Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 144. What to do in Business to become a Millionaire

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Most entrepreneurs aren’t failing because of bad marketing or weak sales… they’re failing because they’re weak leaders.In today’s episode of the Bedros Keuilian Show, I’m breaking down the real reason your business is stuck and it’s not your team, your niche, or the algorithm. It’s you.You don’t have a scaling problem. You have a leadership problem.After building multiple 8-figure businesses and mentoring hundreds of high-performing entrepreneurs, here’s what I know for sure:If you can’t make decisions fastIf you can’t hold people accountableIf you’re more worried about being liked than respected...You will burn out, stall out, or get outperformed by someone who’s willing to lead with clarity and conviction.If you're done being the bottleneck in your business, this is your blueprint to fix it.MAN UP SCALE BUNDLE: $29 (100% Goes to Charity)Get your Digital Man Up book + Audiobook + 2 Exclusive MASTERCLASSES & Support Shriners Children’s Hospital. https://www.manuptribe.com/limited-offerREGISTER 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

Slow decisions, create slow businesses. Make the call. Right or wrong, make the call because momentum wins. Welcome to the Bedroft's Kooli and show. Guys, if you're an entrepreneur and you want to make more money, you want to scale this business faster and you want more time freedom in your life, then the number one skill you need to develop is not marketing, is not sales, it's not operations, it's not anything.

It is to become a better, more effective leader. Guys, welcome to the Bedros-Culian show. My name is Bedros-Culian. Today's episode is about the number one skill you need if you're an entrepreneur so that you can make even more money, have more time, freedom, scale the business bigger, and sell it if you want or create a legacy business that creates generational wealth. Now, I can tell you this, that people who do not know how to lead end up owning a job. I guess it's better than having a job, but I would not necessarily want to own a job.

Like, why risk starting a business and then working basically 24-7? 365 because at least when you have a job, you know this. If you have a job, you're working nine to five. Once you own a job, then you're working 24-7-365. So unless you can become a better leader and start bringing people on board who are bought into your vision and who know how to execute, your business is never going to grow, which means at some point you're going to burn out, you're going to hate life. And that's why 90% of businesses are either losing money or barely breaking even. And I can tell you this. You probably didn't become an entrepreneur to lose money or break even, right? So with that said, what are the things that you need to do?

Now, why am I so qualified to talk about this? Because I have developed my leadership muscles over the last decade and a half. In fact, previous to that, when I first started over 20 years ago as an entrepreneur, I was a horrible leader. I was a horrible manager of people. And because of that, my businesses would putts along. I would start making a little bit of money and then I would hit this point where I would start sabotaging myself or I would fail to have the conversations that were necessary where I didn't know what the next level of success would look like and then of course I would start losing money again and when you lose money you lose your best people see that your worst people stay on board your worst employees will always stay on board until the sink

until the ship is finally sunk but your best people will leave if you stop producing as a leader so let's talk about this one of the biggest problems that people have and and remember I Full disclosure, I was a horrible leader. And when I was a horrible leader, I probably had like nine or ten employees. Now I've got hundreds of employees across my various companies. And I'm a far better leader. I'm a far better manager of people. I understand how to influence and persuade.

And I want to share that with you today because if you're struggling to scale your business and keep it growing in a positive way where you're making more money and having more time freedom because it shouldn't be, you know, the bigger the business, the bigger the problems. It should be the bigger the business, the bigger the profits, the bigger the business. the bigger the business, the bigger your freedom, right? And so that's what we want, man. But understand this, there is a big problem that entrepreneurs face. And it's this, bad employees, bad leaders, right? So if you have bad employees and you're a bad leader, the business is going to sink. If you have good employees and you're a bad leader, the business is going to sink, maybe slower, but the business

will ultimately sink and fail. If you have good employees and you're a good leader, this is where things take off. So we can talk about how to hire the best employees and how to find the best employees in another episode. We don't have time for that. But today what I do have time for is to teach you the seven traits of great leadership so that you can go and get rid of your shitty employees, take the ones who are actually bought in and show them how to scale up in terms of growth, profits, and then help you win back your time, time freedom, right? Because at the end of the day, think about this. You can make all the money you want, but you can't produce more time. You only have a fine amount of time on this planet. And if you want to spend it with your family, if you want to do

