Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Why Failure Is Your Fault - 071

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

Want to delete all your excuses so you can live up to your potential? In this episode, Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne share how to overcome your inner doubts and limitations. They also explain what the “operator mentality” is, and why you need it if you want to shut down every excuse that nags at you. Watch or listen now to discover why you already have every resource you need to start a business, earn higher profits, and change your life. “The path to failure and regret is excuses and procrastination.” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 0:59 - How to start a business when you’re broke 6:31 - The secret behind salesmanship 9:40 - How to overcome impostor syndrome and accept what you’re good at 10:49 - Why laziness is the excuse that cripples most entrepreneurs 18:11 - How adopting the “operator mentality” will help you eliminate excuses and man up “It doesn’t matter what circumstance you’re in right now. Someone in worse circumstances than you is getting more results, is taking action, (and) is having success.” - Craig Ballantyne Follow us on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian / @realcraigballantyne Buy Man Up and get Bedros’s High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/ Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow

I'd rather you be honest, hey, I'm lazy and I'm not going to take action versus, oh, well, I'm an introvert, or I don't understand social media, or I don't know if I can speak on stage, or I'm a foreigner. Like, stop putting yourself in these bullshit boxes. Welcome to The Empire Show. I'm Bedros Kulian, here with my co-host, Craig Ballantyne. Here on the Empire Show, we help passionate and purpose-driven entrepreneurs like you turn your idea into a business and your business into an industry-transforming empire so that you can grow your income, impact and influence. If you're a new listener, then welcome to the show and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. And if you're looking to dominate in business and in life, then this is the show for you. Bejaroos, you and I are fascinated with what makes successful people tick. And I think it comes down

today. We want to talk about excuses versus no excuses. And we've seen since you've launched man up, you've sold tens of thousands of copies, you're getting direct messages from people all over the world, but you're also hearing why it won't work for them or why things are not going right. So on this episode of the Empire podcast, let's talk about the no excuses mindset. Oh, dude. So it's funny that you bring this up because one of the messages I got recently, like within the last two weeks was from a young man, at least from his profile picture, he looked like he might have been in his late 20s, early 30s. Yeah. And he goes, you know what? I've got this e-course that I want to make. And it's got follow-along workouts, and obviously it was like a muscle building program that he wanted to do.

And he goes, but I don't have any money to hire a video crew. And I don't have any money to hire web designer. And I don't have any money to hire a copyright. I don't have any money to buy a shopping cart platform like Stripe. And I don't have any money to run Facebook and social media ads, right? And it was giving me all these. I don't have any money to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah.

And he was giving me all this excuses. And I was like, holy calf. I was like, you know what? I genuinely want to help this guy. Yeah. And so I started responding. And, you know, you only have so much character. the DMs and I wanted to just do it in one message. So I was like, hey, you know, WordPress is free

so you don't need a web developer. You could just start writing your own copy and have it up there. And PayPal is free so you can start accepting payments online through PayPal. And oh, by the way, you've got your iPhone or probably some kind of Android phone where you can film your follow-along workouts. And so you don't need a video guy. And that same phone is going to be able to get you to create how-to videos on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube where you can start generating traffic and sending some of that traffic to your product where you can accept payment. So really, you don't need money for marketing

and you don't need money for this. And I said in the future, as you start selling stuff, then you use some of that money to better your product, better your marketing, and buy more speed. And he responded back with, man, those are all great ideas. And he goes, now if only I had more time to do this. And so he came up with yet another excuse. And I wanted to take my phone and just start smashing it

because I realized in this moment, like, He wasn't looking for a solution. He was looking for excuses. Validation for his excuses. Validation is what he was looking for. So I just didn't respond to him. I deleted his thing because it was just pissing me off. But the path to failure and regret is excuses and procrastination.

That's it. Nothing less. So I sold my first product on the Internet on January 28, 2001, because not surprisingly, I keep a spreadsheet of this stuff. And so I remember, and it was a Word document. sold through PayPal with no pictures in it. Wow. Yeah. It wasn't even a PDF. You actually sold a Word document. Yeah, for $60, too. I was like really proud of that. Was this the original turbulence training? It wasn't even, it was before that. What did you call it? What was the product? Get Lean. Oh, get lean. Yeah. So, and back then, 60 American dollars was like 100 Canadian dollars. So I was, you know, I was rich. And so it was just, I was just a really impatient person. So I think I overcome excuses with impatience. But man, there are so many people we know who have. every single reason in the world to not be successful and yet they are.

