How to Become a Money Making Guru: Part 3
Welcome back for our third instalment of my How to Become a Money Making Guru series with my good friend Bedros Keuilian. Listen to this call here.
Craig: Hey, this is Craig Ballantyne from EarlyToRise.com and InternetIndependence.com and I am back with Part 3 of the most amazing How to Become a Guru series with my good friend Bedros Keuilian. Bedros, welcome back to the call.
Bedros: Hey Craig, thanks man. Good to be back and very excited to talk about some new stuff.
Craig: Well, we will talk about some stuff. That is a very good plan. Now first of all, my friend, give use the one-minute story of how you came to have the immigrant edge because of your travels from your homeland to America just for anybody who has never heard this before.
Bedros: Absolutely. We came from a communist country, Armenia, back in 1980. I was six years old, didn’t speak English. My father was a member of the Communist Party and of course coming to America, we were broke and destitute. Growing up, all I heard from my dad was, “Now that we’re in United States where there’s no oppression, there’s freedom, there’s opportunity, your job is to make the most of it.”
You can call it brainwashing or whatever but my dad just made it where I knew I was unstoppable, not because I had any advantage or money or language skills or skill sets for that matter but simply because of where we were located on a global map. So no matter how bad the economy got here as I grew up, no matter how bad times got, I always had this immigrant edge that a friend of mine kind of bestowed upon me. His name is Robbie and he does all the video shooting for me and editing.
One day, he goes, “You know, you’ve got this immigrant edge about you.” I go, what do you mean?” He goes, “It doesn’t matter what happens,” because that particular day, a brick was thrown in the middle of the night through our office window and about ten math books and about $20,000 of video cameras and recording stuff were stolen. I came in the next morning, I’m like business as usual. Just call the police. Call my insurance, get moving and make more sales. He says, “No matter what happens, you’ve got this immigrant edge” and I said tell me more, Rob. He goes, “You just have this way of kind of taking chicken shit and turning it into chicken salad. Nothing ever brings you down. Nothing ever is out of reach. No matter how bad the economy, the circumstance, whatever, you’re the underdog that seems to make it.”
That was the greatest lesson that anyone could ever teach me about how I think and operate. I think a lot of immigrants have that edge. So my goal, my mission, my purpose has become since then, about two years ago now, to share with as many people, like instill within them my immigrant edge even though they’re not from an oppressed communist country so that they can have the freedom, the success, the lifestyle and opportunities that I have.
Craig: That’s great, man. It really is. You’ve got nothing to lose when you come with that immigrant edge and you realize that if you do lose it, it’s no big deal. You can go back and start again. So we’re going to show people today the final details about becoming the guru. You have shown people how to go from having an event to getting, going an amazing seven-figure coaching program, whether it’s YouTube or whether it’s through book marketing or whatever it is that somebody chooses to create their authority platform.
Now selfishly, I want to hear your plan for me. I’m releasing my Perfect Day book in September. It’s a success and productivity plan that I’ve worked on pretty much all my life. I asked you what are the five most important videos that I need to create and what call to action would I have in these videos before the book is launched. You gave me a list of five guru pump-up videos. I’d love for you to explain those videos, the reasoning behind them, maybe a little bit of what to say and maybe even what to title them when we put them up on YouTube to drive interest and traffic back to our offer.
Bedros: Absolutely. Can you just do me a favor and go through each one as far as what I’ve told you on that list? That’s the only list that I could find.
Craig: Absolutely, my forgetful-minded friend. First of all, how to avoid distraction and get stuff done; second, how to overcome negativity and critics; third, how to build your perfect life and you referenced Frank Kern’s Core Influence here; fourth, how to dominate your day by planning, preparing and executing; fifth, how to think like a millionaire with the secrets to how the successful people think. That’s how to think like a millionaire. And then the bonus video, the sixth video was how to be a leader.
Bedros: Got it. How to be a leader. Tell me what the second is.
Craig: How to you do say so yourself.
Bedros: That was a good one actually. Tell me what the second one was, the one after how to avoid distractions. I missed that one.
Craig: How to overcome negativity and critics, or in your case, how to get rid of crabs.
Bedros: All right, let me break those down for you. Obviously, you and I know one simple thing – the fact that if someone is wanting to plan a perfect day, that all they have to do is become 1) disciplined and 2) put their priorities first. Voila, you’ve got the perfect day. However, everybody in the world feels that those two answers are just too simple. Even though those are the clear and concise answers, you just have to be more disciplined and put your priorities first, people feel that they have just way too many distractions coming at them.
See, they don’t feel that they can shut down Facebook until you tell them in your book or in a video that you can shut down Facebook and Instagram and turn off your text notifications until 12 noon. For example, I turn off my text message notifications until about 3:00 in the afternoon. When I turn them on at 3:0, then it will buzz or beep and I could see the text messages. Until then, texts are accumulating and it doesn’t matter. I make sure to avoid all distractions.
