If You Are Struggling In Any Part Of Your Life, Do This! Feat. BEDROS KEUILIAN & CRAIG BALLANTYNE

There's a lot of great marketers in here who might struggle with family relationships or their health. And you've built a great marketing system. You can go and do the same thing for your time management, for your health, for your family relationships. It's all just about building systems that work for you. And the five things that we use that I've used to build systems for anything that can change your life in any way is having better planning and preparation than ever before, having professional accountability which is going to give you expert advice and someone to hold you accountable and not let you get away with anything. Third is positive social support. So that's being in a room like this. You know, you might not get breakthrough ideas from everybody in here, but they're going to pick you up when you're feeling down. Fourth is having a meaningful incentive. So we're not doing things for money or stuff. It's what matters in life is people and experiences. So a meaningful incentive has to come from your heart, not from your wallet.

This presentation, this interview is going to be incredibly impactful because we have put a lot of time and thought into it. So let me share with you what's going on here. Okay? You've heard for years that most people, even very successful people, use only 10% of their potential. For those of us in the room, that's going to change in our next discussion as we cut through the clutter and misinformation so you can overcome the obstacles holding you back from tapping into the 90% reserves of yours that's just begging to be released. To help us do that today we have two world class experts on human potential. First is Bedros Killian. Bedros is a product of his own product. Not only is he a fit, is he fit, he is super fit. When he works out every day, he's joined by over 2 million people that work out at his fitness centers around the world. He's the founder and CEO of FitBody Boot Camp International, the fastest growing fitness franchise in the world with over 600 locations worldwide. His company is a two time Inc. 5000 listed company and was voted one of the top 15 franchises in America by Entrepreneur magazine. In addition, he he coaches over 1,800 fitness experts, gym owners and personal trainers that are part of his mastermind coaching groups. For an immigrant who came to America unable to speak or understand English, I'd say he's done a pretty good job of tapping his potential and he's just getting started. So joining Bedros is Craig Ballantyne. Craig is a productivity and Success Transformation coach, bestselling author and prolific writer. His book package the Perfect Day, how to Own the Day and Control youl Life and is owned by every Genius Network member except the new ones that just joined us. I know for a fact because I bought one for every single member that is in Genius Network. So it's amazing and it's awesome. And Craig is superb at what he does, which you'll see in just a moment. He's the author of the Perfect Day formula and he's been a contributor to Men's Health magazine for over 17 years. His gift of vision, clarity and the ability to see what is the next step for coaching clients has helped transform the lives of over 67 million people physically, financially, mentally and emotionally in the last two decades. Today, he teaches high performing entrepreneurs to increase their income and make more time in their personal lives. Through his Perfect Life workshops and brand new Work Life Mastery program. Craig used his methods to overcome crippling anxiety attacks and is currently working on his next book in a documentary. Craig also came to America from a foreign country, yet he did speak and understand English when he arrived, which. Which is better than Bedros. His native land was the faraway country called Canada. Okay, please welcome Craig Valentine and Bedros Killian. What's up, guys? What's up, brother?

What's up? Hello, everybody.

Okay. All right. Well, one thing that I think is so awesome here is both of you are really, really good at how you spend your time, how you've learned about behaviors and rituals. And so I've got some questions I want to ask you. So the title of this is how to cut the clutter, overcome everything and reach your fullest potential. Which could sound like a headline from some marketing letter or whatever, but I really want us to do that in the short time we have together so that everyone here really feels that direction.

So can I. Can I just say something real quickly for 30 seconds? I want to thank you. Years ago, when I first joined the 25k group, I was 1 intimidated, 2 overwhelmed, sitting with Brandon Bouchard and Dean Graziosi and yourself and others, this much smaller group. And I remember just saying, this is what we're doing on Facebook. And Dean going, wow, you're using Facebook? I said, yeah, this is what we're doing on Facebook. And you asked, well, how can we help you? And I said, well, I think I need to start a coaching program. And you handed me a written direct mail piece that you would send out for coaching programs. And I don't know if you know this or Not. I went and I said, well, I'm doing everything on the Internet. This was almost a decade ago. Put that online exactly how you gave it to me, except I put trainers instead of carpet cleaners, and I made $500,000 in the next four and a half months from that one piece that you gave me. And, I mean, if that's not a game changer in a young man's business at the time. I'm 43 now. I don't know what is. So I really thank you for that. You're welcome. I appreciate it. It changed my life.

Thank you. Thanks for watching. And look, both of you. I mean, you guys are doers, and you make it happen, which is really what I want, to bridge the gap between someone having an aspiration and an idea and actually doing. Doing it. Which is why I've invited. I think these two can probably guide and direct you on how to get things done almost better than anyone I know. From a practical level, not just big vision, but, like, how do you actually do it? And so I. Anything you want to say before I jump in the. If you and Bedros were to get in a physical fight, do you think you could take him? No, no.

He chokes people out on airplanes.

I have choked a guy out on.

An airplane before for humor or for.

