Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Trump VS Biden - 168

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

What outcome will the upcoming U.S. elections between Vice President Biden and President Donald Trump have on you and your business as an entrepreneur? Hear what Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne have to say on everything 2020 Presidential Candidates.  01:19 - Hear about the first time B was asked to think about the impact this year's elections could possibly have on his Fit Body Boot Camp business.  02:00 - Are real riots a possible threat to communities here in America 04:47 Here’s a practical way to prepare and protect your brick and mortar business if you have one?  13:20 B’s gut feeling on what happens if President Trump wins and riots continue to increase in America.  15:53 How to think of and prepare for your customers if riots are occurring.  17:40 Hear how business should pivot to online if possible. 20:54 Craig shares what a super entrepreneur is and why you need to truly become one yourself.  23:55 No matter what side you’re voting for, here are the real steps of how to truly make America great again. 

When the good times are upon us again, just remember that you have to work like a savage. You have to work like a savage and prepare for the winter because winter once again will come. Hey, I don't know if you're voting for Trump or Biden. And quite honestly, I don't care who you're voting for as long as you exercise your constitutional rights and get out there and vote. But we want to talk about on this episode of the Empire show, Craigie, what happens if Trump goes into power again? And what happens if Biden goes into power in terms of your business? Oh, okay, not in terms of Canada invading. Right, right, because Canada might invade.

Right, I mean, we were thinking about it. I wasn't going to say who, on which one, but... Listen, the best thing would be if Canada and Mexico teamed up, if this is, if y'all can see my desk right now, those of you that are on the, just the iTunes right now, you're out of luck. But if on YouTube, you can see my desk, if this is Canada and this is Mexico, if you all teamed up, it would be great. There would be better beer. Yeah, it'd be amazing beer, tacos, and pork. chops. There you go. And maple syrup. Right. What more could you have? Maple syrup is really the big deal. So listen,

it is a serious conversation to have. It is. And I'll tell you where the idea of this episode came up with, ladies and gentlemen, is, you know, we're sitting in our level 10 meeting every Tuesday. And our compliance officer goes, hey, look, you know, we've got to bring up something serious here with our franchisees for a fit body boot camp. If Biden goes into office and if he shuts down the country, goes on lockdown for a month or more, How are we pivoting fit body boot camp where people aren't going to be working out in gyms? Are we going back to online coaching? And we saw the last time that online coaching peaked, but then it started the taper.

Are we going to have shorter programs and keep changing them out? And so that conversation led to like, man, what about all the other businesses? So we ought to share this on the Empire Show. Well, before you even get to what he does, you have to deal with the fact that for, I don't know how long, there's going to be a lot of trouble whether, no matter who wins, because if the gentleman in power right now doesn't want to leave, you're going to have problems. Are you insiduating riots?

I'm saying you are for sure going to have riots, and I don't know if they're going to go until Thanksgiving and then maybe take a little break, or they're going to go. What? Yeah, yeah. Until they riot at Walmart, and then they're done riding at Walmart and Target

and then back to, I don't know. But I've told my team, my clients that, you know, no matter where you are, if you live in a big city, I wouldn't want to be there if you can. Like our good friend Matt, he rented a house 40 minutes outside of Denver. He rented a ranch. He's like, I don't want to be downtown Denver. You know, there's people setting up tents and all this stuff. And it's just not a great place to be. So if you do have the opportunity to get and you don't have a retail location, then I would make sure that your family safe. Now, on the other hand, if you have a retail location, I got three with FitBody Boot Camp. Obviously,

we got lots of Fit Body Boot Camp owners listening. There's lots of people with restaurants, with everything, you know, real estate. Restaurants, nail salons, you name it. Yeah, real estate, everything. Obviously, you have to take into account that it's going to be a period. These are my outside Canadian eyes here. There's going to be a period of turmoil because it's unfortunate. I love American people. I really enjoy coming here. I haven't been here in a while. It's good to see you guys are still here. But the divisiveness is something serious. And I don't know exactly how that's going to turn out. But I think that even before you get to a point where somebody can impose a whole bunch of stuff, you have to understand that there's going to be like June and July, we're bad.

I think this November is going to be worse. I mean, people in Michigan probably, this is the first year, they're ever going to pray for early snow, right? Right, right. Yeah, just to help taper off the riots and stuff. But to that point, so those of you that have businesses, look, Craig and I are here to serve you guys, right? We've never had a single advertiser on this show.

