Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - The Truth About Making Money - 065

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

In this episode, Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne share some gems of wisdom that just missed making it into Bedros’s new book, Man Up. They discuss topics like hanging around honest friends, bringing on the wrong investors, and selling hard offers. Watch or listen now to also learn why real entrepreneurs work and vacation when they want to, not when the world tells them to. “I’m obsessed with the outcome and I’m in love with the process. Those are the two things you need to be an empire builder.” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 0:50 - How to live by your own rules and create your own holidays 8:00 - Why evolution is mandatory in today’s business world 9:02 - Why you can never assume success before you achieve it 11:43 - What are hard offers, and why are they so powerful? 16:08 - Why your business partners can actually limit your potential as an entrepreneur “You need to be constantly evolving or looking for the next thing.” - Craig Ballantyne Grab Man Up today: https://manup.com/

When you're hanging out with your friends, are you talking about money? Are you talking about growing the money? Are you talking about using the money for impact and meaning and significance? Are you asking them how you can help them or how they can help you? If that's not the conversation, if the conversation is about the fucking baseball game or soccer game or football game that took place, you don't own that basketball team. I am here with Badros Kooley and the author of Man Up, How to Cut the Bs and Kick Butt in Business and in Life. Do you like the PG version of your book? I do like the PG version.

Thank you. My name is Craig Balencien. And welcome back to another episode of the Empire podcast. Pedro, I know what happens when you write a book. You come up with a lot of great ideas after that, you know, you have to write 2.0. So let's talk about new man-up lessons. Oh, sure. From the book.

What would you call them? Well, one of the big things I've been talking about recently is entrepreneurial obsession. Like, if I could go back and rewrite the book right now, it would really have a chapter dedicated to entrepreneurial obsession. But since I can't rewrite it, we'll talk about it here, right? All right. Yeah. So the other weekend, you know, it's Labor Day weekend. I'm watching you gallivanting across the country, as you would like to do, gallivanting.

And you're in Miami, then you're in LAX in St. Louis in three days on a long weekend, while everybody else, and one of my friends sent me a message and said, hey, enjoy the long weekend. I didn't even know it was a long weekend. So, man, you're out there doing what it takes. Talk about how important that is for successful entrepreneurs to be obsessed, addicted to the growth of their vision, and relentless. First and foremost, you and I always tell people,

you got to be contrary. You got to do the opposite what everyone else is doing. If you do what everyone else is doing, you're going to get what everyone else has in life. And what everyone else has is really trivial, bullshit, debt, anxiety, depression, right? And so it was Labor Day here in the States.

And, of course, everyone was taking and joined a three-day weekend. Hey, I'm all good for relaxing, but I'm not going to relax just because the masses are going to relax. Just like when it's Valentine's... Make your own holidays. Right.

Yeah, when it's Valentine's Day, all of a sudden, that's the one day a year you're going to be good to your sweetheart. Well about the rest of the fucking year, right? And so, to me, me, anytime I'm told to do something with the masses, I actually rebel against it. And I think anyone who wants any level of high, tremendous amount of success in their life must rebel against what the masses are doing. So it was Labor Day, I labored. You labored. So instead of relaxing

on Labor Day, I was, I flew to Miami the two days before and I was on Grant Cardone's show, Power Players. Yeah. Had a great time with him. And in fact, you want to talk about someone who's relentlessly obsessed and focused on his money, Grant Cardone. And then, I flew from there to L.A. And I didn't even go home. I lived just outside of L.A. I literally flew in and spoke at Dan Fleischman's elevator boot camp. Right, with all the letters.

Yeah, yeah, Lewis House, Ed Milette, and Andy Fersillo, all the big dudes were out there. And it was great hanging out with them. And then that night, going back to our previous podcast, by the way, that night they were starting a big party for Dan Fleischman. It was his birthday. And they had some rapper come out to sing and whatever. Now, I could have stayed.

And if I stayed, I made. I may have stayed past my bedtime. I may have eaten or drunk or smoked something that I probably shouldn't have. And so after I spoke, I hugged it out with all the guys and left before the party started because I was getting back on a plane the next morning. So I just stayed at a hotel by L.A.X. Oh, wow. Yeah, actually right where you see.

