Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 011. Pay Your Dues, Succeed In Life!

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Most people think the road to success is similar to the yellow brick road, paved with hope and dreams. The truth is the road won't always be paved and when starting off in your journey you're going to experience a lot of obstacles and challenges. In today's episode, we discuss my journey and the obstacles I had to endure during my first couple of years of entrepreneurship.

If you're trying to build a business during the come up, you are going to experience a lot of shit. Welcome to the Bedroof's Coolie and show. Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo in a Benzo. I was banging with a gang of instrumental. True story. I was once beat up by a drunk lesbian at a gay bar. I'm going to tell you that story right now. And I'm going to exercise humility because she messed me up, man.

mess me up hard. So the year was 1997 and I was 21 years old and 22 years old. And I worked at Disneyland at the time. So imagine this. I'm 22 years old. I had maybe a couple years earlier gotten certified as a personal trainer and I'm working as a personal trainer in a big box gym. But I'm also working at Disneyland as a fry cook and a dinner cook to make ends meet. And the reason was it was because while I was a good personal trainer, I really didn't know how to sell personal training. And so I found myself lacking clients. And so to me, it kind of boiled down to I need money.

And since I'm not good at selling, common sense would have told you that I should have just gotten better at selling. but I didn't realize I wasn't good at selling. And so instead, I was like, well, all I got is four personal training clients right now. I need more money, so I better go get another job. And so that's how I ended up working at Disneyland as well. And so imagine that I'm working at Disneyland. I'm working at the L.A. fitness in La Habra, California.

I was actually going back and forth between La Haber, California and Fountain Valley, California. Fountain Valley is right by Huntington Beach. man you know Mike Botticelli would get stoned on the rooftop of the Fountain Valley LA Fitness up there on a Friday after our last training session with our clients and then we would drive to the beach Huntington Beach because it's just one city away and we just chill out on the sand and shoot the shit and Mike Botticelli man shout out to my friend he's from Buffalo New York here's a funny joke that Mike Botticelli would tell me he says I would say hey Bede what time is it right now here in Southern California.

I'm like, well, Mikey, it's 3.30 p.m. And he goes, you know what time it is in Buffalo, New York? I'm like, no. He goes, 1984. Because the whole joke was that nobody changed their way of life since 1984 there. Right. And so he was from Buffalo, New York. He came out to California to become a pro bodybuilder.

We met, man, we met in the funniest way, too. I was getting interviewed at LA Fitness to become a personal trainer by Steve Dow. And as I walked down the staircase after getting interviewed, I think I had like a black shirt on. And I had a black shirt on. And it was a collared shirt. The top couple buttons were open. And Mike Botticelli jacked in all New Yorker coming up the staircase. And he's like, are you applying to become a personal trainer? I'm like, yeah. He goes, hey, how much testosterone do you use? I'm like, wait, that's an interesting second question. What do you mean?

He goes, I see the acne on your chest. How much testosterone do you use? I was like, a lot. And so he's like, well, good to meet you, man. I hope you get the job. And believe it or not, me and Botticelli would make runs into good old Tijuana, Mexico, where we had gotten a connection with a veterinary store, where we would buy a whole bunch of testosterone and sestinon.

And if you ever use gear, you know what this stuff is, the sestine on. It's like four different testosterone blends mixed together. Holy shit. Half the time, like I would get these welts and it would just be painful and God knows what I was injecting into myself. But anyways, that's neither here nor there. So that's how I ended up getting that job at LA Fitness. And of course, working at Disneyland, trading my time for dollars as a fry cook, I figured,

all right, between these two gigs, I should be all right until I get on my feet and become a full-time personal trainer. My goal was to own a gym one day. And, you know, a couple of years go by. And I realized, like, man, I still don't have enough clients. So I'm working at Disneyland. And if you all don't know, Disneyland, like, it has a high gay population. Like, there's a ton of gay people that work at Disneyland. And some of my dearest friends who I've met that I still stay in contact with. I've met at Disneyland, and there is gay as the day is long. And what's really cool is one day I'm griping to one of them, actually two of them, Bob and Randy. And Bob and Randy lived together, but they swore up and down that they were not a couple, but they both admitted that they

were gay. But I think they had a little secret thing going on, if you know what I'm saying. But I'm griping to Bob and Randy because the holidays were coming. So it was probably like, I'm October and like 1997, 98. And I'm like, man, I'm a personal trainer. I'm a fry cook here at Disneyland. And I've got so many nieces and nephews and the holidays are coming. I need more money. And so they're like, well, do you have time to work on the weekends in the evenings?

