Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 203. What's New With Bedros Keuilian? With Bedros & Craig

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

A 2021 update to the man himself, Bedros Keuilian. A quick turn of the tables as typically Bedros does the interviewing of our guests, and this time Craig asks Bedros some hot questions about what’s been new with Bedros nowadays. What is this new phase of the founder of The Empire Podcast, there's tons of learning points that an entrepreneur can look forward to if they build an empire, and grow themselves and their companies to a position where a transition must happen in order to keep scaling. Find out  where Bedros has landed after leading his entrepreneur ventures the past 30 years and Fit Body Bootcamp the past 20 years. 00:00 - Introduction  00:50 - What is Bedros up to now that he’s no longer the CEO of Fit Body Bootcamp? 06:44 - What is Suck Fest? 10:13 - What’re some of Bedros’ memorable transformations from The Modern Day Knight Project? 14:17 - What advice would Bedros give his younger self? 15:32 - Bedros turns it back around and asks Craig for his advice for his younger self. 18:18 - Bedros asks Craig how fatherhood, marriage has changed or not changed this phase of life 20:25 - 2 things Bedros recommends for parents to deeply connect with their kids 23:06 - Bedros’ final remarks    Connect with Craig Ballantyne :    https://www.craigballantyne.com/ https://twitter.com/craigballantyne/ https://www.instagram.com/realcraigballantyne/ Connect with Bedros Keuilian : Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/bedroskeuilian/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/KeuilianInc Twitter - https://twitter.com/bedroskeuilian

If you have a smaller company where you can't just assign a VP or a CEO, guess what? You're going to have to be in the weeds kind of calling the shots and delegating two accountants and two attorneys and who can oversee things that you don't want to. But that should be incentive for any entrepreneur to scale their business faster and bigger and get to a point where you can kind of take yourself out of the areas that you don't necessarily get joy from. Welcome to the Inside the Empire podcast where we're going to get an inside look at

Mr. Begros-Coolean, we're going to ask him anything. Anything. Are you ready? I'm ready. All right. First question is a very serious question. What do you do all day? What do you do all day?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very curious. What do you do all day now that you're not the CEO of FitBody Boot Camp? Yeah, so now that I'm not the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, I'm still the founder of Fit Body Boot Camp, um, it's, it's more visionary stuff, right? Yeah. So it's more visionary stuff in terms of big vision, big plans, big, I'm always three to five years ahead in Fit Body Boot Camp. Where's it going three to five years from now with Truleen with FitBody Boot Camp

with FitPro Tracker, a software company that's growing very quickly that I have equity in and I'm on the board with Fuel Hunt. Ironically, the apparel that we're wearing right now. And so I'm more, my day to day is spent on big visionary stuff on all four of those big brands that, but with Fit Body Boot Camp, it's where are we going to be three to five years from now? How's that going to look? we differentiate. So I'm no longer in the day-to-day weeds, which is pretty cool. What is your visionary stuff look like? Like, you know, so what do you do? Just go? You sit in a, sit in a room and like, thank. Do you spend some time milling about? What do you do? So a good amount of it is being connected to each industry. So let's say FitBody Boot Camp,

the franchise. How is fitness changing, right? So it's a lot of research, a lot of connecting with people in the fitness industry that I know that have been around like Alan Cosgrove, right, all the way to people in franchising to the new levels of technology and fitness and how's that looking? What are the apps doing? How are they integrating with in-person training with gyms, boot camps, etc. How does the new, like for example, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a gym that has a touch system that checks you in. Everything is. Everything is. is no touch, right? You're scanning your iPhone.

Well, is there something that can actually scan? Why don't you tell the 24-hour fitness in Huntington Beach? I know. They're still old school there. I'm like, I gave you my fingerprint. Did I really stupidly do that? You're putting your finger on a little piece of glass

that everyone else before you has touched. Yeah, it's like they pick their nose, walk in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But think about that. So here's one example. Imagine walking into a fit body boot camp. Yeah. And remember, your iPhone can recognize your face, right?