We have no intentions of having an advertiser. Obviously, if you like what Craig and I offer, the coaching programs that we have, like the Empire Mastermind or Craig's courses on how to build your social media following or his coaching or the project or whatever. Great. Come on board with it. You want to buy a Fit Body Boot Camp franchise? Great. You want to go work out at one. Awesome. So we have no other agenda and I don't care who you vote for quite honestly. But what I do care that if riding breaks out, if looting breaks out, I want to share with you what's working for us and

what's going to work for us. So thing number one, we did. If you have any kind of brick and mortar business, right, hell, even a home, you might want to ask your insurance company is my liability insurance going to cover rioting, looting? Because whether it's a hair salon, a product store, a service place, a gym, beauty salon, it doesn't much matter. If a natural disaster is covered, but a man-made disaster is not, then you might be out of luck when your place is burnt down, looted, or whatever. Now, we have to look at the worst case scenario. Let's hope it doesn't happen. Because the wrong people are going to take this as an opportunity to do the wrong things. Right. They just are. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, that's, I honestly never thought of that.

Yeah. That's really great. So those are some of the considerations we're putting out to our fit body owners as of next week. Like, hey, contact your insurance companies and see if this happens, if rioting happens, if looting happens, if a customer or client of mine on their way out from my business gets injured. Right. Is the negligence on me or the looters or the city? Right. Right. Obviously, some punk kid looting is not going to have money. So where does the lawsuit fall? Right. Right. And so those are the things that have to be taken into consideration as an entrepreneur because we are going through a bit of a revolutionary time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Now, so what about in how you are talking to your team? I just had a conversation today with them in our regular weekly

meeting and I said, hey, listen, if you need time off that day to go and vote, you know, do your thing. You know, we don't want your work to get in the way. You're absolutely, like I said, don't care who you vote for. You just, you know, you've got the opportunity and we're not going to stop you. But then I also told them something similar to what I just shared. It's like there's going to be some turmoil. You know, we have a couple people that live in major cities in America. And they're on, I don't even know what kind of side of the fence they're on.

But, I mean, it's not really matter to me anyways. But, you know, I just told them, be careful, be safe. So what do you tell your team? You know, you've got way more employees than I do. What do you tell your team and how do you prepare them for what's, you know, there's just, it's just not going to be great on November 4th. Yeah, well, it's funny to say that, right? So we've got our...

When you wake up on November 4th, I mean. Yeah. I'm going to tell you funny story about that. Don't go voting on November 4. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're ready for this? Like, my whole plan was to be home during that November 4th, fourth, fifth, six, right? Just to be near the home front. God forbid something happens. I like knowing

that I've got some savages here with me, right? All the project instructors here in town. If we needed to take up arms, I'm sure we don't, but if we needed to, we could. Well, just last week, we got a call from the Idaho, Idaho National, what are they called here? What it was the state military called? What? The National Guard? Yes. Air National Guard. The Canadian knows. Yeah. The irony that the Canadian would know. The Idaho Air National Guard has a program for youths, 16 and 17 years old that are troubled youths, teens. And they go, hey, give yourself to us for your last couple of years as a teen. We'll get your life on straight. Oh, okay. And then you go into the Air National Guard from there, right? And so they asked us as project instructors to come out there and run them through a workout the weekend after the election.

Oh, right? Okay. So here's what's really cool about that, though. We're all flying into Idaho, Boise. And then from there, we're taking Blackhawks. No way. Yeah, they're picking us up in Blackhawks and taking us to the air base. The problem there is that everyone who was going to defend the home front is gone, right? The SWAT operator, the SEAL, the Marine, myself, the MMA guy, we're all gone.

And so if you're going to come and loot HQ is a place to come. Well, you know, remember last time for the last election, we were here, or I was here, and we were at sushi 10 eating sushi and kind of paying attention. And I was actually really surprised the next day when we woke up. Like I thought Hillary was going to win and she didn't. I was like really confused at first because I don't know if I was listening to it. I think I was in an Uber listening to news. I'm like, did that really happen?

Anyways, I was very surprised. this one could be a surprise as well. So we got teaching your team, making sure that your team's taken care of, making sure that your physical location is taking care of. Let me share with you what we're going to do with our team here. So next, I think it's next week. Yeah, in a week and a half as we have our monthly team meeting here

right before the election, I plan on letting our team know that, hey, look, we're setting up contingencies and obviously a lot of the people that are staying behind here, that if you feel like you live in an unsafe environment, number one, and you need to move away, just like Matt for a period of time, three, four, five days.

