Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Why Millennials Make Great Employees - 021

Episode Date: November 15, 2017

Millennials get a bad reputation for being lazy and entitled. In reality, they actually make great employees. The previous generations typically have a more traditional way of doing things, however, our new generation is bringing a whole new set of skills that older generations aren’t interested in learning. Listen to Craig Ballantyne and Bedros Keuilian talk about why millennials are changing the workforce with innovative skills, a strong sense of social justice, and the drive to constantly evolve both personally and professionally.   Here’s what you’ll discover:   1:10 - How millennials use their “factory installed” skills to market your business in today’s social media and technology heavy economy. 3:23 - How millennials bring social justice into the Fit Body Boot Camp mission. 4:32 - How millennials have an inborn desire to collaborate and work as a team in the office. 7:08 - Why millennials have the drive to become entrepreneurs and the need to constantly evolve. 9:20 - Why nurturing a “special snowflake” mentality is essential to grow successful entrepreneurs.

Millennials get such a bad rap about being lazy and entitled and whatever. The reality is that they do come factory installed with skill sets that you and I, one, either don't have, don't want to acquire, and it would be difficult to teach someone else who is not within that generational gap. Hey, B, do you know what millennials and carbohydrates have in common? Oh, tell me, Craig. They both get a bad rap. They do both get a bad rap. Yeah, because millennials actually make great employees.

I have a lot of millennials in my business. You have a lot working for you. And so we want to talk today about, on our Empire show, about how millennials actually make great employees. So let's rock and roll with another episode of the Empire podcast talking about, well, basically how to make great employees, whether millennials are not. Right, right. And listen, I've got 85% of my team that works for me here are millennials. And one of the greatest things that I've learned about millennials is so many of the things that we have to do. today in the modern economy where marketing is concerned involves skill sets that are factory

installed for them. You know, social media marketing, working videos, figuring out how to upload stuff to podcasts. Look, we've got this podcast. I've got another podcast and I'm making another podcast. You've got another podcast. I'm guessing you're not uploading anything to sound. No, I have a millennial intern doing it. Right, exactly. So thank God for our millennial team members. And so where millennials get such a bad rap about being lazy and entitled and whatever, The reality is that they do come factory installed with skill sets that you and I, one, either don't have, don't want to acquire, and it would be difficult to teach someone else who is not within that generational gap.

Absolutely. But that's not the only thing that they have going for them. I mean, I love them because we've talked about this quite a bit. They have a sense of social justice more than anybody else. And I think it's because they don't have any boundaries. You know, like the baby boomers and even our generation, we were taught not to, you know, bring those two things together. You know, you have your work and you have your personal and charity life.

You can go and do them separately, but don't bring that stuff into the office. But millennials are factory installed or for some reason they have grown up that way, that they want to bring them together from day one. So how do you guys do that in your business? And how does that make the millennia employee kind of give them a bit of a head start on being great members? Well, I mean, all I had to do was hold one meeting after meeting with a friend of mine. And he said, hey, you know what? Stella has this thing they do with the, where you buy a pint of Stella and water.org will

donate, you know, whatever, a gallon of water to a family or a village that needs it. And of course, Tom's shoes, as we talked about, right? You know, you buy a pair of Tom shoes. They donate a pair of Tom shoes. And I say, guys, I think we can do one better. We're definitely get behind charities and causes like Toys for Todd's and Shrineer's Children's Hospitals and even military causes. But what we, our old model was, we take in money.

And this is, see, great example of the generational gap, right? I'm a gen X-Exter. So my whole thing is I'll build a business, make money. When I make money, I'll carve out a portion of that and donate it to the causes that I believe in. Right. And I go, hey, millennial team, what if we could do something bigger and better?

