Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we've got a real treat. We're going to be talking with my friend Bedros Keuilian, the founder and operator of Fit Body Boot Camp, a very, very successful fast growing fitness franchise that is taking the world by storm.
He's built it up to a multi, multi, multimillion dollar company, and in that experience, has learned some great processes and disciplines and approaches that can help anyone apply the same thinking to their business and in his words, man up to take control of all the things you need to do to get the most out of your business and life.
We had a great conversation. His new book is called Man Up. It's available on Amazon or wherever good books are sold and I highly recommend you read it. But first, here's a conversation about what's inside the book and what we can do to help get the word out.
You know on this podcast we always take a marketing approach, so rather than just talking about the book, we talk about the marketing of the book, so you get a behind the scenes look at how we would get the word out, and brainstorm some marketing ideas for it.
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More about Man Up: ManUp.com
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 115
Dean: Bedros Keuilian, how are you?
Bedros: I'm doing great man, how are you?
Dean: I'm so good. I'm excited that we're going to get to hatch some evil schemes here.
Bedros: Yeah. I love the evil way that you promote things, man. You're so clever. I've got to do a day of coaching with you if you still do those or not I don't know. So that you can tell me how to take a growing franchise and grow it even faster.
Dean: Well I like what I'm hearing. Yes, I do that. We can talk a little bit about that, but we could also talk about your book, which is fantastic by the way.
Bedros: Heck yeah. Thank you so much, man.
Dean: Man up.
Bedros: Man up. I've got so much great support behind this thing it just blows me away. I'm very grateful and thank you for the opportunity.
Dean: Yeah. Well this is an interesting thing because the format of the way we do it here is we're going to talk about the marketing of the book. The getting the word out, and the structure of all of it. I loved the format of the book first of all. Taking people on the journey first. Totally starting with this, start with you. Then you've got to start with your vision and then you've got to move onto your team. So many times people where they get frustrated is that they're at a level that in my observation that they don't have clarity on one of those three things that you were talking about.
Bedros: Yeah, you're absolutely right. It starts with self-discipline. Then there's vision, you've got to have clarity of vision. Then you've got to build a team to help you execute because no empire was built on one man's shoulders.
Dean: What's the big picture here? Where's this going or what's your intention in doing all of this?
Bedros: Good question. I've been fortunate enough to truly have gone through some bad struggles. I say fortunate because I come from the fitness world. When you go into the gym and you work out, no one voluntarily wants to put themselves under heavy weight that burns, that hurts, you could tear your muscles. You're going to be sore the next day. You're sweating, you're hot, it's a crappy experience, but you know that by putting your body through adversity you then build stronger muscles, more resilience, more powerful, faster, et cetera. By going through all the adversity that I went through in 2011 and 12 and part of 2013 when I launched Fit Body Boot Camp as a franchise in a very naïve way and literally had this thing almost collapse on me where I went into debt, over $126,000 in debt. I almost lost my relationship with my wife, lost my health. The first chapter of the book, actually the introduction starts with the morning of my heart attack. I thought I was going to die of a heart attack.
Dean: Yeah, your heart attack, right.
Bedros: For me I had to step-by-step learn how to lead a team and grow this INC 500, Entrepreneur Magazine 500 best ranked franchise from scratch, because in life we're taught, hey, you should be seen and not heard. As an entrepreneur you've got to be heard. You've got to know how to communicate and communicate clearly, you've got to be clear on your vision. You've got to be quick in making decisions, yet our mom and dad and school teachers told us, well think about it. Make sure you get all the information. Be careful when you're making decisions. So everything we've been taught has worked against us as entrepreneurs and that was going to be my massive failure. I learned by developing these six pillars of leadership, self-discipline, clarity of vision, decisiveness, emotional resilience and of course building a high performance team and that you can actually grow any business into an empire. My end game with this is simple. I am now taking on equity in other emerging franchises and businesses.
My plan is I take 20 percent equity with a seven year exit. I was just telling our friend Frank Hearn about this. I take equity in businesses that I know are about to do the hockey stick and grow. These are usually coaching clients right now where I find my best equity partners. I go into this relationship with them for seven years at 20 percent equity. Then they buy me out at the end of seven years. I've had three of these exits and I love them. For me it's easy to install my leadership team, my sales team, marketing team into any emerging business that I see has possibility and scale it faster.
My goal with the book is to really get it in the hands of entrepreneurs, which is why I'm not doing the free plus shipping offer by the way, because it gets it in the hands of wantarepreneurs. I want to sell it at full price, get it in the hands of 50,000 entrepreneurs and we'll talk about what I'm doing to do that. Many of these guys and gals are going to reach out to me. They probably going to have a business. They all start out as a $50,000 a year coaching client because I have to vet them out. After the first year I decide whether they can stay a coaching clients or I want to offer them an opportunity to give me equity for a seven year run. That's my end game here with the book.
