The Nick Bare Podcast - 025: Bedros Keuilian - Turn Your Suffering Into Growth

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Many people let negative experiences and trauma have power over their lives and become consumed by them. Others choose to run and ignore. Bedros Keuilian has made it his life goal to help others realize that we cannot out-run or out-smart our past, but we can use it as a catalyst for growth to fuel our success. Bedros is a best-selling author, speaker, business consultant, and founder of Fit Body Boot Camp. Full of wisdom and experience, Bedros shares how we can rewrite the story we tell ourselves, build confidence, and curate a circle of friends to live out our mission and purpose. Enjoy the episode! Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Bedros here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/  YT: https://youtube.com/@BedrosKeuilian Topics: 00:00 Intro 1:31 The story we tell ourselves 5:17 Power of belief 11:36 Bedros’ biggest lesson 17:36 The moment Bedros changed his story 33:57 Removing the glass ceilings 37:36 Stacking wins to build confidence 43:24 Curating your circle of friends 54:01 Mission, purpose, team 1:08:21 Bedros' relationship with leisure 1:15:01 Using control for positive 1:25:16 Decisions pay us or we pay for them 1:32:14 Stepping down from CEO

I had this massive panic attack. Bro, I thought I was having a heart attack. Like, both arms went nimb, numb. My throat shuts, sweating profusely. In that moment, I remember thinking, if this is how I die, I just had this massive amount of sadness come over me. Who's going to walk Chloe down the aisle?

Who's going to teach Andrew to be a modern day night? And then I made this vow to my wife, till death do his part. I just didn't realize death was going to come so quick. And so I accepted death quickly, but I was so sad for my family. But my theory was if I just can somehow make it down the staircase, is if I die on the pool deck, you know, my wife will see me, and maybe she can call 911,

and maybe they can somehow bring me back to life. I don't know if it was just a fresh air once I got outside the door. All of a sudden, everything kind of cleared up over a minute or two. I was just left in a puddle of sweat. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and supporting the brand. Now, I have spent the last decade plus of my life building bare performance nutrition, and we create effective supplements that you can trust to support your wellness, endurance, and performance goals.

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I appreciate you. And let's dive into the show. All right, guys, what's going on? Welcome back to another episode. Today we have Badros Koleon. Badros, welcome. Nick, thanks for the opportunity, man. Good to be here. This is, uh, this is episode two of you being on the show. Yes, sir. And last time you're on the show, I asked you a question. Your response went viral. I've seen this clip all over the internet, shared by a bunch of different pages. And I wanted to bring that question up again and have you answer it again and then really dive into it. Because I think,

that's going to set the context for the conversation we're going to have today. And I ask the question, what's the number one thing that is holding most people back from reaching their full potential? You said this story. Yeah. Can you describe what the story is? The story is a story that we tell ourselves. And it's partly true.

It's what happened to you as a kid. Maybe you were physically, mentally, sexually abused. Maybe you were laughed at and picked on for, you know, being fat or having a stutter, but whatever story that you end up telling yourself and you carry that into adulthood, what I found through my life experience is that you end up looking for evidence to then reinforce that story throughout the rest of your life of why you're not lovable, why you're not smart, why you can't lose weight, why you should be broke your whole life. And so the moment you can realize that I can take back the pen that I've empowered others with who have been

writing in my book of life, and I could start rewriting my story from this day forward how it goes. Then you start looking for evidence for your new story. I can be lean. I can create financial freedom. I can be loved. I'm not just to be thrown away. I don't have to be in an abused and abusive relationship. But it's about self-empowerment is really about taking that pen back and rewriting your story because I think we could all agree until you die. You certainly have thousands of pages. of blank pages left in your book of life. It's time to start writing your current story and not so much living out the past story that you had.

Do you think it's that easy to go from yesterday? I told myself this story. Today, I change a story. I changed the narrative. So it's simple, not easy, right? It's literally that simple, as I described, but it's not easy because our brains are so good with creating neuropathways to reinforce things.

So for years, if you keep going and finding abusive relationships to then justify why you should be abused because your subconscious mind still believes that you're not worthy of love and respect, then you have to create new patterns of life. You have to create a new neural pathway, and you have to beat that into. This is why we talk about habits, right? This is why we talk about those small micro habits, become lifelong habits that are hardened and create a pattern of life. And so is it easy?

No, it is simple, but it does take a good amount of time, maybe working with the therapist, maybe doing the deep work, journaling your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Why do I feel this way? Where is it coming from? But oftentimes people are too busy distracting themselves, escaping from the reality,

either through social media or binge watching television or vices like alcohol or porn. pornography or weed or gambling, whatever the thing might be. And so they never take time to just sit with themselves and go, what is going on with me? And how could I actually rewrite my story? And then doing the work to do that. Like anything else, it takes time and effort. But the outcome that it produces, holy hell, like a brand new life.

Yeah, I was reading your book, Man Up. Yeah. And one of the quotes in there was, the negative belief system is crippling. Your beliefs dictate your habits. habits dictate actions, actions, dictate outcomes. Belief is everything. Belief is everything. If I believe, for example, that, you know, we're screwed.

Biden is our president and this country is screwed. We're selling it all off to China. We're sending all this money to Ukraine. And it's being laundered right back to the politicians' pockets. And the world is going to hell. If I had that, if I believed that we are screwed, why would I make the time to come here and go on your podcast if my belief system was that we're doomed, right? But I have a belief system that we can overcome, that we can rebuild, that we can write our path.

And so, therefore, my belief systems do impact my habits. That changes my actions. I got on a plane. I got here. And the outcome is, hopefully this interview we're doing, will wake enough people up where they will start becoming the voice against the opposition that is trying to erode our great country and tear down our constitution. Yeah. One of the things I like to say is doubt is only dangerous. when you start doubting yourself,

the whole world can be against you. Right. You know, as an entrepreneur, you probably know when you get started, no one believes in you. Nope. Everyone's laughing at you. They think it's a joke.

When I started my business, people, people were making fun of me. Yeah. Right? And if I would have let that belief control my narrative, my fault process,

my securities, there's no way I'd be where I am today. Yeah. I didn't ever buy into that. So, So everyone can doubt you. Everyone can say things about what you're trying to do and what you want to do. But until you actually believe that from what they're saying, you're in the driver's

seat. You know, as you say, you are flying the fighter jet. Bingo, right. And you could very easily, if you start believing what the doubters say, you turn that fighter jet into a crop duster that is not worthy of, you know, going to battle and then winning the spoils. And it's funny you say that to you, man. we think so much alike, and I think most high performers do.

And by the way, anyone listening to this going, well, then I'm not a high performer. I'm not an entrepreneur like you guys, and I haven't done what you've done. You just do the work and you get there. The human mind, the human body, the human psyche is so pliable. You can literally become anyone and anything. Multiply that over time and experience and don't quit even when it sucks. But I share this because the doubt of a thousand people on me is less dangerous than if I had self-doubt. Like my one self-doubt in myself is more dangerous than a thousand people

doubting my ability to build that franchise, Fit Body Boot Camp, and ultimately, you know, have a big exit. And so the conversation, the most important conversation you could ever have is that conversation that takes place between your ears, right, with yourself. Like, you could sit here and I know you never would, but if you're like, Beidros, you're going to fail at your next big business and then you're going to fail at the one. Cool. Thanks, Nick. Appreciate your opinion, man. And then I could see the guy at my hotel, let's say he says the same thing. By the time I get home tomorrow. A thousand people told me I'm going to fail and I'm never going to succeed. None of that will impact me. But the moment I allow any one of those seeds to take root in my mind

and I go, maybe Nick's right. It's over. Then I will now find evidence to erode my future. I listened to Joe Rogan and Crows Williamson have this conversation. They were talking about layers of paint. And what you previously just said, you know, someone might be watching or listening to this thinking, yeah, but I haven't built a business. And I have no reason to believe in myself and I haven't made money and I haven't achieved any success in the terms that I deem successful. But you have to layer paint. So layers of paint is what builds wisdom, its experience, it's trial, it's failure. So I mean, you've been at this for decades now. Yeah, yeah. You have lots of layers of paint. You've built and failed. You've lost money. You've made money. Built multiple

businesses, built relationships. I'm sure relationships have fizzled out and fallen apart as well. all of those experiences that build wisdom, those are layers of paint. If you're just getting started, you just got to put one layer of paint down and then put another down and just keep layering that paint. And paint isn't always a win or success. It's often a failure. But layers of paint make a difference. Is it true that layers of pain make a difference?

And over time, those layers of pain will fortify me and help me create the outcome. Well, yeah, I see it in this table. You see the layers of wood. You see it in a tree. You cut a tree trunk. you see the rings, the layers that it took to grow. And a person who's a tree expert can look at all the dozens of rings and say, man, over the years, you know, five years in, this tree had to endure a very harsh winter. Seven years in, it had to deal with, you know,

three years of drought. Like all the, you know, forest fires, like the rings tell a story, carbon fiber. Yet another thing. Carbon fiber is one of the strongest materials out there, lightest and strongest. How do they make it? How do they make it? Layers, right? Layers. It's always about layers of pain that begin to build us up. But I think oftentimes people, they compare their one year of effort to our 15 or 20 years of work that we've been doing. And they go, well, I did it for a year of focused work and I'm not there. I'm not where you are, Nick. They don't see that, if I'm not mistaken, you took your GI Bill and you parlayed it into the supplement company, right? I used a loan to the Military Associated Bank,

That's what it was. USAA. Yeah. A lot of people could have told you so many different things to do with that money or better yet not to take that loan. But you knew that I'm going to take that loan. I'm going to do this work. There's probably going to be layers of pain.

It's going to be longer than I anticipated. So I better just, you know, we say, if you're going to eat shit, get good at it. Just to be an entrepreneur, to be successful than anything. I imagine those, you know, guys in the special operations, pro athletes. It's how much shit can you eat over time? time consistently. And if you can do that, and even that, you're layering pain. So nature shows us that layers of anything produce an outcome. So then why wouldn't that apply to us in life? It absolutely does. How many years have you been at this building businesses? I'm on my 24th year.

