Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - The Greatest Lessons from Our Fathers - 031

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

They say the best lessons in life can’t be taught in a classroom, and they were right. In today’s podcast, Craig and Bedros share the greatest lessons they learned from their crazy fathers. They weren’t crazy by text book definition, they were crazy because they dared to take risks in order to succeed. And now, Craig and Bedros have taken those lessons and used them to build their empires.    Here’s what you’ll discover:   1:16 - Why work is holy and drives our purpose forward. 3:45 - How Craig’s life on the farm with his father taught him how to plan ahead in order to be successful. 7:50 - How Bedros’ father showed him you need to be a little bit crazy to take risks and accumulate massive wealth. 15:44 - Why the best lessons we’re taught are learned and passed down through environmental exposure.

My father's hands, it looked like they had been cracked from the cold in the winter. He had lost parts of them in machinery. His hands looked like they were 140 years old, even when he was 50 years old. We're getting a little personal on the Empire podcast today. Hi, friends, I'm Bedros Kulian, and I'm here with my host and best friend, Craig Ballantyne, and today we are going to dive deep into the lessons that we've learned from our fathers. So, Craig, I think this is a pretty personal episode that we're about to share with our viewers and listeners. Oh man, it's really going to be a great one.

I mean, my father did pass away in 2008, but every time I get to tell stories about him, it puts a smile on my face because he was just a, he was a crazy old man, and I say that with a loving heart. He really was, and he just lived a little bit differently. He taught me a lot of things about what not to do, but he taught me a lot of things about what to do. So my old man was a farmer, and some people get upset when I say, my old men. They don't like, they think that that's derogatory. It's not.

That's what I would say to him. And, you know, my father, he was a farmer. I grew up in Canada, we had a beef cattle ranch. We didn't have any dairy cow, so I didn't have to milk the cattle. But you know what? He taught me a lot of lessons, including, including, like, how hard he worked. Now, before we go on about my dad, I mean, your dad is also really hard work. I've made some amazing sacrifices.

And I love this one phrase that he taught you, and I heard you mentioned one time, that work is holy, and I love it. Yeah, yeah, of course. And I think this is why you and I connect so well, even though. I come from a third world country, Armenia, communist control, et cetera. We both have that immigrant edge mentality because we were raised by fathers who valued hard work. And that's all they knew. And so coming from a communist country when we came to the United States, we were very poor, we were broke.

And my dad had to work multiple jobs. And it wasn't until four years later that he scraped together enough money to open up a little tailor shop. And I would see him fall asleep at his sewing machine working 13, 14 hours a day. And I remember one time asking my dad if we can close the shop down early on a Saturday to go somewhere. Maybe it was to go across the street to Arby's because I loved the Arby's roast beef sandwich as a kid. I mean, imagine you come to the United States and you discover McDonald's, Arby's, and this might explain why I was a fat kid, right? Right, right.

But my dad looked at me and he said, son, work is holy. We're never going to cut it short. We're going to stay here until 7 p.m. We're going to shut the business down and then we'll go. I know where it was. It was Sizzler. Yeah, I mean, right, the cheese bread, the steak. I mean, where else am I going to get stake for $4 other than Sizzler?

Yeah, it was more like a hockey puck, but it got the job done. That lesson of my dad sharing that work is holy. And I was like, what do you mean? He goes, that's like a gift from God. And I don't know what anyone's religious beliefs are or if you're spiritual or whatever, but work is holy. And a lot of us complain about work, about our job, or it's Monday, whatever's coming, our business, our empires.

But at the end of the day, if we didn't have a job, we wouldn't have a purpose. And you and I are leaders of organizations, but we still. have a job, we have a responsibility and that's our purpose. And if I didn't have a purpose, man, I wouldn't wake up every morning, at least happy. I'd wake up with a depression and a state of a funk. And so that was one of the biggest takeaways I got for my dad. Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's a privilege to be able to do what we do. I mean, we are here in front of, you know, the cameras and we are being heard by thousands of people. We are so lucky to be able to do this. And you have a privilege of being able to serve tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people every day through Fit Body Boot Camp.

I am privileged to have had my videos watched over 7 million times on YouTube. And you know what? Get your butt out of bed and go to work and enjoy it because work is holy and it's purifying. And it really is so much better than sitting around doing nothing. And, you know, idle hands are the devil's play thing, as they say. So we're very, very fortunate to have that. I got to ask you, I imagine as being raised on a. a farm, there's very specific rituals and routines that have to happen when tending to a farm.

