Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - From Survival Mode to Building an Empire: The Real Story Behind Bedros Keuilian’s Success

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Bedros Keuilian, entrepreneur, author, speaker, founder of Fit Body Boot Camp, and creator of The Project, joins The Determined Society for a raw conversation on success, trauma, anxiety, healing, leadership, fatherhood, and becoming a better man. Bedros opens up about coming to America as an immigrant child, growing up on welfare and food stamps, being bullied, learning to reframe adversity, and building a massive fitness franchise from a place of drive and survival. In this episode, Shawn French and Bedros discuss the anxiety attack that forced him to face what success could not fix, the therapy work that helped him heal old wounds, the weight men carry in silence, why action alleviates anxiety, how trauma can create self-sabotage, and what it means to take the armor off at home. This conversation goes beyond business and into the deeper work of leadership, authenticity, family, masculinity, resilience, and becoming built for the winter. The Determined Society is hosted by Shawn French — a show for people who refuse to quit. Every episode goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the real stories behind resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of a life built on your own terms.   Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all others.. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it — and leave a review. It helps more than you know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I grew up like, must make a crap ton of money. Nothing is more important than money. And then somewhere, my like, money's great, but let's also get ourselves back into shape. But there's men out there. Their credit cards are maxed out. Their marriage is broken. What's their first move tonight? Their first move tonight is eat something healthy and go work out.

Imagine being a six-year-old boy who escaped a communist country with his family and survived by searching dumpsters behind grocery stores for food. Years later, he built a $200 million empire, founder of Fit Body Boot Camp, speaker, author, and entrepreneur. Today we have with us Bedros Kuel. One out of every four of you in this audience have had some kind of sexual abuse. That abuse you carry with you

into your relationships, into your health and fitness. There's this glass ceiling that we all press up against in our faith and our family and our fitness and our finances because we don't feel worthy. Is there any belief or truth that you held five years ago that you believed loudly? Now, just don't believe that very much any longer. Welcome back to the Determin Society.

Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. And as I listen to that introduction, I'm like, what a fascinating character this person must be. Like, truly, it's like, and I realize it's my story, but it's almost like a movie in my mind's eye because I remember every little blip as you talk about it and love to dive deeper into it.

Dude, absolutely, man. You know, everybody talks about the dumpster. Everybody quotes it, right? But I want to go deeper into the belief system of that young boy, right? Yeah. What did you actually believe about yourself? at that time and how long did that stay with you? Okay, so at that time, you got to understand that I kind of felt like I was helping the family

in a way. So I felt very valuable. Like if you were to say, give me words that described feelings in that moment, adventure, worthiness, value, because the phrase that I would hear in Armenian from my dad was, we run out of money before we run out of month. He was pumping gas at Arco gas station. He was delivering newspapers out of a, you know, the side of a van, thrown newspapers in front of people's homes at two in the morning. He was worked at a pizzeria. My older brother and older sister had multiple jobs. And so everyone's trying to make ends meet. We're on welfare.

We're on section living in section 8 housing and we have food stamps. And so for me to be able to contribute at the age of seven, eight years old, right around that age, like it felt good. I felt like I was doing something. you don't now with that also you're the foreigner you don't speak english you're just starting to learn the language right so you're getting picked on in school because you're going to a foreign school and you got a funny haircut and like you said i we found a shirt with herman munster on it from the monsters and so people were like Herman right they just like pointed at my shirt and as they pointed to me i was like yes oh you owned it bro i was called Herman at salk school

I don't know, I was there for three years and I went to a different elementary school, Walt Disney school, and then I went to a third elementary school and second and third elementary school where they started using my name. But for like three years, like I was called Herman, other than by the teachers, right? Because, you know, kids are ruthless.

Yeah. But the emotions that I felt was like, I'm worthy and I'm useful. Outside of the home, I felt like, it's funny because I'm talking about a duality of emotions. I felt fear. There was uncertainty. there was

doubt I didn't know what was going to happen because the neighborhood kids would want to beat me up the neighborhood kids would poke fun at me the neighborhood kids would tell me to go back to my own effing country you don't belong here you and your parents, your family, you guys were foreigners

my parents say you're taking all of our great American jobs and I'm thinking like delivering newspaper at 2 in the morning. Yeah, flipping pieces. Yeah, like working out of gas station. Yeah, that's that's it. That's the great American jobs. it, Davey. Yeah. So anyways, man, it was a duality of feelings, but it also helped teach me the need for money. And like anything else, like when you learn something young, the pendulum

swings the other way heavily, right? So I grew up like, must make a crap ton of money. Nothing is more important than money. And then somewhere in my like maybe late 30s, early 40s, the pendulum swung in the middle and was like, okay, some have some sense of balance of money is great. But Let's also get ourselves back into shape and have some sense of, you know, adventure in our life, be able to use this money to take the family on trips. And so it was a cool experience to grow up fiercely focused on money, but that also caused a lot of lost opportunities when I think about Andrew and Chloe's youth. Right?

Like I go through my phone, I don't have a lot of pictures of them in their youth. and I regret that. So there you go. Dude, thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Because I always go through my phone, like on a flight or something like that,

and I scroll back and I look at those memories of my children. And then I also have a lot of shame that goes along with it too because, I mean, I was very overweight and I wasn't maximizing the times like on vacations because I wasn't truly present because I didn't want to scalp my shirt. I was embarrassed. I felt a lot of shame, like I said, you know, extreme amount of shame. So, but thank you for showing that because that's a very brave thing to say as a man. We don't always come up and say things like that because we like to mask it a little bit and not like to show everybody who we, who we are and what are, I guess, certain tendencies or feelings are.

But, but man, I mean, it's, it's amazing that when you start talking about the duality, right, of at home and in, you know, in society or at school, the difference of feelings, right? empowered, adventurous, useful, a resource at school, made fun of, bullied. And I can relate, man. I can relate. And I wasn't from another country. I was always running from the gang members in the Bay Area and, you know, running from getting beat up all the time. But when you look at that, like, what psychologically, how did you navigate the duality of that, right? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of compartmentalizing. because at home my dad would be like so you know I told you my dad

pumped gas at an Arco gas station right and so next to that Arco gas station was a Alpha Beta Alpha Beta was a grocery store I don't know who it got bought out of but it apparently got bought out at some point became a Ralph Savon's a pavilion whatever the fuck it was but my dad

discovered that the back of that grocery store they had that giant dumpster and they would throw food away that was expired but hadn't gone bad and so being the smallest in the family he would kind of lift me up and like I'd climb over and into it like hey what about this dad he's like yeah yeah that'll work how about this head of lettuce yeah bring it on over how about this you know carton of eggs and so like it felt like I was contributing to the family

and then like you said then you're out and about at school and I talked to someone recently and apparently now everything's digital and so you're in the lunch line all kids are in the same lunch line whether you broke or not but I had a little plastic laminated government lunch card thing and so all of us broke foreign kids were in this one line at school and so it's very obvious you look at the basically it was like the line of losers is how everyone else saw it like our parents gave us money to buy lunch or packed our lunch your parents just gave you your plastic little card from the government and so you know that line meant you're not cool that if you're in that line in the lunch line you're not cool you're you're getting picked on but you learn to compartmentalize i would come home and just put

that away mentally the benefit i had and my therapist kevin says he goes you're a master reframer so as i say this i see i realize i'm reframing things but reframing is a good thing and we can dive into that later absolutely but i was a master reframer looking at it now dude people kids who get bullied at school now they come home they're still being bullied on their phone on social media by the can't get away from it man you can't get away from it yeah i'd come home And it was cool, man. I'd watch Knight Rider and freaking the A-Team and... So good.

Eat my bowl of cereal and make mac and cheese. You know, freaking... I was all right until the next morning, tomorrow morning, when I got to go back to school. So you learn to compartmentalize. And here's another reframe because that reframing helped me develop a superpower. In business, you know this as an entrepreneur,

the bigger the business, the bigger your problems get. New levels, new devils. And I'm a master compartmentalizer. I can, as Jocko says in his book, Extreme Ownership, I can prioritize and execute like a motherfucker. If there's five things going wrong, I can figure out what the number one thing is and ignore the other four and focus on the number one thing,

solve it, and then go on to the second thing. Third thing, through compartmentalizing. I don't dwell on, oh, my God, I got four things going wrong right now. Nope, I got to fix the number one problem to get to the number two problems to get to number three. That's great compartmentalizing, and that's a superpower. So having a fucked up childhood

gave me so many superpowers, I can't be that mad at it. No, you can't. You know, and the reason why I love this part of the conversation that's coming out now that it didn't, the previous, what was it, three years ago when we did this, is that there's somebody listening right now that can really hold on to this

and understand exactly where you're at because their kids are going through it, right? They can't run from the bullying anymore because now it's digital. It's in their face. It's Snapchat. It's TikTok. It's, you know, Instagram, Facebook, whatever the other kids are anything.

I don't know. I think there's a little. with the only apps, right? I don't know anything else. But to be able to reframe something is very important because when I asked you, very first thing I asked you about, what was your belief system?

