Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Remove Yourself From Your Business - 017

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Steve Jobs didn’t work in the Apple store selling iPhones, and Ray Kroc didn’t flip burgers in the kitchen of McDonald’s. Why? Because they created fool proof systems, and outsourced their lowest common work to other people who could do it better. Listen to Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne talk about why you need to scale and structure your business so that you can extract yourself, and focus on your zone of genius.   Here’s what you’ll discover:   1:20 - How Bedros’ severe anxiety attack pushed him to remove himself from working in Fit Body Boot Camp so that he could work in his 5% 3:12 - How you can create a system and hire people you can outsource your lowest common work to to free up your time. 7:43 - You can create a system in any industry! 8:44 - The two steps you need to take to extract yourself from your business. 12:07 - How being a strong leader will allow your team to perform to your standards.  

The biggest reasons, by the way, that we fail to scale our business is not because we need money. We're too lazy to create a system and a process to hand off to someone else. So we go, oh, you know, I'll just keep doing it myself. All right, picture this. The other day I went to the movies, and George Clooney was the guy who was taking the tickets. Can you believe that? What? No, it's not true.

And you know what? George Clooney doesn't take tickets. Steve Jobs never worked in the Apple store and sold iPhones. and Ray Kroc wasn't the guy making the hamburgers at McDonald's. They extracted themselves from their business, and most people who have a business think they can't do it, but today you're going to prove them wrong. Isn't that right?

That's right. I'm Craig Valentine, and this is Badros Kooley. And this is the Empire Podcast Show. And what we're going to talk today about is making sure that you set up your business so that there's scale and structure so that you can leave it. All right. How have you done that with FitBody Boot Camp? Well, again, I'll be fully transparent. If you remember back in 2014, I was everything in FitBody Boot Camp.

I was the guy that ran in the Facebook ads. I was the guy that tried to write the creative for the ads that we ran an entrepreneur magazine. And then when the prospects filled out an application, I was the guy trying to sell you a franchise. And then once you bought the franchise, I was the guy coaching you on how to run your franchise. I was it. Wow. Here's what happened. And, you know, most people have heard the story before, but for the handful that haven't,

I actually had an anxiety attack so bad that summer of 2014 that I thought I was having a heart attack. And I went to the hospital. And I know you've had a crippling anxiety attack. And the same things happen to you. You had to have a personal training client take you to the hospital, I remember. Yes. Yes. At least point in my life. Yeah.

And if you want to put yourself in the hospital, do everything you can all the time in your business, which is impossible. I mean, like you said, you don't see all those guys running their businesses. You certainly don't see Richard Brenson flying any of the airplanes on Virgin United, right? You're not going to walk in and open up the pilot, the cockpit, and there's old Richard, you know, with a martini, right? And so what I had to do for Fit Body Boot Camp when I was doing the marketing and the sales and the operations and the coaching was I had to step out and say, is this how Subway, McDonald's, 7-Eleven, Anytime Fitness, is this how they are running their franchise and their reality is it's not. Well, you know what? Everybody's sitting there saying, ah, you can do it, but I can't. I have clients who get upset when they don't see me. I have clients that got upset when they didn't see me. Oh, and they just say, I can't get out of there and I feel bad. No one does it as good as me. Right, yeah. I don't have the money to. Right. And I know that because those were my objections that I gave until I had that anxiety attack. Go on.

Okay. So those are the objections. Now, what can we tell our listeners to do? about how they can scale and replicate themselves, find people who are actually better at a lot of the things that they're doing right now. So their business grows, they have more time for themselves, and they don't end up with anxiety or stress. In fact, right now, as you and I sit here in the library at our headquarters, there's a team of 38 people upstairs selling our franchises, servicing our franchisees, and selling our coaching programs that we have out there. And you and I didn't run any of the ads. We have two guys in two different states running ad campaigns for us. And we've got a team of four closers doing all the selling for our franchises and coaching programs. And we've got a team of 12 during the branding and operations and coaching.

And so when you're wondering, well, where do I begin? Ask yourself, what is the lowest common thing that you're doing right now that you can give away to somebody else, right? Now, for me, that wasn't the selling because I knew that there was no one who could sell a FitBida, Bouta, Bucan franchise better than me. However, I also knew there was people who could run Facebook ads better than me. And so the way I looked at it is if I could just tighten the belt up for a couple months and have pay someone else because, yeah, you've got your budget plus the marketing fee. And I outsourced the marketing for two months. I got more leads, better qualified leads. It made my selling easier.