Dean: I love that. That's a cool way, you've got a nice model. You've got something like a track for people to run on that way because you can tell where people are. You can't progress to the next level until you get everything straightened out in the first level, otherwise you're bringing all that bad wiring with you and it carries through.
Bedros: Exactly right, and what I'm giving them...
Dean: I laughed when I saw you had phrase in there, you can't delegate leadership. I was thinking about that when you were talking about the gym, that reminded me, you can't delegate your pushups either.
Bedros: Right, exactly.
Dean: You've got to do. Leadership is not something, it's like your health, your fitness. Yeah.
Bedros: You've just got to do it if you want it to work. You just can't delegate it. I've tried, and I'm telling you I almost crashed and burned.
Dean: That's a really cool thing. Now it's like getting the word out there. I love everything about the content, the book is phenomenal, it's going to make a big difference for people who read it. The title, I always look at, when you're going on journey like that, trying to attract the right people. That's really, I think you've nailed the words that people are saying when they come to the realization.
You can't really get to those words until you come to the realization that you've tried to do it some other way.
It feels like, you've come to the realization, listen I'm just going to have to man up and do this. I speak from personal experience on that same thing, that it came to a point where I realized man, I'm just going to have to man up and do. You've hit those words right on the words that are completely resonant with emotion that people have when they get that point.
Bedros: That's the emotion I had. Yeah, that's the emotion I had.
Dean: It's funny. Thinking about Dave Ramsey, and his book Financial Peace, when you get the right words at the right time, for somebody who's going through financial stress or in financial turmoil to look at those, to hear those words and see a book called Financial Peace, it almost feels like if you hold it in your hands, that your blood pressure is going to lower. You're going to get a sense of peace just from having the book. It feels like Man Up is one of what I call a declaration book, right? Which is like, that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to man up and here's my thing, so I'm going to grab this book, and that's what I'm going to do. It's like getting your marching orders.
What's the subhead again? I don't have my book right in front of me, sorry. I meant to have it with me. What's the subhead?
Bedros: How to cut the bullshit and kick ass in business and in life. The reason I used that is that I realized very quickly that the type of person I want to read this is the person has this obsessive, relentless personality, but just doesn't have their leadership skills dialed in. They are obsessive and they want to kick ass. They don't want just want to be good at life, they don't want to just be okay at life. They want to kick ass in business and at life and those are the people that make good equity partners for me because I'm a very obsessed person. I want to time collapse everything. I want to buy speed, I want to sit across from Dean Jackson, pay him money, and then go hey Dean, we're closing 26 locations every month for our franchise, how do we sell 36 locations every month? And grow this business faster, right? I want the type of person that I resonate with, so I figure I use those words. I had to man up to become an effective leader and I wanted to kick ass in business and in life because everything's not isolated.
If you are good at life, you're good at business. If you're good at business, you're good at life.
Dean: Yes. Isn't that true. It's almost like you can't, it almost has to go life and then business. You can't man up in business without manning up in your life first.
Bedros: Right, so you've got the order of it right. But manning up in your life is then going to motivate you to say, you know, I can take this on. I can man up in my business. Then team up, that's really the ultimate thing of it.
Dean: Very cool. So what's the plan for getting the word out? What's marketing wise for the book? Who's the target audience here?
Bedros: The target audience is entrepreneurs that have businesses they can scale to beyond eight figures. I'm talking 50 to 100 million dollar companies. One gentleman that comes to mind is someone who I actually own equity in his business, his name is Elliott Hulse, some of our friends might actually know of him, he's got followers.
Dean: I know Elliott, yeah.
Bedros: Yeah, you know Elliott. So he owns Strength Camp, I own equity in his business and we're going to grow Strength Camp just like I'm growing Fit Body Boot Camp. Strength Camp is going to be the direct competitor to Cross Fit. We're going to crush Cross Fit. Another gentleman who I have equity in his business is Jason Capital, he's a business coach and mentor to millennials. He's got an eight figure business that's quickly going to grow above and beyond that. It's charging entrepreneurs that need better leadership guidance and structure. Anyone can grow a business to three, four, five, eight, ten million. It's how do you get to 20, to 50, to 100 million. That was my struggle with Fit Body Boot Camp. As I saw 100 million approaching, I realized, whoa, there's a whole different level of leadership required here.
I'm looking for that hard charging entrepreneur that has potential of 50 to 100 million dollar company. That's the ideal reader of this book. The way we're marketing to them is really in just two ways. I come from the direct response world like you do. Couple years ago my wife came out with a book called recipe hacker. Within a four day launch with affiliates, we did the free plus shipping offer, so 26,000 copies of her book with free plus shipping, moved a whole bunch of people, like 8,000 people into a continuity program at $19.95 a month, the What's for Dinner club. I didn't want to do that here with my book. I wanted to sell it at full price and I also wanted to get it into hands of people who are going to love it, respect it, and actually read it, and not just buy it because it's the book that you pay shipping for and that's it.
