Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Powerful Business Advice for 2019 - 078

Episode Date: December 19, 2018

What do you need to do to blast past your competition in 2019? In this episode, Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne reveal which trends will dominate the business world next year. Watch or listen now to discover how you can leverage technology to generate higher profits and multiply your marketing manpower. Also, hear why it’s essential to develop your brand on Instagram if you want to network successfully.    “You’ve got to take advantage of winter (ie: the next economic downturn) and be able to have courage when everybody else is operating out of fear.” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 0:41 - How Bedros built a multimillion dollar fitness franchise in the middle of a recession 4:13 - How technology can give you the upper hand on your competition in 2019 7:55 - Why emotion trumps logic when you’re “hero” marketing to your prospects 13:39 - Why Instagram is the best way to make a powerful first impression with others 21:25 - The one Instagram strategy Bedros uses to funnel prospects and build authority online “Instagram is the new business card.”  - Craig Ballantyne Follow us on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian / @realcraigballantyne Buy Man Up and get my High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/ Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow

In 2019, if you're not doing the strategy I'm about to share with you, you're leaving money on the table and you're leaving customers off your list. Welcome to the Empire Show. I'm Bedros Kulian, here with my co-host, Craig Ballantyne. Here on the Empire Show, we help passionate and purpose-driven entrepreneurs like you turn your idea into a business and your business into an industry-transforming empire so that you can grow your income, impact, and influence. If you're a new listener, then welcome to the show and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. And if you're looking to dominate in business and in life, then this is the show for you. Ladies and gentlemen, what is going to happen in 2019? Is your business going to grow? What is the new trend in marketing and sales that's going to come along?

What's going to happen to your competition? We are going to answer that on today's episode of the Empire Podcast. I'm Craig Balentine here with Bedros Kulian. Bedros, what warning do you have for us? Good Lord, 2019 is coming, and everybody wants to know what the year is going to bring them. Yeah. Now, here's what I do know is that the winter is coming. I don't know if winter is coming in 2019 or if it's coming in 2020, but I can tell you that winter is coming and a lot of people will ask, what do you mean winter is coming? Let me explain. There was maybe about a year and a half ago, Craig and I were speaking at an event, Genius Network event. Yeah, with Tony. And Tony Robbins was on stage right before you and I got up on stage. And I was getting miced up back there. And I remember Tony Robin just clapping his big hand saying, look, winter is coming. Winter is coming. can thrive in summer and spring, any business can thrive in summer and spring, but when winter

comes, when the economy crashes, when the interest rates go up, when something happens that's unpredictable, how is your business going to survive? And I'll tell you what, folks, it's historically proven that when winter comes, so many businesses fall apart. So you got to prepare for the winter. In other words, what are you going to do to differentiate yourself to stand out from the competition, to make more money, and to gobble up the competition? Most people, Craig, I have a lot. I don't believe are prepared for the upcoming winter. Well, I would say that you are correct. I really think it's coming pretty darn soon, but you started FitBody in our last winter, right? Yeah, yeah. In fact, let's talk about that real quick. I started FitBody Boot Camp and started the building of it,

the idea of it 2008, 2009, right, when the economy crashed. Interestingly enough, Gary Vaynerchuk started VaynerMedia 2009, right on the heels of the economy crash. Okay. And so while most people will contract, they'll go into save mode. It's scared. Right? They get scared. They contract their money, meaning they don't use money to grow anymore. They try and go into save mode.

They bury their head. The aggressive marketer, entrepreneur, empire builder is going to take advantage of winter and gobble up their competition. And what I saw it was this. Now is the time for me to build Fit Body Boot Camp because there wasn't that many people marketing on Facebook because everybody was contracting. Which means the cost of getting a lead is substantially cheap. And so while everyone thinks that, you know, you have to launch a business during the best times of economy, in reality, the biggest money that's made, whether you're Gary Vaynerchuk or your Bedros Kulian or probably thousands of other people who built their wealth on the heels of that economic crash in 2008, you've got to take advantage of winter and be able to have courage when everyone else is operating out of fear.

Yeah, and in addition to courage, it's also important to have cash. And so now as you're making money, hand over fist, hopefully, make sure that you're saving some of that cash. My friend Simon Black likes to call it dry powder, you know, dry powder for when winter comes. And now you can gobble up your competition who wasn't wise with their money and let things fall apart. You know what? A few episodes ago on the Inside Look episode, we had Patrick Mitt David. Yeah. And that's exactly what he talked about is that he is stockpiling cash because he feels, knows, and is almost. He's been around.

