Bedros Keuilian’s Time‑Freedom Blueprint + How to Scale Your Confidence AND Your Business

Most people try and figure out how can I increase sales, how can I drive leads? Forget the how. Elon Musk is not asking how can I bolt on more tires on a Tesla. He's saying, who can do this for me? As entrepreneurs, once we figure out who can do this for me instead of how can they do it, that gives you so much time. Freedom.

Pedros. Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. Thank you so much for driving here.

Yes. First off, thank you for the opportunity and it's, it's great to be here in your beautiful home.

Oh, thank you so much. And we just said we're sitting here. For those of you who can't see or aren't watching on YouTube, we have two giant sheepadoodles who are keeping you company. We have Bananas and Bonkers.

Bananas and Bonkers.

We should have named them Zen and Calm is what we decided because they're living, they're living into their names. But I'm so excited to have you here today and in person because you and I, I feel like we've gotten, I feel like I've. How long have we known each other? We met.

Well, you spoke at, I think it was Fitness Business Summit 2014, 15.

Oh, my God. It was, it was around my book, so it was around that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's got to be, if not a decade, close to a decade that we've known each other. Yeah.

And I've, I've always resonated with you because you are like the extreme of, for me, this is my perception of you. Like, I love that you can be so hardcore, such a badass, like, kick our butts back into gear. But also, you are one of the most sweet, compassionate, caring, generous people I've ever met.

Thank you.

And I think that just dichotomy is so incredible that you can hold both of those.

I appreciate that.

Were you always that way?

I, I, I, I think so. As I look back to my life, I realize I was always that way. I, I'm very. So my personality type is intj, right. And the J stands for judicial. So I'm very judicial, very structured. But being introverted and, and a thinker in. Right. Introverted thinker, intuitive, judicial and a thinker. I like to think I always put myself in the other person's shoes versus thinking. Like, know they're trying to do, do me wrong. I always go, why does it feel like I'm, I'm being wrong right now?

That's huge.

What is, what is their perspective? And so being able to put myself in Other people's shoes has made me empathetic and compassionate. But being judicial and structured, I can get up someone's ass, and I get up my own ass. Like, I'm my worst, like, critic. Like, I can beat myself up to a pulp, which, the older I get. Now I'm 50, I've become so much better at showing myself grace. But anyway, so I've. I've had this good fortune to be able to be very strict and intense and compassionate and empathetic at the same time. And I hear that from a lot of people that I'm massively grateful for it. By the way, do you know how you, me and Chris met? Do you remember where we first met? Lewis. Yes.

Okay.

At Lewis House's Mastermind. It was in Santa Monica. Right. And I remember meeting you guys and just like, feeling such good energy off you guys. And then it was after that that. That, you know, our relationship and friendship blossomed. And here we are a decade later.

I love that. Oh, my God. There's not a. I mean, honestly, I'm such, like a. In business, too. I really. I resonate a lot with women, obviously, because they're on the same path as me. But something about you came. You came in and you were talking, and I was like, I feel so connected to this human. Um, but I also think it's a lot of just learning about you and your. Your background and just a lot of the different. The different ways that you talk about how you've turned kind of your journey and some of the pain and the different things that you've gone through into so much of your purpose that I feel like I. I think like you in certain ways. So I love hearing how you think.

Yeah.

Just to catch people up. Can you share with people a little bit about how you got into starting your business?

Yeah, well, the. The business that I'm in right now is. Is kind of broad because I own seven companies. When I think about all the companies, six out of the seven are all about empowering and building people up, whether it's my supplement company, whether it's our Fit Body Boot Camp franchise with over 500 locations, fuel hunt Apparel, which is all, you know, community of hard workers. But I've always. And I think we both start off as personal trainers. Did you start? Right. So I started off as a personal trainer, and that young, naive trainer in me was like. Because I was a fat kid throughout high school, I lost weight and got fit working out my senior year because one of the football players from my high school, he was in science class with me. And so we made friends, and I'm like, dude, you're fit. You're Jack. How do I get fit and Jack? Because I'm built like a pumpkin, you know, like, just fat.

And I'm remembering now. I resonated with you. I was built like a pumpkin.