No, no, no. He was a flight risk. My wife and I and the kids were flying back from Hawaii. The guy was a flight risk. He wouldn't put on the zip ties that the flight attendants, they have to ask you to put on zip ties. I don't know if you guys know this. So if you become a flight risk, they ask you to put on zip ties. And this was post 9, 11. This was a few years back. And so I thought the whole plane were going to tackle this guy down, right? That wasn't the case. Me and some guy, we just look at each other like, hey, if the poop hits the fan, we're going to do this, right? I'm with my kids. I travel all the time on my own. Nothing happens. Travel with my wife and kids. Flight risk. And so anyway, she hands him. I said, ma', am, can we help you? She goes, no, no. I got to ask him to put the zip ties on. And of course, when she did, he went off. He hit the guy in front of him, stood up, started getting. And she yells at me, and she goes, we need your help. So me and this guy come running down from business class to first class, who's ironically in first class, and he goes, what are you gonna do about it. And just then I was in my six week challenges that I put myself through like six week in the running marathon, six week MMA challenge. And I was in that MMA challenge. And so I go, well, what did Aaron Weatherspoon teach me? He was the guy, he's my coach. And as he went to push me, I just got him right in a rear naked chokehold. And sure as shit at work, he went down. And I shocked myself. I'm gonna be honest with you, I shocked myself. I now the guy's wedging. Wow. Wedging. The zip ties between me, my gut and his back. And we zip tie him and anyway we land. LAPD comes and takes him away. And I got free hummus and wine on the trip.

Wow. With that, let's talk about productivity. Yeah. That is amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I will be sure if I fly somewhere, I should go with you. So, Craig, I've really crafted some questions here to really get into some good stuff. So you're the discipline and productivity guy, but surprisingly, before you even start scheduling your day, you say there are much more important things to think about. So tell us about the three V's every entrepreneur needs to know before moving on with their day.

Yeah, absolutely. So you need to start with your values first. So imagine like you have a time pyramid, and so at the top is where you would have actually what you're going to do in the day. But at the bottom, you're going to put in your values, because your values are going to drive every single thing that you do. If your values are family first, it's going to drive how you start your day, what you do over the course of the day, how much you work. So you had that example yesterday, Joe, of the guy who was thinking about opening his $0.50 seventh hardware store and he was overweight and not spending any time with his family. Listen, you can make him super productive at opening hardware stores, but it's the wrong thing. And a lot of people in entrepreneurship become super productive at the wrong thing. And so I ask one question of all the coaching clients that I work with, which is in the next 20 years, what do you want to accomplish in the four top values in your life? Your family, your health, your wealth and experiences. That's where everything has to start. So once you know that I want to raise great kids. Okay, good. That means no 13 hour days for you. It's very simple to start planning your day that way. So it's values first on the bottom of the foundation of the pyramid. That's the strongest rock that you start with. Then on top of that is something that Dean was talking about yesterday, which is your vision. That's where you get to next. Values drive your vision, and then you have to know your value of your time. So if you take a look at all the people in here, an income level at the bottom line would be $500,000 a year probably. So that means every single hour of your working day is worth $250. Now, who here is willing to admit that they're still doing stuff like running errands, going to the UPS store, cutting the lawn, making meals, all this stuff, even writing a book. And I know that a lot of female entrepreneurs, you are guilted into it by mother in law or by mother, right? You are still making all the meals, you're still doing all the cooking. And it's killing you because you're trying to run this business at the same time. I remember back in 2009 watching an Evan Pagan video. And Evan said in the video, entrepreneurs can't be doing their laundry. And when I first saw that, I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm doing my laundry. I'm wasting all this time that all this stuff is below my value. So if Your value is $250 or more per hour, that's a lot of money you can put into having people do everything for you. And that's the mindset you have to have as you go and schedule in your day. Even if you want to write a book, think about writing a book. How long is it going to take you if you're not a writer but you know you have a great book in you, right? It's going to take you over 100 hours. Now, if your time is worth $250 and it's going to take you more than 100 hours to write a book, just pay Tucker 25 grand and get the book done so much faster. That's who I've used for both of my books. And it saves me a ton of time. So you have to have that type of thinking starts with your vision or your values, your vision and the value that you put on yourself. And it's going to make you a whole bunch of time to then focus on what matters. So what Tony said yesterday, the one problem in his life is time. I bet you if I spend a full day with Tony, I could save him or make him 30 minutes of time. And if the guy's running $6 billion worth of revenue in companies, that's going to be worth a lot to him.

What we should do. I'll take the video of this and I'll take that clip and see. Send it to Tony.

Good.

And see. See if he does that.

Yeah.

And I mean, this guy's done all that stuff better than anybody.

Oh, well.

Yeah.

So that's my next question. So Bedros, you and Craig, you guys have been working together for about a decade, I think.

Yeah, about a decade.

And you've created a whole winning system by watching pretty much what this guy does. He's very much that guy. And by the way, let me mention this because I didn't do this. I've gone. I've. I've gone through Craig's whole process. Spent a day and a half with him. Amazing. And really just such a great thinker. So tell us how having clarity of path and becoming a disciplined entrepreneur allowed you to go from anxiety attacks and tremors, which you were having, to a $25 million business, I think it is, approximately. And one of the fastest growing fitness franchises on the planet.

