Man Up - Bedros Keuilian - FHR #268

Why Dave Decided to talk to Bedros Keuilian:

Bedros Keuilian is a best-selling author, speaker, and business consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, one of the nation's fastest growing

Franchises. Talking about his upcoming book launch, Man Up, Bedros gives insight into his journey through entrepreneurship and what he has learned.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Running A Business vs. Running A Hobby: (6:20)
• The Concept Of Leading Yourself! (10:45)
• The Business Not-To-Do List: (23:49)
• What Are The 6 Pillars Of Entrepreneurial Leadership: (33:00)

Quotable Moments:

"It's not a light switch, it's a dimmer switch; sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes back down. And over a 3-5 year period, I became an effective leader."

"You are not going to build an empire with a group of employees. You are going to build an empire with an effective team around you."

"Create an environment where your employees don't want to let you down."

Other Tidbits:

Bedros elaborates on the 6 Pillars of Entrepreneurial Leadership he has discovered along the way and how they apply to businesses in general.

He discusses the ups and downs he encountered along his journey and how he dealt with adversity.

Bedros enlightens us on his 5 percent rule!

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Every welcome back

Speaker 2: 00:18 funnel hacker radio. I'm your host, Dave Woodward. Today I am so excited. I have a dear friend. I have. I've watched this guy, his ups and downs, and this is a man who I am so honored to have on this podcast. It's A. We've been trying to get this thing scheduled for awhile now and his scheduled, my scout does didn't meet. He's the author of a cool, crazy, amazing book that's coming out this September called man up, how to cut the bull crap and kick butt in business and in life. And for me, it's honestly, first of all, fueling welcome to the show. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dave, for having me. And, uh, I'm, uh, not only a big fan of yours, but also what you and Russell and the whole team there click funnels have created because we are adamant users of the click funnel product for us.

Speaker 2: 01:02 Obviously we appreciate that for those of us who may not be familiar with Pedro Ceo, he's basically built a massive empire in the fitness business and he's got tons of different businesses. But one of the ones I'm, I love the most is just fitness a fit body. Boot camp's a as on track year to have 2,500 franchises by 2022 and has been just crushing it. He's a guy who's a massive leader, is, owns a ton of interest in other private companies. But the thing I'm most excited about as far as bringing bedrooms back on my podcast is this is a man who actually walks the talk. This is a guy who has been through a lot of the entrepreneurial battle. Uh, you know, we were talking just briefly about this whole idea of having a Gary Vaynerchuk and our, our big Guinness World Book of Records thing last year. You know, Gary talks all about hustling and stuff, which, yes, there's an element of that.

Speaker 2: 01:52 The part I like most about this book and most about you bedrooms is there's hustle, but you have this amazing ability to keep a balance with your family and we're talking about your son Andrew and your daughter chloe and Diana and, and just the, your ability as an entrepreneurial leader to run a company that is Ben Again, Inc. Five hundred last two years, a fastest growing franchises by ink as well. I mean, just your accolades go on For miles and miles, but I think the part that's the most exciting thing for me is you're the real deal and that's not always the easiest thing to find in business when you take away all the instagram and the facebook and everything else. When it comes down to it, you're real. And I appreciate your friendship. And I remember, I think it was, um, interest. We were at a, you're a fitness business summit in la jolla and we're out in the mastermind. Yep. So we were there again, I was there learning how to run a mastermind from big grows and as bedrest was we went across the street and we were sitting there at the steakhouse after all was said and done and you started talking about this book is man

Speaker 3: 03:00 up idea and what you're going to go through and if you don't mind, if you could just kind of tell people, first of all, for those of you guys are listening, you have to understand this book is, is really the history and the life lessons of having a massive business literally almost stolen away from him at three year journey of regaining it back and I wanted to bring them on the podcast right now because everything he talks about applies to you and your business from the leadership standpoint to your own individual self. And so metrics, if you don't mind just kind of dive in here. I again, I love the book. One thing that I want to talk to you about. First of all, I've been talking to her. Let me give you a breath of fresh air so you can actually say something before I have you got so many questions.

Speaker 3: 03:39 I'm gonna ask you. Well, let me just tell you this and, and with all the compliments that you gave and I appreciate that and we're dear friends. There was a time in 2011, 12 and part of 2013 that I felt like such a hypocrite and an imposter in my position as founder and ceo fit body bootcamp because while fit body boot camp, we started fit body bootcamp in 2010. We franchIsed in 2012 and in a very short period we've grown to now almost 700 locations and our goal is to get to 2,500 locations and we're on pace for that. In 2012, 2013 men, we were losing more locations than we were gaining. I had gained almost 40 pounds of fat I was taking every evening. I was taking nyquil and a vicodin to go to sleep and when I would wake up in the morning in order to get out of my mental fog from the nyquil than vicodin, I would take adderall and some kind of pre workout.

Speaker 3: 04:37 just just function. I had massive resentment towards my towards my employees. I had this, this functional adversarial relationship with my business partner in fit body bootcamp at the time and I hated my life and I felt like I was a true imposter and I realized in that time, and this was when I had about six or seven employees. I realized in that time that dude, you're a bad leader. I was just an ineffective leader. And for years I was a marketer. Now as a marketer, you and I know dave, that, hey, you know what? If you've got a good product or service and you can create a funnel and run ads to it and make that funnel produce money, then you're doing good. And as things go on, you might then grow your business where you get to second or third employee to deliver more support or service or help out with a sales process.

