020: Resourcefulness, Visualization, and Manning Up with Bedros Keullian

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback. On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. Coming to this country from communist Soviet Union as a child, bedroom had odds stacked against him. English was a second language, he was an Armenian refugee and his family had very, very little money. At six years old, he had a job crawling in dumpsters searching for expired food to feed his family. So poor as a child when he got lice from living in Section 8 housing, his mom couldn't afford lice treatment, so she got resourceful. She used gasoline on his hair to kill the lice. The amazing thing that Bedros did have resourceful, hard working parents that taught him that you can always be resourceful and find solutions. And even more importantly, that freedom was an opportunity to achieve big things. Bedros knew he'd be successful one day and he knew he'd always find a way. In fact, he used to talk to his friends as a teenager and say things like, when we are rich, we will. He didn't know it then, but he was creating a vision. That vision and self talk allowed him to turn thoughts into action. Today on leveling up, Bedros shares how he founded Fit Body Bootcamp, which by the way is listed on Entrepreneur magazine's 500 fastest growing franchises in the world three times now and listed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately owned companies. And he's going to share how although it's been a rocky road, he has continually leveled up time and time again, failures and created everything from nothing. Today I've got Bedros Kulian on Bedros. I am so excited to interview you because you are the definition of what this podcast is about. You've continually leveled up. I mean, in fact, gosh, your new book is called man up over and over again. And I'm so excited to talk to you today and just dive in deeper on how you've done that.

Well, thank you so much, Natalie. I'm a big fan first and foremost and secondly, I really do appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you. So I want to go back even further than where you talk about a lot in this book, Bedros, if you're okay with that. I want to know, I want to give everyone a little background on you because you're so powerful, and people see you online and they. And it's intimidating. They think, oh, gosh, he's so successful. Everybody knows who he is. He's done so much. He's achieved so much. He must have had a leg up. And I know that that's not who you always were. That's not where you came from. Kasu, can you take us back? Like, way back to where you came from and how you even got here, how that even started.

You know, it's funny you say that, too, because I oftentimes do feel like the Cinderella story, and I think it was Jerry Lewis years ago. Now I'm dating myself. I'm 44 years old, but when I was a kid, I remember watching the Jerry Lewis movies in black and white, and there was a movie that he made called Cinderella Man. And I really believe I'm the Cinderella man, because I was six years old when my father decided that we're going to escape communist Soviet Union and come to the United States. Now, he was a member of the Communist Party, and as you can imagine, the, you know, the communist government does not want you to escape and come to a country like the United States, where at the time, the US Was the enemy. But my dad was very Westernized. He loved. He wore Jordache jeans and Ray Ban glasses, the shoes and. And he was so pro America, pro freedom, pro opportunity, that he was willing to risk his life to get us to the. To this country. And so, as you can imagine, being a foreigner to the United States, there's a lot of trials and tribulations you have to go through. And let me give you some examples. One, the language factor. English is a second language for me and my family. Like, I grew up speaking Armenian, and so I had to learn English. Number two, the culture is completely different. Number three, when you're not from here and when you enter this country as a refugee, you don't have the same opportunities, especially in the 80s. And so, you know, my dad was delivering newspapers, and, gosh, he was delivering newspapers, working at a pizzeria, and pumping gas, like, all at the same time. Had three jobs. My mom had two jobs. My older brother and sister had a couple of jobs. And so I was the baby of the family. Six years old. My job was to crawl into the dumpsters that my dad had discovered in the back of grocery stores, because, as you can imagine, every grocery store has dumpsters. And, well, they throw away expired food, so food that they can't sell. And maybe it's gone bad, but it's not all the way bad. Or maybe it's expired and they can't sell it. My job was to go in there and fish out the food that we could still salvage and eat. And so even I as a six year old had a job and my dad would kind of lift me up on his shoulders and put me over into the dumpsters and I'd fish out eggs and bread and cheese. That's the money. Because the money they made doing all the little side jobs was to pay for our rent and our living expenses. And so if we can get food out of a dumpster for free, free, well, hey, that's a plus. And so, you know, it was very humble beginnings. And I'm so grateful for that though, because I learned so many lessons that later in life, Natalie, I was able to use. For example, I realized that when you don't have the money to buy food, in other words, you don't have the financial resources, you have to get resourceful. And I remember my dad saying, hey son, get the bag of bread, get the gallon of milk, get the eggs. So you don't have resources. Get resourceful. We lived in Section 8 housing, which is government assisted housing. And when that happens, it's not always the cleanliness apartments that you're living in. And so one of the apartment complexes we lived in in Santa Ana, California, I got lice and I was seven years old at this point. Lice. And well, my mom couldn't afford lice treatment, so she had my dad siphon out gasoline from a parked car and she washed my hair with gasoline to kill the license.

I remember reading that and hearing you say that, I'm like, I'm just imagining a mom, that decision. And just like, well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to shift and just find a solution.

That's it. When you again, you don't have the resources, you have to get resourceful. And so again, I use that in my entrepreneurial career in life. And I realized that there is nothing that's going to stop me in succeeding because if I don't have the resources of marketing resources, selling resources, leadership resources, I have to get resourceful and find it and get it and not just stop. So some of the best lessons in life have come to me by being an immigrant that suffered in this country.

No, I want to ask you a bit about your parents and the mindset that there. Because some parents would have had that happening to their Kids and would be complaining about poverty and how hard life is and how much it sucks. And this is your future. Did your parents do that or they did? They just did. You always see them as solution oriented and feel like you had a purpose.