And for you right now, what would you say has been the biggest success? If you had to boil down to one thing. Biggest financial success and also it it helped me personally as well. And I think those two are tied in business. In business, your biggest financial success will also be the thing that develops you personally, that helps you develop the most amount of self-mastery. And it was launching fit body boot camp, our franchise. And the reason is, you know, I was a gym owner. And then when one-on-one gyms started to tank after the 2008 housing market crash, I realized, all right, gyms for one-on-one personal training aren't making money anymore. Outdoor boot camps, where it's one coach, one trainer, many clients, that's making money, but it's not something you could scale across

every state because of weather and inclement, whether it's super hot or super cold. So in Southern California where I live, outdoor boot camps, you can run around, you can run around the year. And so I said, well, what if I just take the outdoor boot camp, bring it indoors, instead of have one-on-one personal training, because a lot of people couldn't afford $600 to $800 a month after the housing market crash, what if I now bring it down to $149 a month, get 30 to 40 people in a group, train them for 30 minutes? And the way I justified it to myself is if a pro-NFL coach can train the highest level of athletes in a group environment, couldn't I then take Mr. and Mrs. Jones and train them to help them burn fat and build muscle tone in a group environment?

Of course I could. So I had to change my paradigm because I come from the one-on-one personal training space. And I always used to tell people, well, it's one-on-one, not one-on-two, not one-on-three, not one-on-three, not one-on many. But what I realize is, if they do it at the pro level, and those dudes are complex, and those dudes cost millions of dollars, I could certainly do it with Mrs. Jones, Mr. Jones. And so as I proved the concept, took the outdoor boot camp, brought it indoors, fit body

boot camp took off. So timing helped, right, because housing market had crashed. People still wanted to get one-on-one coaching because they couldn't just go to the gym and do it on their own. Most people don't know what you and I do and don't want to know that. They want someone to coach them. They want to be accountable to someone. They want that kind of motivation and support. I lowered the price of personal training because it's now done in a group environment to $1.49 a month. I made it convenient by saying now at 9 a.m., 30 of you can work out instead of just one of you with this coach. And it blew up. But in the process of blowing up, and just to give you an idea, all franchises, whether it's Jiffyloob, Subway, 7-Eleven, or Fit Body Boot Camp, our brand,

less than 1% of franchises ever make it to 100 locations. In my first two years, we had 118 locations. And I had no idea those stats. I just put my head down and worked, right? And in fact, back then, I was a licensing program. And so we're going to talk about the layers of pain. This is a great example. It was a licensing program kind of similar to CrossFit, right? But I was like, well, I don't want to happen what happens with CrossFit here at my brand Fit Body Boot Camp because you'll see two Crossfits across the street from each other and they have to duke

it out because there's no protected territory. So even though I had a licensing program and I had 118 locations, I was giving my licensees five to eight miles of protected territory. So if I have one here in Austin, Nick Barr can't open one up for at least five to eight miles. Well, the problem was the great state of California where I live, said, hey, you just crossed the line into franchising. I was trying to do something right by our licensees,

and apparently by giving a protected territory, which is why CrossFit doesn't, I crossed the line into franchising. They wanted to find me $2,500 per location that I had opened. And I said, if you guys do that, I'm going to have to file bankruptcy, number one. Number two, I don't have the money, which is why I'll have to file bankruptcy. Number three, these 118 locations that are active and open, I support them. I coached them.

I mentor them. They've signed a lease. They've built out locations. They're going to go belly up, most likely. And so what else can we do? So imagine the fear where you're looking, you're looking in your wife in her eyes. And she's like, what's going on? I'm like, well, we might have to refinance the house.

What year was this? This was 2011, right? So two years prior, I'd been building it as a licensing program. And so she's like, we've already refinanced the house once for this goofball idea, right? But fine, we can go live on your parents' couch if this fails. I'm like, we may have to pay this massive fine, $2,500 times 118 locations. So she had my back. But at the same time, she was like, like, you got to figure something out, dude.

And so those are the pains that people don't see when they see Fit Body Boot Camp on the Ink 5 500 list three years in a row, entrepreneur magazines, you know, fastest growing fitness franchise. Those things, and that's, I just gave you one example of that. So FitBody Boot Camp now with over 600 locations, it's our biggest brand. It's literally built my personal brand and it's built me personally. I've become a better communicator, a better visionary. I've gotten more emotional discipline. I've become more productive.

My life structure is more organized. I literally found more time in my life because FitBody grew. I became a better leader because now I've got over 50 team members. just in that one company, all walks of life, all different personality types, and I can't just lead the ones that I connect with. I got to lead them all. From the bean counters to the compliance officers, to our attorneys, to our support personnel, to our sales reps. And so it's created so much personal growth. It's created so much financial growth, but it came with so many layers of pain. here we are on our 15th 16th year in business and without that layers of pain i wouldn't be here

today and i love that i'm sure at some point there was this pivotal moment you went from slow growth no growth struggling to high growth accelerated growth what story were you telling yourself back then when you were struggling and then what did it look like when you change narrative you change your story was there a moment you can remember where the story changed i i i i i I can. And in fact, you mentioned my book, Man Up, and I tell that story in the book. So, as I told you, this was around 2011. And so, you know, because people are wondering, did you end up paying that fine to the state of California? Here's the power of negotiations, right? And this is why everyone should learn how to negotiate and compromise and communicate. And not that I was good at it,

but I'm a pretty decent salesperson. And I wasn't a good salesperson. We can trace that back to against someone I talk about in my book, Jim Franco, my first mentor. He was a personal training client. He was an entrepreneur. He taught me how to sell. He yelled at me. He said, you're an order taker and not a closer. That's why you're a personal trainer and a bouncer and a fry cook at Disneyland. And I was like, I begged to differ bit, Jim Franco.

He goes, no, you took my order for six months of personal training. You didn't sell me any personal training. I wanted six months of personal training three times a week, and you just fulfilled my order. But you don't close any deals. You let people walk. And that's why. And I had never had anyone speak to me that way. Did he tell you this while you were his trainer?

Yeah. Was he just giving you a tough love? Tough love. You know, he's an old dude from Jersey, moved to California, started this company called Autolog. I think he saw something in me. In fact, I just went to his 80th birthday party. Like, so Jim is my rich dad, right?

And my dad is my poor dad, and I love him to death. We escape communism. I'm sure we'll talk about that. But full circle here, I had never had an entrepreneur talk. Anyone talked to me like that. Not because, like, I'm a tough. Just no one cared enough. This dude saw something in me.

And, you know, over time when you're working with a client, one-on-one, you do build a bond. He saw how much I cared for his health and fitness. He was in his 60s at the time. And so he poured into me, man. He brought me like sales tapes and sales books. Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Ziglar, like a whole new world opened up to me. But I share this with you because going back full circle, I learned to negotiate because it is a sale between me and the state of California. I don't want to pay this fine. I said, look, I know you're doing this because I'm a licensee or licensing program, and I was selling it as a franchise by accident,

given protected territories. My intentions were well-placed. They go, yeah, we agree. Because I used CrossFit as an example. I'm like, I don't want FitBody Boot Camp locations to be duking it out. I want them to be friends, not enemies. And so I said, what if I turn this brand into a franchise and not sell a single location until I do?

they go, great. Don't sell a single location until you become a franchise. Now, dude, I thought this was going to be like maybe five, six grand of paperwork and maybe a month and a half. $85,000 later, Nick, and 11 months later, we became a franchise in late 2012. This is all just legal infrastructure fees? Yeah, yeah. Like when you franchising, all franchises have to deal with the Federal Trade Commission.

So I'm governed. Fit Body Boot Camp is overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. So, you know, I can't sell you a franchise on a seven-year franchise agreement, have you go sign a lease somewhere for, you know, five, seven, or ten years, billed out for a hundred grand or so, your gym, and then I disappear because I don't have the money to support you. So long ago, the Federal Trade Commission started to oversee franchises, which is great, which is awesome. But with that, there's a lot of legal fees.

You'd have to create SOP manuals and FDD, franchise disclosure documents, and there's 13 of the 50 states have their own FAA's franchise contractuals and FD's franchise discorser documents. Not to bore you with all that. But all this is to say, the California gave me the nod, but it was like 11 months later and $85,000 later, which I didn't have, which was still better than the $2,500 times 180. They let me slide. I became a franchise, and the rest was history.

Now, you fast forward now as we come on to 2013, 2014, remember we talk about how the story we tell ourselves. I've had a weird life, man. I've had a rough life. My family and I, we escaped the Soviet Union, Armenia, when I was six years old. We came here June 16th, 1980. So we just celebrated 42 years of being in this great country in the United States. And that process of escaping wasn't just to bring us to freedom and opportunity.

My dad, he was a member of the Communist Party. He didn't necessarily believe in communism. So he wanted to bring us his kids to a free country where we can have more freedom, opportunity. He believed in capitalism. But my dad didn't know is that by escaping, he also freed me from almost daily molestation. I was being molested by two older boys in Armenia over and over again. And so this all ties into what happens in my book because I came here and because of that abuse, what do men do?

We put it in a box. We put it in a box. We put other boxes in front of it, compartmentalize and move forward and go, I'm never going to think of it again. but it shows up in your relationship. It shows up in your friendships. It shows up in your business partnerships. It shows up in your belief systems and how much money you can make. There's always this glass ceiling and how much love I can have

and how much money I can make because I always feel like I always felt like I was broken, unworthy. Right. And so late 2014, early 2015, I had this massive panic attack. And the title of that chapter in the book is called The Morning of My Heart Attack. Bro, I thought I was having a heart attack. Like both arms went numb, my throat. shuts. I'm getting tunnel vision, sweating profusely. I'm like, dude, I'm 38 years old. I'm having a heart attack. And in that moment, I remember thinking, if this is how I die, I just had this massive amount of sadness come over me, who's going to walk Chloe down the aisle, my daughter, who's

going to teach Andrew to be a modern day night. That was my job. And then I made this vow to my wife till death do his part. I just didn't realize death was going to come so quick, right? And so I accepted death quickly, but I was so sad for my family. And I was in my guest house because I went to pick up my shoes because I left my shoes there the night before. I play the drums. Drums are up there. I play barefoot. So I picked up my shoes and that's when this whole panic attack happened, which felt like a heart attack. But my theory was if I just can somehow make it down the staircase, if I die on the pool deck, you know, my wife will see me and maybe she can call 911, and maybe they can somehow bring me back to life. I don't know if it was just a fresh air once I got outside the door or if it's

just a movement down the staircase. All of a sudden, everything kind of cleared up over a minute or two. I was just left in a puddle of sweat. So that was that. Later, the doctors told me that, hey, it's a panic attack. Your heart's fine. You have to do something. And that's where I started working with the therapist to get over my anxiety attacks and my overwhelm because they gave me, they gave me to, basically to numb me. I felt so numb on medication. I forget what it was. It wasn't Prozac or anything like that.

