple wounds. Like what are those, they simply are triaging. Okay, that guy's got a broken leg. There's legs blown off. He's going to live for another 20 minutes. We got to, you know, deal with this person or, you know, seven bullet holes. You know, you deal with the most important ones first. And, and so if people can operate in that place like that is intense, then a

business owner can operate the way that you were with surgical precision to do that, right? Yeah, yeah. And you know what? That's a really good analogy. You think about an emergency room. There's so many people coming in. Like, let's say a multi-car accident happens in some city, and that emergency room gets filled up. Now, eight people just came in. Someone's got a broken leg. Someone's hemorrhaging blood. They're going to have to prioritize and execute. And that's such an important thing. And I think most oftentimes, when we get into that fear, fight or flight, or freeze mode, we stop prioritizing. We go into tunnel vision and take that wide look and go, all right, broken leg. He's going to be hurting, but he's fine. The guys who's hemorrhaging blood,

let's stop the blood loss and then go to the guy with the broken leg. So that was a really good analogy. I'm the king of analogies, buddy. Now, I got a question for you. I got a question for you. So water buckets and emergency rooms. Now, the question is, there must have been a point for you where you were like, I can't get any worse than this. And then they say, now all of them have to shut down. And so, like, when you felt like you got hit the hardest, how did you get back on track so fast?

You know what? And I can even almost put my finger on when I felt I got hit the hardest. It was probably around week four when I realized we may not be opening doors until June, July, possibly August. Like, I mean, the news we were hearing was so gloom and doom. And, you know, the death rate was so high because we didn't know that the death rate was people who were dying of other things were being labeled as Corona. We were just hearing it, right? And so I was like, holy crap.

But I went right back to what is a task at hand? I got to make sure my franchisees survive. I just kept going to, all right, until I die, I'm going to keep. When I die, it's over. If I die of exhaustion or a hard. When you bleed out, right? Like, isn't that what the market? Lus Sotrell thing was.

Tell that story. That's from that book, right, where they're just taught to stop the bleeding and then until you bleed out, you keep going. And that's it, yeah. So that's a great story to tell. So Marcus Luttrell is a Navy SEAL. People have probably either seen the movie Lone Survivor, or maybe they've read the book. But he was

one of four Navy SEALs. They got attacked in Afghanistan. He's the only one that survived. And with the blown up hip, He was shot several times. He bit his tongue while he fell off a cliff. I mean, the guy was just maimed. And the Taliban is giving chase, and he's crawling, and he's taking mud, and he's putting it in bullet holes, and these body parts that are just gushing blood because they're taught one simple thing as a seal or as a warrior, you stay in the fight as long as you can until you bleed out and die. That is it.

You keep staying in the fight. So his thing is, I'm going to clog up my wounds and keep crawl. to some kind of safety, cover, or a hideout, which is what he did, and then he was found and discovered and saved. And my mentality, I guess, in a similar way, now that I think about it, was, all right, this is really bad news. Because your brain goes to the negative, bro. Your brain goes, I'm like, all right, now we're going to have a third of our fit bodies shut down. There's no way they're going to survive until June, July, August, right? Like, that's what my, the negative mindset says. And then I'm like, all right, dude, easy. I go back to coaching myself. I always go back

of the words that you use, which is outside eyes. I go, all right, I don't have Craig right now in my ear telling me what would you do it be. So I had to tell myself, hey man, what would you do if you were your own coaching client? All right. You can't control how long this thing is going to last, but what you can do is control how you're going to market the online coaching, how you're going to communicate to your franchisees. Then the brain would go to, yeah, but you're tired, you're exhausted. You're just, you're fighting a fight that's not going to win. I'm like, No, no, no, you still have strength in you. You still have a strong team.

Keep fighting. And so you're literally, I was arguing between the bitch and the beast that lives in my head. And every day, I finally came to the conclusion that I'm either going to die of exhaustion or a heart attack, or we're going to turn the corner at some point, and I'm going to be there to see it. And so I just, it was one foot in front of the other, even on the days that I would drink heavily. I'm going to tell you the truth, man. I would drink heavily at night to go to sleep. and I would, that would be the only way I could sleep.