So there’s a small segment of the population who has this built-in or learn the behavior of discipline and prioritizing. The rest of the folks want to be told what to do and want to be led. So while you can give them more specific things like hey look, if you were more disciplined these are the five things you would do in your life – go to sleep at the same time, wake up the same time, eat the same way all day long, whatever workout routine should be at the same time. This is how you create discipline. But really, people don’t want those bullet points. They just want the big overview in these videos.
So the first one is how to avoid distractions. Well, everyone feels they’re distracted. They feel that it’s not their fault that they’re lazy, unproductive and not getting things done. They feel just these distractions would stop. So an expert like you who gets in front of them and you enter the conversation as it’s going on in their head by saying, “Listen, I know you’re distracted. I know that the boss wants a piece of you, the family wants a piece of you. You have these ideas and you keep jotting them down and as you start them, things distract you, get in your way like your taxes, your bills. You might get sick. You might even get distracted by your emails, by your phone, by Facebook, social media, etc. So let me tell you a three-step process of how to avoid and overcome all distractions.”
See now when you got into the conversation in their head immediately and explain to them what they’re experiencing better than they could because as you’re explaining all that, they’re like yes, that’s right. My wife or my husband or my kids and my work…if my boss only knew this amazing idea I was coming up with. As you explain to them they’re like yes, yes, yes, Craig. Now you’ve caught their attention enough to go, “Now here are the three things you’ve got to do to avoid your distractions.
Typically, we always want those to be in bullet points of threes, fives, maybe sevens but certainly no more than seven. If you have seven bullet points, I’d make it into two or three videos because people these days are just having a hard time digesting content because there’s so much content coming at them. So to tell them that this is how to avoid distraction is huge. Then for you to be the guy that explains it to them in a way that they could never explain to others, you’ve won their attention.
The next one was obviously how to overcome negativity. Now we’re all wired to be negative and that comes from a place of being selfish and of course the need for survival, which is brought on by fear. Fear creates this need for survival, which is why we get kind of greedy and selfish, etc. But the people who have excelled and have gotten into a higher status in life have learned how to kind of control that fear and greed monster that creeps around in all of us. They know what to do. They know how to take action to alleviate those anxieties of fear and greed and anxiety.
Again, all you have to do is go hey look, listen. You’re probably wondering how to deal with negativity. It’s not your fault. Again, you’re the man on the white horse that comes in and says here’s what’s happening; you’re surrounded by negative people. Because as soon as you start the video off by saying listen, you probably have negative thoughts, they’re going to go not me; it’s not my fault. “But you’re surrounded by negative people. There’s negative news around you, on the newspaper, on the inter webs, on the TV and radio. And because of that, all that information goes into your head and you can’t help but think negatively and assume the worst. However, there’s a better way to overcome negativity.”
And then you go into your three, five or seven bullet points to explain to them how to shut off the television, how to disconnect from the crabs in their life, the negative people and how to control the inputs or the thoughts that come into their head. Get into the right circle of influence, which at that point—and I’m kind of jumping ahead here Craig because I’m looking at the bullet points on our email—if you’re going to have some kind of a monthly, digital success newsletter that they’re going to get then I would already start programming the audience in these videos that this is something that you have to continuously practice, this avoiding the negativity of constantly serving your life and going what are the negative thoughts and feelings that are coming in and how to eradicate them out of my life and how do I influence more positive people and thoughts into my life.
The reason you want that and you want to explain it to them that way, that you have to do this on a constant basis, is because we know that you’re going to have a newsletter to sell them when hopefully the bullet points of that newsletter will be, “This is a monthly way to tune-up your mind, to keep you programmed for success all year long and not just for the first 30 days because it’s going to be an annual newsletter they’re going to get.
So now we’ve talked about distractions and negativity. You’ve totally gotten their attention. The third video is, how to build your—and I can’t read my own handwriting. What was that third one?
Craig: How to build your perfect life using core influence.
Bedros: Exactly. So anyone who has ever watched Frank Kern’s Core Influence video, which is an awesome video to watch, it basically goes on to say you can write in a paragraph format or bullet point format of how your perfect life would be. So now that you’ve gotten in their head by saying look, it’s not your fault. You have these distractions and this negativity in your life. Here’s how you’re going to deal with those and overcome those, now you’re going to almost take them on this journey.
It’s like you first won their trust. Imagine meeting someone at the park and you start this small talk with them. They’re kind of resistant and skeptical about you but before long, the dialogue has changed to helping them overcome any kind of distractions and negativity and now they’re kind of leaning in and they are starting to ask you more questions and they’re less skeptical. Now they want to know okay, well since you’re so smart and you gave me the bullet points and the answers to overcoming negativity and avoiding distractions, how would I craft my perfect life?
This is where that third video comes in in the sequence and that’s why I wanted it this way is you go listen, let’s just say you wake up. What time would you ideally wake up if you had the perfect life? Then write that down. Then it would all be, what time would you do this and why? What impact is it going to have on your life? So I might wake up at 7:00 AM in the morning because that’s when my circadian rhythm operates the best, that’s when my brain is functioning normal, I don’t require an alarm clock so my body naturally wakes up at 7 as long as I’m in bed by 10:30 PM or 11:00 PM.