And so I always like to tell people, it doesn't matter what circumstance you're in right now, somebody in worse circumstances than you is getting more results, is taking action, is having success. And I mean, we don't have to look any further than someone who's influenced both of us, Arnold Schwarzenegger. No. I mean, that guy was 13 years old, training in the forest. You know, he had everything against them.

And, you know, when he, we watch every year we do this entrepreneurship camp in Lithuania And at the end of it, we always watch this 15-minute ESPN clip. It's like a 30-for-30 thing. Yeah. And it's Arnold training in the dark, in the army barracks, sneaking out of the army barracks, taking a train to Stuttgart. He says, I got to go to Stuttgart. And he goes there, and he wins the championship.

He sneaks back in. They catch him, of course, but he's gone for the weekend. And they make them, like, you know, they put him in solitary and all this stuff. But eventually they actually like, oh, well, he's actually giving us great press. and so they reward them. But look at the, like he was training in the dark on his own. He was training with rocks when they were out in the desert. I mean, this guy had no excuses.

And it's the same type of mentality that we need to take every single day. That carried over, by the way, when he came to the States, when Joe Weider brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to the States, while he was prepping to become an Olympian, he had no source of income. Right. So he became a bricklayer. And he figured out very quickly, like, this,

wasn't a skill set he had. He had to figure out like, okay, affluent people are building homes and walls and buildings. And I live in this whole Santa Monica area while he didn't live in the, while he wasn't rich, he knew there was a lot of affluent people around him. And he knew that Brickling was going to be the fastest way to do this. Him and Franco Colombo, right? Who was, actually, if anyone hasn't seen the movie Pumping Iron, like, that's a must watch. If you're into Empire Podcasts, you've got to see Pumping Iron. And he and Franco Colombo, man, had a brickling business in L.A. in Santa Monica. This was their side hustle, if you will, to fund their bodybuilding dreams.

And so the man had no excuses. Like, imagine today we're like, oh, I don't know how to make a, again, going back to that young man, I don't know how to make a PDF or a follow-a-long workout. Everything is on YouTube for free. Yeah. Everything. There was no YouTube video teaching Arnold how to be a bricklayer. Like he had to probably go and work for someone, learn the skill, and then go and hustle and get the customers and say, I'll do it for less and do a better job, hire me instead. Right.

And then he was buying real estate as a young man while sleeping on people's couches. I mean, it's just an amazing, amazing story. And so you do talk a lot about that and man up. You have your journey from Armenia. You lived in the truck for a while. Do you have any stories that you just haven't told that our Empire podcast? Because I think that's really important. We want to give new stories all the time.

Give us another no excuses, Beidro's story. Yeah. So I got to tell you, I was always bad at selling. I'm still not. I'm a great salesperson now, but that's because I'm, I know the formula is just transference of feelings. Like, if I'm excited about this cup, I can sell this cup. If I don't like this cup, I can't sell you this cup.

Right. And so to me, selling is just transference of feelings. And so when I was a personal trainer, I had already given myself the excuses that, well, the reason I get paid $11 an hour is the front desk sells the personal training services. They charge the client $600 to $1,200 a month, but then they pay me $1,50 an hour, right? And so I had no sales skills. Well, when I got hired by this company called Body of Change, as it turns out, and they were just starting out, only had like two locations. We ultimately grew it to over 140 locations across all these different LA Fitnesses.

Well, I had the opportunity to step into a sales position. And so I kept giving myself the excuse of, well, but I don't know how to sell. I've never sold before. It's not something that I'm good at. I'm a personal trainer. And Steve Dow was my manager at the Fountain Valley LA Fitness at the time. for body of change. And he goes, hey, look, do you like personal training?

Yeah. Has it ever changed your life? And I told him the story of how it changed my life. And I was a fat kid and I wanted to date Nakaya. And so I lost all this weight so I can go to the prom with Nakaya. But I never asked her out, but it had forever changed my life once I got fit. He goes, do you just have to tell that story? And I realized that all I was telling myself is excuses on why I couldn't sell fitness and personal training.

And instead, I had to share my story and transfer my feelings of what fitness. this had done to me. And so I was so locked on to excuses that for years, I was complaining about how low the gym was paying me, why I had to get a side job at Disneyland, and another side job as a bouncer at a gay bar, right? Because the gay bar did pay more for the record. And there was some amazing drag queens on Sunday nights that was like, holy cow, like, where does he hide his junk? Seriously. But I realized I had been making excuses for far too long, man. And when Steve Dowd gave me that mental shift. Like, hey, dude, has fitness changed your life? Yeah. Do you think you

can transfer that feeling over to someone else enthusiastically? Absolutely. He goes, then at the end of that, you're going to ask him, so do you want option A or option B, and then you're going to shut up? And that was the call to action. He taught me the call to action and then just transfer the feelings that you have about fitness. And that was selling to me. And by the way, that was just cutting my excuses. And up to that point, I was just building excuses left and right. That's amazing. The other day I was talking about imposter syndrome on my Instagram because so many people agree that they have it. An imposter syndrome, I understand that some people would have that, but it also hides some excuses, allows some excuses. When you put yourself in the I have imposter syndrome box, like I used to put myself in the introverted box, that allowed me to use all the introverted excuses to not perform at my highest level.