So, and there's already technology out there that we can just put a sensor and a camera above the door. So as you walk into a Fit Body Boot Camp, it scans your face immediately, checks you in, notifies the person behind the counter if you're current or delinquent in your payment, pops up your name,

and if you have any, like, if it's your birthday, happy birthday, Craig Ballantyne, and now the person behind the counter can acknowledge you. Yeah. If it's your 100th workout or close to your 100th workout, like, hey, congratulations, you're about to do your 100th workout. So imagine the level of intimacy we can show to differentiate.

So that not only helps with like what's going on in the world where no one wants to touch anything, but now we can a quick scan and literally see if Craig is updated on his credit card payment, how long he's been working out with us, if there's anything monumental that we need to acknowledge him for as he's here, all those things. Plus, it allows us then connect with any kind of devices that you might be wearing that could allow us to now coach you, train you, help you with your fitness fat loss goals outside of our four walls. And so that's where the future of fitness is going. So my job is a visionary to go, what software, what companies, what devices. And so as I kind of see and scope out and start

working on deals that are going to come through three, four, five years from now. What are you so glad that you don't have to do anymore? Talk to lawyers and accountants. Oh. I am done talking to lawyers and accountants. I think naturally I'm a creative person. Yeah. So talking to lawyers about franchise agreement and master franchise agreements, going into places like Europe and Dubai and Saudi Arabia, what that would look like. And all those things I don't have to do, compliance officers I don't have to talk to, the Federal Trade Commission I don't have to talk to, Bryce does.

And then accountants, right, the bean counters. Well, I love money and I love the money that comes in and I want to see our profit margins. I get to see bottom lines and not so much day-to-day accounting stuff that I have to be involved in. Okay. And so everybody out there listening who's an entrepreneur and it's like, man, I got to do all that and I got to do way too much stuff. What do you tell them if they want to get out of that? What's the path? What are the things that they have to do, like the dominoes that have to fall so that they can move away from that fast? Well, so to that point, let's not forget that while I don't do that for Fit Body Boot Camp, I'm still in the weeds for a lot of our smaller companies that we are parenting to become bigger companies, right? And so if you have a small. smaller company where you can't just assign a VP or a CEO. Guess what?

You're going to have to be in the weeds kind of calling the shots and delegating two accountants and two attorneys and double checking their work, et cetera. But at some point, you might want to hire an outside CFO at some point who can work part-time for you. Yeah. You can hire an outside CPA. You can hire an outside attorney who can oversee things that you don't want to. But that should be incentive for any entrepreneur to scale their business faster and

bigger and get to a point where you can kind of take yourself out of the areas that you don't necessarily get joy from. It's Dan Sullivan, right? He has those three little circles, the kind of the area that inspires you, motivates you, and gives you energy. Like what can I do to work almost 100% in that area? Right. Versus that one last circle that the area of work that sucks energy and depresses me and

puts me on edge. I want to do less of that stuff. The way I do that is make sales, mark more, hire great, competent people who can take the uglier stuff off my hand so I can focus on this stuff. Yeah. Speaking of things that suck, what is suckfest? And why should somebody do it? So, suckfest is this, for the last three years, I started doing this thing on my own, where in December I will take on a challenge and, you know, It's questionable whether I will finish or not because I don't prep for it.

The idea is to not prep for it. The Japanese have a term called Misogi. Misogi is an experience that you do at the end of the year. It's questionable whether you'll finish it or not. And it's a purification process. It's this process to help put you into a state of suffering and adversity at a high point. It's such a high point where you find that other room. We all have that other room up here.

And that other room, there's no key for it. It's hard to see that doorknob to that other room. You only start seeing faint traces of the door and the doorknob and access to it as you are in a place of suffering and fatigue. And you go to that higher state of awareness, self-discovery. And suffering takes us there. And so the Japanese have this Misogi experience where they might stand under a waterfall for six hours, a cold waterfall that's beaten down on them. But then you have to disassociate and get away. Go to that other room to find your higher self.