Speaker 3: 05:29 But what happens when you actually look at your business and you go, gosh, I've got the potential to build a 20, 3,100, $200, million dollar company and then you go, I'm going to do this. So I knew that fit body bootcamp can become 100 million dollar company. What I didn't realize was I was literally putting a supercharger on a 79 toyota pickup, which was a car that I actually owned and I expected the supercharger to perform to make this car perform when really the car did not have the capabilities to the leader myself. So I had a business that had potential of 100 million a year, but the leader was so weak, so Ineffective that I literally almost went out of business and almost destroyed my marriage and my family life. And so, um, it was a product of that that I decided that I need to figure out how to become an effective leader.

Speaker 3: 06:24 And over the next three to five years, people always asking me, you know, so what's the secret to, to leadership? I hear your book has six pillars of leadership. If you can just tell me that I can become a better leader. It's not a light switch. I always tell people it's a dimmer switch that goes up. Sometimes it goes back down and over a three to five year period I became an effective leader. Now I wrote the book so that I can help people ascend to their leadership role faster, more efficiently. Um, but really that's where it started. Man. I was a hypocrite and an imposter. And today I'm a better version of the leader that I'm going to become. It's still a work in progress, but my company's numbers show for it.

Speaker 2: 07:05 I love it. So you actually just have you introduce yourself. You did so much better than I did. I know what I want to ask though. I really do want to address what you just talked about and that is this whole idea as far as being a hypocrite or the imposter because one of the things we hear a lot in a lot of entrepreneurs, I mean I've done it myself where it's like, you know, I'm going to fake it till I make it and if you don't mind, if you kind of expound on this whole idea is yeah, there's an element of faking it till you make it, but also how do you get out of that, that feeling of being the imposter or the hypocrite and actually starting to run a real business versus just a hobby.

Speaker 3: 07:38 Yeah. And you know what? There is some valid need to fake it till you make it. And what I mean by that in one of my favorite movies, catch me if you can, which was the story of tom hanks was in it and also the dicaprio writing. This guy was a con artist and tom hanks was the fbi agent and in real life the con artist, just like in the movie, taught at a university level class. Like for an entire semester, and he, he, he taught, he gave quizzes, he gave tests and you get grades and once they caught this guy in real life, they said, listen, you're a con artist. We know how you, how you were able to con people out of money and get on airplanes by conning people, but how did you

Speaker 3: 08:23 con your way into being a professor for an entire semester? he goes, all I had to do was be one chapter ahead of all the other students in the class and he was just teaching a chapter ahead and he was reading the same book that they were, but he was a chapter ahead and so to me, faking it till you fake it till you make it is that you're doing it, but you're just barely ahead of the people that you're either teaching or selling to or servicing. There has to be a. The next level comes

Speaker 3: 08:53 when you have to be truly demonstrate proof, demonstrate proof. For example, we'll use russel as an example, like one of his first products, the old potato gun that he created, and then he created an ebook that teaches you how to make your own potato gun. Well, that's great. He made the potato gun. He had fun with that. He goes, hey, people are actually searching out how to make potato guns. I might as well make an ebook out of it and sell it and make some money. I'd say that was fake it. You make it like that was a. We all bump into that accidental entrepreneurial spirit and oh my gosh, people are actually paying me for this, but then as time goes on and he writes his books and he goes into many different ventures with click funnels, like now this is a leadership position that he's in.

Speaker 3: 09:32 He's leading a company. He's having to look forward. He's looking to communicate. He's. He needs clarity of vision so the entire team can be on it. He must be decisive because between competition and between marketing and between the economy and the opportunities available, all those things can shift and a strong leader must be decisive and pivot because indecision costs entrepreneurs more time, money and market share than making the wrong decision, and so yes, we all start off as fake it till you make it, but at some point we have to grow into our entrepreneurial skin and be willing to take bigger risks, have those tough conversations and communications, have even greater clarity of vision, be super decisive and go from having a group of employees to a high performance team who is on board with the vision of what clickfunnels, where click funnels is headed and knows that we have to execute this plan because it's us against them. A team team member has an us against them mentality where employees just simply want to come in, clock in a little late, clock out, a little early, do the bare minimum, and off they go. Right? I mean, you're not going to build an empire with a. With a group of employees. You're going to build an empire with a, an effective team around you.

Speaker 2: 10:46 I love that. You know, when the, I, as I was going through your book, man up the, we talked about these six pillars of entrepreneurial leadership and you kind of broke it down into three different sections and leading yourself. That was such a cool section as far as. So often we talked about leading as a team leader and you're kind of alluding to the fact as far as what russell is doing a leading yourself. For me, it was such a foundational thing. I think a lot of people, they kind of skip that. Oh yeah. I'll do that later if you don't mind. I'd like to kind of talk a little bit about this whole concept as far as leading yourself,

Speaker 3: 11:17 you know, and in the six pillars of course, and the six pillars or this self discipline, it's clarity of vision, meaning what do you want your company to go and by when and what's the path. So vision is all about what do you want and when do you want to buy? Um, and of course then there's decisiveness. There's effective communication, there's emotional resilience because lord knows as entrepreneurs, we go through some emotionally challenging stuff that other people simply wouldn't understand. The risk and the exposure that We put ourselves against, and of course the sixth and final pillar is having a high performance team to help you execute your vision, but you know that self discipline piece, the leading yourself is so important. Most leaders, bosses, founders, ceos, whatever you want to call them, believe in this top down leadership meaning I will say, and you guys will do, and that's that, and that is called I call that half to leadership.

