376: Mindset Success Secrets: Overcome Fear, Doubt and Procrastination By Simplifying and Taking Action with Bedros Keuilian

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank, Show, episode 376, mindset, success, secrets, overcome fear, doubt and procrastination by simplifying and taking action with Bedros coolian. Hey everybody, and thanks for listening to the show we're talking right now with Bedros coolie. And what's great about what we're going to be talking about today is we're going to hear we're going to hear about Bedros life story, his ups and downs and his lessons, but then also things that we can all apply from what he's learned. So as a child, Bedros ate out of dumpsters and he couldn't speak a word of English. And today, Bedros is a best selling author, and he's the founder and CEO of the world's fastest growing fitness franchise, which is called Fit Body Boot Camp. He's also famous for helping 24 of his clients go from being in debt to growing seven figure, generating empires and helping 1000s more turn their passions into multiple six figure businesses. So Bedros, glad to be talking to you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity. Well. I appreciate you being on and being generous for your time and all that fun stuff. So can you kind of start us at the beginning and tell us you know what you're all about and how this all started for you?

Bedros Keuilian 1:07 Yeah, yeah. So what I'm really all about is I'm the immigrant edge and I'm the American dream. You can just summarize it that way. And by that, I mean my father decided that we're going to escape communist Russia in 1980 I was six years old at that time. And you know, when you're six years old, you just as long as you were with your mom and dad, you're fine, everything's happy, go lucky. No issues there. But what was pretty cool is that we came to America and we were broke. And the reason that was cool is because for me, as long as I was with my mom and dad, I didn't know the difference. And so if my dad said he were diving into the dumpsters behind the grocery stores to get food out, well, to me, that was a treasure hunt. And if we didn't have lights because we couldn't afford to pay like our electric bill, well, as long as I was with my mom and dad, it was actually pretty fun hanging out in the dark. So I grew up with this immigrant edge mentality where I got to see my dad really not only hustle and grind, but also get resourceful in times when he didn't have resources. And that, to me, was one of the biggest things. That was a and I say this one of the best entrepreneurial lessons I can get, and I still use today, which is, when you don't have resources, get resourceful. So you fast forward 20 some odd years, and I decided to become a personal trainer. I've always known that I am the type of person that likes to serve. I want to help people. I want to be of service. And so being a personal trainer waking up early in the mornings to help people get in shape and start their day off right and live healthy lives, that was my thing. And even today, even though we've got one of the fastest growing franchises on the planet, we're a two time Inc 5000 company, I still look at myself as a personal trainer. The difference is now I'm training millions of clients through all of our Fit Body Boot Camp franchise locations and through all the coaching clients that I get to serve who have their own businesses. Gyms. These days, they have more than just fitness businesses. My coaching clients bleed into other industries as well. But man, it's been such a tremendous voyage and and it's all because of this mindset of when you don't have resources, you get resourceful. And I've had to do that literally dozens of times throughout my entrepreneurial career.

Robert Plank 3:15 And I love stories like that where we're like, you literally started from nothing, and you went through all the ups and downs. Because a lot of times, like, you hear about someone's story and they leave things out, or they got a little bit of help and and I think we've all gone through like, those cycles where you kind of, you know, you have the feast and the famine. And during the famine times, you kind of have to cut things or see what's most important to you so that when the feast happens, you can take the most advantage of it. And so, I mean, as you've kind of, you know, grown and in all these industries and had all these coaching clients, do you have, like, a number one secret to that, this mindset that you have?

Bedros Keuilian 3:51 Yeah, the really number one secret to building an empire is, really to keep it simple. And so most people end up freaking themselves into death. They just get freaked out over all the what ifs. What if this happens? What if competition comes up? What if the economy crashes? What if people don't like my product or service? What if I create a funnel first and then a lead magnet and then move people up the ascension ladder, and most people will over complicate things by way of the funnels and the processes and by way of just overthinking it. And so the number one secret I share with my new clients is, what is the lowest hanging fruit that we can tap into right now in your market space that you haven't tapped into? And usually they can identify that. The difference is they come to that with a complicated plan. And my job is to take a 20 step plan that they have, and, you know, distill it down to the top three things they need to do to monetize and serve their audience.

