How to Build Success from Nothing | Bedros Keuilian on Impact Theory

More people should be hard on themselves. We go around bubble wrapping ourselves, right? We we leave the training wheels on for too long. Like be hard on yourself. Take the [ __ ] bubble wrap off. Take the Take the training wheels off. No one did that for me, man. And we came to this country and it was just like, "Hey, go figure it out." But it was don't take risks to go get a good job. [ __ ] that. Be a fighter jet. Be a fighter jet. Go to battle every day. Take risks. That's what a fighter jet does. A crop duster has a routine life and it's [ __ ] boring. Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that are going to help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest is an Inc. 500 CEO twice over whose company made Entrepreneur Magazine's list of the top 15 franchises. But that is all a very very long way from where he started. His family came to the US with $200 after fleeing Soviet-controlled Armenia in 1980. Overnight, he went from having caviar for breakfast to having to dumpster dive to avoid going hungry. His family risked everything to trade comfort for freedom, something he's grateful for today, but back then it meant excruciating poverty. It meant cramming an entire family of five into someone's spare bedroom. It meant moving 14 times in his first 2 years in this country alone. It meant washing his hair with gasoline to kill lice and growing up heavy-set because he couldn't afford quality food. It also meant having to build up from the absolute bottom in the face of people who did not want him here. Prejudice and bullying were near daily occurrences that chipped away at him, filling him with anger, and at least initially sent him down a very bad path. He was fighting a lot, being a jerk, and at one point even being the getaway driver in a home invasion that ended in a police helicopter chase. Can't believe that's true. Finally, after getting jumped by more than a dozen gang members and beaten savagely, he decided he was going to turn his life around. He He in shape, started personal training, and decided he was going to help people for a living. Luckily, one of his clients, a successful entrepreneur, taught him the basics of sales, and that was all he needed. In the years that followed, he built a massive empire by delivering a ton of value and charging a fair price for it. Today, a true rags-to-riches story, he is the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, ranked number 350 on Entrepreneur Magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing franchises, earning hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, and is considered the fitness industry's most trusted advisor. He hosts the biggest fitness business seminar in the world and has been featured in media outlets such as Inc. Magazine, The Huffington Post, Dr. Oz, and countless others. So, please help me in welcoming the author of the book Man Up, serial entrepreneur, speaker, and business consultant, Bedros Keuilian. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here, man. So, your story is one of the most insane I think I've ever heard in my life. Sure. So, how do you leverage the bullies, the darkness, the prejudice, all of that to do something powerful and positive? You you do have to embrace the darkness. You do have to embrace the rage. Um one thing that recently clicked for me, about a year ago I read Tim Grover's book, uh Relentless, and I think within the first two or three chapters, Tim talks about how he was working with Dwyane Wade and trying to get him to come back and be better than ever, and he said if if if he could just get on that basketball court and bring 48 minutes of controlled rage to his opponents, you're good. You're a winner. And um I realized for the last 20 years, man, I've been bringing controlled rage to my industry. And I And I know that's probably not the politically best correct thing to say. I I should say that I have a bigger purpose and impact, and And I do. I I I We've got adopted kids and charities and causes, but it's the [ __ ] darkness and the rage that drives me. I love that. And that's something that, you know, in your answer you obviously anticipate that people want you to say something more lofty or beautiful or whatever it is that they're looking for, but I found that to be 100% true that at the end of the day there's beauty and light in the world, and I think that they both serve a purpose. My My question, and and I resonate with Tim Grover as much as you do. Um, how do you control the rage? How Like most people are broken by the experiences that you went through. So, how do you actively turn that into something useful? Well, it's not so much controlling the rage. It's knowing that when I had all that anger and rage, and I channeled it towards, you know, carjacking and home invasions with my friends, being the getaway driver and and and getting caught by the police, like karma was not good to me, right? Uh, when you decide to carjack someone and you later find out that night that they're in a gang, and now they're back for retaliation, and they're beating the crap out of you in front of your girlfriend who's like panicking, right? Um, you realize, hey, this is karmic justice. And so, I had to take that rage and use it for good. And I figured at that point that if I used it for good, good things would happen cuz I used it for bad and bad things were happening to me. Like, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do know how to connect dot, and the dots were when I did bad, bad happened to me. And by God, I better start doing good or I'm going to die. And so, you know, thankfully, the only constant I had in my life was you know, after senior year of high school, I finally decided to figure out how to lose weight just so I I ask some girl out to the prom. I never did ask her to the prom, but I lost weight senior year of high school and that kind of you know, got me involved in fitness and working out. So, I was always in the gym. Which was bad because now I'm a strong, steroid-using angry young man just on a