There you go. There you go. We have. We have that, but our shapes are definitely different now. And he. He was kind enough to take me into the school gym, and he was kind enough to teach me how to. I had no idea what macros are and proteins. I just ate whatever my Armenian mom put in front of me.

Right.

Just a lot of ethnic food. Especially being an immigrant to this country. Like, you don't. You don't turn your nose away from food. You eat whatever is in front of you. And so I grew up fat. And when I graduated high school, I was like, I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I do know that I want to help more people achieve this transformation. That I did more than the physical thing. I was like, man, I feel more confident. I feel a higher sense of self worth. Right. Anyone that's lost, because I lost, like, 40 pounds, like, that's a substantial amount of weight for a young man. And all of a sudden, you're no longer invisible. You go from, like, the whole school didn't see me to a senior at the end of senior year. Like, you know, girls are noticing me, guys are giving me attention, and it felt good.

Yeah.

And I realized I have higher levels of self worth, self esteem, confidence. And I said, I want to be a certified personal trainer. Well, that led to, you know, when you're a personal trainer, in between sets, you're having dialogue with your clients.

Totally.

And the dialogue, you get to learn about their life, their insecurities, their fears, their frustrations, their desires. And in between training them, it. I would just kind of give them advice. I would get advice from one coach, personal training client who was an entrepreneur, and give advice to this personal training client. And I'd pass just information along to each other about life. And I realized more than training them on fitness and nutrition, I enjoy this whole, like, teaching them to become a better version of themselves.

Oh, my God. Same.

Right. And as months would go by, you know, you would hear the client go, you know, I finally had enough balls to go and ask for that raise. Thank you for motivating me. I'm like, I motivated you to go ask for the raise? Well, yeah. You know, this talks that we've been Having. And so I realized I love building people up and helping them transform. And so today, all my companies are run by leaders. You know, Bryce, he coached. He's amazing.

Yes.

My CEO, Jeff. I don't know if you've met Jeff. He runs my supplement company. He's the VP of my supplement company. Joan, Ed's wife, runs my coaching consulting company that does 10 million a year. And so I've got leaders running my companies, which gives me the opportunity to then do podcasts, write books, speak on stages, and then I coach and consult other entrepreneurs who are high performing and who want to get to a place that I have gotten to with less bumps, bruises, scars, scrapes, and financial loss. And so I really enjoy coaching and consulting because I get to take the lessons from my life and my business, apply it to someone else's business, and because I work with the breadth of different coaching clients from different industries. What may work in your industry might be completely unseen and totally. And I can take that and teach this guy. And then they'll get a, you know, two, $300,000 a month in recurring revenue because they never thought of that, because that's not something we do in our. In the pool industry, for example, or in the solar industry. Right. And so I, I realized more than anything, I love problem solving. So whether the problem is they were too fat, they needed to be fit, they were lacking confidence, or they needed to make money, I've solved all those problems for myself, and. And now I just go around solving those for others as well and getting paid well for it.

So you get so much information from so many people. I remember that from clients. I was like, I am learning so much so fast, and I get to do that for everyone. Okay, so I want to go back to when you had that realization of, wow, I really want to help people solve these problems. What was your kind of face off moment with yourself? What were you struggling with? Was it like organization? Was it trying to figure things out? Like, can you remember back to the beginning of what those big obstacles felt like?