If I become a New York Times bestseller, great. I'm not after that so much as I am after getting the proper equity partners and having entrepreneurs read this and helping them time collapse their growth in business, and as leaders, which is a big thing. I decided we're going to go for bulk orders, and we're going to go for a special promotion. I'll explain the bulk orders first.
Lewis Howes was kind enough to explain to me, when he put out his last book this past October, so almost a year ago, he put it right on his website that hey when you buy 500 copies of my book I'll do a webinar for you and your team. When you buy 1000 copies, I'll do a half day consulting, and if you buy, whatever it was, 2000 copies, he'll come and speak at your event. He told me, in his attempt to become a New York Times bestseller even though he sold the right volume, number of books, New York Times came back to him and said because you were actively promoting bulk orders, we're going to disqualify you. He never became a best seller with his second book like he did with his first.
By giving me that warning, we decided to keep it kind of blind. On my website ManUp.com, the offer was would you like Bedros to coach and consult or speak at your event? Coach and consult your business for free, or speak at your event for free? If so, fill out this form, name, email, phone number, where you're from, what your business is about, and we'll contact you. I had sales reps reaching to people and saying yes Bedros will speak for free if you buy 1500 copies of his book. He'll come and coach your team if you buy 2000 copies. He'll do a free webinar if you do 500 copies. We ended selling almost 10,000 copies of books in the first month that we started doing this in July. Just in July through bulk orders.
Dean: Through free orders. Right, yeah.
Bedros: Exactly. I said what else can we do to get to 50,000 copies quickly. I've got all my friends, but I'm not doing an affiliate deal, but have put in a lot of money in the goodwill bank account as Frank Kern calls it. For years, I've just come with a helping hand, and just helped, helped, helped knowing that one day I'll want to ask for the help back. I reached out to a lot of my friends, and the direct response rolled. I said hey guys, it's not a free plus shipping offer, I'm gonna ask you to send out two emails, it's just a book recommendation, but here's what's cool. The email say that because you're buying from me, Dean Jackson. You're getting this email from me Dean Jackson, when you buy the book from Amazon or your local book store you forward the receipt to orders at ManUp.com and Bedros is going to give you an eight hour course on peak performance and leadership as an entrepreneur that he's about to sell in January. So I'm giving away $2,000 course to anyone who forwards the receipt to us.
That's doing two things. One, when they forward the receipt, we automatically forward them after confirming the proof of purchase, we forward them the course, but we are also getting opt ins that way. We've got 96 guys and gals who are promoting with those two emails, and it's just a cool recommendation of the book. Simple as that. Hey this Bean, I read this book called Man Up, the six pillars of leadership. How to time collapse your growth as a leader and as an entrepreneur. I highly recommend that you buy it, and because you're buying from me, you get to forward your receipt to orders@ManUp.com, and Bedros will give you a $2,000 course on leadership absolutely free.
That starts tomorrow, because the book launches tomorrow. But I did that with my list, and also Frank Valentine's list, and it worked like gangbusters. Those are two methods. Bulk orders, we're going to keep doing bulk orders for the next 90 days of course.
Dean: Yes.
Bedros: Between that and having promotional emails go out for the book and $2,000 course I think we'll hit 50,000 copies.
Dean: That's so awesome man. Of course, because of this is part of the challenge that happens when your selling books through retail outlets, that's there's no real way to connect to people. That was one of the things in looking at the physical copies that you sent me and the advance copy. I don't know whether you've added this in there, but one suggestion that I might have, I'm a big fan of having crystal clear next steps for people.
Finishing the book, I think your invitation was to give yourself permission. It was a really great motivational ending. We wish you well and go on your way kind of thing. What I was longing for, and what might be a good thing to do is at the very end of the book, before the acknowledgements, going into saying whenever you're ready, here's three ways I can help you. Here's what to do next. It's crystal clear that there's something next for people to do.
People are buying the book. This kind of book is going to have a longer life than just this promotional cycle. It's a great book, it's not going out of style, it's not like some sort of LinkedIn strategy that's only going to have a six month shelf life or something. You're talking about fundamental, contextual stuff that was hard earned over the last ten years. It's going to be valid for the next ten years.
Bedros: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: Being in conversation with those people, I always like to look. We've done this a lot, of using the physical book as kind of the next, a conduit to the next step. It's a good chance that a lot of the people that might find it. You never know who they are. You don't get, that's part of thing of not selling the book directly.
Bedros: Exactly.
Dean: That's part of the reason that people do the free plus shipping kind of thing is to build the list. I really admire your idea, you want to be in conversation with the people who want to buy the book, not just get it because it's free for shipping.