And that was, what, for the first couple weeks? Right around week four, when I realized this isn't just going to end around, you know, Trump was saying, and I'm not against Trump or for Trump, whatever. Trump was saying, I want America to reopen on Easter. Oh, yeah. So April 12th, like that gave me hope. I was like, all right, so almost a whole month of this, we could deal with this. But then when you hear like, nope, we're not reopening.

And in fact, we're going to tighten down face masks. we're going to obviously close more businesses. I was like, oh shit, it's over. Okay, so I mentioned before that Stockdale paradox and the guy who spent seven years in the prison, and he's so famous, like he would, because the Vietnamese people would, or the North Vietnamese, I think, whatever it was,

those guys would march the American prisoners of war out in front of a microphone, and they'd have to say certain things. He would beat himself up and cut his face so that they wouldn't take him out. because they were trying to show like we're treating these guys right. And so what he found was he spent seven years there. The guys that didn't make it fell into what tricked you.

Oh, we'll be out by Christmas. And then when Christmas came and went, they gave up. And he said, I might be in here for 10 years, 20 years. I'm going to survive it, which is eventually what you went with. But when you had your hardest time, it was because you gave into, you weren't confronting the brutal facts or you didn't think you got optimistic in advance and that's what he's found and and I've you know long it's a stoic approach to things and I think that I've kind of been trained on that that it's like well my question is simply and I say this in good times to people too

well what else are you going to do quit like what do you know yeah it sucks but it's out it's worse for somebody else out there and they aren't quitting so what are you going to do you're going to quit And so now I want to turn it on you and say, having run all the modern day night camps, how do you think specifically doing those, going through it yourself, helped you through it? You know, I got to tell you, I knew immediately that if I even attempt quitting or slow down, I'm going to be a hypocrite. Like the leader of the project, of the modern day night project, slowing down, quitting, accepting that we may not last.

And it's funny you say that because once you do accept the brutal facts, and I should have downloaded all those videos. You know how when you make a Facebook live video gives you the option to download those videos? Although they do live on our FitBody Family Facebook group. But on one of them, I think it was around week six when I just accepted the fact. And I said, I got to share this with our owners. And the leadership team was kind of like, are you sure you want to share this message? I said, yeah.

I said, guys, just imagine that we are never going to go back to our brick and mortars. Just imagine that we're never going to go back to your brick and mortars. Because I could just hear every FitBody owner, they ask questions in the comment box there when I do it live. When do you think we're going to go back? So I can tell that they were waiting for that date. But I can also tell that when Easter came and went, my hopes were let down, just like you described. And so once I slapped myself around, I was like, all right, dude, just assume we're never going to reopen. And, well, if I assume that, I've got to tell them that.

But the leadership team was like, dude, if you tell them that, what if we have a mass exodus? I said, let's risk that. So the bottom line was, hey, team, assume that you're just not going to, just assume all locations burnt down, you're building burnt down. Because what happens if the landlord doesn't pay his lease for the, for the land? Then the bank's going to come and shackle all the doors. Even if the government says you can go to business, you can't at that point. You can't open your gym if the bank owns the property.

right? And so I was like, assume that and assume we're going full time into online coaching. And that was the only way I can get that last one-third of our owners who are digging their heels in to commit to online coaching by telling them, assume your business is burnt down, assume it's going to be locked up when you go back because your landlord wasn't paying their mortgage. And your only source of income is going to be online coaching. Can you be the best damn online coach in the world? And once they mentally committed to that and I committed to that, online coaching blew up. And, and And then a few weeks later, we started hearing that, you know, the talk about these phases, phase one, phase two, phase three of opening.

That is something else. This is going to make for a heck of a follow-up to man up in book format, sir. Oh, my God, dude, bananas, bananas. So, you know, my business is so different, right? Because I've got all these, like, what, 600, 700 franchisees that I'm, like, business partners with. And so I've got to help influence them change their mind. Tell me how it affected your business. Tell our audience how it affected your business, dude.

