Digital Social Hour - From 4¢ Leads to Millions: Lessons in Social Media Growth | Bedros Keuilian DSH #1387

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

From buying 4¢ leads to scaling businesses to millions, Bedros Keuilian joins the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly to share his incredible journey of social media mastery, entrepreneurship, and personal growth. 🚀 Discover how Bedros leveraged platforms like YouTube and Facebook early on, navigated adversity during the pandemic, and built a blueprint for success while maintaining his authenticity. 💡 This episode is packed with valuable insights on standing out in a crowded digital world, the power of mentorship, and lessons in resilience that every aspiring entrepreneur needs to hear. Whether you're curious about social media strategies, building confidence, or crushing self-doubt, this conversation is for you. 🙌 Tune in now and hear firsthand how Bedros turned 4¢ leads into life-changing opportunities. Don't miss out—watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🎙️✨ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:35 - Bedros' Journey into Social Media 02:38 - Retirement Plans Discussion 04:59 - Today's Sponsorship 06:28 - Midlife Crisis and Pandemic Impact 09:58 - Notion Overview 10:55 - Addiction vs Dependence Explained 12:42 - Importance of Self Defense for Men 15:02 - Earning Confidence 16:03 - Authenticity in Confidence 18:37 - Trust and Discipline in Men 20:21 - Managing Greed and Desires 21:14 - Humility in Leadership During Crisis 25:43 - Political Perspectives 27:11 - Overcoming Excuses 28:04 - Maintaining Drive Across Ages 32:18 - The Nice Guy Myth 38:32 - Understanding Harmful EMF 39:25 - Awareness in Society 40:26 - Navigating Technology with Kids 43:10 - Teaching Resilience and Toughness 46:54 - Understanding Vibrational Frequency 47:51 - Education and Curiosity Suppression 51:38 - Striving for Excellence, Not Average 54:27 - Standing Your Ground 56:11 - Early Success of Bedros' Ventures 57:57 - Bedros' Initial Steps to Success 59:30 - Mentorship and Its Power 1:00:34 - Finding Bedros Online APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Bedros Keuilian https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian SPONSORS: KINSTA: https://kinsta.com/dsh NOTION: https://www.notion.com/dsh LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ The views and opinions expressed by guests on Digital Social Hour are solely those of the individuals appearing on the podcast and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the host, Sean Kelly, or the Digital Social Hour team. While we encourage open and honest conversations, Sean Kelly is not legally responsible for any statements, claims, or opinions made by guests during the show. Listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions and consult professionals for advice where appropriate. Content on this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, financial, or professional advice. Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad #adoptingaceomindset #realestatemindset #howtoworkonyourbusinessnotinit #growthhackingsecrets #howtoscaleyourdigitalmarketingagency #realestaterookie #socialmediamarketing #digitalmarketing #leadgeneration #businessdevelopment

If I want to be a real estate investor, it's always like pushing you towards jobs, right? But maybe that's all they know and that's all they teach. But the point I was making in that video is be curious, be skeptical. Because if you're curious and skeptical, you might just see that if I follow this thing exactly as planned, I might end up exactly like the rest of them. Exactly like the rest of them All right guys got Bedros here today someone I've been trying to get on for a while now and you were one of the first shows I watched so it's a full circle moment for me. Wow, man. Thank you. I appreciate that You were one of my early aspirations. You've been in the social media game for a bit now. Yeah, man 2008 on YouTube 2009 on Facebook

And then the rest was history. That's crazy. Yeah, what what compelled you to start so early? I guess you had a hutch. I I had a feeling that social media was going to change everything and I knew that it was going to be this mass movement where you could actually start speaking to the masses in a very deep meaningful way and I Saw it with YouTube specifically not necessarily with all the other platforms But then when Facebook came out and I was buying like leads for like literally four cents a lead, right, for an opt-in. Missed those days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's when I was like, okay, I'm going to move people to my blog from YouTube and Facebook, from my blog into my funnel and sell them coaching on, at the time I was coaching gym owners. So for me, I just saw how you could speak to the masses very easily that way. Now there's the opposite issue. There's a lot of noise. There's almost too much. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

It's hard to navigate, honestly, as a young man especially. It is. But good content always sticks out. Good content will always stick out. I think people have this misconception that, you know, every industry we were talking outside, right? Like podcasts. Like, there's millions of podcasts out there. There's millions of gyms. There's millions of restaurants. There's millions of content creators. But the best in every category always stands out. That's true. Cream rises to the top is what they say.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and all those guys find each other too. They do, they do. It's really small. You know this, it's like really small at the top. Soon as we sat down, we're like, oh, we have all these people in common that we connect with, right?

I think it's most competitive at the bottom of the hill where everyone is just trying to make it to the top. I think once you get past that 50% mark of that hill, there's less traffic, less confusion. You've kind of got sets and reps under your belt, and so it's easier to get to the top. And when you get to the top, it's all like-minded people who want to help you come up, right? Like immediately you're like, hey, I think I'm going to do this. I'm like, oh, connect with BJ Baldwin about this and connect with this. People at the top want to help you come up, right? Like immediately you're like, hey, I think I'm going to do this. I'm like, oh, connect with BJ Baldwin about this and connect with this.

People at the top want to help. People at the bottom are very competitive and they feel like there's not enough to go around so they get very selfish. Right. It's if you take it, then there's not enough for me. I don't think that's how it is, man. Scarcity mindset. Yeah.

Are you at that stage now where you're looking to really help out other people? Yeah. Yeah. My companies have, have grown. I've got leaders in all the companies. In fact, we're in the process of selling my third company now. And so I'm in a place where I could help, I could serve, I could take equity in companies and young companies.

Someone asked me, do you plan on starting more companies? I'm like, dude, I'm done. I'll take equity in companies, help them scale and sell. Yeah. You think you're actually going to semi-retire? Semi. I will never fully retire, but yeah, I'm slowing it down. I'm doing less masterminds, less coaching clients. And the reason is I

realized I'm 50 now. I turned 51 this summer. Right around 48, dude, something weird happens. And you're 28, right? Yeah. I told my son this. My son's 19. Right around 48, and I've talked to other people, My son's 19. Brought around 48, and I've talked to other people, speaking to a mutual friend, Ray Kashkar. Ray Kashkar is a year older than me. And we've been working together for five years. He's been, great story about Ray Kashkar. He was working for the CIA overseas in Afghanistan.

And I was like, Ray, I've got this thing I want to run called The Project. He goes, should I quit? I go, no, don't quit because I don't know if it's going to work. But tell me when you're not deployed and we'll run it when you're stateside. We ran it. And after that we started working together for the last six, seven years. But Ray even told me this too.

Right around 47, 48, something happens to people. I don't know if it's same with women, but for men, I feel like every year that goes by feels like eight or nine months. And then as I turned 50, like my 50th year felt like six months. Damn. Yeah. And so you realize like, shoot, I think I have less time on this planet,

which obviously common sense, but on the latter years, I'm beginning to believe that time moves faster. And so if I'm going to do more of the things that I enjoy, connect with more of the people that I want, you know, go to my son's concert, because he's getting into music and whatever, then I need to have less clients, less things that I'm doing,

which thankfully I was smart enough to automate and delegate, you know, a decade ago. Yeah, that is interesting. But it makes me wonder, because you hear about midlife crisis all the time. Yeah. And people that are young can't relate, but it makes sense the way you're describing it.