Robert Plank 4:47 And that is super cool in that. And a lot of times, just like taking that super complicated plan and trying to explain it to someone else, in itself, simplifies the plan, or even having those outside eyes of some. And hasn't seen your super complicated plan before, just like seeing it from that, getting that fresh take really helps to to kind of narrow things down. And so I'm really curious. Like, why do you think people fall into this trap? Do you think it's like the like, the doubt, or is it a form of procrastination, making the super complicated thing? Like, why do people seem to gravitate towards this complex stuff? I

Bedros Keuilian 5:19 think the reason people gravitate towards complex stuff is because when you don't understand something, you just assume it's hard. I'll give you a great example. About two and a half years ago, I took up surfing. Now, before that, a lot of my friends who are surfers would take me out to the beach and they go, Hey, look at the waves. You see the waves? I go, Yeah. Would you see a pattern in it? Nope, I see no pattern. They go, all right. Now pay attention. You're going to see how the waves eventually will kind of get smaller. In fact, will stop for a period, and then they'll start back up again. And when they said that, then I saw the difference. Until then, it was complicated. It was just one wave after another, but I saw that, and they go. That's called a set. So if you're paddling out to catch a wave, you don't paddle out when you're fighting waves. You paddle out when the set has stopped, and you paddle out. You wait for the sets to begin, and then you catch a wave in. Oh, okay, got it. And then they go, Hey, you see how there's people kind of being pulled out into the ocean? Yeah. Well, that's called the current. You see the pattern? If you stay out of the current, you won't be pulled out. You won't freak out. You won't have to exert all this energy, yeah. And so you hit the nail on the head when you said outside eyes when we were entrepreneurism is concerned when we don't see the entire picture. Just like I couldn't understand how the ocean worked and how waves worked. To me, it was complicated to surf. So I got to time the waves. I got to get out there. Then I got to see the right wave I'm going to take. I got to paddle for it. Holy hell, once I paddle for it, and it's taking me now I've got to try and pop up and actually go a specific direction. That's nuts, but it's all one step at a time. And someone once, one of my mentors, told me, Hey, how do you eat an elephant? And I said, I have no idea, but that sounds complicated. He said, One bite at a time. So really, the human brain tends to complicate anything they don't understand. When I was broke and I didn't have any money, and I had a mentor, his name was Jim Franco, all I kept thinking was, I can't wait to be like Jim Franco. And I kept thinking that his life was complicated, and there's a lot of moving parts, and his business is complicated. He was kind enough to bring me into his business in Buena Park, California, show me his office and all of his sales reps on the floor and his operations department. And I realized these are normal people running a normal business. They have a system and a process, and as long as they follow the system, the system runs the business. And so it very quickly got uncomplicated for me, and so for most people, it takes outside eyes to tell them, hey, look what you think is really complicated and overwhelming. It's not. You're making it out that way, because you just don't understand it. Once people show you piece by piece, the elements of okay, you're gonna paddle out. Wait for the sets to start. The sets have started. Choose a wave paddle for it. You're now, you know, body surfing Now pop up. If you do one thing at a time, you're gonna be successful. Surfing. You're going to be successful in business as well. They correlate equally.

Robert Plank 8:07 I really like that attitude. And what I'm hearing from you was that I think a lot of people, they can't separate the forest from the trees, and they just like, like you said, because they haven't mastered it. They just like, see every little piece of it, and they don't understand what's more important than other pieces, or what to ignore, or things like that. And so it's definitely a really good lesson. And also what kind of comes to mind as you're explaining the surfing analogy there is that, you know, there's all kinds of moving parts, there's all kinds of things to worry about. And it's like, if you win and you try to get every single piece of it right, the first time you completely fail, right? It's like the very first time you drove a car, if you tried to worry about the gas pedal, your your singular, your mirrors, you're driving like you totally, just totally fail at it. But it's like, if you focus on taking some action, getting a few things out there, repeating it, getting a few things automatic, then you can kind of slowly, kind of build up this muscle or build up the skill, is what I'm kind of hearing also from you.

Bedros Keuilian 9:03 That's exactly it. You nailed it. It's a muscle, and we have to build it up. And nothing furious me more than when I'm on social media, and I'll see someone that has like 500 followers on Instagram, and they've decided to click the public figure button and call themselves a public figure because they want to be like Gary Vaynerchuk, but they haven't put the like Gary Vaynerchuk work in they haven't written two or three books like Gary has. They haven't pumped out a million videos like he has, but they are hustle and grinding, and I put that in quotes and call themselves a public figure, because, you know, they they think that that's the big moves they got to do, when, in reality, I got an idea. Just go online and you figure out how to make money first before you start teaching people. So it's the same thing. It's it's people who try and over complicate things. I'm going to be like Gary. Gary wasn't like Gary until he decided to just do the work. Put his head down. He did it for a decade when no one was looking. King, because no one knew of him. And then once he proved the concept, he came out and helped the rest of us. He helped the world. And so I think more people need to just go, put their head down, take it piece by piece. Figure it out. Get successful. Take your licks, have your failures. You know, be resilient. Overcome those failures. Be successful, then go out and teach it or scale it. But holy hell, when people go out and just think that they're gonna just do it, right, it's so insulting and offensive for people like me, people like you, like Gary, like whoever, who have spent a decade and a half doing it, and these people think they're gonna come out of the gate and do it right away, because, well, it's social media, and if I just say it, then it'll happen.

