Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Why Disrupting the Market Will Maximize Your Business - 009

Episode Date: August 23, 2017

When you hear “Uber”, you think of a fast, convenient way to travel in your community. If you really think about it though, what Uber did was identify an opportunity to improve the lackluster “taxi” experience, and give people a better way to travel. Listen to Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne talk about how disrupting the market and finding ways to maximize a product or service is a chance for innovation. See the problem, and find a better way to do it!   Here’s what you’ll discover:   1:25 - What is disruption in the market, and how does it give your business a sales edge. 1:50 - How Elon Musk shook the automotive industry with his innovative battery powered car. 3:30 - How Bedros took the opportunity to improve the problem with boot camps and created Fit Body Boot Camp. 5:35 - How building community disrupts the traditional gym environment. 7:35 - How Uber revolutionized the taxi business by giving people a better passenger experience.

Disruption is really something that when the competition has rested on their laurels is when either through innovation or technology, you come through galloping on your white horse with something newer, better, faster, more affordable. All right, so what does Uber versus taxis, CrossFit versus regular gyms, and iPhones have against my beloved Blackberry here? What do they all have in common? Disruption. Disruption. Oh man, the rise of a new company over. the old guard. Let's talk about how that happens, why that happens, and what that means for everybody listening as they build their own empire here on the Empire podcast. Well said, so, you know, there's a company called Flow Water, and we have it upstairs in our headquarters, and Flow Water

has seven filtration systems in it. Now, I don't know what all these filtration systems. There's like a carbon filter, reverse osmosis, coconut filter. They got a flex capacitor? They got a flex capacitor filter. They got all these filters. But you know how they sold me on their company? And why we installed one here at the headquarters is they said, we are disrupting the market. Within 10 years, we are going to be the company that eliminates all plastic bottles. And what they have on their vending machine is that, so they give you these aluminum jars or jugs that you can fill water up with. And every time you fill up, it tells you how many plastic bottles you've saved from the landfill. Yeah, they do that at the airport. And I'm like, I use that all the time. I'm like, oh, this is so cool.

It makes you feel good about it. And they are disrupting the market. And I just know that big soda companies are freaking out over how this is going to happen. Because the soda companies on the water distribution companies. Got it. So disruption. What the heck does that mean? How does somebody go about doing it?

And why is that so important? And how does that become their sales edge? You know, disruption is really something that when the competition has rested on their laurels is when either through innovation or technology, you come through galloping on. your white horse with something newer, better, faster, more affordable. And I'll give you another great example of that is Tesla. You know, for years, big auto companies have been saying that we make electric cars and this is how they work and this is what you can expect from an electric car.

And the bar was set pretty low and the bar, from what I've heard, is set low for electric cars from big automotive manufacturers so that they can keep selling gasoline-powered engines. Now who comes along? Elon Musk with Tesla and he says, you know what? I've got a better idea. What if I can make a battery powered car go past 300 miles, 400 miles, and soon 500 miles to a charge? And he is making luxurious quality cars that not only go over 300 miles per charge, but outlast in quality anything the GM, Ford, or Chrysler is building today. And that's a perfect example of finding a void and filling it and disrupting a market.

But not only that, they're also disrupting how they sell it. They're not doing traditional auto sales, high pressure auto sales. Remember putty on Seinfeld? Yes. Oh, man, you got to get the rust undercoat and all that stuff. They're not even doing that. They're taking the Apple model, which is another disruptor, and they're selling their cars that way. Now, you have also disrupted the marketplace, and I love the way you did it when you first,

brought fit body boot camp onto the marketplace. Pedro Scoolian brought fit body boot camp into the world because he said, you know what, the way that they're doing boot camps in the park and stuff like that is dangerous. You know, you totally changed the game, just like CrossFit did, but you've done so on a bigger level now by the way that you've franchised. So tell us about how you did that. Yeah, so really, again, it's through innovation, right? You have to look at what is the competition doing wrong or what are they just not doing in general.

And I saw that as a personal trainer, I saw that boot camps have the opportunity to grow big. However, they're not weatherproof. So unless you're in Southern California or Florida where you have great weather. But even then, running them in the parks, people are going to trip over tree roots and sprinklers and all these things. And you don't have access to equipment, which means your workouts are going to be a little stale after a while. So I saw all the glaring problems in boot camps. I also saw the opportunity that boot camps would give fitness business owners. And so I said, what if we can take this model?

and put it inside of four walls just like I had my personal training studios. And we can have a minimum set of equipment that can deliver maximum results. And so Fit Body Boot Camp franchise was born and we franchised in 2012. Here we are 2017 and we've been on the Inc. 5,000 list twice now. And it's simply because we saw an opportunity for innovation and took it. Now, CrossFit, and people think that, by the way, isn't Fit by the Boot Camp and CrossFit competition? Shouldn't you not be talking about CrossFit? CrossFit is not my competition.