I sold more people and all of a sudden I can afford the traffic buyer. So there was one way. As that funnel kept growing, I made enough money where I could actually find another closer. I soon pulled myself out of the selling. Now I was doing the operations and the coaching of new franchisees. Then I asked myself again, which of these two can I let go? Well, probably not the coaching of new franchisees because I want them to be successful out the gate. So I'm going to let that go last.

So at this point, somebody was buying our franchise ads for us. We had a closer full time. And of course, I stepped out of operations and I brought someone in to do the operations. which was pretty much paint by numbers. The biggest reasons, by the way, that we fail to scale our business is not because we need money. We're too lazy to create a system and a process to hand off to someone else. So we go, oh, you know, I'll just keep doing it myself. Well, good luck. You're going to be a one-person show. It only takes me an hour. Right. It only takes me an hour a week. So I don't want to spend two hours making the system. Right. But if you made the system,

you could free yourself up for an hour over and over again, right? Absolutely. Now, again, People are saying, they're thinking, oh, but you run this big franchise. I just have this mom and pop store. I have a gym. I can't leave it. So tell us about some success stories that you've coached that have extracted themselves from smaller businesses. And how do they do it? All right.

So one young man comes to mind, and by no means does they have a business degree or anything. He's got a kinesiology degree from Michigan State, I believe. His name is Matt Wilbur. You know Matt Wilbur. He actually was so broke. He pieced together two or three credit cards. to buy one Fit Body Boot Camp franchise. And he was just like me, he was it.

He was selling memberships, he was cleaning the place, he was creating the workouts, he was creating the nutrition plans, and he was following up with the clients and the leads making sure that everybody was serviced. But he soon realized that he's got this need to make a bigger impact. And I said, Matt, you just have to get together

enough money for a short period of time to tighten the belt where he can hire an assistant. So to him, what was the easiest thing that you could let go, Matt? Well, I don't have to do the follow up if I have someone else doing the follow-up for me. So we hired a part-time person for like $13 an hour, and he was able to free himself from doing the follow-up with leads.

Now his job was not to follow up with leads, but just to close the leads into paying clients. Soon, he had enough money to bring on a trainer. So he would close the leads into paying clients, but he didn't have to service them anymore. He had a trainer who was doing the servicing, which means what? He opened up more time to do selling. The more selling you do, the more money you make.

Before you know it, you got trainer number two. Before you know it, you got salesperson number one under your belt, which means he can go on and open up location number two. And today, he's got five Fit Body Boot Camp locations, just three and a half years, just three and a half years. That's all it took. Three and a half years, he's got five Fit Body Boot Camp locations. And he signed on the dotted line for 10 more locations.

And it's not because, you know, he was born with money or he had an MBA. It's simply because he understood that he had to let go of something. some stuff, systematize it, and outsource it to others if you want it to scale his little empire. Awesome, awesome. Now, again, people are saying that, well, I'm not in the fitness industry, Badro, so how would this possibly work for me? Well, look, it works in every industry. For example, Gordon Ramsey is not taking your order at every single one of his restaurants. He's not cooking at every single one of his restaurants. I don't even know if he cooks anymore. The guys out there selling the Gordon Ramsey experience and opening up multiple.

restaurants just like the chef from Nobu and just like Wolfgang Puck and all of these guys. And what have they done? They put really great systems into place just like Ray Crock did back at McDonald's where they made it paint by numbers. So simple. Here you go. Here's how you can do it. Other people come along who are better than them. You know, I'm sure everybody who is a waiter or waitress at Gordon Ramsey's restaurants is a lot more personable and a better waitress or waiter than you know, you know, I'm sure everybody who's a waiter or waitress at Gordon Ramsey's restaurants is a lot more personable and a better waitress or waiter than you. he could possibly be. So he's hiring better people, putting in place the systems, and that's how you extract yourself. So what's the first step? The first step today. So the first step is this, really. You have to identify the number one thing that you can outsource to someone without having fear and anxiety creep in. Like I said, for me, it wasn't selling. I knew that I could sell better

than anybody else. And with a small number of leads we were getting, I needed to make sure that every lead converted into a franchisee. So the only thing I could outsource was then the actual traffic buying, because I knew there was people out there better than me of buying traffic. I just didn't think I could afford them. So I tightened the belt for a couple months, and I found my way to affording them. And so that's the first thing you've got to do is identify what is the one thing that you can outsource to somebody else right now so you can free up more time for yourself to do the

more valuable things. The number two thing is, how do I document this process so I never have to do it over again? I can create a process, which is a system, and a system saves you time, effort, and money, right? And you hand along the system. People run systems, and systems run your business. And it's the documentation process that everyone thinks it's boring, it's too tedious, so I found a shortcut for it. Hire someone on a temporary basis who's OCD, and they're going to hang out with you for an entire week and document every call you do. They're going to record your call.