How long did it stick with you for? You completely reframed it, right? And I think the special part about that is when you choose a perspective in a way to look at things as you did as a six-year-old boy, it's powerful. And you build, that muscle up over time so that you can compartmentalize and be efficient and knock shit out

when you need to, right? And again, that's something that I'm decent at, you know, but globally, probably not very good. I need to get better at compartmentalizing things. And I'll tell you right now, if something's going wrong or I'm stressed, you know, with the show or the business side of it, I contend to be a little bit more cranky, you know, around maybe my wife or my children. And I don't think that's a superpower at all. I think that's the weakest shit I can ever do. Sure. And so I admire the fact that you can reframe because it's important to do that. Yeah. Yeah. But also, as you said, it's a muscle and you can develop it. You can develop it, right? Greg Anderson, who's currently has, shout out to Greg Anderson, has eight more days left, eight to

10 more days left, he and two of his homies are rowing a boat from Washington State to Hawaii. That's insane. Yeah. I wrote the forward for his book. He's a former Army Ranger turned cop in 2020 during the pandemic with his cop uniform on and everything. He puts his phone up. And this guy wouldn't say shit if his mouth was full of it.

He's just like one of those great soldiers. But he was so fed up in 2020. He puts up his camera on his visor of his cop car. And he's like, you know what? I'm not going to go into small businesses anymore and stop them from running their business. I'm not going to force people to not walk in parks. I'm not

going to do all these things that the government and the opposition wants me to do. In fact, this is my resignation video. Right? My video. Yeah. Yeah, to the department. And that was it. It went, like, and he put it on his, like, personal little Instagram. It went public. And soon after that, we became friends. And recently he asked me to write the forward for his book.

But this guy coined the term, and I love giving credit where credit is due. By the way, big lesson to everyone. Like I see on social media, let's just fucking do a little side quest for a moment. Don't drown the man that taught you how to swim. Right? You learn a quote from someone. Give them credit. You saw some don't.

These motherfuckers on social media will, like, take someone else's post that did well and literally verbatim regurgitate that post. Like, can you put some fucking thought into it? Can you be introspective? Can you use some examples? From your own life, do you have to fucking take someone else a shit and act like it's yours that's just fucked up? So with that said, Greg Anderson coined the term, microdosing adversity. Ooh.

So if you want to develop the muscles of maybe tolerance against stress or you want to develop the muscles of reframing things, right, compartmentalizing things, just microdose the things that you need to do. Right? it's not a big flip of a switch. I always say most of life is like a dimmer switch. And imagine you're pushing the dimmer switch slowly up. And then it comes back down again. Some things could be a flip of a switch. Most are a dimmer switch.

And if you microdose whatever adversity you need to to develop the muscle, off we go, there we are. Like, I can come home and the world could be falling apart and I'll be a decent person to my family. I was not that way before. Yeah. That's because, and I remember feeling like, I remember telling Kevin about this. I was like, I feel like

I have roommates and not a family. Right? And Kevin, my therapist, was like, hmm, you come home with the armor on, don't you? I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, you know, you tell me like, you go to war and business because you got competitors trying to put you out of business and the other competitors get funded by $15, $20 million.

Now they're running marketing campaigns and they're outselling you and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, man, that's all frustrating. Imagine someone trying to put you out of business, Kevin, you know, but on a global level at the world, you know, that I play in. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, so you're out there slaying dragons all day long, huh? He goes, then you come home and you got your armor on. And all your family sees is like the chest plate and the helmet and the sword and the

scowl on your face. I was like, oh. I go, man, even the dog and the cat don't want to come near me when I come home. And I'm like blaming everybody, right? And he goes, describe your house to me. I go, well, it's this long, 65-yard driveway that goes down into a six-car garage, and I park on the left side and I walk. across the pool deck there are two French doors and I come in and I look around and

everyone's scurring away oh shit he's like well and as he's telling me this he's leaning back in his therapy chair and the whole like his little office was like the size of the set right right he's like leaning back and I realized oh shit I am an intense and passionate person God's give me a look that organically looks like I'm angry even if I'm happy inside yeah right and so then when all that aggression and passion comes out, it could look very threatening. And it clicked that what he's trying to tell me to do is describe your house. Why?

He goes, each time you step out of the garage and you're walking across that pool deck, I want you to imagine, metaphorically, your armor falling off of you. You took off the metal helmet. You took off the chest plate. You took off the sword. And in comes a loving dad. You put a look on your face that is inviting and not repelling. Sean

wouldn't you know it within two weeks even the dogs and the cats were starting to wait for me by the French doors hey Sean French French French doors how about that that's pretty cool man I like how you did that there very amazing poetic dude very very I mean

that could be another business if you start you're such a good hype man by the way you're my guy dude I got you man we'll we'll talk about your poems later you know you bring up something interesting because a lot of times with perspective as men, we walk into the house

and we don't know that we have the armor on. We don't know that we haven't left a proverbial, you know, what they call, or the briefcase at the mailbox, right? And so a lot of times, you know, my lovely life will say, hey, you know, what you're saying, how you're saying things right now,

you seem very frustrated, do you need a minute? I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm fine. Oh, good. Because I don't, because you don't know, you have this on. Because as a man, you're trying out there, you're trying, you know, You eat what you kill in this world, right?

That's the way it's supposed to be. And we do this all for the family. But a lot of times, that's who suffers. Yeah. Right. And there's a lot of pressure now. Going back to even social media and to piggyback off what you said about stealing people's, you know, ideas and, you know, they call them trends now. And there's so much pressure to perform on a social media platform that everybody, sorry, a lot of people.

Right. are going, oh, that's a trend. I'm going to take this and I'm going to take the sound and I'm going to write the same thing on there and I'm going to put it out that shows what I'm doing. But what they're realizing is they're taking power away from themselves and they're telling everybody that they can't stand on their own two feet

and they're going to steal somebody's content. Now they call that, well, we're just doing trends, but there's a lot of pressure and they don't get it. So for me, I'd rather be original. And it took me a long, longer time, right? But I haven't gone the trend route. I don't interview the same way as most people. I don't clip, my team doesn't clip the same way as some people do. And I just think it's important when you're building something and leading a family, your children, to show them that

you have to build your own path. And you have to be you 100% or it won't freaking resonate with anybody. Bro, people can sense authenticity and realness. They really can. There's just an energy and it's our reptilian mind, right? It's always scanning. Imagine like this. little fucking scanner, scanning for this frequency that is invalid, inauthentic, not real. The reptilian mind is designed to seek out threat. Just because we live in a modern world doesn't mean we're not scanning. Like, we can walk into a room and immediately know if, like, someone's looking me in a way that I may be getting judged.

Someone's trying to size me up. Someone's, like, it's just, it's human behavior. And so people think that, well, that's only in person. No, it's not just IRL. It's also on social media. And so you end up doing yourself a disservice because someone's like, oh, well, I just saw this person do that exact clip

on a different channel and on a different channel. So this person is just regurgitating other people's content. There's nothing authentic and real about them. They're probably not an expert of what they say they are. Because then what do we do? The brain starts jumping to conclusions. If I know this fact about you and that fact about you, I will start filling in the blanks.

So if I know that Sean French used to live in the Bay Area, now lives in Florida, right? Let's say that's all I know about you. Like, oh, I see. I bet he was sick and tired of the pandemic and all the California bullshit and the taxes. And so he left for Florida and he wants a free state because he wants to save money on taxes and he likes the politics there more than here. Well, I just made all that up. True or not, I don't know.

Maybe you're like, dude, I met my honey. She lives out there and her parents were going to watch. to kids and so that's why we went to Florida. Yeah. Or it could be, or whatever reason. But our brain is designed to fill in the gaps. So if all of a sudden I see that this guy feels inauthentic, he doesn't

feel like he knows what he's talking about, he's saying what everyone else is saying on different channels, I'm going to write you off and just say that you're not an expert of what you say you are. I was just thinking that. You know, because I see it, we see it all the time. You know, and there's there's very

little that you can do to rebound from it. Right. Right. as the actual creator that is being assumed upon or even the viewer because once you have your mind made up and you can you can see what potentially could be going on that's that's reality that's in your own perspective that's your reality you walk away from it and there's no more value you know so it's just you know to me it I just think it's tacky man you know we're going down that road here it's just it's a hacky look you know be original yeah right because again in this world right now that we're living in people are craving now and I see it happening more. I want to know your perspective on it because people are craving more authenticity. They don't want clickbait anymore. They don't they don't want any of the shit, but give it to me real. And that's what I see. I'm seeing that now. Well, I think we missed out on human connections since 2020, right? We were already working our way there anyway. But then all of a

sudden you got to isolate yourself and quarantine yourself. And it doesn't matter what state you live in, there was a high level of isolation. And we see that, the rebound of that now, because there are more signups for mud runs and high rockses and crossfit events and marathons than ever before. Running clubs are bursting at the seams now. Why? We're social creatures.

We're supposed to interact. We're supposed to have fine commonalities and shared values. Well, when we're told to quarantine ourselves and isolate ourselves and everything can be found online and we realized, no, I think I need human connection and human touch. Like it's really cool to like DM with you, but it's really fucking cool to like, you know, say hi, shake hands, a hug and fucking catch up on what's going on, right?