I think that's what a midlife crisis is. It's funny you bring that up. I think dudes or yes, mostly guys, right? That have them. It's mostly dudes and I think it's because a woman will have a kid and that kid will grow up, be 18, 19, 20, and that kid will launch into life and she feels like, man, I... Shout out to today's sponsor, Kimsta. If you run anything online, an e-com brand, a podcast site, a service business, you know hosting is one of those things that can either run quietly in the background or completely wreck your momentum when it goes wrong. I've been there, pages not loading during launches,

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and your site will actually feel like it's built for 2025. I did something. I put something out into the world like they could live beyond me. And as men, I suppose, yeah, that kid's ours too. But not really. We have to kind of find our own purpose. And so when men have reached that age of like mid 40s, early 50s, and they haven't done meaningful work, created companies, developed teams, written a book,

just left their fingerprint on this planet, they feel like this sense of urgency, and I think that's where that crisis kicks in. Yeah, and you're seeing a lot of that with men these days too, right? Especially 20s, 30s, like all people my age, they are so lost, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

Like mental health issues at an all-time high. I think that's why people like Tate took off, because it appealed to a lot of guys, right? Yeah, all he did was speak words and a message that everyone else was thinking, but no one had the balls to say it. And he said it in a way, because he's a great marketer to get attention.

And I think that's where people had a lot of indigestion with how he was saying things, but that's why Tate took off. He filled in a vacuum that already existed. And I think the pandemic accelerated that vacuum. It created so much separation amongst people. We were no longer tribal. And before you know it, men are considered toxic and, you know, like everything that is innately

in fact are installed in a man. Like Sean wants to acquire, Sean wants to build, Sean wants to leave a legacy. You wanna be competitive, right? All those things now are considered toxic. And so when that happens and dudes are like, man, I guess I'm useless, I'm not needed. I'm archaic and then you start thinking to yourself

What's the path then I don't have a path and then a voice like You know Tate comes around you're like, you know what? He's speaking directly to me and I think we needed that but and I also see the tides turning like there's it's always an ebb and flow Yeah, yeah, that's life. right? Yeah, that's life. Yeah. I love competition personally. That's what fuels me. I love that podcasts are ranked on the charts because I want to be number one one day. That's what drives me. Oh yeah.

You know? And they made competition like, I don't know, like kind of, like you said, they put it in a bad light. And I think they did that because if, I'm not that much of a tinfoil hat guy, but if I was big government and I wanted to get control and compliance of humanity, all humans, I'm not worried about the women and children, I'm not worried about the elderly, I'm worried about the able-bodied men. Like you are the greatest threat because you are competitive, you want to acquire, you want to grow, you want to amass things.

And oh, by the way, I'm guessing, you know, with all the sponsorship money and all this money that you're making from it, you're also giving back. You have charities or a church or something that you're giving back to. So it's not like you're just acquiring, amassing and competitive and hoarding it all. You're giving back. But if we can control you, if we can make you feel dumb, dependent, get you fat, separate you from your desires to excel in life and to reach your highest potential, you become more controllable. And that's what the government wants, controlling

compliance over the people who are going to be the biggest threats. And that's men, not necessarily women or children or the elderly. That's why it's important to be aware of that. That's why I pretty much cut alcohol, uh, porn on the vices. Cause I want to be as resilient as possible. Yep. That's exactly it. But a lot of young guys fall through those substances or drugs.

Yeah. And the argument is, well, well, they're legal. What's wrong with it? And with occasion, I'm not addicted. Shout out today's sponsor Notion. Your time is for building, not emailing. Countless incredible tools exist to help you build your next big idea,

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you lifting a finger. I've set mine up with custom views so I could see what matters by topic or urgency and their snippet feature. I use it daily to knock out repeat emails, follow-ups, intros, quick thank yous, and one click. It's fast, clean, and smart. If you already use Notion to integrate seamlessly, and if you don't, this is a great reason to start. Try Notion Mail free at notion.com slash DSH all lowercase that's notion.com slash DSH and using our link helps support the show. Hey you're not addicted but you're dependent on it right now. Dependence is just one step away from addiction. Yeah. Yeah. That's why even with coffee I'm not trying to drink it daily. Really? I don't want to be dependent on anything. Good for you man on anything You know that's awesome. So I'll cycle it. Yeah People are cycling trend you're cycling. I love that. I learned that one from Hormoz. Gangster

I don't want to feel like I'm relying on anything. Mm-hmm. You know yeah, yeah, cuz then you're you're kind of like a victim, right? Well, that's exactly it again soon as there's a there's a dependence, you begin to rely on something, you get depend on it. Soon there's an addiction, I need my coffee or I need my fix, whatever the fix is, I need porn. I know so many dudes that have come through the project and porn or alcohol have been their thing to take the edge off. Like, bro, you're a grown ass man. You can't like go and do some box breathing, maybe go on a hike,

stay away from social media for a couple hours, regulate your emotions, come back and then have a reasonable conversation with your wife instead of putting your fist through the wall. Like most dudes that end up coming to the project are dudes that somehow got unhinged and did something stupid in their life to ruin their life. And then they come to the project with me and Ray.

We retired that program, but I'd say about 50% of the guys that came through, the other 50% that came through were dudes who were just like looking to unlock that next level in them because when you got someone like Ray beating the shit out of you for 75 hours and then with me and the other instructors teaching mindset, business development, personal growth, et cetera,

it's an awesome experience. But that's exactly it dude vices End up becoming a crutch and if you're using a vice as a grown-ass man to take the edge off It's probably not the best way to operate. Yeah. Yeah shout out to Ray hardest three push-ups I ever did in my life because he makes you hold it That is a beast. Yeah, he can be an asshole that way of that Do you think every man should learn self-defense these days? Absolutely.

Absolutely. And by the way, I think the greatest self-defense is the gift of gab to talk your way out of it. Like, I shoot, I know how to use a knife, I have situational awareness, I've been striking for 10 years, grappling the last two and a half years. The last thing I want to do is use any of that. I want to talk my way out of a fight. Like I can talk my way out of any fight, but if I can't, and I need to protect myself or the people with me,

then I want to know that I have the capacity. Number one. Number two, in self-defense, whether it's jiu-jitsu, MMA, boxing, whatever you go to learn, right? You meet some of the greatest humans. Because it's the most humbling thing. Like some dude's going to take your back and choke you, right? And the first time that happened to me, someone took my back and started choking me.