And when you do, you start intentionally thinking about what is next year? look like? What are the things I'm going to focus on? What are the things I'm going to avoid? How do I want to show up? Who do I want to be a role model to? And so it's really about setting your intentions for the next year and also reviewing the year that you had while in the state of suffering. So last year I decided it was last December 5th from sundown, which is around 4.45 p.m. to sun up the next morning. I was going to hike the streets and the hills of Chino Hills. And so in 12 and a half hours, I, covered 37 miles, unprepared, untrained. And the whole idea is to feel the blisters, feel the hip tightening up and all that stuff. So this year, Suckfest, I decided to open it up to the world and invite the world, so we have hundreds of people from all over the world doing it,

and they're registering for a hundred bucks. And what's really cool about it is 100% of that money goes to Strenner's Children's Hospital. But we are doing a full marathon, 26.2 miles, but every two-tenths of a mile, you stop, and you do two exercises for 15 reps each. Any two exercises you want, mix and match any way you want. So that when you're done, you have done 26.2 miles and 4,080 repetitions.

And there's about 50 people coming to BK Strength to do it with me. Starts at 4 a.m. on December 4th, right? On December 4th. And then there's another couple hundred people worldwide doing it, who have registered for it. Are you guys doing on treadmills? Are you doing it outside? Outside. So at BK Strength, imagine this.

You do two exercises, say trisop presses for 15 and dumbbell curls for 15. And you run out the front door and you run around the building, which is two-tenths of a mile. Huh. And there's one round. Got it. You do that 136 times. How do you make sure you keep track of the number? Well, that's a great thing about delegating to a team.

I delegate it to Shelby, and Shelby created this giant form. And the giant forum is going to have these boxes that we tick off. And each one's numbered. and each fives tells you that you've done one mile, and by the time you're done, you've got your suckfest form, and it's going to be painful. Nice.

Nice. All right. So speaking of suckfest, modern day, night project is a suck fest. Yeah, for men. Yeah. Tell me a couple of your favorite transformation stories from those five days. The first one that comes to mind is a dude name Andy Foe.

Andy Foe. I've seen him on Instagrams. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's a tattooer and he worked for somebody else doing tattoos. Very talented young man. Married the wife, worked around the clock, hardly saw the wife and kids. And most tattooers, I don't know if you know this or not, it's actually cash business. It's just how they roll.

So they don't really keep track of their finances. It's cash. It might swipe a card on the little square or do a Venmo. So he had no credit, none of that stuff. And as he went through the project, he was like, you know, one dad liked to be a business owner. of my own. So here he is a year and a half after going through the project, instead of just renting out space at a tattoo parlor, he's now opening up his own 6,000 square foot studio in Austin. And he sees his family three days a week is fully off. So he works four days a week, normal hours,

and then sees his family the other three days a week completely with them. He had never done any kind of like workouts or anything, just the guy who's tattooed head to toe, but otherwise soft and gelatinous. Now he's like lean and jacked. Yeah. Has great life balance. Is an entrepreneur, is building his credit. And what's really cool is the three apprentices that he has who will be also tattooing out of that same place. He had them go through the project and graduate. So it's going to be literally a tattoo shop in Austin, Texas, full of project graduates. who just operate as hardcore entrepreneurs, disciplined men who are passionate, purpose-driven,

but have life balance. How did he stumble into your world? His brother, who was his first mentor, did my entire sleeve, Robert Fo. And he came up to me during the third visit at his brother's tattoo shop, and he's like, man, I've read your book, man up, I just got it, you know? And like, I want to do this.

this thing, the project that you are starting. I was like, oh, okay, cool. Here's the application site. Had no idea that he would do it. He did it. And so he's one guy that really comes to mind. Another person that comes to mind, this guy's name, I don't want to share, because I haven't asked if I can share his name, but he was a very self-destructive person. An entrepreneur made tons of money like north of $20,000 to $5 million a year with his business, you know, great margins in his business. However, very self-sabotaging in terms of his personal health and his relationship. The relationship was on the rocks and everything. And we actually have this thing in the project called Project Babies. These guys go home and they show up as new men. Some of them haven't had

sex with their wives for a long time because they're just on the outs. Right? And all of a sudden they go home and the wife's like, oh my God, you're a changed man. You're a savage servant. You keep your word. You show up. You're disciplined. You're organized. You communicate. You telling me what you want out of this relationship, and then you tell me what your expectations are of me, because that is what I coach them in into, right? Like, hey, if you want something from your wife, how about you ask her for it instead of being a little passive-aggressive baby, right? And so as that happens, they kind of rekindled their relationship, and so we've now

have had three project babies, but he's the most recent one. He's the most recent one, and the relationship is super awesome. business has almost doubled now, nearing 50 million in just one year. But more than that, that extra 30 pounds or so that he kept ebb and flowing, he's kept off for almost a year now, which is massive. Because I believe fitness is the gateway drug, right? You know this, like you and I are. Yeah, I mean, we did that podcast. Yeah. All right. Last thing, advice you would give to your younger self. The advice I would give to my younger self is to not seek out everybody's approval because I'm never going to be able to make everybody happy.