They were definitely solution oriented. I wouldn't say that they felt like they had a purpose. They knew that maybe if they got us to this country that we'd have a purpose, as in the kids. And I know that's why my mom and dad did it. I mean, gosh, they were in their 40s, right? So I'm 44 now, and I always tell my wife, like, hey, imagine if we took Andrew and Chloe and moved to see. Now it doesn't matter. We can move to Japan and if we don't know the language, we can just Google Translate everything. But I tell my wife, imagine if we move to Mars where we're speaking Martian. Yeah, the money system is different. Education, the culture, how they look. Because we looked very different as foreigners. You know, when your mom makes her clothes and you have a bowl haircut. So they, I think it was the whole idea was, hey, we're going to sacrifice our future for our kids so that they can have freedom and opportunity. Because my dad kept stressing over and over again that, hey, in this country you have freedom and opportunity to make as much money as you want. And he kept saying, as long as you serve the people in the country itself. And so that has stuck with me so much. And so I guess maybe his vision for me was, hey, grow up and achieve a lot and then serve the people in the country. And I've taken that to heart so much that the four big organizations that we've adopted is Compassion international. We've got 97 kids now adopted through Compassion International, which is crazy when my kids have to write letters to them every month.

Yeah.

But, you know, we donate, you know, billions of dollars to Shriners Children's Hospital, quarter million dollars a year every Christmas, and toys that we buy for Toys for Tots. And then Marcus Luttrell, who's a Navy SEAL, who created the Lone Survivor foundation we donate to that helps Special Forces guys and gals come out and transition into civilian life. And so, you know, the message my dad left with me really resonated. And so I'm very impact and service driven. And so while maybe they didn't have a big vision for their life, I think maybe they were counting on their vision being lived through their children. And so I'm certainly doing that.

So did your parents, did they talk into your greatness. Did that help? Like, I'm curious as a kid, like, how did you. Because a lot, like a lot of six year olds would be stuck in. This is what's going to be in my life. And these are the challenges. So did you ever have that thought or did you always know you were going to be something more?

It's going to sound weird, but I always knew I'm going to be something more. So one of the jobs I had at the age of 19 was I worked at Disneyland for about six years and I started off as a busboy and then became a dinner cook and a fry cook and ultimately became a sous chef at Disneyland before I quit and started my personal training and fitness. But me and my friend Caesar would always talk about, hey man, when we're rich, I'm going to have. And then fill in the blank. You know, you're working with your coworkers, an eight hour shift of busing tables.

Yeah.

And so. But I really took that to heart. And today I still hang out with Cesar. I see Cesar and my other friend Chanta that I used to bust with. And they, every time we hang out, they go, do you remember when we would say that? They go, you now live what you said. I was guys, I really believe that. Yeah, that was just, I'm not going to chalk it up to brilliance. I'm going to say more. It was just pigheaded stubbornness that I said it so much to my friends that I actually started to believe my own thoughts. Thoughts led to action and I've manifested that life.

I hope people are listening to that because that is that theme of having a vision. Like if you, because you know your thoughts, you hear 40,000, 50,000 thoughts a day in your head. So if you're telling yourself, I'm a failure, I'm this, I'm that, you're going to start living that. But your case in point, that you say, I'm going to be. And you became right.

Exactly. And I think oftentimes later, it wasn't until later on in life that I learned something called negative self talk, positive self talk. And my first mentor, his name was Jim Franco. He was a personal training client. And every time I would say, oh, Jim, you know, I'm never going to be able to open up my own personal training studio. He's like, hey, if that's the loop that plays in your head, I'm like, what do you mean the loop? He goes, if that's a soundtrack in your head, if that's a negative Self talk. He was like, whoa. Negative self talk. He goes, yeah, your thoughts become your actions, and your actions manifest your thoughts. I'm like, holy smokes. And so that, to me, was a big deal. But I guess, thankfully, when I was saying all that stuff with my friends, unbeknownst to me, I was actually manifesting my future life.

You totally were. So how did you get into the fitness business? And I want to jump over because you knew you were going to be successful, but where did that idea come from?

From a girl. From a girl. So imagine this. You're a foreign kid. You come to this country and you're living off, you know, food out of dumpsters the first couple years, and then government assisted food. And, you know, mom and dad never put me into any sports or athletics or anything like that. And so I would eat carbs and sugars, you know, cereal and bread, bone and cheese, bacon, etc. And so I had gotten so fat, Natalie, by the time I was in high school, like, I had. I now know what they're called. I had muffin top. I had man boobs.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. So my junior year of high school, I remember thinking to myself, like, man, prom is happening next year, senior year, and I want to go to it. And there was this girl, her name was Nakaya, and I wanted to ask her out to prom. So in my science class, this kid named Dave, he was my science partner and he was on the high school football team. So I said, dave, dude, you work out. You're in great shape. You're the only jock I know who doesn't want to kick my butt. Any chance you would, you would teach me how to work out? He goes, yeah, man, I'll take you to the school gym because you should also read like, Flex magazine and Muscle and Fitness and see what bodybuilders do and what kind of diet they have. So I started emulating bodybuilder diets from Muscle and Fitness and Flex magazine. Dave took me to the school gym and taught me some workout routines. And the summer before senior year, I worked out like a machine and ate, ate as clean as I could. Thank God for being a young male. With all that testosterone in my body, my body transformed. I came back more athletic. I lost 30 some odd pounds. Like fitness not only changed my physique, I was more confident making eye contact with everyone, very happy with all the students. But I still didn't have the confidence to ask Nakaya out to the prom. I never made it to the prom. But the good news is after high school, I didn't know what my path was going to be, but all of a sudden I did. Because while I was reading those muscle magazines, and I'm sure you're going to remember this, you know, you get to the last few pages of the magazine, any magazine, the car magazine, whatever, you see those little fractional ads and inside of a muscle magazine that says, get certified, become a personal trainer, earn $100 an hour. Wow. You know, if I train six clients a day, that's 600 bucks a day, I'm rich. So I got certified and because I wanted to help people achieve the same outcome that I got from working out. Well, lo and behold, just because you're certified doesn't mean that people are going to come and pay you. And so there. Now I was the guy who was a certified personal trainer, who was a fry cook at Disneyland, and by this point I was also a bouncer at a gay nightclub in Buena Park, California. And I remember complaining to my client, Jim Frank. I'm like, Jim, I've got two side jobs and I'm a personal trainer here at LA Fitness. They pay me 11 bucks an hour. Most of the money you give them to work with me goes to them. And he started to mentor me and he's like, hey, look, you know, if you want to be a personal trainer, you have to learn to sell and market. And I don't see you doing that. You're an order taker. Yeah, yeah. So this, right, so this goes back to like, listen, if you've got a vision to be something, then you've got to do every single thing that that something would entail. So in my case, if I want to be a personal trainer, which what I was really saying is I want to be an entrepreneur, well, entrepreneurs need to know how to lead. They need to know how to market and drive traffic. They need to know how to sell. They need to know how to communicate their message. And so Jim, who was an entrepreneur, said, listen, I'm going to bring you cassette tapes from Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar. You listen to them and then give them back to me and I'll give you the next one. And before long, within a couple years, I had my first personal training studio open. And that led to four more over the next few years. And thank God for having a built in mentor.