Speaker 3: 12:10 Your employees or team, they feel like they have to do it. Otherwise they're going to get reprimAnded or yelled at, possIbly fired the leader who's more of a servant leader, who practices what he preaches or what she preaches and his self discipline, which is why self discipline is pillar number one. Leading yourself leads by example says, you know what? Here's what we have to do and here's what I want you to do, and the team wants to do that because they see that the leader is authentic. So self discipline comes from do the work first. If you expect them to show up on time, you show up on time. First you expect them to be ready during meetings, be ready first. If you expect them to be clear in communication, you better communicate more clearly. If you expect them to do the marketing effectively, you better be clear on how you want them to market and how much of a cost of lead should be in and what are we looking for by will conversions and lifetime value of a client.

Speaker 3: 13:02 BecAuse the moment you're unclear in any of that, your team goes imposter, hypocrite, and all of a sudden you're half to leadershIp instead of the one to the one true leader. If your team goes, you know what, I want to do this for him or her because I believe in his or her vision and I want to do it for them. That's so much better. My team hates letting me down. They'll take getting written up by our two vps over letting me down like, okay, great. WrIte me up. Just make sure he doesn't find out. I'll never do this. Over again, because I've been so lucky, so fortunate to create an environment where they don't want to let me down and I remember when I worked at disneyland man, I worked at disneyland, dave for six years and there was a. I had, I had two supervisors in the carnation cafe restaurant that I worked in.

Speaker 3: 13:49 One's name was cathy, one's name was doug. Kathy. Kathy did not practice the leading herself. she always came into work. This sheldon as she Was our boss, I was a fry cook at carnation cafe and twice a day. Carnation cafe was literally the busiest restaurant on the planet because when I worked there it was on main street and the main street electrical parade would go twice a day and that restaurant, we had a line around the building and we were just just bursting at the seams of people wanting to sit there and watch the prayed while they ate and so kathy would come and you need to do this and the food's not at a minimum of 140 degree and you guys are are, you know, there's a stain on your, on your chef whites. And she would always point point, point, but we would notice that she would come into work a little late.

Speaker 3: 14:34 She was always just shoveled, always unprepared. If we had a meeting with her before our shifts started, half the time the meetings will get canceled and so she was poorly self disciplined and so we had no respect for her. Then there was doug when doug was our shift lead and he was this six foot five heavy said bellowing man. And he would walk in here, this cajun accent. He would walk into the restaurant, carnation cafe. Well, what can I help you with boys? And we say, well doug, we need more help on the window. We're pumping out food but we can't get it up on the window fast enough. No worries boys. And he fLipped his tie over his shoulder and he put on the chef gloves and off he went to helping us. And when doug work for us, we didn't care about taking our break.

Speaker 3: 15:15 We all we wanted to do was make sure we get the food out on time so the service can deliver it to the table. And give the guest experience that disney is known for. When kathy was supervising us. Man, it didn't matter if the electric prayed was happening. Oh, break time. I got to go because you Just didn't want to perform for kathy. The difference between doug and cathy was doug, walk the walk and talk the talk. Like he was in there early. He helped us prep when it was time for us to close. He wasn't just up there doing paperwork. He was down there cleaning with us. He didn't have to be, but we felt so indebted to him and never wanted to let him down. and because of that self discipline that he had, because he worked up from the ranks, we never wanted to let him down where cathy was the opposite.

Speaker 3: 16:00 So self discipline is so important. So we're an entrepreneur is concerned. You can be looked at by your team is an imposter as a, as a hypocrite, just like I was by being unprepared, but expecting them to be prepared by being unclear, but expecting them to be clear. And So self really starts with what time do you wake up in the morning? You beat them up early enough to get the work done. Like every monday morning for the last five years, I send out a monday morning email to my team and it's only focuses on clarity of vision. Here's where we're headed guys. And then personal development tips and professional development tips. Because I know like me, they're human. They just came off a weekend. Maybe some people overrate, maybe they overdrInk. Maybe there was a fight in their relationship, maybe something a car accident had happened, maybe a family member got sick.

Speaker 3: 16:48 Whatever happened, guys, here's how you deal with adversity. You cope with what you have to deal with and you control what you can control and here's how you can use that and work to service our franchisees. But every monday morning I'm disciplined enough to wake up before them at 5:00 AM and send out my monday morning email. The day that I missed. That makes me a hypocrite. So we have to start with yourself first and then go into telling people what to do. Otherwise, we're seen as a, as an imposter by, by not only our team, but even our customers.