Well, I've had the good fortune before he ever wrote the book the Perfect A formula, and before he ever had the Perfect life workshops that I've gone through as well, I've had the good fortune of having environmental exposure to this guy. And if you haven't had a chance to have environmental exposure to Craig, it's a unique experience. Your gift, his gift is outside eyes. And so at first I would laugh. Like, why is it that you want to have dinner at 5:30? That's kind of like a late lunch for me. Right? Why aren't we partying? Because we run masterminds together. Miami, San Diego, Las Vegas, Tennessee. We're having good time. We're in great, great cities, man. It's like party till midnight. What do you mean you're going to bed by 9 o'? Clock? What gives? But I soon started realizing that as I was laughing, I was having anxiety attacks when I'd go home and essential tremors. I would just lock up and freeze. And my wife would just like, look at me like, what's going on? And I very quickly realized that his life structure is what I need if I plan on taking this franchise that was just puttering along and really making it reach its fullest potential. And I'm far from that. Our goal is 2,500 locations by the year 2020. We've got 614 locations as of yesterday that are actually open and more in development. But the life structure and discipline that I've been able to witness from him, never mind. Reading the book and experiencing it firsthand from the workshop, has been a game changer for me and for most leaders, most of us in here. And I know you've experienced this where you feel like you're overwhelmed with opportunity. You truly have more opportunities than you have time left on the calendar. That's the reality of it. You try and put so many irons in the fire. And that's what I was doing. And at the end of the day, I realized what is my biggest purpose on this planet. I'm still a personal trainer. It's just now I'm going to touch millions of lives through our Fit Body Bootcamp franchise. And I'll touch lives of people who'll never know me, but I'll be a bigger trainer than Tony Little and Jillian Michaels through our franchise. So why am I striking up a deal with this guy? Why can't I? Why am I doing another event here when my purpose is to be the world's biggest trainer, making an impact in people's health, fitness, lifestyle, self esteem, self image. And so I went narrow and deep on my focus a Fit Body Boot camp. And it went from failing in 2012, 13 and anxiety attacks. And I was in a very dark, negative place, taking Vicodin and Nyquil every night to go to sleep, to now a $25 million company and growing, where I have two VPs running the organization and a leadership team. And then, of course, implementers who execute our vision. And that's really, if you're in this room, you're a visionary. You just come up with the vision and the path and you execute to your high performance team.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Okay, so then, so from what I'm getting from you, you're in this place, you then learn how to structure. And so that pretty much is designing your day. So how does one go about doing that and starting that?

Okay, so I speak to a lot of fitness gym owners and stuff like that. And so I use this phrase, the champion mindset, in that all these fitness gym owners, they've at one point in their life, they've either been a champion athlete in college or they've been A bodybuilder or something like that. And so they're very successful in one area of their life, but then they struggle with sales or they struggle with their time management. And I say to them, listen, you've already been really, really, really successful here. You've put the systems in place. And so all you have to do is transfer that champion mindset over to this other area in life where you're struggling. So that is just thinking, like, okay, well, it's planning and preparation. It was having a coach. It was having a deadline. It was getting the accountability. It was having all those things. And so whatever it is that you guys are good at, wherever you have had great success in life, you just have to transfer that over to having the systems in your own productivity. So can I tell you a very embarrassing story about how I almost fought Shawn Stevenson?

Yes.

Yes, yes.

That was wonderful.

So I hired Sean. I hired Sean for his breakthrough day earlier this year. And it's a heck of a day. And I was going to him because I have all the productivity and stuff in place, but I wasn't getting into deep emotional relationships. And so Sean was helping me through that. And he showed me by the end of the day of our 12 hours together, that I had basically built myself a system to stop myself from getting into deep emotional relationships with women. So I was building myself a prison, essentially. And Sean pointed that out to me. And I was very angry at Sean for pointing it out to me, because I didn't like to be shown that I'm not perfect. Money up front, Right? Right.

Sean said, money up front. If you could.

Money up front. I love that.

So Sean was actually. Were you terrified? Were you worried?

Maybe we could grab him a mic?

Sean was concerned because we were both standing there and staring at this whiteboard where he had pointed out that I had built this prison for myself. And so it sucked. I didn't want to admit it.

There was shame.

It was like, how the hell did I create this very problem that I claim that I don't want?

And that's the hardest part about it.

Yeah. And so he pointed out to me that I built this system that put me in a bad place. And then I realized, hey, I can just go and dismantle that system and build a new system that allows me to have what I want. And I've since done that. And thank you, Sean, for pointing that out. But it just goes to show you that if you've built a system, like, there's a lot of great marketers in here who might Struggle with family relationships or their health, and you've built a great marketing system. You can go and do the same thing for your time management, for your health, for your family relationships. It's all just about building systems that work for you. And the five things that we use that I've used to build systems for anything that can change your life in any way is having better planning and preparation than ever before, having professional accountability, which is going to give you expert advice and someone to hold you accountable and not let you get away with anything. Third is positive social support. So that's being in a room like this. You know, you might not get breakthrough ideas from everybody in here, but they're gonna pick you up when you're feeling down. Fourth is having a meaningful incentive. So we're not doing things for money or stuff. It's what matters in life is people and experiences. So a meaningful incentive has to come from your heart, not from your wallet. And then finally, the big deadline. There has to be a deadline in the behavioral change that you want to make. And if you have those five things in place, you can do anything in life. You can lose weight, you can get rich. You can find the love of your life, the home of your dreams, whatever you want if you use those five things. So just put them in place. Build the systems you want for your time, for your family, for making a million bucks.