Bro, it's embarrassing to say, they didn't even lock in a rear-neck choke yet. I barely felt their forearm across one side of my throat and I tapped and he goes, Pedro, are you okay? Is everything fine? And I go, well you were choking me, coach. He goes, no, no, no, I was like far from locking it in. Like now, and they call that a virgin neck, right? Like I learned the terminology. Now it's like, like when I roll, I could be getting choked

and I'll just be looking at like whatever's on the wall. If I'm at someone's jujitsu school or if I'm rolling at my gym with the fellas that I roll with, like at my gym that people have signed the wall and kind of put little motivational quotes, I'm going to find myself reading motivational quotes as I'm trying to fight my way out of getting choked. And that's a really cool, confident place to be. So you learn a high level of confidence, right? If you learn combatives, self-defense, you meet some awesome dudes who are very humble,

soft-spoken, but absolutely deadly savages. Working out, talk about burning calories. Like you're burning calories big time. And the older you get, the harder it is to burn calories. I used to be able to just lift weights and I could out train a bad diet. These days I keep my diet locked in, I'm lifting weights and I could out train a bad diet these days. I keep my diet locked in Lifting weights and I'm doing jujitsu and you're sweating so much like it's all upside. You've got mobility from it

You build a good tribe of people From it like I don't see any drawback to it And then the confidence that you develop from it is just unmatched Yeah, and I've seen you talk about confidence. You believe confidence has to be earned, right? Yeah, yeah. It is just a byproduct of stacking small wins day in and day out. There is no, when people go,

what is the one thing I gotta do to build confidence? I don't know what the one thing is, but I do know what the, like, don't hit the snooze button in the morning. And then if you say you're gonna drink 30 ounces of water, drink your 30 ounces of water. And then if you're gonna say you're gonna, you know, not do social media for the first three hours of the day,

you're going to focus on your work, do that. Those little things stacked over days, weeks, months, and years, you have an undeniable level of confidence. And confidence is just your credit score with yourself, right? That's all it is. It's your reputation with yourself. And if you could build confidence, then you feel the ability to conf... You have... You build confidence, you now have the ability to, you build confidence, you now have the competency to go do whatever the heck you want.

But people who don't have confidence, they go, one day I'm going to start a business. One day I'm going to get fit. One day I'm going to start a podcast. But you've lied to yourself so much, your credit score is so low with yourself, you have no competency to start that. Great.

I also think confidence is really hard to fake. Correct. I can sense it in people. Yes, you especially, you've done in two years, you did 1600 podcasts. Like you have one of the greatest social experiments. I hope you realize that. One thing I was wanting to tell you is you've time collapsed so much exposure to different people. Like I bet you can put humans who have sat right here where I am in categories, right? The phonies, the fakes, the confident ones,

the doers, the talkers, the people who have just heard things and then they're just regurgitating it. And it's impossible to fake someone who has been around long enough, either through your 28, your young, but through exposure like this, or 50, like myself, and just over time been exposed to a lot of people, you can smell confidence or the lack thereof.

Yeah, you probably been screwed over when you were younger, right? Oh, bro, bro, I still get screwed. It's inevitable in business. Yeah, yeah, especially in business, it's inevitable. Because people come to you with the, everyone puts their best foot forward. No one's like, hey, I'm going to try

and take advantage of you. And I even believe people aren't necessarily going into a relationship to take advantage. I still have hope that most people go into a relationship with the best of intentions. But we have these little greed glands. You won't find it in any anatomy book, but the greed glands exist, bro.

And so imagine if you and I hit it off. We hit it off, I'm like, you know what? He's out here in Vegas, I'm like, you know what? He's out here in Vegas, I'm just a couple hours drive away. I bet I can talk to Sean and we can start doing this thing and I can start tapping into his revenue just to add value. I just want to add value. But at the end of the day,

soon the slippery slope of the greed glands begin. I'm like, what value am I adding to Sean's world? If I'm not adding value to your world and I'm just being a leech and extracting. And soon we can, what do they say the path? To hell is paved with good intentions right right and so I may come with the best of intentions But if I don't keep my greed glands in check, it's very easy To begin to take someone for granted take advantage of them and then soon

That's how you end up screwing people over yeah, I've seen money ruin a lot of friendships Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know yeah gotta be careful working people over. Yeah. I've seen money ruin a lot of friendships, you know? Yep. Got to be careful working with friends. Yep. Once the money starts getting up there, people change. Operating agreement. That's when everyone's like,

oh, me and my friend started this. I'm like, that is fantastic. You guys are broke right now. And so you guys are like, we're going to fucking bleed for this, right? Soon as you make your first hundred thousand, half a million, three million, you're going to wish you had that operating agreement because now it's like, well, what do you mean you're spending the money on this? Well, we didn't decide who's going to spend money on what and how it's going to

just get spent and who's operating in what lane. Operating agreement is the best thing ever. That's, you only learn that when you've been screwed enough times. Absolutely. You also said this, it really stuck with me. You said never to trust an undisciplined man. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They are the most dangerous men. The most dangerous men are not the ones that have guns and knives and jujitsu, because those men are predictable, because they're disciplined.

And they know, like, do you know who Tim Kennedy is? I do. He's been on the show. Alright. Tim Kennedy. Probably one of the most dangerous dudes on the planet. He's also one of our instructors for Operation Black Site. Great guy. And, but super disciplined, but super deadly. You can literally like go and poke at him and he's going to just like, gosh, I'll knock it off.

He's going to hit you with his big bear paws and you know, like have a good time. Right? But an undisciplined man, that's a guy who's conniving. That's a guy who's sneaky. That's a guy who has no emotional regulation. And when you've got a man who's got no emotional regulation and who's sneaky and who feels like because he doesn't have strength,

he doesn't have honor, he doesn't have courage, those are the three things we need to develop discipline, strength, honor, courage. And if we don't have that, then we start doing the sneaky stuff. And when we start getting sneaky like that, a man becomes unpredictable. And I don't trust men that don't have discipline

because they're very unpredictable in the way they carry themselves. Yeah, men that cheat on their wives, right? Correct, correct. That's a red flag to me in business. Big red flag there, dudes that like start a little side business behind the backs of their business partners.

Yeah. And it's not quite the same, but it's similar. And I was like, bro, like, again, if there was an operating agreement, that belongs here. That belongs here. But it's just like, well, no, no, this is separate business because again, the greed glands, dishonesty, lack of discipline lead to that kind of stuff.

How have you kept your greed glands in check or is that kind of ego you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, greed glands are just ego. Yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with that, especially once they start making money or having success, right? Yep, yep. And what ends up happening is you end up getting humbled.

I think one of the best ways to keep your greed glands in check or your ego in check is you end up getting humbled. In a perfect world, We would all just be like You know what? I got to just because there is a place for ego. I mean we can't deny that There's a place for ego because ego is what makes us become competitive ego is what makes us want to go What's around the corner? You know, I made 10 million. What's around the corner? Can I make 20? I turn this 20 to 50. So we do need a sense of ego, but Unchecked it can get very reckless.

Um, but when we are humbled over time, like one of the most recent humbling experiences I had was the pandemic. Like dude, I'm the founder of FitBody Bootcamp, like hundreds of gyms, franchise gyms between us and Canada. hundreds of, you know, gyms, franchise gyms, between US and Canada. We had 612 gyms on March 16, 2020, right? And then the pandemic comes, and on March 16, I announced to all of our franchisees, hey guys, we're gonna flatten the curve for two weeks.

Right, that's what we had heard. Now I come from a communist country, so I also don't trust the government. So I told the CEO of my company, Bryce, I'm like, Bryce, I don't believe this is going to last two weeks, it might last longer. So figure out what we need to do to take all of our clients from all the FitBody bootcamp locations and move them online into private Facebook groups so that

those locations can do online workouts. Right. In case people need to train at home. And sure enough, as you know, you know, two weeks ended up being a year and a half, but in those, in that year and a half period, we lost 218 franchise locations, like millions of dollars a month we were losing. Right. And people go, didn't you have a franchise agreement with your franchisees? Yeah. But when they're like, hey, the pandemic is putting me out of business.