Speaker 2: 17:17 I love that. I know a russell. I joke around about it. Uh, I've never woken up as early as I am right now, so I'm trying to get this whole adonis looked at you. You were kind of like chiseled out of stone. So I'm trying to get to that same type of a luckier. So I've got hired a trainer and I met in the morning. I'm getting up and they're at the gym at 5:00 and it was kind of funny because russell always sit there talking about it and this whole idea of it's been interesting in the office now how many other people, because they're seeing our instagrams and everything else where we joke around about it because these were actually working at his gym. So since it's his gym, he comes in at six and I got to be there at five. But uh, it's been fun to see in the, in our office. How other, how many other people are now talking? Oh yeah, I got up to a 5:00. I'm working out, I'm doing this and and again it's, we never meant to come across as far as you know, you need to do this, but as you talk, as far as my leadership, even in your own personal life and personal life, leadership, it, it just carries over into your professional life so much. And so I appreciate that whole concept of, of leading yourself first.

Speaker 3: 18:20 Yeah, that's, that's a must and I think that's probably the most overlooked pillar in, in leadership because everyone says, you know what, alright, I'm gonna start communicating more effectively. I'm no longer gonna, hold things in. I'm not going to be approval seeking. I'm going to be more decisive, clear on my vision, and so they start saying do, do, do, but remember that the people are by what they're seeing, so they can't hear what you're saying because they're deaf. Invite what they're seeing. What they're seeing is un un sprint. Yeah. So we have to get discipline first, lead from the front before we can actually lead the team.

Speaker 2: 18:51 I love that. You know what? I was going through your titles of your books and the chapters there, and there's two that just jumped out at me. One is the five percent rule, so I want to talk about the five percent rule and the other one is you might have crowds. So those are the cliff hangers. Those are the hooks. So let's first of all talk about this on five percent rule and then we'll talk about you might have crabs.

Speaker 3: 19:14 Absolutely. and, and, and, and, and I go into great detail about this in the book, uh, but, but I want to give, give your viewers here, your listeners a really cool kind of visual. So imagine this. Imagine this. I had my first employee, her name was amanda, amanda. She was my assistant and I worked out of my guest house. This was over a decade ago. this is how the five percent rule came to be. And of course since I worked out of my guest house, um, I was close to the, to the home and my wife one day comes up to the guest house and says, dude, the sprinkler has sprung a leak. And as you're shooting up a fountain, like you've got to fix this thing now, keep in mind, I was in a place in my life where I could afford to call a plumber and having fixed the sprinkler pipe, but I'm a pretty handy guy.

Speaker 3: 19:59 And so dave, I just rolled up my sleeves and said, you know, honey, I'm going to go fix that. So I went to the garage, got some, the red hot, the red hot glue, um, my, my, my, my pipe cutters, some sandpaper and the pipe. And I went outside and start digging to find this sprinkler pipe that sprung a leak. Well, as it turns out, the day before I sent out an email to my small list of gym owners and I said, hey guys, I offer a year of coaching phone coaching for $5,000. Like at the time it was a smoking deal. Today we charge $50,000 for our coaching, but as $5,000 per year of phone coaching. And if you want me to help you grow your business, like I grew my five personal training gyms, then let's get on the phone. You know, let me ask you some questions.

Speaker 3: 20:42 If you're a good fit then I'd be more than happy to help you. So that was the email and the whole idea was they would call amanda. She would, if I was free, she'd put them on the phone with me if I wasn't freezing scheduling with a call. And so I'm, I'm downstairs, I'm elbow deep in mud and amanda comes running downstairs and she goes, dude, I've got a phone call for you. This person's totally qualified. There's no point in putting him in your calendar because he says he wants to sign up right now. I'm like, great, let's do this amanda. But I've got mud all over me. So you've heard me close many of a many of our coaching calls before. So we just take them through the page, get his credit card information and set up the first call for tomorrow. Are you sure?

Speaker 3: 21:23 Yes, I'm sure. Go do it. And there I was again, being poorly disciplined and delegating instead of doing what I should have been doing and it's in my five percent. Well amanda went up there. God blessed her. Did the best she could and actually talk the guy out of the sale and back then man, $5,000 was was I was like $500,000 to me. That was a lot of money to me. Like I knew we needed that money. We had just moved into this house and while we've got a guest house for the first time, but every penny counts. And I'll be very honest with you, dude, this was when you could still buy a home on stated income. Autonomy crashed. So it was probably more like 12 years ago and so pretty much lied to the mortgage company. I make $30,000 a month. Dude, I hadn't made more than $15,000 a month and that's in revenue.

Speaker 3: 22:11 My profits were even less like a true entrepreneur. Let's move in there and we'll figure it out. So we moved in there on stated income. I needed that five grand and of course she lost a sale and that was that. And in that moment I realized I could have paid a plumber $25 to fix that pipe and I could've worked on with my five percent the critical few things that move the needle. And for me, my five percent is to delegate, motivate, and sell. And so what I did is I pass the baton over to her. Instead of doing what was in my wheelhouse, my zone of genius, which was to sell. I should have stayed in my five percent today. I want to do anything outside of my five percent, you know, at the house, a light bulb's burnt out. My wife knows to go right to marlin or house manager and she knows how to change a light bulb because if you tell me I'm just going to stare at it.