So when you focused on this thing, I mean, I guess the way is that's the big picture thing for you, that you needed to build things around.

Absolutely.

So how do you structure your day? Like, what does your day look like? And how can people in this room structure their day?

Well, the most important thing is that you get up. It doesn't matter what time you get up. So I get up early in the morning, but you don't have to get up really early in the morning. What you need to do first thing in the morning when you get up is focus on your number one priority in life for 15 minutes. And the reason why I say that is because most people don't spend 15 minutes a day without electronics thinking about their number one priority in life. It could be an opportunity to take advantage of, or it could be a problem that you're going through. If you give yourself 15 minutes a day, six days a week, for 52 weeks in a year, that's 72 hours of clear, uninterrupted thinking. And you can write a book in that time. You can do anything you want. But most people don't do it. And most people does Anybody in here get stressed out before 8 o' clock because of their morning routine has too much crap in it. You know, you, you have to do meditation, you have to do gratitude journaling, you have to do freeform journaling, you have to do exercise, you have to do yoga with JP and you have to do interpretive dance. Like you have to do all that before seven in the morning according to like these articles that you see on the Internet. And most people are getting stressed out, so don't do any of that stuff. Instead just sit there and think. Go down to your kitchen table, think on your number one priority for 15 minutes and then the rest of your day it can go any which way you want. But you've already had that victory. That's the most important thing. If I can just give you one piece of advice, that's it.

That wasn't bad. That was not bad.

Can I share something where that's concerned too? And it's really made a big change in my life. I'm sure it'll make a big change in yours. Is every single person's morning routine needs to start the night before. And again, this is through environmental exposure through Craig. I've learned more by watching this guy than ever by asking him questions. Because sometimes when you're, when you're the problem, you don't know what questions to ask to get out of the problem. But when you watch, you learn. And even in the evenings now as soon as I get home, after the first hour of being home, I just turn my phone on silent and airplane mode and I leave it alone. Anything that happens, work wise, I'm not going to be able to solve it. Seven, eight, nine o' clock in the evening. Number one. Number two, I don't want to feel guilt the next day when I'm working that I spend actual valuable time connecting with my wife and kids because we're all sucking off the screen there. I don't screen suck anymore. I mean, imagine how many people fall asleep in this very room screen sucking the very last thing you did before you fell asleep. And now that's really impacting your subconscious mind. Instead I'll still open up my notes because remember, it's in airplane mode. So there's no notifications popping up. And I've turned off all notifications, but there's no text messages popping up. Open up my phone and write down my five things I'm gonna attack the next morning. And so I do that brain dump the night before. I'm not screen sucking and reading Bad news, bad Emails. The problem's still gonna be there tomorrow morning when I can actually do something about it with my VPs and my team leads, et cetera, in the evening time, I'm not gonna stress about it. And so if you just focus on actually setting yourself up to win the night before by eliminating screens, by not hitting the snooze button in the morning, because I'm convinced, and someone needs to do a study on this, that if you hit the snooze button first thing in the morning, you really are telling your subconscious mind that I'll take 10 more minutes of interrupted sleep over getting out and dominating my purpose in life. And I believe over time, that stacks up against you like a stack of dominoes where you hit the I'm a loser domino, and off it goes, right? Every morning, it's like we have two. Two stacks of dominoes to hit. If you hit the snooze button, you're hitting the I'm a loser stack. But that's been a big thing for me, man, preparing the night before for the next morning. And we all know when you win your mornings, you win your days. You win your days, they add up into a massive amount of success in your life, whether it's family, health, happiness. Like when people tell me, gee, bad rose, you know, I just have a few more pounds to lose, it's like, fuck, man. We're all millionaires in here, right? We're all doing well. You can't hire a nutrition expert. You can't hire a. A personal trainer. Then it's like, well, I can, but I don't have the time. How do you not have the time? And I later found out they're not working in their 5%. And we've talked about your 5% at least in the genius network groups that I've been in. One time, this was, I don't know, almost 11, 12 years ago. I was working out of my home. We didn't have an office. Then my wife calls upstairs to the guest house, and she goes, hey, dude, sprinkler has a leak. It's like a fountain in our backyard. I said, I'll be down and fix it. And so I went down to fix it. And I'm pretty handy with that stuff, but I got mud all over my arms. And the only employee I had was one assistant. Her name was Amanda at the time, comes down, and she goes, hey, people are responding to the email you just sent out. They actually want to get on the phone with you and see if coaching is right. I said, oh, man. Amanda, I've got mud all over me. You've heard me do the clothes many a times. You got this. Now I'm asking Amanda to work outside of her 5%. I'm working outside of my 5%. What could have cost me $20 to pay someone else to fix that sprinkler. I lost a $5,000 sale. At the time, it was 5,000. Today it's 50,000 to coach with me. But $5,000 to me might as well have been 50,000 back then, 11 years ago. And that was the best lesson. And you all have your 5%. Most of you, it's delegate, motivate, and sell. You delegate to your team. You motivate your business partners, your clients, your team, and then you sell. That's it. Anything outside of that, if you're doing your laundry, if you're doing your grocery shopping, we've got a house manager, her name is Valentina, and she does the shopping for us and changes the light bulb. Anything that's in the five, my wife says, hey, can you take out the garbage? No, it's not on my 5%. Hey, the light bulb's out. It's not on my 5%. Hey, the sprinkler sprung a leak. It's not on my 5%. But now there's someone who can do it. You can afford to get another wife in your house or a. You know how I mean that? Some of you know how I mean that. Yeah. But you really can. And you forget this. And my challenge to you is, why don't you buy back some of your time, focus on your 5% that matters, so you could really focus on what happiness is. Which, to me, it's money, meaning health and relationships. That's it. It's a simple formula, really.