Am I going to be like, sorry, you got to keep paying your royalties. You got to keep paying your monthly fees. No, I'm going to be a decent human. Maybe the old version of me would have done that but the humbled and more mature version of me is like hey I get it you're a small business you're a fit body boot camp location your state doesn't want you to keep your doors open right now I get it we're gonna let you out of your franchise agreement so that was a very humbling experience to go from 600 to 390 some odd locations, right? And to tap literally into,

I sold all my real estate holdings, all the residential buildings, I own residential and commercial, I sold all my residential holdings because the PPP money that we got and all this, the EDI loans, all those things we were burning through, a franchise like that big is so expensive to operate. And so, but I share this with you

because there's like levels to humility as well. Like I realized like, man, I was a great leader and doing this, I'm making hundreds of millions a year, and then 2020 comes and it was one of the most humbling experiences where I was like, man, I questioned my leadership. I questioned whether I was making the right decisions every day. Because I don't know about you, but there's a fucking playbook for how to deal with the pandemic, right? There's literally no playbook. And we were onboarding six to eight new locations per month. Not only did we not sell any new locations for that entire period of time,

we lost 218 locations, bro. And so when I say humbling, and I realized in that moment, I thought I had disconnected from my businesses, because oftentimes your identity will be tied to your business, especially when we're younger, our identity will be tied to your business. Especially when we're younger, our identity will be tied to our business. 100%. Right?

And so I thought like, hey, here I am in my mid-40s. I've disconnected from all my businesses. I'm my own man. My business is their own thing. But I was like, holy fuck, if FitBody Bootcamp fails, then I've failed as a human. Even though the pandemic was crushing restaurants and gyms more than any other businesses, I was like, if FitBody fails, I failed. I was being so hard on myself. And I realized that I hadn't completely disconnected my identity, which means my

ego was still alive and well. And I was like, I don't want all my homies that I hang out with and I speak on stage from, and I sit in green rooms with to be like, well guys, pandemic put FitBody Bootcamp out of business. And so there goes my big hundred million dollar company. And so that fear was alive and real. And it humbled me to the point where I realized I still have personal development work to do.

Because you have to be able to separate yourself from your business. It's not your identity. Because if another pandemic comes, it puts us out of business, that doesn't mean I need to go jump off a bridge. I just need to regroup and restart. Wow. Thanks for being so open about that.

That's insane. Because at the level you were at, you probably thought you'd never have a down swing that heavy ever again in your life, right? No. You think you've gone over the hump. You're connected to all these people. You can raise capital like no one's business. Bro, I reached out to people like private equity and like that I know, like we're like friends. I'm like, I could use some capital right now. They're like, dude, we wouldn't touch you with a 10 foot friends. I'm like I could use some capital right now. They're like dude we wouldn't touch you with a 10 foot pole.

I'm like I don't blame you. I don't blame you. They don't know how long the franchise or how long the pandemic is going to go. They don't know how many more franchise locations we're going to lose. I got nothing to back it up with right. Like I've got I sold all my real estate holdings in 2020. All I had is my two commercial buildings that I'm operating my franchise headquarters out of.

And so they're like, dude, we wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot pole. Like, that's a very humbling experience when you realize, shoot, this could be like starting from zero again. Geez. Yeah. Do you think you'll ever get back into real estate?

Oh, yeah. I already got back into it. Oh, you did? Yeah. Wow. That was quick. You know this. You have to operate quick.

Yeah. Yeah. You, a lot of uncertainty with politics in the market right now, you pay any attention to that or you kind of just do your own thing? I kind of do my own thing, man. Like, I don't really listen to politics. Like I was winning when Biden was president.

I'm winning when Trump is president and whoever becomes president next, I'm gonna win. That's not like, oh, because Baderice is a badass. Now, were we working harder, maybe three to five times harder, to win at the same level when Biden was president? Yeah, yeah. Were we having to get crafty?

Yeah, but that's okay. There's no rule book for this, right? Like if you realize that, man, if I do eight more episodes a day, I can make X amount of more money, as long as those episodes are quality. And guess what? You're gonna have to change the rules of how you operate. Your sleep pattern, your workout pattern, your eating pattern, your life patterns will have to change to accommodate eight more episodes a day

so that you can make the money that you want to make. The rules are always changing. And imagine if Spotify or YouTube are like you can only upload so many Videos then you're gonna go and create another channel so that you can accommodate. You know your desired outcome Yeah, the rules might change, but the athlete always finds a way to win winners always win I think I heard Vaynerchuk say that so I can't take credit for it winners always win And I believe like if you've got that winning mindset. You'll figure it out. You'll bend the rules Sometimes you might break them.

I've broken plenty of rules. Um, but winners always win. There's always a workaround. Okay. And I like how you, you don't make excuses no matter what's going on. You've got, I don't know. I guess at my, at my age, here's what's great. If I lost it all during the pandemic,

I would almost have an unfair advantage in gaining it all back. So when you're like, would you ever get back into real estate? I'm like, already been back into it. When you have all of that confidence that you've stacked for decades, when you lose it all, you don't lose the confidence.

You lose the money, you lose the assets. Hell, you might even lose your network because now some people in your network might be like, hey, Bedros doesn't have any more money, he doesn't have any more access to things, I don't need to hang out with him anymore. But what I don't lose is the experience that I've built and the confidence that I've gained. And so the bounce back is like a tiny fraction of what it was to build it. And that's like, that is irreplaceable.

Agreed, agreed. Do you still have the same drive you did when you were my age? Yeah, but I don't have as much piss and vinegar. Yeah, yeah. Like there was this like, I actually took pride in saying that I have a chip on my shoulder, fire in my belly and rage in my eyes. Like I still remember that quote.

Like I would say that in my early 20s, early 30s, chip on my shoulder, fire in my belly, rage in my eyes. All of that kind of went away, intentionally, because I felt I had a point to prove. So now my drive is, where can I get to? Like, where can the 50 year old version of me take this company? Like I took Equity and Fuel Hunt,

this apparel company about three years ago. And they were doing like $1,200 a month or $1,200 a day in sales. Within six months they were doing $900 a day in sales. Within another six months they were doing $22,000 a day in sales. And it's because I opened up my network and I reached out to all my friends that have big followings and that are into American made apparel. I was like, hey, could you wear this and tag these guys? And it would mean a lot to me because I've helped them out. I've helped them start businesses. I've coached them without charging them.

I've done all those things. So, you know, you've got that you've got that goodwill bank account that you can tap into. Right. And so to me, it's been it's been really cool to be able to utilize my network and my friends to be able to do things. But people always ask me, hey, would you ever start more businesses on your own from scratch? I'm beyond that. I wouldn't.

But today I'm competing against a version that I could be. I heard Ed Mylett say this once. He said, Bedros, when I die and I go to the pearly gates of heaven, he goes, I believe St. Peter's gonna be standing at the gate with this guy next to him. And if I did my job right on earth here, I'm gonna be like twinsies with that guy. Like, he's gonna say, this is what we built Ed Mylett

to look like, like this is the highest potential achievement of Ed Mylett. He goes, I don't wanna go to heaven and be like, I don't recognize that guy. And so it's no longer the piss and vinegar and, you know, acquisition of money and assets and whatever. Because I have that and I'm very grateful for it and I don't want to lose it. When I lost it in 2020, a lot of the real estate, I gained it back. Hell, I emptied it out like retirement funds and shit. Yeah, yeah. I went all in because I was not about to sell. Here's why.