mission to destroy, right? My goal wasn't to to go and destroy things. It's just you have it, I want it and it was mine. Bad way to look at things and today it's the opposite and I want to serve you and I wake up every morning knowing that I can wear one of two shirts. What can you do for me? Or how can I serve you? And I choose the one deliberately every single morning and how can I serve you? And ever since I've done that, it's been the most selfish thing. So, I take that darkness, the rage, the the anger and I just use it for good. Why do you think it's so useful? I think it's useful for me and I think more people ought to embrace that darkness, that rage because gives you a sense of being invincible. The truth of the matter is whether you're growing up, you're a foreigner like I am in this country and you're growing up against bigotry and hate and being broke and moving around from school to school and being bullied and picked on and or you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to build your business, turn your idea into a dream and and help people. You're going to you're going to come across adversities, challenges, setbacks and you got to have a reason why and most people who succeed ultimately have a strong reason why. But if that reason why is fueled I I look at rage and darkness as a supercharger. I have a reason why and the supercharger on top of that engine is my rage and darkness and so I think more people ought to put themselves in positions where they deal with adversity and challenges so that they can develop some sense of anger and darkness and rage. Like like I'll be very frank with you, dude. Between the ages of four and four and six, I was molested by two older boys consistently in Armenia. Uh what my parents don't know is when we escaped Armenia, they thought they were just bringing us to freedom. They saved me from that. Like I grew up with a chip on my shoulder. Like all men were the [ __ ] enemy to me, right? Because of what happened to me. And I was fists up everywhere. So, you know, only in hindsight, as Steve Jobs says, when you look back all the dots connect, but I realized all that anger and rage was coming from just I had to go protect myself, right? But in that ability to disassociate when you know, when you're being molested over and over again, you have to disassociate and mentally disappear, I realized that I developed some superpower. And you don't have to go and get molested, you don't have to go and get raped and abused, but you can go take on a challenge that you've never done before. Uh in 2010, you know, I kind of called myself I'm I'm a meathead. I just lift weights and put them down, right? I had kind of painted myself into that corner. Why not go run a marathon? So, I trained for six weeks and went and ran a marathon. It was the most painful thing I ever did, but I realized that was more the suffering and the pain. And the more pain I had, the more it put me into the zone of wanting to dominate. So, it is a superpower. So, I almost now go back and put myself into these challenges. Rock climbing, I was afraid of heights, took on a six-week challenge, started climbing rocks. Um wanted to fight a professional MMA fighter, so I hired him, trained for six weeks, went in the ring and got my ass kicked and choked out. But each time I did that, it gave me the sense of I can get over any obstacle. And if I can get over getting choked out and punched and the the pain of 26.2 miles in a marathon or overcoming my fear of heights, surely I can build a business. Surely I can take some criticism online, right? But not enough people are willing to build that mental emotional toughness. And the moment they do, they'll they'll persevere. I I love that, and I love your analogy of you having the why and then the the rage that sits on top of it becomes a supercharger. Talk to me, what is the why? And one thing I find so interesting in your story is when you take any one detail, it's it's like this never-ending parade of hardship. But the through your lens of like karma and it turning into basically whatever you're indulging in, you found something so beautiful in your empire like having seen so much of what you talk about and all that, I know it all comes back to that sort of the beautiful things you're trying to bring into the world. But what what are those things? The things I'm trying to bring into the world are are the things that I needed most. I'm truthfully I'm still healing myself. I'm healing myself. You know, we've got 57 kids adopted through Compassion International. And and we every year we donate a quarter million dollars or more on Christmas right around Christmas to the Marine Corps Toys for Tots. And I've been supporting the Shriners Children's Hospital since 2009. 9. If you look at all three of those, they're all child kid-centric stuff. What am I trying to do? I'm trying to fix that little boy inside me, right? I'm trying to help that little boy. Um And then of course I was a fat growing up eating, you know, Velveeta cheese, baloney found in the dumpsters. I mean, we were dumpster diving when we came to America. I was eating literally eating out of dumpsters. And so when you grow up with no nutrition background and I know you can relate to this, your background is is is similar. You know, very unhealthy background. I realized that I've got bad genetics because I've never took the time to eat right, never took the time to work out as a kid. So as I grew up, senior year of high school is when I started to actually work out, I realized how much tougher it was for me than kids who were athletes and whose parents kind of controlled what they ate and etc. and gave them some nutritional guidelines. So, I've always been a late study, but I'm for me I realized most people that go to the gym and the statistics back this up, 89% of gym members never get results. 