What if we can actually tie in our business with a social cause? And it was virtually that meeting and then telling them what the social cause was, which was Toys for Tots, right? We are now changing our entire web special model. The web specials that we sell on Fit Body Boot Camp websites worldwide is 21 days for $67. We raised the price to $69 and that $2 difference plus a $1 on top of that that I'm going to donate. And every, I mean, just to give you an idea, every month we sell, oh, nearly $100,000 worth of web specials.

So if we're selling $100,000 worth of web specials, you need to buy that by $67. and that gives you an idea of how many we're selling. For every new client at a Fit Body Boot Camp location gets anywhere worldwide, we're donating $3 to Toys for Tots. Now, to me, that is true contribution. And it was my entire millennial team that developed the process of doing that, how we're going to market it, how the sales page is going to look. And I'll tell you this, they are absolutely excited about getting behind a cause like that

because it's almost like, again, going back to factory installed, it's factory installed for them. Yeah, and you know what? But that kind of leads me to the other thing that I think is really great about millennia employees is because they want to get involved in these organizations, they actually seem to have a deeper level of teamwork built in that you don't have to go and invest $10,000 on team building exercises because they already are working like that in a better way than, you know, quite frankly, our generation did or generations that come before us when everybody had more of an individual approach to work.

I might have to climb on your back to get up the ladder. But it seems like, at least from my understanding, that the teamwork is also built into their mindset. 100%. By the way, we've got one of the most collaborative work environments ever. And when I bought this building, it was, it's funny, the building belonged to a guy who was in the baby boomer generation. Right. And he was running his corporate office out of here. And every room had a door. So the accountant had a... their own office. The if they had a social media guy, let's say, had their own office, video guy had their own office with the door. And that really forced everybody to become lone rangers

and not collaborate. There was no teamwork. So when we came through, I said, man, I really love the two-story feel. I love the fact that, you know, there's so much square footage, but I don't like the fact that everybody stuck in a little office isolated from everyone else. That's not how my team would grow well. And so we knocked down all the offices and we create an open work environment. And it's amazing how we well, everybody works together. It's a team environment, lots of collaboration, and really positive competition that leads to a bigger outcome for us, right? We make more sales. We, you know, the operational side is always competing with the sales side, and the sales side is always competing

with the media buying side. And I like creating that environment. It's a family environment. And so someone once asked me, well, what happens if they start talking too much with each other? You know, how do you stop that? Listen, the reality is, even if they have, have their own offices, they're probably going to be talking to each other through text message, through instant messenger and all these other things. Instead of saying, hey, don't do that, I go, hey, here's your KPIs or key performance indicators. Everybody in my team has KPIs. And I go, you guys are all adults. I'm going to hold you to your KPIs. But in between, if you want to chit chat a little bit and just decompress and then go back to work in GSD, go for it. And they do.

Yeah. And the beautiful thing is, is, you know, I spend a lot of time here. And I see them, you know, this group's going to yoga and this group's going to boot camp and they're going out to lunch together. And it's really, really fantastic. And then the next thing that I see among this generation of employee is that it's almost like they are still open-minded to learning. So, you know, back in the day, a lot of people, especially even in my age, they were like, as soon as I'm done school, I'm never opening a book again. But because so many of these employees did go to college, they are constant lifelong learners. And so when you give them the opportunity to enroll in a course or to have a team training, they actually take to it rather than sitting there and going, oh, I got to go to this course or training, right?

So more than any other generation, millennials I found, are ones who are really interested in personal development, self-development. So unlike the generations before, they were like, well, I'm done with school. I'm not going to go learn anymore. This is it. Now I'm stuck with this current knowledge level. Millennials constantly evolve and are into self-development self-education, which... Kaisn. Yeah, Kaizan, exactly. And that works in our favor if we're the entrepreneurs who are bringing them on board with our teams. But there's something else that I really love about millennials that, that I don't know if enough people have picked up. They are driven to be entrepreneurs. And I think it goes back to what you said in the beginning. There were race to maybe think differently, think more openly. They took cause and business and brought it together. And they really do believe that if I create something that the world wants, I too can be an entrepreneur. Like they don't go around saying, I was born as an entrepreneur. They're just saying, I'm just waiting for the right thing that I can do