Number one. Number two, if you're going to dream, just dream big. It's the same effort, whether you want to make a million dollars or a hundred million dollars. You know this. And the third advice I would give myself is to be really, really careful who I allow in my circle because they have such massive influence on me. And I think all of us are very influenced by the people around us. We just sometimes think that we look at everybody through rosy-colored glasses. But as I look back, I'm 47, I look back 20 years of life.

Like, man, there are some shitty people I led in my life because I lowered my standards or because I had an opportunity to make money with them. But that went sideways and now I regret that relationship. Whereas I look at our relationship, we've been making money together for almost a decade. and we think alike, we operate alike, and it's a great relationship. As you always say, friends, making money with friends. So those are the three big things. But I know this is asking me questions, but let's kind of turn the script on you for a minute

because I got two very important questions I want to ask you. One of them is what you just asked me, which is if you can go back to your younger self, the 20-year-old version of Craigie, what pieces of advice would you bestow on him? Oh, that's really easy. One, stop drinking. Stop drinking. So I've officially stopped all alcohol for the rest of my life just two weeks ago. Just officially stopped. And I mean, I had maybe like one drink or two drinks a month for the last five years. You know, that was the most I was drinking. But playing around with like the aura ring and the sleep stuff.

Like it just shows you how much one drink, one single drink can mess up your sleep and it's just not worth it. So I decided to go 100% all in rather than. like 99% all in because there's no difference, right? So, but binge drinking when I was younger prevented me from overcoming the social anxiety because it compensated. So if I would have stopped drinking earlier and forced myself to do the work to overcome the social anxiety and just become normal earlier, would have been much better. Second thing is get a job doing face-to-face, nose to nose, toes to toes sales, rather than all the ways I found of making money hiding, and then just find a way to be really fun social person and just really work on that

without alcohol. So, like, if I could have done those three things, and any time I meet a young person, young man or woman who's able to do those things, like, oh, my God, you're like a superhero. And I just, like, there's so much further ahead. So just avoid that. Drinking is totally not worth it. Just stop now. You will save yourself a ton of pain and headache. Was alcohol mainly used for you to be social? I would say so because it wasn't like a stress reliever or anything.

And I never, so like in my 20s, if we went out with a bunch of people on like a Tuesday or Wednesday, like a bunch of guys going out and just getting something to eat and some guys would order a beer because they always just order a beer when they eat. I would be like, why are you ordering a beer? Like, I only drink to get drunk. Like, I don't drink. There's no social drinking in my drinking. So I didn't, like, it doesn't taste that great. So why are you doing that?

Yeah. And so there was only one purpose to it. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. And this is something I was going to ask you tomorrow anyway. I'm just going to dig deep as I, as we hang out over the next day or two. But figure our friends should know, they've been with us on this journey now, what, going on four years with the Empire podcast.

You're married. You're expecting a baby. I am. How has marriage and husbandhood and the prospect of fatherhood changed Craig in any ways? Well, he definitely work less and preparing to be much more supportive, being less selfish with my time. Fortunately, I haven't had to change my bedtime. So Michelle goes to bed at sometimes earlier, than I do. Oh. So everybody who laughed at me and said, oh,

you're not going to be able to go to bed at eight o'clock. In your face. Yeah, I'm going to bed at eight o'clock. Do you still wake up at 3.15 or 14? I don't use an alarm. Yeah. But so I get up anywhere from quarter to four to quarter after four,

kind of naturally. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just mostly, mostly it's just less selfishness with my time. And spending, you know, more time with her family. But in day-to-day stuff, not a lot of stuff has changed. Yeah.

Yeah. How about this? How do you think fatherhood's going to be? Because then we'll look back on this video. So you read Strong Father, Strong Daughter? Did you read that one? Yeah. I mean, so when I read that book, I was like, I mean, I thought I was going to be too strict.