89% of gym members never get results and the 11% who do get results are either former athletes or personal trainers or have taken the time to study up. And so, I wanted to create a model that wasn't expensive. Like, I was really that broke foreign kid trying to figure it out. And so, it was easy enough for me to go, "All right, we're going to create this boot camp model where it's one trainer, many clients and we make it more affordable and convenient for people." Um I'm going to make I'm going to break all the myths about fitness. There are no There is no overnight lose 30 lbs in 30 days. I'm just so sick and tired of hearing that and I fell for that as a kid. So, everything that I've fallen for, every pain that I've had, I'm just still trying to solve right now and I and I imagine I'll go to my deathbed trying to do that, just trying to constantly heal myself. It is the most selfish thing I'm doing. My my mentor, Jim Franco, who was a personal training client, um you know, he he was a little rough around the edges. He was in his 60s and he came from the automotive world and he owned the software that, you know, actually you go into the AutoZones and Pep Boys, his company updates the software. So, what kind of filter and uh oil and etc. for your car. And so, he was very well to do. And Monday mornings I was very tired. I was a personal trainer, a fry cook and a bouncer at a gay bar cuz the gay bar paid more, by the way. Uh people always ask, "Why the gay bar?" They paid $3 more than the straight bar and those $3 per hour is a lot for me at that time. And so, Monday morning when I was training him I was tired and exhausted and he was, "Kid, what's the matter with you?" I'm like, "Well, Jim, I've got two jobs on the weekends, you know, and I'm exhausted by the time I get here." And uh he he he handed me the Tom Hopkins cassette tape one day. He just shows up to his personal training session and he goes, "Listen to this tonight." And so, I listened to Tom Hopkins, Tom Hopkins listened to Brian Tracy, Brian Tracy listened Zig Ziglar, and Tony Robbins, and Dan Kennedy, and before you know what, it's self-development, and and and I realized the value of giving, and the more I give, the more I'll get back. So, Jim Franco, who was just trying to help me get better at selling personal training, so I don't have to have two side jobs, inadvertently catapulted me into self-development, personal development, and then understanding the value of service, being a servant leader, uh as opposed to and that's what he was. He He had no obligation to help me. Like, he was paying me. I was training him. Yet, he was mentoring me in between sets, right? And he would hang around if I didn't have a client afterwards, and he'd talk to me, and he And for the first time I felt like, "You know what? Here's Here's someone who's well-to-do, who's giving me their time." Like, I didn't want to let him down. And so, I would listen to the tape. I'd go, "Jim, I listened to it." And he'd give me the next one. "Jim, I listened to it." And he'd give me the next one. And I was brainwashed into personal development, self-development, marketing, sales, persuasion, influence, and giving. What I find really interesting, um is that so many people are given advice, and so few people actually do something with it. What was it about either the guy that was mentoring you, or or you, that actually made you go listen to the tape, and put the advice to use? Uh two things. One, I didn't want to let Jim Franco down, my mentor. And and the other thing was, I was just sick and tired of being poor and broke-minded, and hustling and grinding, trying to figure things out, finding a loophole in things. And so, I figured there's got to be a better way. When the pain is great enough, you start taking action. The pain was great enough. Like, I knew that I couldn't be a personal trainer in this big-box gym for for too long. I knew that I had to do something more. And so, again, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I can connect dots, and I figured somehow, magically or through some weird law of attraction, Jim Franco was put into my life. But I needed that old dude in my life to set me straight and call me a kid. I needed that tough love. So, talk to me if it In that, um, it reminds me of the story that you've told about the difference between being poor and being broke. Um, define those two because I would say by your definition you weren't poor. See, when we came to America, we were poor and broke, the way I look at it. Um, because we would always run out of money before run out of month. We decide, you know, do we do without electricity or or gas? Cuz some months we couldn't afford to pay both. And, you know, being broke is being without money. Being poor is being kind of scarcity-minded, poor-minded. And, we just realized that money's for the rich. Money's for the the Americans. It's for the people who were born here, who went to college. And, that's how I grew up. And, later Jim Franco taught me that, "Hey, you know what? You can't be scarcity-minded. You can't You have to live in abundance. You have to understand that people just want a solution to a problem, and they don't care about the color of your skin, about the level of your education. Um, they want a solution to a problem. So, he taught me You have to break all these old patterns that I had, right? What were some of the patterns? Some of the patterns were that money's for the white folk and not for the foreigners. You actually thought Yeah. I really cuz that's that's how it was. Because every time we went and got got more food stamps, it was all foreigners. There's no white people in line. At least not not in the parts of Santa Ana that I was raised. Um, and so I felt that money was for the people who were telling us to leave this country, go back to your own [ __ ] country. And, that also puts a chip on your shoulder, right? Against them. And, so I guess I had some reverse racism towards towards white America. Now I realize for no apparent reason. There was a couple of idiots in in every culture, I imagine, right? But, so that was one pattern that I had. Another pattern that I had was that being proud to be blue collar. Like my dad was like and he he still says this, work is holy and I believe that work is holy. But the fact that he had so many jobs, a paper route, pumping gas, worked