You want to go Airbnb, be it at Big Bear or somewhere rural. Go for it. And you can just work remotely. Number one, that's the option. Number two, you want to bunker down here at HQ. If riots break out, if looting breaks out nearby, and you can make it to HQ. You're welcome to come and bunker down here. We'll have food.

We'll have water. We'll have protection. We're going to have that all in place, even though me and the guys will be gone. But that's unfortunate. Like, I never thought that we would be having that conversation with my team and that we would even be making a protection, a plant like that. And I asked Matt, who's our compliance officer and former SWAT operator, I said, YHQ, why not my property?

He goes, well, your property is great, but it's got a lot of entryways to it. Here we back into the highway. We got a two-story building, three-story people on top. You know, we can set up barricades. I'm like, all right, stop. Don't even tell me anything else. Just come up the plan. Like, he had it all set up.

And then if the poop does hit the fan, we go through the fence, right onto the highway. Like, everything's set up for success, assuming something like that happens. but it's just so crazy that we're even planning stuff like that man yeah seriously seriously like i'm just looking forward to dinner tonight yeah like you and i are going to go eat a steak together right right so so if you don't have a swat team member on your team right i guess the most important thing is to communicate give people the option yeah not only take the time off to vote but the time off to you know stay safe obviously yeah because think about this if you have an employee who is obviously going to drive through an area because it's not just, hey, there's no rioting where I'm at

and there's no rioting where the work is. So I'm going to drive to work. We've seen this happen many of times, actually during the L.A. riots this happened in the 90s, where if you have to drive through a riot-ridden area and now your employee just got car jacked and beat up, who's liable for that? They're coming to work. Yeah, okay, your car has insurance, but make no mistake about it, you're now liable as the entrepreneur as well. And we saw actually when these riots were happening where in Portland in Seattle there was one that happened in Utah where an older gentleman drove was trying to just navigate oh yeah I heard about that and somebody shot at him um he was just trying he was he him and his old lady are just trying to drive through they happen to find themselves

in the situation and he's trying to get around and they start jumping on his car he panics he steps on it someone pulls out a pistol and starts capping it's just bananas and so riots in Utah yeah I know of all places yeah this particular one yeah yeah yeah but anyway I share this with you because as the entrepreneur business owner leader, you must take every scenario and person who's under your protection into consideration. Yeah. And once you get through all this,

do this exercise for your business on a regular basis because if you aren't at least somewhat prepared for the threats that you can't expect, then doing that sort of stuff protects yourself for years like 2020. Right. Yes. Right.

All right. So people do that and they do that. And if they don't have a SWAT team member, then they just communicate properly. Now, let's go to the after thing. I mean, if Trump wins, is it just riots on end, but everything else business as usual? So my gut tells me that if Trump were to win and riots were to happen, let's assume they might, right? They're going to be, they're going to start off protests. And depending on the new internet.

think they're just going to go. Or they're going to flare up his riots. Yeah. But if, if Trump wins and the riots happened, then they're going to, and let's just hope it doesn't happen in your area, at some point, very soon, I think he will exercise the National Guard. Oh, yeah. Remember, the reason he didn't do it beforehand, right, is because it's going to work against him trying to get elected. Got it. Right. It's like, well, if he brought out the National Guard in June, July, when these riots were happening than the Democrats. And guys, I'm not picking sides. I'm just telling you how it's going down.

Trump's hands were tied. He was like, look, I want to bring the National Guard out. We've got to stop these riotings in Portland and Seattle and all these other places. But if I do, the Democrats are immediately going to start, like, see what he's doing? He's trying to kill good Americans. Got it.

And so once he's president and it's his final term, he's like, I'm bringing out the National Guard. And so I believe the riots will not continue on, like they have been with all these different cities. So that's thing number one. The thing is, if, if Biden wins, the riots will be worse because he, you know,

assuming he doesn't leave, then they'll actually be worse because they feel like they've won, and now it's being, you know, so. Yeah, and yeah, I'm thinking about that. If Biden wins, we still have Trump for another month. Yeah.

So how does that work? He's, when's he the actual president? In January? January. So we have a whole month and Diane Feinstein. Well, you have two months. You have November and December.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, sure. Shoot, yeah, yeah, two months. And you've got Diane Feinstein who said she wants to exercise the 25th Amendment. And the 25th Amendment says that we can take the president out early and put in the new guy that's coming in. And so Trump's like, hey, that's not going to happen. If Biden, so now if Biden does win, the riots happen because of that. Because people are going to, hey, you should get out early.