When I wake up at 7:00, the first thing I would do is go on my deck, sit on my chair and meditate. The reason I will do that is because it would give me clarity and I’d have a moment to kind of visualize my day before I take it on. By 7:30, I’m in the shower. As I’m in the shower, I would kind of plan out my priority list. And the reason I would do that is blank.
So what they’re going to do and I would teach them in that video, hey, let’s just craft your perfect day. I’d probably give them an example of mine. Everybody always wants to know how the guru does it. In fitness, everybody wants to know how a diet coach eats every day or how does the pro body builder or power lifter workout every day, what their routine is. So in success mindset, the higher level of achievement, they want to know what the guru’s day looks like. I would craft that out by saying here’s what my perfect day looks like. By and large, about 92% of the time I operate by this schedule here and here’s what it affords me. You might want to define your lifestyle at that point.
So you help them kind of develop and craft what their perfect day is and now what they’re doing is they’re almost seeing this visual picture that’s yet to come. This is important because while you’re showing them this future picture to come, your fourth video is how to dominate your day so you’re bringing them back to reality and saying all right, so now that you know what your perfect day is going to be like—and that might be six months from now or a year from now, two years from now, depending on how hard and efficiently you work on getting your perfect day crafted—let’s talk about today, how to dominate your day today because you’re going to need a lot of todays dominated that are going to add up to what’s going to be the perfect day.
I have this rule called the 5% rule that I only work and focus on the 5% of the things that matter in my life. Usually it’s delegate, motivate self and I outsource everything else. I don’t know how to create a website. I don’t even have a key to my office. I don’t know what the alarm code is. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know how to change a light bulb in my office and I don’t need to know that. I have people who do that because I have higher level things to do that are in my 5%.
So what you would really teach them is look, ultimately you’re going to get to this point where your day consists of this 5% or whatever your variation of that is. But right now, we have to talk about how you can dominate today. So let’s make this list of the things you’re doing today that could be outsourced to someone for $20 an hour or less. I would take them to this thing, this entire list of everything they might do in a day or a week and say all right, now put an X next to the thing that’s a $20-an-hour or less task. Now you’re going to take that and you’re going to outsource it to either a virtual assistant, a real assistant, someone in your family, someone who works for you, someone that you do trade outs with. Now what’s left might be the things that are in your top 5%. So let’s talk about how you’re going to dominate those things in order of priority.
So by now teaching them how to dominate their day, they feel they have a greater sense of control. Anyone who has a sense of control over their life and destiny feels this great sense of ease and happiness. When you put people in a place of ease and happiness, now you can move them along to the next video which is listen, now you know how to dominate your day. We’ve talked about what your perfect day is supposed to look like. So if you keep dominating your days, it’s going to add up to ultimately to what your perfect day will be. We know that you’re no longer going to hang around with negative people and allow negative thoughts to come into your head because we talked about how to overcome negativity and we know how to avoid distractions because anyone who is going to have a perfect day like you defined, simply has no room for distractions.
So now finally, let’s talk about what you’re going to become here, which is how to think, operate and live like a successful person, like a millionaire. So now you take them to the traits, which I call rituals. I believe all successful multi-millionaires who have had longevity in success and being a multi-millionaire have rituals. I know for me I do. I know you do, I’m very familiar with your rituals and I think that’s what makes our success virtually predictable.
Imagine that? People go buy a lottery ticket, they have zero control over the outcome and they buy it off whim and hope. Yet you and I can predict our future and now you and I are in the position that we can empower others to have this level of success as well by giving them the tools they need to predict their success. Well for that to happen, you have to go, “Here’s how a millionaire or a successful person thinks” and you start teaching them your daily rituals and why you think that way, why you take these specific actions, why you wear a certain type of polo shirt more often than not, why you wear those tennis shoes, why go to that gym at that time, etc., the people that you associate with, thy I might have this ritual of taking one wealthy person out to lunch each week, someone wealthier than me, smarter than me, more idealized or actualized than me.
Those rituals all lead to action and they allow me to dominate my day. The multiple days of domination lead to a perfect day and of course, that leads to a happy life. So the way I structure these five videos for you, you’re really taking this person who doesn’t quite maybe like and trust you yet and you’re taking them down this journey of winning them over and then showing them what their life could look like and then bringing them down to six months from now or a year from now, what their life could look like to let’s talk about dominating today and then going congratulations, you know what you have to do on a day-to-day basis. Now let’s talk about how you’re going to think and process and the rituals you go through on a daily basis.
By doing those five videos in that order and constantly kind of, for lack of a better word, brainwashing them with this great content, you’re going to have a large number of converts who are going to be chomping at the bits to want to know more about your book or any kind of information you’re going to put out that they can then use to get coaching from you through this medium, whether it’s a book, a membership site or whatever.
Craig: Hey, I’ve got a question for you. So in a lot of our other stuff, especially sales copy, a lot of people would go into, especially if their story is about them obviously, they’ll go into how they were definitely once like the reader, how they struggled, how they had a damaging admission. Do you do that in these videos or do you stick to only “I’m the guru. I do everything right. This is what I do.”