at a pizzeria. And so because of that mindset blue collar, blue collar, we were always this blue collar mentality and I took pride in being blue collar. Another pattern Jim Franco had to had to break was he's like, "Dude, be white collar." Don't use the shovel, sell the shovel. I'd never heard that phrase before. I'm the guy that took pride in I could dig a deeper hole, a deep deeper trench, I could I could outwork you. But that's still trading time for dollars. And so to be able to break those limiting belief systems that I had to me was huge. And all of a sudden I realized I'm no longer poor-minded. I may end up broke again. I do really well now, but I may make one or two bad decisions with my money or my investment and end up being broke again, but I'll never be poor. And I know how to get back from broke because I know how to add value to society, solve problems in exchange for money. But I'll never be poor again and poor is a state of mind of feeling out of control, scarcity-minded, taking pride in being blue collar. No one should ever take pride in being blue collar, period. Period. You've got a brain, you've got a solution to a problem that people want to pay for. Put it out there. Like so many people probably come up to you and I know they come up to me and got this great idea. And one day I'm going to do it. When is that day? And I was that guy. I got this great idea and one day I'm going to do it. And Jim was like, "When is that day, kid?" He's like, I'd always tell him, "I'm going to go to the gym one day." When is one day? He was have you ever put a date to it? Nope. So he had to break that pattern of of being a procrastinator, right? So he goes put a date to it. Oh, that was scary. I go if I put a date to it, what happens if I fail? He goes, "Try not to." Try not like immediately I go to failure. And it's nuts to have this like entrepreneurial mindset being installed in you when all your coming where you're coming from is poor-minded, broke-minded, and uh scarcity-minded. So, when you say scarcity-minded, abundant-minded, what do you mean? Well, the scarcity-minded person says, "Uh-oh, someone else opened up a gym, you know, across the street from me. They're going to put me out of business. I better charge less." Right? The abundant-minded person says, "Someone else opened up a gym across the street from me. I better out-service them, out-work them, out-social media them." Right? So, the scarcity-minded person is always the sky is falling, the Chicken Little mentality, the "Oh my gosh, if Trump goes into office, then we're all screwed. Oh my gosh, if Hillary goes into office, then we're all screwed." I don't care who's in office anymore. I control my own economy. The economy can crash and go back up and back down again. I will find a way, as Tony Robbins says, "I'm built for winter. I just didn't know it." And so, more people need to be abundant-minded in that if the economy crashes, I just have to deliver more value and create this category of one about myself. If competition shows up, I have to out-service them, out-work them, out-social media them versus shrivel up and die. So, if you met someone who literally they're fresh off the boat here from somewhere, communist country, don't speak the language, you know what's in store for them, and I give you like an hour with them. What are like some key principles that you're going to teach them to to endure? Ooh, great question. Thing number one is don't go find where the group of your people are. In other words, if my dad had come to Southern California and instead of living in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Garden Grove, that area, if we had moved to Glendale, where there's a whole bunch of Armenians, we would not thrive like this. We would not thrive because it blows me away when immigrants come to this country and then they go to Little Italy, Little Armenia, Little Little Saigon. Get the [ __ ] out of Little Saigon. Go to Little White America, learn the language, assimilate, understand the culture, like blend into the [ __ ] fiber of this country because when you do, life becomes increasingly easier. It's when they come and handicap themselves and they stay in their own culture, they're in the United States. I mean, there's literally Little Armenia in Glendale. Don't go there and I and I I might get hate email for about that. It's I love the culture. I'm just not going to go grow up there because the economy is done outside of that culture. It's done in this culture. And so, thing number one is put yourself in a position where you're going to thrive, not where it's going to be comfortable, right? Number two is most immigrants will come here and they'll think blue collar. How am I going to trade time for dollars? And so, job number one, job number two, job number three, get minimum sleep. My argument is how quickly can you think up a service, a product, a business model that you can deploy in exchange for money, right? How can you leverage yourself? Like, I wish I understood the concept of leveraging and scaling my knowledge. I didn't know that until my late 20s and early 30s. Like, my kids know that now. One's 10, one's one's 12 years old. Like, I didn't understand leverage and scale. And so, I teach them leverage and scale. That makes a lot of sense. And you talk about this notion of um staying in your zone of genius. What What is that? What's the concept of 5% 95%? What What's the whole thing? Yeah. Yeah. So, so I believe I'm good at one thing and I'm good at building fitness businesses because I'm passionate about fitness. I was a fat kid, fitness changed my life and so, I want to help more people in that area of life. And so, every time I try and deviate out of my zone of genius, which is fitness business or the business of fitness if I tried to make a funnel, run a Facebook ad uh edit videos I am operating outside of my zone of genius. And so, I learned very quickly that there's only about 5% of the things that you do that move the needle. We end up doing a lot of things. Like most entrepreneurs end up writing the payroll checks and doing their own taxes and and and setting up their own funnels and ads and campaigns and Why? Well, because it's easy. It's drag and drop. Who cares? That's not your zone of genius. You can hire someone and outsource that. But I realized very quickly that I can outsource 95% of the things, the trivial stuff I can outsource so that I can focus on the valuable stuff, the 5% which for me is delegate, motivate, sell. And the more I can delegate out, the more I can motivate my team and my business partners and my my clients to buy and and use and purchase again, the better I do. So it's delegate, motivate, sell. That's my 5% and most people need to operate within their zone of genius um and just outsource everything else. And when you do, life becomes a lot easier. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Um you've got GSD. What What does GSD stand for? Get [ __ ] done. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, you know, nothing happens until you get [ __ ] done. Everyone's got a great idea, it'll make me this many millions and it'll help this many people. Nothing happens till you get that [ __ ] done. So how do you teach people to do that? Your masterminds seem pretty impressive, super intense, which is a word that I would definitely slather all over you. Um how do you train them to do that? I love the mastermind environment. I love the coaching environment because through a course I can't transfer this feeling of intensity, of obligation and duty. I really feel like I've got this obligation and duty to reach my fullest potential for two reasons. One, I feel if God or whoever the superpower is put some gift in all of us, we are doing that superpower a disservice if when we die we haven't reached that full potential. Number two, what kind of [ __ ] example am I leaving for my kids, right? Dad chose to take the easy path every time instead of the hard path. That's what I did when I was younger and I was involved in helicopter chases with the cops. No longer will do I want to take the easy path. I'll always take the hardest path, and it becomes the best path. And so, the big thing here when I'm coaching my clients is if I have 12 months with them, and I get to meet them three times a year in person for 2 days at a time, I'm able to transfer that intensity. I'm able to get them to stop thinking in the weeds and start thinking in the clouds. Like, be think in that 5% instead of the 95% as we talked about earlier. I get them to understand their duty and obligation of whatever their gift or purpose is on this planet. I can't do that through my courses. I've got a lot of courses that I created thinking that it would help people. I realized the courses don't transfer the intensity, passion, purpose, duty, obligation, but I can get in someone's face and with love transfer that feeling. And I And I believe that might be another gift, which still is training. It's coaching. Just instead of fitness, I'm coaching you on your outcome in life. Right? Um But But, man, I I I love the coaching aspect for that reason because I can truly follow up with you. And go, "Hey, you made a commitment at this mastermind, and in 90 days we're going to see each other." Like, I don't want you to be the one client who came and said, "Uh I didn't do it." Right? And so, when I put that kind of pressure on Now, many of my clients do quit and leave. They you quit and leave. Because of the pressure? Yes. Yes, and that's okay. They They still want to stay crop dusters, and that's okay. But, I see fighter jet potential in them. I was saying, "Now you Now Now you have to define that. Okay. So, fighter jets versus crop dusters? Fighter jets versus crop dusters is that I believe we all are raised as fighter jets. Just we get neutered by parents, by grandparents, because of the [ __ ] filters they had and viewed life through, the experiences they had, teachers who go, "You don't want to disappoint yourself. Just go to college. Go get a good job. Go to college." Don't go to college. Today, don't go to college. It's the worst thing you can do. Unless you're going to be a doctor or an attorney or an accountant or you know, some kind of an architect, don't go to college. You can do a lot more in life without going to college. And so again, teachers, professors will end up neutering us. And when they take they take that fighter jet, that hunger, the claws and fangs, they [ __ ] defang us. All right. So now we're crop dusters. Well, I don't want to take too many risks. I just want to live a good life and they want to be average and mediocre. That's the crop duster. Yet everyone inside has this hunger. See, the fighter jet didn't go away. It's just been suppressed. You've been neutered. And that was me. Like, hey, don't take big risks. Just go get a good job. Go be a smog technician. Like that was the advice I was given. Go be a smog technician, right? So I'd be the guy putting the [ __ ] probe in the tailpipe of your car and then saying you can go get your car registered, Tom. That was it. That was it. And so I realized very quickly that I've got this hunger inside me. And as I talked to others, they got this hunger inside them. Oh, that's the fighter jet trying to get out. That's the claws and fangs trying to grow. But the society, parents, whoever have set the standard for you to not play it safe, take risks. What if you lose? What if you lose? Who cares? As long as you don't die, you can come right back. And so the fighter jet mentality is that someone who is just determined, relentlessly obsessed in achieving an outcome in the face of all adversity. The crop duster is someone who's always looking for the easiest path, the loophole, which what I I used to be a severe crop duster. The crop duster hits the snooze button every day cuz they'd rather take 10 more minutes of mediocre sleep than getting up and dominating their path. Every morning, on my nightstand, there's two stacks of [ __ ] dominoes lined up. And at the top of this stack says, "You're a loser." The top of this one says, "You're a winner." If I hit the snooze button, I've hit that first domino in the loser stack. The rest of my day is going