But anyway, but I share this with you because here I was going to a therapist working on the things that were making me feel overwhelmed and anxious, because I never wanted to have another anxiety attack like that again, bro. I wouldn't want that on my worst enemy. You are helpless.

It's crippling. It brings it down to your knees, and you're just like, this is how I go. So I figured, all right, I'll work with the therapist, reluctantly. This therapist, Kevin Downing, he's so good at what he does. Within four, he goes, oh, four sessions. I'm going to give you the tools to deal with your anxiety and your overwhelming. If you do these things, you will have like 80 to 90 percent less overwhelming

anxiety. I'm like, check, got it. Like, I'm a workhorse. You tell me what to do. I'll do it, coach. Was this in person or was this? In person. In person. Every Monday for four weeks after work, I would go. I'd get there at 6 p.m. I was his last patient, and I'd sit there on his couch and, you know, He just talked to me and basically you end up really, he just asked the right questions for you to help yourself out. And you're like, oh, duh, okay, I'm just anticipating future pain. All anxiety is, as we talked about earlier, anxiety and overwhelm is anticipation of future pain. And then he taught me that action alleviates anxiety. Going back to what you were talking about.

You made this list when you were feeling a little anxious and overwhelmed. You're like, okay, what can I control? I'm going to control the things that I can control. You took action on it. Action alleviates anxiety. He taught me how to say no. to opportunities that come. Like, we're like a dog on a bone.

If you're type A person, type A high speed, tightly wound, which as most entrepreneurs are, you want to say yes to ever opportunity. And I was saying yes to so many opportunities. I felt like I was stretched then. No, I've been there. Right? Right?

That's tough. Yeah. And so now you're having guilt. When you're doing this thing with a business partner who you don't want to let down, you're feeling bad that you're letting your family down. You're with your family, but now you feel like, dude, my business partner thinks I'm a dirtbag right now

because I should be working as hard as him. And so you're just constantly. constantly overwhelmed, and that's going to trigger another anxiety attack. So another thing Kevin taught me was, like, say no more often. Then the last thing he taught me was halt. Manage your halt. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. That's what halt stands for. When you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you're going to have an anxiety, attack, panic attack. When the alcoholic is hungry, angry, lonely, tired, he's more likely to go to alcohol. When the drug addict is hungry, angry, lonely, tired, they're more likely to hit the drugs, right? So, all right, I'll manage my halt.

So on the fourth session, as I'm leaving, you know, that's when he was, hey, is there anything else we want to talk about? Maybe your life, your childhood, your parents. And in four weeks, he had built such rapport with me. I hadn't even told my wife about being molested. I never told anyone, not my parents, not my older brother and sister. No one. It was going to my grave with me, Nick. And damn it, Kevin asked.

And I was like, well, parents. I'm like, what do you mean parents? He goes, you know, your parents, were they abusive to you? I'm like, dude, my parents come from communist country. Like, I was never put on restriction. I was just slapped around by my dad. But quite honestly, the beatings my dad gave me, like, paled in comparison to what happened to me as a kid in Armenia.

Why I threw that out there, I still don't know today, other than the fact that I probably trusted. He was the first male figure in my life that I trusted at the age of 38. And he goes, what happened? And I just started bawling, dude. I'm standing at his doorway, ready to leave. I've signed my credit card slip. It's a second floor.

Across his tiny office, it's an office this wide. There's a window right here. I could see my truck, but my legs are locked. I can't go backwards to the staircase. I'm bawling, I'm crying, like snot and everything, like just like all in. All I can think is if I could just fling myself across his room here, I could smash through the window and fall to my truck, and we don't have to have this conversation because he just is shaking his head and saying, Bezos, I'm so sorry.

And I'm crying more. and I don't want him to be sorry for me. Like, don't be sorry for me. Don't talk about it. Don't bring it up. Yet I brought it up. He goes, what happened? And I explained the best I could.

And I couldn't talk. And so he says, you know, were you, were you abused? And I nodded my head, yes. Were you raped? Noted my head, no. You know, were you molested? Yes. By a babysitter?

No. By a boy. Noted my head, yes. And then finally, like, two older boys did stuff to me, Kevin. Da-da-da-da-da-da. And now I'm crying again. bro that led to 15 more months of therapy so imagine this i'm on my last four like last session four sessions i'm walking out peace kevin see you nick that led to 15 more months every monday for 15 months

i came there after work and i sat with him and we just did a deep dive and we he put he put these three words to the three feelings emotions that i had which was shame rage and confusion shame I was so embarrassed that happened to me. No one could find out. My friend Nick can't find out. Like, you'd be like, B, what's wrong with you? You're broken. You're filthy.

You're dirty. So no one could find out. There's shame. Rage. How that fuck did this happen? Why did this happen? Why didn't anyone protect me? Didn't anyone see this happening?

Right? And then confusion. Did I do something to invite those two older boys to happen? Did I do this to me? Did I encourage this somehow and I don't realize? So the confusion. So we dug deep, man. And that big mountain on, and this is Kevin's words.

not mine, he's more eloquent than I am. The big mountain on my timeline of life just became a little speed bump on the timeline of my life. He had me write a letter to myself, to my old self, and he gave me the first sentence, and the first sentence was, hey, Badros, between the ages of four and six in Armenia, you were molested by two older boys, comma, but now, dot, dot, dot, dot. He just gave me the first sentence, and it took me a month and a half to write that letter to myself. I tried writing it on my iPhone, didn't want to do it. laptop didn't want to do it pen and paper pen and pencil finally after a month and a half i was able to do it 11 pages letter later i wrote this awesome letter to that little boy uh and told him how awesome we are

today and what a great human i am and and and he should he should be so proud of himself uh you know he helps shriner children's hospital seven figures every year toys for tots every christmas 97 kids adopted now through compassion international and i realize now as i was right writing that to my younger self. All kid-based charities. Like, what am I doing? Yeah, I'm donating money. I'm really just trying to heal myself.

It's the most selfish thing I do. But after those 15 months, Fit Body Boot Camp hockey stick. You can go back to the Ink Magazine's and Entrepreneur Magazine and see where Fit Body Boot Camp hit Inc. 5,000 and then Inc. 500 and where we were Entrepreneur Magazine's 143rd Fastest scoring franchise out of 175,000 franchises. It was all after 2015. After I did the self-work and healing, it was almost like putting down the e-break. It was like removing the glass ceiling.

You're asking me, what is the moment? The moment was on the other side of healing. Sadly, it wasn't a light switch. It was more of a dimmer switch over 15 months of realizing that I am worthy of love. I am worthy of good friendships. I deserve financial freedom. I'm a good human. I'm not to be thrown away.

I'm not garbage. These are things I felt, bro. So if you're walking around in that state with shame, rage, and confusion, how are you going to have this awesome life, awesome marriage, awesome relationships? You can't. And so you ask, what was that moment? It was after healing and proof of it is in the growth of my companies

and how I finally, I always held on to an addition to like 25, 30 pounds of fat. But I was like that bulky, guy who was oh you can tell there's muscle under this guy if he just got rid of that 25 30 pounds of fat permabalk yes the permabalk yes I love that term thank you yes that that literally effortlessly came off over the next several months right because it's a great book called the body keeps the score I forget the doctor's name who wrote it the body keeps to the score he talks about how if people people have been molested sexually abused whatever if you want to disappear in a western in society like we live in, you're either going to get very fat or are you going to, or,

men use steroids to get very jacked and big to protect that inner child. So you either want to disappear or are you going to, or you're going to get big and jack to protect your inner child? I'd done both. That's how good I am, right? Like, that's how broken I felt I was. But man, what was that moment of the meteoric hockey stick on the other side of the healing, which took 15 months? And some days I would walk out of his office. for four or five days, make it felt like I was walking through molasses, like I was able to put a word to it to my wife. I was like, I feel like I'm walking through molasses with my head in a fog.

So if you just imagine that for a moment, while still having to be the CEO, leader, founder, make decisions, but it was all worth it. Who's willing to go through those layers of pains? If you are on the other side of that pain is the highest version of yourself. I think we all need to pay that price. What was it that exactly changed over those 15 months? Were you a better, stronger leader?

Were you a better communicator? Were you a better operator? Do you have more clarity in the decisions you were making? Like, what was it that helped your business scale and grow so fast? Towards the end of those 15 months, I started to feel like, man, I do deserve love. Like, I literally my confidence. I gave myself permission. In fact, how does my book open up?

the very first chapter is I give you permission to succeed. I give you permission to be the best version of yourself. I give you permit. It was like a whole thing about giving you permission because I finally gave my permission, myself permission to feel love, to feel abundance, to have great relationship, to make millions of dollars, to be able to donate to causes I believe in, to be able to pay it forward to others. And so once I gave myself permission, then the next couple of years, I was like, all right, if this business is to scale, like to the point where we're making, making a hundred million, 200 million a year. Who do I need to become?

You need to be a profound leader. You need to be massively decisive. You need to have a vision so big, as Ed Milet says, that every one of your team members, all of your franchisees, and every single one of their clients believe in this vision that you have. You have to have team and not employees. Like the clarity was so obvious. It was like, well, employees are going to clock in a little late, clock out a little early, the bare minimum to maintain employment. A team is going to be fiercely driven by the vision

that I've casted. They're going to play to win because they know what winning looks like. And so across the board, better emotional discipline, better communicator, more visionary, all of it, all of it, all of it. So then I had to develop those skills, skills and traits. And then lo and behold, fit body blows up. All my other companies blow up. I became a better coach and mentor to other entrepreneurs. But it wasn't by luck. It was. was by removing these glass, invisible glass ceilings that we have that limit our capacity to experience love, joy, bliss, to earn, to connect. You've met people where you're like, I just spent two hours with them, but I'm not sure if I know this guy, right? It's, they do a great job dodging

and shifting. And at the end, you're like, I don't know if I know this guy. Bro, now I can get on a podcast and talk about what happened to me. I can talk about it on my own show. I can get on stages. I literally followed Tony Robbins at Joe Polish's event. First of all, how do you like follow Tony Robbins? I was nervous as shit. But I got up on stage after Tony Robbins post-healing to speak about leadership. And I'm like, guys, you guys are all millionaires and billionaires in here. Joe Polish has this massive group. I'm like, I'm not going to teach you leadership. You guys are either good leaders or you have great leaders. So instead, we're going to talk about the limiting beliefs that you might have that probably come from physical abuse, sexual abuse,

emotional abuse. And you can see grown men and women squirming in their seats because I was just like, hey, here's what happened to me, here's how I felt, here's how it showed up in my life and in my work and in my business. And you might be experiencing it too. And as it turns out, one out of every three people have had some kind of physical mental or emotional abuse. One out of every four people have had some kind of sexual abuse. So we walk around in life with all these filters that we have on, seeing ourselves as broken and shameful and seeing others as threats because you're a dude, you're a threat

because older boys did that to me. So now you're like, hey, B, let's go into business partnership. I'm like, cool. But subconsciously, I don't trust you and I want to have a bone to pick with you and then by God it's going to show up because I'm going to find the evidence for it. I let all that go.