How does that help serve in your life from there? Yeah, I think it's really, really great that I realized, you know, the work has to get done. I mean, cows don't take a day off of eating, you know, so my father fed the cattle every day at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. It didn't matter how cold it was. And I remember my father's hands, it looked like they had been, they were cracked from the cold in the winter. He had lost parts of and machinery. I mean, they were just the most beat up. His hands looked like they were 140 years old, even when he was 50 years old. And he had this, you know, dark farmer's tan that made him look like he was Jamaican half the year. And, you know, just the sacrifice they put in, it's like,

okay, you know what, you just go out and you do the work. You don't get up and complain. You get up. You know, he had his coffee. He went out and fed the cattle first. The cattle fed first before he even had breakfast. And it was just that, okay, you do this. You do this work every. You do. You do this work day, you show up with your lunch pail, you do the work. Now, it's not to say that you can't do higher level things. I mean, you have to think bigger. That's what the Empire podcast is all about, but you have to go out there and do a work. And I mean, I guess he became a master of his craft. Sure. And he, you know, like he said, there was no excuses. You do the work. You do the planning and preparation that you have to do. And that's actually something, one of the big lessons

that I was taught living on a farm. I mean, you have to think way in advance. You have to think about the planting season. You have to think about the harvings. season and those are the times of the year when you work the hardest but you have to make sure that you get the crops in by a certain date otherwise they're not going to grow on time and it's going to be into the snow season when you're trying to harvest them and obviously you won't be able to do that and you'll lose on your money so there's so much planning and preparation and I think that was passed down on to me realizing hey not only do I need to plan tomorrow morning tonight in order to be successful but I need to be looking ahead so that I have a great harvest

to have in my business. That makes sense? Absolutely. And I see how that's bled right into your business. And now what you do with your perfect life mastermind and your coaching claims. Yeah, absolutely. And so one of the other things that my father taught me was, and this was really beneficial to me, was that life's greatest lessons are taught outside of school. And so you know what that meant? No, tell me. That meant I didn't have to go to school sometimes when he wanted to go to certain things. I remember one time he took me out of school to take me to a slaughterhouse. You know, because we grew up on a beef cattle ranch, and he's like, let's go and visit these guys who take our cattle.

And so I've seen the inside of a slaughterhouse, and I still eat meat, so I wasn't too bothered by it. But it was interesting to see that, and he was teaching me the lessons there. And he would often take me to the stockyards, which is where he would sit and he would, you know, buy cattle and sell cattle. And he would let me roam around the stockyards. And he just, I guess I just randomly came back, you know, that was back in the day when you could just let children run around. And he let me do that. And he just taught me so much about hard work, about, you know, business, about all these things that it wasn't actually like a standard lesson, traditional learning. Like, hey, I want you to, you know, see this.

He just wanted me to see how things work so that I could take those lessons and move them ahead. And I'm sure that's what is the same thing for your father as a tailor, you know, even back in Armenia, the great work that he had to do, the persuasion taxics he had when he was dealing with the Communist Party. And then when he came over here and he had to get new clients in order to build the business from scratch. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And in fact, his best lessons, I mean, he has a fourth grade education level. And his best lessons, he says, were literally learned while trying to talk his way out of a trouble or a problem or potentially going to Siberia because, you know, word had gotten out that we were trying to escape to the United States. And he had to, well, he had to kind of lie his way that, hey, those are just rumors. What are you talking about?

I'm a communist party member. I'm proud for Pearl Lennon. And we would never escape. And of course, a week later, we were in Italy escaping, right? Which was great. But one of the other things we've got listed here is to be a little bit crazy. Yeah. And I remember when we came to this country, my dad, so literally, we got here and he only

knew one person, and it was a friend of a friend. And that friend, for whatever reason, decided to allow us to live in the spare bedroom of his two-bedroom apartment. So there's a family of five. There's a five of us living in the spare bedroom, someone's spare bedroom of an apartment, right? What sacrifices. Yeah. And the guy already had a job planned out for my dad and my brother, which was to join him on his paper route.

So the next morning, at three in the morning, my dad and my brother wake up, and my brother's older than me, and, of course, they're on a paper route. Two days later, they both have a job at a gas station pumping gas. By a week later, one's washing dishes at a pizzeria, the other one's mowing lawn. So each, my brother and my dad, each had three jobs within a week. And one thing I learned from my dad, and I always hear him talk about this, is we're going to build enough money to buy property here in the United States. And he said, I'm not only going to buy myself a home, I'm going to buy other properties and put them up for rent. And then when I retire, I'm going to sell those properties. Now, here's the crazy thing.