Bedros: Nope. Right.
Dean: That might be a really great way to give people directives. Lead them to the next step so that they can get in touch with you, you know?
Bedros: You know what Dean, it's funny you say that man. I think I must have had the little devil and angels on my shoulders, the angel was the Dean Jackson on my shoulder because when I was writing the book, I actually wrote that next step. I want you to go to ManUp.com and here's how I can help you for my high performance coaching. I even had a free gift offer. My problem, of course hind sight is 20/20, there's a great lesson for me and anyone listening to this. When you're writing a book ask your publisher, or tell your publisher before you sign the deal, one, I want the rights to audible, so they don't get the rights to audible. I forfeited my rights to audible. Number two, I'd already signed the deal, and then when I get the manuscript, it said very clear next, they said no, no, no, we don't want that in there, we're going to take that out.
Had I said I want the rights to audible and I'm going to have this very clear next step in there, otherwise I'm not signing with you, and then I would have had more leverage. That was a very painful learning experience for me. Unfortunately it's because of that I came up with this strategy of all right, if I just can have buyers forward the book, the receipt to orders@ManUp.com, we'll capture their contact info. That's going to be a small fraction of the people that would have reached out to us if we had a direct call to action in the book. You're absolutely right.
Dean: That's what I wonder. I wonder if there's ... we've done things like putting stickers on books, even after the fact. I don't know whether you're going to be distributing the bulk orders or whether they're being bulk ordered through retail. How you're handling that?
Bedros: They're being bulk ordered through retail because we're also really trying to go for it.
Dean: Retail.
Bedros: Yeah, because we're also trying to go for the New York Times best sellers list.
Dean: I got you. Right, right. I guess the thing is getting that, just really being clear on what that next step is for the people who are, giving people the word to go and do it.
Bedros: Right.
Dean: To make sure that they know that they can go and get this leadership course from you. That way you'll be able to communicate with them. It's a really nice next step for people too. So now they're moving forward on their own momentum. You really are getting people who number one are paying full time. Number two, they're going with their own momentum to go and find and seek you out and take you up on your offer for the leadership course. Then there's no excuse. Then when somebody registers for the leadership course, now you've got the opportunity to go with the crystal clear next steps on that steps.
Bedros: Right.
Dean: What are the next steps. Let's walk through that. Right now you've done all the right things. You've got all this equity and friendship and relationship. Everybody is going to get on board to tell everybody about the book. You've got a great book, so it's not a problem to get people to want recommend it. It's a perfect topic, it's going to help everybody who's helping everybody with business. It's a great thing. Then when people do come and register for the course, what's the next step after that?
Bedros: The next step after that for us is actually pretty fun. It's three case study emails of different equity partners that I have. We don't necessarily say that these are equity partners, we just say they're coaching clients because they did all start of coaching clients. We show the case studies of three separate emails, three of our coaching clients who had monumental success, and then the fourth, fifth, and sixth email lead to content and curiosity. Do you think you might be a good fit to become a coaching client. Let us help you scale and structure your business for massive success. If so, here's how you apply. Of course, it then leads into an application process on our website.
Dean: Have you thought about, or do you have a scorecard for this, so somebody could...
Bedros: No, tell me more.
Dean: Okay, this is one of the very best things that I do. I have scorecard, our whole thing is about the profit activators. I have a profit activator scorecard at profitactivatorscore.com. This is a scorecard format that I learned from Dan Sullivan. It's a really amazing way to quantify qualitative things. It basically, I'll describe how it works. For my scorecard, and for yours, yours will actually be built into these. You've already got the six pillars. You could add a couple more on them. I think having eight mindsets or eight things, eight comparisons that you're making. With ours, for instance, we have the profit activators, the mindsets. One is selecting a single target market. You go through and describe where somebody is so that they're reading it with an eye to saying that's the one that describes me.
You might say you cast as wide a net as possible and you work with anybody and everybody who comes along. That would be the lowest level of selecting a single target market. There's four columns of this, progressions from the worst possible outcome you could have for selecting a single target market. Thinking that you cast a wide net and work with anybody and everybody who ever comes along.
Then you move up the way progressively getting better until you get to column four where it's your idealized version. You take to create the polls, what's the first pillar of your six pillars? What was the first one?
Bedros: Self-discipline.
Dean: Self-discipline. Okay. If you were to describe, this is how you would do it. You would take the example, if somebody is at the highest level of self-discipline what would be the you are or you believe, the you statement that they would agree that this is what your aspiration for them would be. If somebody's really dialing it all the way up with self discipline. You think about who's the most self-disciplined person you know? Let's say Craig Valentine, because that's probably true. He's definitely the most self-disciplined person I know. I know that he's been a big influence on you.
