Bedros Keuilian - Started from the Bottom

This week Ed has legendary immigrant business owner and empire builder Bedros Keuilian on the show. Bedros is the CEO and founder of Fit Body Boot Camp as well as a a best-selling author, speaker and business consultant. His family migrated to America when he was six years old with less than $200 to their name. Bedros shares how he learned to be extremely resourceful and resilient through the adversities that his family faced. This episode takes you through a real life RAGS TO RICHES story that sheds light on the mental strength it takes to turn your hardships into catalysts of growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 p.m. And my third day, 6:00 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it. Waiting weeks on a big bank for capital? Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

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• 1:36Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Mylett. I am very, very excited about today's program because I've got a legend with me here in the fitness industry and in the personal coaching industry as well. And that's Bedros Kouyev. And so, Bedros, thank you, brother. Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me. I'm so glad that we finally connected and that we're doing this. Yeah, me, too. Because this is one of the, just so you know, great American success stories, immigrant business success stories, but any type of American business success story. But one of the great minds in business, too. Those of you that want to grow your brand, grow your company, this is one of the great minds in the world that can help you do that. And we're going to get in that brain of yours today. So I'm looking forward to this. Let's do it. Very much. Ironically, everybody, I should tell you, it's such a small world. That Bedros's building is next door to the building that I spent five years building my company.

• 2:21Ed Mylett?

  In fact, from his office, you can look into my old office. And my mom and dad actually can look in his building from where they live here. So it's a very small world.

• 2:28Bedros Keuilian?

  Ain't that a small world though?

• 2:30Ed Mylett?

  It's crazy.

• 2:30Bedros Keuilian?

  Right?

• 2:30Ed Mylett?

  It's crazy. And I'm very comfortable here as a result of that.

• 2:33Bedros Keuilian?

  Good.

• 2:33Ed Mylett?

  You made me comfortable.

• 2:34Bedros Keuilian?

  Good. And you know what? I feel there's some kind of a magical success influence because you were right here within the 100 yards of our building before I ever got here.

• 2:42Ed Mylett?

  I used to come over here and sprinkle the dust on the building before you guys.

• 2:44Bedros Keuilian?

  I knew it!

• 2:45Ed Mylett?

  I did. Yeah. That's why I think I should get some percentage of the whole thing.

• 2:48Bedros Keuilian?

  You should. You should own at least 10% of Fit Body Boot Camp.

• 2:50Ed Mylett?

  At least this part of the building or something. And by the way, what an impressive operation, everybody. If you want to build a culture that grows a company, and this is the epitome of a great culture, a great environment, run by a great leader, you can feel it when you walk around this place.

• 3:03Bedros Keuilian?

  Thanks, man.

• 3:04Ed Mylett?

  So impressive. The things you say are powerful, but the example of what you've put together, both in your company outside of here and in this building is so, so impressive, bro.

• 3:12Bedros Keuilian?

  That means a lot, man. Especially coming from you, seriously.

• 3:14Ed Mylett?

  Really, really, really true. So let's start out a little bit. I always like to get a little background because it's kind of like you're in the fitness industry. He's the founder of Fit Body Boot Camp. Did I say that right?

• 3:23Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes, sir.

• 3:24Ed Mylett?

  Okay. And I say that, when I say that right, because out of respect. It's become such a huge and explosive brand. It's probably the fastest growing fitness franchise in the United States, is it not?

• 3:32Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes. Yeah, in fact, it is. We hit the Inc. 5000 list twice. And we just hit the Entrepreneur 500 fastest growing franchise last month, and we're number 350.

• 3:41Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 3:41Bedros Keuilian?

  And we've only been around since 2012 as a franchise.

• 3:45Ed Mylett?

  That's amazing. Congratulations. And that's amazing.

• 3:48Bedros Keuilian?

  Thank you.

• 3:48Ed Mylett?

  In your business, anybody would love to have some kind of scaling happen like that in their business.

• 3:53Bedros Keuilian?

  And that level of scale is painful when you grow to 619 locations, what seems like virtually overnight.

• 4:00Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 4:00Bedros Keuilian?

  We're in, you know, four countries now. But the learning experience that you get, it's almost like time collapse. What I would have learned over 20 years, I had to learn over six, seven years.

• 4:11Ed Mylett?

  You compressed the timeframes down.

• 4:13Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Ed Mylett?

  So, speaking of other countries, I want to go back a little bit because you didn't start in this country.

• 4:18Bedros Keuilian?

  No.

• 4:18Ed Mylett?

  Right? And so it's one of the fascinating things about your story to me.

• 4:22Bedros Keuilian?

  I'm a former communist.

• 4:24Ed Mylett?

  That's unbelievable, right?

• 4:25Bedros Keuilian?

  True story.

• 4:26Ed Mylett?

  So where, so you're a former communist. That's a great way to start.

• 4:29Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Ed Mylett?

  Former communist, now serial capitalist, I suppose, right?

• 4:33Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes, indeed.

• 4:33Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. So where do you come from? And tell me a little bit about how you grew up.

• 4:38Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, where I come from is Armenia, which in, at the time was a part of the Soviet Union.

• 4:43Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 4:43Bedros Keuilian?

  In nineteen eighty, my dad decided that he's going to bribe the Soviet consulate and we're going to escape into Italy. And then from Italy.

• 4:52Ed Mylett?

  Where he bribes them?

• 4:53Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes, yeah, dude, the story is amazing. I just, I actually learned about it four years ago. I go, Dad, why did you bribe them? He goes, well, there's no other way to get out of a communist country, especially if you're gonna go to a westernized country like the United States, right? And so, and the reason he was bribing the communist consulate was because in nineteen eighty-one, my brother was going to turn twenty years old and he would have had to join the Soviet Army. And if we know history, we know that the Soviet Union was fighting Afghanistan at the time. And Soviet soldiers were dying left and right.

• 5:24Ed Mylett?

  They were losing, just like we've had a hard time.

• 5:26Bedros Keuilian?

  Exactly, exactly, yeah. And so, my brother was gonna go into the Red Army and likely lose his life and my dad was hell-bent on not only having my brother not go, but also giving us freedom. My dad was one of those guys in Armenia. He secretly wore Ray-Bans, Jordache jeans, yeah, Adidas shoes. Yeah, he bought it from the black market. You weren't allowed to have like, American apparel.

• 5:48Ed Mylett?

  Did he have some affinity for the United States as a result, like its culture or whatever the vision of what it was?

• 5:53Bedros Keuilian?

  He loved the Beach Boys and Elvis and he was like this westernized communist. Now, people go then, why was he a communist? Cause, cause true.

• 6:02Ed Mylett?

  Born into it though, right?

• 6:02Bedros Keuilian?

  You're born into it and they ask you, hey, do you wanna be a member of the Communist Party? If you, yeah, they ask you, but if you say no, you end up in Siberia. Right? So he has to say yes in order to support his family, but the whole time he's secretly, you know, putting together money and at the time it was twenty-five thousand rubles to bribe a member of the consulate to let us escape into Italy, which at the time was communist sympathizers, so it's easier to escape into a, you know, a sympathizing country.

• 6:29Ed Mylett?

  Didn't Reagan have some thing that if you went there?

• 6:31Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes.

• 6:31Ed Mylett?

  Was there asylum of something like that?

• 6:33Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes, yes. If you're from a communist country and as long as you can make it here, we will bring you in.

• 6:36Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 6:37Bedros Keuilian?

  Exactly, thank you. You're one of the few people that remember that history, part of history.

• 6:40Ed Mylett?

  I wish more people remembered it based on some of the things we see today, but anyway.