Gosh, so many lessons in that. Okay, for starters, I wanted to also hear this, that you, because you connected with this guy and you were vulnerable and shared like, hey, I'm making $11 hour. And you actually talked to him. He turned into a mentor. And I think so many people get so stuck in their ego, they won't own that. You know, they're just thinking, I have a credential. I'm a personal trainer. I need more people. And they don't tell their clients, hey, I'm struggling. They're not vulnerable like that. So that's. You were that, and that's how you got that mentor, it sounds like.

Exactly right. And you know what people tell me, well, you know, how can I be so open with people? How can I be so vulnerable with people? And I said, look, desperation will do that when you're, like, at the bottom of the barrel. And in my case, I was so disappointed in myself that, gosh, I'm a personal trainer. I paid to get certified, I'm in good shape, I know how to deliver results, yet I'm doing two things that are not in my wheelhouse that I don't want to do. I'm a. I'm a busboy and a fry cook at Disneyland, and I'm a bouncer at a nightclub. And so to me, I was at the bottom of the barrel. And so desperation causes you to just open up to someone that you trust. And thank goodness that I developed a relationship with my personal training client, Jim. And, you know, I trusted him enough to be vulnerable, to open up, and he was kind enough to mentor and coach me.

I love that you're lucky. And see, that's the thing. It's not luck. I mean, that's an opportunity, and you just saw it because you were open. So this mentor sounds awes. And then, see, you started reading, listening, and changing. And now, so how did that become. Now take me to where that even grew even more, because now you're. You're having that studio, you're doing all this stuff, but then it becomes a mega business. And I know that we had a setback then, which I'm going to get into, but how did it. Where. How did you even come up with those ideas to create that into a mega business the first time around?

Very good question. So ultimately, I ended up having five personal training studios throughout San Diego. And I'm talking, like, tiny. Like, they were like 1800 square feet.

Okay.

And we just did one on one personal training. And, you know, and sometimes luck does work in your favor. So I had a stroke of luck come up. But here's what luck is. And again, another lesson from Jim Franco. And this is why I talk about Jim Franco so much in my book. Man up is. He said, hey, listen, Bedros, why are you selling 5, 10, 20 sessions at a time? And then once we run out of sessions, you have this uncomfortable conversation with me. More sessions. I'm like, well, that's how we do it in my industry. Jim, have you thought about putting people on a subscription on a, on a recurring revenue? And I said, oh, no, we don't do that in my industry. Talk about being fixed minded, closed minded, right? And he said, you know, it's funny because when I trained with you in a gym at LA Fitness, I paid them on a monthly basis for my gym membership. And I said, really? No kidding? So he taught me how to put my clients because my whole thinking was, well, gosh, I can't afford 600 to $1,200 a month on a reoccurring basis. And if I can't, other people can't. And that's called transferring negative feelings. So a lot of people say, well, because I'm afraid of the deep end of the water, my kids are probably afraid too. And soon they transfer those feelings onto their kids. And now their kids are afraid of the water because the parents kind of put all this negative stigma on them. Right?

Yeah. I did that to my daughter, by the way, with the ocean. So I totally did that to her. I like almost drowned as a kid. It tormented me. And now she's. I've made her scared of the ocean. Bad mom.

There you go. So it's a.

That's true. Yeah.

And so, you know, I was like, oh, Jim, you're right. So he taught me how to put my business on what's known as eft, our subscription. So I had all these personal training clients paying us monthly automatically instead of, you know, buying sessions, blocks of sessions at a time. Well, because of that, because I had my business on recurring revenue. There was this big personal training brand that was coming through Southern California and they were buying up personal training businesses that had their clients on recurring revenue. Well, I was one of them. So they bought out my gyms and I had a nice chunk of money right as the Internet was popping off 2003, 2004. And I said, gosh, well, I could either open up more gyms or I can start coaching and consulting personal trainers and teaching them what I did to have five successful personal training studios. So I kind of pivoted and went into coaching and consulting, and I used the Internet as my source of generating leads. Well, all of a sudden, you know, now you're looking at search engine optimization and pay per Click traffic, Social media comes around, and before long, of course, the economy crashes in 2008. And now it's harder for personal trainers to survive because not a lot of their clients have the money to pay them for their services. Well, in that time, Natalie, I kept thinking to myself, you know, I see these outdoor boot camps happening, but I'm a big one on one personal trainer type of guy. But I see these outdoor boot camps happening. And I bet people can afford the outdoor boot camps because they don't cost as much. Yeah, I wonder if we can make that an indoor business model. And so had the economy not crashed. And this is another lesson in being resourceful. Going back to, you know, when I first came to this country, I needed to get resourceful and get more consulting clients because personal trainers were dropping off the map left and right, just like when the economy crashed. Real estate agents were falling off the map and so were personal trainers. And so I said, well, I'm going to create this brand, this indoor fitness franchise called Fit Body Bootcamp. And it's going to be outdoor boot camps, but done indoors, so you can do it all across the country, no matter what the weather is. And it's going to be something that's affordable and convenient for people, unlike personal training. And it took off. By 2012, we became an official franchise and here we are in 2018 with over 700 locations worldwide and we've hit the Inc. 5000 list as the fastest growing franchise three times and entrepreneur 500 list. And again, I'm the Cinderella man because of that.