Same with the imposter syndrome. And so I realized, though, and a lot of this actually came from some help that you've been giving me, is that most people, discount and Matt Smith my business partner for early to rise says this as well most people discount what they are good at so when you were a personal trainer or all the personal trainers listening to this or all the real estate agents listening to this or all the business coaches listen to this that have imposter syndrome they don't realize that they have a very valuable skill and so you think that everybody knows how to build a meal plan you think that everybody knows how to do an

exercise like how hard is this it's just a workout right and so because you discount what you're good at, you then think you have imposter syndrome because you think, well, this person should be able to figure it out on their own. How could I possibly ask them for money? And so I realized this recently. People come to my workshops and they're doing stuff, you know, doing the vision exercise and 90-day planning exercise. And at the end of the day, they have an amazing breakthrough. And I like to ask them, what was your one big takeaway from the day? And they go, oh, just the organization and clarity here. And I sit there and I almost go, like, but this is so simple. This is so easy. But now I've realized, because I've heard it over and over and over again,

that it's not easy to people. And so I had been discounting myself for a long time, and that had kind of held me back in some of the sales. See what I mean? I do see what you mean. I'm curious. How much of excuses do you think has to do with people just being lazy? Just straight up lazy? I'm sure that there's a lot. I mean, you know, there's a lot of things. that just are a whole lot more fun to do than discipline stuff. Than the discipline. Like, watch Sunday afternoon football kills me. When I see a great trainer who I know is struggling, and there's a lot of them, right?

We know you probably have a few of them in your head that I'm thinking of. And I see them all Sunday afternoon. They're Instagram and they're parked in front of the TV. And it's, you know, eight hour, 12 hour day. You know, they got their shirt on. You know, they're not wearing their own jersey, as you said. And then it's like Monday morning. They didn't plan anything on Sunday.

They didn't look ahead to the week. And they're struggling like heck on Monday morning because they took the easy way out, the path of least resistance. Because I really do believe it is the box. Yeah. Hey, I'm an introvert. And once you say I'm an introvert, then you use every excuse that an introvert would give. Right.

Like I'm a foreigner. I use them all. I can't be in an elevator with people. I can't do this social thing. I can't do that. I don't want to go to networking things. Yeah. I remember saying, given my social.

those excuses saying, well, I'm a foreigner, therefore, and then you start filling in the blank, right? I'm not white collar, I'm blue collar, I'll never get the same chances that everyone else who's born here will get. And all of a sudden, I realized I'm not a foreigner. I'm an American. Sure. And I have every single opportunity that every great American has in this country, and the excuses were burnt. But I do believe that there's a giant segment of the population who's just lazy. And I believe the reason for that is that the economy is thriving right now. Like, unemployment has never been lower ever in American history. Because of that, people are doing good.

They're doing well. Some are doing great when in reality, in a less thriving time, they would just be doing okay. And because of that... It's kind of like when you're at a bar at 2 o'clock in the morning and everyone's an 8 or 9. Yes. Actually, that's a good analogy. And that is a really good analogy. Everyone is an 8 or 9 at 2 o'clock in the morning.

And you're like, hey, guess what? I'm going home with someone, right? But the truth of the matter is right now that people give more excuses because they're lazy, I believe, than by putting themselves in a box. And by calling yourself out on it, just saying, hey, I'd rather you'd be honest, hey, I'm lazy and I'm not going to take action versus, oh, well, I'm an introvert, or I don't understand social media, or I don't know if I can speak on stage, or I'm a foreigner. Like, stop putting yourself in these bullshit boxes. Yeah, right? And we know a guy that could put himself in multiple boxes and just could have hidden away. in life. And his name is Sean Stevenson. And before, so there's Sean Stevenson, the three-foot

giant who we're going to talk about. And then there's Sean Stevenson, the sleep expert. So, first of all, the lesson is, if you want your child to be successful, just name them Sean Stevenson. Right. But Sean Stevenson, the three-foot giant is a person that we want to talk about today. And he is an amazing speaker, probably the best speaker I have ever seen. I don't know if you ever seen anybody better. But Sean Stevenson, the three-foot giant is really three-foot, three feet tall. He's written a book called Get Off Your But. He is in a wheelchair. Best Motivational Speaker I've ever seen. But he has a disease that his bones are so brittle that he can sneeze and break his bones. And he's broken his bones 280 times. And he had a whole