Home. Holy cow. Yeah, stayed at a hotel and flew right to St. Louis. Went back east again. Went to St. Louis where I was on Sean Stevenson's podcast, Model Health Show. And, well, why am I doing this? Because I'm relentlessly obsessed with an outcome. Like, I'm obsessed with the outcome and I'm in love with the process. Those are the two things you need to be an empire builder.

Be relentlessly obsessed with the outcome. For me, it's to take this entrepreneurial mindset, the fighter jet mindset, and install it in everybody. Even if you have a job, you work in a career, be the fucking intrapreneur in someone's entrepreneurial sphere, right? Don't just say I'm going to clock in and clock out and do the bare minimum. Like, be the fucking best at what you're doing. do when you're behind the desk or on the assembly line or whatever it is that you do.

So I'm obsessed with the outcome and I'm obsessed with the process. Like I love the challenge. I love flying and I love connecting with people on the airplane. I love every step of the process. So I've got a book to sell. This book's not going to hit New York Times bestseller list on its own. So I have to push it to the top of that list and that's exactly what I did. And I do it through entrepreneurial obsession and I see you how you get obsessed.

Like you know that you're going to impact 10 million people's lives with how to you're How does it go? Your mind. Physically, financially, mentally and emotionally. I love that. Like, you know very specifically how the impact is going to be delivered. Yeah. And you don't rest because it's Labor Day, it's Fourth of July.

It's the fucking Queen's birthday. You just go. Right. For example. So while you're gallivanting around the country, as you do. I'm a gallivanter. That's right. I'm sitting in the back of an Uber going from, you know, my home on the farm to Toronto,

because I'm flying to LA the next day. And, you know, most people, when they get in a train or a plane or a car, they shut down, right? Oh, it's an excuse for me to do this, that. or whatever and not do anything. I'm in the back closing people left and right through Instagram direct messages. This is how I found out how I could elevate my empire, you know, over a year and a half ago. And since doing that, I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in the back of an Uber. Instead of wasting time, I am using time properly.

And again, you and I both went on three week holidays to Europe this summer. It's not like all we do is work, but we live by our own rules. We have rules of engagement that we've set for the world to operate with us rather than us to operate underneath the rules, the earth's, the world's rules of engagement. No, we control the game. We are the ones setting the rules. I think that is so important. So what are some other stories that, or lessons that didn't make it into the book, maybe about leadership or maybe about your vision? What is it that you can share with people like, hey, listen, this is a real inside stuff here?

Yeah, yeah. So before I get to that, and I will. I want to talk about something else, too. So in that four-day period over Labor Day, I was in three different cities talking to three different high-level entrepreneurs. Actually, a lot of different entrepreneurs at an elevator boot camp. Like 40. Yeah. There was one point, there was a picture on Instagram, on Lewis's houses, on Ed Milettes, on Andy Fricillis and on my Instagram account, where Lewis is holding his camera and we do a group.

He does a selfie with all of us in it. And we estimated there was about $5 billion in revenue in that little green room amongst like 10 or 12 people. Yeah. And so whether it was with Grant Cardone or the guys in that green room at elevator boot camp or with Sean Stevenson back in St. Louis, the conversation with all three of those ended up basically it was this one and there was all the formalities how's life, how's everything, but the deep conversation goes to how do you make your money? What do you do with it to grow it faster? How can I help get involved? Right?

Serve. How can I serve? And I don't know about everyone else listening to this. or watching this, but I challenge you, when you're hanging out with your friends, are you talking about money? Are you talking about growing the money? Are you talking about using the money for impact and meaning and significance? Are you asking them how you can help them or how they can help you? If that's not the conversation, if the conversation is about the fucking baseball game or soccer game or football game that took place, you don't own that basketball team.