Bedros: That’s a very good question. Where I talked about where you would explain your perfect day, you might first go on and say, let me tell you how my day used to be or—and then I apologize for even completely glossing over that—where I talked about avoiding distractions and overcoming negativity, I would tell them, “Let me tell you, I was the most distractive man ever. Let me tell you what was happening in my life to distract me. Let me tell you how unpredictable things were.”
So you have to draw a parallel because then you have to meet them where they are in order to move them ahead to where they want to be. So if we’re going to enter the conversation as it’s happening in their head, then they have to feel like, “You get it. You understand. You’ve been there and that’s why you can explain my problems to me better than I can.” You have to say that, “I was once there but here are the changes I’ve made.”
I even always give a shout out to a mentor. I drop their name all the time. So I might say, “Back in ’98, I met Jim Franco, who’s a personal training client of mine. This guy, unbeknownst to me as I was training him, was mentoring me during these training sessions. He literally was reprogramming my mind for success without me even realizing it. But it wasn’t until I asked him to let me borrow money that he taught me this first lesson that I’m going to teach you.”
That’s so much more valuable because they now realize that you do have a chink in your armor, that you can be like Superman because there wouldn’t be Superman if there was no kryptonite. So we need that. We have to have those damaging admissions. Absolutely.
Craig: Okay, very good. You really want to show them that you have the perfect life and you’ve done this in your videos, just with these little tweaks to what you’re filming like being in the back of the limo and going to the airport and driving your car and stuff like that. So explain how important those are and how one might do it on a limited budget and the simplest things somebody can do just to prove that you stand apart from other people.
Bedros: That’s a really good question. Now anytime we’re trying to position ourselves as a guru, it’s kind of an awkward thing because most of us who are trying to do that are simply trying to do that to help people. But in video or even in print, it might come off as a little douchey or over the top or just slimy. So you can’t overtly say, “Listen, I own six sports cars. I own an eight-car garage. I own a property here and a property there” because that really just kind of drives people batty and before I knew it, their kind of BS radar is going off.
Mine would, too, quite honestly because seeing you in person over time—here’s a great example. There was a guy at the gym, a real cool guy. He’s a retired cop and he goes, “You know, I’ve seen you pull up with three different cars already and one of them I’m madly in love with” and I said well, which one?” He said, “The Nissan GTR that you have because I’ve got the little sister to that which the 350Z.” I said that’s a great, awesome car. We should go out and compare notes one time. So we went. We went and got some burgers together, etc. and we’re comparing notes on cars. But he said, “Looking at you inside the gym, I would never know you are successful and you have these cars,” because I’m the guy that wears old, ratty workout shorts, Chuck Taylors with shorts, which I know are a fashion no-no and a torn-up shirt. But it doesn’t matter to me. If I had met the guy and I told him that I own this car, that car and this car, I own a house here and a house here, etc., that’s kind of slimy. So when people kind of come to their own realization about you is when they think the highest of you.
By the way, all you have to do is show little snippets. For example, my videographer, Rob, does a great job. One time, we were flying to Modesto, California and he did a great job of just kind of panning the camera over and showed that I was sitting in first class. As I was typing on my laptop, he just panned just right where it kind of wasn’t anything overt but very covertly showed my Cartier watch as I’m typing on my laptop, sitting in first class.
I don’t ever have to talk about that I fly first class because he just shows it as part of the B-roll footage of me teaching a lesson, like, “Hey guys, we’re going to fly to Modesto, California to talk to one of our Fit Body Boot Camp owners and how she opened up three locations out there in the middle of California.” In the meantime, he’s totally positioning me by flashing to my watch just right.
You see this a lot in Frank Kern’s videos. He’ll be driving in his car and the camera guy, as he’s flashing over so you can see Kern’s face, he goes over the Rolls Royce emblem on the steering wheel. He doesn’t need to say that he’s on a Rolls Royce and if you just saw him in the car, you wouldn’t know what car he’s in until the camera just pans over just right over that Rolls Royce emblem, just in the coolest, kindest, awesomest way where you know that he’s the man and he doesn’t have to come out and say it. So those are little covert ways of putting things in.
Or I might be at home and I might say, “Hey, come with me, let’s go jump in my car. We’re going to go to my office. I’m going to teach you something.” I’ve got the video guy with me obviously. While we’re walking across my massive pool deck and then we go into my car, I don’t have to go, “Look at all my cars in my garage” as the cameramen does their job correctly, which is just quickly panning over some of the cars, not in the showroom kind of way but just quickly panning over where you could see it behind me as I pick the car that I want to drive that day. Let’s say we’re going to go on the Land Rover and we jump right in, he might just pan over my watch and this time it might be a different watch. It might be the Rolex. It might be the Omega. It might be whatever. It doesn’t matter but it has to be very covert.
As we go up my 65-yard driveway let’s say, he makes that very obvious. We might even crack a joke about it or I might say, “On this driveway,” which I really do, I go, “On this driveway right here which is 65 yards, I do hill sprints. I do ten hill sprints every night on this driveway because I hate doing cardio.” I never talk about the fact that I’ve got a long driveway and it comes to my one-acre property but it becomes very obvious when I talk about this 65-yard driveway ahead because it’s all uphill that I do hill sprints on.