to suck. Now, with that mentality, am I going to ever hit snooze again? Absolutely not. Because I've sold myself on the idea that when I hit the snooze button, I'm an absolute loser. I'm scum of the earth. I am My day is destined to be shitty. Now, some people go, "You're being awfully hard on yourself." More people should be hard on themselves. We go around bubble wrapping ourselves, right? We we leave the training wheels on for too long. Like be hard on yourself. Take the [ __ ] bubble wrap off. Take the Take the training wheels off. No one did that for me, man. And we came to this country and it was just like, "Hey, go figure it out." But it was don't take risks. To go get a good job. [ __ ] that. Be a fighter jet. Be a fighter jet. Go to battle every day. Take risks. That's what a fighter jet does. A crop duster has a routine life and it's [ __ ] boring. Dude, that the example that you gave of the alarm clock snooze button is brilliant. If I come to you and I'm a crop duster, but I'm really serious that I want to become a fighter jet, but I don't know what to do. Are there other mechanical things like that that I can do that will empower me? Like how do I cross that chasm? The way you cross the chasm is by building a morning ritual. Like I had no morning ritual. So, I would wake up, hit the snooze button, it would go off again, I'd hit it one more time. And then I'd get up. What am I do, right? Today, you can set your clock to me. Like you know by by by exactly about 6:05, 6:06, I'm sitting on my couch on the right hand side of my living room and a sniper could actually shoot me every day at that at that time, right? Not a minute later or sooner. And and and the reason is because I wake up at 5:00, never hit the snooze button, have my morning ritual of taking a shower, water, coffee, protein shake, playing with Cookie, my dog, and then getting on my couch, and then literally looking at my iPhone. What are the three things I'm going to do this morning that's in my 5% that's going to move the needle that only I can do, that I'm capable of doing. Then I put my iPhone upside down, on silent, and I push it away from me. Like all of that to me is a ritual. It's no different going back to a fighter jet. The dude the I guess the fighter jet pilot doesn't just jump in and go, "All right, let's start dropping bombs." He has to go through a checklist, right? Of dropping the canopy, turning this on, checking that, making sure the GPS works, guidance system. Okay, great, fantastic. Now he takes off. So, you've got to build a mechanically, where mechanically is concerned, yeah, don't hit the snooze button, but make a list the night before. Do a brain dump. What are the three to five things that you need to do that's going to really move the needle in your business or in your life, right? And then go and do that. And so, for me, I make the list the night before. I dominate it the morning of. By 9:00 a.m., I'm off to the gym, and you know I am because you can look at my stories, and it's like, "Hey, it's 9:00, and I'm off to the gym to go crush another workout." Then I go to the HQ. It's the same [ __ ] routine, but it's such a great routine because it's every day is a challenge. The weight room is a challenge. My work is a challenge. I get to the headquarters, and we've got a new challenge cuz the Federal Trade Commission wants to know how we're selling so many franchises. That's a good problem to have. Like, in life, we're going to have good problems. It's just Is there Are your problems first world problems or third world problems? I used to have third world problems. No money, no opportunity, no hope. First world problems are the Federal Trade Commission is auditing you cuz your franchise is growing so quickly. I'll take that. Right? That's what we want. I love that. And when I think about what it is that allowed me to be successful, it was the ability to generate that energy from nothing, to not have any particular hunger or anything in me, but to leverage the pain, to leverage the darkness, to knowingly turn inward and say, "I'm going to turn this into something." How do you teach people to do that? Well, it's not easy, and I think the best teacher is environmental exposure. And again, this is why I love high-level coaching. Like, if someone wants to create a a brand like you have with Quest, their fastest route is to be within you and your partners' circles. It's environmental exposure. What does Tom do every morning? How does he think? What is the first thing he say to his wife? What is the first call he make? What what what does he What does he look up? Like, I'm curious, what do you look up on your phone the first thing in the morning? Are you responding to text messages, emails? I want to know because I want to get to where you are. Environmental exposure. So, if I had it my way, I would be attached to your hip if I wanted to be the next Tom. Um so, environmental exposure is the number one teacher to turning people into fighter jets. It's not a light switch, it's a dimmer switch that goes up over a year. I want to talk about that transition in your life from not being a good leader, recognizing that, which is already pretty extraordinary, and then becoming a good leader. What what was that transition like and why is the punchline man up? Mm. Well, the transition was really painful. See, I thought I was an entrepreneur, I wasn't. I was a business owner. And as a business owner, you know, I owned five personal training gyms and when you're in the right parts of San Diego and the economy's thriving, you get clients. It's easy enough. And it wasn't until I started coaching and consulting personal trainers after selling my gyms, the economy crashes, and that's when I decided I'm going to start this franchise, you know, because one-on-one personal training is is no longer feasible for most people. So, hey, this is the time to create this franchise. Well, I had to hire more team members, more employees. And I realized in that moment, in fact, I even took on a business partner. And I realized in that moment, as I was going through this that, you know, my