The way that I describe it is remember that episode of Seinfeld where it's like everything is even Stephen for Jerry? Yeah, I do. Yeah, that's essentially been me for the last little bit. Now, on the personal side of things, I've probably been more social during quarantine than normal because every time I take my dog to the park, which is right beside my house, there's like a hundred people just sitting in the park, not socially distancing because the weather's been good here. And they all want to talk to me and my dog, so I've had to talk to a lot of people. But in the business side of things, we had, you know, at first there was a bunch of people that did the flight, I guess, response. And they were like, I got to cancel. I got to go on hold.

And I'm like, okay, no problem. No problem. And so what we did is we then quickly offered different types of programs, lower level, different access levels. So we saved on that. And then we started to attract those people that you said reached out to you for coaching. And we started to get people reaching out to us for a lot more coaching because they didn't feel they needed it during good times. And I believe like you believe that the money, there's still money out there. In fact, one of our really close friends had his best month ever in one of his businesses.

like he made seven figures personal profit in April. And so certain industries, like the supplement side of things, those things blew up in a good way. People that were selling fitness equipment, those things blew up. Online coaches. It was the golden era for being an online fitness coach. Because every time I would hear from a fitness coach that was like, oh, I'm kind of worried.

I'm like, are you insane? 40 million or 100 million Americans just got kicked out of the gym, they're going somewhere, even if only 10 million Americans went and found an online coach, it's a gold rush. So, you know, we had a lot of people come in on that side of things. And then very much like almost every business that, you know, moved something to online, like you moved training to online. And you guys probably thought about it for a long time.

And he's like, yeah, we'll just, you know, it's the next project or, you know, next quarter. and we all were forced into accelerated online events and more communication. So I actually started doing more live coaching sessions, group sessions for some of our programs. I started doing more of those. And then we also were forced into really putting more emphasis into the marketing of our Instagram course, which is perfectly timed for this. Like our friend Robbie Blanchard's program is perfectly timed for people who want to make money at home. And so it was just something that was a side project for a while.

And now it's become a big part of our business. And you know, you've referred to, you know, you emailed out for it the other week. And we've got a lot of affiliates emailing out for it. And we started to get a whole lot more serious about the Facebook ads for it. And then we've also just done a little bit more ruthless self-reflection of who's our best customer and changing some of our messaging around our best customer, which I realized this very similar to your, the best customer that you had for your gyms. I have a little higher level, but it's really the, you know, I look at my best clients.

They're all men over 35 families who want empire or generational wealth. Those are the people that are paying the big, big bucks to be in our program. And then we did our first virtual mastermind and it went way better than I expected. In fact, I would say that I think people got more out of the virtual mastermind than they did out of two-day in-person mastermind. So I started doing half-day virtual masterminds. We got one for gym owners. We're going to have one for my clients in Europe because they can't travel.

And a lot of my clients in Europe complain. And I have a disproportionately large amount of clients in Europe in Holland and France and all these countries where there's very few entrepreneurs. And so they hear about our podcast or, you know, the Empire podcast, or they hear about, you know, my articles or they hear about how I help Joel or helped you or whatever. And they say, well, if he helped that guy, then he can help me become that disciplined, entrepreneur, ambitious, generational family wealth sort of thing. But over there, there's not a community like there is in America or even in Canada.

There's a decent community of bigger thinkers. And they feel like they're in a prison where nobody thinks big. It's very socialist over there in terms of the, um, entrepreneurial world. There's a lot, there's, there's, there's very few people that are doing it. And they, it's because they get taxed, you know, through the, through the, you know, it's, it's very difficult, but, and it's very difficult to fire people over there. Like, you're, you're, you're on the hook for so much for my client in France. Like, he's trying to figure out how he's going to fire somebody and not pay like a year's salary for them. Oh. Yeah, it's, and it's, and it's just like,

there's all these laws that are in favor of the worker for whatever, you know, I'm not going to judge any of that because I don't know about it. But so anyways, I'm doing virtual masterminds for them. And it's, you know, our business went down slightly in April, but we'll be up in May. I don't think it'll be our best month of the year, but it'll be a good month in May. And so we just are putting stuff out and we're putting out pushing more in our morning routine course. And I'm not going to say the word pivot because I'm sick of hearing it. But, you know, we are just like, okay, this is not working as well.