Yes. However, I know it was not all like, peaches and roses and butterflies along the way. So talk to me about what happens with the ego too, because as I know, because spoiler alert, I read your book, but I know ego gets in the way too. So as we're growing, we think we know a lot and we work on our ego maybe instead of leadership skills. So what went wrong? Tell us what? Because you had a massive crash in your business and then before it got to where it is now. And I want to hear that. And then I'm so curious, like, because it was, I want really this massive crash, how you shifted your mindset during that. Because that's so. Kika. So many people quit at that point.

And you know what? I got to be honest with you, say I was near ready to quit. And so the massive crash actually happened. So the good news is the economy crashed. When I say good news, good news for me and everyone else that created businesses, mega businesses. When the economy crashed Gary Vaynerchuk is another one who created Vaynermedia right when the economy crashed and he was able to benefit from the crash, so were many other people. But having said that, you know, in that time before that I was coaching and consulting personal trainers. Well, you don't need a big staff to be a consultant. You know, you create a couple of digital courses that you sell online, someone buys your courses, and then, you know, a small percentage of them want to pay you extra money to coach and consult them over the phone. And so, hey, that's easy enough to do with myself and maybe one or two, you know, assistants and helpers. So I didn't really have to practice leadership skills and have a vision for my business, etc. We were making a couple million a year and really happy.

Yeah.

But as the consulting business started to, to wear thin once the economy crashed and I said, well, I'm gonna create this franchise. But when you create a franchise, now you're working with lawyers and now you're working with marketing teams. And when you onboard franchisees, well, you have to service them, you have to teach them how to negotiate their lease and build out their franchise location and get clients, etc. And so all of a sudden I'm finding myself hiring employees. And right when I had around nine, between nine and 11 employees, my business started to collapse on itself because that's when the pain of ineffective leadership set in. See, after that point, my ego said, man, dude, you and two employees are making a couple million a year. You're a badass, you're a business expert. You know it all. Yeah, I knew how to tell a personal trainer how to open up a successful gym. I didn't know how to run what was going to be a multimillion dollar, you know, near nine figure generating fitness franchise. Right. And so as I'm hiring more employees and I'm hiring web developers and business coaches and sales reps because I can't sell the franchises anymore, I have to have the vision. When I, when I asked the web developer to make a website and he wouldn't make it right, or he wouldn't give it to me on time when I wanted it, I'd get passive aggressive and adversarial. Then I would realize that, wait a minute, my passive aggressive behavior is causing my employees to quit more frequently. And now they're getting resentment towards me. And so that led to me blaming my employees. Well, obviously they're bad. They have poor vision, they don't understand what I'm doing, they have no work ethic. And then when franchisees started to drop off because we weren't able to service them. So basically, Natalie, we were promising a unicorn with Fit Body Boot Camp and then delivering a donkey back in 2011, 12, 13.

And in your mind, you're. It's at that time when that's happening. It's not your fault. It's your. It's the wrong hire, the wrong person. Correct.

Like, yes, exactly. My employees suck. They work ethic. My franchisees suck. They. They have no work ethic. They're just horrible people. And yeah, the wrong people are buying Fit Body Boot Camp. And then. And then all of a sudden, as you start losing more franchisees each month than you're gaining. My wife sucks. She doesn't understand.

Oh, yeah, I get it.

Complaining about money, right? So it becomes the enemy.

It's everybody else's fault.

Yeah, everybody. And all of a sudden, I had a business partner. At that time, my business partner was the enemy. Everybody was wrong except me. And then I realized one day when I had a massive anxiety attack, it was so bad that I actually thought I was having a heart attack. Natalie. I was. It was a Monday morning, and I went to put on my shoes, and my throat closes up, my arms start tingling. I'm having a hard time breathing. My heart's racing, Tunnel vision, sweating.

Oh, wow.

30, 38 years old. And in that. And I go, holy crap, I think I'm having a heart attack. And I might. I might die today. And in that moment, I realized, like, who's going to walk my daughter down the aisle? Who's going to teach my son to be a modern day knight? What legacy am I leaving for my wife to carry on? Like, how's she going to handle our debt? Because now I start, we're $640,000 in debt. All of a sudden I went from making money to being in $640,000 in debt and arguing with my wife every night about money.

Wait, pause, about that. Right now with the $640,000 in debt, and you said you're arguing with your wife. Did she know you were that deep in debt or were you hiding that?

No, she knew because she would see that we would take money out of our personal bank account and put it into the business bank account. And soon we had to refinance our house. And now you think about a mama Bear says, wait a minute, I've got two kids now. We're refinancing our house. And mama Bear just. She doesn't care about franchise. She cares about having A roof over the babies, and that's rightfully so.

But she becomes the problem at the time, I'm sure, because she's just bothering you about money.

You nailed it. You nailed it. So she's like, hey, look, we're taking all this money out of our bank account now. We don't have money in our bank account. We're refinancing the house. Who's to say that you're going to be able to save the business with refinancing the house? Like, where are we going to live? Are you going to live with your parents? Are we going to live. Go to Washington? Live with my parents? And.

Right.

And I'm of course yelling at her, saying, like, stop being so pessimistic. But she's saying, look, you've got a track record of failing the last year and a half, two years. How can I do you know what's going to happen to us? But again, in that moment, the ego just kept saying, I know what I'm doing. Leave me alone. Until the day that Monday morning where I had that massive anxiety attack that I thought was a heart attack. The next day I went to the doctor and he said, look, you know.

Okay, why did you go the next day, by the way, instead of calling an ambulance?

Good question. Here's the crazy thing, right? I was so hell bent on making this business work and not letting my wife down and my employees down and my franchisees, deep down inside, I also knew that I was letting people down, that once I realized that, hey, this is just. Actually didn't even realize there was an anxiety attack. I often. I could breathe. The tingling went away. I sat down and caught my breath. I go, holy crap, I think I just dodged a heart attack. And so in my head, I'm thinking, listen, you don't have time to go to the doctor. You don't have time to.

Of course that's what you were thinking.

Yeah, go to Starbucks, get your coffee, and then get right. And so again, you know, we always hear about, oh, you should grind, you should hustle. Well, if you're grinding and hustling in the wrong direction, if. If I'm like, hey, Natalie, somewhere in this backyard, I buried gold, but you're digging a hole 40 yards away where the gold is. You could dig as hard as you want. And yeah, Ryan, is. You're not going to get to the gold. You're just going to be tired and ultimately die. And that's where I was headed.