Well, you know, in 1997, I hired Gary Halbert for. Well, I think you both have maybe heard the triple X Halbert take. I recorded it just on a little cassette player and for myself. We ended up distributing it as a product. And it was me and Pamela Yellen and Gary Hallbert, John Carlton. We're all sitting around in this hotel room because I was up there doing consulting with Bill Phillips at the time. Body for Life author. And basically, we're all making a list of if we were all millionaires, what are the things that we would have in our lives? And one thing that every person wrote down is a personal trainer. And then I think it was John Carlton that said, you don't need to be a millionaire to hire a personal trainer. You don't need to be a millionaire to hire a lot of these things. And as a matter of fact, by not doing it, it's one of the best ways to not become a millionaire. Because you spend all of your time doing what you just explained, and you.

Start to feel like an imposter in your industry. You really do. Because the content you're going to deliver on that video, you're not delivering at 100% because you don't feel comfortable in your own skin. How you're gonna pitch from the stage, you don't feel 100%. Let me tell you. I'm in the fitness industry, and it's been 15 years since I've trained a client. But when I was in that stressful period of my life seven to eight years ago, as we were growing Fit Body bootcamp, I was £25 fatter. And when I would get up on stage, a fitness business summit to sell, there's no surprise I was selling. 5, 6, 7 mastermind coaching clients. Today, 90 to 100, 110 people come on board at a time. The difference is not my pitch. The difference is not anything else other than the fact that I feel authentic. And that transfers to the audience. And I don't care what you think through transfers, through video, through your email, through your every. Your mannerisms, your eye contact, every single thing, your stage presence. So work on you, man. Work on you first. So valuable.

Love it. Wanted to ask you both about how do you do, I mean, with what you're doing with the franchises? I mean, how. How do you deal with the information overload? I mean, you've touched on a lot of it with just. Even the, you know, what you do in the morning, what you do the night before. But how do you deal with the sheer volume of stuff? And, I mean, everyone here has their own version of that.

Yeah. And we're all leaders. And so you can. You can definitely. I know you've experienced this before, where you become the human bottleneck in your business. Right. How often are you the one with the buck in your hands and you don't know what to do with it because you got 10 other bucks that you got to do something with? You're the human bottleneck. And so I quickly learned that I can't be the boss that runs it. I forget who was up here yesterday. I think it was Tony who said, you know, you still have a job. You're a millionaire, but you still have a job. And so I'm a big believer in decentralized command and all that. Simply Means is I have two leaders, two VPs, VP of operations, VP of new business. Because as we bring on new franchises that I take equity in, you know, the VP of New Business will make sure that they are running like Fit Body Bootcamp is running so that we have congruency and KPIs in place. But the VP of Operations and VP of New Business are the ones I meet with them 35, 40 minutes every day after my workout. They go and delegate to the team leads, team leads delegate to their implementers, their department, and then they execute. And the simple formula is this, what is it that we're doing? How's it gonna look when it's done and what is the deadline? That's it. So I just have to talk to my two VPs and. And they go and delegate. And then when it's done, we'll have a meeting on it. And I might say, well, I don't like how that works, or what if we did it this way? But again, I'm no longer the bottleneck in my business. And when you're the bottleneck now, you start doing time theft from yourself. I'm gonna cheat my. Who was it? Todd Durkin. Todd Durkin, are you in here? Todd Durkin? Remember you were saying that at some point I'm just gonna eat a protein bar and skip lunch. Eating engineered food is not food. I don't care if it's a protein bar, it's not food. And you start stealing time from yourself, from your family, from your sanity, from your workouts, from your sleep. Before long, you're having an anxiety attack and the central tremor because the human body can't deal with that. So decentralized command. Find leaders. As Tony said, let them fail. Create the systems and delegate to them.

Anything you'd like to add?

I just don't know how to do anything. Mostly on with text. So, I mean, he makes fun of me all the time. But, you know, on my phone I have two apps and that's all.

That's all I have. Do you still have a BlackBerry?

I still have a seven and a half year old BlackBerry that I use and you can't do anything on that thing, so I just avoid getting myself in trouble. I build a lot of systems because I'm a very weak person like anybody else. I get really tempted by things and so I just keep myself out of harm's way. Just like, you know, I tell you, if somebody comes to me for weight loss, you tell them to keep the crap out of the house. It's the Simplest thing to do. So keep yourself out of trouble. How can you keep yourself out of trouble? Just do like, go through your day and figure out what are the things that are causing me the most problems, what are the things that are getting me in the most trouble, and then figure out a way to keep them out of your life. So a lot of not to do's is a good place to start. Most people's most important list is their not to do list, not their to do list.