I'm like, well, sure. Yeah, I do. Look, you work with a whole bunch of gay people here. Like, if you're not averse to it, you know, there's a gay nightclub down the street where we go to. They're hiring. They're looking for security. I'm like, dude, make the connection. I'm there.

Right. So literally that weekend, I'm working at Oz. Oz was in Boyn-Apart, California. Disneyland, obviously, is in Anaheim, California, so short John to Way. So now I find myself working as a personal trainer in the mornings. And in the afternoon, I'm working full-time at Disneyland. And then on the weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'm working at Oz. So during the day, Oz was a steakhouse.

but at night, boom, it transformed into a gay bar. And, man, some of the hottest women I've seen, by the way, before I realized that they were in drag, I've seen it Oz. And I was like, God damn, she is beautiful. Wow, she looks like Madonna. Holy crap, that one looks like Cher. Then I realized it was men dressed as drag. Like, I kind of grew up under a rock.

And so anyway, coolest people ever. the first two weeks working at Oz was weird because I get it man you're working at a gay club and so the dudes there think and it was like a a male gay club right so a lot of men and the dudes think that uh that you're gay and so I have respect for what women go through man when they get groped by guys when they're at a club or wherever like these dudes were pretty handsy man dudes are pretty aggressive and I don't know maybe gay dudes are extra aggressive but I was the minority there being straight. And I was like, listen, bro, I'm not gay.

Okay, cool, okay, sorry. And then I walk two feet. It's a nightclub. It's crowded. There's a bar. People are having a good time. The music's going. I walk two feet.

Another dude grabs my nuts. God damn it, bro, I'm not gay. I walk two more feet. Another dude's like just kind of put in his arm right across my face and just like slathering his sweaty arm across my face. I'm like, bro, if you were a woman, that would be fucking hot. But you're a nasty ass man, dude. Like, let's not do this.

right? And so after a couple weeks, word got around. But the thing I couldn't figure out is, why does this gay bar pay so much? Like, they paid really, really well compared to other friends of mine that worked at nightclubs and stuff as bouncers. I got paid like $5 more per hour. On the third weekend of working there, I understood why. See, what happened was a lot of skinheads would come and hang out in the parking lot and they would try and get in. And there was five bouncers in total. There was this angry, angry Samoan bouncer who was gay, big and jacked, muscular, long curly hair. He wore a trench coat and he did not want to be fucked with. Like any dude that he was going to shag, like he was going to destroy. Like he was just an angry,

gay Samoan bouncer. And I was like, man, I'm glad he's on our side. side. And whatever trauma got him to the place of all this high level of anger, this is great because he will keep us safe because he's working the door. But if you get past him, then you have to deal with the rest of us, bouncers. On that third weekend, word got around that there's skinheads waiting in the parking lot for the club to give out. And the club gave out at around 2 a.m. And they were going to gay bash. There's no other way to say this. They were going to gay bash. They were there with bats and pipes and they were going to gay bash. And of course, the manager of the nightclubs like, hey, you guys, as in to us, the bouncers,

you guys can't let anyone get hurt. They called the cops. But still, you guys can't let anyone get hurt because this will ruin our business if Ford gets out that this took place. And so, dude, we would get in fight like once a month with skinheads who were there at a gay bash. And I was like, I am not, this is not what I signed up for. I wanted to be a personal trainer. Working at Disneyland was fun.

and it made made ends me. But for the holidays, I want a little extra money. So I worked at Oz. But man, I did not sign up to work in a place that I'm going to be fighting skinheads with like fucking chains and brass knuckles and baseball bats and lead pipes. And so anyway, that career there at Oz lasted about four, maybe five months. But and I met some amazing humans there. One of the coolest things.