We just wouldn't do this on text message or a DM. It's human nature for connection. And in the absence of that, we start feeling lonely and hopeless and sad and depressed and anxious. And that's why we saw also a giant spike in the prescription of all. all these different anti-anxiety and anti-depression drugs, right? And so on social media, social media is just a metaphor,

an example of real life. And so people are like, fuck man, I'm sick and tired of these highly produced, inauthentic, fake guru, you could buy for $14 a month, you could buy the blue checkmark. You could put a thing in your bio that says, you're an expert and you're an authority at this. For a few hundred bucks, you can buy 100,000 followers

from like bots or some. Brazilian kids like some some some dude reached out to me he goes bedros this is when I only had 8,000 followers on Instagram so this is 2019 he goes bedros there's this dude he gives away an iPad he gives away an iPad and then he posts on all these different channels go follow these 10 people oh the giveaways the giveaways yeah yeah and I go who who is going to follow me so if like if I'm one of those 10 people that paid into this thing who's going to to follow me. He goes, oh, he gives an iPad to like third world kids. So they're like, they'll go follow everybody on. The fuck is a third world kid going to buy a Fit Body Boot Camp franchise.

There it is. Like, I want my free content to help these third world kids, but I don't want third world kids to follow me on social media. I want people to follow me who are going to be high intent leads, prospects, people who are going to buy shit from me, who I'm going to do business with, right? I got money to make around. Yeah, God. Damn it. So, oh, God, we're in a Christian. I just said, see, you know, I, you know, that's the thing with you, man. I mean, I'm waiting for the lightning. Yeah, exactly. All of a sudden I started like sweating. Yeah, profusely. I see that. Yeah, metabolism's going and then you are putting me in a bad situation here. We're all going to die, fellas. You're never, you're never making it back to Florida.

Oh, don't tell me that. I'm kidding. I got shit to do, man. No, no, no, you do. You're going to get their just to. All right. So all driving me. Yeah. Yeah. The truth is that we need more human connection, authenticity, and the pendulum swung one way, fake and bullshit. You remember when every chick was like posting today is shoulder and and bicep day but the camera was set from like the booty angle yeah it's like uh i can't see your shoulder workout because all i see is your ass with those shit that doesn't fit and it looks like a dental floss has been wedged up your ass right that's it and so like and then they would do what then it would add filters to that and they would do the editing i don't know what was it airbrushing or where the fuck uh yeah i'm just naturally handsome so don't have to do

No, no, there's no way you can modify this any better. Don't touch your thing. I won't. But now you start seeing videos like, oh, hey, with great lighting and modification, I look like this, but look at me now. They let their stomach out and whatever. Like, people want to see real authenticity. And that, that's it.

If you could do that and actually have an original thought, because you do. We have 80,000 thoughts a day. If you actually put your phone down and start being introspective, surely like 10 of those thoughts could be worthy of sharing on social media through some story and metaphor that would add value to someone's life and maybe transform the way they think and operate and feel and damn but they don't because they're like oh well Sean just posted something and it went viral I'm gonna cut and paste basically the same thing and that doesn't work because if it went viral I already saw Sean's thing and now I see your thing it's not going to go it's not going to go and it's not yours

it went it grew legs and ran because it was done from a place of creativity and love yeah from radiance yes from radiance yes god puts that orb of light in our heart in our chest and he says this is your radiance and like a fingerprint it's unique and authentic to you and if i try and mimic your radiance it will never work yeah it's interesting because you said do you remember when like did it ever stop i mean it's still there they're still happening yeah and you know but but again you know what that's that's the world we're living in right man yeah and we don't have to subscribe to that we can be original we can do our own thing and that's the thing that i really love about, you know,

knowing you for these years and, and seeing you on socials, you're, you're always going off of what you believe. You know, you're not ever piggybacking off of anybody. I do my best not to do that either. I won't copy content or strategies from, you know, the massive shows. We don't run the same play,

but yet I see everybody, everybody, again, a lot of people. You speak in absolutes. Yeah, I know. Isn't that bad shit? And then you go back. Then I go back. And then you correct yourself. See, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, you know, awareness, awareness, right? They're doing the same slide posts in the same format as another popular podcast.

Like, look, guys, it's not the format. It's what that person built. It doesn't matter. They could put out an emoji with a turd on it and their picture on it with whatever writing they want. It would still run. Do you see my point? It's different, man. But, you know, the leadership qualities that you gained as a young child, you know,

coming over from Armenia with your parents and contributing to the household, man, you've built some amazing things, you know, $200 million empire, 800 locations, fastest growing, you know, extra fitness franchise in America, fit body boot camp. Shout out to that, right? Yep. But at 38. Yeah. You had everything, right? You had all, you know, you're successful, you're crushing it. But at 38, you had what you thought was going to be a heart attack. And it wasn't. It was the first of very many anxiety attacks, take me back to that 38-year-old man on the floor in that room. Yeah, yeah. So I'll set the scene for your audience. And in my book, Man Up, the title of that chapter is called The Morning of My Heart Attack. And it's because in that moment,

I really thought I was having a heart attack. So Sunday night. So I told you, I'm down the driveway. It's a, what do they call it, a detached building. It's a six-car garage, above the six-car garage. Yeah, we get it, dude. Your house is freaking big. It is very big. It's beautiful. It's luscious. Yeah. It's like this amazing resort.

And I work my nuts off and so I will brag about it. You deserve it. He deserve it. Absolutely. But this guest house up top. And in the bedroom of the guest house, my son and I have all of our musical instruments. And I grew up playing the drums. And so Sunday night, I was playing the drums.

And I went across the pool deck and I took my shoes off in the guest house and I play the drums barefoot. When I went back into the main house later that night, I left my shoes up there. It's important to tell you this because Monday morning, it's go time. Can't find your shoes. Got to build that empire. Can't find your shoes. Where are my shoes? Oh my God, they're upstairs.

So I go across the pool deck, ready to go to work, in my socks, go across the pool deck, bend over, grab my shoes, and as I, before even come up, I literally dropped my knees, and I'm hyperventilating and I hear the thug-lug-thug-lug-thug-thug-thug-lug-thug-lug in my ears as though my heart is beating really fast. and then my throat gets tight, and then I'm sweating, and then both arms are tingling. And I remember from, like, a first aid class

that I took in 19-fucking 32, that you, you, you're, one of your arms tingle when you're having a heart attack. I think it's a light hand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, this must be a really fucking big heart attack

because both are tingling, right? You're an overachiever. And in that moment, bro, I'm thinking, like, this is so sad. I'm going to die. My family's going to find me here in the guest house in the evening, because I'm going to be like,

dad never came back from work. Turns out he never left. He died in the guest house. And I remember feeling sad because not because I was what I thought I was dying. I remember feeling sad. Who's going to walk Chloe down the aisle? She was a tiny little puppy then when I was 38. I'm 51 now.

And who's going to teach Andrew to be a modern day night, right? Like that's my responsibility. And I failed my family. And so in that moment I'm like, well, I can't die in the guest house. Like they can't find me all fat and bloated and that'll be traumatic for my family. So I was like, I'm going to take, go down the staircase and maybe I'll die on the pool deck and they'll see me in the next hour or so like that's the weird shit that runs through my head as I was I don't know if it was the fresh air or the movement but I somehow managed to go down the staircase

and all of a sudden all those symptoms slowly went away I'm like well I think I just dodged a heart attack wow and so I went to work because like literally at this point we're in debt we've maxed out credit cards took a home equity line of credit right all of it and so it's not like I'm the version of myself now financially what do they call it asset rich cash poor I was asset rich very cash poor. And so went to the doctor the next day, and the doctor's like, well, dude, we check you. No heart attack. Your heart's fine.

How's your stress levels? I'm like, horrible, right? Horrible. I'm taking Adderall in the morning. I'm taking Vicodin at night to fall asleep. Like, I just let it rip. I'm a very honest and direct person in that way. And he goes, well, you're going to have more of these unless you can do something about it.

So he puts me on Xanax, right? Four or five days on Xanax. And turns out, after having that big anxiety attack, I really, realized I was having like micro panic attacks months building up to this I just thought it's just pressure it's just pressure again the whole reframing thing right like a couple of a couple of Advils are good for your headache the whole handful of Advil you're gonna burn a hole in your stomach exactly so I could reframe the hell out of anything but at some point you can't reframe to the point of denial and so I would reframe and be like I'm just I just feel

the pressure that's all this is this is just work pressure bro I was having micro anxiety attacks and didn't even realize it until the macro anxiety attack hit and so in that moment I realized oh shit I've been having these for a while this was just the big one so he puts me on Xanax four or five days and I felt no stress no anxiety after that but in those four or five days I felt no desire no urgency no agency to get up and work to produce to be creative so I'm like hey doc this isn't working what other medication do you have for me right and he goes they're all going to make you some sort of the same way they're going to make you feel dull right he goes have you tried talk therapy

like talk therapy he goes yeah good psychologist can give you tools to work on your anxiety like that's for broken people man you should actually try it so fine I found a therapist Kevin Kevin yeah yeah and so what I thought was going to be four weeks of working with Kevin

because he goes hey it'll be four weeks I'll give you all these tools to deal with your anxiety something your audience should know halt hungry angry lonely tired when you are feeling halt hungry angry lonely tired the alcoholic will go back to alcohol or has a higher chance of going back to alcohol. The drug addict will go back to drugs. The workaholic will go back to an anxiety attack. So just address your halt, right?