• 6:43Bedros Keuilian?

  Thank you, and I wish we could somehow magically bring Reagan back, but that's a whole other.

• 6:47Ed Mylett?

  So do I.

• 6:47Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, yeah. But, but anyway, so. And my dad always wants me to state this point. He goes, anytime you're being interviewed on TV, a magazine, podcast, whatever. He doesn't know what a podcast is, but let's just assume he does, right? He says, you make sure you tell everyone that we entered the United States legally. Legally. And so, we went into the American consulate in Italy and after two and a half weeks, got the paperwork in order to come into the United States. Your brother's 20, how old are you? Six. I'm the oops baby. So my brother's 20, my sister's 22. Okay. I'm six years old, because I recently found out that I was also the oops baby. Okay. I'm the baby that was never supposed to be. Wow. And so I tell my parents, you gotta practice and save sex. Yeah, that's a whole different story, yeah. Awkward topic. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially when they're in their 80s. But, yeah, that's where they are today.

• 7:31Bedros Keuilian?

  But, lo and behold, we come to the United States and we are immigrants. We're foreigners. My dad has only about a hundred and eighty-five, eighty-six dollars in his pocket. Uh, we're living in some, he just knows one guy through a friend who has a two-bedroom apartment, and the second bedroom is empty. So we're, a family of five is staying in this guy's bedroom. Oh my gosh. In Santa Ana, right? And he says, you got one month, then you have to go. Oh my gosh. And so that, on day two of being in the United States in, in Santa Ana, my dad had a paper route. By day three, he had a paper route and was pumping gas. By day four, paper route, pumping gas, and working at a pizzeria. He got my brother a job at the pizzeria. God bless him. By two weeks, brother, sister, mom, and everyone's got multiple jobs. Immediate action. Yeah. I was the breadwinner. How were you the breadwinner?

• 8:15Bedros Keuilian?

  I was the breadwinner because, uh, my dad discovered that it, behind grocery stores are giant dumpsters. And in these dumpsters, um, are food that's expired, or maybe has a little bit of mold and got thrown away, but it's still edible if you pick off the mold. And so my dad realized that we're scraping together all this money to get ourselves an apartment, and so we can't buy food with the money. We have to move out of this guy's apartment in a month. And so what he decided to do is, he'd take me to the back of these grocery stores, Alpha Beta, I don't know if you remember the Alpha Beta. Of course, there was one here in, in Diamond Bar. Okay, right. So there was one in Santa Ana and Anaheim, and we go to Santa Ana and Anaheim, he'd push me into the dumpsters, and to me it was like a treasure hunt. A six-year-old kid, "Hey dad, what do you think of this?" "Yeah, that bread's good." Milk, heat open it, smell it, because it's expired, so the store can't sell it.

• 9:01Bedros Keuilian?

  But it doesn't smell sour. That's good. We have milk, we had eggs, we had vegetables, man, we had it all. And I was the breadwinner, and I look at, look at it that way now. Back then, I just looked at it as, you know, like, I can't believe we're having to go into a dumpster for food, and I looked at it as a treasure hunt, but like, oh, this is embarrassing, you know, I'm starting to go to school, learning the language. We didn't speak English. That's crazy. We didn't understand the culture. Yeah.

• 9:23Ed Mylett?

  What was that like, you're a little boy going to school where you don't even speak the language, and you're in a dumpster the night before, fishing for dinner?

• 9:29Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, yeah, and people didn't know my name was Bedros, because in the dumpsters, we found the Herman Munster shirt, remember Herman, uh, the Munsters? And so, one of the clothes that fit me was this Herman Munster sweatshirt. It was a little tight, but it fit me. I was a chubby little Armenian. And, uh, people started calling me Herman.

• 9:45Ed Mylett?

  Oh my gosh.

• 9:46Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went to three elementary schools, two junior highs, two high schools, but in the three elementary schools, people called me Herman.

• 9:53Ed Mylett?

  You have got to be kidding me.

• 9:54Bedros Keuilian?

  I'm not. Here's the funny thing. When I went to the second elementary school.

• 9:56Ed Mylett?

  Funny, but it's not, right?

• 9:57Bedros Keuilian?

  I introduced myself to kids as Herman. Ed, it's nuts. That's all I knew. Remember how, we were talking earlier, right? And you said, you were known as Little Ed Who Shy.

• 10:07Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 10:08Bedros Keuilian?

  I was Herman. And that's the script I read off of, and I had that epiphany as we were talking in the other room.

• 10:14Ed Mylett?

  Oh my gosh.

• 10:14Bedros Keuilian?

  And, uh, so that was me, man. I was the foreign kid, and, and people go, well, like, how do you do this? I mean, we ran out of money before we ran out a month, sometimes. And when that happens, mom and dad have to pick between, do we have lights, or do we have gas, right? We can't have both. Um, and there was, back then, there was apartments that said, no kids, no pets. Now they don't have no kid apartments.

• 10:34Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 10:34Bedros Keuilian?

  And so I would have to get snuck into different apartments. And when the landlord would see me, or another tenant would see me and tell the landlord, we'd get evicted the next day. There was no thirty day notice like there is today. You got evicted in the eighties, and off to a new city we go, a new school. I'm the foreign kid again, who doesn't speak English. And but I realize now that that adversity of being the foreign kid and not knowing how long I'm gonna be there at that school. If I met you, I became so good at building rapport and building friends.

• 11:02Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 11:02Bedros Keuilian?

  Because I didn't know how long we're gonna be friends, Ed. We might get evicted again, or my parents decide we're moving to a new town, it's a new school. And so that skill I use today to build rapport.

• 11:11Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Bedros Keuilian?

  And network. But back then, I looked at it as a disadvantage. It's one of my superpowers today.

• 11:17Ed Mylett?

  That's unreal.

• 11:18Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Ed Mylett?

  So one of the, one of the, I'm just processing this, so you went from an immigrant young boy diving in dumpsters to all of this at some point in your life because I think people use, I think oftentimes people will use their past to dictate their future terms. And you and I have talked a lot about how life happens for us, not to us, and that's powerful. So it shaped you, obviously, by building this skill, right?

• 11:41Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes.

• 11:42Ed Mylett?

  Like this build rapport. How else did that upbringing, though, shape you? What else did it do to you? You talk a little bit about, I've heard you talk about like immigrant mentality as it appeals to business.

• 11:53Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes.

• 11:53Ed Mylett?

  Do you think part of that was even happening at that time? And what is that?

• 11:56Bedros Keuilian?

  I was getting a PhD in immigrant edge, in this immigrant mentality. So, for example, the ability to build rapport quickly because I didn't know how long I was gonna be in the school, and if I wanted to get along with kids, I had to make friends quickly. Right? And so I did that. And of course, then we'd move on, then have to build friends again. Well, today in business, I can build rapport pretty quick.

• 12:15Ed Mylett?

  You do it amazingly well.

• 12:16Bedros Keuilian?

  Thank you. Thank you. Another immigrant edge or immigrant mentality that I picked up was being resourceful. So in 1983, so by this point, I was eight and a half, nine years old, in one of the crappy apartments that we lived in, I got lice as a kid. And you can imagine, I'm just scratching my head and I'm crying to my mom, and she goes, "Well, looks like you got lice, kid." But again, we have only so much money coming in. We've just been in the country for a couple of years. And so we can't go and buy lice treatment like maybe someone else's parents can't. So my mom had my dad siphon out gasoline from our old Ford LTD.

• 12:49Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my God.

• 12:50Bedros Keuilian?

