Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 158. The Truth about Passive Income

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Everyone online is selling you the dream of “passive income.” Work once, get rich forever.Here’s the truth: passive income doesn’t exist.Every stream that looks “easy money”: real estate, stocks, online courses, YouTube, affiliate deals... still demands work, strategy, and discipline. The only people making money off “passive income” are the ones selling you the fantasy.In today’s episode, I’m exposing the lie that keeps men broke, lazy, and distracted. You don’t need another course promising freedom, you need skills that solve problems and the discipline to master them. That’s how you create real, lasting wealth.After decades building and selling multiple companies, here’s what I know for sure:Money isn’t passive. Success isn’t passive. The only thing passive is mediocrity.If you’ve been chasing shortcuts instead of stacking skills, this episode is your wake-up call.DOMINATION DOWNLOADSTRAIGHT FROM THE DESK OF BEDROS KEUILIANYour weekly no B.S. newsletter to help you dominate in business and in lifehttps://bedroskeuilian.com/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

Baby Row, you think you look so hot on that troll's arm that he's just going to pay you to hang out with him to drive around in his Lambo and his fucking white linen shirt, both of which have been rented. You are going to be doing some gnarly shit at the end of one of these nights. That will haunt you in your dreams. Welcome to the Bedroft's Coolie and show. If you're looking to get wealthy and run, Lorenzo and a Benzo, I was banging with a gang of instrumental. If you're looking to get wealthy and rich and you want to do it by making passive income, you've come to the right place. Guys, my name is Bedros Kulian. Welcome to the Bedros Kulian show.

Today we're going to talk about generating passive income. First and foremost, the number one thing you need to know is you have been lied to, you have been scammed by anyone trying to sell you anything about passive income. There's no such thing. So you can either bounce right now or you can stay because I am going to teach you how you can create wealth. You can create financial freedom. but it does require something else that is going to help you create multiple income streams. But there is no such thing as passive income. So I decided just for fun that I'm going to go to old Chat GPT 5.0 and ask ChatGPT,

hey, give me the top sources of passive income out there. And ChatGPT actually laid out six different sources of passive income. I was like, well, that's interesting. So let's break it down. Source number one for passive income according to ChatGPT. Dividends from stocks. All right. So let's say you're going to put $100,000 into these four or five stocks that are going to pay out dividends for you, right? So you're going to get money back, right, assuming the stocks are doing great.

But guess what? Did you have to first make that $100,000? Yep. So that wasn't passive, huh? You had to work for it. And then you had to do some research to figure out what stocks to put these in? Yep. That wasn't passive either, was it?

you had to actually learn, study, figure out, buy the knowledge. So there was time, energy, and effort there. And then once you put the money into these five stocks, they're going to pay off dividends. Do you just let it ride? No. The world changes. Economy changes. Industries change.

Companies get bought out. You look at what happened with Tesla. Everyone was betting on Tesla until Elon decided to join the government and everyone started shitting on Tesla and Tesla stocks went down. Yes, they came back up. But the point is, if you don't keep track of those, those stocks and you just think you're just going to let that $100,000 ride on those five stocks and you're going to get paid dividends, well, you're probably not going to do that for the rest

of your life. There's going to be ebb and flows and there's going to be times those dividends are not being paid out like they were the year before. And so you've got to figure out, is there a better place to put some of this money that will pay me a higher rate of return than these stocks? So really, dividends from stocks is not a passive income stream. Is it near passive? Absolutely.

But it is not passive. So then chat GPT said, there's also real estate income. Hey, guess what? I have real estate, but it's not passive income for me. So maybe I'm doing it wrong because I have a lot of real estate. I mean, hell, this building that we're in, two-story 15,000 square foot building that I run all my companies out of is just one of my many different holdings in real estate. But maybe I'm doing it wrong because it's not passive income for me.

I have real estate homes and apartments that I've got tenants in. It's not passive. Why? Because I still have to deal with the property management, right? Still have to deal with the property management. People damage units. Homes catch fire. There's floods and leaks and building needs maintenance. There's always something happening in real estate.

You can't just buy a piece of land or a piece of real estate, put tenants in, and assume that it's just going to generate cash flow and that your property managers are going to If you think that your property management company is going to handle it all and just send you the money and keep the 5% or 8% the property managers do, you are so functionally stupid that I've got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. That's how fucking stupid you must be. So real estate is not passive. Is it a great source of income? Yes. Is it semi-passive? Yes.

But you still have to find the real estate. You have to find the deal. You have to buy the deal. You have to get property managers in it. You have to manage the property managers because they're human and they fuck things up just like all humans do. They have good days. They have bad days.