And the other thing he taught me was action alleviates anxiety. So you're feeling a little tension and anxious about something. It's probably something, a conversation you need to have, a thing you need to do that you're not doing, you're kicking the can down the road, and action will alleviate that, right? And then he taught me that anxiety is anticipation of future pain. And so like if you know there's a Bill, you got to pay and you're like, oh, I'm not going to pay it right now. I don't have, I'd rather spend money on whatever. You know the bill collectors are going to contact you. You're going to be anxious about that, right? It's inevitable.

Yep. And so action will alleviate that. And so he taught me those three lessons. Majority of my anxiety went away. On the fourth session of my time with Kevin, he's like, I'm signing the credit card slip. And he goes, is there anything else you want to talk about? you know, maybe your childhood, your parents, you know, everyone's parents fucked them up in some way. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, Kevin, you know, mom and dad were former communists, but we came to this country.

You know, they're really heavy-handed, you know, very physically abusive. I didn't even know what physical abuse was. I would, true story, when one of the Section 8 housings we lived in in Anaheim, so it's when we moved from Santa Ana, which is right here, to Anaheim, a nicer Section 8 housing complex. I had a friend, my first American friend named Scott. American, I should say my first white friend. Most of my friends in San Ana were Mexican. My first white friend, Scott.

And one day I knock on Scott's door. Hey, Scott, can you come out and play? He's like, no, man, I'm on restriction. The fuck is restriction, right? At this point I'm like 10 and 11 years old. I'm like, what's restriction? He goes, I got in trouble. I can't watch TV and I can't come out and play with you guys for two weeks.

I'm like, oh my God. That's horrible. That's horrible. And then innocently I was like like what happened? He goes out whatever it was he left left the stove on I didn't know it had to do with the stove or the burner And he almost burned the apartment down. Yeah I'm like can your mom and your dad like slap you a couple times hit you because that's called abuse Like oh shit. I'd rather get slapped around for something and then go out and play

Then deal with your consequences of two weeks of sitting in like solitary confinement and Right and so that was my first like wow these Americans that live very differently. They really punish their kids. You know, so I'm telling Kevin this. He goes, wait a minute, physical abuse was not punishment to you? I'm like, nah. I got to go out and play all my friends.

The only problem was when you're on restrictions, that means I can't play with your toys. Yeah. And being a foreigner and broke, I got no toys. So if you guys are on restriction, I'm fucked, I gotta play with dirt. Yeah. Until you bring out your G.I. Joe's,

you bring out your He-Man, and you bring out your skateboard. And so anyways, all that to say, I'm like, Kevin, the physical beatings I got from my dad were nothing compared to what happened to me as a kid. in those four weeks he built such rapport with me that for the first time ever in my life

I dropped a hint that there was some other abuse that took place that was even worse and the beatings my dad would give me my dad's beatings were so severe that my mom would sometimes throw herself in watch a UFC fight and fucking the ref like

John McCarthy would jump in the middle yeah big John McCarthy jumps in between because motherfuckers gone scene and he's just a beat the fuck out of the guy and the guy can't even defend himself anymore right yeah like my mom was John McCarthy before John McCarthy was a thing right yeah because my dad would fucking lose it lose it and so she would get in between us and fucking

pull them off and I'd run to the bathroom fucking locked the door and like okay come to shoot down you got this it's happening he's gonna fall asleep and you're gonna sneak out you know you're gonna everything's gonna be good and and but I share this with you because I'm telling this to Kevin he goes wait what happened to as a kid that was worse than those beatings I just started bawling and crying man and this started 15 months of weekly therapy about the sexual abuse that I had faced and experienced as a young boy in Armenia between the ages of four and six

I was by two older boys repeatedly repeatedly in like a carport and that I had never talked about that and I had carried the weight of that dude you had it locked away in a chamber in your mind for 30 plus years too yeah no one that's heavy as shit no one and I realize now it was the equivalent of if if I put well he's really buff all of you are really buffing room if I gave you guys a big burlap bag of fucking cinder blocks to hold over your shoulder now let's all go outside and we're gonna sprint I'm not gonna hold the bag of cinder blocks just you four are I'm pretty sure I'm gonna win the fucking race

because that same bag of cinder blocks is gonna be pretty heavy you down man right I've been trying to live life with the weight of that the shame the guilt the confusion the anger and so fucking Kevin lied to me he said in four weeks he'd help me with my anxiety. 15 months later, he took a lot of my money and helped and truly healed me. And that's why I'm so grateful for him. And to this date now, I've sent 81 different men to him. 81.

81 different men, guys who went through the project, guys who just reach out to me because they'll hear podcasts like this, like, hey, I follow you and I listen to the podcast with Sean French. What was the name of your therapist? Do you think he's, sure, man, let me make a connection, right? That's cool, man. Yeah. So, and then when you heal from that kind of stuff, you realize the shame, the rage, the

The guilt all that goes away the guilt was simply like did I do something to Invite those older boys to take advantage of me to do this to me like My fucked up your little brain can't process that your child brain right? Yeah, and so you're like maybe I did something to To invite that maybe I'm gross maybe I deserve yeah Yeah dude no one can find out who's gonna want to marry me if if right? Who's gonna want to date me? Who's gonna want me? Who's gonna want me to be around their kids? Like oh my god, I had a pact with myself because I had heard as a as a as a a young adult that kids who have been boys who have been or or any kind of sexual abuse but I share this with you man because I had a pack with myself that if I had heard that boys or men that have been sexually abused can become sexual predators and my pack was I was afraid

to have kids I had a pack with myself and so I'm telling this to Kevin he's like you've lived your whole a fucking adult life this way I go yep yep um He goes, wow, that's a hard way to live, huh? Yeah. He goes, did you ever have any desire to do that? I'm like, nope. You know, more of a helicopter dad and Victor and would rather, like, my kids' friends come and stay with us

because I don't trust their parents and, right? I go, again, the pendulum swung the other way. Right? He goes, yeah, that's such a harsh way to live, don't you think? Well, that price around yourself? I was like, yeah, he goes, if you spend some time together, we can work through this, like we work through anxiety.

And because he had proven to me that he can help me processed through my anxiety I believed that he could help me process through this it didn't take four weeks it took 15 months a lot of fucking painful work and layers and layers of old shit and belief systems and stories and identity being peeled off

and then one day at a Joe Polish event it was like two years after working with him uh Joe Polish was running a genius network event I was in his mastermind by the way one of the greatest connectors of all time Joe Polish like he can connect you to anyone on the planet. So I was in his mastermind. After about three years being in his mastermind, he's like, dude, I'd like you to speak on leadership, like how you grew Fit Body Boot Camp and your

leadership team, because you tell me you don't really do much at the corporate office in terms of the day-to-day work. I'm more of a visionary, right? And so Tony Robbins was up. So, like, Joe was opening it up. It's his event. And then Tony Robbins, and then I was like the second speaker. And this is, I don't know, nine years ago, 10 years ago. And I didn't have as many speaking under my belt as I do today so I'm getting miced up in the AV table in the back of the conference from like 300 high-level entrepreneurs and Tony Robbins is on stage with this big giant mitten hands like you know slapping his hands and talking about like what was the thing that he was saying I was getting all hyped up and the AV guys like hey fucking stand still so I can mic

you up he was saying oh um don't be built for the summer be built for the winter right he was ending his talk because I was about to go up. He's like, so basically the lesson of my talk is don't be built for the summer. Anyone can thrive in the summer and spring be built for the winter. I was like, yeah, fucking Tony Robbins, right? I'm just because I'm a big fan, man. Of course, yeah. And so, and I'm fucking nervous.

Like, my butt holes puckered and, like, I'm going to go on stage. And so I'm like, hey, man. So Joe wants me to talk about leadership and how we grew FitBody boot camp into the Inc. 5,000, Inc. 500, Inc. 500, Entrepreneur Magazine's 200 Fasts, going franchises. Like, we were just hitting all these fucking records with FitBody. And so here I am. And then as I look around, I'm like, I realize like you're all multimillionaires. You guys don't even need to learn leadership.

I needed to because I was a horrible leader and I couldn't afford a leader to bring on a leader. Here's my leadership talk to you guys. Go recruit a leader, a good leader from a competing company by paying them more and maybe giving them some stock options. And then you don't have to become a better leader. You become the visionary and that's that. Now let's talk about something different. I was as a kid. and literally just came out of my mouth.