No, what you just said is, it's interesting. I'm a very weak person. We all have areas where I've always like. And you'll hear me talk about it. I'll ask different people, you know, what's your kryptonite? You know, what is the sort of thing that gets you in the way? Because the best way to get out of a hole is to quit digging it. And people dig a lot of their own holes. And I see that with, you know, a lot of people here that are workaholics. From my conversation with Gabor Mate, there's an understanding of where a lot of this stems from. It's just the things that a person becomes conditioned to that continues to build these dopamine hits. And so like phones is an example if you have a workaholic problem or tendency or whatever you want to call it, but you're also doing all these other things that you are not strong with that are these temptations. You know, if you're an alcoholic, you can't keep booze around the house. You know, if you're a food addict, you can't keep a bunch of freaking snicker bars and shit everywhere. So.

Well, I use this analogy, like if you have young kids, young kids bring home this, you know, they, they draw something, you can't figure out what it is, but they bring it home to you, right? And they, and you give them your approval and it's like giving them a gold star, right? And so as entrepreneurs, we're getting gold stars from things. And so like the next time you watch a video that says hustle and grind 16 hours a day, you're like, oh, I'm going to go and do that. Because I'm going to do that and I'm going to get a gold star from some guy on the Internet because he sees me hustling and grinding. But that's totally misaligned with your values. And, and that's where you get in trouble. But you keep on doing that next thing, oh man, you're really working hard. You know, I see you hustling, grinding. That's awesome. And you're getting positive reinforcement from the wrong thing. And so your actions are misaligned from your goals. And that's what causes what I call. It's like the first world problem, which is, you know, the biggest stress is when we're not aligned in what we're doing. And so if you keep on, you know, you say you want this in your life, but your actions are taking you down here. There's always going to be that stress inside you until you align your actions with your goals, which is starting with your values and your vision. And so what I've seen Bedros do now, Bedros is even better with his time than I am now. He gets done work at 4 o', clock, so he plays with his kids before dinner, has dinner with his family, plays with his kids after dinner, has time to watch one television show and hang out in the hot tub with his wife. I mean, that. And run a business with 600 franchises. I mean, that's pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So if there was one takeaway action step that would produce a 10 times result for the audience from each of you, what would it be?

I think I already gave mine, but it's really that. Fifteen minutes in the morning, get up, do not pass go, do not collect $200 until you've sat down at your kitchen table without the electronics, pen and paper. Sit there and if you have a problem in your life, solve it. If you have an opportunity, take advantage of it and you can write 500 words in 15 minutes. If you're writing a book and in 10 weeks, that's 30,000 words, 15 minutes at a time. I've done it. I've built businesses doing this. And it's so simple because most people's entire day is reactive. But that's proactive and that's how you're.

Going to get ahead in life.

You know, I know the word vision has come up several times so far in the last two days. And allow me to bring it up for the 20th time now, but oftentimes when you make a vision for your, for your life, for your business, you're making it based on what everyone else around you is doing versus what values you have or what values you think you should have for you, your family, your personal goals. And for me, I learned very quickly. I don't know if I told you, I spent 16 months in therapy about three years ago.

I didn't know the time period, but I thought you spent the last decade in Therapy, Yeah.

You would think it should have been the last decade. But the irony there is that towards the end of that, at one of the meetings, you talked about the book the Body Keeps the Score.

Great book.

Bessel van de Kolt.

Yes, by the way. And he goes on to say that one out of every four people have had some kind of sexual trauma in their life, assault whatever whatever. And one out of every three have had some emotional trauma in their life. So when you look out here in the audience, what are we really doing? And as I sit there with my therapist, and I went to my therapist, by the way, for my anxiety attacks, he taught me four words or four letters. Halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And as it turns out, when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, I'm going to go into an anxiety attack. The alcoholic is more likely to go and hit the bottle. The drug fiend is more likely to go and do the drugs. And so I remember. And you've done this before where you're typing, I'm not going to go pee until I clear out my inbox. Or have you done this? Raise your hand if you've done this. Right. As though it's some magical, virtuous thing, like it's a badge of honor because I'm a badass entrepreneur. What does that really mean, man? All that means is that's making me angry. And the anger, right. Halt, hungry, angry, long and tired. The anger is about to make me go into an essential tremor or some kind of an anxiety attack. And so after working with him for four weeks on that, he goes, hey, is there any other problems we to need you to work on? I'm like, no, I got no problems. He goes, well, how was it with your family growing up? I'm like, look, I come from a communist country. English is a second language for me, you know, so big deal. My dad slapped me around a little bit growing up. I go, but what happened to me before that? Being slapped around is nothing. He goes, what happened? And I just broke down crying, and I'd never. And this one. This is just three years ago. This happened with my therapist, and I broke down crying, and he literally walked me through it. And we basically spent the next 16 months overcoming the trauma that I had dealt with between the ages of 4 and 6 of being molested by two older boys in Armenia. And the reality of that is that I had created business upon business upon business. And even in the book the Body Keeps a Score, the author talks about how men who have been sexually traumatized will begin to Disassociate, inject steroids to get bigger. And the whole idea is I'm telling myself I want to get bigger and stronger because I like to power lift. In reality, it's to create insulation, to be big and strong so this never happens to me again. I create business upon business upon business to insulate myself from the world. And all I had to do was really deal with the shame, rage and confusion. And we spent 16 months working, working on the shame, rage, confusion. I became a better human, a better husband, a better father, a more effective leader in my business. Started focusing on my health more because we are oftentimes have our head in the sand. Think about it, there's what, 300 of us here and I don't know, another hundred in that room. What percentage of us have dealt with traumas, have experienced traumas, but you haven't processed through that shit. Just like I told Kevin, my therapist, as I'm snotting up and crying and looking out his window because I couldn't even look at him. I said, what happened there, Kevin? I've dealt with that. I've dealt with that little boy. He goes, wait, you dealt with who? I said, I've dealt with that little boy. He goes, bedros, can you look at me? And I looked at him and he goes, you do realize that's called disassociation. That's the first step into creating multiple personalities. Dude, I had no idea, right? I said, oh, my gosh, Kevin, this is scary. Let's take me through the journey. So I don't know what shit has happened to you, but we've all grown up with some level of trauma likely. Especially if you're an entrepreneur and you're, yeah, we want impact. Yeah, we want income, influence. But you also have some shit to deal with. And trying to insulate yourself with money and muscles and power, just deal with this shit. And then the money is greener. I told Kevin, I said, kevin, the color now is in Technicolor. Sounds are better. Like, I go to concerts and I jump up and down and fist pump. I'd go to a concert and you wouldn't tell if I liked the concert or not. I'm just bobbing my head. In fact, Jay Ferruja, a dear friend of ours, he took me to a Jay Z concert. He goes, I thought you liked Jay Z. I'm like, I do. But I was numb my whole life. And I always found reasons to insulate myself. And I'm pleading with you, work on yourself. That's the biggest Thing you can do, do your 15 minutes, but work on yourself. You've got the money. Find the therapist, find the trusted person, do the fucking work and come out on the other side as a winner. It changed my life, man. It really did.