And I encourage everyone else to do the same, man, but the work has to continue. I think back to when I first got started with this whole journey. And I announced to friends, the family, to peers. I was in college at the point. I'm starting a supplement company.

Yeah. I'm starting a dietary supplement company. And the response was, who, it's a pretty competitive market out there. You sure you want to enter a competitive market like that? And for a second, I started to believe this doubt. I thought, oh, man,

is this actually the right choice? Is it the right decision? And I started justifying to myself. Well, this is a multi-billion dollar market. If I can just get a small share, I bet you I can at least do $100,000 a year. And I put this cap. You know, I just, I just want to get to $100,000 a year.

If I, if I reach $100,000, I can ride that for the rest of my life. And then you finally get there and you think, well, let me just, let me bump it up a little bit. Let's just do $200,000 and then $300,000. And then $300,000. And then $2 million. And, you know, it was these small incremental steps for years and years and years because I never took the top off. Yeah. I never allowed my vision to be as big as possible.

And eventually I got to a point where I realized, you know, these small incremental steps, I'm setting them and I'm achieving them because they are achievable. Because I don't doubt them. What happens if I, you know, like Grant Cardone's 10x role? What if I set my goals 10x larger than I anticipate or expect? I betcha I can hit that and I did. Eventually you realize there's no ceiling to this. I'm in the driver's seat.

I'm in complete control. There is no top end. I think once I realized that, I felt so powerful. I felt limited by absolutely nothing. Was there something that you did to realize that? Like, was there a moment for you? When you stack enough wins,

you start to build some confidence. Yeah. When I stacked enough wins, which also came with a significant amount of losses, as well, I quickly realized, I've never been the smartest person. I've never been someone at the highest athletic ability.

I never really stood out when I was younger. I was very average. So I expected average in my life when I was younger. And then once I started gaining more confidence and more wins and more success, I started to realize being smarter, that's not my competitive advantage. And that's not necessarily a competitive advantage of a lot of high achievers and successful people. It's just being extremely consistent and just ruthless,

work ethic and just going all in on a vision. I thought, oh, I can do that. You know, it's funny if a few months ago, someone was, we were holding an event here at BPNHQ, and we were outside and we were selling a product and we were meeting with people and just hanging out. And this younger gentleman walked out to me and said, he pointed to the BPN sign.

He said, man, one day I wish I could have something like this. I said, you can. There's nothing that separates, me from you. I just had this goal 10 years ago. I went all in on that goal and I haven't stopped working towards that goal since. And eventually it's a point we realize I am in complete control of my destiny and my outcomes and the result. And it's funny that you say that too, right, about stacking wins. And we talk about that and people always will ask like, what is the one thing I got to do is though if they have this one big win, they're going to succeed. They're going to

cross that chasm. And I was like, hey, did you hit the snooze button this morning? Like, yeah. I'm like, well, you stacked an L. You had a loss instead of a W. Like, that's the one thing you could do every morning, not hit the snooze button. And now you got a win. Should be proud of yourself. And then maybe you drink 30 ounces of water to rehydrate your body. And then maybe another win is that you don't check your social media, your phone for a whole hour. Instead, maybe you just take a shower, do 100 burpees, journal, read a book, have a plan to actually GSD, get shit done the next hour after that. Like, stack those little wins over time. It's all about little wins. I can't think of any one thing we did. We're like, oh my God, then we got 500 locations on board

overnight. It was one, two, three locations. And every now and again, we'd get someone that buys a multi-outlet agreement, five locations, eight locations, 10 locations. Cool. That, I believe, as God or the universe rewarding me for the consistent, ruthless, pig-headed stubbornness of hard work that I've done for the years going, here's an eight-pack for you, eight Fit Body Boot Camp locations sold it once. Cool. But we built the entire brand on the back of one location at a time, one franchisee at a time, one relationship at a time. All of those are micro-wins, and I start every morning with not hitting a snooze button, stacking my first win. And as it turns out, years later, I read about what's known as the confidence, competency loop.

And what that says is your confidence will go up, the more competent you are. The more confidence you have, the more your competence goes up. Scientifically, they've proven it. So the more you stack little wins, the more little wins you will stack. The more you stack wins, the more confidence you will gain. The more confidence you gain, the more wins you will stack. And so confidence competency loop is a thing. And all of us who have achieved any measure of success have just done that.

The small, dirty, ugly work that's not sexy like social media, like a podcast like this, that gets the results. And those who think that there's like, what is that one thing I got to do? I don't know, win the lottery. I guess that would be it. What is the one thing that's going to financially change your life? Go win the lottery. outside of that it's all the little wins

but what sucks about winning the lottery is there's no I mean I haven't won the lottery so I don't know yeah nor have I but I would assume there's little fulfillment and purpose and happiness with that yeah

don't they say like 80% of those people end up sliding back after a couple years and they lose it all pretty quickly but you could put a lump some of cash in my hands right now and it won't change my one desire and need to work because I get so much purpose and fulfillment out of of the work, the impact. I can honestly, I can honestly say that. You brought up Jim Franco. You talked about

him in the book. And I know you had a picture of you and him on Instagram. You guys posted together. That was from his 80th birthday party a couple months ago, yeah. Okay. I think it's really important to have people like that in your life. People who are just willing to be brutally honest with you. Do you still have people like that in your life who will call you out and shit when they need to? I do. I do. And I make sure I have those people because the position that I'm in, the position that you're in, it's easy to surround yourself with a lot of yes men and yes women.

At the end of the day, when your name's on the front of the check that they're getting, they just want to say yes to you. Jim Franco doesn't get a check for me. He still, I think, sees me as a son. I see him as my rich dad. We text all the time. We talk all the time. see him a couple times a year. And so he will still be brutally honest with me. In fact, he goes,

hey, in 2020, you were going to buy that $27 million house and Dana Point right on the water where I surf. He goes, did you do it? I go, no. When the pandemic hit, I realized that my ranch style house where I have two different exits, I'm on a cul-de-sac. It's a big property on a hill. I realized during the pandemic and during those riots, I was in a better position than a gated community on the water. He goes, good move, kid. This was at his 80th birthday party. He goes, I thought that was a stupidest move you were about to do. I go, I remember when I told you all excited like, Jim, you were like, that's a stupid move. And so I just kind of tuck my tail and went. And this was 2020, bro, three years ago. So let's not forget that even now I make stupid moves. It's just,

we know how to recover because we've got a track record of making bad decisions and recovering from So when people think that, gosh, you know, this one bad decision is going to end me, it's not. I've made a slew of bad decisions. It's just I happen to make a few more good decisions than bad, which has put me where I am in life. But Jim Franco, my wife, Ray, Ray Cash Care, former Navy SEAL, right? Who works with me with the project and Squire program, all those guys, all the instructors from the project, brutally honest with me and I'm brutally honest with them. Joan, my assistant, like, will pull me aside.

Hey, B, I recently tore my tricep. You're kind of being an asshole to everybody here at HQ when you walk in. I'm like, Joan, I'm black and blue. I've torn my tricep. It's 31 millimeters retracted. Working out isn't just a physical thing for me. It's a mental thing for me. She goes, I know.

I was letting you know. People think that you have it out for them. I appreciate the heads up. None of those people were going to tell me about it. Maybe at some point, a couple of them might put in their resignation because B is obviously mad at me. I'm not. I'm upset at myself for doing this. something stupid in tearing my tricep.

But as it turns out, I was short and snappy. So to have those people that will check you out of love, I think is necessary. And not enough people are anti-fragile enough to be willing to ask for that and look for that feedback. I do because I realized that's how I'm going to time collapse my personal growth, financial growth, impact growth. Yeah, I once heard someone say that effective communication is a dialogue. It's not a monologue.

You know, so from a leader, you put this vision out there. You put the plan, the rehearsals, everything out on the table. It's like, this is what I'm thinking. And if you have a bunch of yes men, it's, okay, boss, we'll do it. That's a monologue. Yeah. You know, a dialogue, it's, yeah, I don't think that's going to work because of X, Y, and Z. Yeah.

I want pushback. I want my thoughts, my idea, is my plan to be disrupted. and destructive and put back together. You know, I think having those people in your life is extremely important. You made this post that I thought was really interesting. And it said, everybody understands the concept of you are the some of the five people you spend the most time with. You hear people say this all the time. But few are truly willing to curate their circle of friends.

That's hard. Curating your circle of friends of powerful people who are willing to call you on your shit, that's difficult. It is difficult. And you know why if you were willing to do that to curate the circle of friends? Because everyone thinks that, hey, I'm the exception. I could hang around with dipshits and losers. Basically, I can hang around with crop dusters, but I can still do fighter jet stuff. Like, everyone thinks that they're the exception.

Because it's a catchy phrase, right? Like, hey, you are the sum of the five people you hang out with the most. Duh. Okay, it makes sense. Your income, your attitude, your belief systems are all a byproduct of the five people you hang out with the most. You're going to be the sixth. But then people go, yeah, but we've been friends since high school.

and yeah, he'll gossip and he's lazy, he'll cut corners, but I don't do that. It's like, no, to some degree you do. You accept that. You accept that. I'm not saying you ought to be an asshole to this person and try and change them, although I would encourage that you try and encourage them to level up with you. But if they don't, you got to move on. You got to move on.

But too many people think that they're the exception, that they can still be driven while hanging out with losers, and they can't. Are there certain characteristics you look out for in people that make you say, No, you're not, you're not part of my circle. You don't fit. I'm going to be brutally honest. If they had, if they've had more than one divorce, right? Because I get it, man.