Ed Milet, actually at Elevator Boot Camp made a good point. He goes, it baffles me that people will wear other sports athletes jerseys and they'll have their last, name on it as though you're on their team, you somehow get revenue from it. You don't own the team. You don't make anything off the big paycheck. You lose everything from it. Why don't you wear your own fucking jersey, right? That's the entrepreneurial obsession that I'm talking about. Like, wear your own jersey, be on your team, try and grow your money instead of trying to grow their money. They have enough money. How about you growing your money? And so some of the big lessons that I also left out of the book because otherwise it would be in the encyclopedia

is, like thing number one is people aren't evolving fast enough, right? Right. Like, evolve faster. There used to be a time that marketing was direct response through snail mail and you write a letter, send a postcard, et cetera. The internet came about and what used to take every 10 years to change, now like every few months, right? When there's an update on Facebook, on YouTube, on Instagram, marketing evolves. Man, some guys get, you know, with the last one on Facebook, some guys' businesses almost got wiped out. Yeah. And this happened in 2009 with Google Slap and all that stuff.

And it's like, you need to be, first of all, you need to not be. just relying on one thing, but you need to be constantly evolving and looking for the next thing. And that's what I've always loved about you. Like you guys are on FitBody Boot Camp 4.0. Not Fit Body Boot Camp 1, 4.0. And it's bigger and better than ever. Yeah. So you've got to evolve faster than ever.

You've got to understand we live in a time right now where things change comes so quickly, and if you don't evolve, you perish. Right. And so let that be known. The other thing is making assumptions. Too many people, and I was sharing this lesson with Vince Del Monte's father, Luciano Del Monte. too many people make assumptions. They just make the wrong assumptions.

Oh, I assume my industry is going to turn out this way. I assume the economy is going to still keep thriving in the next five years. You can't make that assumption. If you are making home run ad campaigns right now, go all in on those ad campaigns because you don't know if you wake up tomorrow and two other airplanes have hit a building and the economy crashes. Or Facebook does an update and those campaigns stop working. So go all in.

Don't make the assumption that this is going to go on forever. Yeah, the haydays are going to go on forever. Yeah. Another thing is wanting to please or wanting to not hurt anyone's feelings. Since when did we become people pleasers so much where you are willing to neuter your life, your business, your sleep pattern, your health, your relationship, in exchange to not hurt someone's feelings or to get validation from them. Right. Like, hey, I'm all for making you happy, Craig. Like, you're one of my best friends. But I'm not going to make, try and attempt to make you happy and sacrifice my relationship with my wife, my kids, my health, my final. So if you're like, hey, B, let's stay out tonight and snort cocaine, not you ever would. Actually, if you said that, I probably will. I'm going to be very honest here.

If you said that. Why? Because you might be like, what? The fact that I'd be like snort and cocaine with the world's most disciplined man on the plant. Like, I would probably do that and it would be my first time snort and coke. But anyway, the point is that oftentimes we attempt to overplease people and try and get their approval and we sacrifice so much of our health, relationships, mindsets, and finance. Yeah, can I interrupt you there? Like, I think this also goes, like you were saying, hey, I'm not going to please Craig and sacrifice my family.

But I think it's also important that you're not going to please me by not having, like, difficult conversations. Like, you'll call, you, like, a good friend calls somebody out on it. So you're not going to be a people pleaser and say, oh, yeah, Craig, your new idea. Yeah, it sounds good. You know, let me know how it goes. And you say, no, Craig, that's a bad idea. You need to, here, listen, I'm not saying you're a bad person, but it's not a good idea. Here's what you're going to do.

You're going to course correct, like we do in our mastermind. group for our people. So I just want to go a little bit off track here and talk about how I see so many people, for example, one of our friends has a good Instagram following and she told me what the advice she was getting to make a pretty grid, a pretty grid of her pictures on Instagram, paying good money to make a pretty grid. Listen, the only people making money with pretty grids are the people teaching you to make pretty grids. There is absolutely no money in pretty grids on Instagram. Same with, you know, like people who are these life coach. or these heart center business coaches. Listen, that's nice, it's cute. I understand you want to be