  It was like this brown Ford LTD. He got two cups of gasoline. She made me double over in the grassy part of the apartment complex. She said, "Close your eyes, double over, don't, don't stand up." And she washed my hair with gasoline to kill the lice. Now, I remember seeing little feet all around me, other kids were coming by and watching. They're probably thinking, this lady's about to light this foreign kid on fire.

• 13:10Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 13:11Bedros Keuilian?

  But my mom, who didn't have any money to buy the lice treatment, got resourceful.

• 13:16Ed Mylett?

  Resourceful, wow.

• 13:16Bedros Keuilian?

  And siphoned out gasoline, had my dad siphon out gasoline and washed my hair. So today, when I run into obstacles as an entrepreneur, when I have coaching clients who run into obstacles, I go, alright, you don't have the resource, you don't have the money, you don't have the connection to Ed Mylett. But, how else can we get resourceful? Right? How else can we get resourceful to get the outcome that we want? Because if we can't connect with Ed, or Andy, or Grant Cardone, or Tony, whoever the person is.

• 13:38Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 13:39Bedros Keuilian?

  Everyone always says, I don't have X, therefore I can't achieve outcome.

• 13:43Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 13:44Bedros Keuilian?

  Forget, if X didn't exist, what other resource or resourcefulness can you tap into? And that is the immigrant edge mentality that I think more people need to, we give up so quickly.

• 13:53Ed Mylett?

  Well, you know, of all the podcasts I've done, by the way, of all of the podcasts I've done, that word's never come up. And it's so true, because the lack of it's so apparent to me. You probably get this too, but I'm constantly on social media getting asked questions. Some of them are great questions, but so many of them come from a scarcity or a space of not being resourceful. Like, I don't have this, I don't have that. And you're so right, can someone who's not an immigrant develop that edge? Or is that just something you get as an immigrant?

• 14:21Bedros Keuilian?

  No, no, in fact, like I was telling you earlier before we started filming, one of my most requested talks when I speak is the immigrant edge talk. Because I've got this unique perspective that I can install into the audience. So you don't have to have come from a communist country. And, I mean, we've had the KGB come into our house, because they suspected my dad was up to something. And they lined us up in Armenia, along the hallway, and they were looking. My dad was a tailor, and he would make suits on the side, and he would sell them to people.

• 14:48Ed Mylett?

  Is that how he accumulated this money?

• 14:49Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes.

• 14:50Ed Mylett?

  In addition to his job, he would make this?

• 14:51Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes.

• 14:52Ed Mylett?

  That's resourcefulness.

• 14:53Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, that is resourcefulness, exactly. That's the immigrant edge mentality he had. So I learned very quickly that, uh... You know, so anyway, the KGB would come in, we'd all line up against the wall, that's just how it is. And they're looking in the house, looking for chalk, a meter stick, because you know, they go off the metric system.

• 15:09Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Bedros Keuilian?

  Needle thread, anything to evidence that you're making suits. And he would hide stuff so well in our tiny little apartment in Armenia.

• 15:16Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 15:16Bedros Keuilian?

  They never found anything. He made enough money to pay off the communists and for us to come out here. And my dad, like, he is a true American. And, see, we had to become citizens.

• 15:26Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Bedros Keuilian?

  Right? Everyone else is born into a citizen, and so part of that immigrant edge mentality is, while you were born as a citizen, I had to learn about what, I know what the stars and stripes actually mean, right?

• 15:37Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 15:37Bedros Keuilian?

  And when you know that that red stands for the blood loss.

• 15:40Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 15:40Bedros Keuilian?

  Right? When my dad says, you make sure you tell everybody that we entered this country legally, and the reason is, he believes that, and I believe the same, when you enter this country legally, you value it more, you respect it more, and therefore you're willing to be in service of others who enter it. Now, I understand it's the greatest country on the, in the world, and people will come to it any way possible. But those, you know, when you earn a dollar.

• 16:00Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 16:00Bedros Keuilian?

  You'll value it more than when you're given a dollar.

• 16:02Ed Mylett?

  That's true. I can tell you that most of my, not all, because I have unbelie, I have friends who have had generations of families that have lived here. They've had family members serve in the military. They're unbelievable patriots, right? But I gotta tell you, the majority of my friends, if you said, who's some of the greatest patriots you know, it's my immigrant friends. Because there's an appreciation for it because of where they had to come from to get here.

• 16:20Bedros Keuilian?

  And so it's a contrast that I'm able to show people that, without them having to go and live in a communist country and eat out of dumpsters.

• 16:27Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 16:27Bedros Keuilian?

  And thankfully, maybe I've got the gift of gab or storytelling, like you said earlier, where I can share, I can draw the picture well enough where people go, I get it now.

• 16:35Ed Mylett?

  You're one of the best communicators I've ever seen.

• 16:37Bedros Keuilian?

  Thank you.

• 16:37Ed Mylett?

  And I, I bet you part of that is that you had to literally work on linguistics and work on your language and articulation. I told you when we were in the hallway earlier, I consider you to be a world-class communicator. It's a very rare skill that someone can both think and articulate simultaneously. You do it magnificently well. And when I introduced you, I said that you were one of the great American business stories, and people are now hearing why. I mean, to come from where you came from. To end up finding yourself in a dumpster having gasoline poured on your head. And there's a whole lot more of these stories, which we can get into a lot of them as well. But to come from that place, to rise up, to build this empire that you've built. And what I love about you is you feel like you haven't built anything yet. You feel like you're just in the beginning. And I have, if I could buy a stock in something, I'd be buying a stock in you and this brand here. Because I want to tell you, I know where this is going. You can just see it.

• 17:22Ed Mylett?

  The writing is on the wall, literally, about where your company's going. But if you don't mind talking about it.

• 17:27Bedros Keuilian?

  Sure.

• 17:27Ed Mylett?

  There was one other benefit that you've sort of recently tapped into. That I want people to hear about this because I like to do a business show, but I also like to do a life show. And everybody that's listening to this, many people can relate to what I would call dysfunction in their lives. Mine was alcoholism in my family. But, you know, most people look into things, other families are perfect. Other people's lives are perfect. So you not only had to overcome the fact that you were an immigrant and that your parents had to go through all these sacrifices. But something's recently popped up too, that you escaped when you left there as well.

• 17:58Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Ed Mylett?

  If you don't mind sharing, what, tell them a little bit about that, if you don't mind.

• 18:01Bedros Keuilian?

  Well, so I'll preface it by telling you this, that there's a great book out there called The Body Keeps The Score. And The Body Keeps The Score is really about those who have suffered through trauma. Emotional trauma, father who was an alcoholic, right? In my case, I was molested between the ages of four and six on a consistent basis by two older boys in Armenia. When we escaped for our freedom, what my father and mother don't realize is they saved me from that molestation. And for a young boy to experience that, you can imagine the chip and anger and rage. Shame and confusion that left in my heart. And while you're trying to deal with it, cope with it the best you can, a lot of it came out in violence and unfortunately carjackings.

• 18:44Bedros Keuilian?

  And I was involved in a police helicopter chase and I was not the guy in the police helicopter. I was the guy in the getaway car. And it's not something I'm proud of. I, and so, but you could, there's the only way you can process through that kind of trauma. Is through violence, unfortunately. Or you're going to become a predator yourself. And I knew long ago, I would listen, you ever listen to the Dr. Laura show when it was on?

• 19:05Ed Mylett?

  All the time, I did, yeah.

• 19:07Bedros Keuilian?

  Dr. Laura was my first, and I don't care what people think about Dr. Laura, and she's conservative and she's through this.

