Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 197. 3 Things my dad taught me after surviving communism and poverty

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

42% OFF - Get your Digital Man Up book + Audiobook + 2 Exclusive MASTERCLASSES https://bit.ly/manuptribeOPEN A FIT BODY LOCATIONA High-Profit, Scalable Gym Franchise Opportunity Driven By Impacthttps://bit.ly/bedrosfbb3 Things my dad taught me after surviving communism and poverty Yesterday I sat down with my 92-year-old dad — the man who escaped the Soviet Union, survived genocide-level hell, and still walks around with delusional optimism that turns every tragedy into fuel. If you’re in a losing season right now and feel like giving up, this episode will rewire how you see hardship. Today I’m handing those lessons straight to you. Average is the enemy — let’s get after it.

He has this like delusional optimism where he's just constantly reframing everything into a positive. He goes, see, that worked out for me. And through the hardship that my dad experienced, he learned to show a high level of gratitude for everything that went wrong, but every right and positive that he was able to create out of it. He was the king of turning chicken shit into chicken salad. Welcome to the Bedroats Coolian show. I visit my dad on a weekly basis. He's 92 years old and a former communist because he's he. He's the guy that escaped the Soviet Union and brought myself and my entire family to the United States. And today I'm going to tell you all about the lessons that I've learned from my 92-year-old dad that are going to benefit you in your life and your business.

Guys, welcome to the Bedroskulian show. I'm Bedroskulian. And today's episode is pretty cool because yesterday I spent some time with my dad. It was one of my weekly visits with my dad. And, you know, he's 92 years old, man. He's still walking around, but he's got a walker a couple years ago. He fell and broke his hip. But all in all, he lives at home.

And I've got a caretaker for him, an Armenian caretaker who lives with him. And so she takes great care of him. And me and my siblings go visit him on a daily, sometimes weekly basis. My brother and sister see him more frequently. I live a little further away. I see him on a weekly basis. But whenever I go, I make sure to be able to download some of the history that this man carries in his beautiful head.

And so I'm going to tell you something about my dad that I've probably never shared. In fact, I know I've never shared here. And it's pretty wild and insane. And if you are going through hard times right now, if you are going through a challenging, a challenging phase of life right now, we always talk about the winning phases and the losing phases of life. If you're going through a losing phase, a tough phase, a challenging phase, a phase that seems like it's not ending and you kind of have no hope in sight, the story I'm going to tell

you is probably going to give you a lot of hope. And it's going to give you a lot of lessons because I'm going to be a lot of I've taken the lessons from my dad and I've applied them to my life. And it's helped me develop a high level of success. And it's literally been the foundation of my resiliency and ability to be resourceful. So I want you to have those as well. So yesterday, there I am visiting my pops. He's 92.

And I get there and I realized I haven't really taken time to fully record any of his stories that he tells, right? Like he'll tell me stories. I'll say, hey, dad, tell me a story about, you know, when you lived in Syria, when you lived in, when you moved to Armenia from Syria, even though he's Armenian, he was actually born in Syria, and I'll tell you the story about that in a second. So I was like, you know what? My mom died two and a half years ago, and I have no video recording of her at all. I just had never thought to record her. The only actual things I have from my mom in terms of that I could remember are obviously the

memories in my head. And then the voice messages that she had left me when she would call me to check in and see how things were going, like, you know, four, five, six years ago. So I'll often replay those audio messages that she sent me when, you know, she left a voicemail. But that was the extent of it. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to document a good 15, 20 minutes of this time with my dad. So I set up my phone and I hit record and we're just shooting the shit. And first of all, you should know this about my dad.

Like the dude is so old. How old is he? He's older than Napoleon Hills. book Outwitting the Devil. If you know that's one of my top favorite books that I recommend, Napoleon Hill's book was written, Outwitting the Devil, was written in 1938. My dad was born in 34, right? And so even though Napoleon's book was written in 1938, it was actually published in 2011 because it was so controversial at the time that no one wanted to publish it. And the family wasn't even interested in having him put it out. And they talked Napoleon out of putting it out.

