Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 128. 6 Business Lessons That Will Make You Millions

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

You’re not broke because of bad luck—you’re broke because of bad habits.Most waste time, hesitate, and overthink—while winners take action. The difference between success and failure? Urgency, focus, and knowing how to play the game.In this video, I’m breaking down the biggest mistakes keeping you stuck, the mindset shifts you need to make more money, and how to build a business that prints cash.Rich people don’t work harder—they work smarter. Let’s get after it.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

understand that urgency and focus are the best and most important muscles an entrepreneur can build. Welcome to the Bedros Koolian show. Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo, I was banging with a gang of instrumental. Hey guys, I want to give you 20 years of business advice in 20 minutes or less. So let's jump into it. Now, for context, if you don't know who I am in case you're brand new to this podcast and YouTube show, my name is Bedros Kulian. And this is the Bedros Kulian show.

I'm a fanatical entrepreneur for the last 23 years. And what I want to share with you is how I've built companies and sold them. One of my companies currently does $74 million a year. And that's what it did in 2024, 2025, we're on pace to do $110 million just with that one company alone. And I've had the good fortune to also take equity in many other companies, products, services, software, you name it. And so we have been able to build, scale, and sell companies. throughout my career as an entrepreneur. And I want to teach you the things that I've learned over those 20 years.

And everything that I'm going to share with you here over the next 20 minutes are all things that I have fallen a victim to, made these mistakes. So don't think for a moment that I'm talking down to you. What I am doing is trying to talk into you so that you don't make these mistakes. And you can get to the higher levels of success faster and sooner because I'm grateful that collectively my companies do about $200 million a year in revenue. However, I realized I could have gotten there a decade sooner if I knew these six things that I'm about to share with you.

So without further ado, let's dive into it. If you're an entrepreneur, you're going to get a ton of value. I think number one I want to share with you in terms of growth of business and scalability is understand that urgency and focus are the best and most important muscles an entrepreneur can build, right? So if you're an entrepreneur, the best muscles you can build are urgency and focus. Because if you can time collapse the point of realizing you need to do something and then actually getting it done, that is urgency, you are already winning and you are beating your competitors,

right? So when you have that level of urgency, like the time that an idea comes to you and the time that the idea is completed and finished, that is urgency. Most entrepreneurs procrastinate, delay, think about it, try and fact find and gather way too much information for far too long. They're scared. They don't, they feel like they don't know. They don't understand that indecisiveness is toxic to an entrepreneur because when an opportunity creates itself, indecision could be the thing that closes the door. That opportunity, that window of opportunity could only be open for so long.

And before you know it, boom, the door is closed while you were trying to. a fact find and gather information and now you miss the boat. So urgency is an important muscle to build as is focus for an entrepreneur, a leader like you. Why focus? Because you are going to be faced with so many shiny objects, new ideas, distractions. And if you can have singularity of focus, doing the one thing, that one idea that you wanted to scale, scale it to your desired goal, the desired outcome, you will achieve results faster. You will make me. You will make me. more money, you will have higher profits, and you will experience less friction and frustration during your journey.

Right. So develop the urgency and focus muscles as quickly and as fanatically as you can. Thing number two, it's easier to sell and become more profitable when you're selling to the affluent than when you're selling to the masses. Throughout my career, when I started off as a personal trainer 25 years ago, 26 years ago, I had the good fortune of doing one-on-one personal training. That meant as a byproduct, the affluent people were my clients, right? And so where I started off as a personal trainer, Lahabra, California,

it's a nice affluent community in Southern California. And the LA fitness gym that I worked at was one of the gyms that charged more in terms of membership. And that means the members who came to that gym were the, more affluent members of an affluent community. And so as I was going around selling personal training services, once I actually learned how to sell because I was a horrible salesperson. So I was in the beginning of my personal training career. I struggled a lot because I didn't know how to sell.