• 19:11Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 19:12Bedros Keuilian?

  When I didn't have a true north and I was this raging bull and you didn't want to get in my way because I would crush you.

• 19:17Ed Mylett?

  She incised this man, you would not want to get in his way.

• 19:20Bedros Keuilian?

  But I just wanna hug and love people.

• 19:21Ed Mylett?

  I know you do. You're light. No, it's true. You're very light. We were telling that earlier.

• 19:24Bedros Keuilian?

  And but I would I somehow stumbled on KFI Six Sports, some AM radio channel. I'm listening to Dr. Laura and she goes, you have two chances at a father and and son relationship. One, when you're a child and one, when you're the father, right? And I was like, holy smokes. And I started listening to this woman more. And she helped me stop raging out so much and becoming so violent and helped me understand the inner thoughts and the inner talks that I would have with myself that were so negative and so violent, right? So anyway, all that said, I remember thinking to myself, like, why didn't my mom and dad help me when that was happening? Well, the reality is they didn't know that I was being molested. They were too busy trying to get together money to come to this country, right?

• 20:09Bedros Keuilian?

  And so the rage I had towards my parents, right? Towards the babushkas, the older grandmas who live in communities like that in Armenia. They're always home looking over their balconies, gossipy. Like, they're gossiping about all this stuff, but where were they to save me? Right? That's a lot of rage, man, a young man has.

• 20:24Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 20:24Bedros Keuilian?

  Now, all of a sudden, you're in your twenties and you're strong, you're lifting weights. You start doing damage.

• 20:30Ed Mylett?

  Gonna be released.

• 20:31Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm so like, I that's one of my biggest regrets, man. And so today, I feel I need to live ten lifetimes and be in service for ten lifetimes to make up for that shit. You know, to make up for that.

• 20:42Ed Mylett?

  I think you're doing it.

• 20:43Bedros Keuilian?

  Well, I'll keep doing it. But but that's who I was. And so ironically, we're talking about Tony Robbins. And so Joe Polish had this event a few months back called the Genius Network Event, and he asked me to speak at it. He goes, I want you to talk about entrepreneurial leadership. And Tony Robbins was on stage right before me. Tony got off. I got on stage. It was Tony and Dean Graziosi being interviewed by Joe, and then me and Craig Valentine got on stage. And my job was to talk about entrepreneurial leadership. I said, Joe, we've got you've got millionaires and billionaires in this room. They don't need to learn how to be leaders. They can hire leaders. Let's talk about what really matters. And right there from stage, I went off script and I just said, look, odds are, one in three of you have had some kind of emotional or physical abuse, and one in four of you have had sexual abuse. Let's talk about that.

• 21:27Bedros Keuilian?

  And I come from the, yeah, I saw grown men squirming in their seats, looking at the exit. And by the time I flew home that night, I had six emails from some of the guys in there, like, Pedro, where do I go from here? Right? Like, I believe that

• 21:44Bedros Keuilian?

  Most of us who create wealth and money. Do it to create insulation and isolation from some kind of trauma.

• 21:53Ed Mylett?

  Gosh, that's so valid.

• 21:54Bedros Keuilian?

  And if you could just process through that trauma like I did three and a half years ago. I finally worked with a therapist. I worked with a therapist. Dude, it was affecting my marriage.

• 22:03Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 22:03Bedros Keuilian?

  My finances.

• 22:04Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Bedros Keuilian?

  My mindset. I would build, build, build a business and then I would intentionally sabotage so that my back is against the wall. Because that's the script I live off of.

• 22:13Ed Mylett?

  There was some mark on your identity from it, right?

• 22:15Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, I always needed to have my back against the wall and come out fighting. And so I put myself in that position. Today, I'm building on top of, no, no wonder why Inc. and Entrepreneurs naming us in the last three years.

• 22:24Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Bedros Keuilian?

  Like, I thank Kevin, my therapist, for helping me process through this.

• 22:28Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Bedros Keuilian?

  To get over the rage, the shame, the confusion. And as I described it to you, and he described it to me, he said, imagine if you're standing in a pool and you're holding this beach ball down.

• 22:37Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 22:38Bedros Keuilian?

  Underwater.

• 22:38Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 22:39Bedros Keuilian?

  And he goes, that's your trauma.

• 22:41Ed Mylett?

  What an unbelievable.

• 22:42Bedros Keuilian?

  And at some point, a fly is gonna land on your nose, or you're gonna have an itch or a scratch. And when you try and do that, the ball's gonna pop out. And Lord help you if you are in my way when that ball pops. He goes, what if we can just release the air out of that?

• 22:54Ed Mylett?

  Oh, love it.

• 22:55Bedros Keuilian?

  And we spent sixteen months processing through what happened to me. And I gotta tell you, it was the most fulfilling thing to get in touch with that little boy who was me. And to be able to write a letter to myself, when this is what Kevin had me do, write a letter to myself. Between the ages of four and six, I was molested by two older boys. But today, dot, dot, dot. So he gave me that first sentence. I wrote eighteen pages to that little boy. I said, today, you're this, and here's who you're gonna become. And then here's how you're gonna, your life's gonna end. Like, I wrote, I know the whole story, I know how this ends. You should see your face change when you just told me that. You should see your face change. I'm, I'm getting goosebumps right now.

• 23:33Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Bedros Keuilian?

  Because I've never really shared this on anyone's podcast. The fact that I, that I actually wrote that and I know how, how my journey ends. I'm the author.

• 23:41Ed Mylett?

  Oh.

• 23:41Bedros Keuilian?

  I'm not controlled by what happened to me anymore. And I want that for everybody, man.

• 23:47Ed Mylett?

  That's, that's a lot, brother. Like, uh, thank you. Like, I wanna acknowledge that, man. Like, that's, you're such a big, strong, physical specimen, so for you to be that vulnerable is, um, that's a wow, dude. Thank you for sharing that. I really, really, really appreciate that. And I know that. I know that so many people listening to this appreciate it. I had, I had Lewis Howes on my program. He shared a story somewhat similar, different but similar. And just the floods of people that reached out to me saying it just freed them to know that they, you giving them permission to go get help.

• 24:20Bedros Keuilian?

  It's so taboo, right? It's like you must be broken if you're gonna work with a therapist and gosh, you're a business leader, you own this big brand called Fit Body Boot Camp. You, you, you don't need a therapist. No, I need the therapist most. You need the therapist most.

• 24:32Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 24:33Bedros Keuilian?

  It's like having a human pit crew who can help get your head and your heart on the same page.

• 24:38Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. You're one of the, it's funny, you're, you're one of the warmest people when you first meet you. It's one of the first things I noticed about you, even your face and just your light, right? But you were sharing with me that had I met you prior to this experience, that was not the case, right? There's been this literally like a physical, spiritual, emotional transformation. True?

• 24:55Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know what else to call it, so I called it my monster. And I remember, this is embarrassing to say, but I'm gonna be fully transparent, it's the only way I know how to be. Two years into being married, God, I hope my wife never watches your podcast, if we ever go out for dinner, this never, this conversation.

• 25:08Ed Mylett?

  We're going out for dinner.

• 25:11Bedros Keuilian?

  Two years into being married, I got in a fight with my wife, like most couples do, just arguing over something. I don't even know what. And I put my fist through the wall and I said, "Don't let the monster come out because if it does, you're fucked." And I said, "I've got $10,000 in the bank account, that's all we have. Take that, take this house that we just bought, which we couldn't even afford. We bought a tiny little house in Chino Hills at the time." And I go, "I'm outta here." Like, that's how I coped with things because you're, everyone's my mortal enemy because what was supposed to be a rite of passage for a little boy looking up to, by the way, that's what Kevin explained to me. He goes, "Knights have squires because all men look up to their fathers, their older brothers, to older boys in the community as a rite of passage into manhood."