So if you haven't read out winning the devil, go read it. It'll change her life. And so my dad is older than that book that was written in 1938. Now, what you ought to know, because I told you he was born in Syria. Like, how can an Armenian be born in Syria? Well, simple. From 1915 to 1923, there was the Armenian genocide. Most people have not heard of it.

But in Turkey, and at the time was the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Armenia are neighbors, neighboring countries. the Turks from 1950 to 1923 killed 1.5 million Armenians. As you can imagine, a lot of the Armenians were trying to escape that Ottoman Empire, Turkey. And so they went to different places, right? What's a crazy story here that my dad told me and my son, oh, maybe four or five years ago? So I was like, hey, tell me about grandpa. tell me about your dad, right? So my dad is telling me about his dad.

And he goes on to say how his dad had, I didn't even know my grandpa had a first wife, right? And so he goes, you know, your grandpa had a first wife and they had a little boy. And it was like 19, 1990 or 1920. He couldn't remember. And the genocide, was taking place, murder and killings of all these Armenians in Turkey.

And my grandpa rushed his wife and his newborn son to a Armenian church that was there in Turkey. And it had been said that the Turks were leaving the churches and the monasteries alone. They weren't attacking them. They weren't going in there because it was known that it was mostly women and children in those churches. And so my grandpa took his wife then and his one-year-old or under one-year-old son to that church. And then he and a group of seven other guys, and somehow they had one pistol between the seven of them, set out to try and fight back against the Turks who were committing this genocide, right?

Well, obviously they got overrun and they were unable to fight back in any decent way. apparently most of my grandpa tells my dad that most of his friends in that group like five of the seven of them died so just my grandpa and another guy survived and so when they survived he realized right there's no hope in us staying here in turkey which was on the border of armenia where they were and so he went you know he spent you know days trying to fight with these turks and he went back to that church where he left his his wife and his newborn son only to find the church burnt down to the ground. Everybody in there, including his first wife and my grandpa's first son, were murdered, were killed.

And so sad, my grandpa decided that he's got no more life there in Turkey slash Armenia, right? It's the Ottoman Empire there. And so he makes his way to Syria because Syria was taking on refugees who were escaped. the genocide. So he makes his way into the Syrian border. He crosses the border with that friend of his who survived. And there, there was these Catholic churches that were set up to take in all the refugees, Armenian refugees who were coming in, boys, girls, men, women. So there, my grandpa was set up with my grandma, my dad's mom. by some priest.

And the whole strategy there, my dad says, was they were just setting up men and women, or I guess boys and girls. He was like a young, you know, 18, 19 year old, I guess he was a man. And young girls, you know, whatever, 17, 18, 19 year old girls together to repopulate the Armenian ethnicity. And so that's how my grandpa met my grandma. right by being set up by this catholic church in syria and so as that happens they have a first son who's eight years older than my dad and he's passed away already and then they have another son

and that son drowned when he was 16 years old and my dad was 14 years old he drowned in a river um and he had you know My dad tells the story that his middle brother had gotten this confidence that he could swim across the river, but the river was just flowing too hard and too aggressively, and his middle brother drowned. My dad was the youngest of the three sons. And so when my dad was born, my grandma, his mom wrote my dad's birthday in the back final page of a Bible. Well, two years after my dad's birth, my grandma dies. And now my grandpa is stuck with two sons, one of them dead. Well, at that point he had three sons.

Later, one of them would die. But he's single. Now, his wife's dead. Now his second wife is dead. My dad never really got to see his mom, experience his mom, because he was only two years old when his mom died. my grandpa couldn't remember what happened to that Bible, so he couldn't remember my dad's birthday. So till this day, we celebrate my dad's birthday on Cinco de Mayo.

If you're wondering why we celebrate my dad's birthday on Cinco de Mayo later on as my dad and my mom got married, my dad had my sister. She's my oldest sibling. After my sister came my brother. and he was born on May 5th. And so my dad felt, well, we haven't celebrated a birthday for me in all these years. Now that I've got a son, I'm going to set my birthday the day after my son's birthday. So my older brother was born on May 5th.