Well, you were. It sounds like you were also asking the wrong Questions and directing the wrong blame. Like you're blaming the wrong people, and you're just keep asking the same questions of new people or those people. Right? I mean, that's what it sounds like.

Exactly. So I would just replace the old people with new people, and they have the same poor expectations. Like, here's a great example of three employees who quit on one day. This was my favorite. I wanted a website made. And one guy was going to make the website. The other person was going to write the copy for the website, the words. And then the other girl who quit was my assistant at the time, who was also the girlfriend of the copywriter, which is why three people quit at one day because her boyfriend and the web guy quit. And so she left. But I said, hey, I want this website made. Hey, I want you to write the copy. And this is what it's going to say, of course. And I said, you know, I want it real soon. Now, to me, soon was tomorrow, today as a web developer, soon as three weeks from now. That's as soon as they can get it. So they had one expectation, I had another. About a week goes by, I blow up at them because I had patient skills. I would be passive aggressive, passive aggressive, passive aggressive. And then, boom, explode like a nuclear bomb. And so when I exploded at them, they're like, you know what, dude? We're out of here. And so one guy quits, the next guy walks out with him. And then, of course, the girlfriend walks out with the boyfriend. I'm like, oh, crap.

Wow.

And again, I still blame them. And, you know, now they're teaming up against me. How dare they, you know, kick a man when he's down. But that morning of that, of that, of that anxiety attack, you know, the next day, that night when I came home, of course I told my wife, I said, hey, I think I had a heart attack this morning. And she's just looking at me like, what are you talking about, dummy? Had a heart attack. And I think I had a heart attack, and I went to work. She goes, well, if you had a heart attack, we need to go to the doctor first thing in the morning. So first thing in the morning, we go to the doctor, they take all the EKG tests and they go, dude, you're fine, but we think you had an anxiety attack. Really? I don't get anxiety. Well, you. You had your first one. And do you get any sleep? And before I could even say no, she goes, nope. He drinks Nyquil every night, takes a couple of shots of nyquil, takes Vicodin to fall asleep, but he's still tossing and turning all night. Then in the morning, he's drinking a whole bunch of coffee and takes pre workout.

And you say you were taking in your book. You said Adderall too, right? You were taking. Yeah, yeah.

And I was taking Adderall. Yeah. I had Adderall literally prescribed to me for focus. But I would take double and triple the dosage because the NyQuil and the Vicodin were so strong, I'd wake up foggy headed. Right. And I'm being very honest, I was addicted to the cycle of numb myself at night to fall asleep and have really crappy sleep and then wake up and take all types of stimulants to get charged up. Well, those stimulants obviously help trigger that anxiety attack. And before you know it, I'm having anxiety attack after anxiety attack. And I realized, wait a minute, I got to do something about this. So I asked my doctor, what can we do? He says, we'll put you on Xanax. They put me on Xanax, yeah.

So you get another drug?

Yeah, yeah. Well, now there's no desire to work. I've got no real energy, no creativity. I just feel like I'm numbing. Okay. So this is a great way to fail. If I don't work now, we're guaranteed to fail. At least there was some small chance of success before. And so I went to the doctor, I said, this isn't going to work. He goes, have you thought about working with a therapist? And in my mind, anyone that works with a therapist, obviously there's something wrong with you. You're crazy.

Yeah. You went too weak, right?

Yeah. You're weak. Yeah. Yeah. Be a real man, right? And so. But when you have so many crippling anxiety attacks, you succumb. And finally I went and started looking for therapists. I went to two of them. I didn't like them. I found this third guy. His name is Kevin Downing. He's right here in Brea, California. And he was a. He worked with high performance athletes as a psychologist to help them break through their limiting beliefs. One of the, one of the guys he worked with was an Olympic athlete back in the 80s who was a great speed skater.

Okay.

But he was only great. And he would break records during trials and practices. When he was on the Olympic four times, four consecutive Olympics, he was on the ice. It was the fourth and final time that he was. He worked with Kevin and he finally broke through his limiting belief that he's going to. So every Time he would. He was afraid that he's going to slide and just eat it. And so he would slide and eat it. But during practice, he would break records, but when the spotlight was on, he would just self sabotage. And Kevin helped him break through that. And so because of that, I started working with this therapist. And the first thing he taught me was anxiety is anticipation of future pain. So he said, what are you. What is the future pain you're having anxiety about? I go, well, one, I know I'm going to go home, my wife's going to yell at me at the end of the night. Number two, I know my business partner is going to do something stupid again, and our franchisees are going to be upset. Another one is that my employees are just all over the map. They don't know what to do to make our business work, and it's frustrating. And so I'm just waiting for them to yell at me when their check bounces, when I give them the payroll check. So anxiety.

Yeah, I have anxiety just hearing this. So, yeah, I can only imagine you're living that. Yeah.