• 25:53Bedros Keuilian?

  And these two older boys took advantage of that and hurt you. And so, this is how I was now going to repay the world through anger and rage. Like, I will do everything for you, but the moment you crossed me, it was over. And that's not how it's supposed to be, man, because one day, you're gonna be late to lunch. That doesn't mean I need to like-

• 26:12Ed Mylett?

  Annihilate me.

• 26:13Bedros Keuilian?

  Right?

• 26:13Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, right.

• 26:14Bedros Keuilian?

  There was a car accident, something happened, I learned how to be human now.

• 26:17Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. Isn't it amazing that perhaps, of this whole empire you've built, that it's funny how we can be used for good in the world, right? It's interesting that it may be that of all the unbelievable, and by the way, Bedros coaches some of the most successful people. You all listen to their podcast, he coaches them. And so, it's interesting, he's gonna be coaching me today when we stop. I'm here to get advice from him too. And it's interesting that of all the good you've done in that regard, that maybe even beyond all of that, that what we're talking about right now could be the greatest good you do for people just in sharing this piece of your story, man. I mean, it's unbelievable what you're doing. Let's try to shift to business-

• 26:54Bedros Keuilian?

  Sure.

• 26:54Ed Mylett?

  Because it seems secondary after that conversation. But let's talk a little bit about, because it's all your service to people, right? Thank you so much for that. So, in business though, I feel like even prior to you going to therapy though, you feel to me like someone who's really worked on themselves. And so, I think if I were betting, had I met you even the three or four years ago before this, I still would have met one heck of a higher identity guy who'd worked on himself, who had kind of this mark on his identity, right? I don't think that you can-

• 27:24Bedros Keuilian?

  That's a really good way to define it.

• 27:25Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 27:25Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes, exactly.

• 27:26Ed Mylett?

  Okay, that's what it seems like to me. So, talk a little bit about even your journey, because I know guys like you, right? I have lots of friends, several, who grew up as immigrants, really rough backgrounds. Santa Ana, for those of you that don't know, the parts of Santa Ana, it's a wonderful place, but the parts of Santa Ana that Bedros is from is not white picket fences and, you know, rosy, you know, perfect families all around him all the time.

• 27:49Bedros Keuilian?

  The good news is, we did eventually move to Anaheim, which was a lot nicer.

• 27:51Ed Mylett?

  That is that, that is that, that is that, right? But so, you had that environment you grew up in, learning the language, immigrant mentality, so probably a stricter upbringing in your household than other people, some cultural differences too, lots of friends like that. If you grew up in Southern California, you have friends like that, right? And so, I'm curious, was part of you becoming you, like a ferocious dedication to personal development, self-improvement? Like, talk a little bit about that piece of your life and how important it has or has not been for you.

• 28:20Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, yeah, well, as we were talking about earlier in the other room, I was a personal trainer, right? After high school, I decided to become a personal trainer and- And one of my personal training clients, his name is Jim Franco, we're still dear friends to this day. One day I asked him, I said, "Jim, I'm a personal trainer and a fry cook and a bouncer at a gay bar." And the reason I was at a gay bar, because they paid $4 more per hour and I needed the money. Okay. As it turns out, the reason they paid a lot more is because skinheads would come every weekend to gay bash and it was our job. Wonderful. Right? They didn't tell you that before they hired you? No, no. So, the good news is that by this point I've gotten so many fights that- Yeah, you're equipped. I was equipped to fight, but I was starting to learn that I don't think I want to fight anymore because

• 29:03Bedros Keuilian?

  Jim Franco gave me a cassette tape from Tom Hopkins. Me too, I love Tom Hopkins. Right, and he goes, "Listen to this Tom Hopkins cassette tape so you can learn to sell, so you can get rid of your side jobs." And Tom Hopkins leads to Brian Tracy, Brian Tracy to Zig Ziglar, then to Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham and Tony Robbins. And before you know it, I'm learning sales and marketing and personal development and influence. And so I was building this side of my life really well. I was doing everything I could where personal development was concerned- Yes. To become a better entrepreneur. Yes. I chose to put that, what happened to that little boy, into a box and put it far away. Yep. And I still, till this day, I still have the gift of compartmentalizing, which is probably- It is another strength. It is another strength. Yep. Yeah, it is another strength, but I use it for good.

• 29:48Bedros Keuilian?

  I mean, you know, someone crosses me, I don't just put them in a box and put it away. These days I like to communicate. Right. "Hey Ed, why were you late? What can we do about it?" Et cetera, right? See, I'm nicer. That's good. For the record, you weren't late, it was just a hypothetical. Yeah, I was early. But anyway, all that said, I was very fortunate that Jim Franco helped me become a better entrepreneur soon. I didn't have my side jobs and before you know it, I had five personal training gyms and I was successful with those. Mm-hmm. And at a time, this company came through and bought out my five gyms and it was the first time I'd sold something for six figures. Okay. It's like, holy cow, like you can build and sell a business? Yep. Like, I didn't even know that. I thought businesses just being self-employed. Right. Owning a job. And so I started coaching and consulting personal trainers. Okay.

• 30:30Bedros Keuilian?

  And I really loved coaching and consulting trainers because I can teach them and give them the shortcuts that I never had. Hmm. And so I would hear these trainers, "Man-" You know, I'm making now eight thousand, nine thousand, twelve thousand, fifteen, thirty thousand dollars a month on the reoccurring income.

• 30:45Ed Mylett?

  Wonderful.

• 30:46Bedros Keuilian?

  Cause most personal trainers sell five, 10 sessions at a time, then they've got to come and resell you. My whole thing was we're going to put you on E F T, electronic fund transfer and build the reoccurring revenue.

• 30:54Ed Mylett?

  Yep, okay.

• 30:55Bedros Keuilian?

  So before long, I've got forty-three thousand customers over a 10-year period.

• 30:59Ed Mylett?

  My gosh.

• 30:59Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, who buy my courses.

• 31:01Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 31:02Bedros Keuilian?

  Come to my workshops and live events, et cetera. And in two thousand and ten, eleven, came up with the idea of Fit Body Boot Camp.

• 31:09Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 31:09Bedros Keuilian?

  And franchised it by two thousand and twelve. And so I was able to go to all these customers and say, hey, look, I've created this franchise brand. Do you want to be a part of it? So it's everything about fitness, but all the systems are built in. And boom, it took off. Now, there was a lot of work involved and I had to evolve into become a leader to be able to build a team around me.

• 31:30Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 31:30Bedros Keuilian?

  And that was a work in progress.

• 31:32Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 31:33Bedros Keuilian?

  But holy smokes, man.

• 31:34Ed Mylett?

  How many of them are there, six hundred and twelve?

• 31:35Bedros Keuilian?

  Uh, six hundred and nineteen, Fit Body Boot Camps worldwide, yeah, yeah.

• 31:39Ed Mylett?

  They're growing. I mean, all the time, you're talking about every other month in here, you've got twenty to forty people coming in here that you guys are training.

• 31:43Bedros Keuilian?

  We're adding an average of fifteen to twenty locations per month.

• 31:45Ed Mylett?