They're going to record your emails. they're going to document everything. When someone asks prices, this is how he answers. When he has to leave a voicemail, this is the voicemail he leaves. And what you've done is you're creating a process manual. Someone else is documenting everything, either through an iPhone recording or oral recording. Before you know, it's all documented in a three-ring binder, and then you move on to the next department, which is marketing, sales, operations, support, coaching.

Yes. And so what you have done there is you've found someone who's better than you at doing something, which is putting together the systems in place, so that you stop doing those things. And I'll tell you what, one of the things that I see so often in the people that come to me from my Perfect Life workshops is that they say they don't wanna do things anymore, but they keep on doing them.

So I want you to say right now with conviction, I will never do so-and-so activity again in my business. I'm gonna outsource that to somebody right now. It's gonna save me time, energy, and money. I'm gonna build that system. I want you to make that commitment right now, And that's your first step of getting out of your business so that you can scale. You can have more freedom, make more money, and have more time for your family, just like you've been able to do.

As you grow your franchise, you're not working less than ever, but you're not working as much as you did when you were struggling, right? Right. And I'm working on the things that are within my zone of genius. I have fun doing them. Like, this is the stuff I love doing. I love being the face of my brand, right? and I love sharing a message through passion and purpose. I could do this all day long.

So actually, how about this? I'm working more hours, really, when you think about it, but it's hours that don't fatigue me, exhaust me or stress me out. They make me stronger and they empower me because it's in my zone of genius. Absolutely. So get yourself on that plan. Get rid of the things you shouldn't be doing. Get people in that should be doing them and be that leader of them, right?

And that's one other thing. That's the one thing we'll close on. can you say about the power of being a leader as you extricate yourself from that system and that business so that you have the true scalability? You know, every single business out there is scalable. And I was just reading a book by Jockle Willings. Oh, yeah. Right?

Actually, rereading it, truth be told. There was the third time that I'm reading it because I just love extreme ownership. So in case people are wondering what's the book from Jock Willings, Extreme Ownership and he's a Navy SEAL. And he really talks about leadership. Here's the crazy thing. He talks about how in Buds, basic underwater demolition seal training, they take these rubber boats and they have teams of seven guys in each boat. So there was six teams. Team number two kept winning. So the cadres would say, hey, you guys are going

to take the boat all the way out, 150 yards, turn it upside down, get a right side back up, get back in, fight the waves, carry the boat over your head, walk around the sand berm, whatever. so all seven teams had to do it. And so it's six guys and a leader. Team two keeps winning. Team six keeps failing. One of the cadres came up with an idea. He goes, what if we just switch the leaders?

Nothing else, right? Remember, team two keeps winning. Team six keeps losing. And so they switch leaders, and on the very next race, team two wins. Again. But team six comes back into second place. Got it. Into second place.

So what happened? A strong leader went into a weak environment. So there is no weak team members. There's only weak leaders is what that defined. Soon enough, team two and six were neck and neck, right? Because now that leader got played up to become a better leader by the boat crew. Yep. And then the leader here on Team 6 got the weak boat crew to play up to their expectations, to their potential.

The point of this was that there is no weak team. There's just weak leaders. So leadership is always the problem and leadership is always the solution. So the number one thing I can tell you about being a leader is one, be decisive. Make decisions, make them fast. They don't have to be the right decision. They just have to be a decision. Otherwise, when you procrastinate, hand ring, take too much time, you really end up

letting competition eat you up alive. Thing number two as a leader is that sometimes there's easy work and it's the fun work and the creative work that you can do. Sometimes there's a hard work. And hard work involves either delivering bad news or hard work involves creating a system. manual, which is not exciting. It's not sexy. It's not sitting here making a podcast video, but that's the stuff that the leader does. The leader does the tough work with as much enthusiasm as the easy and fun work. And that's what differentiates winners from losers.

Awesome. I love how you said that every business is scalable when you have a good leader in place, when you're putting aside your ego and hiring better people than you to take over the tasks you shouldn't be doing, putting boundaries on your time and what you do. And that is how to you take those steps getting out of your business, growing it, and living that dream life that you have, all because you're building your empire, right? Yes, sir. All right. See you.

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