Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 125. The Brutal Truth About the Price of Success

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

The truth about success? It will break you before it builds you.Most people want the rewards but refuse to pay the price—until life forces them to.In today’s episode of The Bedros Keuilian Show, I’m talking about the brutal reality of what it actually takes to succeed. The setbacks, the sacrifices, the gut-wrenching moments where most people quit.Success isn’t for the lucky. It’s for those who can take the hits and keep moving.If you’re tired of excuses and ready to really level up, this episode is for you.BEDROS KEUILIAN LIVE 2025 | MAY 31, 2025 in Anaheim, CAhttps://live.bedroskeuilian.com/2025REGISTER FOR THE LEGACY TRIBEGet the Life, Money, Meaning & Impact You Deservehttps://bedroskeuilian.com/legacytribeJOIN MY FREE 6-WEEK CHALLENGE:Transform into a Purpose-Driven Manhttps://bedroskeuilian.com/challengeTHE SQUIRE PROGRAM: A rite of Passage for Your Son as He Becomes a ManA Father and Son Experience That Will Be Remembered FOREVERhttps://squireprogram.com/registerTruLean Supplements | https://www.trulean.com/pages/bedrosGet 50% Off Trulean Subscribe & Save BundleUse Code: BEDROS Few Will Hunt Apparel | https://fewwillhunt.com/Get 20% Off Your Entire OrderUse Code: BEDROSOPEN A FIT BODY LOCATIONA High-Profit, Scalable Gym Franchise Opportunity Driven By Impacthttps://sales.fbbcfranchise.com/get-started?utm_source=bedrosPODCAST EPISODES:https://bedroskeuilian.com/podcast/STAY CONNECTED:Website | https://bedroskeuilian.com/Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bedroskeuilianTwitter | https://twitter.com/bedroskeuilian

You better know how to be anti-fragile. You better know how to pivot and make fast decisions. Because if you think that it's going to go exactly to the timeline that you put on your marker board, and if it doesn't meet that expectation, you think that you're cursed and that you're destined to fail, you should just pull the plug and go bankrupt. Then you deserve to fail. You deserve to live like a peasant. You deserve to just be on that hamster wheel of life.

Because success is reserved for the few who are willing to push through. Welcome to the Bedroves Coolie and Show. Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo I was banging with a gang of instrumental. The man at the gate must be paid and sometimes over and over again. Hey guys, welcome to the Bedrose-Coolion show. I'm Bedros-Coolion. And today's episode is about the price of success and what it takes to truly succeed in any category of life. But before we talk about this episode and do a deep dive that I've got outlined for you,

I want to let you know that Bedros-Cooleon Live is taking place May 31st at the Grove theater in Anaheim, California. For the entire day, I've got an amazing lineup of speakers who are going to be talking into you and to you, giving you the blueprint on money, meaning, and self-mastery. You know this entire show is about money, meaning, and self-mastery. Well, at BK. Live on May 31st, myself and an entire lineup of amazing presenters will be sharing their blueprint on how to make more money, create wealth, multiple income streams, build your personal brand, marketing, sales, processes, leaderships. And then on the meaning side, significance, fulfillment, purpose, and how to lock in and find it and live it. And then finally,

self-mastery. If you have self-mastery, you're going to live a purpose-driven life with lots of money and you're going to have that for a long period of time. Self-mastery is the thing that breaks limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behaviors, and really gets you to become the highest-level version of yourself, highest level of potential. So there's a link. If you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to click the link in the description box or that first comment. to register for BK Live. And if you're watching this on the podcast or listening to this on the podcast platforms, go to bedrose-coolion.com. And when you do, the first box you'll see there is for BK Live. So without any further ado, let's get going on this episode. I got a text message the other

day. And I wanted to share this text message with you guys because it's from an entrepreneur. And he's been an entrepreneur since 2019. And I met. I met him a couple years ago. And I met him through one of my coaching clients. He's a good friends with one of my coaching clients from my Domination Year Coaching Program. And he's actually got a really cool business. And the reason I met him is I was gifted a hat from him. And he has a hat business and my coaching client gifted me one of his hats.

I like it. I wear it every now and again when I work out. But essentially this guy's hat business took a weird turn of events. And because I had his phone number, he texted me this just the other day, just in time for this episode. He says, B, I'm sorry for the long text message. I don't have anyone else to turn to. My head is all fucked up. So I'm reaching out to you for help.