I can. For me, especially starting my business, the big face off moments where it's funny, you can lose weight and get fit and have confidence in your personal life. Yeah. But that doesn't always translate to your professional life Totally. Right. And so while I could feel like more confident walking around and talking to people because I don't feel like I'm fat and grotesque and. And I don't think anyone ever looked at me as grotesque, can just feel that way. You feel that way. And I'M being very direct and honest with you. Like, I, it's, it's. And, and if, if someone's watching this or listening to this and they're like, I could relate. Yeah, you, you will feel fat and grotesque even though others won't feel that way towards you. But because you will feel that way, you will do things, you'll find evidence in the world to justify how you feel. Right. And so I would constantly justify how I felt. Like, see that person, you know, just, they kind of look my way. Well, they kind of look my way for a million reasons. But in my mind, they look my way because they think I'm grotesque as well. So anyways, the confidence did not translate to the business life. When I wanted to start my own personal training gym. I just wanted to start one personal training studio, like 2,500 square feet. Thankfully, I had a personal training client named Jim Franco, 62 years old at the time. And I didn't know anything about sales. I didn't know anything about lead generation or marketing. I didn't know anything about communication in terms of, like, how to communicate a message. And so for me, those were all sticking points. And when you think about being an entrepreneur, you've got to drive leads, you've got to convert those leads into paying clients. And as you build a team and as you build a customer or client base, you have to communicate things to them. The three key things and the fourth one being leadership. I'd never been a leader in any sense of the word because in the Armenian culture and my dad being a former communist, you know, your audience needs to know that we escaped the Soviet Union, came to the United states. I was 6 years old. My dad was a card carrying member of the Communist Party. And when you've got a communist father, he's not like how I am with my kids. And I was with my kids were like, oh, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this son or daughter, right? He was like, you're just supposed to be seen and not heard. That is it. And his solution to most problems were what he called the five brothers, which was a backhand across my face. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I love my dad to pieces. He's 91 years old, I take great care of him. He's got an awesome caretaker. My mom passed away a year and a half ago. But you know, people go, oh my God, your dad was an abuser. Everyone from the communist bloc was abusers. That's, that's just how it was when I came to America and I made some American friends as a kid. I knocked on a friend's door, his name is Scott. And I said, hey, can you come out and play? He goes, I can't. How come? He goes, I'm on restriction. I was like, dude, what is restriction? I'd never heard of the word restriction. He goes, you know, I can't watch television, I can't come out and play with you guys because I got in trouble and I said, can't your mom or dad like hit you a few times and then you can come out and play for me I thought his punishment of being on restriction was worse because for two weeks he can't come out and play with us. Whereas with me, my dad gives me a good beating and then I'm off to playing with my friends again.

So like I learned these lessons fast.

Yeah, right, exactly. We time collapsed. Exactly. So long story short, when your dad, you know, comes from a communist country and thinks the communist way and he's the dictator, there is no let's collaborate. And so leadership, communication, sales and marketing were not my thing. Those were all weak points. But I also realized, and you know this, as a, as a personal trainer, most of your clients are well to do, especially if you're one on one. Personal training. Yep. You know, you're charging them 400, 600, $800 a month. Of course I wasn't making that money. The gym was. I worked at an LA Fitness. They were, the gym was paying me $14 and 25 cents an hour.

I was at an LA Fitness too.

Were you really?

They broke it to a 30 minute session and paid $6.

Okay, right. So my 1425 broke down, that's an hour. But it's seven and change. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. What LA Fitness did you work in?

New Brighton, Wisconsin.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I was in beautiful La Habra, California.

Minnesota. Sorry, New Brighton, Minnesota.

Minnesota.

Where was I at the time?

Dude, that's funny. Yeah, we were under the same regime.

Totally.

And I remember thinking like, the gym is making a ton of money off this training that I'm delivering.

Same.

Yeah. So long story short, but what I did realize very quickly is I've got built in mentors. Every one of my clients, probably with the exception of a couple of the, the wives who were stay at home wives of rich entrepreneurs. I had built in coaching clients. And so Jim Franco, who I told you was one of my personal training clients, brought Dan Kennedy's book, he brought a book from Jay Abraham, he brought me book from Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar and He's like, these books will teach you how to lead, drive, and market. These books will teach you how to sell. Because he owned a massive software company, and so he comes from sales and marketing. And so once I realized I had built in mentors, what were what. My weaknesses soon became my strengths because I had mentors who were coaching me, mentoring me, giving me audio cassettes, because I come from the audio cassette world. And it completely transformed my mind. I had no idea that there's this other world. I thought, you know, if I'm in good shape, you're going to pay me, because you see that I'm in good shape and you're not. So you're going to pay me. It doesn't work that way. Yeah, people need to be convinced and sold. And we need to agitate the. The buying buttons, which is, why are you here? What have you tried? What's your biggest frustration? What keeps you awake at night? You peel the onion, you get to the big why, and then you go, what happens if you can't get the results? Like, what is the chasm that you want to cross? And what happens if you can't cross that chasm? And I would hear Mrs. Jones to. I always called my prospective clients at my gym Mrs. Jones, and they would say, you know, I've heard women saying, this breaks my heart. I'm afraid my husband's going to leave me. I'm afraid my husband's going to cheat on me. I'm afraid that I'm no longer attractive to my spouse. And then I would hear the same thing from husbands, by the way, I'm afraid that my wife's going to cheat on me. And so when. If you can't agitate that fear and the pain in them, pain leads people to action. And so once I learned that, once I learned how to overcome the objections during my sales presentation, instead of waiting to handle those objections after, like, it was eye opening. Now it was just a matter of, here's the four programs that we have for you. And then I would always give them an option of one or two. So I would say, I think the two or the three time a week is going to work best for you. Which of these two can we get you started on? And that was a line I got from Zig Ziglar, which Jim Franco gave me that book. He said, instead of telling them, do you want to start or not? Which is a yes or a no answer, do you want option A or B? Because either way, they're going to pick an option and you Win, you make the sale, they win, they get the outcome and the results. So for me, sales, marketing, leadership and communication. Yeah. And it wasn't an overnight fix. Those were my struggles.