Orange Theory sold 60% of their franchise brand to private equity. 24 hour fitness sold 75% of their equity to private equity, of their company to private equity. And so the private equity vultures were circling all fitness franchise brands because everyone knew that the pandemic's gonna end at some point and the world's gonna go back to normal and this franchise is gonna go up again. They were buying at a discount.

They were trying to buy at a discount. And so I was like, the hell you guys are gonna buy at a discount. So I've always been self-funded and debt-free. And so I was like, we're gonna stay this way through the pandemic. Bro, it hurt. Because again, no one's telling you like,

oh, there's gonna be a 12- month pandemic or a 14 month pandemic where you can now kind of, you know, balance your budget and go, okay, this is how we're going to go about it. Every month you think it's going to end and it's not, you keep going. And so I share that with you because it's like, I'll have to empty out retirement accounts. I'll have to empty out crypto accounts. I'll have to empty out real estate deals. But I'm glad I did that because now the valuation of my franchise is like through the roof and it's still 100% mine.

It's not like private equity owns 30, 40, 50, 60% of it. And so I'm glad I did that, but these days, I don't so much have a point to prove. I just want to reach the highest version of myself, whatever that, it's become a sport. And I feel like I'm an athlete and I was never into sports. I don't worry in basketball You're like I play yeah, I got a game tonight. All right, so there you go. Like I've never been athletic really So my sport I guess jujitsu is if it's a sport

It's like the last couple years that I got into jujitsu, but short of that. I've never been athletic So I've always looked at entrepreneurship as my sport. Mm-hmm And so in that way, I want to win and I want to see how good I can get at it. It is a sport. I mean, Mark Cuban says it's 24-7 nonstop. Yeah, yeah. It's the biggest sport in the world. The biggest sport of the world.

You're always on, you're always in preparation, and you don't know what the competition is going to bring to the court tomorrow. You hear this term like nice guys finish last. Do you agree with that in a business sense? Like do you think you could be a leader and be really nice, but still get to your level?

Yes, with an asterisk. Nice guys don't always finish last. If they, you need to have a shark in you. Like there's a mode that I can click into. I think I'm a pretty decent human being. I think I'm a good guy. People might say Bedros is a nice guy. I'm reluctant to use the word nice guy because there's a great book out there called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover. Have you read that book? No, I haven't. Great book. But nice guys are in a negative connotation there. But I understand the connotation you're meaning. But the nice the nice kind good dudes can finish first if they have this switch that they can flip

Go savage when they need to hmm there is there is a place for savagery and being a shark in entrepreneurship In other words to strike. I'll give you a great example. You know who Tim Grover is yeah, all right I'll give you a great example. You know who Tim Grover is? Yeah. Alright. Do you know him personally? Like, has he been on the show? No, I've seen him like speak though. He's a really good dude. One would say he's a nice guy. Like, a foreigner to this country like me,

like, bled, bled to become successful, became Michael Jordan's personal trainer, then Kobe Bryant's personal trainer, then you name the pro athlete, like, he's an amazing, New York Times bestselling books, great inspirational motivational speaker. We had a, one of my competitors in Fit Body Bootcamp, I won't mention the franchise brand, let's call it Bob's Fitness franchise. During the pandemic, that guy died.

The founder of that franchise brand. Tim Grover knew him, just like Tim Grover knows me. Tim and I are friends. He and Tim were friends. Tim reaches out to me that afternoon, like soon as the word got out, like he died that morning, that afternoon, Tim Grover reaches out to me and he goes,

hey, you heard that Sam died? I go, yeah. He goes, now's your time to make an offer. Because his business partner doesn't know what she's doing. now's your time to make an offer. Because his business partner doesn't know what she's doing. Now's your time to make an offer and take all his locations and rebrand in his FitBody bootcamp locations. I was like, Roger, that's exactly what I was thinking. That's a pretty fucking savage move.

Wow. His body was probably still warm. And he was friends with the guy. Wow. Cutthroat, right? But he ain't coming back. And it's a good business decision. Wow. Cutthroat, right? But he ain't coming back. And it's a good business decision for me.

Tim saw it, I saw it. Others saw it. So... I made a fair offer. Fair for the circumstances. Desirable for me. Did they take it? Nah. Nah. What ended up having to them. They ended up taking on

private equity and then ended up losing. They only had 75 locations. They didn't have that many, but 75 locations, let's say two thirds of them converted to FitBody locations and the other third died. Right. Cause when you're buying out your competitor, you're not converting all of them. Right. So let's say two-thirds convert, one-third die. Or you can defranchise, move on. That still would have been a big win for us. But the offer I made was competitive for me. It was desirable for me. And it would have been great for them. They would have gotten a nice little chunk of change. And so they took on private equity. Private equity didn't know what to do to help them scale.

So after three more years, they ended up doing Dilling Away. Last I heard, they got like four corporate owned stores. Geez. Yeah. You hear that all the time with private equity acquisitions, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're like the soul of the business. Yeah.

You are the soul of the business. And when they come in and they start cutting costs and increasing franchise royalty fees and nickel and diming everything, that all looks great on paper, on a spreadsheet, but bro, like you're fucking with the soul of a company. And so you gotta be careful when you bring on private equity. Yeah, cause you have personal relationships with these franchisees, right?

Like you're friends with some of them, that goes away. And then if you're a public figure, I have my own podcast, I put myself out there. For example, if I said said who's the CEO of dodge You know dodge no No one knows but who's the CEO of Tesla? Elon Elon, right? He's a public figure and so You know, you may not no one knows a CEO of 24 hour fitness or f45

But they know the CEO of fit body boot camp because I'm a public figure I put out content every I love writing books I love doing podcast episodes. I love serving humanity through the free content I put out. And so to some degree, I've got a relationship with the clients that go to FitBodyBootCamp locations. They're leaving comments on my shit, right? And so to shaft them by saying, oh, this private equity is going to give me an extra $8 million,

so I'm going to sell to them. But I know immediately they're going to raise prices, cut session times, and cut pay at corporate office. Bro, I would never do that. Like maybe the younger, stupider, greedier version of me would have done that, but the version of me now would never do anything like that because one, the business is going to collapse on itself, and there goes your brand that you work so hard to build. And two, I think there's some kind of karmic debt that I would have to pay. And I've paid my share of karmic debt,

so I do know karma's real. I know karma's real too. Yeah, fuckin' hell. 100%. No, I think you're right though. That's why you see big companies even noticing this. You got Mark Zuckerberg going on a podcast tour rebranding. Right, exactly. You can rebrand so quickly these days.

In fact, I think we can all agree, well, Trump needed podcasts to win, but it certainly helped. I think there was a few key podcasts, Joe Rogan's being one of them, because you could have this, instead of just a sound bite from Fox News or CNBC or CNN, now you got two and a half hours. So like, what is this guy all about? All right, he might be rough and tumble,

but you know what, I kind of like what he stands for where this country's concerned. Yeah, because you could fake a CNN segment. You can't fake a two-hour podcast. No, exactly. And I think that, by the way, was Kamala's downfall. She should have said yes to the Joe Rogan show and just come and rapped with him, just like a regular human. I always say like two dudes, or in that case,

it'd be a dude and a chick sitting at a bar, having a beer, cocktail, shooting the shit. Absolutely. She might have had a running chance. Yeah, she didn't do any podcasts. Or she did like a couple, cocktail, shooting the shit. That she might have had a running chance. Yeah, she didn't do any podcasts. Or she did like a couple, but they were like... Manufactured. Yeah.