And I think 1960, 1960. And yeah, 1960. And then my dad decided that on May 6th. since my brother was born on May 4th, that my dad would celebrate his birthday on May 5th. Of course, we come to America and you come to realize, May 5th is Cinco de Mayo, baby. So the entire country celebrates for my dad's birthday.

But we don't know his official birthday. We know the year, 1934. But I share this with you because you talk about the great escape, right? Like the stories that he had to hear. He had to find out from his dad that, holy crap, man, like had your first wife and son not perished like my dad and his two brothers wouldn't have been born and even though my dad never met his mom he ended up you know it's one of three boys to my grandpa they have to remember in that time there's also a world war two going on right

and so they're in syria they're trying to get by my dad's talking about like how everyone's just got you got one set of clothes that's it one set of clothes and then to wash them you stay in your underwear and your undergarments and then you wash them you dry them and then you put them back on if you're lucky you have maybe an extra shirt or an extra pair of pants but that's it everyone's got just one thing like people are broke destitute the world war two is going on it's a whole thing and my dad at that point um i don't know how else to say this like he was the youngest of the family and my grandpa was trying to raise three sons by himself while being broke and he was a shoe repair man he went to the market and he started asking people if they were looking for a young boy a son he was trying to give his

son away even for a temporary period of time as in my dad because my dad being the baby of the family it was harder to take care of a baby you know the middle son and the older son were now one walking and toddling around, et cetera. My dad was just under two years old, still in diapers, and they're not the kind of diapers that you have today where they're disposable, and there's no wipes and powders.

It was like cloth diapers that had to be washed. And my dad was telling me the story that his dad told him, look, there was no woman around to change you. It was just me, and I did the best I could. And since I wasn't able to feed all of us, and you were the youngest, I figured there must be a couple out there in the market that he would go to.

in the center of town, there might be a couple that's trying to have a kid and they can't have a kid. And he goes, I was going to have you go to them so they could feed you. They could adopt you. And I didn't want to lose you, but I felt I had to. And in the process of looking for a way to give my dad away, he ended up meeting a third woman. And this third woman, her husband had died and she had one son. And so my grandpa marries this woman. and now my dad has a stepbrother, right?

And I remember him. He died a couple years ago. And I remember visiting him. He moved to the United States here as well many years later. But man, what a story? What a story? And then my dad tells me the story that in 1946 son, he says in 1946, when the war ended of September of 1945, World War II, in 1946, we finally went to Armenia.

And I got to see the motherland, the country that I was. supposed to be born in. So that's why my dad knows Arabic because my dad or my grandpa took him to Syria or went to Syria and my dad and his sons or and his brothers were born in Syria. My dad also speaks Turkish because my grandpa knew Turkish because he lived in Turkey. My dad speaks to Armenian because then he went to Armenia in 1946 and he was raised in the Armenian culture in Syria. And then of course because the Soviet Union, Russia, took over Armenia in that time. My dad was forced to learn Russian,

which is why he became a member of the Communist Party once he moved in 1946 after the war to Armenia. And then when we came to the United States and he was 44 years old, he learned English. albeit broken with a heavy accent, he learned English. The dude speaks five languages.

Russians, Armenian, Arabic, Turkish. Russian, Armenian, Arabic, Turkish, and English. English being the most broken up, obviously. Hey guys, quick interruption to the Vedderos Koolian show.

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pair of clothes. And oh, by the way, my stepmom, the third wife of my grandpa, he goes, she didn't take care of us like she took care of her son. And understandably so, there's only so much food to go around. I'm like, damn, dad. And he goes, yeah, so plenty of nights, you know, me and my brothers would go to sleep hungry. And there were plenty of days that we were hungry.