Let's just say Craig. If Craig is answering this, it would be you realize that self-discipline is the key to freedom and everything in your life is organized to support you and your discipline. Something like that. I'm just going off the top of my head. That somebody would agree with that. I'm totally on board with that. Okay? Then you take the opposite end of the spectrum which would be if somebody was failing at self-discipline, what would the statement that would be you, you like to go with the flow, and take everything as it comes. Whatever happens, happens. You know what I mean? The opposite end, right?
Bedros: Exactly.
Dean: That would be how they would describe their current situation, with that in regard to that one. What Ben does, is these four columns as your progressing kind of loosely follow this progression between failing in column one, so the first statement would be a description of what it is like to fail in that first pillar. Column two is what it feels like to be frustrated in that column. That means they're trying to do something, but they just don't know or they're doing the wrong things. Taking the wrong approach to it. Right? They're beating their head against the wall kind of thing.
Column three is what we would call winning, traditionally. That means that they would consider themselves, that they are doing pretty good on this, pretty well, that they're pretty strong on it. They might not even know that there's a fourth column that's transforming in this. When you look at that, the way this helps identify where somebody's big opportunity is, and I think for you it would certainly help identify what track is the right, where to meet them where they are. The way I use it with our profit activator score is that I'm looking for, I know that ones that matter for me, that are kind of baked in are profit activator number one, they know who they want to attract, and profit activator number, which is deliver a dream come true experience. Deliver the result for people.
I'm looking for people who rate themselves highly on I know who I want and I can deliver a dream result for them. Then in profit activator two, which is basically lead generating, using direct response to get people to raise their hand. Profit activator number three which is educate and motivate, and profit activator number four is to make irresistible offers. I know that they're low on those three, I can help them with that. What's harder to fix is when they rate themselves low on delivering the result.
If they can't get the result, no amount of marketing is going to help. We've got to go to the core, and get that shored up, so that you can have something that can shout about from the mountaintops. You know that when somebody, when you do somebody to work with, that they're going to have an amazing experience. If you looked at this with those six pillars, maybe it's nine, that it's three from each of the phases of the personal, their vision, and then their team. Eight or nine would be a target on that.
The thing that people do, each column has three options. Across the whole four columns, there's 12 numbers so you can rate yourself on a scale from one to 12. Within each column, the first column is one, two, three, you can actually have nuances within each one. If you're kind of dead in the middle of that column, you would rate yourself a two. If you're almost at the next column, you would rate yourself a three. What we have people do is pick two scores. They pick where they are right now and they pick where they want to be.
For a lot of people, Bedros, they may not even know that column four is a possibility
Bedros: Oh sure.
Dean: They may be, if somebodies in the frustrated column, that means that they're doing something, but it's not working. They doing what was probably told or what they've read, or what they have been taught to do, and it's just not working for them. That's different. To be in column one most of the time, you really almost have to be defiantly, sort of aggressively not interested in moving forward.
You want to avoid those kinds of people, but if they're frustrated, so they rate themselves as a four, five, or a six right now, but they want to be a 10, 11, or 12. That opportunity, that gap is where the opportunity, the conversation is with people.
Bedros: That's brilliant. I love that scorecard method.
Dean: That may be, I'll get a copy of Dan's book on that. He's got a whole book about that scorecard methodology.
Bedros: Oh great, thank you.
Dean: It's just such a game changer in the way of setting up a conversation with somebody. The way I've got it set up is that when people fill out that scorecard on line, it goes into my gogo clients, but it also goes as an email so we get an email that shows Bedros filled out the scorecard and heres all the, here's what his scores were, and here's his comments that he made about this. If I see that you are high on delivering results, your high on who want to reach, but your low on generating leads, for instance. I can reach out to you and say, hey Bedros, it looks like it's smooth sailing once you get somebody to work with. What business are you in? Just starting a conversation with somebody. That really goes such a long way in helping people feel understood.
Bedros: What a great way to qualify the volume of leads that you would get, by most qualified to least qualified, right?
Dean: That's exactly right. You know your stuff. You want to get people who self assess. Somebody self assesses that I'm doing great in everything, I don't need help. That's a different thing. You can almost sense the ways that everything is. It really is the sincerity of the comments and thoughtfulness that you can really feel when you see one of these scorecards filled out. They really, even just filling out the scorecard itself. It's not an assessment. There's no magic algorithm in the background that's going to send you the, your the honor. There's not any kind of, no assessment or evaluation of it. All of the awareness comes in doing the scorecard itself.
Bedros: It makes total sense, and they come to the solution on their own.
Dean: That's exactly right. Now they come to the conclusion that listen, I really need help on pillars three, four, five and six. I'm doing okay on number one and two, but I really could use the help. This is exactly where I fall down. I bet you, knowing what you know about these things, could really articulate what their pain is if they're failing or frustrated in any of those pillars. You know?