But that book suggests that you be even more strict. But at the end of day, it's just spending a ton of time with my daughter, which, you know, I'm set up my life to do that. So, you know, I'm super excited for it. I, yeah, I'll just say I'm super excited for it. I'm learning, like, my friend Jeremy, who's my age, just had a kid, and he's got a one and a half year old girl. So I just ask him all time, like, what are you doing?

How do you spend time with her? Like, what's the, what does she like? What does she not like? You know, what's the quality time, that sort of thing? And so it's, I'm just, I, I, I, I, I really, truly will just be talking to a little adult for a long time. Yeah. And being amazed. So, so I know I've shared this with you, but it's important probably for our audience to know this.

Those of you that have a little baby in the oven, two things that that I did with both Andrew and Chloe, and then one other thing I did with just Chloe. The one thing I did with Chloe was when, I think she was around maybe six years old, seven years old, we started going on daddy-daughter dates, right? Like chick-fix. filet, bowling, stuff like that, yogurt land, every other week or so. And I realized how much influence I have over her now. As she's 14, she went and met a boy at the mall. Mom took her there, and the boy was 20 minutes late, was texting her like crazy, like, oh my God, my dad's, like stupid, he's running behind. I'm so sorry, da-da-da. Like to Chloe, it was like a non-negotiable. She was polite on that date. And afterwards, she was like, hey, man, sorry, can't. There's no second time of

us going out because that's just what I've helped her understand that if they don't open your door, if they don't show up early, because early's on time, then that's that. But the magical thing that now Andrew's 16, Chloe's 14, when they were born, I started, I created an email address for both of them at Gmail. I've told you this before. And I just started writing them emails. and sending them pictures from my iPhone of pictures of them and little videos of them. And now at 14 and 16, they have that email address. I gave it to them last year.

And they have the password. They go through and like, oh, that's, I remember that picture. And well, here's what I was thinking when we were at Disneyland and I was eating all that cotton candy and I threw up. So you get to hear their perspective.

And then, you know, you get to. How many posts were in that thing? Oh, man. Thousands? Probably hundreds. Yeah. I'd probably write at least like three a month, you know? Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Yeah, probably hundreds. But from pictures to videos to just long, drawn out emails where if I remember several times, I was stuck on a tarmac, during those years that you and I were traveling like crazy, stuck on a tarmac. Like, all right, bust out the phone, start writing an email to Andrew and Chloe. And it was just about like, hey, here's 19 principles of life that I wish I knew when I was a teenager. And so it's really cool for them to just read it and go like, hey, man, this is really helping me

throughout high school and junior high right now. Yeah, yeah. So I started writing little letters in a notebook, but left that back in Vancouver. So we'll either pick that up and just make scrapbooks or we'll do the email thing now that I know exactly how that worked. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. That's amazing.

So those are your answers. From The Empire Show. Anything you want to add to the end here? You know what I do want to add? And it's not often that I plug any of our companies here. But guys, if you don't know anything about fuel hunt, I think it's serendipitous that both Craig and I are wearing a fuel hunt shirts. And we did not plan on doing this. But fuel hunt is not an apparel company.

It is a movement. It is about restoring the dignity of hard work. And the whole idea is everybody wants to eat, but fuel hunt. And I just love that movement. And so I had the good fortune to get into business with the two guys, Drew and Joey, who started at two gritty cousins from Philadelphia. Philadelphia, hardworking dudes. And now that I've had them on the show, right? Yeah, I've had them on the show. So if you guys can do me a huge favor and truly go to feeblehunt.com, it's the highest quality apparel with a movement and a message behind it. Go to feeblehunt.com and buy a shirt,

buy something. And when you wear it, tag Feble Hunt and Joey and Drew and myself, I will reshare it, repost it. And I would really appreciate you just helping those guys out in terms of growing the brand and the movement. But that's about all I've got to share here. And so, So with that said, guys and gals, thank you for watching this episode. We appreciate you from here to the moon. Be sure to leave us a five-star review on iTunes. Leave us great comments. Take a screenshot of this episode.

Tag Craig, tag myself. And as always, don't forget to tell your mama.