He goes, but I understand today, like you guys try and go hungry for 24, 48 hours. I go, yeah, it's called fasting. He goes, I was fasting before fasting was a thing. And I realize he's got this incredible way of reframing everything into this, like, delusional optimism that he has. You know, he reframes everything as like, hey, but at least she took me in because I could have been adopted. And then I told my dad, I said, how did you learn to become a tailor? because he became a tailor. Your dad was a shoe repair man.

How'd you become a tailor? He goes, well, there was also a period of time that all you boys were too overwhelming for this new wife that my grandpa had. So my grandpa sends the three boys off to their uncle in Damascus where the uncle was doing a lot better. He was already a tailor.

He was established and he was doing somewhat better than my grandpa was. And so it was. it was there that my dad's older brother, not oldest brother, but next older brother, drowned at 14 years old, 15 years old. So now my dad's uncle is teaching his two nephews how to become a tailor. But he realizes I'm going to teach him the skill, but I can't really teach them the entire skill because I don't want competition. Right. At the end of the day, if they stay there in town, they're going to become tailors and become competitors to the uncle. And so he teaches

them how to sew suits, vests, pants together once the material has been designed and cut. But he doesn't teach them how to draw out on the material, chalk out, and cut out the design, the pattern, right? And so my dad said he did that so that he could be the designer and pattern cutter because when a customer comes, in case you're wondering, where everyone, everyone's getting custom suits? Yes. Yes. There was no like you walk into a store and you look at the rack, right? You would order a coat. You would order a shirt. You would bring your own material or he would go get material for you from the market. And then he would tape measure you, head to toe, get your measurements and then design the pattern. Do you want a, a, a, A suit. My dad says, double-breasted or single-breasted? Right?

So you want pants with pleats or no pleats? You want cuff on bottom or no cuff? Right. And so the uncle had taught them how to sew so that they could work for him. At least they had some kind of wage they were making. But they hadn't learned how to design and pattern, which means when a customer comes into his alteration or tailor shop, it wasn't an alteration because you weren't altering shit.

You were making a brand new outfit from scratch. when you show up and you're like, hey, here's the material. He would have my dad's uncle would have the two boys going to corner somewhere, make sure they weren't looking. My uncle would take the measurements so that they don't learn how to take measurements. And then once the customer left, he'd again go say, hey, get out of here, take a hike, go outside. He would design the patterns and stuff.

And then once he was done designing the patterns, cutting it all out, he would then have the boys come in and he would have them sew. the suit or the pants or the vest or the shirt jacket, whatever, together. But my dad was like, dude, I had to get crafty. I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, I needed to get crafty. And so I would come in and I'd be like, oh my God, I'm thirsty. Or oh, my God, I'm hungry.

And he would storm in to the shop, which was in the back of a little shack of a house. And my uncle didn't have enough time to gather everything up and hide it from my dad. And so my dad would, my dad makes this face. He goes, I would look from the corner of my eye. I would look to see what exactly he did. And I could see he's trying to cover up the work he's doing. But piece by piece, my dad would sneak in and look to see what my, or his uncle was doing in terms of the tape measuring, the chalking of the patterns and the designs.

And a little by little, he would start practicing secretly on his own, making himself like a pair of pants or a jacket or a shirt. And then when he realized he could do this on his own, at 16 years old, he broke off and he decided to become a full-on tailor himself. And it was two years later that he ended up running a little organization of tailors and seamstresses for some bigger company in Armenia once they had moved to Armenia. Man, I share the story with you because today you have access. We have access to YouTube and courses and coaching and seminars and instructionals and how-to videos. And people can't figure out how to develop a skill. This dude while starving and filthy and living in poverty was having to come in and from the corner of his eye,

watch what his uncle was doing to develop and learn a skill on how to cut and sew and put together an outfit. I share this with you guys because the experience that my dad tells me, and I kind of gave you the top overview. And the experience that my dad tells me about himself, his life is insane. Like the parts that I didn't share with you, I'll just share one of the craziest parts. When my dad's dad, my grandpa got married for the third time, my dad had a stepmom now. and a stepbrother, that woman also had a young daughter. And that woman couldn't dress all of my dad, my dad and his siblings up in clothes. And it's hard for me to tell this story because my dad being the youngest and her daughter

being closest to age in my dad, she would just dress my dad up in her daughter's old clothes, dresses. So my dad says, I remember being four or five, six years old, being in a girl's dress and being laughed at in the neighborhood. Like he has no education. Like he probably went to school for like one year, like elementary school for one year. That was it. And then he had to develop and learn his skill. Like these. These are the hardships that he dealt with. I don't want to list off any of the other hardships that he's told me about. It was very emotional for him.