Bedros: Oh sure. Absolutely. I mean, I've done so much research on it from firsthand experience, yup.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Bedros: That's brilliant man. I love that.
Dean: That's an exciting opportunity, you know?
Bedros: I will definitely be deploying that as part of the funnel, I'll tell you that.
Dean: I love it. Yes. Especially because if you're going to be generating leads at high volume like that, it really helps to evaluate and get the conversation started with the right people. It's almost like doing triage on who is the best that you can help. It also indicates that people are willing to engage in the dialogue. They want help because they took the time to voluntarily fill this out. There's nothing, it's not mandatory. By them doing it, the urging.
Every time you, on the bottom of every email that I send out I include this super signature that always says plus whenever you're ready, here are four ways I can help you. I say number one, be a guest on MoreCheeseLessWhiskers and we can hatch some evil schemes for your business, just go right here and click on be a guest link. Number two is always try our profit activator scorecard and get a sense of how the eight profits activators are either growing or slowing your business right now.
Every time we send those out, people, new people, are filling out the scorecard. I end every podcast with that invitation too. Your constantly percolating people who've been in your world here. When they're ready, they rise, and that's one way that they kind of surface themselves.
Bedros: It's a brilliant method. I love that two simple avenues.
Dean: And that's something, do you have a Man Up podcast?
Bedros: Craig and I have the empire podcast which the whole Man Up thing is about that. That's how we drive leads for our empire mastermind, the coaching that I run.
Dean: Oh perfect.
Bedros: Even for that we should be running a scorecard. It just makes total sense that we've got to be running a score card for that and the Man Up funnel as well.
Dean: Right. It's such a great tool.
Bedros: And it's so non-invasive it sounds like. It's brilliant.
Dean: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. That's the thing. They get an opportunity to put in their insights. As they're going, and you can see the light bulbs coming on for people as they're making their way down the score card. They get to, they're good at delivering the results, but then they realize in profit activators six they don't have any after sales service. Or do they don't have any nurturing of life time relationships. They're not orchestrating referrals in profit activator eight. They start to realize, wow, there's so many things that I could be doing, but I'm not. They're just really focused on get people in and hopefully help the, and hopefully find enough people to keep doing it.
Bedros: To that, I feel like I'm underperforming now. I got to get behind my laptop and start knocking out these scorecards.
Dean: The great thing is, once you get the rhythm of it, it's pretty easy to get it. You know the source material so well. You know that it's really just the nuances of you use the language, and stuff. Happy to help you with that. I've done enough of them to have some shortcuts to getting the language down and stuff.
Bedros: That's great.
Dean: It seems like, the reason I asked about the podcast is that as this is happening, what happens on the ... this could be special thing of the empire podcast. Is it typically just you and Craig doing one?
Bedros: Yeah, it's typically me and Craig. Every now and again I'll do what I call inside look where Craig's not in town. I might take someone who's a high achiever, performer in their industry and bring them on and interview them.
Dean: Yeah.
Bedros: But most episodes are just Craig and I. Yeah.
Dean: Okay. You know, it's kind of an interesting thing this may be a really great opportunity for you to document and celebrate people manning up. If that's kind of a, I mentioned Steve Sims, that hashtag bluefishing, like turning it into a verb, manning up is a thing. To celebrate what that actually means, what that looks and talk about the transformations for people.
Bedros: That's brilliant.
Dean: What I've stumbled on here at morecheeselesswhiskers, like I love the format of the podcasted show when I do one, we, you've been on that, Craig's been on that. I love that kind of format. What I found, this is how I decided to do morecheeselesswhiskers is that one of the most popular episodes on I love marketing was always the yellow page's roulette episode. Whenever the yellow pages would arrive I would text Joe, or he would text me if it was his, and we schedule a time. We would get on the phone, and we would play yellow pages roulette.
One of us would pick a number, and we would turn to the page and then we'd brainstorm about that business category. We'd talk about what would we do. We did things like an aquarium business, or a roofing business. Whatever it is. I always thought to myself people love that because there's a sense of improv theater to it. Your flying without a net and they're getting insight into how we think about businesses. How we think about applying marketing to different businesses.
I always thought to myself the thing that would make that better is if it was actually a real business that we were doing it with, and they were actually able to talk back. I started doing this, I'm over 100 episodes in now at morecheeselesswhiskers where it's every episode is a different business owner and we come on, the whole thing is very raw. Just like, I've shared with you before you came on that we record every minute of the thing.
You dialed in, and there we were, our greeting, everything is the whole thing.
Bedros: Yeah.
Dean: I spend an hour and all we're doing is brainstorming and applying marketing and specifically our profit activators to all these different business. At the end, it just goes so fast, it's also really educational for people listening because they hear what would be a legitimate live $2,500 consultation. They're listening in on what that would actually be like. It's an effortless way to create a podcast. I never have to think about what we're going to talk about. I never have to have an outline, or any kind of thought or conversations about it, what we're going to talk about, because we're going to talk about their business. We're going talk about it from the beginning of the hour to the end of the hour, all self-contained in there.