You have to hold them to keep performance indicators and standards. And you have to make sure that your tenants are doing their part. And what happens if the tenants decide not to pay their rent? Tennis decide to shit all over the place and bust down the walls before they leave. Property manager is going to come to you and be like, hey, so this is what you're dealing with. Do you want to sue them? Do you want to go to the insurance company? You still have to do some work.

I'm not trying to turn you off from real estate. I love real estate. But it ain't passive income. So then, chat GPT says, well, how about number three? Royalties. Oh, well, shit, I get royalties. I wrote a book called Man Up. It turned out it did pretty well for itself.

Amazon recommends it with a lot of personal development books and business development books. I get big quarterly checks from my publisher as royalties. And yes, it's passive, but semi-passive. Why? Because while Amazon continues to recommend it and people read it and they post about it on social media and people who see them post about it and to bind the book and reading it, so far passive, right? But I still have to promote it.

I still have to talk about my book, man up. I still have to tell you to go buy it if you're looking to become a better leader in your life and in your business. And so there's still work that has to be done for me to keep that pump pumping out water royalties. And the work was very front-loaded. It took me two and a half years to write Man Up to do the research, to tap into my life into history and get the lessons, the six lessons that you will extract from Man Up. It wasn't like, boom, I just wrote a song or a book or a movie and now I'm getting royalties. So if you're like, well, royalties will get me, no, they won't. No, they won't. Because even if you buy

someone else's stuff, someone else's art, their book, their music, their movie, their sitcom, and you're like, now I'm going to get passive income from this? Cool. You still have to promote that in order for people to buy that so that you can get royalties from it, which means you're still doing work. So it turns out royalties is not passive income either. So come on. Chat GPT. Show me something that's passive and aha. Number four, online courses, chat GPT says. Got it. Online courses. Well, shit. Let's talk about online courses. First of all, you have to develop the skill. Now, I know a lot of fake, phony gurus out there who have never developed a skill, have never used the shovel, are out there selling a course on how to make a

shovel and use it, but they've never once used a shovel, metaphorically speaking, of course. but think about this man an online course you first need to have the skill of whatever it is that you're teaching like you have to have the proof that you know how to do that then you have to actually create the course

so you're filming shit you're writing shit you're recording audio you're organizing it or you're paying people to organize it and some on some paywall right and now you have to promote it for that online course to be sold so you're still doing work

you're doing work in developing the skill you're doing work in putting the course together. You're doing work in promoting the course. And yes, guess what? When you promote it and run ads for it, people all around the world are going to see those ads and you will make money in your sleep. I make plenty of money in my sleep,

but it is not passive because those ads at some point will reach ad fatigue. They will no longer start converting. And now me and my team need to figure out what ads we need to make, what creative we need to make, offer we need to make to test out and to start running campaigns again to keep the cash flow coming in. Now these days I don't even have courses because I think courses are stupid now. We are in the free

economy. Anything that you can teach in a course, if you're an expert or an authority, you should be giving away for free. If you can teach it in a course, I'm telling you, you should be giving it away for free. And instead, that free content that you give away should be giving away should be so good and should give such results in advance that people go, fuck, this free stuff could be sold as a course and they're giving it away? Imagine if I coach or mentor with this person. So if you're truly good at what you do, you've got a track record yourself of doing what you say you do. You've coached other people to great success with what you say you do. Then give that content away for free. Teach them the what, but not the how. And now you will acquire coaching clients.

but courses are dead anyway, so courses aren't even a great source of passive income or semi-passive income. But so far, chat GPT, you've been wrong on dividends off of stocks. You've been wrong of real estate income. ChatGPT, you've been wrong off royalties. You've been wrong of online courses. Ah, number five, chat GPT says that YouTube and podcast is passive income. Well, God damn it, I've got a YouTube show and I've got a podcast. And I make good money from it. I make money by the ad traffic that I get. I make money because I promote my own products and services like the Truly Wellness Shot and Fit Body Boot Camp franchise, the two companies that I've started and scaled. I run my own ads and I don't take on ads from other companies because why would I take

10, 15, 20,000 a month to promote some other company's business when I can make three, four, five, 10 times that promoting my own company and my own company and my. own products, right? And of course, I make money by getting coaching clients from my YouTube show and podcast and helping other people that are ambitious and driven that have businesses and want to scale. But guess what? YouTube and podcast require for me to do this, for me to be home and literally plan out an entire episode. Do the research, put it together, give it structure, teach you in a way that's entertaining and educational so that you stick because you've got TikTok brain now and your attention span wants to leave.