He's been around. And he knows the winter is coming, and he's about to gobble up his competition. And that's when you see businesses take these monumental leaps. Like most businesses that are doing well will continue to grow, you know, in a linear fashion. But all of a sudden, the economy crashes and people who have cashed Simon Blacks and Patrick Bittavits and you and I are in a position to have these exponential growth phases. Yeah, absolutely. What else is coming in? The robots are coming.

In 2019, we got robots coming. Right, the robots are coming. So the other day, I'm at dinner. I'm with Jason Capital, and I'm with my other friend, Sean in New York City. And Sean actually is the CEO of Sovereign Man, which is owned by that Simon Black guy. And we were talking about how they are testing AI marketing already. So we've all heard about AI artificial intelligence, and we're like, yeah, whatever. That's like five years, 10 years down the future.

But it is coming fast. And Peter Diamandis, the guy who's the ex-price guy, he was on a webinar with Tony Robbins, and they were talking about how technology is accelerating faster than you think. So we are going to see in 2019 established companies, not just like kids playing around with this stuff, but established companies using artificial intelligence for their marketing, you know, whether it's creating email content or whether it's segmenting lists automatically. We're going to see this happening. And, you know, Joel Marion presented up my big event.

on the weekend on the Perfect Life Retreat, and he talked about knowing your numbers, knowing your numbers, and you can really benefit, you can use these robots to your advantage by sorting your data, figuring out your numbers to make your business stronger. And if you know your numbers, going into winter, you can fight off the competition, fight off the robots, and you can really, really thrive in these somewhat scary times. But there's probably some other ways that people can, we don't want to scare people about 2019. But not, 2019. 2019 is going to be a great year. Great, great year.

It's just, quote, most people don't realize that we're going into a year where there's going to be a lot of changes where technology is concerned. Remember, there used to be a time where the iPhone even came out every couple years. And now it seems like they bring out a phone and then within a year cycle, they bring out another one. When you look at the number of updates that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube are having on a weekly basis now. It used to be like every month they would update their platform.

And so because the update cycles are faster, 2019 is going to be a very monumental year for people who have speed of implementation on their side. In fact, where robots are concerned, and I know I was guilty of this with Instagram. I wasn't guilty of this with Facebook, but with Instagram, when Instagram came out, I'm like, oh, it's just another online platform. And look, Facebook is dominating.

Why would I need to go on Instagram? When Facebook is dominating, I'm spending tens of millions of dollars every year on Facebook to buy traffic, and our business was thriving. But I came on board Facebook late 2014, almost 2015, Instagram or Facebook? I'm sorry, Instagram.

Yeah. Yeah. I came on this, and I should have come on board sooner. So should I. Right? 2017. Yeah. Yeah.

And so because of that, it was a painful learning curve for me. And most people need to understand that when this artificial intelligence kicks in, if you have 100,000 people on your email list and I do, and I've invested in the AI platform where it can segment the list, it can tell me even better open rates, exactly what time to mail out and you think, oh, I don't want to pay for that extra form of intelligence. I'll just keep mailing out like I used to. You're going to get eaten up. So really, where 2019 is concerned, technology is going to be on the forefront of everything from social media

to email marketing to probably even smart. Like the many chat. Yeah. Look at the many chat. Talk about smart communication platforms that will sit there and qualify people for you. Once they're qualified, then they'll pitch that lead to a sales rep. And so you've got to be willing to invest in that and be an early adopter and not think that, oh, you know, it's just a phase and it'll pass. Yeah, absolutely. That is going to be a game changer for us.

And the thing is, on the other side, is that human emotion is still something that we can use to our leverage. I mean, maybe the AI is going to eventually figure it up, but right now we still have a golden era of human emotion that we can use with Instagram. And how are you, or even in any of our marketing, including what you guys are doing better than anybody else, which are what I call hero videos.