Wow. And then one out of every four of you in this audience have had some kind of sexual abuse. Those are the stats, by the way. That abuse you carry with you into your relationships, into your health and fitness. There's this glass ceiling that we all press up against in our faith and our family and our fitness and our finances

because we don't feel worthy. And I can tell you that it wasn't until after I did the healing work that I finally got abs. I've always been big and strong. It looks good in a T-shirt. but I'm telling you man after working with Kevin for those 15 months people were like dude you look lighter you look more like radiant finally I hit my goal of like 12% body fat now I'm 51 and I've got abs in my in my 30s I couldn't get abs right because I would just get close to my goal and then self-sabotized get sick get late you know get too busy something

always happening relationship was always almost there but then it wasn't then something would go wrong Business was almost always there, but then something would go wrong. And that's because when you are carrying that burlap bag of zinder blocks and you feel like you're a piece of shit, you, because it's all in the shadows, right? It's all in the shadow work. You don't feel worthy of the love and the abundance that God or the universe wants to grace you with. And so I'm just talking about that. I'm like one out of every four of you, and I'm seeing grown men and women squirming in their seats,

one of them being Dean Graciosi. And he's cool with me talking about this because we're talking. after we hugged each other and cried in the green room uh he's talked about this on podcast openly um but he's like bro that happened to me as a kid oh man i've done fucking stupid shit in my life i'm like amen to that brother i get it and uh he goes where do i start i'm like let me introduce you to kevin very cool you know he ended up getting his own therapist and and working and with him and now he's got a beautiful family and he doesn't self-sabotage and he and tony have you know the uh zenith Mastermind together and many of my coaching clients are in that group as well but I share this with you man because it's like this glass ceiling will break if you start doing the healing work the healing work is painful it's ugly it takes long after you sit with your therapist you feel worse

You feel worse hurts I've never had cancer but I've heard you know you hear about cancer patients say like after the after chemo they're exhausted for a few days right like the radiation and the fucking chemotherapy drugs almost feel worse for the next few days than the cancer itself That is what healing from sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse. People think, you know, Pedro, I'm so sorry you had sexual abuse. I was only beaten by my parents. Bro, the same part of our brain lights up. The fight or flight system lights up whether you're physically, mentally, emotionally abused. Right?

So just get the healing done. And then it worked for me, and that's why I become an advocate of it, that I could talk about it now and it doesn't weigh on me. What was a mountain on the timeline of my life is now just a tiny little speed. bump and that's it see that's amazing and there's so many things to dive into there i'm i'm gonna pick uh one or two that's very powerful yeah to speak about first and foremost i think most men can feel exactly how you're feeling like almost getting there they don't know if you remember but when we met three years ago yeah i was probably 30 40 pounds heavier um i would start getting in

better shape and then i would get sick or i would get stressed or we go on vacation or i'd get an argument with my wife or have a fight with a friend and then all of a sudden I relate on that that nasty word called motivation to get me to move my fat ass to do anything and it never worked I kept going backwards and never really pulling forward and I also noticed that the show was staying stagnant in certain ways and so in 2024 I walked into a room ran into my buddy Jeff Delaney I could even look at him in a face he owns multiple testosterone clinics a weight loss company, everything.

I couldn't look at him. And then he came up to me, he's like, we good? Hey, man, I'm just struggling. I need help. And then from that point on, I have done the work. I have focused on my nutrition. I have focused on the resistance training. I have started to heal some of the things with my past.

I was never, not that I'm aware of, it hasn't triggered in my chamber yet if I was abused in the way you were. But there's a lot of emotional things as a youth, you know? My biological father left when I was little. I never really knew him. And I can only remember certain things early in childhood. And then after nine years old, I didn't see him until I tracked him down when I was 30 before I moved to Florida. And I'm almost 48 now, right?

So I think that's powerful because it gives a peek behind, like what could be going on with somebody that's just almost there, but can't quite get there. There's something that you need to deal with. And I always say this. It's the one thing. There's one thing typically that's so big that someone has to work through and heal from in order for them to excel to the next level. And for me, it was the worthiness of feeling like I can be in better shape. I can do this.

I always thought I wasn't allowed to. I wasn't good enough. I had so much shame, right? And so I love that. That is insane, insanely true. Would you like me to channel my inner Kevin Downing for a second? Psychoanalize my ass. Let's do it. Well, this is, I'm just talking because I've been around him so long, I'm like, what would Kevin say right now?

You said you've, you had these feelings of not being good enough, of shame, right? You know, having your dad abandoned you. That's what happens. That's what it was. You were abandoned. Probably neglected, building all the way up to the point of abandonment, and then abandoned. of the one man who had the responsibility to fill the hole,

the only hole in a young man's heart that can be filled by anyone is not by a mom or older brother or a mentor that's a male is by a dad. So when you're abandoned and neglected building up to that, you start feeling maybe I'm not good enough to be around. Maybe I'm not good enough for him to go,

that's my son. That's my fucking spawn. Yep. Right? Yep. And so if you don't feel good enough there, you probably won't feel good enough in other areas of your life. But you've either started doing the work or you've done the work or you've acknowledged

the work you need to do. And so as you start healing from that, you were good enough. That fucker missed out on a fucking really awesome dude. Yeah, man. And three years ago, I got to meet a great guy and, like, today you're even seem more comfortable and with it in your own skin. And you've made 10 years of transformation

into three years that I've known of you, right? Thank you, man. And it's simply because it starts with awareness. Like, okay, something's wrong. Something's wrong. And once we see something, we can't unsee it. Once we become aware of something, we can't become unaware of it. From that point on, it is like if I'm just pestering you, like Chinese water torture.

Like sooner or later, it's going to burst through. It's going to burst, man. Yeah. And so that's what it is. Like once I realized, like, there was this weight that I was carrying of no one could know what happened to me. And there might be a monster that lives in me. And I'm not worthy. And that's why these two older boys did this.

to me. Like they could tell that I wasn't worthy. We could have done it to anyone else, but they did it to me. Like the stories that we start conjuring up, we tell ourselves a story. So I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable. I'm broken. I probably did something to instigate that and attract that. So that's a story based on an experience, right? And then you go through life looking for evidence to make that story true. In any situation. In any situation. And then that reframe in the negative way. Absolutely. You might go, hey, Bezos, what's And I'm like, the fuck didn't mean by that. Yeah.

Like what I mean, what's up? What's up with you, bro? Yeah. And you're like, no, buddy. I'm just saying like, what's up? What's going on? Yeah. But if I haven't done the healing work, I'm like, aha, he's challenging me.

Uh-huh, he's like, oh, he's trying to see if he's doing better than me in life. Yep. No, my buddy from three years ago is just like, hey, Bairdus, what's up? What's up, man? I haven't seen a lot. Yeah. Why wouldn't it be? It's the lens that I bring it through.

Yeah, man. It's not your tone. It's the lens that I bring it through. reinforce that story and when we find evidence or manufacture evidence because you will always find what you're looking for in life then that becomes our identity. So you're like, how do I change my identity? Change the fucking story. You change the story.

You find evidence like, yeah, I'm a pretty fucking likable guy. And you know what? Turns out I do have great genetics. I know it because I'm on a tiny dose of TRT and I take BPC and TB 500 and at 51 I fucking work out twice a day. I do jiu-jitsu and I'm fucking in better shape than I was. my 20s and 30s. I've told myself, I've sold myself on the idea

that I have great genetics. And because of that, I find evidence for it everywhere. And it's become my identity. In my 60s and my 70s, I will have abs. With loose skin hanging, probably. That's okay. I don't get fuck. Yeah, why not?

It's okay. Hey, man, we all get old, right? We all get old. Control it, 75. And it's the identity. And it's backed by a story. And people forget to change the story. And they live to that story and the narrative

for fucking decades. And it's like, bro, take this pen back and start rewriting in your book of life what the actual new story could be. And for people, you know, I would challenge people, you know, and even, because like we can sit here and say, that's all you have to do, right? It's find a different perspective, reframe it. It's a heavier lift. Sure. When you go from, I'm not good enough to, like, convince yourself that you are. And it's harder and it's more emotional.

But through it all, it's necessary. And there's certain amounts of healing that have to take place. and through healing lead, in your situation, you started an NVK project. Yeah. Right? And you've been a leader for so many men that come to the project and really go through the warrior side of it. And again, last time we talked, we talked about the inner advocate and inner critic, right? But there's also external advocates and external critics.

And I am an external advocate of you. I know the narrative. I know your intentions. I even know the guy yelling at everybody. at the MDK project. But the critics will say that someone's going to pay five figures to go to this, get screamed at by a former seal or whatever, and, you know, that the MDK project is preying on vulnerability to become a man.

What would you say to that, to that? It's funny, man. Ten years ago, I would have been like, you're absolutely wrong. These are men who have either, you know, former military or high-level entrepreneurs, or former police and firefighters, they've gone through some level of trauma in their life. They don't wanna work with the therapist, and I'm not professing that we're therapists,

but I'm telling you right now, this is where they're gonna find a brotherhood, a mission, a sense of purpose, and a community of like-minded men who wanna grow in their faith, family, fitness and finance, and I help them make more money while the Navy's sealing, the Marine break them down and build them back up, and we could teach them rules for life

and get them off the drugs and the alcohol and whatever that they don't wanna address publicly. Today, I'm like, you have a right to your opinion. I love that. And again, that's the answer. I thought you were gonna get, but I wanted the audience to really see how powerful that was because we can defend things all the time.

And that shows a massive, massive weakness. You know, one of the YouTube channels that really did a great job in squatting, like took a deep Asian squat and shat all over me and the project is a channel that my son subscribes to. Penguin Zero Zero or whatever's account is. Okay. funny, entertaining guy.