  Unreal, brother. I mean, unreal. And those of you that are in the fitness industry, if you want to build any sort of fitness practice, this is the Mac Daddy, right here. This is the guy. Either getting involved with the Fit Body Boot Camp or just getting coached on how to grow your practice, right? You've got all this content, all this material. This is the guy. But let's talk about all entrepreneurs for a second. So you've built this environment here, right? You're the leader here. What's unique when I walk around here is what I would consider to be the energy level. There's a positive energy in here. There seems to be a mutual inspiration or affection that you have for them and that they have for you and creating a culture. So all of these entrepreneurs that listen, by the way, most people that are listeners that think they're entrepreneurs are actually still only self-employed.

• 32:23Bedros Keuilian?

  True.

• 32:23Ed Mylett?

  Right? So talk a little bit about the difference between those two things. How do I go from being self-employed to an entrepreneur? And how do you, as a leader, create this culture here? What are some of the principles?

• 32:32Bedros Keuilian?

  You know, when someone is self-employed, you basically own a job, right? Which is great, because no one's going to fire you. The problem is you're on twenty-four hours a day, and if you really do the math, you're making way less than minimum wage.

• 32:40Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Bedros Keuilian?

  But now you've got the seed of building a business and becoming an entrepreneur. And from an entrepreneur, you can replicate and multiply to becoming an empire builder, right? That's kind of the three phases that I look at. You're self-employed, you're an entrepreneur, then you're an empire builder.

• 32:57Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 32:58Bedros Keuilian?

  So people always ask, just like you, well, God, the culture, the morale in here is so amazing. It is. So unique, so magical. A lot of it has to do with clarity of vision and clarity of path. As the leader, our job is not to just be the kind of leader that says, "Do it, or else." That is called the "have to" leadership. Okay. Your employees feel like they have to do it, or else the leader's gonna punish me. Okay. I wanna be a "want to" leader, right? What's the difference? How does that create? The "want to" leader says to their team, you see the difference? I said "employees." Yeah. Now, "team." You introduce everybody as your team, by the way. Exactly. I just happen to be the team leader. They're my team. See, employees clock in a little late, clock out a little early. Do the bare minimum to maintain employment.

• 33:39Bedros Keuilian?

  They're not gonna take my vision and bring it to 2,500 locations like I want, right? By a certain date. So, whereas the team members, we have a unified goal and an outcome to win, right? So, they know what our vision is. They're clear on our vision, on our path, on our deadline, which the leader has to set. You have to be a leader that leads from the front, the servant leader. Like I told you, about, well, about a quarter of our team members, go and see my therapist. Sometimes, I pay for them to go see him, right? Because if they have hangups, and they feel safe to come to me and say, "Hey, B, I've got this issue. I don't know who else to talk to. Hey, man, can I pay you to go, you can go see my therapist for a few sessions? I know I can't help you, but maybe Kevin can." That's wonderful, man.

• 34:21Bedros Keuilian?

  And then they start paying for it themselves, because if you value it, you should pay for it. Right. Right? So I certainly encourage them to value themselves. But it's clarity of vision, clarity of path, a deadline on when you want that vision to come true. Build a team and set high expectations. Like, we're filming in this room, but just earlier, we were filming in another room. And they were all, they had everything all set up, where we had minimum wait time and transition time. Yes. This was all done ahead of time, where we could just make everything flow quickly. Yes. A team does that. Employees would not have done that. Something would have gone wrong, and then the camera, and the thing, and the flex capacitor. That doesn't happen here. Everything is predictable. Yep. And... The attention to detail here is magnificent, Pedro, so. And so, culture is built as a byproduct of a leader who leads through...

• 35:04Bedros Keuilian?

  From the front, a servant leader who says, "Look, I'm here for you. What can I do to help? Here's rope. You can build a ladder, or you can hang yourself with it. But I'm always giving opportunities." Yeah. And I want that, because no one gave me an opportunity, man. Like, I had to claw for every opportunity, whether it's Disneyland or wherever I worked. I was always like the one like, "Oh, we're not gonna put you in front of the house. You're gonna be a fry cook forever. You're gonna be a busboy and then a fry cook. You're not going in front of the house." Because I had an opinion, right? And I was like, "You know what? I want your opinions. I want your feedback." As this founder and CEO, it doesn't mean I know all the answers.

• 35:34Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 35:34Bedros Keuilian?

  My job is to make decisions. I don't know if they're the right decisions. Give me some ideas to make decisions on. So, the culture improves when I say, "Guys, give me feedback." If the feedback doesn't work out, that doesn't make it bad. I make mistakes. You guys are allowed to fail in here as well. And so they go, "Holy shit, man. He's okay with us failing." I remove the bumpers. It's like bowling. I remove the bumpers. If we fall in the gutters a little bit, that's okay. That's okay. And that creates a culture of they're in it, they're part of a team. They show up early, they leave late. And as a byproduct, they bleed for us and our brand, and I bleed for them and the brand that we're building, and it's a win-win all the way around.

• 36:10Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, your guys, like Ed and Drew here. Drew, when we were sitting even on the wrong side in the other studio, switched things. Like, Ed and Drew care. Like, they genuinely care. I interviewed a guy a few weeks ago, and I'm not even gonna put the podcast up. And I won't say who he was, but the reason I was gonna put him out is because his whole philosophy on leadership, literally, said to me in the interview, "Don't get too close to your people." Because if they get too close to you, that they're gonna take advantage of you. He must have had some experience that told him this, right? He took wrong meaning from an experience. And I couldn't disagree with that more. I don't think you can get too close to people. I think it's wonderful to build relationships. And you were even talking about, and I do it too, you work out with these guys, right? You're on the road, you're close. They're almost, they're like family, almost.

• 36:47Bedros Keuilian?

  Sometimes I see them more than family.

• 36:49Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, that's wonderful. That's part of your environment here. So, step back a second. We don't have too much time, but I wanna pull out of this brain of yours a little bit. So, there's entrepreneurs, there's really, I have, you know, there's lots of different people that follow my content, but there's a lot of fitness people. But there's also just a lot of entrepreneurs, too. There's a lot of young people, too. Young entrepreneurs. So, if I was a young entrepreneur, and I'm starting in a business, whatever, I've found my passion, I've kinda found my purpose, I wanna do it. And I got to get in one of these coaching calls with you, or one of these mentoring environments with you. Give me a little snippet of what you would be telling me as an entrepreneur. "Hey, listen, these are a couple things that are non-negotiable. If you're gonna be successful, these couple things must be present in your life or in your business." What would they be?

• 37:28Bedros Keuilian?

  First of all, the acid test that I put him through, I go, if the thing that you're passionate about, if I took it away, if I took away the money that you can make from it, just I fed you and I made sure you had a roof over your head and your bills were paid for, would you do it for free? If the answer is no, then I go, this is not your passion and purpose in life. Let's go find something else. If they say, yes, I would still do it for free as long as my bills and overhead were covered. See, I would be a personal trainer, Ed. Yeah. I would do this for free, man. Yeah. The fact that I make money helping people with our franchise, like I'm the ultimate personal trainer because of our franchise. I get to reach millions of people every morning, right? Yes. And so I would do this for free. But, so I serve and as we talked about earlier, and the fact that I can build wealth while serving, happy benefit.

• 38:08Bedros Keuilian?

  And so that's the first acid test I ask people. So if they say, yes, I would do this for free, this is my passion, this is my purpose, great. Those who say, I don't know what my passion and purpose is, I mean, you know what? Don't look for it. It's not hidden. Develop it. Develop it. Okay. You, my friend, you weren't good in math. You told me earlier, you weren't good in math. It's not like you had some kind of financial certificate or degree. You were gonna go play baseball until you got injured, right? Right, yes. They put you into, or you took a job, part-time job, and you weren't even that good at it, you said in the beginning. I wasn't. But you stuck to it and you developed your purpose. Yes. Most people think that their purpose and passion is out there and they haven't found it, like it's lost. It's not lost. It's not a thing that's lost. You have to develop it. Wonderful.