I didn't know how to persuade an influence. And therefore, I ended up being a personal trainer. And I was a fry cook and bus boy at Disneyland. And I was a bouncer at a gay bar on the weekends just to make ends meet. But once I actually learned how to sell and I learned how to sell from a mentor named Jim Franco, who I've talked about here before, man, like my business blew up because I realized I wasn't able to transfer the benefits of personal training from me to the end user. So I always thought, well, I guess they're not buying because they're broke when in reality they weren't buying because they didn't see the value. These people were affluent. But I share this with you because it is far easier and way more profitable to sell products or services to the affluent than it is to the masses.

And if you start doing that, think about this, you don't need a lot of affluent people to make a lot of money. Right. Like if you've got a solution to a problem that wealthy or affluent people have, right? So let's say, you know, these 200 wealthy and affluent people have this specific problem. and you've got the solution to it, and let's say it's a $10,000 product or service, dude, a wealthy and a fluent person

will easily pay $10,000, $15,000 to have that problem solved in their life. Whereas if you try and sell a $2,000 product to the masses who are either broke or are struggling paycheck to paycheck, or they're always trying to, you know, keep a bare minimum balance in their bank account, you won't be able to sell like a thousand or $2,000 product to the masses.

But you can take these 200 people and probably sell half of them, if not even a quarter of them, on a $10,000, $15,000 product or service. And they won't bat an eye as long as they see the value in it, right? And think about the money that you'll make. And by the way, you should know that there are not a lot of people selling to the affluent. You name the industry and there are not a lot of people selling to the affluent. but there are tons of people selling to the unwashed masses. And I share this with you because it is highly competitive when you are trying to sell to

broke poor people, middle class people who are kind of, have many options. And they're always watching their money. Think about this. If you only have $10 to your name and I go, hey, this thing is going to cost you a dollar. Dude, I'm taking 10% of your money. if you have $100 to your name, and I go, this thing is going to cost you a dollar, I'm only taking 1% of your money. So a person who has $100 who's more fluent, they're going to part with that dollar.

See, the product costs the same. It's a dollar. But selling it to someone who only has $10 to their name, I'm taking 10% of their money. They're like, holy shit, I need to see if I really want this product or service. A person who's got $100, taking a dollar, that's only 1% of their wealth or their bank account. So they're like, all right, that'll solve my problem and I still have 99% of my money. Done deal, right? And it's not as competitive when you're selling to the wealthy.

And believe it or not, and I say this from experience, wealthy people give you way less problems. They have way less expectations in terms of customer service and support. Back when I was a personal trainer, we wanted to make sure that we could sell our services to everybody. So we created a training program called the maintenance program. The maintenance program, so you have to remember personal training when I was a personal trainer, 20, 25 years ago, was about $600 to $800 a month to work with the personal trainer three to four days a week, right? Well, not everybody in the gym could afford that. And I wanted to make sure we're closing everyone in that LA Fitness.

So we created a program called the maintenance program. It was $99. And you got to work with the personal trainer one time a week. and then that personal trainer would write up a workout for you to do the rest of the month on your own and you got that for 99 bucks and then a new month would come and you'd work with that personal trainer that one time and then they would write up a program for you to do the rest of the month on your own 99 bucks man those people that were on the maintenance program we called them high maintenance clients because they expected so much they demanded so much and they were so

unreasonable with what they wanted. The clients who were paying 600, 800 bucks a month, man, if their personal trainer wasn't around and like another trainer steps in to give them the workout, they're cool with it. As long as it's a great workout, they don't care if Bob didn't show up because Bob's sick and Cindy ended up training them. And so understand that when you sell to the wealthy, you make more money, you have less friction, frustration, and you have to overcome less objections. Hey guys, quick interruption to the Bedrose Koolian 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 arrange.

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before it goes away. Back to the show. Thing number three, I want you guys as visionaries and leaders to get good at leading the people and managing the metrics that move the money needle. I get it.