bunch of traumatic injuries when he was a child. Now, this is a guy who could have said, I'm in the wheelchair. I'm, you know, I've got this disease box, you know, put himself in all of these things and hidden himself away in life. But today, he's happily married. He does these workouts that, you know, you got these workout videos of him doing push-ups and it's amazing. He has videos that have watched 50 million times on Facebook. He has this great line when he speaks. Make him laugh, make him cry, change your lives. That's the formula for speaking.

If you do that, game changer. And man, he is an amazing speaker, and he's a certified therapist, and I hired him for a breakthrough day. So he's got everything against him. But everything going for him. Have you heard the story of him being stuck in an elevator at the White House? I love it. I'm going to share this real quick with our friends. So imagine this.

This guy is, as Craig said, he can sneeze and he'll break a bone. In fact, years ago, somebody brought him to a Tony Robbins event, if I remember this correctly. And, you know, he was in a wheelchair, whatever. And, you know, giant Tony Robbins comes up. This is like early 90s when Tony still let those things. Yeah. Tony scoops him up out of the wheelchair. And they're like, watch out, Mr. Robbins.

watch out. If you move him wrong, he's going to break. You can break his bones. And he's like, look, I'm no medical doctor, man, but if your bones were that fragile and brittle, you're probably acidic and you just need to be more alkaline. And that was the start of him actually trying to turn alkaline and strengthen his bones. But one of my favorite stories of Sean Stevenson is he was an intern at the White House during the Bill Clinton era. And apparently... Not that kind of intern. Yeah, not the kind of intern that was under the desk in the oral office. He was an intern, and he's in the elevator, but apparently these elevators work off the human touch, kind of like the iPhone screen, where it needs like the human skin touch, right, to actually do something.

And I get it. That's probably for the sake of security. Well, as you know, Sean Stevenson has this little... It was a backscratcher that he would use to touch the elevator. And he's got this backscratcher tucked into his wheelchair, and so he's given us an example on stage. He pulls at the backscratcher, and he's talking about how he went to push the button of the elevator to go up. the doors closed. Now, the doors are closed because he can't reach the button and his finger won't be able to touch it.

It's not going anywhere. So he had to wait like 10 or 15 minutes before somebody would actually come in and push a button for him for him to go get down. But there's a guy who never used excuses, just probably sat there pushing the same goddamn button until somebody came in to help him get to his destination. Yeah. So our friend Steve Weatherford. Yes. Yeah. Super Bowl champion Steve Weatherford.

I mean, skinny, scrawny guy growing up. But man, I mean, that guy is relentless and unstoppable about the levels that he will go to to be successful. So first of all, he became successful in college football, then in the NFL, won the Super Bowl. And now it's like he's transferring it to business as well. It's absolutely amazing. And you've been working with him. You interviewed him here in the Empire podcast. What did you take away from that?

I mean, talk about a no-excus mindset. He even says, he's like, look, I don't have the best genetic. I can just outwork anybody, and I won't make excuses. And he lives in a constant state of, if I remember, he's perspective and gratitude is the state that he lives in. Like his perspective is I've got two arms, two legs. I live in a country where I have access to everything and resources of people that I can reach out to. So he comes with the giving hand.

He's grateful to everybody and anybody who will help him. And he'll come and help you as well. And so because of that, we've helped him out. So many of our friends have helped him out, Lewis House, and the list goes on. And he's got like, he just launched his podcast and went to like number six in the world or something, like of all podcasts. Overnight. And it's not like he's a lot.

podcasting expert. He certainly wasn't an entrepreneurial expert. No. He's a guy who just says, I'm not going to make excuses. Instead, I'm going to go from being an athlete who had to earn his position as a Super Bowl champion, to being an entrepreneur, who had to earn his position in making money, to now being a podcast host, and he's like the number six podcast in his genre. Not making excuses and taking responsibility for your actions are the number one strategies to getting to success. And there's a man who lives by that. Absolutely. And so just to sum this all up, I use a phrase now called the operator mentality. And I stole this from the Navy SEAL books that you love to read. And the operator mentality is that when you are in work mode, you are on a mission and nothing is going to stop you. You wake up and you're supposed to present at a seminar and you got a head cold, you're going to find a way to go and make it work. You know, when I was reading Relentless by Tim Grover, I've read it three times this year. There's a great story about Michael Jordan. He got a good. food poisoning, like either game six or game seven of the finals. He went out there and not only