This is just something that I started thinking about just last week. So it's funny that it was on our list of Empire Podcast topics. Because I look back now, I'm getting goosebumps talking about this. I look back now, and while, yes, I've built this massive franchise, I own so much property here. in Chino Hills and it's something that I don't talk about often, but I own rental homes, I own commercial buildings, and I'm always looking at buying more property and I realize- You're gonna own this street. Yeah, I used to think my dad is crazy, like, dude, we came from a communist country, we can barely

afford to eat, be happy the fact that we've got our own apartment. And as a kid, I used to think like, wait, we're gonna buy a house, like we're gonna have one of those things, and then you're gonna have so many others that over time, you're gonna sell them for more money and it's going to pay for your retirement because, you know, he's not going to have a pension plan. He opened up a little tailor shop. And that is exactly what he did. He bought one house and he had a condo and two small homes in Garden Grove, California, about 30 minutes from here. But those three other rental properties went up in value while other people were paying his rent and his mortgage. And he sold them. He did exactly what he said. And today, like, he doesn't need any

financial help. I helped them because that's my purpose is to help them. But he's got money stored away in jars of, I told you, right? And my dad, so for those of you that are watching and listening to this, my dad, coming from a communist country, he's got jars of literally thousands of dollars in about six or seven jars of Fulgers coffee cans buried

in our backyard, or his backyard. Yeah. And thankfully, my brother and I know where it's at because he's now 84 and sometimes he forgets. It's under what fruit tree? I mean, think about that. The man has created wealth for himself. And so, while I thought he was a little bit crazy, that crazy got passed over to me. And that's why

I believe. He was crazy with 10x thinking. He was. And that crazy led to me thinking, I'm crazy enough to not have gone to school to learn about a franchise. I dropped out of college, barely made it out of high school. But now I own this international franchise and it's growing. I'm crazy enough to think that now I'm buying property and have both commercial and residential property up for rent and that it's going to pay for something in the future. I don't even know for what. But we got to be a little crazy. And I learned that from my dad. I'm sure there's got to be a lesson like that from yours. Yeah, absolutely. And so when my father, saw a keep out sign. You know what that meant to him? Come in. Come on in. And so I think that's why I'm a

little more conservative about stuff like that. But I mean, I remember being on vacation with him one time and he saw the keep out sign. And the next thing, you know, he's hopping the chain link fence and he's exploring behind it. And when I would come home from school, we'd jump on the snowmills in the winter and he would just drive like a bat out of heck. I mean, the guy, I'm surprised he made it as long as he did. But he just lived on the edge and pushed himself as hard as possible. What he did a lesson to me was, you know, he was not the richest man in the world. So he was looking, you know, being a cattle rancher was a tough business. And so he thought, you know, how can I fatten up these cows, which is the purpose of owning cattle, of beef cattle,

at the lowest expense. And so he was getting, he would go to these companies that would do frozen food, like peas and corn and stuff, and he would arrange some deal where they gave whatever they couldn't actually package and sell to people, they would just drop off at the farm. And I remember all his friends would tease him and make fun of him for doing this, but it was all healthy food. It just was like those vegetables that didn't look nice, you know, that don't go up and end up in the grocery store. So he was always doing crazy stuff like that in order to advance himself and do the right

things in his business. So I learned a lot from that. But one of the craziest things about him is he actually did go to college. Yeah, he went to agricultural college, and you can go to college for being a farmer. And he actually graduated, which is also another crazy thing. Because another thing that he did, he used to play hockey, and he was a goalie, and didn't wear a mask. And so one time he got a puck in the head, and they had to take him with an ambulance and take him to the hospital. But he probably didn't care. I mean, he would just do the craziest, craziest thing. He would climb the side, I could be here for hours, but he would climb a silo that we had, 80-foot silo, and he would climb the ladder on the outside to the top, and then he'd kind of hang off it

and just wave down at me. Because, man, that guy just had no fear. I wish I was like a tent that's fearless as him. You know what's funny though, so you said that, and you said that he'd see a keep-out sign and he'd go in, and you said, well, that's probably why I'm so conservative. Maybe in those areas, you're conservative, but I can see how you're such a risk-taker and a pioneer because so early on in your life, you adopted the internet, you saw this internet thing coming, and you took that risk. You went all in on the internet. You stopped training clients. You went all in on the internet. You went all in on coaching and consulting when it was such a new space. Even some of the business partnerships that you have, the sprayable energy, etc., you go all in and you take the risks that most people are not willing to take.

And I now see that that might be some traits that learned behavior from your dad, man. How comes that? And you know what's interesting is Warren Buffett has this saying that what he does is not risky at all. People say, oh my goodness, you just bought something for $10 billion. That's really risky. It's not risky because I know I've done my work and I have these beliefs in myself. And that was the same way I am about business. And it's probably the same way my father was. My father's like, I'm not going to fall off this thing.