some awesome stuff, you want to have great experiences, then you've got to have time freedom from your business. If your business has become the golden handcuffs, guess what? Pretty soon you're going to resent your business. Or if you're like always in your business, like I said, because you own the job, right? Then your spouse is going to soon resent you because they're like, dude, you're spending more time with the business than you are with me. You should just go marry the business. They're going to ask for a divorce. And so with that said, what are those things that you need to do, right? So we're going to assume that you have good employees, but we're also going to assume that

you're a bad leader. And here's why. You have to accept the fact that most leaders are bad leaders. And in fact, study after study proves that people who think they're great leaders and managers really are not. At best or mediocre. And the moment you can accept that, and when I accepted that, when I had my big anxiety attack, which I talked about in my book, Man Up, you know, I thought I was a great leader

because I thought I was like, well, everybody likes me. Well, they liked me because I would buy them Starbucks every morning. They liked me because I would buy them lunch every day. They liked me because I didn't really hold them accountable to any specific KPIs, key performance indicators. Yes, they liked me, but they didn't respect me. And they did just the bare minimum to maintain employment, but the company never grew. So as cost of living went up, as inflation went up, as my competitors started to spend more money and get bigger. I was like, holy shit, I'm about to go out of business unless I can do something.

Well, I chose not to do anything because I chose to just bury my head and pretend like, I was a good leader just because I was liked, but I wasn't respected and I was never clear in my intentions in terms of intentions and expectations. And guess what happened next? I had a massive panic attack. It was such a big panic attack, in fact, that I thought it was a heart attack. And I talk about it in my book, Man Up. If you have not read the book Man Up, it is all about leadership and life and business so that you can have a higher quality of life, make more money, and have more freedom. So with that said, let's begin. So what are those things that you're going to do? the seven traits that separate wannabe entrepreneurs from the entrepreneurs who are real operators,

making real money, having time, freedom, and living a life that most people would be jealous of, right? So thing number one is you have to be ruthlessly clear. As a leader, you need ruthless clarity. That means if your team doesn't know what winning looks like, it is your job to share with them what winning looks like. Clarity beats charisma. You can be charismatic and liked all day long. I was charismatic and liked all day long. Yet my team did not know what winning looked like.

They did not know that we need this many applications a day to make this many sales so that we can hit our monthly goals, quarterly goals, and our annual goal. Fuck, I didn't know that, right? So ruthless clarity says that we have to define the target. And then we have to repeat the target to the team and the team has to be bought in on that target. If the team is not bought in on that vision, right? When I say ruthless clarity, I mean clarity of vision. Where do you want this business to go in the next month, in the next quarter, in the next year,

in the next three years, in the next five years, right? Don't worry about your 10-year goal. Just go next month, next quarter, next year, three years, five years tops. That's it. Many of you're planning for fucking two decades down the road when you're about to go bankrupt tomorrow, which doesn't make sense to me. So once you define the target, what winning looks like, what the vision is, you have to make sure that everyone has bought into it.

If they haven't bought into it, you've got to fire these people and bring on people who are bought into your vision, right? And once they're bought in, you have to beat it into their head. This is what winning looks like, and here's what we have to do every day to win. I want to be respected by my team, not just by liked by my employees, right? So if I'm going to be respected,

that means they have to execute until they have achieved the outcome. The only way they can execute until they achieve the outcome is if they are clear on the vision, and that means it is on me to be ruthlessly clear in my expectations. trait number two for the most successful leaders decisiveness right slow decisions create slow businesses make the call i want you to make the call right or wrong make the call because momentum wins you can't steer a parked car you've heard this saying before right you can't steer a parked car so you got to make decisions you got to make moves right or wrong you got to make moves you can't

expect to have all of the information 100% of the information you need to make the right decision every time. What I want you to do is start making decisions. And decisions, decision making is like a muscle. The more you make decisions, the better your decisions get because you make a decision. If it was the wrong decision, you course correct. Next time you have more information to make the better decision making. Decision making is like a muscle, as I said. And that means you get to develop the muscle of decision making, which means you become more decisive, even faster. And you make better decisions faster. And that is how winners win, right? But if you can't be decisive because you're like, well, I'm not sure.