did he play, not only did he play like a great game, but he was like the MVP of the game. And they had to carry him off the court at the end. I mean, this guy just, there was no excuses. He was in operator mode. And so I get, I know, I have a lot of coaching clients and they'll say to me, oh, I went traveling and I drank too much at the seminar and now I came home and I got sick. And I'm like, you got to get into operator mode mentality. When you travel, when you travel for business and you got a family at home, you go in, you do the work, you get out. You have that operator mentality. You're not there to drink and goof around and party and stuff. Like when you travel, you go, you flew to Miami, you did a podcast with Grant Cardone, you flew back, you did a speaking engagement,

you flew to St. Louis, you did another podcast, you flew home to your family. Now, you can't be in playoff mode all the time, but when you are promising and making a commitment to somebody, nothing gets in the way. You have an objective. And it's just like from lone survivor, Marcus LaTrell, right? was the one when he got blown up, and all his buddies were dead, but he still had a mission, an objective to go and complete. And so those guys are trained to do that. They're trained operators.

And it's why I used to have that old backpack that I used to carry around, right? Because I knew where everything was. And so I'd be an operator mode. And so if I flew from Toronto to London, England, when you fly overnight, you show up in Heathrow, and you're all dazed and confused. And sometimes if you're not an operator and you don't know where all your stuff is, you'll forget your passport or something on the airplane. But not me.

Like I always knew everything was in there and I could get up, go and operate, do my presentation, get back on the plane, fly home that same day because I'm always in operator mode and no excuses. Now, again, those Navy SEALs, they're going to come home and they're going to have recovery. They're going to go into civilian life. But when you are at work, when you are on a mission, you have an objective and nothing can get in the way. You know, I'm so glad you brought that up to you. Marcus Lettrell in his book, he has two books out. One is lone survivor, the other one is service.

And I believe this is an excerpt from his book, Service. And he talks about in the military, especially in special operations, it's mission over the man, meaning not only the man next to you, like if your buddy gets shot, go finish the mission, your buddy should be able to tend to himself and then come and help your buddy. If you're shot, you're not allowed to die unless your body dies. Keep going forward and finish the mission. And I love that mentality. and I use it in my civilian life because I go, all right, guess what? I didn't sleep while last night. I'm tired.

I had many unexpected things come up today, but I still have to work out. Part of my mission for today is to work out to sell franchises, to sell coaching programs, to add value through social media into my email list. I've got these eight or nine things I got to do today. The mission doesn't end because I'm tired. The mission ends when I go through all eight or nine things. If my body literally drops before those eight or nine things are over, then guess what? It shuts down.

I'll get the rest. Or as he so eloquently put it in his book service, he goes, when you die, you'll know you're dead because it'll just be dark and silent. And I was like, holy crap, right? Like that's hardcore. But mission over the man. And if more people went with that mindset, you've accomplished anything on your task list. Yeah.

And the last thing I want to say here is that so many people, especially in our world, the personal trainer world, and I always had this revelation when I was up speaking of fitness business summit. There's a thousand personal traders in the audience. and a lot of them struggling with business, right? But if you actually talk to each one of them, they were either a champion athlete, they were a bodybuilder, they were a fitness competitor,

they would go to the extremes. They would go and finish the mission in the gym. But as soon as they left the gym, they didn't finish the mission as a parent, they didn't finish the mission as a business owner. And that always, I just, it drove me nuts because it was so incongruent. And that's why last year at my retreat,

I was teaching the champion mindset. You take whatever it is, allows you to be that champion as an athlete or even as parent or if you've even married out of your league, what allowed you to succeed in that area in life? And then just realize you can transfer it to everything. If you're the personal trainer who says I'm never good at sales, but you can stand on stage and 3% body fat and in a little oily bikini. If you can do that, that's way harder than selling something. That is true. Right?

So if you can do that, you figure out what did I do to do that? I had a coach. I had a mission. I had a plan. I had an accountability partner and I had supportive environment. Okay, those five things are the same five things you need to become a great salesperson. You just transfer your champion mindset over there and you eliminate all excuses. That is what Weatherford did, didn't he?

He just transferred his champion mindset from athletics into entrepreneurship into podcasting now. Right, absolutely. And the guy has five kids too. Yeah, yeah, five kids, married with five kids. So it's not like he's got all the time in the world. Like he still has to be dad. Yeah, absolutely. What a great message, man.

Yeah. Friends, if you like this message about no excuses, we want to share this podcast with your friends. Leave us a five-star review, and thank you for watching and listening to The Empire Podcast Show. 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 Ballantine 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.