You kind of get good at it over time, at covertly peppering in your guru status because the truth of the matter is one might ask, “Why do you need to do that? That sounds so douchey.” Let me tell you, man. I feel that way too but you need to do that because there’s so many fly-by-night people on the internet these days and enough people have been burnt on the internet or heard about someone getting burned on the internet where they’re skeptical. So you have to position yourself in this coolest way possible without crossing the line into this pompous, arrogant dirtbag.
Over time, you do learn how to straddle that fence just right to pull off the coolness so that you can win their trust, you can get them to see that you are a person of authority and credibility so that they can follow your message. Because if trust, authority, credibility are not there, you could talk all you want, you can give the best nuggets of content and information, they will never take action on it if they don’t trust you or view you as a person of credibility.
Craig: You’ve used the phrase “B-roll footage” a couple of times. I think that’s really important to explain to people what you mean by that and also, in terms of how Rob does an amazing job of setting the mood with faraway shots, up close and how he does do those subtle showings of your wealth and success. Can you explain what you can about doing that and then also what someone might look for in terms of hiring a videographer to be able to replicate that?
Bedros: Absolutely. Let’s talk about the last question first, which was how can someone find a videographer to replicate that. You and I are major proponents of modeling success. In fact, anyone super wealthy I know models success. They don’t recreate things from scratch. They might improve upon them. They certainly don’t go stealing other people’s ideas and plagiarizing them but we really do go around and model success.
So I would never encourage anyone to go and try starting this from scratch. Just go to my YouTube channel. Google Bedros Keuilian on YouTube. Go to my YouTube channel. Look at my last ten videos that I shot, my most recent ones and you’ll see. You just send those links to the videographer that you’re going to find off Craiglist who has some level of high-end videography and you’re going to say we’re going to make a lifestyle, educational video. I always call it a lifestyle educational video because it is info-tainment, as you and I have always talked about, where it’s information and entertainment together. By lifestyle educational video, meaning we’re going to showcase some lifestyle here while I educate.
Once you send that person that link and, you tell them what you’re looking for, they go oh okay, I can see how this is lifestyle, info-tainment educational videos. They watch the ten videos and they see that in one of them, Rob decided to do something cool and a very cool, awesome way showcases the fact that I’ve got my own filming studio here at my office and I’ve thousands of dollars of equipment. I’m not showing off the equipment. We’re showing off the fact that I’ve got a full-time videographer and all these equipment and my own private greenroom that gee, this guy must be good at something if he could afford his own greenroom to shoot in.” I forget the name of this video. It might be the Straight Line to Success Video.
What he really did was smart because he set up a camera in a far corner of the room as he started to set up the room before I even got in there to shoot. So you could see him pulling down the green screen. You could see him setting up the big, bright lights. You could see him setting up the shotgun mic, the boom mic and the loud mic. You can see him setting up the two other cameras for different angles and he’s got this thing working on super speed mode so the camera is kind of recording faster. Maybe he’s just fast forwarding through it.
So the first eight seconds of the video is Rob setting up my greenroom in a very fast fashion. Then all of a sudden, he flipped the camera. This is where you have to just get people to go, “All right, see what Bedros did right there, what his video camera guy did right there where he comes in?” He set the camera up really low on the ground and he said, “I want you to just come in and just stop for a second and then go to the X on the ground where we normally shoot from.” As it turns out, what he was doing was filming my feet, my jeans and my Chucks coming in. So I come in. I stop right in front of the camera that’s laying on the ground. You see my Chucks and then the camera pans up and then tada, I’m standing on my X. I go, “Hey, this is Bedros Keuilian and now we’re going to teach.”
That eight seconds of positioning was huge because it tells people a lot of things. It tells people how I like to do business. I don’t wear a suit and tie. I don’t schwack my hair back. I don’t wear expensive leather shoes or whatever. If I’m going to spend money, it’s going to be on homes, it’s going to be on watches and it’s going to be on cars. I know the last two depreciate in value and that’s okay for me. I’ve put enough money away. I’m a good steward of money. But that’s what I spend money on.
So I let them know if you do business with me, odds are you’re going to see me wearing either a trucker hat or some kind of ball cap, maybe a polo shirt if I’m really going to dress up for you but it’s always going to be Chucks for the most part. So it kind of gets the, huh, you’re an interesting kind of guy effect.
Another one that Rob did, which was a great pattern interrupt was we took the whole office bowling during the afternoon. Across the street, there’s a bowling alley. We’re bowling. We had planned out since we’re going to be bowling anyway, I said hey, bring your camera. I want to start the conversation where we’re bouncing.” Bouncing is very important, and I’ll get the B-roll in a second, but when you’re bouncing in video, remember, people have short attention span. So if you’re just a talking head in front of a whiteboard, that is boring.