employees were showing up a little late, they're leaving a little early, they're kind of doing the bare minimum, and I wanted to give them feedback, Tom, but I I didn't know how. I didn't know how to give them feedback, and I looking back, it was because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I cared about their approval, how they felt about me, and because of that I wouldn't give them feedback, but something would happen. I would start feeling animosity towards them, right? Like I I don't want them here. I don't want them to be around me. Before you know it, that kind of turns into this adversarial tension that was between me and some of my employees and me and my business partner, who I felt he should be doing this, but instead he was doing X. But I never gave him feedback, yet I was passive-aggressive, right? And so, when you're passive-aggressive towards people, you're afraid to give feedback, you don't know how to communicate to a team, and you don't have clarity of vision, you know, hey, we're growing this Fit Body Boot Camp franchise. Great. Are we going to be international or just in the United States? I don't know. How many locations do we want? I don't know. And I never took time to have clarity of vision. What do I want? When do I want it by? How am I going to get there? And so, we were launching starting Fit Body Boot Camp in 2010. By 2012, we were an official franchise. By 20 early 2013, I was having anxiety attacks so bad. The first one I had, I thought it was a heart My throat was closing up. I was tunnel vision. My hands were sweaty, arms tingling. Couldn't breathe. My heart's racing. I could hear the thug lug in my in my ears with my blood pressure just pumping. And I thought this is how I die. And uh thank God I stumbled outside and fresh air just kind of set me straight and I was sweaty and fine, but I was like, all right, I can go dominate my day again. And that night I tell my wife like, "Hey, um I think I cheated death. I think I I think I cheated a heart attack." She goes, "You're an idiot. How do you cheat a heart attack? Like, we're going to take you to the doctor, dummy." And so, we go and the doctor's like, "Hey, man, it wasn't a heart attack." They put me through the EKG test, but what you did have is a anxiety attack. You know, do you have a lot of stress in your life?" And of course, my wife rolls her eyes. And um I go, "Well, yeah, I don't know if I have stress in my life, but I I take NyQuil and Vicodin to go to sleep. And then I take Adderall and pre-workout in the mornings to beat the foggy-headedness. Um yeah, I guess I do have anxiety in my life." He goes, "Well, you got to stop." I was like, "Well, I don't know how to stop. Just prescribe me Xanax. Give me more meds. Give me more drugs." And he did. He gave me Xanax. And I took that for about 4 days. And time I was like drooling out of the side of my mouth. So, what's the point of taking Adderall and then Xanax? They're counter counteracting. And I realized I don't have any clarity here, like mental focus. I got to I got to figure this out without the drugs. So, again, I tried to will away the anxiety attacks. Still trying to grow our Fit Body Boot Camp franchise. Still no clarity, no ability to communicate, no no vision. No I was a poor leader. I got to the point in fact where I was avoiding coming to my office because I didn't want to see my business partner and my employees because I felt it was them against me, right? And by this point even though we had franchised a year earlier, we were losing more franchise locations now than we were gaining. See people just see the success of Fit Body Boot Camp now, they don't realize that I was $640,000 in debt in 2013. Now I was an entrepreneur I no longer a business owner, I was an entrepreneur. Like holy [ __ ] I'm trying to build an empire and it's imploding on me. And one day my wife and I and and our kids were on a small little vacation cuz that's all we could afford to Palm Springs. We went for 3 days. On day two I got a text message that basically was some bad news about my partner doing something really stupid. And I texted him and I said, "Hey, is this true that you did this stupid thing?" He says, "Yeah, bro {comma} I [ __ ] up." And he sent it to me. Told my wife pack up the [ __ ] we're driving back to Chino Hills. And then the entire drive from Palm Springs to to Chino Hills, which is about an hour and a half, the whole time I'm just it's time to man up. It's time to man up. It's time to I'm literally saying those five words to myself in my head. Wife's quiet, kids are quiet in the back. It's time to man up. It's time to man up because it was time to man up and have that painful conversation with my business partner and say either you go or I go, but we can't both run this thing. And I was ready to let go of Fit Body Boot Camp. And so I said, "Hey, meet me at the at the office. I'll see you there." And so one it's time to man up at the time I started having the conversations with my employees. I need you to be here on time. I need you to meet my expectations. I need to Then I realized, "Wait a minute, I'm being a [ __ ] hypocrite." I'm hitting the snooze button. I'm not showing up on time cuz I don't want to be around them. I got to suck it up and I got to be there. I got to be there. So this learning process of being a fighter jet continues. Like there's different levels of fighter jets, right? And so very quickly I realized that when you say it's time to man up, it really is stop making excuses, take control of your situation, and rise to your potential. And I knew I had this potential to build a big brand, a franchise where I can help millions of people every morning worldwide, and it feels so good to wake up and do that today. But for this to happen, I had to become an effective leader. I had to get self-disciplined first. Stop being a hypocrite. I had to learn to communicate and give feedback and not feel like I need their approval or that they're going to accept it as criticism. I had to have clarity and vision. Where is my business going? How many locations do I want and by when and how are