positive. But it is not a hard offer. Hard offers must be made. If you don't, if you're not a guru, if you're not Tony Robbins, you can't sell on, you know, date with destiny. He's the only guy that can sell date with destiny. You can't go and sell heart center business stuff. You know, you need- Tell our friends what a hard offer is. Hard offer. Really falls under three categories. You must be able to help somebody make more money, get more sex, or lose more weight. Around there. So, obviously something like build more muscle would fit in with lose more weight, but also get more sex. But it's really about those three things. And if you're just starting out and you need a front-end offer and you're not making any money and you're struggling with these, oh, you know,

productivity or habit things, those are not strong enough offers, you know, to ignite your soul. Man, I see that all the time. Or to inspire people. Right, right. That is not a hard offer and you are not a guru and you cannot sell that and you will go broke and you will go back to a nine to five and you will sacrifice your soul to ignite other souls because it's not a hard offer and we have to lay the smackdown on that today. I love that. I mean, is there any other reason to go on right now that other than put a period on that one? No, but the biggest thing that I want to stress that Craig just hammered on is that you cannot sell intangibles. Right. Tony Robbins, right? Right. And I know it feels good to have people come in it. And the reason people want to sell, ignite your soul and I want to inspire people and motivate them to action is because it feels good when people come to us and go, hey, Craig, you know, that one post you put up or after coming to your workshop, I was inspired to create this outcome. Right. That's a rare thing. But when they come to your workshop, they come there for a very specific thing. Right. To either make money, to improve their relationship, which falls under the get more sex, right? Or to lose weight or put on muscle their health.

take back control. Yeah. And when they fix that one area of their life, yes, they're also inspired to work on their other areas of life or significance or impact or charities. But if you think that your main front end of offer is going to be igniting a soul motivation or anything like that, it's not going to happen. Listen, the end of the day, the reason why so many people get caught up in that is because all these people are saying, hey, that was a great post. It was really motivating. And so they're like, oh, well, I should go and make a product around this. But listen, at the end of the day people vote with their wallets and they are not going to vote they're not going to upvote that offer with their wallet they are you know you're still going to help people but on such a

small scale because you won't have any money to then start advertising more and impact more people you have to have the hard offer it is absolutely important let's uh let me just be very honest and and share with our audience here this is the empire podcast like we're not talking about just building a owning a job right that's you can go on a small you can open a small business in your community, a donut shop or whatever you own a job, or hey, you know, a garage or dent removal or that's cool. Or you can make 40 grand as a heart center. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. And you could even have a small business online, right? We're talking about building an empire that has true significance where you know you're reaching your potential. And our friend that Craig was talking about,

she has over 600,000 real followers, by the way. These are real humans. She's a celebrity that was on TV for 15 years. I didn't know that when I was talking around the phone for 15, for 15, years she was on TV and she's paying someone a thousand dollars a month like you said to have the grid the top three so each day she posts it fills up the top three spots yeah yeah so it looks pretty and you can't even tell like i didn't even know that looking at it was like really yeah i can't even tell now and i know and when i found that out i immediately told her you've got to stop paying this person a thousand dollars because that grid that's pretty will not convert followers into dollars right and you got to go and buy craigs what it was a 500 or a thousand dollar course that you

you have on Instagram, right? And so, of course, we're going to teach her how to make money, and we're going to coach her up on that. But my point is, if a person who's been a TV celebrity with 600,000 followers can't figure out how to make money using social media and, in fact, right now it is running out of money. She's on her last $30,000 of her savings, then you've got to understand to build an empire. You need an offer, a hard offer that's so unique and special that it solves a problem or create such value that people are wanting to give you money for it.

And ideally, they want to pay you money over and over again. Like, that is like entrepreneurial obsession empire building shit. Yeah, absolutely. And that actually leads into another lesson that one thing where I have great respect for you, I've said this over and over and over again, is that when you were building FitBuddy Boot Camp and there were some, you know, bumps on the road, people were coming to you and saying, hey, I would love, you know, I love your mission, I want to support you, I want to invest in your company, and you turned everyone away.