One relationship you weren't able to hold together, but two, there's a pattern there. If they, rumors or gossips. If they engage in rumors or gossiping, we're not hanging out. If you don't make enough money to really live financially free, we're not hanging out. because then there's going to be something that you're going to try and do where your greed glands are going to secrete that you're going to justify why it's okay to take advantage of me or the opportunity my events or my franchisees. And this is stuff that had happened to me.

People are like, B, how can you say that? So you want to hang out with someone that's like, you know, like a blue-collar person that's getting by? No, I got a blue-collar friends and I'll see every now and again because we've got history, et cetera. However, I won't and I won't do business with them. If they're, you know, more than one divorce, if they have, you know, more than one divorce, if they spread rumors, if they gossip, if they have any vices that they haven't dealt with.

Because ironically, on the other side of it, I love anyone who has seen adversity and overcome it. So you've been physically, mentally sexually abused, and you've overcome it. Come work for me. Come work with me. Let's be business partners. Bryce, my CEO for Fit Body Boot Camp, recovering alcoholic. He's on his sixth or seventh year. And I knew him when he was an alcoholic.

He was one of our franchisees. Now he's the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp. Like look at the trajectory over the last 12 years that young man has had young man because I'm about to turn 49. He's 39. Recovering alcoholic. Like, man, he's got rage in his eyes. He's got a chip on his shoulders.

He's got fire in his belly. Like, I love addicts because if you're a recovered addict, I'm going to take that same addiction. Just like I, I'm an addict. And I'm going to channel it towards something good. And you're going to do amazing stuff. But, yeah, I will ruthlessly curate the people that I surround myself with. and also the thoughts that occupy my mind.

Like, you will never see me with, at a hotel or, you know, you walk into a nice hotel and they got the TV playing. Yeah. Immediately I turn it off. You're indoctrinating me with something to as little as go get coffee at the downstairs restaurant all the way to here's why this state is better and you should move your business there because now I'm running my business in California. Now I'm thinking maybe I should move my business to Arizona.

And now it's going to do, I don't want any kind of information that I haven't curated to come to me. Like the, I follow like 500 people, and those are the 500 people that I, that I love and respect, and I like their shit. If any one of those people start changing their conversations and all of a sudden now they're victim-minded, there's another one I'll add to the list. Victim-minded, gossipy, rumor spreading, multi-divorced, addicted people that haven't recovered yet. I will not hang out with them broke. And so to me, the thoughts that occupy your mind and the people that you surround yourself with are like 99% of the equation of who you're going to become, the actions you're going to take. So if I can curate that and control that, why wouldn't I?

I was thinking about this on the run this morning in terms of what are the characteristics I look out for to avoiding people. And I've learned this by working with these people, obviously. High ego is something I love high confidence. I love high confidence and great confidence. But high ego is something that will, I've seen wreck an organization, wreck a team, and just annoys the shit out of me. The second is insecurity. Now, we all have insecurities, and that's okay.

But a lot of times people allow their insecurities to just disrupt every part of their life. And not just their life, but the lives of people around them as well. Those are two things I look out for in individuals that I work with or I surround myself with. ego is a defense mechanism for a lack of confidence. And so ego is what creates blind spots. Like there's so much science behind that.

And so if someone's got ego, they can't even take feedback well. And so clearly they're the ones that are always blaming. They're the ones that are always not taking responsibility. And at some point, it is going to wreck relationships. And then, like you said, insecurity, if someone's insecure, they lack confidence. If they're insecure, there's probably opportunities that they had to stack wins and create competency and they didn't and that's where the insecurity comes from. And it's not, look, we all had insecurities. Like you said, it's okay, but heal or stack enough wins to fix those

insecurities or lose the weight or build the muscle or solve the problem. But if you don't, hey man, I want the best for you, but we just can't be friends because I'm on a mission and this rocket cannot slow down. If it does, it'll fall out of the sky and it's not about to do that. Not during the pandemic, not during anything. Like, you're a man on a mission. I'm a man on a mission. And I believe like every man needs mission, purpose, and team. The moment my mission is compromised, I lose my sense of purpose, and I don't have an A-level team around me, I will go back to being a self-destructive asshole. Like that's who I genetically am.

I must have mission, purpose, and team, and the absence of that, I self-destruct. And so I can't allow people like that to come in. I think it makes sense why those are your parameters. I mean, you're a man on a mission here, dude. You're blowing up BPN. Last episode we recorded, you talked about that concept of needing purpose and a mission. And if you don't have purpose and a mission, you self-destruct. Yeah.

And you use that, use your dogs. Yeah, cookie. Yeah. Can you tell that story again? Because that was so, that made so much sense for me. I've told so many people that analogy in that story, it makes sense. It does. And again, this is why humans are messed up, man, because we're like, oh, we're humans.

We're much better than dogs. We're far smarter than dogs. We have much more emotional control than dogs. We really don't. And here's proof. So Cookie is seven years old now. She was eight months when we got her. So she was somewhat of a puppy.

She's part mastiff, part German shepherd, right? So seven years ago when we got her, she was eight months old. Sounds like a beast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a big girl, big girl. Strong, but lazy, but strong. But anyway, so when we got Cookie, she's eight months old. She's a big girl at the time.

She was 70 pounds. Now she's like 98, 99, you know, bordering triple digits. We're trying to keep her lean and she felt, but it's difficult because she likes to eat like me. And so we got her up until that point. Nick, we've had like small dogs, like chihuahuas and little terriers. And they're cool. They're fine.

But you can manage them on a leash, et cetera. And when we got cookie, we tried putting her on a leash. Man, she was pulling everybody around, right? And at some point, I was like, my son and daughter are just going to be like dragged behind cookie at some point. My wife was like, I'm not even touching this dog. You went and rescued her. You saw something in her. You figure it out. And so I was like, cool. I was like, I need your help. Like two minutes later, I'm like, I'll figure it out, but I need your help. And she's like, well, here's a dog trainer. This lady comes, works with, takes cookie, you know, for a few days

a week, trains her, works with her, et cetera. Finally, the five or six weeks are over. And she's like, hey, here's a well-trained dog. She's going to walk next to you. She's going to sit. She's going to lay down. She's going to heal. She's going to listen. But dogs that have German shepherd in them especially need to shepherd. They need a sense of purpose. So you've got two little kids here. Maybe she can shepherd these kids around the property.

You've got a big property. She can protect your property. She also needs a routine. So maybe every morning you can throw the ball for her 10, 12, 15 times. I'm like, cool, I can just make that part of my morning routine and do that as well. Well, I'm drinking my protein shake. I could just throw the ball, which is what I do every morning. And she goes, now listen, I'm serious.

Like she has to feel like she's part of the family. She's shepherding and protecting. She needs purpose and she needs routine. She needs to know like she's serving you guys. And she needs to know that she has a routine. Like, okay, lady, got it. And she's driving this home, Nick. She goes, otherwise, and she points to this beautiful rose garden that we have.

She goes, you see that beautiful rose garden of yours? I go, yeah. She's going to dig holes all over that rose garden. Like, why would she do that? She goes, well, in the absence of having a routine service, meaning, she will start getting anxious and depressed, and she will give herself something to do, which is to dig holes on your entire property. Dude, as I'm hearing this, I'm like, holy shit, we are no different.

And I'm just like, whackin my wife on the arm because my wife's next to me. I'm like, that's us, that's us, that's humans, all of us, every single one of us, myself included. In the absence of service, routine, structure, purpose, I will dig holes in my life. I will self-destruct. I will eat like 5,000 to 10,000 calories per sitting. Like I don't have that mechanism that tells you're done. I'm Armenian and I come from emotional trauma, bro. Like, I will eat, like, eat.

And so I will literally go inward and self-destruct. I will be like, oh, is that Vicodin? Can I have a handful? And then I go down that rabbit hole as well because that was my addiction after ACL reconstruction. So I share this with you because people, who don't have a sense of purpose, a mission, and don't have a consistent routine, end up digging holes in their life.

And it's not always Vicodin or some drug addiction. It could come as something benign as, porn, gambling, over-drinking, too much television, things that slowly chip away at humanity, things that people use to escape, vaping, binge-watching television,

all of these things are digging holes in your life that ultimately you look back and you realize there's such a chasm between you and your spouse that you and your kids barely know each other even though you live on the same roof that you've got this dad bod with a pot belly and pointy tittyes and pear-shaped and you're like whoa where'd this come from it was the absence of purpose and it was absence of routine we need it otherwise humans dig their holes in their lives too no different than a German Shepherd would. No different. I mean, I experienced something similar to that about a year ago.

It was a hard transition for me in terms of two massive events happen in my life. One, I set down from the CEO role in the business. Two, my daughter was born. And it happened pretty close in proximity. And both great things. Like, professionally and personally milestones for me. And I was so lost during this time. And when I think of it, like, what did I lose?

One, I lost my routine. I got so effective and efficient with building routines the last couple years of my life. Having a daughter disrupted every routine I ever thought I had. I'm still trying to rebuild some of those routines. I've learned that responsibilities. I'm laughing because I've been down that road, bro. It's awful. Oh, my gosh.

I'm now learning that responsibilities outweigh routines and routines can be built around responsibilities. So that shook up my life. And then for the longest time, I identified as the founder and CEO of bear performance nutrition. When I sit down from that CEO role and put an operator in that position, I feel like I lost my purpose. I was trying to find, well, what is now my meaningful mission? How has my mission evolved in this new role? I was trying to navigate these two life transitions. And I've talked about this extensively on this podcast and my content because, you know, I'm still going through this transition in life. Yeah. I mean, it's new. But what, what I've been, what I did reactively is I started digging holes and self-destructing.

And, you know, I'm a problem solver. So I'm now running more and longer trying to figure out, okay, what is going on and how do I solve this? And I read a few books. there was a book called From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks that really opened up to my mind of, oh, I'm not going through a crisis. I thought I was going through a crisis at first. I'm just going through a transition. I have to now navigate this new transition and what my meaningful mission is and how that's evolved in, you know, what is my purpose and what is my new routine.

And once I started rebuilding some of those pillars, I started feeling happier and fulfilled and better. But I wanted to tell that story because it's not necessarily always, like, you know, When I think of someone who doesn't have purpose or direction or routine, I think of someone sitting on the couch playing video games, who's 100 pounds overweight, who never had purpose in direction or routine. Oftentimes, it's someone who's going through this transition. He's now trying to renavigate this new life or these new chapter of life.