• 38:48Bedros Keuilian?

  I developed my purpose for personal training, for fitness, for health, because I was a fat kid and I wanted to ask Nakia out to the prom. So I spent all of senior year. Nakia's some girl at high school? Yes. Okay. All of senior year. So all of this is because of Nakia and the prom? Nakia is the foundation of my empire. True story. True story. Now, I lost 32 pounds the summer before senior year and it changed my life, my confidence, everything. Never mind how I looked, everyone was like, wow, look at you, but I'm like making eye contact, shaking hands. Totally different. Did you get her to the prom? No, sir. I didn't have the confidence to ask her to the prom. I didn't go to the prom. But I said, I want to be a personal trainer, not a smog technician. My dad wanted me to be a smog technician. Wow, that would have been a different life. So that changed my entire trajectory in life.

• 39:32Bedros Keuilian?

  And so now I took that personal training thing and I just developed it and developed it until I became the best in the world at it, right? Everybody needs to develop their purpose. You need to go, is this thing that I'm doing, would I do this for free if someone else paid my bills? If the answer is yes, then that's your purpose. And then the other thing is, Give it the 10-year run. Give it the 10-year run.

• 39:52Ed Mylett?

  Thank you.

• 39:52Bedros Keuilian?

  People are so obsessed with, I need the outcome today. What is the fastest? I don't know the fastest way, but I know the surest way.

• 40:00Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 40:00Bedros Keuilian?

  Because every single person overestimates what they can achieve in a year, and they underestimate what they can achieve in a decade.

• 40:06Ed Mylett?

  I agree.

• 40:07Bedros Keuilian?

  Let's do a decade, and I think Tony Robbins, I heard him say that.

• 40:09Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Bedros Keuilian?

  I think Tony Robbins said that.

• 40:11Ed Mylett?

  He did.

• 40:11Bedros Keuilian?

  Give it a freaking decade.

• 40:13Ed Mylett?

  You're right.

• 40:13Bedros Keuilian?

  And watch what happens.

• 40:14Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 40:15Bedros Keuilian?

  But maybe it's social media, maybe it's the time we live in, but everyone wants it tomorrow. And I can't produce that as a coach.

• 40:20Ed Mylett?

  Couple of things from that, just lessons that I took from it too. So Nakia is the catalyst. It's interesting because that was your first pursuit. You didn't get Nakia, but it ended up turning into something else. A lot of times what happens for people is their first pursuit, they chase it. If they don't get the first thing they're pursuing, they don't know that that was only the first part of the journey to their real greatness, and they stop when they don't get the first thing, right? Nakia was the catalyst, but that wasn't your end destination. That was a high school prom. And someday, whatever you're chasing right now, the thing that you might have just missed is the high school prom of your life. It's a rearview mirror story. There's decades of great things that are gonna happen because of this pursuit, if you give it the decade.

• 40:54Bedros Keuilian?

  That's it.

• 40:55Ed Mylett?

  I totally.

• 40:55Bedros Keuilian?

  Give it the decade.

• 40:56Ed Mylett?

  I support that big time, man. Like, I love that. And the other piece of it that I thought was profound too is about service, right? Like, this seems to be like a current, like a recurring theme with you. Do you think your purpose is in somehow serving people? Like, if you're to dig out your purpose that you're gonna develop, it usually involves serving other people. Would you agree with that for the most part?

• 41:18Bedros Keuilian?

  Absolutely. And what other industry would you be willing to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to meet someone cranky at 5:00 a.m. in the gym?

• 41:24Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 41:25Bedros Keuilian?

  With their morning breath, to put them through a workout, and make them sweat and make them sore, even though they don't want to be there? The only people that would do that are personal trainers, and we are the most servant people on the planet.

• 41:35Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 41:36Bedros Keuilian?

  Because we're willing to do that. And so, yeah, I believe service is in my DNA. Shame on me for living with all that rage and not. Dealing with it sooner, but I also, no one ever approached me and said, "I think, young man, something's wrong with you." The court system just kept shuffling me around.

• 41:52Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 41:53Bedros Keuilian?

  But no one ever said, "I think there's something wrong with you. What's going on? Here's a therapist."

• 41:57Ed Mylett?

  Even of all your mentors, because you've had great mentors in your life, they didn't see this side of you. You could keep it sort of construed.

• 42:01Bedros Keuilian?

  I was good, man. I was good at camouflaging it because I was so embarrassed by it.

• 42:05Ed Mylett?

  And you're also producing some external results too, right?

• 42:07Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Ed Mylett?

  You can be, that's the one thing we all, sometimes we deny issues we have because we're functional. You know, at least we appear to be functional. So, just because certain areas of your life are flourishing, doesn't mean there isn't some mark that you need to be dealing with, right? That it could be still affecting you.

• 42:20Bedros Keuilian?

  Absolutely.

• 42:20Ed Mylett?

  So, we only have a few more minutes left. Like, this is like gold and I don't want it to stop, so I wanted to go through a couple more things.

• 42:25Bedros Keuilian?

  Yes, sir.

• 42:25Ed Mylett?

  Because I promise everybody I would pull some things out of your brain, so I want to continue to do that. I told you earlier that you're a world-class communicator. And at first, when I was driving here today, because I've watched your videos, I listened to you talk, and I appreciate great communicators because I'm, I'd like to think I'm working on being one myself, right? And so.

• 42:41Bedros Keuilian?

  You're a great one, but you're being very modest.

• 42:42Ed Mylett?

  Well, I, like you, I hate hearing the sound of my own voice probably, right? Like, we'll watch this back and there'll be a million things I wish I said or did differently, but, and that's always the case with me. But, see, it's interesting, it struck me, I'm like, "Well, he's in the fitness business. I wonder why that was so important." And then I started to think about it. Is there really any business where that's not critical? So, talk a little bit about, I'm sure even with your FitBody Bootcamp franchisees, the ability to communicate with people, to persuade, to influence people to do things for their own betterment. How important has that been in your journey and do you think it is for entrepreneurs? I think there's some guys that think, "Well, I'm a tech entrepreneur, so this doesn't matter." You're still gonna have to market something or hire people or persuade them to join your firm. How important is persuasion, articulation, communication?

• 43:25Bedros Keuilian?

  It's a lost art these days unfortunately because we text so much. I saw, I saw a study, a video, the professor took two students from the same class, college students, put them back to back in a chair, without their cellphone, and they said, "Communicate." And it was very awkward and clunky. "Hi, hi, how are you? Good, what are you doing? Okay." Handing them their cellphones, they're still back to back. And they, and you could see their screens, and they started to communicate, Ed. So with emojis, exclamation points. So verbal communication, physical communication, the art of getting your message across and influencing others and painting the word picture so that they can be all in on your vision.

• 44:01Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 44:02Bedros Keuilian?

  Is a lost art.

• 44:03Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 44:03Bedros Keuilian?

  Now, English is a second language to me. I had to learn this language first, then I had to learn how to communicate with it second. Everything I've wanted in life, whether it's building this franchise, networking with amazing people like you, has been an outcome of communication. I communicate through video, through podcasts, through blog posts, through, through Facebook Lives, you name it, we communicate. And if we can't articulate well and draw the word picture for others to get on board with our message.

• 44:29Ed Mylett?

  Word picture. That's interesting.

• 44:30Bedros Keuilian?