This is a pretty rad story. When you're in your early 20s and you're single, you don't realize this, but a lot of gay men bring their straight girlfriends to the nightclub. Like, they work together, and they bring their straight girlfriends to the nightclub. And so now these gay men know me, and they like me, and we're cool, and we're buds. And I look after them, right? And so they would bring their girlfriends. And so at any given time, on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sundays were drag night. And so there'd be more women, like actual women, although today's definition, you could really

go down the rabbit hole on what an actual woman is. But anyways, that's neither here nor there. But man, any given night, they'd be like 20 or 30, like pretty decent looking women. And they would introduce me to their girlfriends and their friends that were friends that or girls. And one night, I'm like saying goodbye to them, whatever, because I flirt with them in the club. I'm saying goodbye to them. There's like a car of like two gay dudes and three straight chicks. And they stop and I'm in the parking. I'm like, hey, good seeing you guys. See you next weekend, fellas. Hey, ladies, great meeting you. And the windows rolled down. And they're like,

you got any plans after this? I'm like, nope, I'm going to hop in my truck. Go to Denny's, get a bite to eat and go to my apartment, you know. And they're like, come here, come close. And I come close and they pull me in to the car and drive off. One of the greatest nights I've ever had. Greatest nights I've ever had. Anyway, that said, the night that a drunk lesbian whooped my ass. So this gay club, Oz, you imagine you coming through the front door, you go through the bar section first, and then it opens up to a dance floor that's kind of inset into the ground.

So it was like two little steps. You have to go down to go to this dance floor. And then beyond the dance floor is a door that opens up to a patio that's fenced off. And that patio was the smoking section because California, you can't smoke in restaurants. Right. And so people would go out there, they'd smoke, have some conversations and then go back into the club and dance or drink or whatever. And so I get wind that there's this woman being yelled at and screamed at and pushed into the fence. I'm like, holy shit, holy shit.

I got to do bouncer duties. Here I go. And so I go through the crowd and I get to the patio and I see this woman pushing her girlfriend against the fence all in her face yelling at her. She's like wearing leather, almost like a biker chick, right? And like her friend was definitely scared. Her girlfriend was definitely scared. And so I was like, hey, hey, can you knock this off?

Can you guys just maybe leave? I can open this back door. You guys can leave. Take this out in the parking lot. But you can't do it here. You know, you're freaking people out. Chill out.

And she gets in my face and she gets like, hey, what the fuck? What are you going to do about it? And she's like, punches me in the shoulder. And I'm like, whoa,

hey, I don't want any trouble. I'm just telling, like, they told me to tell you that you got to leave. Right? And this bitch went fucking crazy,

bro. She's like, I'm not fucking leaving. I'm going to fucking slap you. I'm going to punch you. You know what? You know what? you're fucking out of here.

Because now she's going off at me and everyone's like, oh, what are you going to do? Well, what am I going to do? I'm not going to hit a woman. So I'm like, you're out of here. And so I grab her from behind. I turn her around.

I grab her from behind. And I've got her arms pinned next to her side. And I literally pick her up. And now I'm walking in through that door, literally using her to push people out of my way on the dance floor. But as I'm doing that, see, she's smashing my head, my face with the back of her head.

And then she's got these fucking, construction boots on and she's raking my shins bro she's raking my shins with these fucking and i'm in so much pain and i'm just squeezing her heart or thinking like i'm sending her a message like fucking stop right and she's not she just keeps whacking me and by the time i get her past the bar to the front door where the angry samoan gay bouncer is i forget his name solid fucking dude he like literally just grabs her from me and my face is just bleeding my nose is bleeding my my tooth had bit into my upper lip. And I'm just like, fuck.