to be an entrepreneur. And so when I find those millennials, those are the ones that excite me the most because I bring them into my world and I go, you can be an entrepreneur. You can be an entrepreneur within the organization, the empire that I'm building. And so whether it's a sales department, operations department, media, or even the video guys that we have, they have so much free reign to become entrepreneurs within my entrepreneurial structure that I really, look at it is they never feel like they're coming to work. And from every email and correspondence they have with me, they're like, hey, I never feel like I'm coming to work. I'm coming to a place where I get to exercise a lot of my creativity. And I don't know about you, but if I'm going to work

for someone, I want a place where I can exercise a lot of my creativity to the benefit of that business. And that's really what I love about millennials. Yeah, and you know what? So people always say, oh, these millennials, they think they're special snowflakes. Well, that is actually a good thing, because that means they're going to bring that social justice mindset. They know that they have time and room for personal improvement. They love self-development because they, hey, I'm special. I want to get even more special. And then finally, you need to have that special snowflake mentality to be an entrepreneur.

And therefore, you can go and add value. And as an entrepreneur, one of the things we absolutely love is when employees are driving, when they're leading, when they're coming with new ideas, we don't just like to, you know, download the information, have people do stuff. We want them to upload information, upload great ideas, and that's how the team just comes together and it has that symbiotic, synergistic relationship. Yeah, yeah, dude, you nailed it. I mean, again, I know that when I had a job, I was working at Disneyland as a fry cook, right? And I remember sitting there and it was like 10 o'clock at night. People are ordering hamburgers and

French fries and chicken salads. And I was one of the 10 fry cooks at Carnation Cafe, dishing up this food at 10 o'clock at night to tourists, right? And my shift wasn't going to end until like one in the morning, by the way. All I kept thinking is, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. I am not meant to work for someone else, even if it's Disney, which was a great corporation to work for. I knew I was meant to work for myself, and I knew there was something special about me. I've heard you tell the story, and I don't know if our friends know this, that one day, I don't know, you heard of, want to tell that story?

Yeah, I was five years old. I was out on the farm. I was walking with my cousins and out of nowhere and there was no context to it. I just heard this voice in my head say, you are special. And I believed it and I've acted on that ever since. Yeah. Yeah. And since we're talking about how, gee, everyone feels like millennials or unique snowflakes and

why do they think they're so special? You nailed it. I want them to feel that way because I felt special. You felt like a unique snowflake. We did and therefore we acted upon that. So what can you do to pull these millennials into your environment? environment, give them a sense of purpose and significance, and then say, look, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to tell you what our end outcome is. I'm going to set KPIs key performance

indicators that show me that you're taking your part of our business to our end desired outcome, but then go run with it. Be an entrepreneur within my entrepreneurial world, and that is the smartest thing I've done. Unfortunately, it took me a whopping almost half a decade to figure that out. Until then, I kept feeling like, I need to download information to them, and then they need to do it, and then come ask me for more permission to do the next thing. Dude, if you know what the outcome is that we want out of this building and you're an adult and you have this other way that you can skin the cat or get to the outcome, tell me about it. Share it with me. Hell, go out and do it. And if you get us there faster, I'm going to financially reward you for it.

So it becomes a win-win once you embrace the fact that they're unique. Yeah, and all of that, plus giving them the educational resources, the team trainings that I've given your team as well, the books, the courses, make sure that you are always helping them up-level their skills, and they are going to bring their hearts and minds to your business and grow your business faster than you ever could, and that's the power of the millennial employee, right?

Well said. Thanks for listening to The Empire Podcast Show. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, share it with your friends, and give us a rating. We'd really appreciate that. And make sure to go to empirepodcastshow.com to watch the videos as they come out.