I truly believe I'm cursed or something. If you're an entrepreneur, already this beginning two sentences probably resonates with you. He says, I started my hat business in 2019. It took off in 2020. and I started selling $60,000 worth of hats per month. In 2021, the LA Dodgers sued me for using the LA Dodgers logo and pulled down my Shopify store. So I'm guessing Shopify pulled down his store because the LA Dodgers probably sent a cease and desist to Shopify as well, saying, hey, look, one of your shops is selling an LA Dodger logo that is not licensed to them.

So you've got to pull the site down. So imagine his site gets pulled down. He gets a cease and desist. and from what he's saying, he was also sued. I'm sure this lawsuit was dropped once he took it off the site and signed something that says he'll never do that again. He says, all the sales stopped when the site was pulled down and until I got a shitty little website up,

I wasn't able to start making sales again. But even then, it was only 10% of what I was previously making at $60,000 a month. He says, but once Shopify reinstated my site, I was able to build my revenue back up. But by the time there was, By that time, there was competitors selling similar styles of hats and designs. So I'm having to spend a lot more money on marketing, which means I have a lot less profits for myself.

So I got loans from investors to help me scale. But things are going slower than I thought. Doesn't that resonate with you as an entrepreneur? Things are going slower than you thought, right? It's like you have this plan as an entrepreneur. I'm going to do this and then that's going to happen. I'm going to succeed. And this person's going to promote it.

And Facebook's going to run the ads. And Instagram is going to run the ads. The ads are going to be perfect. People are going to click. They're going to buy. They're going to share. And then you realize, oh, shit. No one's doing that.

So he's going on to say that, so I got loans from investors to help me scale, but things are going slower than I thought. And now the balloon payments are due back to the investors. In other words, he borrowed money from investors, probably, you know, 5%, 8%, 10% interest. And then at the end of that year or two years, however long, he borrowed the money for the balloon payment, the big amount, like if they gave. of $100,000 or whatever is due back to them. And he's like, I ain't got the money to give that money back to them.

He says, I went from making $60,000 a month to being sued, losing my Shopify store, fighting competition, trying to figure out ads that convert, and now having to pay back investors with money I don't have. My goal was to start making $100,000 a month and have all my hats made in the USA, like you guys do with Fee Will Hunt. He's implying like how we do with the fuel hunt shirts. We obviously fuel hunt doesn't sell hats. But fuel hunt shirts are made in the USA.

All the apparel, rash guards, fight gear, sweaters, sweatshirts, shirts. When I became an investor in fuel hunt, all the gear was made in Pakistan. But the guys were like, hey, we're going to figure out how to raise capital. And fuel hunt did exactly that. We raised money to change the entire stock to made in the USA. It was a big shift, right? So his goal was to start selling made in the USA hats with his custom unique designs and logos on it. So he says my goal was to start making $100,000 a month, have all my hats made in the USA, like you guys have all your apparel made and fuel hunt stuff in the USA.

But instead, I'm in debt. I'm barely making $12,000 a month in sales. And my hats are still being made in China and Pakistan. I'm really stressed out, man, and I'm weighing over my head. Should I close it all down, file for bankruptcy and move on? So if you're an entrepreneur, you can relate because he started this in 2019. In 2021, LA Dodgers give him a big slap. In 2020, he was killing it.

In 2021, he gets a big slap from the LA Dodgers. Now it's 2025 and he owes a lot of money and he's not making anywhere near the $60,000 a month. He's making $12,000 a month. There's competition kind of nipping at his heels and he's like, fuck man what do I do and I've been there I've been there as an entrepreneur and if you're a seasoned entrepreneur listening to this you're like all right been there and you'll probably go there again at sometime right but here's what I need you guys to understand there's a price to success that has to be

paid and that price is not determined by you the tuition must be paid no matter what there's a tuition to get through the gates of success to leave peasantville to leave peasantville to leave average, to leave mediocrity, and to enter a kingdom of where the ambitious and driven and visionaries get to live and thrive. But there's a price to be paid to go from Peasantville to the kingdom of thriving and experiencing a life at a very different level. That price that you pay is not set by you. And that price is not always money. That. That price is not always money. That price is paid in time. That price is paid in health, lost health, that stress, relationships.