And.

But I am very OCD and I'm very intense and passionate. And so I dove in and within two years, I dare say I had mastery in all of those areas. Leadership being the last area that I developed mastery in.

So were you, were you practicing those frequently? Like, was it because you were constantly talking. LA fitness is a grind too, by the way. You are like, you are talking to people every day and trying to sell people, like pretty much every day. I worked, I felt like I trained, but I also, they made us do, you know, sales, trying to sell clients.

Right.

For somebody who wants to get better at that because you're like, in two to three years, you said you feel like you kind of mastered that. How many, like, what did the reps look like?

I would literally say probably over 2000 reps of actual humans. And this is the beautiful thing about being in an LA Fitness or any big box gym.

Yeah.

And if someone's like, well, I'm not in a big box gym, go knock on doors. Yeah, go not find the affluent neighborhood that you think has your ideal prospect and go knock on doors. If I come here to your house and I knock on your door and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna sell you solar, right? And I give you the best pitch I can and you go, go away, I don't want it. I can go to your neighbor and have a clean slate, knock on their door, give them my best pitch, and maybe they buy solar, maybe they don't. Now, when you're in a big box gym, you go to a treadmill. And you know this. Around 5:36pm at night, all the treadmills are packed and what are they, eight inches away from each other. So I walk up to a treadmill because you know this, if someone doesn't show up to your 30 minute workout session, they want you out on the floor prospecting. Cool, I get it. And so using those skills that Jim Franco had taught me, I would go to someone on a treadmill. Hey, my name is Pedros. You doing cardio right now? Have you done your resistance training yet? No, I haven't. Great. Can I take you on the floor and do some resistance training? And then you should do cardio because you're going to burn more fat that way because we're going to burn off the glycogen. Da, da, da. And you're Going to go right into more fat burn. And they would say, no, not interested, thank you. And then you go, I got to hit the ellipticals next. And then I got to hit the recumbent bikes after that. But when you get that many repetitions in and when you walk up to people who are working out on the floor and you go, hey, it looks like you're training back, but I think there's a better way to do it. Can I help you? And they go, sure. You put them through a free workout and I would take them right into the office. And my hook was, you know, all the goals you want are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. In the gym we break down muscles, but the recovery is important. And what you eat and so it's not what you do for an hour here, it's what you do for the other 23 hours. They go, okay, got it. I go, let's go and talk about nutrition. And the whole idea was I would segue the nutrition conversation into a sales conversation and then ask for the sale. So imagine doing in a two year period, probably 800 to A to 1200 repetitions. Like, I developed mastery so quick that I felt super confident that I could open up my own gym. Now I needed to raise money, which is a whole other thing, right? But the repetitions, like when you learn a skill. And by the way, at the time I had a girlfriend, I was, I was doing so many sales presentations on my girlfriend, her parents, my parents. I would tell my dad, just give me objections in Armenian, don't buy. When I lay out the prices at the end, don't buy, give me objections. And I would literally do the sales presentation in Armenian to my dad because it also involved like drawing diagrams on three sheets of paper. And I, I didn't want anyone to buy off the bat. I was like, give me objections, give me the hardest objections. And I got so many reps in that I developed mastery quickly. And I believe anyone can. The whole, you know, 10,000 hour rule can be.