Like, what did I do wrong, bro? He's like, nothing. That's how that works. Like, what are you going to do? Hit her? I was like, no. And so anyway, it gets crazier because I'd forgotten what happened to her girlfriend. So I'm just going back, you know, wipe my face, whatever.

Patch, you know, gather myself up, you know, I may have shed a couple of tears. Like, what the fuck just happened? That was traumatic. And I'm back on the dance forward. just watching people. And I get fucking clocked from the right hand side. And I look and it's her fucking girlfriend. And now she's mad at me for kicking her,

her girlfriend out. And she's like, you hurt my girlfriend. I'm like, well, go fucking spend time with her out there. She's like, well, I'm having too much fun in here, but I just want to let you know you're fucked up. So I got clocked by her too. That was a fucked up night, man. Thankfully, skinheads that had come that night.

Like, could you imagine it would just been fucking awful? But I share all this with you because during the come up, If you're trying to build a business, during the come-up, you are going to experience a lot of shit. Imagine that. I was working as a personal trainer at LA Fitness. I only had four clients. And I was working at Disneyland as a fry cook. And I was working as a bouncer at Oz Gay Club, the running joke.

Whenever I'm in an event with Craig Ballantyne and I know Craig's in the audience, and I go, and that's where I met Craig. And everyone gets a good laugh out of it. But I did not meet Craig at a gay nightclub. I met him at a different gay nightclub. So the fourth gig that I had was I'd started a website called Total Muscle.com. And Total Muscle.com was, as far as I know, could have been the very first online supplement store. I know now we've got Truline and Truline's rocking, but there's also paid ads and influencers and social media and all this.

stuff. Imagine 1997, 1998. I create total muscle.com. I think it cost me like a piece together three credit cards to spend 20 grand to make this shitty website. And there was no way to market. And so my means for marketing total muscle.com, I would go on AOL dial up. If you've never used dial up, you can Google what dial up sounds like. And the speed is like fucking snail speed. and I would go to AOL America Online, and I would search for AOL members that were athletes or into bodybuilding or powerlifting, because you know, you had your AOL profile, and it would search by keywords that you put in your profile. And I didn't even know how to cut and paste. I don't know if cut and paste even existed then, but I had this Toshiba laptop that a friend got me because it fell off the back of a truck, so it only cost me $400. And, well, I'm not proud of that fact.

It's what I use to run my online business. And totalmuscle.com was it did not have address verification. That didn't exist, meaning if you bought something from there, you used someone else's credit card, but you want it to be delivered to your house. It wouldn't verify that, you know, Layton is using Andrews credit card. It would just be like, cool.

Layton is using a credit card. The credit card's valid. Perfect. And I was trying to deliver good service. so soon as you order something, like I remember one time an order for $1,500 worth of supplements. And I didn't even sell any of my own brand. I don't know how to create my own stuff. I just created and sold like stuff that you would find at a GNC.

But my whole thing was I found the distributors where I could get it for the same price that GNC does. But I'm selling it out of my closet. So, you know, I have some profit margins. And so in the name of good service, I get an order in. And I see that order within an hour. And I package it up, throw it in my business. truck and it was like $1,500 worth of like protein and creatine and whatever, take it to UPS and

they ship it off to Texas. I remember the address being in Texas. Two weeks later, the $1,500 was pulled out of my bank account. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? And so I'm talking to this rapid visa and they're like, well, someone used a stolen credit card. Like nowadays, there's something called ABS, address verification system where if Layton is using a credit card, that credit card needs to be linked to the address that he's having the stuff delivered to, and then there's like the four-digit pin and the code. Like, there's all these different ways to check verification so that there's little crime. I can't say there's no crime these days, but there's little online crime. Back then, man, it was the Wild West. And so every month I would lose money because

people were just doing shady shit. But my whole marketing strategy was every night when I would get home from Disneyland during the week and then from Oz, so when I'd get home like at 233 in the morning, I would go on America Online, I would look at profiles of men who bodybuilded, powerlifting, fitness, and then I would email them, and I would write an email.