Seven million subscribers. Wow. Right? Seven million subscribers. And my son's like, Dad, this guy's shitting on the project. Oh, my God. Like, all the stuff he's saying is so untrue. He's like, oh my God, he's saying you guys, you guys call yourselves alpha mail. I know you hate the word

alpha mail. We've never want, we don't use it on the website. We don't use it to the project. I never consider myself an alpha male. If someone's an alpha male, you'll just get a sense for it. And you'll want to, it's because they have a sense of who they are and where they're going and you're like, you know what, I like this guy's energy. They don't talk about it.

No, they're not going to beat their chest about it or whatever. But I'm like, son, don't sweat it. You like this guy's like, he's like, I'm not subscribed from the channel. No, son, you like their shit. In fact, I subscribe to the channel. Right, to the guy's channel. Because he actually speaks a lot of truth about the Epstein files and all this stuff. But guess what?

He has to create content two long-form videos a day, not a week, a day for 7 million subscribers. The guy monetizes like a motherfucker. Wow. So I became a piece of content. for him. And then when Sean Ryan had me on his show, we ended up getting four dudes into the project. Two of the dudes told me, I'll never mention their names, told me in person afterwards that had it not been for the project, I was going to fuck myself. And so, look, some people are going to hate me. Some people are going to love me. Same for you. The old version of me once,

like, don't you see I'm a good guy? Don't you see I'm a good guy? Now I'm like, you have a right to your opinion. Yeah, absolutely. Good for you. Absolutely. I just remember seeing it and I just kind of chuckled at it. Yeah. They don't understand the intent, right? They don't see the back. And I know, I know dudes that have gone through it and said it was the worst, but best week of their life.

Yeah. I mean, it looks horrible. I mean, it really, really does. And, but I mean, you know, in anything in life, when you're trying to build something, let's talk about a body. Don't you have to break it down first? Absolutely. Don't you have to break it down to the base level of like just hell?

And you build it back up. It's the same thing with anything, man. You just have to go through those things. you know and again you know what it is what it is you're entitled to your opinion that's it look i've learned long ago again through kevin i feel like i'm a walking infomercial for kevin downing yeah i mean you're you're plugging him man that's your homie yeah yeah yeah he taught me this lesson long ago and he taught me to me recently like it's literally is a month and a half ago because i went in to see him for a two two hour session now i do two hours sessions with him less frequent

but now i'm going there with intent Kevin these are the things that are irritating me, bothering me, and I feel like I'm hitting my head against the wall. Can I have a two-hour session? Yes. And I'll go and pay him. And for two hours, we just chew the fat. And he gives me insight. But I learned this long ago, and I learned it again recently. In an argument with a business partner or a friend or a spouse, we might go, well, I think this is what you meant. So first of all, I'm going to interpret what you think, right? You're like, don't tell me how I feel, right? You've probably heard that from your wife or a business partner or a friend. So I've learned to not tell people how they feel.

I'm like, hey, through my lens, it seems like this is how you feel. But I now realize that's not how you feel. And I'm sorry for that. But it seems like that's how you feel. And so I responded to what I thought you were feeling, right? Because sometimes we'll anticipate their feelings and this is probably what they need to hear. The other thing is to help make them, I need you to understand my point of view. I need my business partner.

I need the wife. I need, I need the friend. Understand my point of view. No, no. Kevin says, just give them a different experience. He told me that recently. He goes, just give them a different experience. Instead of going, no, that's not what I meant.

This is what I meant. Bro, the entire country is divided between Democrat and Republican. They will hang their hat on fucking Joe Biden sniffing people and his kid fucking snorting cocaine in the White House on the 4th of July no matter what, right? They're not about to be like, well, you know, he's sniffing little kids and his son's fucking snorting crack and coke and the fucking thing. And so I'm going to be Republican. No, if those two worlds can't fucking come together,

you think I'm gonna be able to educate you into seeing things my way. No, I just give you a different experience. How about I go, you know what, Sean? I get that's how you feel. And while I can respect it, I don't agree with it. So can we just move on and be friends? And you'd be like, holy fuck, he made me feel understood,

but he's not trying to be like, I need you to understand my perspective. Yeah, yeah, I think with anything like that, you know, it's important to hear somebody out and maybe kind of, maybe not agree, but have an idea of how they were feeling, right? Instead of just attacking or assuming and we're walking away from it completely. Right.

But there's also a lot of people, too, that won't grow a pair and have those conversations. Right. And that's hard. Because you know what? In those moments, if I'm sitting here and me and you, right, we have an issue and I'm not willing to talk to you. And you are left with the assumption, right? And so it takes two people who are willing to communicate in order to bring it back together. And it's just like you said, you gave the example about the country, this side and that side.

There has to become an understanding that we all live in the same country. Spoil alert for all you people. But we all live the same country. We love our freedom here. It means something. It's different than any other country. And we are the youngest country, by the way. But we are the most free.

And if we can't sit there and understand a difference of opinion, what in the fuck are we doing? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, going to the country, by the way, how crazy is it? I believe this is where I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on for a moment and say that by design, they want to separate it and segregate it in as many factions as possible. You know, blue states, red states, Republican, Democrat, love the police, hate the police. Believe in the vaccine. Don't believe in the vaccine.

Because all the different ways, abortion, not abortion, or what is it, right, right to, whatever the fuck it is. Right? Right to life, not a right to life. Because the more they can keep us separated, the better they can have control and compliance over us. Like if I want control and compliance over anyone, we did this at the project. We take away their watch. We black out all the clocks in my gym, in the vans that we carry them in. Everything's blacked out. They're hooded.

They have no idea if it's daytime or light time when we're driving them to Newport Beach for Ray to put them through, Ray, the Navy Steel, put them through water torture. When we take away your sense of time, direction, and start isolating you, you become much more compliant of a human. And we do this in three days, the project. Imagine when the system, the opposition, does it over time using media, both CNN and Fox, using television,

using movies, the university, school systems, churches, churches, all messages are disseminated through churches and all those other platforms that I mentioned, social media. And if they can keep us separated and enemies, they will have greater sense of control and compliance. The moment we unite as a country,

we are more powerful. And we can easily unite and still say that, you know what, I believe that you have the right to bear arms, but I don't think I'm into guns, which, by the way, I am. I love guns. But we can be friends and be like, hey, cool, man. You can have the First Amendment and the Second Amendment.

I'm just cool with the first. I think we should limit guns, but I also understand that our country is the freest because of that. I just wish there was like and still get along. That's unity. We don't have to be on the same page, but we can still have unity. Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be difference of opinions, right? And I think the problem now is there's one truth for everybody.

Like nothing else to be true. And see, that's the problem, right? Right, right. Oh, you nailed it. You nailed it. There's one truth. One truth. Which is funny because if you were to be like, hey, where's home?

for you Chino Hills how far 35 minutes and I'd be like bro if you want to get my car we can go there five different ways right off top of my head I could think of through Carbon Canyon through 91 through the toll roads with the beautiful hills 241 I could think of three ways off the top of my head right now that there's no one way to get to Chino Hills there's no but we all believe there's one truth you nailed it if there was like anything to this whole episode it should just be a solo episode you can just cut all of my shit out and just be like there's one truth and everyone believes there's one truth I can't watch it out man I appreciate

Come on now, dude. But the moment we all realize that maybe we could all have a truth and still be friendly and unite, maybe as a family, as a community, and as a country, at that point we would be able to overthrow the opposition. But until then, this is how we live. There can be two truths,

because everybody has their own truth and that needs to be respected. Speaking of that, question for you, is there any belief or truth that you held five years ago that you believed loudly, that now that you've quietly just don't believe that very much any longer. Geez.

Yeah. I get beat up on this on my podcast in the comment section a lot on YouTube of my podcast. I believe there's a higher power. I believe there's a God. There's universal consciousness to Bratman connection, something. I don't know if Jesus is the way.

I don't know if Allah is. the way. I don't know if Buddha is the way. I don't know if the Quran is the way. I don't. I do know that in times of like near death, we instinctively all shout, oh God, why do we ask for help instinctively from a higher power? So that's within, again, the radiance, right? And so people are like, Pedro, you share such great content. You've transformed my life. You help my marriage. You've helped my business. Like, if you just believe in Jesus, you'll go to heaven. And then I go, Listen, Dr. Laura Slessinger. Let me tell you about Dr. Laura Slesinger.

She is a Jew. She is a therapist. And she was on KFI AM 640. It's still an active radio station here in L.A., L.A. County. She's retired now. But she was a radiotherapist, right? Had written many books. One of the books that she wrote was the proper care and feeding of a husband.

It was written for women, the proper care and feeding. feeding of a husband and spoiler alert I was just like basically like give him food when he says he's not thinking about anything actually believe him men know how to just have a blank mind women don't all the wires are connected with us and then it was not very smart give him food make love to him and then when he says he's not thinking anything actually believe him don't ask him what's on your mind but I share this with you because when I was a young man in my late teens 17 18 19 years old home invasion robberies, carjackings, police helicopter chase, right, by the Anaheim Police Department,

and then they caught us in Buena Park at a gas station, cornered our... We caught you? Yeah. Oh, that was you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was the getaway driver at that particular time. And I was like, guys, as soon as I fucking stop at this gas station, we're all going to jump out of the car and run and go, off we go.