That price is paid in many ways. And that price is often paid over and over again. That price is paid in ways where you're like, aha, I did it. I dove in the deep end. I thought it was going to be difficult. I fought the dragons and the bears. I overcame the adversity and now we're making money. And then boom, just when you think like it's all up from here because you're making

money, your lifestyle improved, you maybe got a nice car, nice watch, and you're eating at fancy restaurants, and all of a sudden, something happens. Maybe competition comes up. Maybe you get a lawsuit. Maybe Shopify takes your store down. Maybe ads stop running. Maybe you get deplatformed, and all your platforms all of a sudden are locked up and you can't do anything about it. Maybe your email marketing platform. Like, you know, if you get emails from me, you know that I'm sending out mass emails, right? And, you know, to have built a multiple six-figure person email list, you know, hundreds of thousands of people on my email list, well, there's been plenty of times in the past where my email marketing platform shut us down because they go, oh, you're using a word that's

too, seems too spammy or too aggressive. Or I sent out an email where people were like, I don't like that email so they hit the spam button. You hit the spam button too many times on an email that gets sent out by someone and the company that is hosting your emails says, you know what, dude, we're not going to let you send out emails because you're really screwing up our IP address. And now all the other people using our platform, their emails are going to end up in the junk or spam box. So there's a million things that happen to entrepreneurs on your way to success. And success you should know is not linear.

It is a time of peaks and valleys. And sometimes you're experiencing the peaks as you're going through the valleys, right? And I share that with you because the cost of success is long and inexpensive. It's a tuition that must be paid in order for you to achieve the lifestyle and the brand and the freedom or the maybe the celebrity that you're trying to build or financial freedom. All of that comes at a cost, guys. And I'll tell you my story about Fit Body Boot Camp. You know, many of you know I started Fit Body Boot Camp back. in 2010. The idea came to me after the housing market crash. 2008, the housing market crashed.

Economy went to shit. One-on-one personal training was way too expensive for people to afford, you know, who's going to pay $600 to $800 a month for one-on-one personal training when the housing markets crashed. Unemployments at 11, 12%. People have lost their homes. They're moving in together in apartments and shit or moving into grandma's house and mom and dad's house. Like people were not doing well in 2008, 2009, 2010. So I was like, I got an idea. What if I take that outdoor boot camp and bring it indoors and call it fit body boot camp? And we do group training.

And if we do group training now, personal training could be one on many. One coach, many clients, which means instead of charging $600, $800 a month, we're charging $199 a month. And we're allowing our clients to get workouts five days a week, unlimited. and they're paying $1.99 a month and they can come to as many sessions a day as they want, right? Like, what a smoking deal. We made the cost of group personal training convenient and more affordable. And so the idea of Fit Body Boot Camp grew within a year of 2010, between 2010-2011, I had 100 Fit Body Boot Camp locations licensed out.

I didn't know anything about franchising. Right now we're a franchise. But back then, there was a licensing program. And guess what? in 2010, I come up with the idea. In late 2011, the state of California is like, hey, you got these hundred locations across the country and they're all licensees, but you're giving them protected territory, like six to eight miles of protected territory.

You can't do that. Only franchises can do that. A licensing program cannot give a protected territory. You have crossed the line into franchising, yet you're not franchising. So we're going to find you $2,500 per location that you have. And I was like, holy fuck, right? because I'm running my business in California. I live in California.

And so they're like, hey, we're going to find you $2,500 per location. Well, times 100 locations, that's $250,000 that I did not have. I mean, my butthole puckered shut. Like immediately, my, I was like, listen, if you guys find me, I'm going to have to go bankrupt. And now these 100 licensees won't have any support in terms of marketing, sales, processes, et cetera. And so I had to, like, that was a big, you know, big price I had to pay. I thought I paid the price by maxing out my credit card, starting Fit Body Boot Camp, you know, working throughout the night, all of 2010, and acquiring all these locations.