Hey, my name is Pedro, I have a website called total muscle.com. If you're looking for a creatine, if you're looking for protein, if you're looking for pre-workout or fat burners, we've got it all, and we've got all these different brands. Designer Protein back then was one of the popular brands.

Isopure was another brand. EAS, Bill Phillips's company. Cool Cap, by the way, it's full circle. Come full circle now. I get to be friends with Bill Phillips. But way back in the day, I was selling his shit. His supplements, not his shit. I was selling his shit on TotalMussel.com.

But I never made a penny from TotalMussel.com. But my goal was that I was going to one day own a gym and that I was going to have this online supplement store. Obviously, I was way ahead of my time. There was no Google, no social media. There was no email broadcasting platform. And my goal was to send out 250 emails a night. If I could send out 250 emails a night,

and the way I did it was, I would start it from the West Coast and work my way. So I was like, I'd start at California, and I was going to work my way across the country. But again, I've never made profit from it because the supplements would expire faster than I could sell them. and then about 40% of the time, imagine that. If you own an online store right now, imagine 40% of your online orders were basically Visa, MasterCard American Express did a charge back

and pulled the money back out because they were fraudulent orders. So 40% of the time I had fraudulent orders. The rest of the time shit would expire, and so I'd have to throw them away. And that is how I ended up homeless for a period of 90 days because I used the last amount of money that I had, which was going to be my rent money. That is how I ended up homeless for a period of time.

It was going to be my rent money. But I was like, you know what? I think I'm on a roll. Orders are picking up. I'm just going to keep pumping out 250 emails a night. Like handwritten emails, man, every night. And as you could imagine, the landlord was like, hey, you're behind on your rent.

And it's been more than like 40 days. Things didn't pan out like I wanted. and they evicted me. So I lived in my 79 Toyota pickup for a period of about three months. It wasn't bad because Southern California is beautiful. And I worked at a gym, LA Fitness, so I had access to showers and everything. And the lady at the juice bar, this awesome Korean lady at the juice bar would let me use her fridge. So I had cans of tuna fish and hard-boiled eggs and all this stuff.

And true story, if you've been following me for more than a decade, I've talked about this on my blog back in the day. Ptepower.com, but I couldn't, I couldn't afford a lot of food. So if you get the shitty cans of store brand tuna fish and you get the Diet Coke, like the off-brand diet sodas, and you have the nice Korean lady that runs the Juice Bart, LA Fitness, store all that in the back, in between personal training clients, she would blend a can of Diet Coke, ice, and two cans of tuna in a blender, smelled awful, like the whole lobby of the gym stunk up. But now I had caffeine and about 40 grams of protein for under a dollar, right? Because it was cans of tuna fish. I think we're like 60 cents each. So maybe just over a dollar. But that was my my protein drink for those

three months when I was homeless. And I wouldn't trade that time for the world, man. See, this is the kind of shit I couldn't talk about or I didn't talk about on the Empire show because it just didn't make sense. But here, just you and me were banned. here, friends, and we're talking about life and what it takes to pay your dues to make it in life, right? Like there I was. I had four gigs, Total Muscle.com, Oz the Gay Club, Disneyland as a fried cook, and then LA fitness, two LAFRA and Fountain Valley working as a personal trainer, all at the same

time. And thankfully, thankfully, one of those four personal training clients was Jim Franco. And one day I was complaining to Jim Franco on a Monday morning. because he's like, man, why are you so tired this morning? I'm like, Jim, now I work like Friday, Saturday, Sundays at a nightclub, and I don't go to bed until 3 a.m. And so I literally woke up like two hours ago, and I just got two hours of sleep.

And it's a Monday morning, and I'm here to train you. And I'm tired. I'm exhausted, man. I can't seem to get clients. All these people are fat walking around in the gym, and I can't seem to get clients. And he goes, you know why you can't get clients? I go, why? He goes, because you don't know how to sell.