At best. Call her daddy or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bro, I'm curious, what are these? So, do you believe in EMF? Electromagnetic fold dependencies? Like how it's harmful to people? Yeah.

So these are like anti-EMF. They're a sponsor of the show, Aries Tech. I got one on my phone too. So I know most people are skeptical, but we did a brain scan with me. Yeah, and then we tested this like me on the phone like this. Yeah, this phone is damaging to your brain man. Yeah, no doubt about it. When you put it right next to your head. I still use the tethered earbuds. Yeah, those are better than the AirPods. Yeah. Yeah, but EMF is no joke dude. Got it.

My HRV was lowered 40 points when I was on the phone. No way. 40 points. I'm guessing you were probably on the phone a lot, with obviously with what you did. We just did a five minute call for the test. Yeah, yeah. But some people were on the phone for hours.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, dude, you're frying this up. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, there's all these hell things, but I just focus on what I can control. I'm curious in like 50 years, like what we're going to see with like humans. We're going to have like hunches on our backs

for like looking at phones all day long like bro Like the old version me was an asshole like I'm talking about the young version not like 20s and 30s where I was a young Entrepreneur I'm talking like late teens early 20s. I used to get in trouble with the law etc and these days when I when I see People walking around town with their face in their phone or sitting in a parking lot dark parking lot On their iPhone. I'm like, this is the fastest robbery, kidnapping, and car theft ever.

Like I'm going to get a trifecta on this one. Like it's just nuts how people are so unaware and it's all because of those phones. I mean I saw a viral video yesterday, this guy was just fake kidnapping like a kid and seeing how people would react. Everyone was on their phone. Only one person stopped out of the 10 people he did the test with to help the kid out. Isn't that crazy?

That is sad because we're just walking on our phones. Yeah. Yeah, and there's this new mindset We're like, I don't want to get involved. I don't want to get involved. I I don't know Bro, it's not like a screen where you're spectating like you could actually change the outcome of whatever's happening right now Yeah, people are just fucking weird. How do you approach phones with your kids? Like you give them free reign? Now Andrew's 19, Chloe's 17, but when they got phones at 13 years old, they had complete rules and regulations and standards and what they can in fact,

I hope Andrew doesn't listen to you because he hates when I talk about this. But he was 14, he started a Instagram account and his profile image was the middle finger, right? I'm like, son, I come from Thugville. I was a foreigner. I live in Santa Ana. I got in gang fights with those guys. You live in beautiful Chino Hills on a one acre estate that's manicured.

You got a, you know, we've got a chauffeur and you've got Marlon the housekeeper. What are you, what is the middle finger for number one? Number two, I thought you told you you can't have a social media account, right? But yeah, they were raised with so much structure that they know how to use their phones to access information and not so much to live on it on a daily basis. Smart. Was teaching toughness to your kids hard

because you had all the wealth and success? Yeah, because you have to manufacture adversity versus having it, right? Right. Growing up in section eight housing in Santa Ana, California, you see your dad, my dad had this Armenian saying, he said, we're always running out of money before we run out of month.

And so he would have to make a decision whether we're paying the electric bill or the gas bill. They always ran the water, because obviously humans need water, so if you don't pay your water bill, you still have water. But electric or gas. And so sometimes we had no electricity in the apartment. And that was section eight housing where the government

paid for a large amount of our rent, right? But you know, he's got a paper route. He's a 45 year old man who's got a paper route and works at an Arco gas station. Like how the fuck is he going to make it happen? And so like I lived through real adversity and hardship, which is funny at the time you don't realize it because you're just having a good time because you're a kid.

In hindsight, you look back, you're like, holy fuck. Yeah, I was before social media where you were comparing yourself to other exactly had nothing to compare against right and all the other kids and so in a In a community like that where it's you know they're getting government-assisted. They're just like you so you're like we're all the same You now with social media you can like oh shit that kids got a Lambo that kids got a bling You know whatever and so with my kids like how do you what do you you buy them the plunge? Now with social media you can like, oh shit, that kid's got a Lambo, that kid's got a bling, you know, whatever. And so with my kids, like, how do you, what do you, you buy them the plunge?

And like, hey, do the ice bath. The cold plunge? Yeah, and so that's what we did. Like, hey son, here's a plunge, do the plunge. Hey daughter, do the plunge. But I raised them as hard as I could. Taught them how to lift and train. My son's in jujitsu, my daughter's not.

My daughter plays flag football. She's a savage in her own right. They're as hard as can be considering whose kids they are. Yeah. I do well. They went to private school. They had a great life. They're as hard as can be.

Love it. And I don't want them to live the life that I had either. Like that's, I would never want that. Yeah. Yeah. So you manufacture adversity. Do you believe in tough love? Cause I've seen it like hit or miss. Like for me it worked.

My mom was pretty tough on me, but I've seen it the opposite way as well. My dad was really tough on me. He was very physical with me. I think it worked with me. The first time I whacked Andrew in the ass, Andrew's older, so... He was always like the test subject. Chloe was one, Andrew was... No, Chloe was two, Andrew was four.

And he did something, and I like whacked him in the ass a couple times. And he looked at me and just these big crocodile tears started coming down. Bro, I felt so awful. I realized I cannot be physical with my kids. I apologized so awful. I realized I cannot be physical with my kids. I apologize to him. I was like, this will never happen again. At four years old, he was like, okay, whatever, right? He's like, fuck man, you just spanked me in the ass. But um, I don't know, I think showing him and her that I'm disappointed in them and that I know they could do better, it was tougher love than the physical. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Yeah, I meant more mentally but yeah back in your day physical was normal. Yeah. Yeah, so we said tough love I went right to yeah. Yeah. No, that's what happened with my dad. He got this shippy out of them going up on a farm Yeah, yeah, that's that's tough. That's just how it was back then. Yeah. Yeah, that's just how it was I mean dude when we came to America, I was six years old By the time I was nine or 10 years old in one of the section eight housings we lived in, the shade tree apartments, I had a friend named Scott. And I go knock on his door, he had GI Joe action figures

and we'd play with that shit, right? And so I always played with my friend's shit because I never had shit of my own. And I knock on his door, I'm like, hey Scott, can you come out and play? What the fuck, it's a weekend, right? I'm like nine years old, 10 years old, and he's like, I can't come out, I'm on restriction.

I was like, what's restriction? He goes, you know, I can't watch TV, I can't come out and play with you guys, I can't go swim in the pool. How long? He goes, two weeks. I'm like, oh my God, what happened? Like bro, I've never heard the term.

I'm like, what happened to you? Like, this is bad. He goes, I got in trouble. I go, your mom can't just slap you a couple times and you can come out and play? He goes, I got in trouble. I go, your mom can't just slap you a couple times and you can come out and play. He goes, that's called abuse. I go, my dad slaps me around all the time and then I come out and play with you guys.