I'm going to ask 20 people for their opinion. I'm going to him and ha, and it's going to take forever until I gather all the right information. You were going to miss out on the opportunity because opportunities, the window of opportunity is only so big, whether it's marketing, it's sales, it's an economic shift, right? Or it's a shift in your industry. That window of opportunity is small, and if you can't be decisive and pull the trigger, dude, you're left behind.

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If you decide it is the best thing for you, like thousands of other people have, then stay on board to the Trulene Tribe. And every month, we will send you a new order for 30-day supply for 20% off, free shipping, and a dollar from every one of those orders will go towards Shriner's Children's Hospital, where we're going to do a lot of good together. So here's what I want you to do. Go to truene.com. Use my name, bed roast to get 50% off your first order of the subscribe and save and build your body, build your health, build your energy as we do a lot of good together. Now back to the show. Trait number three for top-notch leaders. Accountability.

And accountability, by the way, starts with you. You don't get what you want in your business. You get what you tolerate. You guys need to understand that. So if you can't hold yourself accountable and you can't hold your team accountable, then you're just going to get what you tolerate, right? You're like, well, I tolerate them showing up late. I tolerate them doing a shitty job.

I tolerate them delivering the products to the wrong address. I tolerate them putting up a post that has all these misspellings in it. The more you tolerate, the stupid or you look. You're like, well, you know, I don't want to be mean and I want to be liked and I don't want to lose my employees. I would rather lose my worst employees. I want to be so mean. I want to be so ruthless. I want to be so fast in showing them my claws and fangs that my worst employees leave.

I need them to be held accountable, right? Because if your team sucks, you have to look in the mirror first. If your team sucks, it's a leadership issue. You've either brought on the wrong people or you've brought on the right people, but you've failed. to show them what winning looks like, right? Which goes back to number one that we talked about, which is ruthless clarity. And so if you can be that leader who can hold yourself accountable to your own marching orders, your own expectations of yourself and hold your team accountable to what you expect of them,

now you've got a business that's growing and scaling and actually doing well. Trait number four of very effective leaders, emotional control. I'm going to tell you this right now. You are not allowed to have bad days as a leader. You can outside of the building, outside of the workplace when you're not in front of your team, when you're not in front of your customers. But otherwise, you are not allowed to have a bad day, period. Because the second you lead from feelings and emotions, you lose the room. You lose respect.

They feel scared. Could you imagine if you and I are in some military and we're listening to the general and he sounds a little scared? he sounds like he has a little bit of doubt in his voice. And he's like, yeah, I think we're going to go over that bridge. And once we get there, we need to figure out how to take over that country there. And when we do, we'll figure out what to do next. You're like, motherfucker. Are you kidding me?

And he's like, you know, I had a bad day though. I fought with the wife. So I'm not 100% sure if that's what we should do. But, you know, we got a war to fight. So fuck it. Let's go fight a war. Like, bro, you're emotional. You have doubt.

You don't seem confident and certain. I can't follow you into battle. Right. So as a leader, you have no room for feelings and emotions. You have no room to have bad days in front of your team. You absolutely don't. Your job is to be the thermostat and not the thermometer. The thermostat sets the temperature, sense the vibe of the room. Right? If you show up with enthusiasm, you show up with clarity, you show up with the game plan. And you are like, this is what we're doing. You're definitive. And what you want to do, you are now a thermostat. I should say, if you don't do that, you then you become a thermometer, right? Because then the room starts getting a little wishy-washy, then the room starts getting a little insecure, then you start feeling insecure, and you start adjusting to their temperature. I want everybody in the room to adjust to my temperature. So I will always live my life like a thermostat and not a thermometer because consistency breeds confidence. And I will be consistent. And when I am consistent, I am relentless, I am focused on my mission,

that people around me are confident. Number five, this trait of leadership is very important. Radical candor, right? Tell the truth. Tell the truth fast. Be brutally honest with it. I want you to praise your best people publicly out loud and correct them privately. Don't embarrass them, right?