You're an order. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm an order taker. What does that mean? He goes, you know, someone goes to the restaurant, they're hungry. They're already going to eat. The waitress, she's just going to take their order. She's an order taker. Now, if she's good at selling, she could upsell you on drinks and cocktails and dessert. And if she can, if she had great personality and is enthusiastic and really delivers great service, she can also beef up her tip. But otherwise, she's an order taker. I'm like, shit. He goes, so you're no different than her. I'm like, holy crap. I'm like, well, I sold you six months of personal training man you come here three times a week for six months he goes you didn't sell me that you just filled out the paperwork i came in here looking for a personal trainer to work with three times a week and i wanted to hire hire someone for for six months and everyone said that you were the best personal trainer here in this gym i was like damn you're right so i was like well then what do i do jim and uh so jim was in his 60s energy for days owned this multimillion dollar software company and he goes you want to know what you need to do, you need to learn how to sell.

And the next day, he shows up with three books, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, and Ziglar. And I was so young and dumb. The Tom Hopkins book said, you know, selling for real estate agents. And it was the first book of the three on top. And I'm like, Jim, this says like for real estate agents, I'm a personal trainer. How's this going to help me? He goes, look, dummy, you need to hear a personal trainer each time you read. real estate agent. Otherwise, selling is selling. And I read Zig Zigler, Brian Tracy,

Tom Hopkins, in the order that he gave me, listened to a whole bunch of Brian Tracy cassette tapes in the months that followed, started selling like no one's business. Like I was selling 12-month packages, four, $5,000 packages. Of course, most of it goes to the gym and I'd get a commission out of it. But I very quickly started, I ended up quitting Oz. I ended up then quitting Disneyland because I was working full-time. And when Jim Franco saw that I was all of a sudden working full-time as a personal trainer, still trying to get Total Muscle.com to fire, but that was just not working. I was way too early to the online game.

I told Jim, I said, man, like my schedule's packed. I'm packed. This is great. I appreciate you for teaching me this. The next thing is I need to open up my own personal training studio. He goes, well, how much money do you need? Probably $55,000 right around there. I just need like 2,500 square feet and I'll be a personal trainer.

He goes, cool. Do you need a business partner? I go, I guess. Are you going to loan me money? He goes, sure. So he loaned me the $55,000 for 8% interest. This was the worst deal ever. Yet look at another lesson I got to learn from Jim Franco, the shark of all sharks.

He loaned me $55,000 for 8% interest. He was my 50-50 business partner in Premier Results, my first personal training studio. And I paid him back. all that money at 8% interest, and he was still, the agreement was that he'd still be my 50-50 business partner. And what was rad is when I learned a skill and he saw that I used the skills that he handed me in those books, he was willing to then be my money man and allowed me to leverage his money in exchange for starting a business. And then he's like, hey, now that we're 50-50 business partners, you know, it's only you and your personal training studio. You're just trading time for

dollars. Why don't you get some other personal trainers and start scaling your business? And I had never heard the term scaling a business because up until that point, I was always trading my time for dollars. And so before you note, I hire a second trainer, third trainer, fourth trainer. And at one point, premier results, my first location, because I had five in total after a few years, but my first location of premier results, the one that I had, Jim as my business partner, we had 11 personal trainers working for me, some part-time, some full-time. All I did was the sales, and then I would hand off the client to the personal trainer, and we were doing about $75,000 a month in revenue with about 25% profit margins.

And of course, once I saw that happening, I was like, Jim, I think I'm going to open up location two, three, four, and five. Do you want to be my business partner? He's like, nope, the rest is all you, man. I've taught you everything you need to know. And so I opened up more locations on my own. And that became the catalyst of me becoming an entrepreneur, me learning scale and structure and a good product and bringing in the right people

and using the right processes to be able to create wealth and not just make money. And so that brings us to the end of this show, my friends. And so I just want you to remember that average is the enemy. Success is your responsibility. And change can take place in an instant if you are willing to flip the switch. Much love to you all, and I'll see you next time.