Let's go do this. I'm very glad, though, that I didn't have all GM owners as coaching clients. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah, I could relate to that. I know what you mean. You and I have barely talked in these 11 weeks. Yeah. And it's not, and I just was like, listen, I'm not going to go and interrupt this guy.

I mean, he's got stuff to do. And if he needs anything, like one time, you were like, hey, do you know somebody that can help with Amazon? And I'm like, yeah, contact Ryan. and, you know, like, I'm not going to show up and want on your door because I can only imagine how many people pour their hearts out to you, so you had to take on their pain as well. So, you know, it's funny. It's like, people ask me how you were doing. I'm like, I'm sure he's doing fine. I'm sure it's rough.

But, you know what? I'm sure he's fine. I just believe in the guy. And I know that if anybody's going to be fine, it'll be him there. You know what? Let's take a couple of minutes to talk about that for a second, because you're right. 11 weeks have gone by and you and I talk the least amount via taxed or over the phone and any other way in that time.

And to me it was the same thing. One, I'm not going to go complaining to him. There's already people that he did that pay him to complain to him. Like he gets paid to get complained to you just like I do. Like I'm not going to be that guy in his life. Number two, I'm friends. I've known you for a decade. We're best friends and business partners.

And I know that if you need anything, you'll come. And if I need anything, I'll come. And during the 11 weeks, like you said, I'm like, dude, I need, I need, I need, I need, who's got the hack for, for Amazon? And you're like, boom, this guy. And bam, we launched an Amazon thing. But yeah, that's so important. And I think that's, that probably doesn't fall in the category of leadership here,

but that falls in the category of just being a decent, freaking human. Like, don't go bothering your friends who are trying to make it happen for themselves and, like, pissing on them and, you know, crying on their shoulder. Just keep your head down and work instead of complaining. and if you can add value to them, add value, and if you need something, say, bro, I need something. But otherwise, I knew that you, because people were asking me the same thing. How's Craigie doing? I'm like, you know what?

Craig's a little cockroach. He could survive anything. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. He could survive anything. Like, and if he can't, I know he's going to reach out to me and we're going to figure it out together and vice versa.

If I can't figure anything out, I'm going to reach out to you and the small handful of people that I trust like Joel and whoever and we're going to figure it out. But there's so much magic in leave us the fuck alone and let us do what we do best. and if you're a good friend, you should have that mindset. Yeah, and I think it wasn't that you weren't in my head. In fact, you were in my head more than ever because I'm like, when I would have a moment, you know, like, oh, four cancellations today, be like, well, I ain't, I ain't going to be a little girl, okay?

Everybody's going to get mad at me for saying that. I ain't going to be a little kid and going to Bedros and complaining. I'm like, what would Pedro do? What would Joel do? What would Matt do? okay or what would I tell somebody else to do and when you said you were coaching yourself I think coaching yourself is really how people can get themselves through a lot of problems it's like okay what's the best if someone came to you with the problems that you're having now what advice would

give them that's the advice you need to take now go and do it and you know you know obviously talk to your partner your spouse or maybe your parents want to hear about it but you know mostly other people that are busy doing stuff, they don't have the bandwidth for it. That's exactly right. All right. Well, that's a fantastic episode. Guys and gals, thank you so much for watching and listening to this episode of The Empire Show. As always, if you like this episode, and we know you did, please give us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.

Leave a comment on those platforms as well, on YouTube as well. Take a screenshot, share it. Tag myself and Craig. And as always, be sure to tell your mama. We'll see you later.