we going to get there? I didn't have that. Today, we're super clear on that. We know exactly how many locations we need to gain every day to hit our goal of 2,500 locations by the year 2023. I I never had that. And and and so then, of course, I was so emotionally reactive. Something would happen and I would just emotionally react. Today, I just think think, process, and respond. What do you think is the reason that any of us are here? Man, I don't think that we would be here if we didn't have a purpose. I I can tell you that. I truly A purpose that's given to us or Nah. Nah, it's our job to develop that purpose. It's our job to find and hone in and craft that purpose. And the purpose is usually crafted through some level of suffering. It's the hero's journey, right? Like in in in film. You know, the the hero, he's down and out and and and he loses the girl and the and the house and he goes on this journey and he finds strength and wisdom and knowledge and comes back and is now the hero. We have to go through that level of suffering. Like for me, everything that happened from being molested to literally one day eating caviar for breakfast cuz my dad was a member of the Communist Party, the next day starving in Italy and wondering, why are we sharing one [ __ ] banana for a family of five? What the [ __ ] is going on? And and so, there's this hunger that everyone has. And it's always neutered by family, by teachers, by culture. And I believe you wouldn't be put on this planet if you didn't have this hunger. And if you explore this hunger, for me it was then being a fat kid, then being a being a foreigner, then a fat kid, and then fixing my problems, and then realizing I have the solution to other people's weight loss problems. For someone else it might be a financial thing, you know, they fix their financial problems, and they realize they can help everyone else's financial problems. But you have to go through the suffering. Um you have to be hungry enough to deal with the pain and come out the other side with some scars, cuz scar tissue is infinitely more resilient than regular tissue. Uh but again goes back to most people feel like, "Yeah, I think there's something great in me, but I don't want to explore it. I want to play it safe. I'm going to stay bubble wrapped. I don't want to risk it." But we wouldn't be put on this planet if we didn't have this greater thing to accomplish. Now, some of us are going to be Elon Musk, and we're going to shoot a [ __ ] Tesla to the Mars, right? And and that's okay. And others are going to create a fitness franchise or a or a supplement company that actually delivers, you know, great nutrients that help people optimize their performance. Some other people are just going to be really great therapists. They're going to keep throughout their life maybe save 10, 12, 15 people from killing themselves. Whatever your purpose is, you've got to develop it. You've got to develop it. But you wouldn't be put on this planet if you didn't have it. I'm I'm convinced of that. All right, before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you online. Uh best place to find me is uh Bedros Keuilian.com or on my social media platforms, um Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube @BedrosKeuilian. All right, my last question, what's the impact that you want to have on the world? That's exactly it. The impact I want to have on the world is that we're all here with so much potential. Yet we most of us It's unfortunate, but most of us leave with majority of that potential untapped. And if I could just By the time I die, if I can get a loud enough voice to share with people that Mom and Dad don't write your book. School teachers don't write your book. Those two [ __ ] dudes who molested me didn't write my book. I'm the author of my own book. You're the author of your own book. So many people give the pen to someone else. And if I could just help enough people realize that they hold the pen and there's way more pages to be written and they could write it, then I've actually served my impact. I I believe that's the thing that I want to leave. That's an amazing answer. Bedros, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, guys. I am beyond in awe of what he's done. His story is is astonishing on a level that I almost don't know how to convey. To come to this country with no money, to literally be diving in dumpsters to try to eat, to have to fight that hard against a system and people that don't want you here that are heckling you. And in all of that, to somehow still find his way to creating something beautiful. And that's what I want you to understand. To be a fighter jet, to be intense, to wade into the darkness to bring out your full potential. All in service of something beautiful, trying to build something that is helping other people. This is somebody that looked at his life and said, "Being a jerk, getting in fights, doing all of the bad [ __ ] that I'm doing, it isn't leading me anywhere that I want to go." And so he flips it and builds something out of that, builds something out of wanting to connect with people, builds something out of wanting to do amazing things for other people. And relentlessly goes after that skill set. But the the thing that I hope nobody misses in his story is that it's the suffering that leads to that. And I think that a lot of people will lost in that. And that is my big fear. And that is the thing that I always I don't know how to deal with that. I don't know how to put people through that kind of pain to see them become something. But when I see a story like this and I understand somebody that wasn't broken by it, but they were able to grow stronger and build themselves out of it, that to me is incredibly inspiring. So whatever you're going through, I hope that you will lean on his story. I hope that you will see in what he was able to accomplish the future of what you're able to accomplish because it is truly limitless. All right, if you guys haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Great job. Thank you very Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.