Shitty leaders that operate from ego and insecurity will instill fear in their employees, and their subordinates. effective leaders on the other hand understand that hey i have to be truthful i have to be brutally honest with everyone on everything but if i have to correct you i will correct you in private where i'm not going to embarrass you and if i'm going to give you praise i'm going to praise you publicly because i want everyone else to see that when you win and you do things right you get recognized right and so if you're able to do this you're no longer going to sugarcoat things because sugarcoating things destroys performance. I don't want a sugarcoat. I don't want a pussyfoot around things. I just want to

be direct and honest and say, please, pretty please, this is what I need you to do. These are the expectations. Do you have the capability? And if the answer is yes, then I go, I'm holding you to it because the alternative is for us to part ways. It's as simple as that. Your job as a leader is to be a pressure cooker of truth. And enough pressure is either going to make diamonds or is going to make people leave. Right? So I hope you understand that. But you've got to first, as a radically honest leader, you've got to first lead yourself and be brutally honest with yourself before you could lead your team. Number six, and this trait of effective leaders is equally as important, have high standards.

We've done an episode about on this, I think three episodes ago. We did a whole episode on setting high standards and making all your decisions based on your high standards, hiring and firing people out of your life and out of your business based on your high standards. High standards are everything. You've got to have high standards. If your team does not say, damn, like this guy is just like not letting anything slide.

He has these expectations. He holds himself to those expectations. And he's holding us to those expectations. Mission accomplished. There should never be a time where the standards are lowered, where the expectations are lowered, because you've got an employee who's just not sharp enough to get it. Either build that employee up,

or exit them out of your company, right? So when you raise the bar, people are either going to leave or they're going to build themselves up. Your job is to raise the bar and create the opportunity for them to want to build themselves up. But if they decide the bar is too high

and I'm not cut out for this, there's the exit. Fire fast and then higher slow. Finally, trait number seven of the highest performing leaders who have seen the most amount of scale and profitability like I have in my companies, you have to lead from the front.

you have to be congruent. Don't ask for hustle if you can't bleed for the cause, right? Do not ask for your employees to bleed if you're not willing to hemorrhage. A strong leader is someone who can practice what he preaches. A strong leader is someone who could lead from the front and be an example. A strong leader is respected, not necessarily feared or liked. because most of you, when you don't have the confidence and when you let your ego get in the way,

end up either going too hard on your people and getting them to fear you, in which case, they don't tell you the truth, and they dance around you, and they're just yes, man or yes, women, and then you only find out later that nothing was being done, or you're so busy trying to be liked because you want their approval and validation

that they feel like you're a pushover. Right? So I'm here to tell you, like, it's the work ethic, it's the integrity, it's the sacrifices that you make that they're going to see and want to model, right? So practice what you preach or risk becoming a hypocrite. If you are not willing to hemorrhage, do not ask them to bleed. These are the traits that have helped me develop myself into a better leader who can communicate his thoughts, feelings, and emotions, well, who can manage his thoughts, feelings,

and emotions, who can lead, who can attract the best people. And that's the other side benefit of great leadership. You begin to attract some of the best people instead of necessarily having to go out and find them. And don't you want to attract nines and tens in your company? Of course you do. Well, it starts off with you leading from the front. Guys, thank you for watching and listening to this episode. If you're watching this on YouTube, please do me a favor and subscribe because 74% of you are not and be sure to like and comment those of you on Spotify and iTunes thank you as always for the comments for the likes for the shares and above all remember this that averages 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 what's the difference between me and you back when cue was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo I was banging with a gang of instrumental