By the time we had 100 locations, I was making really good money for myself. But bam, by end of 2011, the state of California is like, hey, here's the law that you're violating. It was unbeknownst to me. I didn't know. I wanted to give my licensees a protected territory so that they don't open up next to each other in the same city and become competitive and argumentative and have all this like talk toxic energy, right? But instead, I crossed the line into franchising without even knowing it. And so, of course, they're like, we want to find you. Now, to the credit of state of California,

they're like, hey, tell you what, we won't find you. Don't sell another license location. If you want to continue doing this, become a franchise. So I had to learn all about franchising, then all of a sudden I had to take on $85,000 debt because it costs us $85,000 to become a franchise across all the states and to create our franchise manual, right? We had to hire an expert to do that, hire an attorney to do that. The whole thing, $85,000 took about five, six months to do. So we had five, six months of no sales. By 2012, we'd become an official franchise, right? But then I was like, all right, well, I don't know anything about franchising. So I better hire some experts who can help me. So I found some consultants, and I should have

done better research. This is a great example of like what bad coaching can cost you more money than if you just went at it on your own. And here's why. I hired two consultants and they said they understood a new franchising. They were charging me $20,000 a month to advise, coach, and consult me in terms of franchising. And about six months in, I realized the questions I'm answer asking them and the answers they're giving me seem like answers that could be found on Google. Like with a little research, like do I really need to be spending $20,000 a month? So at month number seven, I disengaged from them. And I was like, guys, I can't afford to pay you money for advice that's not really taking my business to the next level. And so it wasn't their

fault. It was my fault for not doing the research and saying, have you guys coached other franchise franchise owners, have you guys, do you have a track record and working with other franchisors who have been able to scale, who have dealt with challenges that I'm experiencing? Had I asked those questions, they probably would have told me no, and I would have said, then I don't want to work with you guys. But they said they had industry knowledge, and I blindly bought into it, and I'm the one that agreed to pay $20,000 a month. And at month number six is when I came to that realization, and I was like, we can't work

together anymore. It's costing me way too much money for answers that I could find on Google, right? There weren't any groundbreaking answers. And so I share that with you because that now took place in late 2012. In 2013, if you read my book, Man Up, the whole Shannon incident, I had a director of operations named Shannon. She's a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible director of operations, bad person. I did a horrible job hiring her. So I'm going to take credit for this as well. I screwed my own business up because of her. Because when I knew she was toxic, I knew she was a bad person. I knew that she was limiting the growth of our company because she was getting intimidated every time we would kept growing and hiring new people. And we had a very tense relationship, her and I.

I'm the boss, yet I had a tense relationship with her. And I felt like I couldn't fire her because she had me by the balls. I needed her to run operations because if I stepped into operations, then I couldn't sell franchise locations. And so I kept her reluctantly. Well, one day the tension got so bad. I had gone to lunch. I'd come back to the HQ. And guess what? Shannon's gone. And all of our franchise agreements that we had at the time because we converted all of our licensees into franchisees. They were putting a big giant trash bag and she had poured a pot of coffee from the coffee machine, a pot of coffee in there. And we had like, you know, carpet cleaning solution underneath the desk or underneath the drawer in the restroom.

She had poured that in there, tied a knot, shaking it all up and left. Literally just bounced. Right. So that was like the big fuck you. to me and I suppose good for her because I should have fired her months earlier but I didn't. And so now I've got these franchise agreements with people's credit card numbers on it that's so smeared I can't even read them. And I'm like, fuck man. It seems like one thing after another. I start in 2010, 2011 California tries to find me. Then I pay $85,000 to become a franchise.

Then I pay $20,000 a month to some shitty consultants that only cost me money and wasted my time. and then the Shannon situation happens. It's embarrassing. And so now I've got to reach out to all my franchisees and, you know, get their new credit card information, new payment information, fill out new franchise agreements. I mean, those franchise agreements were so soaked in chemicals. Myself and Joan, you've heard me talk about Joan. She's my assistant.