That's good.

That's good.

I almost would like to take. I mean, there's other things I could ask you, but just with what you just said is two questions. If anyone has two questions for Craig or Bedros, go up to the mic. We have time for two of them if you want.

If anyone has a question, one person has two questions.

No, two people. Two people have one question. Yeah, thanks for the clarification. I don't have a question. I just. What you just shared in a room like this as a man takes tremendous courage in a room of high achievers. I want the whole energy here shifted. And thank you for modeling authenticity, vulnerability and courage.

Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Matt.

You know, I appreciate that. And for 41 years. I'm 43 now. For 41 years, I just kept that. I boxed it up, as we do so well, and I put it away. I'm the king of. You know, you cross me and I would box you up and put you away, and you don't exist to me anymore, and I'm not that guy anymore. And so to be able to tell my wife for the first time two years ago that, hey, this is what happened to me. And so when you hug me from behind and that visceral reaction that I feel, or to be able to just, you know, not get triggered by stupid shit, just deal with it. There's professionals who aren't going to judge you. There's going to listen to you. And just because we're really good at what we do, we think, well, I'm really smart because I can extract money out of thin air. Therefore, I can solve this little problem by putting it away in a box. You can't. There's experts who will walk you. I didn't know the four letters. Halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Just. I started drinking water, going pee when I need to. Spending time with my wife and kids. I no longer had anxiety attacks, started delegating. There's a lot you don't know, folks. There's a lot I didn't know. Do the work. Yeah. Thank you, man.

Yeah.