Look at how the bar has been set so high up by all these videos being uploaded to Facebook and YouTube today that is so cutting edge technology done by 12-year old kids, 13-year old kids with the editing, the videography, the special effects that you and I have to one-up them or we might as well not even compete in this space.
So I said Rob, we’re going to bounce around, meaning we’re going to go to a few different locations before I actually start teaching the information. So the video starts with us bowling in a dark bowling alley. Black lights are on and everything is neon. You see a few people from my office, Chuck laughing it up, having a drink, throwing the bowling ball and then I interrupt the camera and I’m like, “Hey, this is Bedros. I want to talk to you about something, something that someone asked me the other day which really got me thinking.” Before you know it, we’re walking out to my car and I’m like, “Hey, but since we’ve got the GTR out today, why don’t we go zip around town here in Chino Hills with the GTR and then I’ll take you to my office because I need to draw this out on the marker board so you can really take in this information.”
We went from the bowling alley, into my car where I’m now teaching in the car. There’s a little part, maybe about three to six seconds where Rob got outside of my car. He’s like, “All right, I want you to zip past me real quick and zip past me one more time.” He just kind of videotaped the GTR zipping by really quick. We jumped in my car and I said, “All right, so now that we had our fun, we had a good time here, let’s go to my office. Let’s go to the headquarters.”
I never call it the office. I call it the HQ, the headquarters. You’ve got to name things sexy-like. You can’t call it your corporate office. How boring is that? So sterile. You want to call it something sexy. So I’ve always called it the HQ, the headquarters. We went into the HQ and I said, “All right, so now that we’ve had a good time, we bowled together…” see, I’ve brought them on my journey. “We bowled together. We zipped around town together. Now let me talk to you about the idea fairy, this idea fairy that seems to jump it your head just as you have a good idea, distracts you from that good idea and then takes you down this rabbit hole with another bad idea, and before you know it, your good idea never comes to fruition.” So I explain the problem to them and then I go and explain how they can cut out the idea fairy from their life and what they need to do, the three steps, the five steps or the seven steps they need to take and then I wrap it up.
Now the B-roll happens while I’m teaching on that marker board because if this was let’s say a six- or seven-minute video that I did there, really the first minute and a half took place in the bowling alley and in GTR and around tow, zipping around. So the last two minutes or the last five minutes were spent in front of the marker board, which can be pretty boring even though I like to kind of entertain and yuck it up. So the B-roll comes in where when I’m speaking, when I say, “Some of my coaching clients who do really well with their personal training businesses or their boot camps have learned how to overcome these distractions by doing X, Y and Z,” and we’ve got enough footage from years of shooting where as I’m talking about some of my coaching clients, he might pan into a mastermind which I ran with some of my coaching clients, which again positions me and you get to see some of my coaching clients, or he might pan into a shot from Josh Carter’s facility or Bryce Henson’s facility or someone’s facility where you see Josh leading a class of workouts and it comes back to me.
So B-roll footage, you’re going to capture and get over time or you can create as you need it. What ends up happening when you shoot a year or two worth of videos is you have so much B-roll footage that as you’re talking in front of the marker board, your videographer is going to cut in this additional footage where you will still hear your voice but on the screen, we’re going to see things that complement the things that you’re saying, which really captures their attention and keeps them engaged.
Because at the end of every video, I’m guessing you’re going to want to give some call to action, at least you should, and that call to action would be, “So click the link down below to go to my blog” or go to my free book offer or simply to like and share and leave a comment. But whatever it is, you have to get them through your entire video, 1) to indoctrinate them; 2) to educate them; and 3) to give them your call to action. Otherwise, you’re never going to make the money and their life is never going to change anything other than from being average.
Craig: And so what are your best videos?
Bedros: All right, let me pull those up for you really quick. So one of them off the top of my head I can tell you is the GSD video, how to get stuff done or really it’s how to get shit done. So I’m going to pull up YouTube really quick and then I will give you my best video titles and you guys can go and watch them.
So the first one is my GSD video, which is how to get stuff done, how to get shit done. The other one is Straight Line to Success, very popular one. What else do I have here? The ones for personal training probably don’t matter to you much. Oh, the Immigrant Edge video is a great one. How Successful People Think, I actually have my own version of that, just like I encouraged you to do, which is a great one. The Finger is a great one, definitely The Finger. That’s where I kind of draw the line in the industry and tell you I’m a guru in the personal training industry. I help personal trainers grow their business. That’s where I kind of draw the line and I give the finger to the people in the industry who kind of poo-poo on the idea that personal trainers can’t be wealthy, can’t be successful because personal training is not a real career. But the way we start that whole video is a complete pattern interrupt, which really when you think about all the different ways I’ve been talking to you about this so far, it has all been pattern interrupts.
The Finger starts off with an airplane. Every time I try and speak, there’s like an airplane buzzing by and Rob, you hear him off camera go, “Hold on. I’ll be right back,” and I’m like kind of rolling my eyes to the camera like what the heck is he doing? Then it pans over to Rob’s iPhone and he’s like launching a scud missile to blow up this airplane. Of course, the airplane, it’s very obvious it’s a remote control airplane then a fake little missile does hit it and we use some fancy technology to make it look like it blows up. Then he comes back in and goes, “All right, action!”