No, I'm not. I'm finishing off my term. Feinstein is going to launch a 25th Amendment attack. Stein. Who's she? I've never heard. She's about a 109 years old senator from San Francisco. Francisco. Oh.

Just like this old, wrinkly bat. She's the one. She's the one, by the way, who went to a hair salon without a mask on. No, that's Pelosi. I'm sorry. That was Nancy Pelosi. Yes. I apologize. Nancy Pelosi is. I meant... Ms. Feinstein, we're so sorry. I, I... Hey, Feinstein's not a peach herself. But Nancy Pelosi is who I meant this whole time. So it's Nancy Pelosi who is threatening to do that. So either way, there's going to be riots. And at the end of the day, our job as entrepreneurs are to protect our clients and customers, protect our team, and protect our money, our business. Yeah. So that was the next question. What did we do with the customers? So, you know, like, let's say you have a nail salon or you have a restaurant

and, you know, you're just getting back on your feet. Like, somehow you're expected to operate at 50% capacity. Yeah. Like, you could, you could barely scrape by at 100% capacity. Now you're expected to operate at 50% capacity. And by the way, we all. I love, I love, I love, I love the government's math on how businesses work. And that's what I was going to say is, look, it's no surprise, folks, between myself and Craig, like, you truly are the mathematical brains. Like, you're the brains, I'm the emotions behind this whole thing, right? And so I like that my math turns, my math is powered through emotions.

Your math has actually makes sense. And so I'm like, all right, listen, as an entrepreneur, if I have 100% of my payroll, going to my employees, great, and 100% of my mortgage and my liability insurance and all the things to keep me in business, but I can only have 25% of my clients served at any given time. The math doesn't work out. It doesn't work out, right? Just putting it through the Craigfield Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Not even in the Canadian math. No. So I don't know what the hell is going to happen. Now, the good news is I do believe that if Trump goes into power, he will, goes back into power, he will quickly get out a second round of funding. They're at a standstill right now. And look,

is that going to help your business? Possibly during the next phase of, you know, 25, you to 50% capacity. And we do know the virus numbers are going to eat. Yeah, of course. It's not, if that's not getting better, either. Because it's flu season that's coming up. Right. And any time, like, have you ever sneezed, like, in public? Bro. Like, and you're just like, do anybody hear that? Yeah. I sneezed in the stairwell, the hotel today and I have the mask on it. I'm like, ducking in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a bad human if you do. Right. You can't even sneeze. Remember when that was okay? Yeah. It was okay to sneeze and, like, to just cough because, while you're human and you have a little ticket in your throat.

Here's what I'm suggesting. For businesses that can take their services online, you're going to want to go online. You're going to want to go online. Now, what does a hair salon, nail salon, restaurant do? This is probably the time where you start thinking creatively. And what I thought about is our annual, what we do with Fit Body Boot Camp.

And if you're a gym owner, you guys should all do this. And then just send me a DM and let me know how much money you made. The average Fit Body Boot Camp will make like $30,000 to $50,000 when they run this promo, the Black Friday promo. The Thursday, or sorry, the Friday after Thanksgiving here is Black Friday, for those of you that are non-U.S. residents listening. And we run a Black Friday promo on Black Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And the idea is you pay in full for a year of Fit Body Boot Camp membership,

and you get two months free. You pay in full for 18 months, you get five months free. Right? And we sell a certain number of those, because you don't, When you sell those, yeah, you get a big influx of money up front, but you drop your EFT, your recurring payment, your subscriptions. And so you can say, hey, I'm only selling 15 of those or 12 of those or 10 of those, however much you want to create a nice little cash influx.

But those of you that are nail salons and restaurants and hair salons, et cetera, this is where you end up selling services up front at a bit of a discount to your best customers saying, and you have to be fully transparent and vulnerable about this and go, hey, look, we can't serve you right now, but we want to be in business when things go back to normal. For us to be able to serve you when we're back to normal, we need money. And so we're selling you X amount of dollars in service. Basically, you're buying services for the future. Yeah. And no different than that paid and full Black Friday promo. But that's the thing that's going to save these businesses who can't go online. Yeah. And I mean, I know one of our favorite places didn't make it through you said. Right.