In fact, you hear me talk about Ed. I talk to Ed, who's behind the camera. Ed is my assistant, Jones' husband. And Joan and I were peeling franchise agreements. franchise contracts from one another, laying them down on the ground and trying to air dry them so we can somehow read the payment information and the address and all this stuff. But ultimately we ended up reaching out to all of our franchisees and saying, look, you know, this unfortunate thing happened. And now we're having to, it was so embarrassing. Now we're having to get your contact information

and credit card payment and ACH number and all this stuff, right? And so that's in 2013, man. And then you look at 2015, there was a wrongful term. Lawsuit that I dealt with. You know, welcome to the state of California, right? We fired someone, but we hadn't kept a great paper trail when we fired her and She is a she was a Hispanic. She was she is a Hispanic woman and so you got that she's female and Hispanic so minority female and we didn't have a great paper trail of all the different times that we had to write her up and talk to her, etc. And so we fired her and she went and found a lawyer and said, hey, look, wrongful termination. They had never warned me. They had never talked to me. They had never done any of that stuff. There's no paper trail. I was just blindsided by this termination. And I think it was an act of some kind of racism or bigotry or

whatever, right? And so all of a sudden now it's 2015 and I'm dealing with the wrongful termination lawsuit. And you think like winning that lawsuit is settling. Well, you're still settling with money that you didn't plan on putting out so that money you have to extract from somewhere, right well I didn't have a savings account I've used all my money up at this point and so I share this with you because that's still part of the cost of success that's that's what success looks like you guys quick interruption to the bedroast cooling show I took some time to go to the local juice stores here in town and I bought all these different ginger turmeric and wellness shots now they range anywhere from $3.69 cents all the way to $4.5 and to be honest with you they all suck why

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So go to truleen.com, use my name Bedros, and you can get 50% off plus free shipping, a 30-day money-back guarantee, and $1.00 gets donated to Shriners Children's Hospital. Best of all, if you like the Trulene Wellness Shots, and I know you will, like thousands of other people who are part of the Trulene tribe, every month will send you a new supply at 20% off free shipping.

So go to truleen.com, use my name Bedrosse, and get your 50% discount code before it goes away. Back to the show. Then you look at 2016, 2017, I decided I need a second in command. I need a real VP that I could ultimately elevate to the CEO position. So 2016, 2017, for two years,

I went to three different VPs. Imagine how turbulent that was for my business when you bring in a VP, you introduce them to the team, you introduce them to the franchise brand to all the franchisees, and then bam, a few months later, you part ways with them

because they weren't the right person, they weren't the right fit. Then you bring in the second one. You do the same thing. Bam, you part ways with them. You bring in a third one. one do the same thing. Boom, part ways with them. It was until the fourth one in 2018 when I brought Bryce on board, Bryce Henson, who's currently now our CEO of the franchise, has been with us for years.

And you start getting this PTSD like, am I just a bad boss? Am I a bad leader? Am I a bad decision maker? So think about the price isn't just in money. The price isn't wasted time. The price is in self-doubt. The price is stress levels going through the roof. The price of success, man. The tuition to success to making a lot of money, having winning your financial freedom is not linear. It is not on your timeline. And it's an embarrassment.

It's in stress. It's in time. It's in lost sleep. Do you know how many hours and days of lost sleep I've had because of this desire to grow fit body boot camp, right? But we persevered. We pushed through and we got a great CEO, Bryce. And then, of course,

were thriving along, but then in late 2017, I signed a contract with this company called Club Ready. And Club Ready is a front desk management system for gyms. And I'm like, perfect, perfect. But I didn't do enough research. And all of a sudden, it's not operating well for our franchisees. The platform is slow. It's not processing credit cards. And when we had our big New Year, New Year, annual challenge at the beginning of 2018, the whole server.

We crashed their entire server. Like, it literally had a meltdown. And then I find myself now suing Club Ready trying to get out of that deal and then finding a new gym front desk system. Right. And that's why when I learned about FitPro Tracker, by the way, if you're a gym owner, you're a franchisor of gyms and you're like, hey, what is the best like front desk gym management system to use? FitPro tracker. Just get FitPro Tracker. That's what we use.

It will change the way you do your business. But I had to go through the club ready debacle to find and discover FitProxer. Pro tracker, right? Think how much. So what was the price of success then? Lost trust with my franchisees. To go to my franchisees and to go, guys, I am fucking sorry. I signed a three-year franchise agreement with Club Ready, right, that we would work with them for three years, our franchise. And then here we are a year in and their platform is clunky. It's slow. The new stuff that they said they would program for us. They kept missing the deadlines. And so it wasn't quite working well for us and then when we had our big new year new you promotion we ran so much deals through

the platform that it literally had a server meltdown and so now I've lost trust and credibility with my franchisees like that is part of the cost of doing business like that is part of the tuition and then you go okay do I quit now like maybe I just this is the time I quit but you're going to know I'm going to push through I'm going to sue club ready which is going to cost me time and money in the meantime I have to find another solution, which is FitPro Tracker, and then I'm going to keep pushing through, right? And then just then guess what happens?