So he says, well, what are you going to do about it? Oh, I got to do something about it. He goes, yeah, so like, fix it. So the very first act and I talk about in the book was to part ways with my business partner. So instead of being passive aggressive and adversarial with him, sat him down, I said, hey, buddy, look, one of us have to leave. I don't mind leaving Fit Body Boot Camp. If you want to buy me out, I'll do my best to buy you out. But if I have to buy you out, I have to pay you in payments because I don't have the money. And he said, well, listen, I want you to buy me out because I'm just sick and tired of working at Fit by the boot camp. I don't want anything to do with it. I'm done. So I said, well, I'm going to have to make monthly payments. So I bought them out with payments and one uncomfortable, painful conversation at a time. Natalie, I was able to have these conversations with employees and et cetera. Now here's the crazy thing in that time. And that's why. So if you go to the back of the book, I. In the acknowledgments, I give thanks to 11 different Navy Seals. And these Navy Seals were all guys who came out of battle and wrote books on what it takes to really succeed in battle and how it translates into life. Well, the reason I started reading these books is it's kind of embarrassing to say, but I was a big Howard Stern fan back in 2011, 12, 13, when my business was falling on itself. And my only highlight of my day was I'd get my Starbucks coffee in the morning, and then I'd listen to Howard Stern on my way to work, to my office. And one day, Howard Stern is interviewing this other guy named Howard, but his name is Howard Wasden, and he was a Navy SEAL during the. In the 90s during the black Hawk down era. And he. You know, he's interviewing him because he wrote his memoirs of what it's like being a Navy seal. And of course, Howard Stern says, hey, you should go buy his book. And I just wrote, instead of going to my office, I went right to Borders, or it was Barnes and Noble, actually. And I bought a copy of this guy's book because I'm a big Howard Stern fan. He says, buy a book I bought. And I figured, what the hell? I'll just start reading it now and just avoid work. I mean, my business is collapsing around me anyway, right? So I started reading, and I got hooked into this guy's book. And as I'm reading, I started learning things about how self discipline is key for every warrior that goes to battle and how when they go on a mission, they have what's known as mission clarity. They need to know, is this a kill mission? Is this a capture mission? Is this a get gather intelligence mission? And what kind of intelligence? Like, they're very clear on the outcome they want. When a group of Navy SEALs go out, whether it's four of them, six of them, a platoon, there's a small group of them, but they communicate so well that they have something that they call overwhelming force. They seem like there's a massive army attacking the bad guys, even though it's only four or six guys, because they're so good in communicating and how they're going to attack a small village or whatever to get the bad guy. And so I realized, gosh, I have no mission or vision clarity. I have no self discipline. I have poor communication. And they talk about being decisive, that when you're on the battlefield, you do have to make many decisions in a clutch, because when you come up with a plan that all looks good in the planning room. You go to battle, your buddy gets shot. Do you help your buddy, or do you keep fighting? And there's something called they choose the mission over the man. And I go, holy cow, what have I been doing? I've been selfish. I've been choosing the man, me over the mission. I'm saying I'm the victim. It's all their fault. So I'm reading this guy's book for entertainment, but I'm learning everything that's wrong with me as a leader. And of course, he talks about, you know, some other Navy Seals and other battles. So I go buy another book, another book, and I'm a pretty decent reader. So within a week, I read like three Navy SEAL books. And all of them talked about self discipline, clarity of vision, decisiveness. And I realized, oh my gosh, these are all the things that are missing from me in my business.

But what's interesting is you had all those things in place to create the business initially, and then it looks like it sounds like just everything got in the way, it grew too fast. Your ego, everything else. And you almost forgot that. But you did have that initially, yes.

But when you have a small team, like when you have two people or three people in your business, hey, guys, this is what we're going to do. And it's easy to communicate. Like right now, we have one people that work for us at our headquarters. Half the time I don't know who's doing what, but I've got two vice presidents now, two VPs who I meet with. In fact, just before this call here, I met with them. I know what operations is doing, I know what sales is doing, I know what marketing is doing, and I know what our future business goals are. And then I do this kind of stuff, podcasts and big level thinking back then, when you have a small team, well, you can just spitball with each other. But when you have a bigger team, 9, 10, 11 people, and you're not communicating well. So really, leadership is a skill set, like a muscle that grows. If I keep doing 25 pound dumbbell curls, my muscles are going to stay one size. You know, this is a fitness expert. But if I keep challenging my muscle with more weights, different exercises, then that muscle grows. Well, my team was growing, my business was growing, but I wasn't challenging my leadership muscles. And therefore the business started to crumble around me. And I suffered financially, of course, in health and in relationships. And thankfully, thankfully, I was able to recover. But it didn't take, what, three and a half years? Like, once I realized leadership was the problem, it took me three and a half years to fix everything. It started with self discipline. And, you know, from building a team to self discipline, clarity of vision, decisiveness, etc.

So every time you've had, like, because I know you had other mini Failures that we didn't talk going into all of them. But every time you've had a failure or like that massive failure, I know going through it didn't feel fun or great, but looking back now, would you feel that those are like the greatest things that happened to you?

Yeah. In hindsight, you know, I'm so thankful those things happened to me because they were the best teachers of the lessons that I needed. I wish I had a modern day Jim Franco like I did when I was a personal trainer 20 years ago. Who could have said, like, actually today, these days, there's a guy named Cameron Herald. He helped start 1-800-got junk. He built that thing into a $200 million company. You know those trucks that come and clean up the junk in your backyard? Well, he helped start that and he was the CEO of it. He sold that since. And he's now a consultant on leadership and team building. And, you know, I pay $60,000 a year to Cameron Herald to be one of my many coaches just in leadership. And I have a speaking coach. And so now I spend well over six figures a year on coaches and experts who are going to help me become the CEO of the Fit Body Bootcamp. That's going to come next year and the year after that never happened. See, that's what was missing is the coaching. So I had to learn through my problems. I wish I had learned through mentors.

What would you tell somebody that's like, super financially stuck about? Because a lot of times people say, oh, I can't afford a coach or I can't do that. And gosh, they're so critical. Like, I don't know people that hire good coaches and regret it, you know, so do you, do you hear that? And how. What would you say to somebody that's thinking that?

I do, because today I coach and consult many different franchises, thought leaders, New York Times, best selling authors, et cetera. And when I, you know, obviously these guys and gals can afford me and they do. And so when I, you know, people on social media, Instagram especially, it's almost like a broke population on Instagram. Their future entrepreneurs is what they are used to be, they go, hey, I want to mentor with you. Well, great. It's 50,000 a year. Yeah, I know that. I've seen that on your website. But I can't afford you. I go, you do realize I've got, for $19 on Amazon, I've taken my 20 years of knowledge and put in a book. If you read it and then apply it, then you Go read another book on like Tim Grover's Relentless. And then you read Grant Cardone's 10x rule. And then you go read Tim Ferriss, you know, the four hour work week. You are buying people's 10, 20 years of knowledge for 19, 20, 21 bucks. It's not quite hiring a coach, but it is pretty darn good and allows you to make enough money to then invest in that coach.

Yeah. Which by the way, by the way, his book that we talked about earlier, man up, is like all his years of knowledge. This is, I just, I recommended your book, by the way, Bedros, on several podcasts, on several interviews because it's, it really is like a bible for how to, how to shift and become a leader and build a business. It's incredible.