Speaker 3: 22:53 I don't know how to do it, but I'm not gonna do it because that time could be better spent with family or by creating more financial wealth for us. And so, you know, pipes broken, everyone knows what to do. My five year, I haven't been to a grocery store for over six years. I don't pick up my dry cleaning, my car is don't get washed anymore by me. They get washed by people who just show up to the headquarters here and wash the cars, but all those things keep me focused, so I work eight hours a day in my zone of genius, my five percent, which is to delegate, motivate himself, and the competing ceo of a franchise says, you know what? I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm going to work eight hours a day and do everything. He's writing payroll checks, reading p and l reports, and he's changing out light bulbs.

Speaker 3: 23:31 Who's going to get ahead over the next 12 months? Obviously meat, but that was the most expensive lesson that I learned is that as entrepreneurs, as leaders, you have to work in your zone of genius on the five percent of the things that you need to do that move the needle. The other 95 percent you outsource a competent team members. I love it. I know we've talked a lot about this. You and craig and I about this whole idea as far as a not to do list. If you don't mind, kind of expand on this because people, I mean they go sheets and sheets deep onto do lists, help people understand what is this not to do list. you mentioned a couple of things there, but what are the types of things do you do and then with that, if a person doesn't have money to hire all that, who's the first hire?

Speaker 3: 24:09 They should get a very good question. So the nod to do list is I look at it as non negotiables and these are things like for me, I won't. I won't go to the dry cleaning. I won't go and pick up lunch for myself. I have that brought in. I won't. In fact next time you guys were out here in southern California because the 24 hour fitness is three miles away from my house. I bought a warehouse and I built my own private gym and mile away so that I don't even have to go competing. I don't even want to wait in line for a squat rack or a bench press. I built my own 3000 square foot private gym and I justified it by saying it's a mortgage on that building is $7,500. I've got a $7,500 gym membership as far as I'm concerned, but it's clean, it's clean.

Speaker 3: 24:50 Every equipment is available when I'm there, the equipment instead of a broken and it's a bonus to my team members because they get the work out there in the mornings. We're after at the end of the day, so I won't do anything that creates time theft. That takes away time from me, my health, my finances or my family. Not necessarily in that order. So if it's grocery shopping, washing my car, going to the dry cleaners, driving too far. I believe every entrepreneur should have a two mile bubble. Your office, your home. In my case, starbucks sushi and my gym or all within those five things are within a two mile bubble and I think those two miles, it's unpredictable. I don't know what the freeway is going to be like. All of a sudden what I thought was gonna be a short drive, added 20 more minutes to my time.

Speaker 3: 25:33 I don't want that. So part of having this not to do list is going, what areas of my life are sucking away time, are creating time theft away from my time with my family, my ability to create wealth and significance and of course to work on my health. To me those are the big three areas and whatever those are, you have to ruthlessly chop those things out and they are non negotiable. It can't be like on weekends I'll wash the car because on weekends are my time with the kids or on weekends I'm flying out to speak at events and so you have to create your nonnegotiable list and then of course stick to it because so often people do want to start shoving other stuff into your list and you have to be the anger queen of saying no. Right? And so to me that, that's, that's a massive lesson that I learned.

Speaker 3: 26:21 I learned that it's okay to be a control freak. People out know was like a control freak and I said, oh gosh, that's a bad thing. It's got such a negative connotation. I want to be a control freak. Like dave, you can set your clock to me. You know I'm going to wake up between between five and 5:30 every single day. I'm not going to hit snooze, I'm going to have water and then coffee and then my protein shake. I'm going to go through my gratitude list as I'm playing with cookie. Might 95 pound massive, and then I'm gonna sit on my couch by around 6:30 7:00, work for two and a half hours on my magic time. The things that craig valentine taught me, you know the, the, the list that I do the night before that are going to move the needle, right?

Speaker 3: 26:56 my five percent and then by 9:00 AM I'm in my gym working out by 11:00. I'm here meeting with my two vps and then I do this kind of stuff, which is fun. This is like in my zone of genius. I can't have anyone of my team members sit here and deliver this message, but what I can have them do like a non negotiable for me just because I know how to use click funnels. It's so easy. You guys have made it easy to use, but my team uses that to build our book funnel to build every single funnels that we have. Just because I can doesn't mean I do it. So that's a non negotiable as well. And to me that's been a huge thing. Speaking of which, let me tell you about the crab story. You know, I was asking people, hey, do you have crabs?

Speaker 3: 27:31 And they go, why did I go? No, not, not in the way the, the year was 2005. Dave. And gosh, if it wasn't for my wife's grandparents, I would have never experienced this cruise. We went on, um, on holland America cruise lines, which is a really high end cruise line. We went on an alaskan cruise. Thankfully they paid for the entire family. And thank god I was married to my wife by then because I got to go on a seven day cruise to Alaska and man, I had barely been out of California at that time, let alone like, wow, we're going to Alaska, we get to see glacier, we get to go hiking. Are you kidding me? this foreigner doesn't do that. Right? And so one of the ports that we stopped at was ketchikan Alaska and at this point, you know, I've already started building my business.