If you're starting out, you're probably within your first three, four years, you're probably thinking, I need to manage and lead everybody in my company. No, you don't. That was a big mistake I've made thinking that I'm thinking that I've got to micromanage and micro lead everyone. No, you don't. If I can go back from day one,

I would have started only leading the people and managing the metrics that mattered. What matters in a business? Profitability, sales and profitability, right? Do I need to manage people making graphics? No, do I need to manage people that are doing customer support? Nope. Do I need to manage people who are web developers, nope. Who do I need to manage? Marketing and salespeople. Why? Because marketing drives leads into my company. Salespeople convert the leads into paying clients and customers. And the metrics that I need to manage are the metrics that move the money needle. If I could go back and lead the people and manage the metrics that move the money needle, I would have become a multi-millionaire a decade sooner. Thing number four.

I want you guys to build an all-star team, an all-star team. So that means you have to fire the losers. You have to set higher standards and expectations of your people, of your employees, and you must give them autonomy and the ability to solve problems. Right. And I got to give credit to Joan Arka. She's now been with me for 11 years. You guys know who Ed is.

Ed is the videographer who's right behind the camera, shoots and produces the BK show. Ed is Joan's husband. So they both work for me. Joan has been working for me. Started off as my assistant. Now is the vice president of my coaching consulting companies. And way back in the day when Joan started, she was like, hey, listen, instead of the six employees that we have coming to you with problems and waiting for you to tell them what to do

to solve it. What if they do what I do, which is, hey, B, here's the problem. here's the two solutions, which one do you think I should do? I was like, Joe, and that is brilliant, right? She was like two years into working for me, and she's such an efficient thinker that she was like, hey, as your company gets bigger, there's only one of you, and there's going to be many of us in terms of team members, employees, and there's no way you're going to be able to tell everyone what to do and how to do it.

I was like, holy shit, you're right. We have like six people, and I'm already getting overwhelmed, and it's taken away from my creative time, my working time to produce good work myself because I'm constantly managing people, right? And so what I realized is I need to hire people that are self-starters, that are self-motivated, who already have built-in autonomy and understand that their job is to problem solve without coming to me for the answer. Now, sure, are there big, complex, sophisticated problems that a business has that my team members need to come back, come to me from time to time? Yes. But 98% of the times, whatever problems they're experiencing,

they could solve themselves and I could just find out in a meeting or in a end of the day email that might get sent to me kind of encapsulating what that organization or company or department is doing, right? And so if I could go back and do it over again, I would hire people who have higher standards for themselves, higher expectations for themselves, but that starts with me. I, in the beginning as an entrepreneur, did not have those standards and expectations of myself. And I did not feel that because they work for me that I could send high standards for them. I figured like, well, I'm the boss. I'm the guy that started the company.

Of course, I'm going to have to work harder. Of course I can expect more of myself. But I can't expect this level of work and performance and production out of my people. That was a big, fat lie, an absolute lie. In reality, I absolutely could expect more of myself, but I didn't. And because I didn't expect more of myself, I didn't expect more of them. And so what ends up happening is those, you know, if you have like a, let's say, say six or seven employees like I did when I first started.

And you have those one or two employees who are just high performers. They end up either quitting or they end up lowering their standards and their performance because they go, oh, the boss is okay with everyone else working at these low standards. I guess I can work at these lower standards as well, which is a really, really bad thing to do. So your job is to build an all-star team. It is to fire fast, higher, slow. And you need to fire the people who are not a good fit. They're not a good culture fit.