So I'm going to make sure. I'm so glad you said that too, because I have a hard time really self promoting where the book is concerned. If people go, why did you write the book? You've got this like massive international franchise. Because I don't want to see another entrepreneur suffer like I did. Because it's not just you suffering anymore. If you're married, your wife and kids are paying the ultimate price, your health is paying the ultimate price. And the thing where entrepreneurship is concerned is that a lot of entrepreneurs will suffer in silence and we don't need to. You can learn someone's wisdom through the books they've written. And so to me, it's just, I'm paying it forward through that book.

Yeah. I've got some questions for you. I'm curious about a few habits just because I think this will help a lot of people too. Like, I'm curious how you start your day because I know you're very routine now. Can you just take us on like a little rundown on what's your morning routine or how do you start your day?

Absolutely. My morning routine actually starts the night before. So at around 8 o' clock in the evening, right after dinner, I'll take out my iPhone, open up my notes section and I'll write down the three, five, maybe six things I'm going to do first thing in the morning when I wake up to move my business forward. It's not trivial stuff. It's only the things that are within my zone of genius that only I can do.

The reason is, I'm assuming. So it's not checking.

It is not checking. Check, check in on Instagram. So like for example, this morning it was make a call with, with our franchise attorney. So I was on a call with Lane Fisher, my franchise attorney. I was on two other calls with our head of marketing department to come up with the vision for, you know, the New Year's rush that's coming up in our fitness industry. It was writing a email broadcast that I can broadcast to 100,000 people on my email list that gets people to buy into my vision. What else did I have? I had one other thing on there. Oh, it was actually take my kids to school because my wife's out of commitment right now. So take my kids to school. And I actually had to write that down because I will forget if I don't write it down. But because of that, now I can wake up in the morning. And I always wake up between 5 and 5:30. I set my alarm for 5:30. Most of the time I wake up around 5:15, 5:20 on my own. If my alarm does go off, I never hit snooze. In fact, I've turned off the snooze feature. I believe if you hit snooze, you're telling your subconscious mind that I choose 10 more minutes of interrupted sleep over getting up and dominating my path and my purpose in life. And that's never a good way to start the day with the loss.

And that's huge because, by the way, Brooks, my husband, was a huge snoozer until he heard you say that, and that shifted him.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest takeaways people get from the book. And you know, that bleeds into every other aspect of your life because then you start the day with the win. Like your first promise to yourself. Because remember, when you set an alarm, people are like, well, why is this such a big deal? What if I got bad sleep? I'm like, listen, I don't care if you got bad sleep. Just slap yourself around, wake up, and here's why. You've made a promise to yourself the night before when you set your alarm. It's really, I promise to wake up at 5:30. That's why I said it. The first thing that you do in the morning is to break a promise to yourself. The worst person to break a promise to is to yourself. And if you're breaking a promise to yourself first thing in the morning, the rest of your day subconsciously is shot. And so I never hit the snooze button. My coaching clients never hit the snooze button. For that reason, my family doesn't. And so I work off my list that I made the night before. I don't check emails, I don't check in with social media. I get my water, my coffee, my protein shake, go through my gratitude exercise. And usually by 9am I'm done with everything on my list and I'll go to the gym, get a workout from 9 to about 10:30, come here to the headquarters, take a shower and then I'm ready to serve my team now and do podcasts like this and broadcast, etc.

You know what's crazy? Pretty much everyone I've interviewed that's ultra successful, they have a very similar morning routine to me. It's just crazy if people don't take that and run with it because like I have not. I don't believe I've interviewed a successful person that doesn't have a strong morning routine. It's super important. It's like the one huge commonality with everybody. Now I but I do want to know because I'll say I have a strong morning routine. I would say five or six days a week, but there's always a day that I kind of throw myself off. Do you ever have those days where you by accident grab your cell phone or do something off?

You know what? I think that's normal human behavior. Look, as a fitness coach and I still see myself as a personal trainer and you can relate to this, you're in the fitness industry. We teach our clients to have cheat days on your diet. It's a good mental reset. Like if you're eating six days a week clean. I always told my clients, look, make Sunday a cheat day. Like make a couple of your meals when you sit down, eat whatever you want, but when you get up, you're done. And you do that by giving yourself a reward you reward yourself with for good behavior. You're going to keep repeating those behaviors. And so on Sundays, if I sleep in, good for me, I don't hit the snooze button, right? What I do is I just set the alarm for 7 o', clock, 7:30. If I wake up at 6 o', clock, great, but I just set it for a little later. I don't necessarily have a list on a Sunday to work off of, but I do know that Sundays I'm going to train legs, you know, like I have a general idea of what my day is going to look like, but I'm not so regimented. And it's a nice little mental break. But I love the routine as well because every single day is predictable. And listen, when you're a high performing human, it doesn't matter if you're on your own business or you're an executive for someone else's business or you're an athlete. If you're a high performing human, you need routine because high performing things like fighter jets, high performing motorcycles, Ferraris, look, your Toyota is not going to break down so easily. Your Ferrari is going to break down easily if one little particle of dust gets into the intake. And so high performance things that move fast tend to have a lot of potential for breakdown. For example, my life is very regimented. I have a lot of routine so that I know most things are going to go according to plan. Because I also know my life moves so fast that I have a lot of things that go, oh, this happened, what do we do, boss? This happened, what do we do? And so I do have to stick and move and pivot and imagine if I didn't have a morning routine, then I'd have a chaotic day on top of a chaotic day.

Yeah, no, that's incredible. And I know you're super rigorous about it. I mean, I just know how hard it was to get on your schedule to interview. So you got a team supporting you around that, it's awesome. So yeah, you're rigorous about it and it's incredible. A couple more questions for you. I want to know, like, who do you let into your inner circle? And I don't mean names of people, but like the type of people that you let in your inner circle so you can stay in this mindset path.