Speaker 3: 28:19 I'm trying to figure out how to be an entrepreneur. Um, sometimes I would tell my friends or family members like this is my goal, and created a software product called high tech trainer and it's going to be on a palmpilot and gyms are going to buy it from you. They're going to have these palmpilots and handed out the clients. And now if you can't afford a personal trainer, the workouts are going to be on the palmpilot. And I would have some friends and family that were just, what are you sure? Is that going to work? This going to be expensive. I would even know about software. And they will start and then of course I would just go fists up and want to duke it out with them. And um, so there we are in ketchikan, Alaska and we're walking across the this rocky area that's parallel to the water and we're seeing all these crab fishermen casting out their nets and then waiting a little while and then pulling in their nets.

Speaker 3: 29:05 One gentleman had a five gallon bucket next to him was about this much water in it. And then in the bucket at the bottom of the bucket was maybe five or six crabs. And I was fascinated. I've never seen anything like this. So diane and I stopped and were watching him cast his net and pull crabs in or pull nothing in. And as we're watching him, I noticed that there's one ambitious crab crawling on all the other crabs and this little guy is starting to reach for the rim of the bucket to pull himself up. Now in the, in my head, one part of me is written for him like, hey, you can do this little guy. Get out there and go for freedom before this guy. On the other side, I want it to be a good samaritan, so I said, sir, you're about to lose a crab.

Speaker 3: 29:45 He's, he's trying to make an escape. I think you should put that lid on it. [inaudible]. There was a lid sitting on the ground and he goes, watch what happens next. So I'm watching them. This little crabs hoisting himself, starting to hoist himself up to the top of the bucket. All the other crabs at the bottom. Reach up, grab it by its hind legs and pull it right down. Dave, and I'm hitting my wife. I'm hitting you. See what's happening here because the guy goes, these crabs are self policing. I was like, oh my god. And I realized in that moment I've got crabs in my life. It's not that my dream and my vision and my hope for, for the software that is going to change. The fitness industry is unrealistic. It's the people around me are crabs and they are unrealistic and they're transferring their lack of ability and desire and willingness to take risks on me.

Speaker 3: 30:32 And so I literally got back from ketchikan, Alaska and I started just cutting away friends from high school friends who I new from, other places who were negative, toxic. Anyone who looked forward to the weekend and didn't look forward to mondays. That was one of my criteria. You don't look forward to on monday. We can't be friends now. I didn't of course call them up and say, hey, we can't be friends anymore. Your crab in my life where I slowly. Because people always asking me, no, wait a minute. You just cut them all out. I said, you know, you slowly phase yourself out. You, you replied to the text messages last you answer the phone calls less. And what I found was I created room for a better group. Have people around me who weren't crabs. So here I was trying to be an eagle, but I was hanging out with ducks and wondering why they're quacking, what I'm trying to soar.

Speaker 3: 31:17 while the truth is, once I cut out the crabs out of my life, it made room for egos like yourself and russell and craig ballentyne and frank kern and randy garn. And all these good people to come into my life and allow me to stand on their shoulders and allow me to take a peek into your business and see how I can scale my business or tell me. Yeah, you can do at vedros. in fact, I think you ought to set a higher goal. That goal isn't big enough. Like that's what I want to hear from my peers. Not. Are you sure you can do it? What if you lose money? and what if you. You ended up homeless.

Speaker 2: 31:46 Oh totally agree with you on that one down I think is probably the biggest problem. A lot of people when they start getting down this entrepreneurial road they face because a lot of the friends aren't entrepreneurs and they struggle with that and it's. I Actually had this conversation with my son chandler, who's a. I was in college actually, randy gardens working for skipio skipio to go do his own thing and all of his friends were like, you've got this great job and you why you doing that? And he's like, it's not what I want to do. And, and it was really cool because randy's partner nate was chandler, just go do what you want and I appreciate it again, date and randy's friendship, but just recognizing that sometimes you do have to kind of distance yourself from those people who are pulling you down and sometimes they don't mean to. It's their own lack of security themselves and they're like, I can't do that. So I doubt you could either. And so I, I appreciate that for sure. you know, and that's exactly the, they don't have their intentions

Speaker 3: 32:40 are well placed. I don't have any bad intentions. I just realized that they, they mean well for you, but they're passing along their insecurities, their transferring those feelings on you at that because they're friends. You do put more weight on what they said because you know they have the best interest for me. But in reality it begins to play this negative loop in your head while you're trying to do something positive. And those two things never work out. Well,

Speaker 2: 33:01 I totally agree. Well, last question here I really want to dive in on, and this is so again, if you don't mind, tell people again what the six pillars are. I also want to let them know where they can get the book, but so tell that first will be a little commercial break here, but they don't want to talk about the last one and we'll come back to that.

Speaker 3: 33:17 So good. So the six pillars of entrepreneurial leadership, a real simple, it starts with self discipline is pillar number one. Clarity of vision and clarity of path is number two, clear communication skills as number three, decisiveness, being able to make a decision and make it fast and course correct if it's the wrong decision is number four. Number five is emotional resilience. So many of us tend to react instead of respond, and oftentimes when you react, you leave a wake of destruction behind you instead of responding with clarity to a problem or challenge that entrepreneurs will have. And of course, finally doing away with the idea of having employees and only building a high performance team who can help you get to your outcome and your life and your business. And so in fact, the book now, it doesn't come out until September 18th. However, it's. It's on amazon.com right now.