2020 comes about, and then boom, we're hit with the pandemic. Probably the darkest season in all of FitBody Boot Camp. We lose tens of millions of dollars. Just to give you an idea, in all of 2020, Fit Body Boot Camp made about $19 million. Right? My franchise made about $19 million dollars.

Because who the fuck is going to gyms that are shut down? Right? You know, we had hundreds of locations nationwide and like 80% of them are shut down because they're in states that are finding these gyms like $500 to $5,000 per day that you're open. And so no matter how hard we're fighting against this pandemic, no matter how hard we're pushing against this pandemic, we're losing franchise locations. Our locations are shut down. They're losing money. We did all of $19 million.

That is nothing for Fit Body Boot Camp. But here, last year, 2024, would it's $79 million, right? $79 million. So we had to push through the pandemic. We had to push through the lost locations. We had to push through the lost millions. We had to push through the embarrassment. We had to push through the lost trust.

We had to push through the stress. All of it is the price that you pay. And I share this with you because throughout that time of FitBody Boot Camp, All those years that I listed off, hey, guess what? We had record numbers. We also, in 2013, 14 and 15, we were the fastest growing franchise for entrepreneur magazine, top 200 fastest growing franchises in the world out of 174,000 franchise brands out there. We're top 200.

We hit the Inc. 5,000 and Inc. 500 list two years in a row. So good things were happening while the bad things were happening. this is what I say, when I say during the peaks, you're also experiencing the valleys. And you're like, fuck, what is this about? Like, I'm broke, but we have so much great momentum right now. I'm being sued. But things look so promising here for the near future. And then the pandemic comes and you're like, fuck, maybe I had a rabbit's foot up my ass all these years.

Like all those other things, the Shannon situation, the lawsuits, the dealing with the state of California trying to find me a quarter million dollars. all of those paled in comparison to the pandemic where we lost millions, tens of millions of dollars in a 10-month period of 2020 and locations. And I share this with you because I stayed in the fight. I stayed in the fight because success is not linear. And this is just one of my companies, Fit Body Boot Camp. Thank God, I've got Trueling.

Thank God we've got a fuel hunt. Thank God we've got all the coaching businesses that I have. Thank God I've got equity in other companies because the revenue from all those other businesses is what kept us afloat when FitBody Boot Camp was limping along in 2020. But what happened is we bounced back even harder. I mean, we just did $79 million in 2024. We're going to do over $100 million in 2025 just in FitBody Boot Camp. And I share this with you because I have no doubt that the freedom and the lifestyle that I have,

the abundance in which how I live, the assets that I own, all of that is a byproduct of me willing to pay the price. But I used to think that the price was like, all right, I'm going to have a couple years of struggle and I'm going to be stressed. I might lose a few thousand dollars and it might take a few months longer and then success comes. Like that's what I thought. And when it doesn't meet our expectations and when you end up losing millions, when you end up getting sued, when you end up getting fined, when you end up having a revolt of your employees, when you end up, you know, in a divorce, when you end up going through a health crisis because of all this, that. is the price that you pay. There's a tuition to this and you do not set the price. You do not set the timeline and you do not set the events. But if you're willing to push through, if you're willing

to persevere, you will produce the desired outcome. And the reason I share this with you is because many of you are right there on the edge of success and you think that once you're successful, like our friend there with the hat business earlier that I was telling you about, once you're successful. Once I'm making 60 grand a month, then it's just naturally going to go to 70 and then 80 grand a month and then 80 grand a month and then 100 grand a month. You don't think about the competition might come up, a lawsuit might come up, economy might change, you might get sued. You don't think about all those things. And so when something like that happens, you better know how to be anti-fragile. You better know how to pivot and make fast decisions. Because if you think that it's going

