Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - The Secret to Getting Stronger…in Business - 067

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

Want a brain that oozes creativity, a focus that can’t be broken, and energy to outlast anyone? In this episode, Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne explain how fitness gives you an unfair entrepreneurial edge over the rest of your competition. Watch or listen now to discover why your success in business is related to how often you put yourself in uncomfortable situations. “If we can overcome the (challenges) in the gym, we train our body—mentally, physically—to also overcome the challenges that come to us as entrepreneurs.” - Bedros Keuilian Here's what you'll discover: 1:41 - Why getting fit actually sharpens your entrepreneurial instincts 3:23 - How to create success habits by putting yourself in uncomfortable situations 5:42 - How the strongest challenges bring the best out of you as an entrepreneur 9:31 - Why travel is no excuse to veer off the healthy path 11:36 - How to relentlessly pursue your goals like a Navy SEAL “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to do the work. You have to get started.” - Craig Ballantyne

If you're an entrepreneur and you're not working out, you're not challenging your body, you're not going into the gym and giving it your all, you're just dogging it in the gym and dragging ass. You're a little bitch. Hey, Craig, what do you, me Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rock have in common? Well, we're all beautiful men, and I think I know where you're going here, but you tell me. Well, you're right. In addition to being amazingly handsome, we work out. We work out. We're fit, we're jacked, we stay in shape, we make that a priority, and we are hard, charging. entrepreneurs and that's what I want to talk about today. Yeah, I think there's a really great

overlap there about the lessons that I learned in the gym when I was 16 years old. I went to the YMCA for the first time in my hometown. I remember doing a bench press workout and I remember leaving and I had like one of those old little four tempos and I could barely lift my arms up from my first workout to like grab the steering wheel. But that set me down the path of discipline and entrepreneurship and, you know, structure, routine, all of these things and and relentlessness and resilience that allowed me to become successful. So I think, is that where you're going with this one? That is where I'm going.

And hey, friends, welcome to another great episode of the Empire Podcast Show. My name is Pedro Coolean, and this is Craig Ballantyne. And this is the podcast where we help you take your idea, your mission, your vision, and turn it into a business that can scale into a massive empire so that you can make a big impact and tons of income. So one of the things that obviously I wanted to talk about here is the connection between entrepreneurs who are jacked or in great health physically fit and entrepreneurship.

Another person that comes to mind is our friend Ed Milette. Oh, yeah. Max out. Max out. The guy's like a brick house, right? He's got like the gun show going on and he's a relentless focused entrepreneur. And one thing I realized very quickly when I started working out is we put ourselves through, I mean, think about what happens when you go to the gym, whether you decide to go on a five-mile run

or you go to the gym and lift weights or you do yoga and Pilates, it comes to a lot of discomfort. Sure. It comes with a lot of new territory. If you're working out in the gym, you're probably going to increase the weights or the repetition or you're going to do it faster. If you're running, you're probably going to add another mile or two every few weeks or months. We're always increasing the resistance to challenge our body. Well, what's great about that is the parallel between the exercises that we do in the gym

and our desire to constantly challenge ourselves with resistance and do the discomfort, uncomfortable stuff. That happens in business. Like, we have to challenge ourselves as entrepreneurs. Each year that we're more successful comes with new challenges and setbacks and adversities. And if we can overcome the ones in the gym, we've trained our body mentally physically to also overcome the challenges that come to us as entrepreneurs, don't we? Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just, you know, when you say like every year you have to get better and better.