Right. I got so fired up the other day as explaining to Michelle about like, we used to go to this place. I was a place, man. I was angry. Yeah, yeah. So it was a great sushi restaurant out here and the dear friend of mine owns it and, you know, Craig and I would go there. It was part of our ritual where you come into town from Canada and we go there and we hang out and we eat and he just

hooks us up with extra food or whatever and we shoot the shit with him and the dude's been like a pillar of the community here for 10, 12 years. And look, he's a sushi chef. He's an artist. I asked him, I said, what happened? Like, what happened? He goes, dude, the complexity of the paperwork to fill

to get the PPP program was just above and beyond. So he reached out to his accountant, and we later heard through the news, this happened to a lot of people. They reached out to their accountant. The accountant starts trying to gouging you. It's going to cost $2,000 to fill out that form, for grant to fill out that form.

Bro, and if you don't have an HR team or like a whole accounting team like I do, to go, hey, do this and get us our money, that sushi chef does not have time to stop and learn how to do this. That's not his business. zone of genius, unfortunately. But that's the world we're living in right now. It absolutely is. All right. So at the end of the day, you almost just have to take everything that you've done.

You have to become a super entrepreneur. You have to improve your communication, improve your leadership, be more creative with your sales in marketing. All this stuff that, you know, we may have been doing on autopilot a little bit for the last, you know, 10 years that we've had it pretty decent, and some might say better than ever. And so now it is separating those people who are serious about this from those people who were just dabbling. Yeah, and who couldn't have survived in harder times, but couldn't have failed in good times. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of truth to that.

And by the way, this isn't, and I told you so, but what is this, our third or fourth year during the Empire show, two years in, So about two years ago, you and I started talking about prepare for the winter, get ready for the winter, be born for the winter, be mentally strong, emotionally resilient, be ready to pivot, build that email list. Build that text list. If you're wondering, like, why would I have needed an email list? Because today, if you're a brick and mortar business or any kind of business that you can't necessarily see person face-to-face to deliver your product or service, now if you have an email list of your customers and your prospects, you can reach out to them and sell them future services. Yeah. You know, and so when we say winter is coming, make no mistake about it. We will get past this as a nation and as a globe.

We will all get past it. Everything will be a memory and it'll be a distant memory and we'll only remember the fond things and be like, dude, you remember 2020? What a shit show that was. But what will quickly happen, and we saw this happen with 9-11. We saw this happen with D-Day. We see this happen with the big stock market crashes

as we soon forget. We get complacent. We get soft. And when the good times are upon us again, just remember that you have to work. like a savage. You have to work like a savage and prepare for the winter because winter once again will come. Yeah. And so I think one of the last things to say that is when you said, hey, let's do a show about who wins. My first thought was, well, it doesn't matter who wins because you can't control

who wins. You can't control. I mean, it doesn't matter if you go out and you run up and down with a sign. And I, you know, we were driving around Chino Hills and the Uber going back and forth to the gym and I saw all these like homemade signs out. Like, you know, on both sides. And it's just like, at the end of the day, you can't control that, but all you can control is this, your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. You control what you can. You become that control king.

You control your environment. You control what you share with your people. You control your preparation. You control your emotional response when you're around people that you don't agree with. You only control yourself. What goes in and out of your mouth and what goes in and. out of your head. So that's the most important thing. You're always going to vote for yourself and that's the most important vote you're going to make. You know what's interesting about that

is I made a YouTube video about that two days ago and I posted it up on my YouTube channel right off my iPhone. It was just one of those passionate things. I'm like, hey, it doesn't matter who wins. The subject of the YouTube video was if you want to make America great again, wake up early and do the work. If you want to make America again, great again, focus on your fitness and your mindset. If you want to make America again, be productive and focus on what matters, right? And most of the people got the message. They were basically, they understood that it doesn't matter if it's Biden or Trump. You have the greatest influence on your outcome.

But some of the people were like, yeah, it does matter who wins. And you could tell you just a number of exclamation points and caps that they were using. They were so emotionally charged up that they really believed that this one person somewhere in another state where historically no politician has ever told the truth, all of a sudden this one person has got. to make an impact on their life that they couldn't make an even bigger impact on their own life. Paul, politicians by nature, their number one thing is getting elected. So they will do whatever it takes to get elected. And so by nature, you just can't trust them. And so don't put your trust in somebody else, first of all, anybody else, let alone a politician. Put your trust in faith in

yourself and go from there. Amen. And to that point, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching and listening to The Empire Show. Please take a screenshot of this and share it on your social media. myself and Craig, leave us a five-star review. And as always, don't forget to tell your mama.