to go exactly to the timeline that you put on your marker board, if it doesn't meet that expectation, you think that you're cursed and that you're destined to fail, you should just pull the plug and go bankrupt, then you deserve to fail. You deserve to live like a peasant. You deserve to just be on that hamster wheel of life. Because success is reserved for the few who are willing to push through the undesignated amount of time and money, stress and adversity, setbacks, that's who success is reserved for. And it's not guaranteed, by the way. You could do everything right in success

is still not guaranteed. Not in business, not in life, not in relationship. You could be the best husband or best wife and you could end up with a crackhead of a spouse. Someone who is an absolute, you know, narcissistic asshole to you. Right? And you're like, what the fuck did I do wrong? Or you can be in phenomenal,

shape, but turns out there's a ticking time bomb inside your body, heart attack, stroke, whatever the thing is, right? Because you have something that's predisposition from, you know, a hereditary thing. And the reason I share all this with you is that the price of success is not linear. It will always change. It is expensive. It is timely. It will cost you in many, many ways. And if you are willing to push through, you will experience it. And what you will develop is this ability to be anti-fragile. Over time, you will realize that part of success means you will be tested over and over and over again. My opening line for this episode was, the man at the gate must be paid and sometimes over and over again.

The man at the gate is the gatekeeper between Peasantville and the kingdom of success. And the man at the gate must be paid not just once to get into the kingdom. That's not just a tuition. that tuition must be paid every now and again the man at the gate comes to you and goes hey i'm about to test you again to see if you deserve to still live in the kingdom i'm going to put another challenge in front of you i'm going to put another adversity in front of you i'm going to shake things up a bit and see if you still deserve to live here so you're not just tested once you're tested over and over again understand that this is not a the finite game of once i get there i stay there this is not finite

This is the infinite game of I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna fight to stay there. I will end up going down the slippery slope of challenges, adversities and setbacks, but I will claw back stronger and make even cover even more ground only to know that at some point some other adversity will show up and over time you don't think Warren Buffett still deals with shit today You don't think Elon Musk who's like so seasoned as an entrepreneur still deals with shit today go over read his documentary or his, what is it called when you, someone's like life history? Biography. Thank you. Go read Elon Musk's biography. If you read Elon's biography, you would know that Tesla was winning. It was thriving. It was doing great. But then they ran into a big hiccup.

They weren't able to deliver the cars on time. And they had taken deposits from all these people. And all these people were now reaching out and saying, hey, man, you've taken deposits from me for this car. and you haven't delivered on the car yet, I want a refund. So not only is he not selling the cars and getting more money, but he's having to give away deposits that the company needs. They need that money. So he ends up going to the founders of Google, and he's saying, look, I will sell you guys X percentage of Tesla

for so many millions of dollars so I can keep pushing forward. Like now you see Tesla's everywhere. Now you see the Tesla story and the Elon Musk story. But what you don't see is when he made that flamethrower, several years back, I think seven, eight years back, he made some kind of flame thrower. And he made, I don't know, I don't know, like 100,000 of these flame throwers and he sold them. It was his way of making something very quick that was desirable by people who would pay money so that he could have a bit, do a big money grab and keep working on his mission. I think it was when he launched the boring company, right? like boring, you know, like under the earth, like drilling a tunnel from L.A. to San Francisco was his goal.

And so the setbacks will continue. The price that you pay was undetermined. And so you just have to lock in and go. Understand that you don't have bad luck. This is simply the tuition that must be paid. And once you were in the kingdom, the tuition must be paid over and over and over again to prove yourself. Just like I had to prove myself in 2020 with Fit Body Boot Camp. But here we are now thriving and crushing with Fit Body Boot Camp, which, by the way, if you want to open up a gym that's actually successful, helps a lot of people, makes you good money on a recurring basis. You might want to consider becoming a Fit Body Boot Camp gym owner.

If there's a territory available in your town, in your area and you fit the criteria, we'd love to have you come on board as a Fit Body Boot Camp franchisee. But always remember this, that the man at the gate must be paid and sometimes over and over again. If you understand that concept, then when the adversity comes, not if, but when the adversity comes, you will not be surprised. Instead, you will put your head down, horns up, and attack. the adversity. Guys, remember, BK. Live 2025 in Anaheim, California, at the Grove Theater, May 31st. Looking forward to seeing you guys there. And until then, remember this, that average is the

enemy, that success is your responsibility and change can take place in an instant if you are willing to flip the switch. I'll see you next time.