  That's what we're doing, we're drawing a word picture. If I say, imagine if, Ed, you're sitting in a room that looks like a library, that looks very old time library with a beautiful oil painting of an amazing dog across from you, which right across the way, there's my dog.

• 44:43Ed Mylett?

  This man has an oil painting in his office. So I look, there's pictures of his family in here somewhere, I'm sure, but the, the main picture in this office that I'm staring at is of your dog on the wall here. That's with a crown on, is it her, Ed? Cookie. Is it a her or a he?

• 44:58Bedros Keuilian?

  Uh, it's a her.

• 44:59Ed Mylett?

  It's a her.

• 45:00Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Ed Mylett?

  We're staring at Cookie, she's watched this entire interview.

• 45:02Bedros Keuilian?

  But imagine if we weren't in this room and I said, Ed, imagine if, and I started to draw this word picture to you.

• 45:07Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 45:07Bedros Keuilian?

  You would picture this room. And we need to get better at that level of communication to draw word pictures because when people can see it in their mind's eye, they now commit to it mentally and emotionally and are willing to buy into your vision, your agenda, whatever your thing is.

• 45:22Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Bedros Keuilian?

  So without communication, I believe that we are lost as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as, as teachers, as, as politicians. With communication, we can lead the masses. Hopefully to a better place.

• 45:35Ed Mylett?

  Wow, so good, man. Like, one of the things I noticed about you and your ability, by the way, I love that word pictures analogy. I'm gonna steal that from you. The other thing that you do really well, and I want people to hear this, because they're experiencing it, but I want you to know what you're experiencing. You can't transfer energy through text or email. You can transfer information, but you can't transfer energy. You can't transfer word pictures. So one of the things you do in an exemplary way is you transfer energy. The way you communicate makes me feel something, right? Like, strength, intensity, passion, empathy, whatever it is. Great communicators can transfer energy to people. You can't transfer to me something that which you're not already experiencing yourself. You can't give me what you don't have. The reason you're such a gifted communicator is you're experiencing these things yourself. You've already won. You've already been successful. You already feel these things.

• 46:19Bedros Keuilian?

  And I know, by the way, I know people will probably, you know, leave comments and messages, but what if I don't have the gift that he has? I just want to reinforce to others that English was a second language to me, and this is a learned behavior.

• 46:31Ed Mylett?

  Yep. I should say something about that too, because I'm using the word giftedness. And so, here's what I think. I think that everybody can get to a point of being super great communicators. I also think someone like you was, you were born probably with the ability to have this, and you've refined it, and refined it, and refined it. I think all humans have the ability to give energy. Some are better at doing it with the spoken word, some are better at doing it with a look, some are better at doing it with a touch. But we all have the capacity to transfer energy to one another. I just think one of yours is with the spoken word. I just think you're excellent. I think everybody can develop that skill, so I'm glad that you mentioned that too. So we're coming to the end. I don't want it to be. By the way, we're gonna have...

• 47:07Bedros Keuilian?

  I don't either. I'm having such a great time.

• 47:08Ed Mylett?

  Well, I'm learning too, man, and having a great time. We're gonna have Bedros back on in September, because he's gonna have a book coming out, and I want you all to be aware of that. But before we go, like, what is on the horizon for you? So, you've built this Fit Body Bootcamp that I know you've got a big aspirations for, but you've also got these other entities you're involved with, with coaching and business. Like, what's the, what are you focused on right now? What's your future plans for you?

• 47:29Bedros Keuilian?

  Yeah, so my future plans is, they're very focused. And when I look at it all, it's the big blanket of service. And people ask me, "Why are you writing a book about entrepreneurial leadership? Do you plan on coaching other entrepreneurs in the future?" Probably not. We're building a pretty massive franchise here to 2,500 locations, and that takes a lot of horsepower. But I want to put out a book... That I would have wanted a decade ago. That tells me this is exactly how it is to be a leader. You have to be a servant leader. You have to be the want to leader, not a have to leader, not I have to make people do this, but people want to do this for me. You have to build a team and not employees. You have to set high expectations, all these things. And so really, it's the growth of our Fit Body Boot Camp franchise because I'm so desperate

• 48:12Bedros Keuilian?

  into helping people who are overweight, out of shape, and don't know what to do in the gym. People ask me, well then, why do you coach and consult other gym owners who are not Fit Body Boot Camp owners? I go, they go, isn't that your competition?

• 48:24Ed Mylett?

  Still part of your mission, though.

• 48:25Bedros Keuilian?

  It's part of my mission. Do you know who my competition is? My competition is McDonald's, it's Starbucks, my competition is the Snickers bar, my competition is the Cheetos, it's the bags of things that say gluten free and therefore people inhale those calories thinking gluten free somehow means fat free, carb free, calorie free. And so my competition is the food conglomerates who are stuffing disease down people's throats and not personal trainers who are on their own brands or Fit Body Boot Camps competing. There are more overweight and out of shape people than any coach or trainer could ever touch. And I pray for the day that people are in such great and amazing shape mentally, physically, emotionally, that there'll be no need for me to coach and consult the fitness industry. I can go on my merry way and coach and consult others in another industry. But until then, I will help anyone in this industry because this is my purpose.

• 49:09Ed Mylett?

  I love that. Real quick, before we finish, by the way, what time you get up in the morning?

• 49:13Bedros Keuilian?

  Between 4:30 and 5:00.

• 49:14Ed Mylett?

  4:30 and 5:00. I want everybody to hear that because you know what's really this is all built from? Freaking crazy hard work. Freaking bananas hard work, right? And like, there's this new world, you talked about Tom Hopkins and then Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins, right? And then I feel like today, I don't know if you feel this way, but now the new space, there's Grant Cardone, there's myself, there's you, there's Andy Frisella, there's Still Tonys at it, there's Gary Vee, there's some people in this space now. Information is so accessible today, right? The things that you need to learn, it's really the separator's work ethic, at least at the end of the day for me. Don't you feel that way?

• 49:46Bedros Keuilian?

  That's it. It's action. Take imperfect action, but holy hell, take action.

• 49:50Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, that's what I know. We came in here, I'm like, this dude's a hoss. This is a brother. This guy is a get after it, get up early, crush it type leader. That's really at the end of the day. On top of all your vision, your ability to articulate, you could have all the visions in the world, right? All the personal development in the world, all the ability to communicate in the world, but the fact is, you've just busted your ass.

• 50:10Bedros Keuilian?

  Wake up and bleed for a decade and you will have whatever you want.

• 50:13Ed Mylett?

  I love it. That's such a great place to finish, man. Where do they find you so they can get more of this gold from you?

• 50:18Bedros Keuilian?

  Best place to find me is on Instagram, social media, Facebook, and of course, my blog, bedroscoolin.com.

• 50:24Ed Mylett?

  Okay, find this man. I know you can feel the value. Brother, like, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for open, being so open. Thank you for sharing. Thanks for the gold. Thanks for the personal stories of vulnerability. You're a, this man's a big spirit. If you were in his presence, just so you know, you're a big spirit. You're a force for good in the world, bro.

• 50:42Bedros Keuilian?

  That means a lot.

• 50:43Ed Mylett?

  You are, man. And I know this is just the beginning for you. We're gonna look back on this interview someday and go, man, that was a catalyst to a great friendship for you and I. So, so grateful for you, brother. Thank you.

• 50:52Bedros Keuilian?

  Thank you.

• 50:53Ed Mylett?

  Okay, everybody, max out your lives and make sure that you rank and review the podcast on whatever platform you're watching this on. God bless.