Like to me, my dad beating me and then I can go back to resuming being a kid was a lot more reasonable than fucking two weeks of restriction. But that's just how I was programmed because I didn't know anything different. Interesting. Yeah, you were just so normalized to it. Did, did you I guess come to terms when you got older with him and make amends? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's 91. He just turned 91 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah as

Former communists get older they soften up. Someone said this about About some dictator if I think Fidel Castro, like before Fidel Castro died, like a decade or so before, somebody went and interviewed him, but he had interviewed him maybe like 20 years earlier. And they're like, man, the Fidel Castro from 20 years earlier was just a savage, ruthless, cutthroat guy. Like this is a softer, more gentle Fidel Castro. And I think time does wear out, smooth out the edges.

Time heals, right? Time heals the heart. And then on someone who's rough and tumble. And again, my dad had a rough childhood too. Like, I can understand that. It doesn't give him permission to go beating the shit out of me and my siblings. But my point is, he's so gentle now. And I understand where he came from. And in his own way, we've made mends. Like he hasn't apologized, but in his own way he has. I love that.

I think it's important also just not to hold anger and resentment, it could affect your own health, right? Absolutely, absolutely. I think when you're holding resentment, when you're holding guilt, when you're holding shame, all those things can just kind of start eating away at you from the inside. And I saw that there's that, we've all seen it, I'm sure you do a Google search for the vibrational frequency scale of humans.

Like shame, guilt, regret. Those are the very bottom, low frequency, right? Acceptance is in the middle. So it's like, if, okay, accept the fact that you fucked up, you're feeling guilty about something or you regret doing something. Just accept the fact that you screwed that up. And acceptance has a higher vibrational frequency. Wow. Now, at least accept it and go, I'll never do this again. If I took advantage of you and I feel guilt and shame and regret, I could either live in that low frequency or I could accept it and then go, I'm going to come and apologize

to you. I'm going to say, homie, how can I make this right? And then hopefully you give me the opportunity to make it right. Now I have acceptance. And I can start working my way up higher to like joy and bliss and happiness with higher frequency. I love that. Yeah, we'll throw out that image on the screen.

One of your recent videos was titled, How Churches and Schools Destroy Dreams. Yeah. I wanna learn more about that. Yeah, I do believe that churches, believe that churches, schools, universities, they want congruency in people. Again, I get it. Like think about the road. There's lanes and it's just that paint that's keeping traffic on this side of the road

and then traffic on that side of the road. Like if we decided to ignore that paint and just become unruly, those lanes mean nothing to us. We're just going to smash into each other, right? And like, you know, 3000 pound vehicles. And so I do realize humanity needs like some level of control and congruency. I get it. And we have to comply to, you know, stop lights and all that shit. But it's also easy enough to go, well, we could do that if we can just draw lines on the ground, arbitrary lines and people will stay in them.

If I want to create workers and cubicles or factories or whatever, then maybe what I'm going to teach at schools are things that are going to dim the light of curiosity, dim the light of, I think I'm gonna go and explore and see what's out there. And instead say, what do you wanna be? Do you wanna be a firefighter, a police officer, an accountant, a chef or whatever? In other words, go work for someone.

Churches do the same thing. If you wanna be a good religious, good believer of Jesus or Allah or Buddha, there's a path that's very specific that you have to walk. And if you deviate from it, you know, hell fire and brimstone. And so there is a sense of control and compliance, congruency that has gotten from schools and churches. I think it, it takes, it takes curious and adventurous minds and it declass and defangs us. I don't know if it's

intelligently designed that way or if it's, hey we have to teach kids math, we have to teach them English, we have to teach them pronouns, we have to teach them verbs, and then we have to like, okay we're going to read scripture and so we can't just haphazardly open up the Bible to some random page. We have to have structures. So I get structure and all that. But I think if you don't question school, why am I learning this? Why are you asking like, what if I want to go open up a restaurant?

Why, who didn't ask me if I want to be an entrepreneur? If I want to be a real estate investor, it's always like pushing you towards jobs. Right. But maybe that's all they know and that's all they teach. If I want to be a real estate investor, it's always like pushing you towards jobs, right? But maybe that's all they know and that's all they teach. But the point I was making in that video is be curious, be skeptical. Because if you're curious and skeptical, you might just see that if I follow this thing exactly as planned, I might end up exactly like the rest of them. And do I want to be average like the rest of them. And do I want to be average like the rest of them? One thing I shared at the project with these men

that Ray Cash and I ran for five years, I was like, dude, if you guys have kids, you would never say I want my kid to have average health, to be of average height, to have average intelligence, make average income, live in an average house, marry an average person. You want the best for them, right? You want the best for them. Yet we kind of, through schools and churches,

and I guess if there was a third thing, it would probably be media, and that's gonna be social media, television, movies, music, like all sorts of media. It does get people to comply. Now, you remember back in the 70s, 80s, there was like music that was just like, hey, bucking the system, like how do we buck the system?

How do we think outside of the norm? But I think a lot of things right now get people to stay homogenized. And if you're just curious and skeptical enough, you might realize that I don't want to be average and the path that they're sending me down in this university or this school or this church is a path of being average, and I don't want to be average and the path that they're sending me down in this university or the school or this church is a path of being average and I don't want that.

Yeah. When did you start having that mindset? Was it when you were in college or in your twenties? Dude, because my dad always told me never trust the government because we come from a communist country and he was a communist party member, he said, always be skeptical.

Like I think that was one of the greatest gifts he gave me. Like he probably told me that at 10, 11 years old. Damn. Yeah. So I didn't trust teachers. Like I would literally run away from school. I was like, I don't like this class. I'm out. I literally go out the door, right?

At 10 years old? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was definitely a renegade in that way, a renegade in that way. And it served me well. I do not have an average life. There's nothing average about me in any way. And to some degree,

you know, the lion that's caged up in the zoo tends to live longer because four times a day they throw raw meat in there and he eats it. The lion that's on the wild Serengeti that's knocking out 1600 episodes in almost two years and hunting and trying to figure out how to monetize and create live events and get sponsors. Like you're hunting. You're hunting every day.

You may not have a long life, but God damn it is fulfilling. That's what I love. That's what I love. I made it to 50. Maybe at 51 I pass out. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I get to 100.

My goal is to live to 100 and die. Especially after a good leg workout. That's how I see it. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I get to 100. My goal is to live to 100 and die. Especially after a good leg workout. That's how I see it. I'm trying to manifest. I'm going to have a really awesome leg workout, get to my truck and then die. Yeah, at like about 100 years old. Whatever a good leg workout means during that time. Yeah, at least you did everything you could in that time. Yeah, that's all, man. I just don't want to get de-clawed and de-fanged. I made sure that my kids aren't de-clawed and de-fanged. And to that, look, they went to a private school and

My son wanted to have long hair, but you know the private school was like hey the long hair He could have long hair, but it can't touch the collar right okay cool So I made sure it was just right there like a half a millimeter from the top of the collar right and So one day like the one of of my son's teachers was like, hey, you can't have long hair, we're going to send you to the principal and they're going to tell your parents whatever. And I raised hell, I'm like, it's not touching the collar. Well, but Mrs. Whoever thinks that it's not appropriate.