I'm totally fine here. And so it's not risky when you believe in yourself and you've done the work in advance. So I think that's another way of looking at it. But yeah, I guess you're right that I probably am taking a few things from them. Now, do you ever look in the mirror and say, oh my gosh, there's my dad? I do, especially as I'm getting later in my years. I'm 43 now, and I see younger pictures of my dad. I go, holy smokes. I see so much resemblance. And when I came to visit you, I saw that picture in your house of your dad. And I just kept going back and forth from you to your dad. I mean, yeah, absolutely. And my sister did something really weird the other day. She found this app on Facebook or whatever where you can like take a look at what you're going to look like in 30 or 40 years. But then you can switch to like the other gender. and she sent me this photo and it totally freaked me out because it was my dad.

And, you know, so we're both going to end up looking like him. But, you know, in a way, it's really great because that just reminds me. I mean, you know, he had these things where he would also, you know, these rituals and routines in his day, which are very, very important for success, but also for stepping back and recovering. So about 3 o'clock in the afternoon in a sunny summer afternoon, he would go and get the paper and he'd put up this little cheesy lawn chair in the backyard and he'd sit there and he'd read the paper. And that's one of my fondest memories of him. And so this is not business related, but as parents that are listening and watching, you know,

it's those little things that are just, you know, going to remind your children of you going forward. So, you know, the big lesson there, I suppose, is something that was said at my mastermind on the weekend, which is behaviors are caught, not taught. Behaviors are caught, not taught. And so what we see our parents doing, as you can see in this podcast here today, what we've learned from our fathers was not something that they sat us down and they gave us a lecture on or anything. We tune that stuff out. But it was the way that they acted. And if you want your children to be hardworking at school, to be hardworking in their careers, to be entrepreneurs, to be big thinkers, you got to do that stuff yourself, right?

Yeah, you got to lead from the front where that's concerned. And listen, you know, I know that not all of us had amazing things. fathers. And Craig and I certainly aren't saying that our fathers were picture perfect and they were there for every moment of our life. But when you go back retrospectively and look at the lessons you've learned and the character that you've built, and I've heard you once say this before and I hope you don't mind me saying this. You said, I've learned a lot from my dad of what not to do. Oh, absolutely. Of what not to do in my life. And quite honestly, I have as well. And I love my father to pieces. He's alive and well. But the reality is that I spend more time with my kids because I

I've got that opportunity to. He came into this country. We were poor. We were broke. Didn't understand the language or culture. And so I've never thrown a ball with my dad. I've never gone anywhere that I have this fond memory of, you know, fishing or hiking with my dad.

And so those were lessons as well. So things that you might look at as pain or losses that you didn't have in your life, you ought to probably consider reliving that with your second life as a father and a son or a mother and a child or whatever relationship because at some point you're going to be the parent and you could relive that youth and I'm going to ball games with my right I took my son to the Seahawks game we're going to a lakers game sitting court side next week but the point of this and you're in the Guinness Book of World Records I'm in the Guinness Book of World Records with my son how cool is that and those are things that didn't happen with my father but I could either be resentful towards it

or I can go you know what I'm really grateful for what he did give me and the things that I didn't get I'm going to use his lessons to apply with my relationship with my kids. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, my father had some bad habits. And so I realized that, hey, you know what, I always thought he was like so smart, but I realized he really threw away a lot of his potential. And so, unfortunately, that taught me a lesson not to throw away of my potential. And so, you know, when I was young and stupid, I was drinking. But then I realized, you know what, this has got to stop. And fortunately, I did. And so it was a hard lesson that paid off in the long run. But in the end, I won't really remember those bad things. What I remember most about him is the hard work that he did, the sacrifices he made, the way that he thought about

doing things differently, and just, you know, you don't have to follow the crowd. You don't have to follow the crowd in business and school and anything. There are so many great opportunities out there for it. So use your creative mind and go on and be successful. And, you know, just general advice to parents is create those memories because that's what your kids are going to take the most from you, right? Amen. And listen, if you're going to be watching this video on YouTube, I'm very curious, what are some of the big lessons that you took away from your father, good, bad, ugly, or indifferent? What are some of the big takeaways that you got from your father that you'd like to share with us? Leave that in the comments section below. And as always, if you enjoy this podcast, please do us a huge

favor. And whether you're listening to it on SoundCloud, Stitcher, iTunes, rate it, love it, like it, share it, leave a comment. We are eternally grateful if we were able to add any value to your life as an entrepreneur with this podcast. We would love your feedback and ratings on this. And of course, thank you so much for listening, as always. We'll see you later.