Speaker 3: 34:05 You can get it from amazon. You can preorder it. And what I'm doing for actually you're the first person I'm doing this for a click funnels. The first person people I'm doing this for is when they order this book right now from amazon.com. just forward your receipt to orders at [inaudible] dot com. Use forward your receipt to orders that manup.com. And two months ago I created, I charged $2,000 a head, got 20 people into our learning center here and I did a one day entrepreneurial leadership workshop. And so I'm making a $2,500 course out of that. But if you send your receipt to orders@manup.com, you'll get that course absolutely free. We'll just email you the login and the access to it as a giant bonus gift for getting onboard with the amount of movement.

Speaker 2: 34:50 Thank you. I really appreciate that. I. I need you to clarify one thing and that is I had a couple of people were asking say, well, does this work for women too?

Speaker 3: 34:59 Yes. Yes. That's a really good questIon. In fact, manning up doesn't work for women too. It's just mad up as a phrase that we've heard before. Hey man, up and go ask for that. Raise. Hey man. Up and go after the girl of your dreams are. And so the way I look at it is when you look at the word human human up, rIght? And I started to think about this again. I really do explain in the book and I go into great detail with anecdotes and stories of myself and many of my clients who were in the darkest of times as entrepreneurs and how we turn our business and our lives around. Because how you do anything is how you do everything. Like my health is connected to my relationship with my wife, which was connected to my, which is connected to my mindset, which is connected to my significance and impact I want to have on this planet.

Speaker 3: 35:42 No one thing. I can't be fat, sick and out of shape, but I expect to run a business at its full potential. Impossible. And so I started to think in in 2013, but you know what? As a human, I think I'm at the top of the food chain on this planet. I'm pretty sure as a human we are tOp of the food chain yet I'm going to be very honest with you, man. I had taco bell and del taco wrappers in my car for like three, four weeks ago. I had empty starbucks cups and soda cans and you would think that a hobo lIved in my car and I remember looking around in my car and being disgusted with myself. I'm like, wow, I'm living subpar. Like a. Like a dog doesn't even go poop in the area that it leaves. It actually walks away right?

Speaker 3: 36:25 Yet. Yet I had this junk. I had crap around me because I thought so little of myself, so if I'm a human and I'm top of the food chain, but I'm not living to my fullest potential and expectations, shame on me. I better start with self discipline and so I. That's where I started, was with my weight, with my health, with cleaning up things around me and when women always want to put anything man up on social media, every now and again, most women are totally on board with the movement because they understand. Matt up simply means stop making excuses, take control of your situation and rise to your fullest potential. but they go, well, you know, why can't we women up? I said, look, if you want a woman up, you can woman up, but at the end of the day I want you to human up because your top of the food chain is a human and when it's a human up, and so if the word man is in the name isn't the word human, we just need to man up to our greatest potential and if that means warming up and then so be it.

Speaker 3: 37:18 I love it. Well, it's a great book. Again, you guys get it manta.com or go to amazon right now and get it beFore it actually goes live in september. Um, my problem is I would love to sit and talk to you for hours because there's so many things I want to talk to you about on this book. So I know your limit on time. There's two different things. I'll let you kind of pick which one you want to talk about. Emotional resilience or else the glue that holds things together. Ah, let's talk about emotIonal resilience because this translates emotional resilience, translates into your personal life and your professional life. And at the end of the day I just want to give back. I'm like, I would have wanted someone to give to me when I was coming up as an entrepreneur and thank god I accidentally found my first mentor, jim franco, who was a personal training client of mine.

Speaker 3: 38:00 I was just complaining to him one day saying, well jim, I'm a personal trainer and a fry cook and a bouncer at a bar. I don't want to be a fry cook and a bouncer. I want to be a full time personal trainer, and he said, you know what, you're a horrible salesperson and I'm going to teach you how to sell, and he took mercy on me and he mentored me and so I figured if I could just pass that message along, mentoring someone else now so that they see the value of mentors and invest in him sooner than I did. It wouLd be huge. But emotional resilience is this. Oftentimes as humans, especially humans who have a business, you have competition because you're an entrepreneur. You have competition, you have regulation. Probably either a state regulation, federal regulation, if you're a supplement company or in my case, a franchise to the federal trade commission oversees us like, like we have an inhouse compliance officer overseeing everything we do.

Speaker 3: 38:50 Right? And so you know, just like people who sell stocks and commodities and all that stuff, and so you have competition regulation, you have taxes, you have people who might even try and steal your business idea and go elsewhere. You have the economy that might crash around you. And while you have advertising that you have to do and all these things cost stress, like nothing, nothing worse than sending a few ads on facebook and then getting a random disapproval message and then two weeks ago that same ad was running this week. That adds not no one's responding to you and you're just, you want to go nuts, you want to send a an all caps email with a lot of profanity to somebody in facebook and say like, what the heck is going on? I'm just trying to serve my industry, makes some money, and it has some significance.

Speaker 3: 39:32 Well, most of the time we tend to over react emotionally and, and here's where that comes from. And I was able to look inside me and react and I'm embarrassed to say the state, but there was a time and 2004, I was on a phone call with a customer who very quickly became a non-customer after my reaction, instead of my response, he said, you know what? I've downloaded this high tech trainer thing on my palm pilot, but it's not working as advertised now. At this point, we were in so much debt and we hardly making any money. I took it as though he was literally saying, you have an ugly child who's horrible human. I said that right, and truth be told I was burning the candle on both ends and I took it personally and instead of saying, well sir, let's talk about what operating system you have on your.