They're not bought into the vision, mission and core value. of your company. You need to say what the vision is. Vision is what we're going to achieve by what date. How much sales, how much revenue, how much business, how many, how much impact, and by what date? That is a proper vision. The mission is what are the daily steps we need to take to accomplish our big five or 10 year vision, right? What are the daily mission steps we need to take, the KPIs, the key performance indicators that will show us that we're on track for our vision. And then the core values are what what makes us tick? Are we relentless? Are we disciplined? Are we focused? Do we drive change? Right? How do we

show up in terms of values? Do we accept responsibility? If you're the type of person that has these really relentless, focused, disciplined, well-driven core values, you can't hire someone that's lackadaisical and it's like, oh, I can just put that off till tomorrow. That's not a core value match. So you must hire based on the vision, mission, and core values that you have. And if you don't have those, develop the values and mission and and, uh, values, mission and vision now and then start training your people up, the people that you can't train up, fire and replace them with people that are bought into the vision, mission and values.

Moving on. Number five, I want you to get out of the silo. What does that mean? When you are building a business and first starting out, you think that it's, it's, it's your job to drive all the business, all the new leads. And to some extent it is, right? And so you or your team, you're going to put up content. And you're going to put up content across your platforms.

And you're going to do this and you might even run ads. But what you don't realize is you're operating in a silo. The content you put up, if it goes viral, it gets you more leads and more sales. If it doesn't go viral, well, then you're screwed. Right. And so what you need to understand is there are already people sitting on other people's platforms, OPP. And if you understand the method of OPP, infiltrating other people's platforms, then you can now get on other people's stages, podcasts, YouTube shows, and be exposed to their

audience who already knows likes and trusts them. Think about it. Your product or service that you have already speaks to some content creators, some podcasters, some YouTubers audience. That audience knows likes and trust them. They probably have a few hundred thousand or several million people that know like and trust them. Wouldn't it make sense for you to spend time, energy, and effort to build a relationship with OPP, other people's platforms, other people that have platforms that already cater to your ideal prospect or your ideal future customer client, build time, take time and energy to build the relationship, to network, to go to events and connect with people that are like-minded,

that have a similar platform as you in terms of audience, but not a similar product. Does that make sense? A similar platform, but not a similar product. Why not a similar product? Well, pretty simple. If they sell a similar product as you, they're not going to promote your product because they're going to promote their product. But, for example, if I am a online fitness coach and I only do online fitness workouts, right? Like workouts. I only make workout plans for moms. And there's some woman out there that's got a YouTube show and her business is all about fat loss nutrition programs for moms and she's got 500,000 followers and subscribers. But all she does is nutrition. All I teach is workouts. Guess what? That's a perfect complimentary program. She's got people that she's

teaching fat loss through nutrition. I teach women to lose fat through working out and exercising. She can promote my programs and take a commission as an affiliate. So figure out what the other people's platforms are and find ways to get them to promote and talk about and interview you and become part of your syndicate, your network of influencers who can help scale your business faster. And number six, I need you all to stop lying. See, in the beginning, you kind of lie to yourself. you lie to yourself you think you're a better leader than you are you think you're a better communicator that you are you think that your product is actually better than it is it's not your product is not the best in your industry you're not the best leader that you can be you're not the best

communicator that you can be you're not the best problem solver that you can be you're not the best and you don't have the best systems that you think you you you have and so each time you lie to yourself and you're like maam our product is the best our service is the best it's not don't lie i'm a great leader It's just my employees suck. Nope, no, nope. The employees are a reflection of the leader, right? A leader who's a six or a seven cannot lead an eight or a nine employee, period. So when you stop lying to yourself, you accept the realities that these are the deficiencies

that I have in leadership and systems and product quality. And then you start moving forward to fix them. And if you can start moving forward to fix those things, instead of lying to yourself and being delusional, you will be able to scale your business bigger, faster, and make it more profitable. So I hope I see you at BK Live, May 31st, and beautiful Anaheim, California, an amazing lineup of presenters at BK Live, where we're going to talk about money, meaning, and higher levels of self-mastery. I promise you at this event, you will learn how to finally have your breakthrough year that you've

been wanting to have in 2025. But in the meantime, remember this, 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. I'll see you next time. With Lorenzo and a Benzo I was banging with a gang of instrumental