It would be very emotional for me. But I share this with you because when I think about how grateful my dad is for coming to the United States, for meeting my mom, for my dad, his dad not giving him away, his stepmom, putting him in a dress. He's like, at least I had an outfit, son. Yeah, dad, you did. Could you imagine how traumatic that is? Now today, that's also just cross-dressing.

You freaks just tend to cross-dress and you can, you know, color your hair blue and purple and grow a beard and wear a dress and call yourself, they, them. He's she it. And that's cool. But back then, my dad was leading the charge on that shit. He was way ahead of his time. But in all seriousness, man, the dude was resilient. He showed resourcefulness in and sneaking in and watching how my, his uncle worked.

He has this, like, delusional optimism where he's just constantly. reframing everything into a positive. You go, see, that worked out for me. You know, had my mom not died, I wouldn't have gone to my, to my uncle and learned a skill to be able to take care of myself. And then because I had a skill

and I opened up a little tailor shop and a business, I was able to meet your mom because he was a high status man at that time, right? Instead of working for someone, he had his little tailor business. And I told you that ultimately he started working for this company

where he was overseeing these tailors and seamstresses. And because he was the boss or the manager, one might say, the head tailor, my mom was one of those seamstresses and they hid it off. And he goes, you see how things always worked out for me, son, in my life? Now, you could also list off the tragedy of his dad's first wife and son dying in that church burning to death. And dad, how dare you try and give me away at the market. Dad, how dare you not stop this woman from dressing me up like a girl? Dad, would go to sleep hungry. What do I mean you're going to ship us off to the uncle in a different city where we're going to stay with him for a couple years? But how often do you want

to replay that story of negativity in your head? What if you can reframe it and realize that every negative thing that's happened to in your life, there's a positive seed that if you focus on and nurture and water, that seed will blossom into something great. And through the hardship that my dad experienced, he learned to show a high level of gratitude for everything that went wrong, but every right and positive that he was able to create out of it. He was the king of turning chicken shit into chicken salad. Before that term ever existed, lemons into lemonade. And if we can get better at that, because it's never an absence of resources, it's never

absence of information, it's an absence of resiliency. It's an absence of gratitude for what you have, albeit so little. It's an absence of being able to be this delusionally optimistic cat who could reframe everything as a gift. This is a gift for me. and I realized through osmosis, through environmental exposure to my dad, I've experienced that. And I've learned that. And every time something negative has happened to me, I've always looked for the silver

lining in it, the positive. How could I reframe this? And if you could develop those skills of delusional optimism, being able to reframe every negative and find the positive in it, force yourself to find the positive in it. And if you could reframe things so well that you could start showing you. showing gratitude for it and be grateful that you have what little you have today, that you're alive to go through the suffering and adversity that you're going through so that you can problem solve and figure out and develop new levels of resiliency and resourcefulness.

You will become a better human on the other side of that. Now I wouldn't wish upon anybody what my dad and people of that generation had to go through. I can't wait to visit him next week and get more information and knowledge and with them from him. And before signing off, I want to just show you these pictures. The first picture you're going to see here is of me and my dad two years ago at his 90th birthday. My sister and I took him to a little steakhouse, or maybe it was a fish house. I don't remember, but it was two years ago and he dressed up in this handsome suit that he has. And he looked sharp, man. That was when he was 90. The second picture that you see here is of my dad from yesterday.