Speaker 3: 40:22 Because I did my own customer support on your palmpilot, et cetera. I just lost it. I'm like, what? You have no idea how long they took me to build a software. You have no idea how many people have to hire from India. And then they screwed it up. Then had to find people in United States and that I'm, as I'm talking and yelling, I'm just. I see my barometer go from yellow to orange to red and then I just started smashing the phone until all that's left is the court in my hands and I look over and there's my wife, like, what in the world just happened to you? Right? And that moment I said, can you believe this guy? The nerve that he would have to tell us this after we've taken six years to build a software and data that, um, well in hindsight years later I realized the guy was having a problem.

Speaker 3: 41:00 He's a paying customer. My job is to help them through a solution instead of reacting and taking it personally. I could have just responded effectively by saying, hey, you know what, why don't you want me to model of your palmpilot? Why don't you tell me, um, when you downloaded this thing, what version of high tech trainer did you download? And walking them through the steps. And so, but I realized were emotional reaction comes from, and I'm gonna share this with you and your audience so that we never do it again when we're born and we're babies, we're in a crib and it's the middle of the night. And being, uh, being a parent, you've had this happen. All of a sudden this baby just out of nowhere, it's just start screaming, holy murder. You just spring up your spring up and what's going on? Okay.

Speaker 3: 41:39 It's a new baby. Okay. Whereas mom, okay, we need to breastfeed or bottle feed. Got it done. All of a sudden the baby two hours later screams again, oh my gosh, what's going on? Oh, the baby has pooped themselves. Now we need to change the diapers. So the baby gets used to asking for things through emotional reaction. It's our job as parents, as they grow up, you go, hey, you know what? You don't have to emotionally react anymore. We've all been into the target or the walmart or the nordstrom's where we see this kid who's now eight, nine years old and having a temper tantrum, trying to get his way just like when he was a two month old baby. Right? And that's because the parents didn't spend the time to teach them how to phase out emotional reaction and phase in logical response like, you can actually talk now, son, so why don't you tell us what your feeling was?

Speaker 3: 42:26 That hunger pains, okay, you want food? Great, let's see how we can feed you. And so I realized that most of us never got past the emotional reaction phase of survival. And so even as adults, we believe that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Yeah, okay. That term exists, but the squeaky wheel also gets hated upon and has lost all trust and respect and authority. And so If you can just step back and go, what is this person across from me saying, is it a personal attack or are they just criticizing my business and product? Okay. It's a criticism of my business and product, not of me personally. If I emotionally react, I only have one thing I can do freak out and no one's gonna benefit. If I respond, I might have three or four options, so I'm going to choose to emotionally or to effectively respond strategically, respond with this answer because I think that's going to be the best and it's having the wherewithal as an adult to not react anymore.

Speaker 3: 43:21 Instead, take a step back, take a deep breath. Don't write that email and send it out. Write the email and just let it sit there and your drafts right? Or don't send that text message just because someone got flared up to right. But it's so easy to react, but it takes a pro. It truly takes a pro. the amateur reacts to the pro. We'll step back, assess the situation. It's not a personal attack. And even if it is, it's probably coming from a place of, of weird emotions that they're having. I'm not going to take it personally. Here's how I'm going to strategically respond. And anytime I've responded to a situation, I've been able to change the other person's perspective and get them to see the light when I've come to them with fists up. Well we've really duked it out. No one's one. And so one of the best quotes I've heard is you never want to argue with someone stupid because it will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience. But I was pretty emotionally reactive per person and that would just bring people down down to my level and I beat them with just freaking out at them. And then of course they'd stopped doing business with me and they tarnished my reputation and I'd somehow blamed them again. But truly, if we can just manage our emotions and be more responsive instead of reactive, man, the world opens up with so many opportunities.

Speaker 2: 44:37 I love it will be. I get, I could spend all afternoon with you. I love being around you. I appreciate all the, all the wisdom, the value bombs you've been dropping for our audience here. Again guys, go check out [inaudible] dot com or go to amazon and get it there. Again, I appreciate your kindness and offering. It's huge. Twenty $500 course to our audience. That was kind of you. And any other parting words before we wrap things up?

Speaker 3: 44:57 Well, no, I just have to say this, that uh, and you know that when you first opened it up you said, you know, tell us more about self discipline, but everyone on here is going to have room to improve and their leadership skills. And I can tell you that the easiest path you're going to want to take is to become a better communicator or more decisive. We're trying to build a team or clarity of vision. Go back and look in the mirror, start with yourself. And when you can work from the inside out, the outcome that you get in your business and your success and your personal family life is, is monumental. And, and that's the one parting message I want to leave with the audience here.

Speaker 2: 45:32 I appreciate it. Thanks. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 3: 45:34 Appreciate it. Take care, dave.

Speaker 4: 45:36 Hey everybody. Thank you so much for takIng the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crushed through over 650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and, and get this out to more people. At the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, I only just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go To itunes rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.