I don't know what you call them, but it's a really great, great term. That's exactly what we call them. Good. And so one thing we're doing to sell our franchises, I mean, when you're selling a $30,000 franchise and asking people to sign a seven-year franchise agreement at $997 a month franchise royalty fee, that's a high ticket sale. And yes, you can sell your franchise with logic and talk about how it's a turnkey system and how you're going to get support and we have

done for you funnels and all that. Logic works, but everybody connects deeper with emotion. And we all connect deeper with emotion and then justify the logic through emotion. And so we create these hero stories. For example, right now, as we're filming this, it's Veterans Day. Actually, today is Veterans Day. And Ben Jones, who is a Fit Body Boot Camp owner, and he owns seven Fit Body Boot Camps in Arizona. He was in the Army, and he was a military police. And we sent our film crew out there last year to film him. Okay. And, you know, he was in his fatigues. He's walking through the barracks and we were able to kind of get the National Army Reserve there, let us get on board their barracks. And he's shooting a rifle and then you see him get into a civilian clothes and

running his fit-body boot camp. Got it. We showed an emotional story of an American soldier who is in service of his country, but still wants to take care of his family, his community, and his has a passion for health and fitness. And that one video every year sells more and more franchises for us of people who are first responders, police, firefighters, and military. And during this time of the season, during this Veterans Day, Memorial Day holidays, is when we launch that video on Facebook,

buy traffic with it, and then drive that traffic to our sales reps, right? And so we have that, you know, listen, if we want more female owners, we have literally female hero case studies of Fit Body Boot Camp owners, who are, you know, tell the story of, look, I couldn't even afford diapers. We have one Fit Body Boot Camp owner. Her name is Stacey Cutler.

She's told this story offstage at Fitness Business Summit. Man, before she joined FitBody Boot Camp, when she had her baby, when the doctors and the nurses walked out of the hospital room, she got up and she stole a whole bunch of diapers and put it in her bag because she knew that she didn't have enough money to even buy her new baby diapers, right? And we have her tell that story again. And we kind of depict it in the video. And so if you can make these hero stories and not just be logical about your product or service,

I don't care if you have apparel or a supplements or a franchise like I do or a coaching consulting business, whatever it is that you have, you've got to get a case study, someone who's a walking, talking billboard of your product or service and go deep into their story and identify why they're a hero. And people who identify with them will end up buying more of your products and services. No, that's a game changer. Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's that aspect of the hero marketing and anybody can make these videos and what I tell people do is you've taught me this very well is that that music that goes with it that and you can get royalty free soundtracks that just have this emotional heart tug music you have to have that and then you simply ask a couple

of questions to somebody and then you do some B rule and the questions go like this it'll simply be where were you before you started coaching with me or before you found fit body where were you in life, you know, point A, the prison that you were in. And then what was the big breakthrough that you had with the coaching or, you know, as a fit body client or a fit body owner? What was a big breakthrough you had there? And then what were the actual specific results that you got? How much money did you make? How many locations do you own? How much weight did you lose? Whatever it is that you're helping people with. And then finally, who would you recommend this for specifically, right? You want to be as specific as possible. When you have those four questions, great music, some really cool

B-roll. Like, I just did one where we were at Speed Vegas with one of my clients. He owns this company called Speed Vegas. Exotic cars. We were driving stuff, drifting, all these cool stuff. But then he had an emotional story of how he was at the Vegas shooting. Then he came to one of my events, got the business of his dreams. Now he, you know, his family is great.

His business is great. All through the coaching. And it just makes for a powerful story, right? Yeah. And now most people might be thinking, well, listen, what if I don't have the crew to send out in, you know, okay, it's great. I'm looking forward to 2019. I want to make a lot more money, make a bigger impact,

but I don't have the film crew to send out to get the hero story. That's okay. You could always just take a picture with your client who's successful, and then on social media tell that hero story. See, in 2019, more than ever, people want to connect with people versus just your story of, hey, look, I look, I made more money, or, hey, look, I fly in private jets. They want to know what is the impact that you're having. So go ahead and take a picture with the client who's been successful.

share their story instead. And when you share their story and their journey, you're going to have a deeper connection. And then you can follow that up with. If you vibe with this, you might want to come to my next workshop, or in my case, you might want to go to FitBody Bootcamp.com and fill out a franchise agreement,

or in your case, you might want to come to the Perfect Life Retreat. And before you know it, you've got an audience who's ready to pay. Yeah, but I will challenge you, and I'll say with an iPhone and some of the software and doodads that you got these days, you can definitely make that content

because that's something, that everybody's really just a social media machine these days. Yeah. Yeah. So you're doing something pretty cool, man, with Instagram. You got on board Instagram two years after me, and I dare say you use it better than me. We're generating money.