McDonald's is my competition. Carl's Jr. is my competition. Coca-Cola, Free to Lay, those are my competition. CrossFit saw another opportunity. They saw that, hey, big box gyms don't offer powerlifting platforms and an opportunity to do any kind of Olympic lifting or power lifting. So they said we're going to create a box that literally has this type of lifting, and that's it. I mean, our client bases between Fit Body Boot Camp and CrossFit couldn't be any different.

And both of us have disrupted what big box gyms. are doing and what personal trainers just to do outside in a park. I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that that's not the reason that you guys are so successful. That both CrossFit and Fit Body Boot Camp disrupted regular gyms in a different way. Tell me more. One word, one word. It's a C word and it's community.

Community. Community. When you go to the... You have to be worried. Yeah, when you... A longer C word. When you go, longer C word, when you go to the big box gym, you go in there, they don't care.

they don't even want you to show up. Right. Right. But FitBody Boot Camp and CrossFit are based on community. That's what brings people together. That's why people go back. It's not even about the type of exercise in some cases. People just want to be part of a community.

And that's how you guys disrupted things too, right? And you know what? You nailed it because, truth be told, when we think about the results that people get, you can get results by watching a YouTube video about workouts and eating right. You don't have to go sign up at a Fit Body Boot Camp or a CrossFit. I mean, people can get results by just watching a YouTube video and going and doing it at the gym that they're paying $10 a month to. But the reason they come to us is because of community.

And when we have surveyed our clients, and we go, what are you here for? It goes, result is always number one, followed up by community as number two, right? And if you have friends, and it's like that cheers where everybody comes to as a second home, well, you're never going to lose clients. And that is a disruption in the way big box gyms did business. Absolutely. So let's boil it down. Here's what disruption comes down to. First of all, identify what's not working, right?

Yeah. Okay, and then also find a way to make it better. Can we talk about the Uber example? Yes. The find a way to make it better, especially our friend in Las Vegas. Do you remember him? Yes. Okay.

And just correct me if I'm wrong on the stories. But Craig and I do a lot of traveling seminars and masterminds. And we were in Las Vegas. Now, if you've been in any cab for any length of time and with the amount of traveling that we do. We've been in a lot of horrible cabs. Cabs where the suspension has been shot and they go over just a little pothole

and the car bottoms out. Cabs where the seats have been wet and you're wondering why the seats are moist and wet. Cabs where it just smells inside. Cabs where the driver's rude to you. And we can figure out how does one go about this? As it turns out, the guys at Uber figured it out. They said, hey, there's people out there right now

who have time and have clean automobiles and they're willing to drive you around in their communities. And we can use an app to connect you, the guy who needs the ride and the guy or gal who wants to give you a ride together. And there's that responsibility of you have to do a good job. Otherwise, you have the crappy ranking. That is so powerful. You and I could never rank a cab driver, could we?

In fact, I've been yelled at by cab drivers because he goes, why did you want to take a cab from ARIA to MGM? You could have walked there. What does it matter if I'm going to tip you $20, right? But at the bottom, the bottom line is we can't rank them, therefore we can't do anything about them. Uber decided that now drivers can rank you. and you could rank them.

So now that there's a rating system, and they've disrupted that market, and they've given us another alternative, a cleaner vehicle, people are polite, and the Uber driver that you and I had exceeded expectations. The guy had waters. He had candy. Candy, gum, all types of refreshments,

like the alcohol wipes. Yeah, you just made it so much better. And you know what my absolute favorite part about Uber is besides the clean car? What's that? It's paid for. paid for. You don't have to whip out the credit card and get yelled at by the cab driver. We don't take credit cards. Yeah. Oh, it's only 2017.

Yeah. Well, you don't take credit cards for. When you think about how many levels Uber and Lyft have really evolved transportation, right? It's not only is it already paid for, you're guaranteed a clean vehicle. Otherwise, that guy's not going to be driving around anymore. It's just a brilliant way to go about it. And it's such an awesome way to disrupt the market. And so when you're thinking about, hey, I've got an idea, but the market space is too busy. It's too congested. It's too competitive. Ask yourself, what are they doing wrong or what are they not doing that I can become the disruptor?

Oh, absolutely. So figure out what doesn't work, figure out what you can do that will work and get social proof, make it easier. And that's how you're going to disrupt any industry. Any industry, it doesn't matter how long it's been around. They disrupted the automobile industry, and you can disrupt yours too. and build your empire, right? Yes, sir. Thanks for listening to the Empire Podcast Show. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, share it with your friends, and give us a rating.

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