Bedros: Built in content.
Dean: That's what it is. That's exactly it. From that, all of this thing, all I do is I dial the phone and we talk like this. As soon as we hang up wheels will be set in motion, Bedros, this will automatically forward the audio to a Trello board where my team will take and do everything that has to happen to get this up on iTunes and Stitcher and where ever else podcasts are sold. Then we get it transcribed. I have a writer through and picks out three to 500 word articles so that all those emails that I send are written something that I've said from the podcast. I don't have to write the emails. From that one hour, it's all this total self-sustaining thing and I think you've got that opportunity with this kind of community of people who are in the process of manning up.
That could be everything to the point where they're ready personally to get their vision in line. When they've got that vision to really set in motion and find the right team. I think the journey could be amazing, you know?
Bedros: Oh absolutely. I just love how Craig has this saying, he says make sure to use every part of the pig.
Dean: Right.
Bedros: That's exactly what you’re doing. From the moment that our call started to the moment it ends, then all of the sudden it forwards to the right person, like a set of dominoes, everything happens in the right order, where the iTunes and Stitcher happens, the email is crafted. My goodness, I just love how you operate man. You're smooth.
Dean: And that, well thank you very much. The great thing is, even those super signature items, they're all leading to the next thing. It's self-perpetuating because the invitation is always be a guest on the show. Go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com, download the morecheeselesswhiskers book and click on the be a guest, and let's hatch some evil schemes for your business. We have this perpetual, never ending stream of people who want to be a guest on the show. I just pick the times, Craig would love this, because I just pick the times on the calendar and they're filled. That's Lillian, who works with me, takes, reaches out to everybody, coordinates when they are so I wake up on the day I'm doing the podcast. Typically I'll do them on a Friday. I'll have one at 10 o'clock and one at noon, and that will be it for the day. We'll go to the movies. I just love those days because I wake up and I know that at 10 o'clock I'm going to be doing my favorite thing, which is scheming and talking about marketing.
I'm going to do the same thing at noon, right? Then I don't have any homework after that. That's not a deadline. This is an interesting thing, I've learned the difference between synchronism and scheduled, and asynchronism with a deadline, right? Asynchronism with a deadline, huge like, where you're going to get all the freedom. You're going to get to work. You're not tied down. Just tell me when the absolute drop dead is. Synchronism and scheduled is where it all is. I don't have to give it any thought until three minutes until 10 o'clock. I get ready dial in, and the at one minute after 11 o'clock I'm done thinking about it.
I don't have any homework or preparing for it, you know?
Bedros: That's the real freedom. That's the paradox of being an entrepreneur. We ultimately want freedom, but we lock ourselves into all the schedule, the homework, the after things you have to do after you podcast. You've got it squared away man, you're done.
Dean: The freedom is the discipline, that's what Craig would say, right?
Bedros: By God, by God. And everybody wants to be Dean Jackson when we grow up man and I know why.
Dean: Wait a second. I think that might a cool addition to your podcast, or an additional podcast that would take very little resource, you know? Very little effort. It's almost seems, here's the thing, when you think about it now, you're at the level where you could mogul up and get a podcast like that done without you even doing it. You shouldn't have. Well this is great. I do these break through events all over. I did one in London.
Had a guy who has a big property portal website. He lives in London, but the property portal site is for Spain, foreigners buying houses for holiday or investment properties in Spain. I suggested this idea of doing podcasts and he hired somebody who is a former television presenter in the UK, just a super pro. She does the interviews with people who have come and bought homes in Spain. She talks about their experience. It's almost like the whole idea of it is people who've made it through that journey of hey I think we should buy a property in Spain to learning the ropes and learning the moves and picking the right place and going through all the new stuff of buying something in a foreign country.
She's hearing, exploring their thought process and the lessons they learned, and if they could do it all over, what they would have done differently, or what they really enjoyed about the process. People get to vicariously learn through the experiences of other people. She produces these amazing podcasts. He's not doing it. It's fantastic.
Bedros: Wow.
Dean: I'm wondering about your Manning Up, that this could be, especially if it something where if you take a thing like I do on morecheeselesswhiskers. There's sort of a thing that I'm doing my highest level things. This is my highest thing, coming up with ideas, and brainstorming at the moment, helping people get marketing clarity. It would be different and difficult to subcontract that. To hire that out. Somebody's not going to have the same insight or experience with the profit activators as I do. If we're sharing somebody's experience or sharing their story, or documenting their results or their case study or their lessons, whatever it is, there's lot of people who could that.