Yeah. And they might feel just as lost. I can dovetail that into a perfect story. I'll protect this gentleman's name because he's kind of out. there and I haven't heard him put the story out there, so I'm not going to put his story, his name, I'm not going to attach it to it. Not that it's anything bad. So, I don't know, about six, seven years ago. Oh, full circle. That event that I was going to speak at, Joe Polish's event, where I followed Tony Robbins. I was just going to take a quick first class flight from

Orange County, John Wayne Airport, Southern California, to Phoenix, 48 minutes. A friend of mine, a coaching client of mine, reaches out to me and says, hey, I've got a friend, and he'd like to talk to you. But he knows your schedule's busy, but he also knows that next week you're supposed to fly out to Joe's event.

He's actually going to that event. He's going to be in the audience. He has booked a four-seater citation private jet. He's paying for it so that you guys can both be in that airplane together. You're going to that event anyway. just forego the first-class seat and just go private with him, and he just wants to meet you and talk to you.

He just has some questions to ask. I was like, well, fair enough, happy to help anyone if this guy's an entrepreneur and has some questions, whatever. And so we're on the plane. We're sitting across from each other, 48 minutes. I meet him, and he's like, hey, what do you do? Great dude, by the way, awesome human being. I go, what are you?

He goes, well, I built, I was brought on board as a CEO, as an operator of this giant real estate company. But even though it was doing something like $380 million in sales, it was still upside down. I knew that real estate is cyclical, and they gave me a big chunk of equity in the company, and I knew I had five years to turn that thing around so they can sell it. And I did. And I had a massive payday. For five years, and he didn't use these words, but he was saying basically for those five years,

I had mission, purpose, and team. Like he was, man, I was in it. I was doing it. And he's describing it in my head, I'm like, he had mission purpose and a team for five years. And John Eldridge, by the way, in his book Wild at Heart, talks about that every man needs a battle to fight, an adventure to have, and a beauty to rescue. Right. So it is factory installed in all of us, man.

It is like, we can't get away from this. German Shepherd or John Eldridge or this multi, multi, multi, multimillioner that had a massive exit, you can't get away from mission purpose team or battle adventure beauty like you have as men we have to solve problems or we dig holes just to solve those problems which is funny um so i go uh-huh uh-huh got it he goes so now i don't know what to do so how can i help you he's like i'm just in a slump i'm like sad every day i don't have like anything to do dude have you thought about maybe coaching others that are starting like real estate franchises century 21 remax whatever. No, I haven't. Sounds like you've forgotten more than like these people would know.

So today he's got one of the biggest coaching business for the real estate industry. He's thriving. And I let's just call him Bob. And I was like, Bob, when you go and sell that coaching business, before you do, you better start setting up your next thing because you're going to be like my dog cookie. And then I told him the cookie story, right? He goes, I get it. And that's all I've done, man. Like I know that obviously there's an exit for Fit Body Boot Camp my franchise down the road. That's why I built Trulene. That's why I built the project. That's why I'm working on another book.

Because I know the moment I stop doing the things. The moment I'm not battling. I'm not seeking out an adventure. I'm not focused on a mission and a purpose and have a team to just conquer with. That I will go inward and self-destruct. And people go, well, so when will you retire? For me, how about never? I may slow down, but I will never retire because when I do, I'll just be like a 90-year-old man

self-destructing. You hear about cops and firefighters and all these people who like retire pro-athletes, right? I don't know anything about sports, but you hear about pro athletes. They retire two years later, dead. They lost mission-purpose team. They lost a reason to live. Like, truly what we do is a reason to live. And so you're right.

It's not just that 100-pound guy playing video games with Cheeto Dust and his belly button in his mom's basement. It is like us. It is the people that are productive. maybe you're mid-level management. Maybe you didn't start a business. Maybe you're mid-level management. And at some point, you know, the company got bought out and you had a big golden parachute

paid out to you. So you're like, hey, I don't have to work for a year. Work anyway. Find something to do. Because if you don't in that year, you will self-destruct. You will dig holes. And it will show up in the weirdest ways, man, that is so damaging to relationships, to health, to mental health, all of it.

All of it. I'm sure you've probably heard this before, but people say to me, you can never retire because you're a workaholic. But I think based of what you just said, it's not being a workaholic. It's just that we require mission, team, and purpose.

It's not the actual, it's not the work itself. It's the impact of that work and the fulfillment we get from. Yeah. Like, I like breathing air, so I continue to breathe. I like keeping my teeth,

so I brush and floss my teeth. These are the things I do to maintain hygiene. Why would I maintain, want to maintain emotional hygiene, purpose hygiene? There is hygiene in other categories, physical hygiene, keeping yourself fit, right? Property hygiene, making sure my car is not a mess.

It doesn't have a ding on it, a scratch on it, because it reflects me. I see a ding on my car. I'm like, Shelby, one of my assistants. Get that fix, quick, because that ding affects me. All of it is hygiene. And if we don't maintain hygiene in these categories, we will begin to erode, man. It's a slippery slope and it happens, which goes right back to five people that you hang out with, you're going to be the sixth.

but everyone thinks that we know on the exception you know i'm not going to be influenced by their laziness by their drinking by their stupidity you will it's on a subconscious level it might be at a slow level it might be like a pilot light not a raging inferno of them destroying you but over time make no mistake about it like chinese water torture it will drive you bat shit crazy and you will self-destruct that's that's unavoidable in your book you mentioned that you have to apply the same energy to your your five to nine post work that you do your nine to five. Do you struggle with with taking time off, taking vacations?

If not now, did you historically in the past? Like, what's your relationship with leisure and family time and vacation now? Let's talk about wisdom for a second. Wisdom is a byproduct of not just age. There's plenty of old people I know who are in their 50s. 60, 70s, 70s and beyond who are still little boys stuck and trapped in an old man's body. Wisdom is age, compounded by experience. That's wisdom.

So what's awesome about getting older and developing wisdom is when I went, when I first got married and we'd go on vacations, I'm not a sit at the beach and dig my feet and toes in the sand and read a book. Like, looks good when I see it on a magazine or in a commercial. I'm not that guy. My wife is, that woman. So I tried it a few times. I'm like, I'm going crazy.

I got to learn to surf. I got to learn to billyboard. I got to try to fight those waves. Like, I need something to do. So one, self-awareness. Like, you got to figure out who you are. Like, how you tick and what you like and what you like. Number two, I realize I'm not the guy that can go on vacation and then completely

shit on my routine. So now all of a sudden, I'm eating pancakes, sleeping until 9 a.m., not doing anything productive. bro, I bring the whole MacBook. I bring the iPad. I bring the iPhone. I have GSD time. My morning routine continues, whether I'm in Europe, whether I'm in Hawaii, whether

I'm in California, whether I'm in Austin. Like this morning, I woke up the same routine that you could set your clock to that I do in California happen here. And I wake up at 5.30 Austin time, Texas time, because I wake up at 5.30 a.m. California time. So it's always going to be 5.30. Like, I'm so proud of myself. We're waking up at the same time, doing the same thing.

a hotel and I set everything up the night before, before I went up the elevator at that Fairmont hotel, I was going to check the gym out. Is that the gym I'm going to work out in? Because, you know, there's some hotel gyms kick ass and others are ass. And so, okay, no, it's not. So I got to find myself a gym, right? Like, I set it all up so that I could win in the morning. So vacations are the same. I can't, I can't just turn the brain off. What I can do is, let's keep it five to eight days. That's about my expiration. Point eight days. We tried a 10-day vacation to Hawaii.

Didn't work out so... Or not Hawaii. Europe. It didn't work out so well. And then I have to still have a morning routine that involves making money, then involves my same routine. I may have to wake up super early

while everyone else is sleeping in, which is cool. I'll still do it. But I realize that I have to have a routine. Then I can be a better dad, a better spouse, a better everything. But I can't just dig my feet in the sand and like eat bonbons for eight days

because then when I'll come home, I'll just be so disgusted with myself that I'll do that for another eight more days. And then I'll have so much hate for myself. And it just goes down a rabbit hole. And part of that is, again, type A high speed, tightly wound personalities are that way. So self-awareness has allowed me to go, it's okay for me to work in the morning a little bit, to have my morning routine, to still wake up early. I don't have to eat sugary foods and spike my insulin. I can have a bite of what Andrew's having and I'm good. I don't need the macadamian nut pancakes with coconut syrup on there. And so when I figure that out, vacations are a lot more tolerable.

But I love the life that I have. So what am I vacating from? Look at the word vacation, to vacate, to leave. The fuck do I want to leave my life? I've structured an awesome life. I used to have a shitty life. I've structured an awesome life. Why do I want to vacate?

But I'll do it. But it has to be under my terms and conditions where I have a structured morning routine and then anything after 10 a.m., let's go have fun, fam. I'm the same way. Right. You have to be. The same exact way I vacation.

I mean, I've taken it to extremes. And I've gotten better because I also still stick to my routine on vacation. Me and my wife both. We go work out, run, go to the gym in the morning. We stick to a healthy diet, you know, for dinner. We'll go, we'll go crazy. We'll get something. We'll get dessert.

We'll get some cocktails. But I used to be really bad in terms of neglecting family, neglecting my wife and being too good, too hard. for time off, leisure, vacations. And we look back, you know, the week before I got married, I sent up for an Ironman triathlon. So I was already deep in prep, you know, as soon as we got married. And for our honeymoon, we went to Cabo.

Yeah. So I remember I was trying to, like, keep it really low key. I told my wife, I'll wake up extra early. Yeah. But my wife also wanted, we wanted, she wanted to sleep in together. Sure. So she'd go down to the pool in the morning And I'll never forget this

Because I feel like it's such an asshole for doing this And she's down at the pool On our honeymoon Laying out soaking up the sun And because I was in Iron Man prep I was running 14 miles Watching ultramarathon documentaries On the treadmill in this small resort

I'm like What was I? I could have ran four or five miles I could have stuck to my routine But I've taken things to the extreme So I've gone to those extremes To realize being selfish in those situations

sometimes creates collateral damage to the people around you. But we're the type of people that we're training in the morning we're eating healthy, we're feeling good, we're enjoying ourselves, we're having fun, but we want to come back from occasion feeling energized,

not feeling like a piece of shit. Yeah, that's exactly right, man. And so to be able to, I hate the word balance, but I think this is a great place to interject that word. I figured out how to have some balance on a vacation where I don't need to work a full day. I'm not taking eight hours of coaching calls. I'm not doing Zoom's with attorneys and trying to figure out how we're going to go into

Saudi Arabia and open up 84 locations there. I'm not doing that on a vacation. But I do have a couple hours of structured work. Before that, I have to have my workout. I have to do my three gratitude text messages. I have to live my morning routine. It's just after my workout, I now spend time with the family instead of going to HQ where then I would take coaching calls or do a half-day coaching session or whatever, meet with people.