But even within every single workout, you know, there's going to be some sets are tougher than others, some exercises. And it's the same day to day. I mean, you post that very popular picture on. Instagram where it's like, here's my day as an entrepreneur. It's up. It's down. It's way up. It's way down. It's way up. It's just like that. And that's how every workout goes. That's how every day goes. Now, I am curious, how did you get into working out? Well, for me, it was a girl, right? Her name was Nikaya. And of course, it was a senior year of prom. I wanted to ask this girl Nikaya to the prom. And I was like 35 pounds over fat. I'm maybe going to say overweight because one might think that was

bone density and muscle. It was just straight up over fat is what I was. And so I started working out and eating right, and one of the guys on the high school football team who was in my science class ended up helping me with, because I didn't know any programming for exercises, he helped me. And so I lost the weight. I never asked out Nakaya, but it changed my trajectory in life. And truth be told, I was a pretty lazy kid. I ate like cereal, breakfast, lunch. I would have eaten it for dinner if my mom didn't force me to eat something else. And so, you know, when... And Arby's. Yeah, well, actually, there's something else was Arby's and Kentucky Fried Chicken,

so it's not that it was anything better. But the bottom line was that when I started working out, I realized there's this addiction that comes from lifting weights, challenging your body, you know, running out of breath and still going forward anyway. Yeah. And the feeling after of having done something, being productive, having a purpose, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I also love the stories about, you know, we look at Arnold, the icon. I mean, you hear the stories if you've ever done any research about Arnold, not only did you.

he trained hard and he did all that resilience, persistence, everything. I mean, he overcame so many objects and probably channeled a lot of that through his training. But he also was an entrepreneur from day one. He knew the importance of getting in, being an entrepreneur, buying real estate. He was sleeping on a couch, more sacrifices while he had bought real estate, but he was sleeping on people's couches back in the day. Yeah. And that's the thing that people who work out, who are fit and jacked do, is they put themselves in uncomfortable positions over and over again. Because look, no one is forcing you to wake up early in the morning and go on a long run. No one's forcing you to wake up and do 100 burpees. I think our friend Joe Polish was doing like 100 burpees every morning for a while. I hope he's still doing it. No one's forcing you and me to wake up and go to the gym and just put ourselves through a brutal workout. But the reason we are doing that is because we're building a routine in life. It becomes a consistent pattern in our life. And just like the challenges that you'll have as an entrepreneur, you need routine, you need a pattern to overcome those challenges as well and to me it's been a game changer I'll give you an example I realized real

quickly one day that as an entrepreneur I'm always gonna have challenges resistance adversity most people who are entrepreneurs and don't work out the first time or two they deal with a setback they start questioning maybe this isn't my path maybe I shouldn't be doing this maybe I should be doing something different for me because I've always worked out ever since high school I realize hey wait a minute the best things happen to me once things get tough. When I'm working out and I need my spotter to come in there and give me another spot to eke out another few reps. When it burns, the lactic acid is building

up and I'm sweating and I'm hot and I'm running out of breath. That is when my body sees the greatest amount of positive change. Well, I just draw the parallel to my business. Oh, when something tough is happening right now in my business, holy shit, I'm about to see a big breakthrough financially or with impact. And so I don't stop. I excitedly go through the repetitions as an entrepreneur, just like I do in the gym, because my outcome on the other side is greater than the weakness on this side. Absolutely. So if you look back to like, remember your first fitness business someone, I love this story. We didn't even have a stage and no one could see me at the back, but you went and did the next year it got better. The year after that, it got better. The year after that

it got better. And so entrepreneurs, one of the things that, those that train, one of the things that they both have in common there is that they started. They got started because most people don't get started. Being an entrepreneur is tough, it's scary. Going to the gym, it's tough, it's scary. But if you can go to the gym and get through that, then you know, like, hey, I can get through anything. And so you go out, you get started, you overcome that initial inertia, and then you make it that habit in the routine. I remember when I was in high school, I would go to school all day, then I'd go to my part-time job, and then after my part-time job, I would go immediately to the YMCA in Stratford, Ontario, and lift weights there, and I still go back

there sometimes. And then I would go home and have dinner and then do my homework. And it was automatic. It was automatic. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a choice. It was okay, get in the car, go to the gym. And because I built that up, when it comes to entrepreneurial stuff, it's like get up, going right, then go and do your calls, and then follow the script that you have for the sales calls. And it's just following those rituals and routines build success. Because none of this is rocket surgery. You know, anybody can go and go to the gym. And we know a lot of fitness competitors who, you know, they aren't the, you know, NASA rocket scientists. That's for sure. But they follow the plan. And same with entrepreneurs. You don't have to be the smartest person in the

room. You just have to do the work. You have to get started. And it all starts with you building up that both, you know, kind of like that entrepreneurial muscle like you build the muscle in the gym. That's exactly it. It's the consistency because we get hooked on the fact of consistency builds muscle or consistency burns fat. Consistency makes me look younger. Consistency in the gym makes me more, gives me more energy. And that same consistency, going back to how you do anything is how you do everything, you can't, you're not going to find someone who's jacked and athletic, but has poor work ethic. Right.