The cops were far smart than that. So you can't get away from the helicopter, and the cops are just slow speed chasing you. And there's a radio. You cannot run that, right? Yeah, yeah. And so I pull over. They jam their bumpers into my front doors. And so we're stuck.

We're trying to jump out of the windows. By the time you jump out of the window, they're dragging you out and step up on your neck. So I was that guy. But while I would carjack, and we would strip the cars down and sell the parts to auto body shops who would claim that they would buy that bumper from the car dealership,

but really charge your dealership price, but then you stole them parts to fix your car, and then so we'd make some money. So I'm carjacking doing home invasion robberies as a young little shit bag I don't know if it was guilt. I don't know if it was God but something would afterwards I would listen to KFIM 640 right and I would always listen to the Dr. Laura show and she would have callers callers callers would call in with their life problems the call screener would screen the call make sure it's like a worthy question because it needs to be entertaining and then Dr. Laura would answer it right like one of the things she taught

my dad never left but he was otherwise negligent and unavailable mentally emotionally it was as good as leaving and one of the things dr laura said to a caller some dude calls he's like man my dad was absent out of my life my wife's pregnant with with with with our boy it's going to be our first boy i don't know what kind of how to be how to be a father to a young man i don't know how to be a father period i never had a father son relationship that i'd actually go stop stop stop stop stop he goes what she was okay so you had a bad father and son relationship yeah Like I don't know how to be well you have a second chance at a father and son relationship so like learn to be a better dad Here's some books I recommend and then you like you have a second chance of like healing yourself

He's like oh fuck that's right sometimes we have a second chance by becoming the father at this time instead of the son right But living vicariously through our sons in a way so dr. Lora is like healing people bro She's literally made me start I learned about karma through the dr. Laura show Yet people would periodically call they would lie to her call screener because she would openly talk about being a Jew and they would lie to her call screener and then when she's like, all right, this is Dr. Lori, you're live on the air. How can I help you? Like, you're a fucking Jew.

You're going to hell. You should believe in Jesus, right? Whatever. And I'm not pro-Jew, pro-Christian, pro-any. I'm just saying, like, that lady stopped me from being a criminal shitbag. All she would do for a decade that I would listen to her show is help people on the radio. How is she going to go to hell?

Sean, I just can't process. How's she going to go? to hell. Now, a good Christian will say because John 316 says that Jesus died for your sin, and if you believe that, you will be absolved of all your sin and you will go to heaven. If you don't believe that, no matter how good you are on this earth, you're flawed and you will go to hell. I just can't imagine that. It's a tough, it's a tough pill to even follow. You know, break it down. Look, man, we'd go to Cavary Chapel, Dr. or pastor Jack Hibbs would take the stage and he'd talk about Hellstone and Brimfire.

And if you don't believe, and on Easter he would do the sermon in the parking lot and it was packed. And I was just like, I don't know, man. I'm a marketer. I'm a stage speaker and I could see that he's using this thing called leading and pacing. Leading and pacing is you tell a couple of facts

that people know and then you pace with a not, something that could be a non-fact. But for example, you might say back then, he was talking about how, There's a war taking place in Iraq right now, like when we invaded in 90s, right? Or sorry, in the early 2000s, we invaded Iraq and then I think Afghanistan after that. There's a war taking place in Iraq right now. Yeah, and it's taking place right by the Euphrates River.

And that's in the Bible. And the Bible says that when a war starts taking place in holy places, it is end times. And therefore it's end times. So he would say two facts. There's a war in Iraq. Yes, I saw it on the news. And it's taken place right by the Euphrates River. Fuck, I saw that.

There was tanks and people fighting and therefore it's end times and then the tithing plates would come by Put your money in and then people will like empty their pockets. I'm like Motherfucker. I lead them pace on stage too. I also know how to anchor the stage whenever you give negative news you anchor it from the left side whenever you you're going to give great optimistic news You go to the right side of the stage and you do that you keep anchoring different sides with negativity and positivity So that at the end if you're going to pitch from stage here's a marketing lesson for all of you if you're going to pitch from stage and pitch something ethical

where they give you a dollar you give them $10 with the value back you don't pitch from the negative side of the stage you pitch from the positive side of the stage where you anchored all the good feelings and you stand there and you pitch because they subconsciously associate that side of the stage

as a more positive optimistic side because you delivered a lot of good news for the last hour from that side and a lot of bad news from that side of the stage and I share this with you because it's not going to make you a better closer but it's a force multiplier your ability to sell to the masses from stage. I'm a fucking gangster

at it. I share this with you because I see Pastor Hibbs doing the same thing, leading and pacing, anchoring the stage, and then the money plates come around, and what do I do in my business? When I speak to a thousand people, then the black envelopes with the gold stickers get passed around at the right time. No different. So very quickly, I'm like, okay, Dr. Laura can't be going to hell after she's saved a fucking asshole like me and all these other assholes who called for a decade. This guy, and by the way, he's got his own TV show on a doctor, uh, Pastor Jack Hibbs. There's like 7,000 seats, 3, 7 a.m. 9 a.m. 11 a.m. on a Sunday.

Like he was like a fucking micro Joel Ulstein. You know what I mean? Yep. They're in Chino Hills. And so I don't know, man. Then I read Joseph Campbell's book, The Power of Myth. So I combine all those things together. And then I listen to my radiance.

And I go, I think, I think we determine heaven or hell. right here on earth. And then there's a lot of books on life after death, right? And near death experiences. Yeah. So then I read that, many books on near death experiences. And I realized some people that have gone to the light and have seen the other side,

many of them report, and they're non-related that you have this flash of your whole life, the good, the bad. And if I crossed you on this earthly life, I get to feel in that moment how you felt when I crossed you. Wow. So all the good that you've done,

all the bad that you've done, you get to feel. And then you go and you're amongst this beautiful place. I don't know if that's true or not, but I've developed my own belief system in the last five years. And that belief is that there is a higher power. There is a good place, but we get to decide if this place is heaven or hell. And there's no way Dr. Laura could go to hell

with as much good as she's done. And if she is, then I like to be right next to her. Wow. so I can thank her. I'm going to sit with that for a second because that's powerful, man. Yeah, and I'm not trying to convince anyone to believe what I'm believing. But no, that's the thing. Like, I personally don't agree, right?

I'm a Christian. At the same time, I respect what you're saying. Thank you. I mean, do, come on, man. You know, that's the whole beautiful part about life. Yeah. And we can still be homies and not have to, like, fucking duke it out. Like, I mean, seriously, like, I don't want everybody to be like me and think like me.

You know, we're not clones. We're not robots. There's going to be difference of opinions and difference of beliefs. And we can also be good people. We can all give back to the society. And we can all be productive and help this thing run a lot smoother than it is right now. Yeah. You know, when you go back and you brought up the carjacking, the armed robbery.

See, I didn't know that. Not armed robbery. Well, okay. What was it? Home invasion. Oh, okay. And it became a home invasion because we didn't know the lady was inside the house. We thought it was an empty house.

You didn't know. So it was a robbery, just so you know. the penal code. It's a robbery when it's an empty house. It's a home invasion robbery when there's someone in the house. Got it. And that's a different consequence.

I love it. So be careful when you're robbing place. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I'm not stealthy enough like you. You know? My friends were just dumb. We all have done dumb shit, right?

Yeah. You know, we're talking about the young Beidros and then we've had the six-year-old, right? We've talked about the six-year-old. Yeah. We've talked about the 38-year-old Beidros. Same guy. two different moments.

What do you owe each one of them? Well, the little dude, I wrote him a 11-page letter. Again, Kevin, Kevin encouraged me to do that, and he gave me the first sentence. Hey, Bezos, when, between the ages of four and six, you were by two older boys.

But today, you are dot, dot, dot. He gave me the first sentence, and he goes, just write a letter to your young man. And man, that little dude was like, what? You did what? You came to America? And then you learned the language. And then you, not too far from here.

UC Irvine. Across the street from UC Irvine, there's a place called California Graduate Institute. Way back in the early 90s. I was dating this girl, and she was going to UCRabine. She was, hey, CGI, California Graduate Institute is doing the study. They'll pay $25 cash a week for 13 weeks if you go through the study. So I'm telling a little bit or something like, dude, So I went through this little study and they I didn't know what it was but I was not in the placebo group

I was actually getting the treatment and they would put the glasses on me and then the earbuds and that that that that that and the glasses would shine and they did the MMPI test first to Minnesota multiple personality inventory test and they're like hey you're manic depressive which today manic depressive is bipolar disorder I am not on any drugs for bipolar disorder this is why I will have ups and downs that you know I talk about I wake up every morning and I send out three gratitude text messages because I wake up very mean very angry very angry very dark and depressed for no reason whatsoever. I just do. That's my chemistry. And I teach myself to become manic by sending out three gratitude text messages to three random people that have helped me in my life. And that forces gratitude on me because I'm a fucking asshole of a human being by factory default.

So with that in mind, California Graduate Institute, my IQ over the 13 weeks started at 100, ended at 118. And I'm telling a little Pedro's bro, you came to America, you went through this fucking CGI thing because you wanted $25 cash because you were a broke young man. Thank God for that girl that you were dating because she helped you raise your IQ by introducing you to that thing. Later, finding out that it was sponsored by NASA had funded CGI to do that. And the platform that they built is called HoloSink. You can go by today.