You still teach me a few things. But, yeah. Well, I trying to keep teaching you is, hey, upgrade to the iPhone 10. Right. I think I'm trying to teach you right now. But in all seriousness, how are you using, because you've got this metric, and every time I speak from stage,

I always give you credit for it. Hey, Craig's taught me that we need to get $2. per new user per month or per new follower per month, right? Yeah. One, how did you get that metric? Two, how do you get that conversion to happen? Because you're just a pro at that. Well, yeah.

So it's just through the experience of me going through and selling stuff through the Instagram direct message system that I have and making the content leading, sometimes the phone calls and through the application forms, all that stuff. And just the experience showed me that that was the rate. And then I started coaching coaches to do it. I started coaching real estate agents to do.

I started coaching people who have even products to do it. And that's about the going rate that you should be able to get one, $2 per follower. And the reason is, is because you're not a robot, you got human emotion. And so you mentioned before, like you thought you kind of dismissed that Instagram itself just might be a passing fad. And I didn't join it until February 15, 2017. And then just at my event on the- You would remember the date.

Of course. Well, it was right after Valentine's Day, so I always remember that. Sure. And so a bunch of people this weekend said they couldn't believe how many people, they didn't ask, when they made all these connections at my event, they didn't ask for a business card, they didn't ask for a text message, didn't ask for an email, they said, what's your Instagram? Instagram is the new business card for a lot of people. And so this thing is still got legs. There's a lot of room. That's the social media that everybody's moving towards.

It's just so easy to share, and that's where you need to get into. And then in addition to that, I'll say the great thing about Instagram is the multiple ways that you can use video to portray that human emotion, whether it is videos on your feed. When I try to do at least one video on your feed per week, daily video stories. And then the cool thing that I've talked about before is let's switch from text message to video direct message just to do those quick messages. So today, I've already done video messages with somebody from Holland. I've done video messages with somebody from Australia. I've done video messages with multiple people in America and Canada who were at my event and also somebody who traveled all the way from England to my event. I did video messages with them.

And it's just that, hey, you know, just quick. Hey, awesome. Thanks so much. Or when a lot of people who were at the event said they were really skeptical of me, they were like, oh, this is another event. I don't know, you know, they were just getting the email marketing. And then they reached out through Instagram. Then I got back to them with a video message. five second video message, just like, hey, great to hear for you man.

I'm going to send you all the details below. And you could actually do, like you and I were talking before, about having a custom video just off screen, about just making not a custom video, but a generic video for messages. You can just have a generic five second video that you could upload and send to somebody as well. But I try and make real videos, the ones that disappear, and just tell them that the text message below will have all the information in it.

It's a human touch. You know what's funny is, as you and I have talked about, more and more about Instagram being a business card. It truly is. When you think about a business card, it might have, if you're lucky, a smart entrepreneur might use both sides of the card. Sure. Right?

And they might put a little saying or otherwise, if it's a real estate agent, it'll be their picture, the organization they work for, Century 21 or whatever. Phone number. Phone number, what they do. Yeah, maybe a website. But when you tell people what your Instagram is and they can instantly go and follow you. Yeah.

One, the first thing they're going to see is, obviously, when they land on your page is your profile. Like, what is the description that you write under your profile? Well, I'm going right to the numbers. I'm like, because I check how many people follow them and how many people do they follow? And if you got more, if you follow more people than you have followers, I'm like instantly like, okay, this person's a joker, right? Really? Especially if they follow thousands of people, you know that they were one of those people who tried to do the follow, unfollow. Yes. And you're like, oh, so you clearly don't get marketing. You don't get personal communication. Um, I'll still, I'll give you a second chance here, but that first impression is not so well.

Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that because how you structure that your profile page is everything. And exactly what you said, the number of people you're following versus the number of people that are following you, whether if, listen, if you say a public figure, if you've got your name and then it says like, mine says, it says Pedro's Kuliana, and then it says entrepreneur underneath. If you say public figure or entrepreneur, but then you have like 140 followers, you're not a public figure. Now. Period. No.