Yeah. Now, you turned everyone away and said, no, I'm. I know where I'm going, I have very, very clear vision and mission, whereas beginning entrepreneurs, they'll go to that person on the white horse, right? They'll hire that person who promises them these great things if I just manage your social media or whatever. And so there's way too many people are relying on partners or people as a crutch. So, I mean, that's not the man-up approach. No, that is not the man-up approach.

And in fact, I talk about it in my book, Man Up, that, and I learned this lesson from you, right, about there is no man on the white horse that's going to gallop in and save the day. It feels good, especially when you're stuck at the crossroads. Like, I don't know what to do. I'm actually starting to fall into debt. Competition is starting to rear their head. And I think I need a partner or I think I need some money. However, what we really need is action. Right. All we need is action. And I was very tempted to give, you know, there's a guy that you and I know. He offered money during the start of phase of Fit Body Boot Camp. I'm not talking about a couple hundred thousand. Like he offered millions of financial injection. And then just most

recently, J.W. Childs, which is a M&A firm, right, offered us $30 million. No, thank you. Not interested because I'm clear on my path. I'm self-funded. I know what I want and I'm headed towards that outcome with blinders on so that I don't get distracted or tempted by bullshit opportunities, right? Yeah. And I just want to say to people that are starting businesses, they know it's going to be scary. And so they think, well, if I just had a partner to lean on that, you know, it would be easier. Well, listen, it's not. There's all types of things. things, problems that come up with partnerships. And if they don't bring any tangible skills that you don't have, if they don't complement your skill set, if they don't bring money, capital to invest in

their business, you don't go and give them equity and make them a partner just because you need somebody to lean on. You know, you can't do that. You have to man up and build the empire on your own, build that team to support you. But don't go giving away your business. Please, please, please, do not go away giving your business. Now, you and I have a partnership because it's built around the fact that we complement each other's skills, you know, you're the beautiful one, I'm the smart one. And most importantly is that this is not our main thing. We do our own things. We do this for fun to give back and also make a little bit of money while we do it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we love running the Empire Mastermind and it does make us good money and we love running the Empire podcast

because it's part of our way of giving back, right? We don't have to do this. We, in fact, have committed to never running ads on our show. And the reason for that is we truly want to give back. But when you look at what Craig does with early to rise and his his coaching programs, and then of course what I do with my separate masterminds in Fit Body Boot Camp, it's two different animals. Down the line, I may go into business with him, but that kind of leads us to something else. I mean like a bigger business. And you and I were talking about this and me and Joel were talking about it. I've known both of you so long that I feel I've seen the worst, the best, and everything in between. Right. Right. Most people who try and

partner up with someone, it might be a client or someone that you know. Someone they met at a seminar for three hours at the bar. Oh, I should go into business. Yeah. May as well get married to somebody you met at a bar. Yeah. I mean, honestly, you wouldn't do that, right? You wouldn't get married to someone that you just met at the bar. So why would you go into business with them? That's complicated marriage. Going to business with them without a formal written agreement, just a handshake with somebody you met at a bar at an internet marketing conference of all places. He's talking about a true story, by the way. Yeah. So you don't do that. Listen, at the end of the day, the lessons that Baderos has in Man Up, the lessons that

we've talked about that didn't make it into Man Up, 2.0, whatever it is, or into his courses that follow up, it's really about you. It's about you taking it, taking all the, the ability, the power to have the decisions about your life and living life on your own terms. Amen to that, man. Amen to that. And so with that said, guys, by the way, if you don't have a copy of Man Up, you can go to Amazon or your favorite bookstore or just go to manup.com and get a copy of Manup, these six pillars of Ones. Entrepreneur Leadership and Peak Performance, I promise you will change your life. And every single pillar that I talk about, I've gone through.

And I went from being the guy that was broke and underpaid. I was literally losing more franchises than I was gaining in 2011 and 12 to now we've been on the Inc. 5,000 list three times in a row. Entrepreneur Magazine's 500 Fastest-Browing franchises and, of course, top 15 franchises in the world. And I'm blessed to say that I put all those lessons in this book with the stories. that accompany it, so it's also very entertaining. Just find it at manup.com or Amazon. And thank you so much for watching and listening to the Empire podcast. Thank you so much for joining us for another amazing 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.