As I was filming him, I also took a picture of him. He sits in that chair right there. And that's his house. And this third picture that you see, I think in this third picture, you might even see my feet. And I had to hit the wide angle. That's my dad. And next to him is the empty chair that my mom sat in next to him for, I don't know, 30 years that they owned that house. My mom and dad were married for 63 years.

she was always by his side always always by his side and she passed away two and a half years ago from dementia and while my dad is hunched over and he's walking with the walker even yesterday he's yucking it up in the videos as he's telling me in armenian like how his uncle when his uncle figured out that my dad knows how to now design and develop patterns and he's he could go out on his own and make suits now. His uncle, in Arabic, called him a pig. And my dad, you know, says the word in Arabic. I forget what it was. And then he starts belly laughing yesterday. At 92 years old, he still has found things to laugh about. And he starts belly laughing. I go, Dad, why are you laughing? He goes, I could just picture his face how angry he was when he realized

he's about to lose me as an employee because he wouldn't teach me the skills that he had. and he was so angry that he called me a pig son i was like yeah man you're a gangster and then he would nod off and start falling asleep and i would just sit there and let him take a little nap and then he like like the fucking president lincoln animation from dizzland you know when you watch president lincoln it's like this animatronic robot he would just wake right up and he would just wake right up and go so son what were we talking about and i go all you were telling me about Syria and how you had to go to Damascus and learn from your uncle, but he wouldn't teach you these things. He goes, oh, that's right. And instead of continuing on the story, he just looks at his

hands. This is happening yesterday, man, I'm telling you. And we're all going to do this. We're all going to do this. He starts looking at his hands. He goes, that's right, son. Let me finish the story. But then he doesn't. He just starts looking at his hands like this. I go, Dad, what are you looking at? And I got up and I'm looking. I'm like, maybe there's something, a little ant crawling on him. He goes, I don't know. I don't know whose skin this is. I don't know how my skin turned out this way. You know, it's dry. It's old. It's wrinkly. I go, dad, we're all aging, man, but you're my hero and I want to age just like you. He goes, yeah, so let's continue on with the story. And so I sat back down and off he went. And I was just telling Leighton and Ed here yesterday was about

85, 90 degrees in my dad's house. Now the air conditioner, he doesn't turn the air conditioner on until it reaches about 110 degrees in the house. And so you see in those pictures that he's bundled up. He's got a flannel long-sleeved shirt on, and he's got his vest on top of that. Of course, I show up, and I was wearing, I was wearing jeans and my chucks and a t-shirt when I had workout shorts in my backpack

to get my second workout into the day when I left there. I go, you know what, it's too hot dad. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm going to get out of my jeans here and put these shorts on. I got the shorts on. And he had the front door open to get a little bit air. He goes, son, now that you put on your shorts and the front door's open, is it going to be too cold for you?

Are you going to get sick? And he tried to get up to go close the door. I go, dad, dad, sit down. Sit down. It's like 90 degrees in this house, man. I'm doing a fucking sauna experience while I'm talking to you. We're good. Leave the door open.

God bless him, man. He won't touch that air conditioner And if you have an old parent, man, you know what that's like That generation He wouldn't turn on the AC in the car When I was a kid with him because he was like Oh, it's gonna put too much stress on the engine Dad turn on the AC

I told I've told stories about my dad here Where when I was a kid we came to America We were broke and you know You're a kid you're taking a piss I left the door halfway cracked open To the restroom and the lights on And I would just see a hand come in And he hit the light switch knowing that I'm in there

Taking a piss I'm like yo dad I'm in here taking a piss. He goes, you can take a piss with the lights off. We need to save money. That's the kind of dude we have, man, is my dad. And I'm very great for him. And I wanted to share the story of him, not only to memorialize him, but for you to see what a generation had to go through, what a generation had to go through, to endure, to persevere, to be able to make it, to come to a new country, learn a new language, bring a family along. And today he owns that house. It's paid off free and clear.

And, you know, while he doesn't have my mom with him anymore, he demands that seat still stay next to him because he says she sits next to him in spirit. And I believe that. So thank you for watching this episode of the Bedros Coorin Show. 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.