People who are friendly, and curious, and articulate, and good interviewers, journalists almost, are really documenting these. I've been using a great word I'm calling field reports that are people who are out using these things in the field and we're going out and documenting what's happening.
Bedros: I love that.
Dean: I think that could be a cool thing where you create this culture, like I mentioned to Steve Sims about bluefishing, that's hashtag bluefishing every time somebody's having an experience or an epiphany or a breakthrough or something like that, to hashtag it with bluefishing or with yours, hashtag Man Up. You can gather these things and put it together. It's almost like they're the reality of it. You almost need, who's that guy on Bravo that does the Watch What Happens live or whatever? Andy?
Bedros: Oh yeah.
Dean: Can't think of his last name. Andy Cohen. Yeah, Andy Cohen.
Bedros: Yeah, Andy Cohen, yeah.
Dean: You look at that. What he's not doing anything, he's just documenting or sharing what's going on here. That's kind of the thing. If you had the Man Up documentarian kind of thing who's preparing all these or documenting all these. That's a pretty cool collection of things. I think you've got something with longevity here. I don't think it's just like a promotion or a launch to get the book out there and that's it. I think this has.... that's the start of the journey. Step one is man up. You're on your way there, you know?
Bedros: You know what? I see so much potential for it now in the long run. I see the legs now as opposed to just a six month promotion.
Dean: Yeah. Right.
Bedros: That is awesome.
Dean: Because I think that's not, you've hit that level, right? It's not something that is a new phenomenon. For years people have, every single person who has built a 20, 30, 50, 100 million dollar company has at some point reached the spot where they've had to say, I'm just going to man up and do it.
Bedros: Yeah.
Dean: They've probably been knocked down a couple of times to get to that point.
Bedros: Isn’t that the truth.
Dean: It's very exciting.
Bedros: I love that.
Dean: I think you've got some cool stuff. See how fast this kind of stuff goes?
Bedros: It goes fast and I got so much more clarity Dean. Holy smokes man. Thank you. Here I thought I was going to tell you how we're launching the books. You just showed me how we're launching the Man Up business, man.
Dean: Make it the Man Up movement. That's just it.
Bedros: You are great.
Dean: Man, I just want to tell you, you are just this evil, and I say evil in the kindest way possible, evil genius.
Bedros: Evil genius who can see opportunity in ways that most of us can't. You really are gifted sir. Wow.
Dean: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. What do you think is going to be, if you were going to unpack it, what's your action or awareness from what we talked about?
Bedros: You know what, I'll tell you this, as I told Joe at the less cheese meeting, I'm the king of taking action. If someone shows me the path like you just did, I'm literally going to walk out of this office right now and talk to my media team, the four video and audio guys who sit in the cubicle around the corner and say guys, let's start setting up who the face of Man Up is going to be to literally start taking the Man Up podcast global, just like we did with the Empire.
We're not a competent business podcast with the empire podcast that Craig and I do. I think that I can the same thing with Man Up.
Dean: That's amazing.
Bedros: Yeah, yeah. To me, it's just right into action. Who's going to be the face? How are we going to market this?
Dean: Now you're a podcast mogul. A podcast mogul. I never thought I would say that.
Bedros: That's so fantastic. I love it.
Dean: My directives to everybody listening on this is that they can get a copy of the book and I'm assuming they can get this free course as well. If they just go, what do they do if they buy a copy at Amazon or the bookstore or whatever? How can anybody take advantage of the course that you have?
Bedros: Yeah. The easiest thing to do, whether they buy it at Amazon or they buy it at your local bookstore is just to take either a picture of your receipt, if you bought it at your local bookstore, or just forward the receipt if you bought online, to orders@ManUp.com and we will, within 40 minutes, confirm the receipt, the purchase, and forward them the log in to the high performance leadership course. It's a $2,000 course I created. That's completely high value there.
Dean: I love it. That's awesome. Well, I hope that everybody will do that. I can tell everybody it's an amazing book. Fantastic. I'm so excited that we got to talk. I'm going to get this up right away for us and get the word out.
Bedros: Well, thank you Dean. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.
Dean: Thanks Bedros, I'll talk to you soon.
Bedros: Take care.
Dean: And there we have. That was a great episode. If I were you what I would do right now is go to ManUp.com and get a copy of Man Up book and take advantage of Bedros offer for his leadership program that's available when you just send a link, or send the picture of the receipt for buying the book. It's a great opportunity for you. I'd highly recommend it. I loved the book. There's so much great information in there. Actionable insight, that's really what I call it, insight. This is a guy who is writing a field report. Someone who's done the things he's advocating and gotten tremendous results. If you'd like to continue the conversation here just go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com. You can download a copy of the morecheeselesswhiskers book and if you'd like to be a guest on the show, just click on the be a guest link and we can get together and hatch some evil schemes for your business.
That's it for this week. Tune in next time and I'll talk to you then.