You're just never going to find that person. Great example of that is The Rock. Yeah. Right. I mean, here's a guy who was a pro wrestler and kept himself in tip top shape. We know plenty of pro wrestlers who are not in great shape. Right. He was a pro wrestler.

Because you're traveling on the time. You got all the excuses. Right. You got a million excuses. The time delay. I'm traveling. body doesn't feel right. Food, you got to eat. And now he's an actor. He'll shoot for 8, 10, 12 hours at a time. And he's shooting at different parts of the world, different time zones. He's out of

his element. Yet he always makes time to work out, which is why he's also the most consistent and the most profitable celebrity out there right now. Absolutely. It is a huge game changer. And so what I want people listening to do right now is just think about, man, remember how good it feels when you go to the gym because, listen, we're talking about building the habits and all that stuff, but you also are building the energy, the energy that allows you to focus. And so, you know you've gone through times where you traveled on a work trip, and as soon as you travel for a work trip, and as soon as you get in that airport, you're like, oh, all the rules are off. I can go to Antianns and get a pretzel or a Cinebon or whatever. And then you go to the seminar

and you spend all day sitting down, and then you go out and have these heavy meals, and you go home feeling like crap. But you also know how you feel when you're consistent, when you've had those work trips where you do go to the gym, where you get outside, you go for a walk, you get sunshine, you eat healthy, and you know how much more energetic. You have been on both ends of that extreme. And you know that if you want to take it to the next level, it's time to take this mindset, this fitness mindset and apply it to your life. It's no joke that guys like Ed Milette, even Grant Cardone's working out, all the female entrepreneurs you know, they are consistent with their workouts and their habits and it's because it builds that base foundation. Imagine, imagine yourself, your success

foundation as a pyramid. If you got to build that foundation first of your energy and your success habits, including high performance self-care stuff so that you are able to build a very high profit peak at the top of your pyramid. Amen. And to that point, you know, to anyone watching and listening to this episode, you're probably thinking like, but what if I travel? Does that make it okay? Like Craig said, hey, all of a sudden you're traveling, that doesn't make it okay to eat Aunt Annie's pretzels. No. So if you're traveling, you know, It doesn't make it okay to stop working out. And in fact, the guy behind the camera on this side, there's two guys on the cameras right now.

The guy behind the camera on this side, we got to St. Louis. I was doing Andy Fricilla's podcast, the MFCEO project. Big shout out to Andy Fersilla. Make sure after you're listening to this, you tag him and you let him know, we give him a shout out, show Andy Fersilla some love. And that guy's showing the journey, too, of entrepreneurship and in the gym. Yep. He's paying his dues, as he says. And we got to St. Louis, like, 11 o'clock at night.

And I was like, dude, I'm going to go to the gym and work out because it was still shoulder day. It just so happens that I'm in St. Louis at the four seasons, and I got to be on a show with Andy Fasilla, but it's still shoulder day. I'm training arms and shoulders, and nothing's going to stop me. And so I did. And so you remember our Navy SEAL friend who applied for a job here? When I was talking to him upstairs, he goes, look, here's how I look at my days. Every day I have a mission, and part of my mission is to make money, to keep my body healthy, to work on my mindset. And it doesn't matter what goes wrong in the current job that I have.

or if I went to the gym and then I had to leave the gym. If today my mission consists of getting a workout in, I will not go to sleep until I've accomplished a mission. And I started thinking like, man, I'm not a Navy SEAL, but I'm going to start thinking like that. Every day I have a mission to move the money needle, to move the impact needle, to work on my fitness, to make a deeper connection with my family.