And I found that I'm a better human for it. And therefore, I'm a better husband and I'm a better father on a vacation versus like, you know, this guy. He's just cranky because all he wants to do is go back, go back home. Nothing wrong with that. A little balance turns out it does pay off. Something that you have said that I really resonate with. And a lot of this has to do with being. in control of your life.

One of the things that I've learned through the experience these past couple years of building this business is if I look back in the beginning, I didn't realize or know I was in control of my destiny. I didn't think I was in control. I thought that was already predetermined.

I thought where I ended up 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now was already set in stone. And the life that I was living was just, it was predetermined. Like you were just hitting a mile markers. Yep. That was predetermined for it.

He was already there. It was already laid out. And then eventually I realized, I'm in the driver's seat. I'm in complete control. I can do whatever the fuck I want. That was one of the most powerful moments of my entire life. It was pivotal. It was truly pivotal.

How did you come to that epiphany? Building the business and you can feel momentum. Part of that momentum is when people pick up their entire family. out of state and they move because they believe in your vision. Right. And part of that momentum is when you're running out of warehouse space and you're scrambling to find more warehouse space to hold inventory and pallets. Part of that momentum is more orders coming in, volume increasing, retail accounts being

established, building on infrastructure and the team. And every time you can feel that momentum, while it may feel overwhelming, I also feel more in control. I feel like I have more leverage. And as I was telling you before we started recording this episode, last week I felt extremely overwhelmed. You know, there's a lot going on in my personal life, my professional life, the business, content, building out teams.

There was a day where I was extremely overwhelmed. And it was in the morning and I had to get to a meeting. But the way me and my wife have a routine set up is I work out first. I go from my run, when I get back, then she goes and works at out and I watch our daughter. And I'm watching our daughter and she's crying after I just give her breakfast. I'm trying to answer text messages

to my team and I'm counting down in the minutes before I have to leave the house to get to a meeting on time. I just took a step back. I took a deep breath and I realized, okay, let me, let me see if I'm actually overwhelmed. So I took inventory. I wrote down in my head all

the things that I was being overwhelmed with. Personal, professional tasks, meetings, everything. And I quickly realized there were only two things on that list that I could control on that one day. All these other things I was worried about, anxiety, the future, were things that I couldn't touch or affect for days, weeks, months, even possibly years. And when I took accountability and inventory of all the things I actually had to do and that were overwhelming me, I realized I actually wasn't overwhelmed. It was self-induced. I was self-destructing.

And I also quickly realized I'm in control of my thoughts, my actions, my habits, the outcome, everything. I just completely changed the narrative. I changed the story. I changed the way I felt about that entire day in a matter of seconds because I was stressing out over things that aren't actually stressful. Right. Has there been a moment where you flipped that script, you flipped that story and realized you were in control? You also find that a lot of people you work with, entrepreneurs, high achievers. anyone in your coaching program often feels they don't or aren't sitting in the driver's seat.

I felt that way, right? I remember, again, how old are you? I'll turn 33 in a few months. So I've got a decade and a few more years on top of that over you. And so when I think of me, mid-30s, I remember feeling like I'm in a forward sprint. and like Usain Bolt, I'm leaning so far forward that if I even attempt to slow down, I'm going to go flat on my face, that level of overwhelm. I mean, it would come on for days at a time that ultimately led to that anxiety attack, right?

That panic attack. But it goes back to, again, self-awareness, take an inventory. And part of it is, man, you know, there's like nature and nurture, right? So nurture is things that were taught, mom and dad, school system, mentors. nurture. Nature is what's factory installed for Nick. And you probably are a bit of a control freak like I am. You're probably high speed, tightly wound. That's a gift. But it could also be a massive curse when left with no mission purpose team as we talked about or, hey, you know, put a pile of cocaine in front of someone like us and, you know, accidentally take a little toot and there goes

the whole pile. And so when we are, I even reframed that. I even reframed that. I'm like, why does control freak have such a bad negative connotation? Oh, you're a control freak. I'm like, no, I'm a control king. Like, I literally gave it a positive connotation because, and I remember once saying this many years ago at an event, I'm a control king. I don't know why there's a negative connotation to being a control freak.

Like, I control my time. I control my attitude. I control the people I get calls from. I control, control, control, control. I go, I even control my wife. And you can just see a whole audience was like, right? like 1,200 people in the audience. I was like, yeah. If I'm sending her, I love you text messages, and I'm letting her know how much I appreciate her and a selfie video when I'm out of town like

this, speaking at an event like this, and she knows that I'm thinking of her, even though there's 1,200 of you that I need to focus on, but she's the higher priority than you guys are. Like, when I come home, her attitude, her energy, everything is very different than when I would just check out like most men do, who are control freaks and massively focused, come back three days later, and she's like, Coli broke her arm, Andrew Chipped the tooth, radiator or the water heater doesn't work. Like, all those things still happen.

It's just now I have control. And so I think there is an element of awesomeness for those of us that have factory installed ability to be able to control as many factors as we can. When we feel like we can control so many things and so we say yes and yes and yes and yes to everything and then before we know

were overwhelmed. I've never want to be in a position again where I have to count the minutes to a meeting or whatever. In fact, just recently this week, I was like, hey, Joan, canceled the next meeting that I have. It was with my HR person. Cancel it because I'm talking to this M&A firm. They're actually at HQ. I keep looking at the clock over the guy's shoulder. Now he keeps seeing me looking over the clock. I know that I got that meeting. I'm like, hey, can we take a tactical pause here for a second? And I was so proud of myself. I'm like, dude, patted myself on the back. I'm like, that's a big boy thing you just did. Because normally, I don't want to let anyone down. I'm also that guy, and you're probably that guy,

because we just want to help and serve the world at our expense, at our emotional expense, in fact. And so, I'm like, all right, four o'clock is coming. I got 14 minutes. There's no way this whole M&A conversation is going to end in that time, which means now I have to ride into that person's time, which means now she's not going to leave work at 5 o'clock like she's supposed to. She's probably going to leave work at like 515, 5, 5, 20, 5, 30, and that's if this thing ends at like 515. this meeting. And so I was like, hey, let's take a tactical pause. Hey, Joan, just sent her voice shot. Can you do this? Sure be no problem. Didn't affect anyone, right? But the old version of me was, I got this. I can do this at the expense of anything. Like, I'm talking,

I'm being very frank. Like, I don't have to pee. I can just hold it through this next thing. And I know like dudes like you can relate. I'm thirsty, but that's okay. And I have to pee, but fuck it. I'll keep drinking water. You don't need you any of that stuff. As it turns out, there are things that you can reschedule, you can say no thank you to and take off your plate and it feels so good at almost 49 years old now to be able to do those things. When I have clients or friends who are entrepreneurs who have been in that place where they feel they need absolute control and they have to count down minutes, I'm like, wouldn't it be great if you just honored that person's time and just reschedule them? Wouldn't it be great if you honored your time?

And look at the domino effect. I honored my family's time because then I was going to eat into, so I'm going to have to finish up early with this guy and disrespect him, or go later with this guy, the M&A guy, and then go longer with my HR person. HR person's now going to get home later. She has a spouse and kids. I'm going to get home later.

My son and I always go work out every night. So now at some point while I'm driving, I'm texting and driving and, hey, son, I'm on my way, all of that was averted by me taking that tactical pause. And it was such a big boy thing to do. and the 38-year-old version of me would have never done that. The 48 version of me, 48-year-old version of me did it, and I was just super proud.

I hate countdown minutes. Sucks, man. Oh, my God. It's like having a gun to your head. Dude, it makes me think of, you know, you have there certain days where it's meeting to meeting to meeting, to call to call. And if one goes over, it throws everything off.

Yeah, then you begin to resent the person. It's a whole thing. The intention behind it, when we stack our calendar like that is well, placed. It's just, I think, wisdom is so underrated and how great it would be if we can have wisdom early on. We just can't. I think, again, going back to the conversation we had earlier, God does have a sense of humor, as it turns out, because as we get later on in life, like, oh, as it turns out, I could have just taken a tactical pause, rescheduled a couple things, and everything's fine.

But in that moment, and part of it is our wiring. Like, I'm a people pleaser. I do like taking care of, like, meeting all my obligations and not saying no to anything. And so it is a rewiring of a hard coded, factory installed thing, like something that is nature in us and not just nurtured. But when you do that, you realize you're really honoring yourself, you're honoring your family, you're honoring the people that you're talking to, and you know, you don't have to fake call in front of someone you're about to walk by. It's horrible. It's horrible.

I've done that. So one of the things I love that you say is you're either getting paid for the decisions you made in the past or you're paying for them. I'm curious, what decisions have you made in the past that you're getting paid? for versus things that you've done that you're paying for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, in my book, I forget what I called this guy, what, you know, the publisher wants you to change the name of all the people that you've worked with.

I was like, hey, I'm only leaving Jones's name in there. Jones's not going to sue me, like I'm only got good, good things to say about her. Not that I didn't have good things to say about this other guy, but his name is Fernando. He worked for me. And this is before I did any healing. So this is in the first two years of Fit Body Boot Camp when we were still a licensing program. Fernando should have and could have been.

Fernando, if you're listening to this, bro, you could have had Bryce's seat. And we're still friends. He's a great dude. Lives in Hawaii now, runs his own company. But Fernando could have been the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp. The dude was one of our franchise, or I guess at the time,

the business coaches for our licensees. So a new licensee comes on. Here's how you sign a lease. Here's how you build out. That's what Fernando did. And I talk about Fernando in the book, and I talk about how, because I was such a poor leader, I was passive aggressive in my communication. I never asked for deadlines and due dates.

And therefore, when I was like, hey, can you do this? And they go, yeah, when you need it. And I go as soon as possible. And let's say soon as possible for you is like in two weeks because you know the complexity of work is two weeks. To me, it seems like it's something simple. You should have it in two days. Now, date number three, I'm being a jerk to you.