Your attention span wants to ignore. Your attention span wants to move on. And so if you're good at anything with YouTube and podcasts, you better know how to educate and entertain and keep your content concise so that people will consume it. These are skills putting together the structure of a podcast YouTube show. is a skill, is work and effort. Ed behind the camera has to do editing. That takes money, money that I have to produce to pay him to edit and put the content out.

Leighton and Lauren, who are here, have to then get that on the platforms once Ed has done the editing. There's a lot of work that has to get done, a lot of people that have to get paid. Once the platforms are populated with the content, do we make money? Absolutely. Like I said, we make money from ads. we make money from promoting our own products and services, but still my team has to fulfill on those products and services. And if you're like, well, then why don't you just run ads for other people?

That way it'll be passive. You can just take $10,000, $15,000 per month and promote someone else's supplements or product. Okay. So don't I still have to get a deal with them, put an effort and structure a deal with them? They're going to pay me X amount of dollars for X number of promotions. Now I got to film the promotions. or write the script. So you see how there's no such thing as passive.

You're doing the work no matter what. So you might as well cross that out. Not passive income for YouTube and podcast. And anyone that tells you it is, is full of shit and is trying to scam you. Hey guys, quick interruption to the Bedros Kooling and show. It is cold and flu season. And I want to make sure that you have a strong immune system and that your body is fighting off inflammation because right now lots of people around you have the colder flu.

And you want to make sure that one, you don't get it. And if you do get it, you want to get over it as quickly as possible. go back to dominating your day and stacking winds, right? So most of you out there are probably taking a whole bunch of supplements like vitamin C, vitamin D, echinacea, ginger, turmeric, astragulus, B12, zinc. And while all these things are great for building your immune system, one, they cost a lot of money. And two, the quality of the ingredients in here are not great.

So I want you to throw all these away. And instead, what you're going to do is you're going to get the trulean everyday wellness shot. Taste delicious. You can feel it working. You're going to boost your immune system, fight off inflammation, have more energy. and keep your body hydrated because we recently added pink hemelaine sea salt for sodium and potassium and magnesium to keep you hydrated. So here's an offer that you can't refuse. Go to truleen.com, use my name bedroost to get 50% off the truene subscribe and save offer. Plus you're going to get

free shipping and a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee. This product is so good, such high quality, strong efficacy, and third party tested that I want you to try it out at no risk. So use my name bedroes to get 50% off plus free shipping. shipping and 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee. Now back to the show. And so the sixth thing the chat GPT said was affiliate marketing. Well, what do you know? I happen to know the top affiliate marketer on the planet and he used to be a coaching

client. Robbie Blanchard, go look him up. Affiliate hero is his product. He teaches you how to be an affiliate of other people's products and services and promote other people's products and services on social media and through paid ads, through organic content and email marketing to make commission. from selling other people's products. That's affiliate marketing.

But guess what? You have to build an audience. That takes work and effort and money. You have to write up an email campaign and send it out. That takes work, effort, and money. Yeah, but I can do with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is not going to write that perfect affiliate email marketing email. I promise you.

The content that you have to create. Well, I can go find other content creators. Great. The finding of other content creators is work and effort that you're going to do to create passive income. So you see how there's no such thing passive income. So the big lesson here, I lied to you, is not about making passive income. The big lesson here is that the truth about passive income is it doesn't exist. There are

income streams that you can definitely make money from with doing upfront work and then doing a little bit less work once the system is deployed, like real estate, like a YouTube show, like a podcast, like writing a book and getting royalties, but you're still doing some level of work before or even during while you're getting paid. Some level of work must be done. So what is a big lesson here for you? The lesson is don't be afraid of hard work. Because the only person that I know that gets true passive income are sugar babies.

Sugar babies get true passive income. They will look good on your arm in exchange for money. But I guess even they don't make passive income. Because at some point, they have to get dressed up for you to take your money on a consistent basis, to go out on a date with you when they don't really want to. And you know, and they know that at the end of that date, she's going to have to put the chapstick on the helmet and the knee pads because she's got to earn that money, Leighton.

Ed? Layton Lauren She's going to have to earn that money Everyone's nodding their head yes So even the sugar babies Ain't making passive income Baby Row you think you look so hot

On that troll's arm That he's just going to pay you To hang out with him To drive around in his Lambo And his fucking white linen shirt, both of which have been rented, you think he's, you are going to be doing some gnarly shit at the end of one of these nights.

Shit that will haunt you in your dreams. So even sugar babies do not make passive income, my friends. And so I'm here to tell you that you're better off committing to doing the work. You're better off not being allergic to hard work. You're better off not being a stupid silly fuck and trying to find the easy way to fast money. There is no such thing. P.T. Barnum once said that a sucker is born every minute. And I believe that to be true.