It's the theta waves with the light glasses. So HoloSync is the main company that NASA and HoloSink worked together. They were doing that to help astronauts and military professionals increase their ability to retain. and memorize speed recognition and there was one more thing oh and to increase the ability to fire your synapses on demand right so think at a higher level what I jokingly would call tell my friends bro I could see the world in the fourth dimension I can see the world in the fourth dimension now right right and I didn't know what it was until Dr. Wolfe who ran the event or the experience was like dude you were not part of the placebo group you're actually getting

the treatment this is what it is and it's by Holosync and NASA It's for them. But later, Holosink made a civilian version of the glasses and the thing that we could all wear. Just like Tang was founded for astronauts. And then now it's, you can mix water and drink Tang as orange juice in the morning. But where the fuck were we going with all this?

I was just asking you if there was something that... Ask again. Okay. So the 6-year-old Bezos and the 38-year-old Bezos, same man. Two-year-for moments. What do you owe each one of them? Fucking, hey, even Ed's laughing back there.

Ed's always heard my fucking hijinks. So I share all this with you because I wrote to that little dude. I was like, man, we fucking went through CGI. We can see the world in the fourth dimension. We can recall faster, higher IQ, speak better. You're an introvert, but you're on stage, and you're getting paid to speak, and you're donating all your speaking fees to Shrine of Children's Hospital.

And then you have a fucking awesome life and great family and your kids, and you travel the world, and you have a podcast and a platform. And the little dude inside me was so fucking happy. And then the 38-year-old version of myself was like, you have no one to show approval, to give approval and validation from. All you need is internal approval and validation. I was doing all that shit. I have custom suits.

Ed Sina, I have eight custom suits. Actually, not too far from here in Costa Mesa. I had custom suits made with BK, because I got traps, big traps, big traps. I took a lot of testosterone and sestanon and fucking Deca and all these things. And my traps just grew, man. My quads and traps just grow.

And so a custom suit with BK lining, all in the fucking thing. Because I thought I needed custom three-piece suits and fucking Rolex watches and Cartier watches and all. I got these fucking things that the watches spin on. I don't wear a single watch anymore. A little Asian lady gave me this, and then when my mom died two and a half years ago, this was her fucking thing that Armenian ladies and men fucking play around with,

and I turned it into a bracelet because Chloe made it for me. My daughter. That's it. That's the only jewelry I wear. I got hundreds of thousand dollars of jewelrys and suits and fucking pants and shoes that I don't wear because I thought I needed the world's approval and validation. So the 38-year-old version of me is like, no, you don't need to do that. Fucking chucks, t-shirt, jeans, and a hat.

That's it, bro. That's how I roll. And then at 51 years old, I realize I don't have to like I don't have to try and tell anyone like no, no, no, here. This is what I meant with the project. This is what I mean with the Squire program. This is why I created the truly supplement. You don't like my supplement, my franchise, my events. Shit on me all you want, man.

That's all good. That's all good. You have a right to. But when the opposition comes to get us, it's all fucking arm ourselves and shoot the opposition before they shoot us. Like that, that's it. I just want to be a decent human. And I'm so glad I wrote that letter to a little bit. because he's so fucking happy and then Big Bee is like I don't have FOMO anymore.

I love Lewis House but he's like oh red carpet event a few months ago red carpet event you got to come out to it man da da da da da da da da you've been on my podcast a few times Lewis I love you but I'm not gonna you know why because me and my daughter we're gonna go do something really cool what what are you gonna do we're gonna fucking work out and go eat at CPK boom I already committed to her I love it man yeah I love it man and that and that doesn't happen if you didn't work on your trauma and you know because I'd want to be there because I can't miss out yeah because you've already you've already can look in your you yourself and i want you to sit with this for one second

you yourself can look through your camera roll when your kids were young and you don't have a lot of pictures of right you already know what that feels like yeah you don't need to sell out you've dude you've already made your money you've already done it you're a visionary so that's what you do you keep going because if not you'll you'll wither away you need to be productive this is what you enjoy it's what you're great at yes but there's men out there right now potentially listening to this episode as we speak right and their credit cards are maxed out. Their marriage is broken.

They don't know who they are. What's their first move tonight? Their first move tonight is eat something healthy and go work out. That's it. Because you can't fix your marriage overnight. You can't fix your credit card debt overnight, right? But you can decide it's control. As men, we need control.

Dude, it's so funny. Have positive control in your life. So the next thing you're going to put in your fat jow, make it higher protein with fiber, low carbs, low to no fat, and then go get a workout in. Two very productive, positive things of control. You get dopamine there, you get dopamine there. And then tomorrow, when your fat, sloppy ass wakes up, do the same thing. You have control over that.

And once you start stacking little Ws, like, man, I control what I eat. I can control how I work out. I wonder if I can control my attitude with the honey. I wonder if I can control my spending habits. I wonder if I can watch a YouTube video on how to get out of debt, on how to maybe consolidate all my credit card debts into a smaller interest rate and pay it off over time.

I wonder if I can create a side job. I wonder if I could actually make some money on the side, Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays, instead of watching sports and having another man's name on the back of my shirt as though I play for the fucking Lakers because you don't. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense.

You want to know the funny thing? I'm writing these cards out, right? Because I'm stupid. I can't remember anything, right? I can mind. The older I get, bro, I have to text myself. everything. It is what it is. My iPhone notes are crazy. And sometimes I forget why I took the note and I can't figure out what the hell it is. Write a note about the note. Right. I'm writing that

question down and I knew your initial answer was going to be eat something healthy and go work. Yeah. You know, because you learn to know what somebody's going to be about and what they're going to say because that is kind of the energy spark to everything else. Because if you don't feel good when you wake up in the morning, you don't feel good when you put your damn pants on, right? Or when you're walking outside, you can't do anything else. So I love that, man. And when you look at your, your whole life, man, everything that you've been through the abuse, the panic attacks, the recovery from that, even reconciling the fact that

when your children are young, you don't, you weren't there a whole lot. You were building. When you look at all that and everything that you've overcome, even as a young child, What does true determination mean to you? I think true determination is this, man. Know the path that you want. And every day, no matter how hard, how difficult, how severe, how slow, take forward momentum.

Like some days you'll be sprinting towards what you want. Those are the big Ws. Other days, you might just be like clawing your way one millimeter forward. That's a win too. That's determination. It's like forward momentum. In my book, I talk about this little saying that I created,

never peak the best is yet to come. Right? Listen, man, when I started doing these six-week challenges, 13 years ago now, my first six-week challenge was hired a running coach, trained for six weeks, run a marathon. Because I can lift heavy weights. I was like, I'm not made to run. And that's a story I told myself. Very big story, yeah. Since then I've done like MMA challenge, Jiu-Jitsu challenges, Jiu-Jitsu stuck, surfing stuck, guitars, guitar stuck. I did salsa dancing. You name it, chess, sign language. I want video of you doing salsa dancing. I can move like a gorilla. I bet. We're in concrete shoots, yeah. Beautiful.

But I share this with you because I may not be able to move faster on the mats today than I could have if I took jujitsu 20 years ago, right? Because I started jujitsu, 48, so we're three years in. But I make progress. I told you my son and I started juxtu to the same time. Well, he was 17. He's 20 now. I was 48.

I'm 51. He's progressing a lot faster. But I still make forward momentum every day. Every day I make forward momentum. That's determination to me. is never peak the best of me is yet to come. It might come a little slower if I take more, more coaching

and more repetitions than you and him and him, but it'll come. And what the fuck do I have to do with my time anyway? Dwell on myself and my problems and really start self-destructing? Because that's what we do. When we go inward and start dwelling on it, oh, I'm so sad that this is wrong

and my knee hurts on my shoulder and my wrist. Shut the fuck up. Like, what do you want? No problems? Just do it. Yeah, dead people have no problems. If I want no problems, I'll have to be dead.

Yeah, I'm not ready for that yet. You know what I mean? Right. I just think it's a great answer, you know, because, you know, determination to me used to look like it was loud and look at me and I'm doing the work and I'm documenting everything. But really what it is is those days where I don't emotionally feel great. Yeah.

It's still work. Yeah. Even if it's not 100% of my normal capacity, it's still doing something. And the next day you feel better about yourself like, man, yesterday I felt like dog shit, but I still went this much forward. And that next day, I'm back at 100% capacity. But if I don't do the work the day before, I'm not at 50% anymore. I'm at 20.

And now I'm struggling and now I'm depressed. And then I reach for the pizza instead of the protein shake. You see what I'm saying? I do. So you know what? I appreciate you, man. This has been fun. Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming back on and running it back with me, dude. Amazing conversation. I appreciate it. You know, I'll always love having chats with you. So, dude, again, thank you. Yes, sir. It was a lot of fun. For the audience, go check out my boy, BK.

watch his podcast on YouTube, see everything that is actually involved with him, his books, his speaking events. He runs a lot of events speaking. So go check him out. You might learn a thing or two. And who knows, it might change your life. But until then, stay determined.