It doesn't matter what you think. She's trying to de-claw and defang. My mission is to have these kids not de-clawed and defanged. So that ain't happening. And oh, by the way, if you want that giant canopy that I paid $90,000 for that's being built on the playground, and that's the only time I've ever have flexed my money, is like that giant, because it gets pretty hot in Chino Hills. You want that fucking giant canopy? Like my kid's hair is not changing because it's not touching his collar. And they're like, no worries. And then they put

up a giant banner that said thank you FitBody Bootcamp. it with fit body boot camps a lot of it off. Oh smart I love that you stand your ground for what you believe. Oh, you have to you have to be Humanity wants to move you along the path. They want you to drift down the path that they've already predestined for you. I I don't want that. I don't want that. That's that's that's such a Again, they do with the best of intentions My dad was a tailor so he's like I'm gonna give you my tailor shop. And then he came to America, opened up a little tailor shop. After five years of working his nuts off as a paper boy and working at a gas station,

he bought a little tailor shop. And then when I turned 16, and I know how to sew really well, actually. And he was like, you know, one day you're gonna have this tailor shop. I was like, no, I don't want this. And he's like, but I built this for you. Look, it bought us a house. I have a little rental property. I'm like, good for you. It's not for me. He goes, well, I don't want this. And he's like, but I built this for you. Look, it bought us a house. I have a little rental property. I'm like, good for you. It's not for me.

He goes, well, what's your path? I don't know, but it's not this tailor shop. Right? And so like to say that to your communist dad who took risks his life and brought you to the United States and then it's like, hey, I'm going to hand you a business. That's pretty fucking scary. And then I didn't have an answer when he's like,

well, what's your path then? No fucking clue, dad, but it ain't this. I know that. It ain cuz I just I know I'll be dead inside cuz I just thought for a moment sitting right there at His sewing machine and he would get so tired bro after like 12 hours He would literally put his head he'd make two fists and he put his forehead on his fit on his top fist And he would sleep for a little bit with his tape measure hanging hanging. I would see him like that I was like, I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I'll go hungry, but I don't want that.

That's all I knew. And so once again, like he was handing me a cage with meat thrown in it every day, four times a day. And I was like, no, thank you. I just want to see if I can go hunt. And in the process of hunting, I've got my battle scars and my bumps and bruises and my losses. And those losses have ranged

from hundreds of thousands to a few million at a time. But I wouldn't change it in any other way. This is fucking experience, man. Yeah, I love that. Did it take off right away when you made that decision? Did it take years or what was that process? About a decade. That must have been rough for your relationship.

It was, it was. I very quickly, at around 17, I moved out of the house. Wow. Because he was like, I'm handing you something and you don't want it, now you're out here causing trouble. So I would, me and my friends would carjack dudes, steal their car. We wanted nothing with them. We just wanted to steal their car and our justici, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. It's like, oh, their cars are insured. And Honda Civics back then in the 90s, you can get a lot of money for car parts for Honda Civic.

And so we would do that kind of stuff. And then eventually I got caught in a police helicopter chase. Damn. Yeah, yeah, that was a whole issue. I was driving the 79 Toyota pickup, trying to get away from the Anaheim Police Department, and they've got a fucking helicopter.

You're not getting away in the 79 Toyota pickup, bro. Not at all. And so that was a big, But imagine how disappointed my dad was. I've got a business I want to hand you, and here you are doing stupid shit with your friends, and I brought you to this country from a communist... He risked his life. Like, he denounced communism. We went to Italy on vacation from Armenia, right? Which was under Soviet communist rule. And then, of course, we weren't really on vacation. We were escaping. And then we go to the we weren't really on vacation. We were escaping.

And then we go to the American Consul, and my dad's like, hey, I'm a communist party member. I denounce communism, and we want to defect to the United States. They pumped him for information for 10 or 11 days, and then they allowed us to come into the United States. So he like risked his life, brings us to the United States, and then he's like, opens up a tailor shop

that has done well for him. A lot of cash transactions, especially back then So not paying a lot of taxes And he's handing this to me and instead what am I doing? I'm stripping cards down and I'm like getting in a police helicopter chase, but I just knew my path was different I just had to find it but it took about a decade. I start off as a personal trainer I love training people fitness changed my life I was a fat kid when I got lean leaner, more athletic, built more confidence,

built more competency, all those things that we talked about earlier. Then I wanted to help people achieve that, but then I realized as a one-on-one personal trainer, I can't achieve that, especially in a big box gym. One of my personal training clients, his name is Jim Franco, awesome fucking human being. And Jim's like,

you need to have your own personal training studio. I'm like, well, I don't know how to do it. He goes, first of all, you got to learn how to sell. He goes, you're just taking orders right now. Someone says they want 20 sessions from you. You just sell them what they want. You're an order taker. No one had ever spoken that much truth to me.

Like think about this, the guy's paying the gym for me to train him and I'm getting paid 12.50 an hour. And he, I got a millionaire coaching me and I didn't even realize it. And when it clicked, he teaches me how to sell. He teaches me how to market he gives me helps me develop self-belief that I can open up a boutique gym and then he loans me money and I successfully opened that up and the rest was history from there like I

realized okay one-on-one I'm never gonna become financially free but if I have a personal training studio and I have 10 or 15 personal trainers working in there now they're trading their time for dollars and I'm getting going to become financially free. But if I have a personal training studio and I have 10 or 15 personal trainers working in there, now they're trading their time for dollars. And I'm getting a portion of that. Now, if I can multiply that gym to five personal training gyms, now I'm really like scaling this thing, right? And then I ended up selling those to Crunch Fitness, um, back in the day. So that was my first sale at the age of 28.

I sell like five gyms, right? I made a few hundred thousand dollars, like take home for me. And I was like, holy shit, entrepreneurship is my thing. And from there, I just went all in on it. I love it. That's the power of a good mentor right there. Bro. Change your life. Yeah. And all I did was just believe him.

Even though I doubted myself, I believed him. Because he had, again, undeniable proof. I would look out the doors of LA Fitness, and there's Jim Franco pulling up in a champagne-colored Cadillac Escalade. because he had, again, undeniable proof. I would look out the doors of LA Fitness, and there's Jim Franco pulling up in a champagne-colored Cadillac Escalade. The next day, there's Jim Franco pulling up in a 1964 Shelby Cobra.

Like, and one day I'm like, Jim, how many cars do you have? He goes, several. I'm like, dude, I've got this like old beat-up truck. He goes, well, you know, the more value you add to humanity, the more money you make, and you can buy as many cars as you want. Like, that know as well. The more value you add to humanity, the more money you make and you can buy as many cars as you want. That blew my mind. Yeah, so anyways, just to open up your ears and listen,

you don't always have to pay mentors. Like today we've got, this episode, right? Look at all the episodes you're pumping out. You got a shit ton of stuff on YouTube, on Spotify, on iTunes. If people would just listen and execute, that's all I did is listen and execute. Like you don't gotta be that smart.

Just listen and execute. You know, most of things will work out. Some things won't. You just keep moving forward and before you know it, you've amassed some wealth. Absolutely. Yeah. Pedro, where can people find your show

and your events coming up, man? My show can be found at Spotify, iTunes, the Bedros Kulian show. They can follow me on Instagram. And if they go to BedrosKullian.com, they could find my event for May 31st. Awesome. Thanks for coming on, man.

That was so fun. Check them out, guys. See you next time.