And there's a lot of fake gurus and phony coaches and consultants that have never done the work. They've never been in the trenches. They profess but have never practiced. And they will take your money and teach you shit that they don't know how to do themselves. and you will end up losing more money looking for that free, fast, easy button to make passive income that doesn't exist. So what do you do? Start developing skills where you can market those skills that solve problems in exchange

for money. And if you get good at it, you can develop one skill like this, the skill of oration, of storytelling, of doing a podcast and a YouTube show. where one show like this can create ad revenue, can create sponsorship revenue. And if you have a coaching service, because you've actually done something meaningful in your life, like the only thing I coach people on

is business growth and scaling. Why? Because I've developed businesses like high tech trainer, Premier results, FitBody Boot Camp, an international franchise. I've sold high tech trainer. I sold premier results. I've sold two of my companies.

I'm in the process of selling a third. Fit Body Boot Camp is an international fitness franchise. Truly supplements over 2 million units sold, thousands of people on subscription. I run experiential events so I know how to get people together, get them to pay, to come and have an awesome experience and then go and have a better life and make more money because of that experience. So I'm an entrepreneur.

I've been successful all the way through, from ideation all the way to exit. So I teach entrepreneurship. But I'm not going to teach crypto. Why? Because I have crypto. I have crypto investments, but I don't see myself as a crypto expert. I certainly wouldn't trust my judgment to advise someone else on what Bitcoin or Ethereum

or fucking meme coins to put their money in. I know where I put my money in. I have great advisors. so I look to other mentors and advisors who are great at what they do with crypto, but I'm not one of them. So I would never coach you on that just because it's a hot thing, right?

And so what I'm telling you to do is develop skills. So first, you might have to just create one income stream, my friend. One income stream where you have a skill that solves problems in exchange for money and get so good at that that you could teach others. Get so good at that that you could teach others, being the top one percentile of the people in your industry, whether it's copywriting, it's buying ads,

it's making websites that actually convert. Think how many people want to know how to make a high converting Shopify page. All these people reach out to me and go, oh my God, you know, I look at fuel hunt, I look at Truling supplements. You guys have, you know, you guys are making all this money, selling all this product. Your shopping pages convert. Your Shopify pages convert.

Yeah. Yeah. And. you could become an expert by learning how to manipulate Shopify to make it more high converting and start offering other businesses that are going to be selling stuff direct to consumer online through Shopify. And then if you get so good at making Shopify pages or writing sales copy or running ads on meta or Google or YouTube,

then you can package that up and now sell that as a course or coaching program, not a course because courses are kind of dead, but as a coaching program, imagine teaching, you know, a group of people, right? Like, hey, I'm a great YouTube traffic buyer. I have coaching clients. Like, I have people that I buy traffic for because I have this skill. I have 10 people that pay me $3,000 a month and I make $30,000 a month as a YouTube ad buyer. I know a guy who does that.

And he's currently now working on creating a coaching program that's nine weeks long. he's going to onboard 20 people at $1,000 for nine weeks. He's going to teach them how to do what he does in different industries, buying ads on YouTube. So now he's going to be making his $30,000 a month from his clients that he buys YouTube ads for. And then he's going to teach 20 people at $1,000 each. So you make an additional $20,000 over nine weeks teaching. that and over time he'll raise the price on that now he's got a second income stream right and now imagine if one of those people start a company and he ends up partnering with them that company scales bigger

now he's got a third income stream i've started businesses with coaching clients and so one income stream can become two income streams can become three income streams and then now you can take some of that money and put it into stocks to pay dividends or real estate now you got a fourth income stream but none of it is passive, homie, none of it. So anyone that tells you that there is a such thing as passive income, there isn't. You're going to have to work hard. You can't be allergic to hard work. You're going to have to put your head down and put in the time and pay your dues if you want

to make the monies and create the multiple income streams and have the fucking lifestyle that awesome people like me and others have. And when you do, you need to pay it forward and give back to the causes and charities and the churches you believe in. because part of being a good human is serving others with your money. Money's a superpower. So I hope you got a ton of value from this episode. I want you to subscribe to the Domination Download newsletter

where every Sunday I put out a brand new email newsletter and I teach you every different strategy we're using to make money, drive traffic, lead my companies, grow in business and in personal life because I want to see you win. Go to bedroschooling.com. You will be able to drop your name and email address in the form there to get on the domination download newsletter. And always remember this, that averages 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. What's the difference between me and you? Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo, I was banging with a gang of instrumental.