Don't put public figure because now the message you're sending, as Craig said, first impressions or everything, the message you're sending is in my head, I think I want to be a public figure. But the reality is... I'm an influencer. I got 118 follows. Don't write that stuff that you're not. And then instead, go and write the accolades that you have. So my said CEO, Fit Body Boot Camp with a little arm flexing. Three times, Inc. 5,000, an entrepreneur 500 listed company. Yep. 700 plus gyms worldwide. National bestselling office. and the Empire Show and then a link to an Empire episode. And if you just look at that... Let's be brutally honest, and you can say it. You don't have to make... It's not going to make me feel bad.

You've got the blue check mark. You can say it. All right. I don't have the blue check mark. I did see someone do something creative. You know how you can write your name and put an emoji next to it? Somebody wrote their name and put a little diamond, which is kind of like a light blue diamond.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. And I have to do a double take one time. But listen, if you can get verified, it does help you. because all those things buy you credibility and authority. So, number one, if you're not filling out your profile completely like I have, like Craig is about to talk about his, you should. Number two, all of your posts better be congruent around one or two specific messages.

Like mine's about peak performance, reaching your fullest potential, especially as an entrepreneur. Of course, I talk about mindset, et cetera, but it all is geared towards being an entrepreneur. You won't find one minute on promoting a protein line next to you. an apparel line. Next minute, I'm saying, be an entrepreneur. Next minute, I'm asking, who's got a job for me? Right. You know, I have your tree training. I got a job for you, buddy. I got some ditches that can be dug. Right. Right. So, so what do you got? I'm curious. All right. So I have Craig Valentine, author of the Perfect Day formula,

creator of turbulence training, armflex, perfect life workshop, boom, Empire Podcast, and then a link to social story selling system, which is in my Instagram course. So we have that. that. Now, I will say, I was just with a smart Instagrammer yesterday, and they knew my story system very well, and I was like, okay, give it to me straight. How can my profile be better? And he goes, you need a little bit more professional stuff because I'm a pretty raw guy, put stuff out there pretty quick. And he's like, listen, you've got access. You just had this big event, put a little bit more high, high quality polish stuff on my page. So that's one thing that I'm working on. But I will say that my video of me singing karaoke for the first time has 4,000 views of me doing the Bon Jovi song here.

Is that one of your higher views? Yeah, it is one of my higher views of me. I love that. I love that. I watched that four times. Yes. So four of those views are me. Yeah.

All right. But folks, again, going into 2019, I'm telling you right now, when people still ask me for business cards when I'm speaking at an event or whatever, and I instantly tell them, hey, go to Instagram right now. Because remember what you could do, you've got a chance for one link as well. well. Right. So most of the time, the link in my profile goes to Man Up. And let me just share something. In 2019, if you're not doing the strategy I'm about to share with you, you're leaving money on the table and you're leaving customers off your list. Most of the time, the link in my

bio on my Instagram profile is to Manup.com, my book's homepage. And the reason for that is, one, we use a Facebook pixel on that page. So as soon as you hit that page, I'm building an audience on Facebook and I can retarget you and get you to buy my book. Number one. Yeah, same with my course. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Number two, when you go to manup.com, there's an opportunity for you to give me your email address for a free course. So I'm trying to take you from Instagram and put you on my email list, right?

And of course, number three is if you were to buy my book, and I don't care if you buy it from manup.com, from Amazon, from Barnes & Noble. But by promoting my book there, my book really ends up being a 182 page sales letter that tells you who I am, what my vision and value. are and how I can help you. That book has bought me more authority. We've we've already had the book spent out eight weeks and we've already sold seven franchises because of it right, right? Because people said hey I bought it. I jive with you. I connect with you and I dedicated half of one chapter to talking about why creative fit by the boot camp who it's right for and who it's not right for and when people read that they get qualified. So I'm telling you guys this right now

that your Instagram account in 2019 and beyond is going to be your biggest and best card. Absolutely, absolutely. So, 2019 is going to be a game changer of a year. I'm super excited for it. You're super excited for it. FitBody's going to go to the moon. We're going to have a great time. And we have taken care of you today so that you know what to do to prepare to have cash on hand and grow your business faster next year. Hey, thank you so much for joining us on the Empire Podcast show. The best way you can thank us is to leave a five-star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast platform. And of course, leave a comment and share this podcast with a friend.

And if you'd like to grow your business to the highest level of success, go to bedroskoolion.com forward slash empire and fill out the application where you can join myself and Craig Ballantine in the Empire Mastermind Group.