Alex, how's it going? So Joe gave me the strength last year to stand up in Genius Network and say, I'm an alcoholic. You know, I kept that to myself. I thought it was something that I did. Culture from the uk And I almost lost my. My wife, my family, almost lost my life, almost drowned. Couldn't help myself. And then, you know, in marketing, something we know is you need to understand your audience better or you need to know your market better than you know themselves. Then they look to you for the solution. I was with Aaron Lewis, and Aaron Lewis said to me, you've got imposter syndrome. You need to go and see somebody called Dr. George Pratt. He's like a psychologist. And then that night, Joe drove me home, and I started speaking with Joe about the conversation with Aaron. And Joe explained me better than I knew myself. He actually spoke to me. Like, nobody in my life has spoken to me. Like, this guy gave me hope. And I was blown away. But, you know, I've been on a journey and I won't go into it now, but I've literally been through. I went to the psychologist, been facing my trauma right now, and Joe has been there for me every day, like, pretty much. If I wasn't texting and speaking with this guy on a regular basis, I don't know what would happen to me. I wouldn't be here. The reason I only come here is to give him a hug and a big kiss, and it's. Right. Dean Graziosi said, you come here with these ideas of all these lists of things that we want. And I just looked at my list of what I want, and it's just meaningless to what I've got from this. Just listen to you beverage. What you just said, it's. He's right. It's like, wow. To be here in this environment and be vulnerable. The one thing I'm here to do is try and find out who I am right now. What is my next mission? What's my next. What is my moonshot speaking to Lisa Sassefage just now? I don't know, but that's why I'm here. And I'm sure there's something amazing, but I need to get rid of the bullshit. And I. And I just think it's. It's just incredible to be able to say this in a room of people like this, where I would always keep it hidden. I'm the marketer, you know, I'm the guy who can make money, extract it from anywhere. But now I feel like if I can actually speak to the world like this and be my true, authentic self, holy shit. What can I do? It's incredible. So thank you for being up there. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, you know, I mean, different. A lot of people absolutely resonate with getting into the vulnerability stuff. And other people are like, you know, I had. I always think of dad. Sullivan had great, wonderful parents. He's never been to therapy in his life, and I've been to more therapy than most. You did say, oh, I thought you'd never been to therapy. Oh, okay. Well, we got a whole nother interview with Dan on therapy. I can't wait to do that one. So that's the next TEDx talk. Yeah, exactly. The thing, though, when I was given this definition of intimacy, which I've, you know, shared several times from a guy who treats people with. He sponsors people with sexual addiction, he was never a sponsor to me. I just met him through a dear friend. Never in person, just over the phone. And he. Several years ago, he said, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions or what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And when I heard that, you know, I grew up never feeling the world was a safe place. And so I built some level of business success and popularity and trying to do cool things always, because I just never felt safe. I was always. My world consisted of, you know, I was always in a hurry to get somewhere, so. So as soon as I was there, I was in a hurry to get somewhere else. I could never feel okay anywhere. And it felt like the dark cloud was just following me around, and if I could buy my way out of it, if I could make enough money out of it. And I talked about this last year. I won't go into depth here, and it will probably be taken out of context for timing purposes. I did big events much larger than this for many years. They were lower price. They're like $1,000 to $2,000 a person. But for the first decade that I did them, almost after every event, it was exhilarating. People's lives were changing. Business. We weren't talking, like, vulnerability stuff. I wasn't bringing addiction people. And even conversations like you just had. It was very powerful, though. And people would. They would change their lives. They would cry, and I would do my best to take it in. And most of the time, I would leave those events and. And I was very stressed out and I couldn't unravel. And I would call up escorts and I would, you know, hire hookers, and I would just feel like the biggest piece of shit because I'd have all these people that were looking at me, like, guiding and directing their business, and it actually worked. You know, results were being produced, but I could never connect with it. And I'm just like, what the fuck is wrong with me? You know, I mean, like. And then I started realizing once I started immersing myself in recovery that a lot of successful people do that like, you know, drug of choice for many high level CEOs that were abused, 60% use escorts. And you know, I never talked about it because I didn't know how to deal with it. And I've always remembered the Janis Joplin, you know, who died of addiction. She said I would go out and make love to 20,000 people by performing a concert. Then I go back to my hotel room alone. And when they'd go back to the hotel room, they would drink and they would do drugs and they would try to escape. And it was just such a difficult thing. And I just never had that support network and I do now. And what I also didn't have was the ability to take it in. It was always like pexiglass. I could live this sort of life, I could have this fame and this notoriety, but you know, it never, never took in my perfect health. I mean, I've got a long way to go in terms of where I know that I could get to with freedom. But what doesn't happen anymore is the self destruction. After the success, I would go out and what I realized is when I would get super overwhelmed, the thing that would take the overwhelm off of my plate, I would add a new project to my plate. One of my self sabotage things is when I'm really overwhelmed, let me take on a new project and I'm guilty of that. And temporarily it would work because I was distracted, but everything was a distraction. Business was a distraction, all of the stuff was a distraction. And what I know now, it's just about connection. If I can stay connected to other people, I stay connected to myself. If I can stay connected to what, you know, call it whatever you want. I don't care if you're an atheist, I don't care if you're, you know, it doesn't matter. Whatever the source is, whatever that energy is that nurtures and feeds you is critical. And that has everything to do with how you set up your day, how you set up your life, all the rituals, everything that go into it. So any final words of advice? Anything I didn't ask that I should have asked you guys, that you'd like to speak to.

I think the most important thing for me in making any change in my life and probably help with bedros is having the accountability partner. You have to be willing to share what you want to change, whether it is stopping drinking or whether it's being more productive or whether it's writing a book or whatever it is. You have to be willing to say to somebody that you don't want to disappoint, that, hey, I'm going to do this and you're going to hold me accountable. And with Bedrose, he's helped me basically go from being a big dick to a little dick. And. And it's because he's like my big brother. And every time I'd screw up, he'd give me this dirty look and I'd be like, oh, I can't do that again. So it's. Accountability is going to change your life. That's the secret sauce to success.

And Joe, I just want to thank you for that. You create a place that all of us can feel safe to share this stuff. And I think these are the conversations that become the 10x multipliers of success and not necessarily what the next best funnel is. Yeah. So thank you for that.

I mean, thank you. And you know, we're sitting in a room of high achievers, people that are capable. And many people in this room not only inspire people and help them have better lives, many people in the room save lives. And I think, you know, with the sheer power of the people in the room being in situations that that prevents you from doing what you can do what you want to do. And just feeling connected to it is so critical. And yeah, all of this other stuff is I just want to reduce suffering or eliminate it. Not me, like I'm going to do it, but just bring conversations and people here. And that's why the very best people that I can bring up and share with everyone and connect them with each other because this is a connection network. And I really appreciate you guys. You both have been not only as being in the group, but just you're great mentors to me and we all learn from each other and both of you are amazing. So thank you for sharing your wisdom. And how do people find out more about you? Because I want this video to be watched.

You can just go to manup.com because I decided to man up. So you can just go to manup.com and you can learn all about me.

And you for anyone that wants to do personal work with you. How do they do it?

Yeah, they can just email me@craigodfather.com I.

Love this man up in Godfather. I mean, this is a give it up for Bedros and.

And.

And Craig. Thank you, guys.

Awesome.

Thanks, man.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.