So it’s great piece. It gives people a little chuckle. It tells them about my personality, that I do like to have fun as I build freedom, success, wealth, etc. But all of them have to start with a pattern interrupt because if you just start with, “Hey, this is Bedros and today, I’m going to teach you how to make money,” “Hey, this is Bedros I’m going to teach you how to market,” “Hey, this is Bedros and I’m going to teach you how to overcome distractions,” they’re done, man. They’ve left you. So we do have to do extra work on our part but we do have to meet them where they’re at, get their attention, win their trust all over again and then teach them what we’re going to teach them.
The GSD video, How do Self-Made Millionaires, The Finger, How to Successful People, Immigrant Edge, those are all great ones to watch that I’ve done. I’ll come up with more here as it loads. There’s an interview I did with Jay Ferruggia, our friend there, Jay Ferruggia. Oh, the one I was telling you about where the camera starts at my foot level and it does the whole fast-forward filming is How to Live Awesome, which is a great one. Everybody seems to like that, over 10,000 views which is a lot of me.
And of course, all of my industry trends and prediction videos have gotten lots of views and that’s because I literally position myself as the industry expert by every year at the beginning of the year, talking about what the industry trends and predictions are to come. This was actually an idea that you gave me after you went or read something from Dan Kennedy about doing that.
Craig: Oh, John Reese.
Bedros: Oh, John Reese. There you go. Thank you.
Craig: All right, man. So that’s a ton of great video stuff. You summed it for me. You want to move people to action to inspire and to get more eyeballs on your videos. So you also want the sizzle, passion, enthusiasm and high end editing with great B roll footage. I think you explained pretty much everything there, right?
Bedros: That’s exactly it.
Craig: All right, my friend. Next, we want to talk about what happens after I sell my book. So we’re probably going to use that free plus shipping model and then from there the plan is either have the newsletter on the front end, which obviously will decrease sales of the book but the whole point is to get people onto the newsletter and to become customers of Early to Rise, or it might just be the first upsell for our Success breakthrough annual newsletter. For $40 a year, they’ll get 12 newsletters sent to them, one every month, by email. So it’s by PDF, very similar to what James Altucher is doing, very similar to what Porter Stansberry does.
Then also we can upsell them to my 49-Day Challenge video coaching program. I’ve actually filmed that but never released it. Then we will also have a second upsell where they will be into webinar coaching, probably at $497 for six weeks on Success, maybe going a deep dive into those videos and into those really important lessons but also with group coaching as well. Then finally Success Breakthrough one-day live event hosted by your and I. Then where do we go from there? That’s what we want to talk about next. What holes are in that, how would you improve it and what’s missing?
Bedros: I’m glad you brought that up since I’ve been able to kind of look at this in the last two days and digest that. One thing I might recommend—and I’ll tell you this, I have not tested it out—but when we did Diana’s launch for her recipe hacker book, had we had something like this I would have absolutely tested it out. What I would use is I would do the forced continuity on the front end because it is a free plus shipping offer that you’re doing. So the offer is a great offer.
Now we do a forced continuity. You have your $40 per year digital newsletter however I would let them know that they can uncheck it. Here’s why I say that. If they do take that meaning it’s already forced but they can take—I guess it’s not completely forced because it’s an optional continuity but the box is checked off that they’re also going to get a free whatever or they’re going to take $40 and maybe will l try it out for the first 30 days and after that they’ll pay $40 for the year, I would wordsmith it that way—but if they take that, then I would add a different upsell.
I would add another upsell because we’re going to assume they took the newsletter so I would have three more upsells, of which you have the one-day live with you and me. You also have the six-week Success webinar for $497. I would add a third upsell just in case they do take that because I’m guessing, my gut would tell me, that you’re going to have over 50% take-you-up on the $40 per year Success newsletter, especially if you say, “Get your first 30 days free” and then after they pay $40. If they like your first issue then tada, you’re onboard for $40 a year after that. If they take it, great. You have three upsells. If they don’t take it, then that $40 option for the year becomes an upsell automatically just like you have it listed here in the notes that you sent me. Does that make sense to you?
Craig: Absolutely, boss. Absolutely. That’s really great. Tell us more about the high end stuff and where we go from there.
Bedros: On the high end stuff, obviously those who take the $497 six-week course or webinar coaching, if you haven’t made that already then I would definitely pepper that in with the value of in-person coaching and how tremendous in-person coaching is because it has this group of people that you can use as a brain trust, etc., because to me the way I look at it is anyone who buys that six-week $497 webinar-based coaching program is in a position to come to a one-day live mastermind with you and I where we’ll have the opportunity then to ascend them to a higher level of 12-month coaching program.
So by already pre-framing during those six weeks the value of masterminds, showing images, if it’s webinar-based you’re going to use a PowerPoint showing images from our masterminds or different masterminds we’ve conducted to explain the value of these masterminds in the teachings, this way down the line when you market specific to the people who have purchased the six-week webinar sequence, they’re going to go in the back of their mind oh yeah, I know that Craig always talks about the value of one-day masterminds. Now here he is offering it to me. You’re going to have a higher take rate. So what you’re really doing is indoctrinating them to get ready to buy a one-day mastermind down the line.