And that's part of my mission. I'm not going to go to sleep until I've accomplished my mission. No high-performing special forces guy is going to go to sleep and just give up without, they're all about the mission. That's so funny. It's because I recently gave that advice to a coaching client of mine, and I used the phrase operator.

And actually, I stole this from Jared Glant, who works with Grant Cardone. He said, I'm an operator. And I'm like, I'm an operator too. And I use that same mentality. When I go and when I'm traveling for work, I am going to give a great speech at an event, but I'm also going there with the mission of staying on my routine. First thing I do, when I land, I don't go to the hotel. I go to Whole Foods.

I'm on a mission to go to Whole Foods. My backpack is packed out. I know where exactly the protein bars are, the nuts are in the backpack. I know I'm going to go and grab water. I know that there's no excuses. All I have to do is be planned and prepared like an operator. And one of my clients, he said, well, I go and do these certifications, and then I go and get drunk with people after, and I come home and I got sick.

And I said, that's not how an operator operates. An operator, the operator goes in there, and they're on that mission. And I don't read the seal books that you do, but I get the lessons. from these seal books. And I remember you telling me about either, I think it was no easy day, the Marco Stretel story, whichever one that one was. And they were just, you know, they were on a mission.

If they had to sacrifice themselves, it didn't matter. They had an operative that they had to do. And so they went out and operated like that. And I thought, you know what, if they can do that, like you felt like that. It's the same thing. And so there's no excuses.

You just have the plan. And then that's another thing that we get from training. You don't go into the gym and just kind of wander around because even those people, with experience have had those workouts and they're not good workouts. No, the best workouts are when you go in there and say, I know what I got to do today. Maybe I don't feel like doing it, but I've got the plan. I've got a great training program and that gives you faster results.

And then that bleeds over in a business where you go, well, listen, if I go into the gym and get better results with a training program, it's probably going to give me better results in my business if I go in with a plan. If I go to a coach, which is another thing that, you know, people in high performance athletes, bodybuilders, fitness competitors, they get a coach, They follow their coach's advice. They have that plan. And it's such a parallel between business and training that if you have a plan and a coach, a plan in a coach, you are going to get better results than anybody else in the competition.

That's the bottom line. And here's the big lesson I'm going to give to everyone listening to this episode right now is that if you're an entrepreneur and you're not working out, you're not challenging your body, you're not going into the gym and giving it your all. You're just dogging it in the gym and dragging ass. You're a little bitch. And if you're being a little bitch in the gym, I promise you, you're being a little bitch in business. And that's why your business is struggling. Guys and gals, I get excited about working out.

I know Craig does too. And so does Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Rock, Ed Milet, our friend Andy Fersilla. You look at the best businesses and you will find people behind it who work out relentlessly. Jesse Itzler. Yeah. He's like a working out machine. A hundred mile runner, you know? And he had, you know, living with a seal.

Shanda Sumter, a friend of Jesse's. She loves her hardcore endurance training. It doesn't matter. I built my business, making fun of endurance training. I don't care how you train these days. You just need to train the right way for you that builds that unstoppable mindset. And that's going to be a game changer in your business, your family life, everything. Because how you do anything is how you do everything. Right. And that's the bottom line. We thank you for watching and listening to this episode. To tell your friends, family and your mama all about it. We'll see you later. Thank you so much for joining us for another amazing episode.

episode of the Empire Podcast. Now, the greatest compliment that you can give to us is liking, loving, and sharing this episode with all of your friends. So please go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating and then share it online and social media with everyone that you know and make sure to tag us because we love hearing from Empire listeners. And if you own a business that's doing half a million dollars or more in annual revenues and you know it's got massive potential and you like myself and Craig Ballantyne to help you scale it by 5x, 10x, and 20x in the shortest amount of time possible, then you might be a great candidate for the Empire Mastermind program that we have. To learn more about the Empire Mastermind program, go to bedroskulian.com forward slash empire.