Yeah, you know what, I only let other fighter jets in. In the book I talk about crop dusters and fighter jets. And I believe as a fighter jet, human. We were all born as spider jets. We're all born to like want more, to expect more of ourselves. We were curious as children. We reached for things, we ran fast. Of course our parents said, no, don't do that, don't touch this, don't be so loud, put that down. And they neutered us and we became crop dusters. Many people in society still operate as crop dusters. They don't reach their full potential. I believe this is why depression anxiety is so high in society because people know that they're capable of more, but they've been neutered. Their claws and things have been cut out. And I believe that once I allowed myself to become the fighter jet that I was supposed to be, I set high standards of expectations for myself. I now surround myself with others that have high standards of expectations. They're working hard, they're regimented, they have routines. I don't have Idle conversation. I have very purposeful conversation. I don't talk about the sports team or the weather. I don't care about the sports team and the weather. I can just look up on my iPhone conversations. Right. I have deep, meaningful conversations with my team, with my friends. And if I can't have a deep, meaningful conversation, then we're not gonna be hanging out in the same circles. And look, I've had to eliminate. I talk about the crab story in them in my book, where crabs have this habit of pulling each other down if they try and get away from. From one another. Well, humans are very crab like and we tend to want to, you know, stifle one another. It's just how it is. And so if I can find someone who's willing to push me up instead of pull me down, I want them in my inner circle and I want people who are crab like out of my. Yeah, I've had to eliminate people.

Yeah. So, so critical. And then I want to know, okay, if somebody. This is my final question for you. This is really, really a big one. If. Because there's. I know there's people listening that are at that rock bottom. I mean, maybe they're starting from rock bottom or maybe they just lost their business. They're in that place you were maybe when you had that panic attack and you. Everything was just falling apart. If you were to like, say, hey, there's three things you can do, like right now to start shifting this, what would you tell them looking back now?

Well, I'm so glad you asked that. I'm going to tell that person who's in rock bottom right now is go out and get. Thing number one is go out and get a win. Whoever this person is, whether it's in business and they're just failing and struggling right now, their relationship might suck. And maybe they're cheating on their spouse or their spouse is cheating on them or alcohol has control or drug has control over them. I don't know what the rock bottom is, but wherever they are, doesn't matter. The category, health, mindset, finance. Go out and get a win. There's something that you're good at. And I'll give you a great example. When I was writing my book, man up. I've never written a book, Natalie. I've launched multiple seven figure, eight figure companies, and I'm blessed that I have that ability and skill set. But I've never written a book. And my publisher came back to me and just tore me to shreds when I sent him the manuscript. And I had to hire Ryan Holiday, a ghostwriter who's written for Tony Robbins, et cetera. And I said, ryan, I know you charge an obscene amount of money and you need a lot of time, but I'm willing to pay you more if you will take this crap that I've written and make it into a book that's going to become a bestseller. I know the message in there is going to resonate with people. So when I was writing my book, I would hit these points where it's like, I don't want to do this. Why did I even take this on? And I would start beating myself up because I hit rock bottom. I kept asking for a I need an extension from the publisher. I need an extension on the deadline. Four times I asked for extensions. Soon as I would hit that spot where I just was poo poohing on myself, I would shut my MacBook down, go to the garage, grab my kettlebells, and I've got a long driveway that goes uphill. Open up my garage. I do like 20 kettlebell swings and sprint uphill, come back down 20 kettlebells, and I do that 10 rounds. Why? Listen, fitness has been my thing ever since I lost that weight as a kid. And now I've become a fitness fanatic. I'm good at fitness. I can get a win. I can do kettlebell swings and sprint up a driveway all day long, and it feels good. The dopamine is pumping, the adrenaline is pumping. I feel good about my. I would get these wins in the garage just through my workouts.

Yeah.

Then all of a sudden, creativity starts flowing again. I'd go to my MacBook, and all of a sudden, the book was easier to write. So thing number one is, you're struggling, you hit rock bottom, there's something that you're good at. Go get some wins, stack those little wins on top of each other, and that gives you the confidence to go and take on the bigger challenges that you need to take on to get out of rock bottom. That's thing number one. Thing number two is there's always a coach or a mentor who's willing to help. And, you know, I talked about Jim Franco and I talked about Cameron Herold and all these different coaches and consultants that I've hired and keep around me. Now, for that reason, there's always someone you can have my therapist, Kevin Downing. And so go and reach out to a friend or a mentor and say, look, you have outside eyes on my life. Here's where I am. It takes vulnerability. We talked about that. You got to be open up and just say, here's where I am, here's where I want to be. You've got outside eyes looking in. What do you see? What can I do? Where's the path? And believe it or not, a good mentor, a trusted friend can tell you. And the third and final thing is start loving yourself up. Meaning even if you don't work out, fitness is not your thing. Just start working out. Get some kind of consistent eating, sleeping, fitness routine. Because as you start loving yourself up, you start building self confidence. And if you decide, hey, I went to the gym five days this week, in five days last week, high five to myself, that gives you enough confidence to go, you know what? Then I'm going to go and maybe, just maybe go to my local AA meeting and just sit in the back and listen. And it might give you the confidence to walk in. Maybe you're not going to raise your hand, admit that, hey, my name is Bedros and I'm an alcoholic.

Right?

But it might give you the confidence to go in and listen and that might lead to you getting another win. And I think that's what most people need to do is just stack those little wins, get a mentor, and then start loving yourself up by fitness, nutrition, positive mindset, and that kind of bleeds into every other part of your life.

So good, so good. So helpful today. Where I. Where do you want people to go to get your book? Any store. Where do they find it? Do you have a site that they should go to?

Yeah, they can go to manup.com where they can learn more about the book, but otherwise they can go to Amazon, they can go to Barnes and Noble, they can go to any bookstore at their local airport. Airports now carry them. So really Amazon's the fastest, easiest place because you ship it to you. Yeah.

And then where are you most social on social media?

Where do you want people these days? I'm, I'm very active on, on Instagram and Facebook and if anyone wants to reach out to me, they're more than welcome to find me there.

Amazing. You're awesome, Bedros. Thank you.

Natalie, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful. Cool. So others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable and come interact with me over on Instagram at Natalie Jill Fit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.