Of course, as it comes to the one-day live Success event that you and I are going to run, that’s a no-brainer because we already run those now and it seems to work really well because every time we get an audience of eight to ten people in there, we have a closing percentage of 50% that we move to a 12-month mastermind program at $1,800 a month if those numbers transfer.
Now if the event got bigger, we’re not going to close 50%. In an ideal world, if you were doing this and we had the time, we would probably run five or six of these throughout the year so that we would keep them between 25 to 30 people and still get a good 30% to 40% close. More than 40 people, the close ratio falls down I found because I’ve been testing that a lot with the other two masterminds I’ve been running. Of course with the live events, the big ones that you and I run like the Online Info Blueprint Workshop where we have a couple of hundred people in the audience, the closing percentage kind of drops down to 10%, 12% to 15%.
So I’d rather have 20 people in front of me over six different one-day Success things and close half of them into a 12-month coaching program at $2,000 a pop. Now you’re going to be able to impact their life in a greater way and they’re going to be able to get the most out of your coaching because nothing beats 12 months of being around a successful person and their circle of influence. Does that make sense?
Craig: Absolutely, man. Probably my biggest regret was not getting into a mastermind earlier. I waited until 2007 after I’d been successful for a couple of years and I just imagine that being around a mentor and being around as much the people in the room who are also very smart individuals, just kicking your butt, holding you accountable and giving you great ideas that you never would have come up with on your own is just like being on this call with you. I would never would have come up with these tweaks and the exact way of doing things that you used your experience to come up with and dialed it in so well. You are just the master at this.
So thank you very much, sir. You’ve walked us through going from basically zero to hero, starting with nothing, building an email list, building a Facebook and YouTube following, getting people to a live event and getting them onto a coaching call. You’ve given us a script for that. You’ve given us how to convert them into high-paying mastermind members or coaching members. You’ve really helped people in all different industries. You even helped my sister who is a retail shopping consultant. She does this now and she’s really excited by all the audios that you’ve created for her. So she’s really looking forward to this one, too. So thank you very much, sir. Is there anything we possibly could have missed in the three calls that we’ve done to help people go from everyday expert to absolute guru dominating their industry?
Bedros: No, man. I think we really covered it all. Now one thing I would love to do for you if this would help your audience as well—I certainly hope it would help you—is I think the hinges that are going to swing the big stores for you on this book launch, Craig, are going to be where you offer that newsletter on the front end, have the box already checked off, and have compelling copy in the Johnson box why they need to leave that box checked up so that you can give them three more upsells. I would love to get the opportunity to maybe review and add my two cents to that copy if I can, if you get it done. Who knows? Maybe you could share it with your audience, the before and after of that copy based on how it performs. It would help them and of course it would certainly help you as well.
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. We will do that for sure. We will share everything. We’ve got nothing to hide here and we love helping everybody out who’s listening of course. And I love getting help from you. You are the master of selling. So thank you very much, sir, for that offer. We will certainly take you up on that. We’re probably looking at a couple of months to get that all wrapped. Tomorrow is the first day of July and we will get this out to everybody early in the fall. It’s going to be a lot of great fun and a really great opportunity for people just to observe first of all and learn that way, just by watching what we do.
That’s another thing. People should be watching what you do all the time because there are so many lessons for free just in having you as a virtual mentor and watching what you do, Bedros, so it’s fantastic and then also hearing from you on these calls. So thank you very much, sir. Where can people go and watch you videos and read your articles? Even if they’re not trainers, they’d be very wise to do so.
Bedros: Absolutely. You can find my blog at PTPower.com or just Google me since I’ve got a unique name – Bedros Keuilian. Just slaughter that name on Google and Google will fix it. It will find my YouTube channel and Facebook fanpage. Yeah, they’re definitely well off following me and getting onto my email list as well since that’s how you and I met, developed this unique friendship and now we get to do business together. So onward and upward.
Craig: Excellent, sir. Thank you very much. So Bedros Keuilian, you have been a very, very big help today. Everyone, thank you for listening. This is Craig Ballantyne from InternetIndependence.com and EarlyToRise.com. Look for my book very soon, The Perfect Day Formula. It’s going to help you absolutely dominate your day and live the life of your dreams just like Bedros does. Bedros has this golden mile that I think about all the time because I have like four of them because I live in Denver, Florida, Toronto and out on the farm. Maybe one day, I’ll be like you, B. I’ll grow up and just live in one spot. But you’re very inspirational to me and I really appreciate it. Hopefully, this interview has done what you have taught me to do, which is leave everyone better than we found them. Thank you very much for all your philosophical teaching and helping me become a better person over the years, my friend.
Bedros: My pleasure. Thank you, Craig. Best of luck to you on the launch.
Craig: All right, we’ll talk to you soon, my friend. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I hope to see and hear your guru and success stories soon. Bye-bye, everyone.