I'm being passive aggressive. I'm like, dude, what's up? And you're like, this is a complex thing you asked me to do, man. It's a two week thing. But I never asked for a due date or a deadline. which is part of great communication. And so because of my poor communication and leadership, Fernando quit, left, had a couple other jobs, and then ultimately started his own company and is thriving.

Like, I paid for that because while Bryce was supposed to be my CEO and he is, I do feel that. Fernando could have been a great, another great second in command or could have been another CEO for my other companies. but I went through three different VPs before I found Bryce. And so I had three really bad auditions. Each one, I've lost either hundreds of thousands or a million and a half on one of them when it turns out they made a bad decision as they were auditioning for the CEOC. I feel like that's how I paid for it by losing Fernando because of my poor leadership. Right?

So there's a great example of a bad decision I made of not I knew I could have been a better leader. My team was growing. My franchise is growing. But I'm like, ah, you know, leadership. Just keep marketing and selling, right? You can get more people. He's not going to quit. No, it turns out people quit, man. They feel neglected. And they don't need to deal with a shitty attitude from their boss. And I had one. And so, and then a great decision I made that I'm still getting paid for is once I realized the value of mentorship from Jim Franco, you know, I paid with my time. At the time, I didn't have money, so he was working out with me three times a week as my personal training client.

And he was giving me great advice in between sets. I'm like, hey, Jim, do you want to come in four times a week and you don't even have to pay for that fourth session? I'll just train you on my time. He's like, sure. I go, but I want to start asking you questions. Like, what does it take for me to leave LA Fitness as a personal trainer and open up my own personal training studio and become my own boss?

I was like, I just want to ask you those questions during that fourth session. And so I realized the value of mentorship through Jim Franco. And so I was very quick to start investing in pain others that had an experience or expertise had achieved already what I want. Tell me how you did it. From Dan Kennedy to Joe Polish to Dean Graciosi to Frank Kern, Joel Weldon when I needed to become a better speaker, hired a comedian and a stand-up, what do they call, improv coach, like, because. I want it to be a better speaker from stage, so I wanted to do the icebreakers, not just share

the facts of how I grew a business, but actually be able to communicate and have charisma, et cetera. None of that is factor installed. I'm a very intense dude. And so I value coaching so much that I've literally paid hundreds of thousands, if not millions in terms of coaching, but it's how I got paid for it, time collapsed, the growth of my franchise, the growth of truly supplements, the growth of the project, the growth of the sales of my book, you know, the fact that it becomes a best-selling book. It should have hit, end up should have, in terms of number of books sold, I'm in good company with Howard Stern, my book sold enough to hit the New York Times bestseller list, according to my publisher,

Ben Bella. However, because it launched in 2018, if you think back to 2018, there was the Me Too movement and Harvey Weinstein, that asshole and all these other misogynist men who, well, were assholes to women, Bill Cosby, et cetera, the Me Too movement, rightfully so. the title of my title of my book, Man Up didn't help my cause where the New York Times bestseller list was concerned. So I hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. We hit the Amazon bestseller list.

And I'm not talking about some obscure category. I'm talking like the bestseller of all books. But I share that with you because I hired a coach and teach me how to do a product launch, Jeff Walker. Like, how do I launch a book? And then I implemented it. And so I paid money to get coaching and it still continues to pay off. And then I was a shitty leader and communicator, lost Fernando, and then end up paying through three

really bad CEO auditions before I got my fourth CEO, Bryce, who's just a badass gangster at what he does. And in fact, the third person who cost me the least amount of money almost put me in a multimillion dollar lawsuit because as my VP, he fraternized with one of our lower-level team. members and Joan, my assistant, found out, she literally called and goes, hey, let's just call him Bob. Bob has something to tell you. And he's just like, I'm on a business trip. I could just hear him going, no, no, no, I'll tell him when he gets back into town. I'm like, hello, hello, guys, hello, anyone, right? She's like, she's like, tell him, tell him now. Joan's fiercely lawyer. She's

been with me almost 10 years. And so he's like, hey, just want to let you know, you know, me and whoever have been doing this, but I really like me. I'm like, bro, you're the one who says, we need a employee new hire packet. And that new hire packet said that there's no frattingizing, let alone someone in your position. Like, you just put me, and I'm in California, man. Like, I'm like, give your resignation to Joan and walk out that fucking door. And so all this to say, like, that's how I paid for not necessarily grooming and mentoring Fernando as well as I could have where he could have sat in that seat.

I'm curious why you ended up stepping down from the CEO role. and I kind of want to preface it with this context too. I'm a fan of the book, 15 commitments of conscious leadership. In that book, they talk about operating your area of genius. Yeah. And I know in your book, you've talked about operating your area of genius. Obviously, you're a very strong leader. And you could have maintained that CEO role and taking the business to extreme levels.

Did you feel that you had a stronger area of genius? genius, which led you to step down from the CEO role and hire an operator? Part of it was that. So it was a two-prong reason for me for stepping down as the CEO. So part of it was that while I knew I had, I've got strong leadership skills now. I had to develop that muscle that wasn't factory installed. Like I had that had been nurtured into me. But I only lead people who are like high speed type A tightly wound.

I can lead them really well. I can't manage regular people. And I know that about myself. So I knew that my zone of genius was I can cast an amazing vision and I can lead great people, people who are literally who are great people who are just high speed, tightly wound action takers. But I still get frustrated very easily with like just rank and file people. Sorry, but I do. And so I'm like, if FitBody is to grow and we're going to have a lot more rank and file people,

I'm going to be very frustrated and it's going to show. So I need someone who's not only a great leader of these people, but is also a good manager. Because they're not the same thing. They're not. Leading and managing is not the same, right? You know that. You know that.

Managing emotions and conversations and why did you do that again? Did that make sense for you to do that? Like, I couldn't have, I, like, what the fuck did you do that for? Like, how, on what planet does it make sense for you to take a company laptop with you on vacation and then leave it at a hotel? Because that's that happened, right? And then, of course, that never goes well because I lose my shit. And so I realized what my deficiency is, managing people.

This company is going to be very big. And therefore, I am not going to be able to manage these people without frustration. So, therefore, steps in Bryce, an amazing leader, wonderful manager of people. And I tell him every day, I walk by his office, I open his glass door. I'm like, dude, you're amazing. You're not just a great leader. You're a wonderful manager of people, much better than me. And then I go right into the war room where I do my half days with my coaching clients.

It's right next door to my conference room where I do my half days. So that was reason number one. Reason number two is I knew I was meant for more. There was more I got to do. And for me to do that, I had to step away from that seat. My face had to no longer be associated with Fit Body Boot Camp so that I could start the Bedros Koolian show, which launched eight months ago.

And I had the idea of that, like a couple years ago. Actually, during the pandemic is where I started thinking about that. Like, I need to end the Empire podcast, which was focused on building businesses and building a lot of money. That's factor installed for me. I can turn anything into money. And I can take anything I turned into money.

I can scale it very quickly. But I was like, after 2020, I was like, I got to look down the barrel of a camera, have no guests, and just speak. My heart's content. But I also knew, like, if I speak, because during the pandemic, I was on Fox News a few times.

So the 218 locations, franchise locations that we lost during the pandemic, nine of them were because our franchisees We're like, we don't agree with what you said on Fox News. We don't think this is a pandemic. And that's cool, man. Cool. We're shutting down.

We're not going to work under someone who has, who's inciting violence or whatever, right? I'm like, what the hell? That's got to be a weird feeling. Bro, very weird. And I realize, like, if you don't like my trueling supplements, great. And you don't like what I say on Fox News,

you can just stop using my supplement. But if you're a franchisee, you're on a seven-year franchise agreement. You've signed a lease. You've, like, painted Fit Body Boot Camp colors. there's a lot of impact that my words might make. Whether I agree with what they say or not. So I realized I have to start getting into the shadows

and therefore I need a CEO so that the things I say in front of my mic, looking down the barrel of that camera on the Bedros cooling show, does not negatively impact Fit Body Boot Camp. And so that was my second reason. And I was right because my show just blew up, blew up the last seven months. And I'm really grateful for it because I knew I had a message that was going to speak to the hearts of men and with what's happening to society today.

But I also knew it was going to be very polarizing where maybe a client who works out at a fit-body boot camp decides they don't like what I said and then decide to protest against that fit-body boot camp they're going to, which that's a small business, bro. That doesn't affect me. That affects that fit-body boot camp. And so I don't want that on my conscience.

And so that was the second reason why I had to step down. So in retrospect, has been the right decision? Now that I've got the right CEO in the seat, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I meant something I had to learn the hard way, the difference between leadership and management. I've always seen myself as a visionary and a leader. And as the business started to grow and I started to become frustrating with managing and I would build a resentment around managing and those tasks and those duties. I started to build some insecurity around that.

Realizing that I wasn't the best, the best, strongest manager and I didn't really enjoy managing. And I saw management and leadership as one of the same. So I started to become insecure of, oh, man, if I'm not, if I'm not a really good manager, I don't enjoy managing, does that mean I'm not a good leader and I don't enjoy leading people? And until I realized those two things are different. Yeah. I really even was more secure in realizing the fact that I love leading. I love being a visionary.

Like we talked about earlier, we implemented EOS in the business. That's been so powerful and really. confirming I'm in the right seat for this next phase of growth in the business. But understanding the two between leadership and management has been very game-changing for me personally. Yeah, yeah. And not all great. I mean, you look at Elon Musk. He's not the CEO of any of his companies.

He's the founder. He's got a CEO for Tesla. He's got a CEO for Neurrelink. He's got a CEO for the boring company. He's got a CEO for SpaceX. because typically the visionary and leader were weirdos, bro. And other type A people who don't want to necessarily take the risk to be the entrepreneur, they'll work for us.

And so they love being led by us. And they are naturally great leaders, but they just don't, they're not risk takers. That's the difference. And so we're like, dude, I could lead them. They're type A. They're driven. They just want me to point to a direction and tell them how far to run. Then the people who want to be managed, that's where we will just like, we will create a wake of

destruction. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I've done it. Oh, yeah. I've done it. Well, Bejurus, I appreciate you coming in here. Yes, sir.

This being the second episode, you know, your story's amazing. Obviously, you've achieved amazing success. Your show is blowing up. It's growing massively extensively. And you're splitting good stuff out there, so I appreciate you. Thanks, man. And I appreciate you, Nick. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Absolutely.