Robert Plank 10:38 Yeah, that sort of turns me off too, when people, they almost look at at copying as the shortcut. And whenever, whenever I see one of those, like the big influencers, like a Gary V, I always like to look at their current stuff and then go back and look at their early stuff and sort of see how they're, how they sort of grew into that personality, or how things change and which just came from, you know, making those mistakes or putting out those that body of work over time, and kind of just growing into the kind of person that they were supposed to be all along, as opposed to just on day one, being, you know, being like Gary V is. And so I'm really curious about some of those stories that you have, about some of those, like, kind of early successes and failures when you first, kind of, you know, got started with this. So anything fun like that to share? Oh, absolutely,

Bedros Keuilian 11:22 man. The very first, the very first venture I took was a venture called Total muscle, calm. This was in 1997 1997 98 as the internet was coming about, before the big bubble had burst. The internet bubble in 2000 I created a website called Total muscle. And my whole plan was that I was going to buy supplements from Europa supplements, and they're a distributor, just like where GNC would use, except I wouldn't have a storefront, therefore I'd be able to sell for lower cost, because I could sell it online. So I had one of the first online shopping carts I had, and think, thank god man. And this goes to show you how far authorize.net has come back then. Authorize.net was brand new back in 9596 97 But long story short, I used authorize.net they kind of supported my shopping cart. I hired a web designer, took pictures of all the supplements and went to when I went to sell them online, I realized I had no audience. There was no Facebook to market to. There was no email list that I had. There was no email marketing system, in fact. And there was no Google for me to optimize or buy traffic from. No YouTube for me to do how to videos. And so one of my very first failures, and this is a great lesson for anybody watching here, is when you are too far ahead of the curb, if you don't have the financial backing to basically survive the test of time, while Google is doing its thing and being built and email marketing is coming around, then you are going to fail. And that's what happened. I lost $55,000 and threw away a ton of supplements. The $55,000 was the amount of money that I maxed out on credit cards to buy more supplements each time that I would buy them, and they would expire, so I couldn't sell them anymore, and I had to throw them away and buy more. But I realized then, in that moment, that, you know, I'm going on AOL and contacting one, one guy who lifts weights, because, you know, you can check back. Then you could check someone's AOL profile and see if they work out or bodybuild or power lift, which tells me you take supplements and then I would send you a handwritten email. You can imagine how many of those a night I'd send about 200 to 400 a night while I had a daytime job. But that's not going to be enough to drive traffic, and so I moved some supplements, but not enough, and ultimately went out of business because I was way too far ahead of the curve. Today, you look@bodybuilding.com and Bio Trust and all these other online supplement companies, and they're rocking it. So that's just one thing. The other thing was, I launched a software program called high tech trainer. High tech trainer was an online personal training software once again, way too ahead of its time. The difference was, this time, I borrowed money from a client who actually he was a personal training client turned mentor, and I borrowed money from him. So this time, I had financial backing, and high tech trainer was meant to fail, Robert. The difference was that I had the financial backing that I could educate the market space. And after a year and a half of educating the market space and racking up $126,000 in debt, or the money that I owed my mentor, I was able then to start turning a profit to the tune of 20 to $26,000 a month. That was the average monthly income from high tech trainer. And quickly paid off my debt and made high tech trainer a successful online software so there's two examples of one was destined to fail. They were both destined to fail. Just one did fail because I didn't have enough money to continue down that path. The other one didn't fail because I had the financial backing. But between then and now, I've gotten smarter and now I if I know something's going to cost me, let's say, a half a million dollars to launch I make sure that I have. Three times that in financial backing, just in case things don't go as planned. And as it turns out, the road to construction is always under the road to success is always under construction anyway, so things never work out as planned. And that's why it's good to have all that extra money and marketing savvy in your back pocket.

Robert Plank 15:18 Super cool, and I imagine that a lot of people had never considered that they could actually be too early for something. It seems like everyone's always worried that they're too late. So I mean that what I'm hearing from that is like that a lot of you know things can go wrong, and that sometimes we have to kind of be unlucky and learn a few things the hard way, that way we have that knowledge to use later. And I think that you know when I think back at times when, if I made a website or had a project that didn't work out, or, you know, put a lot of time into it, and it only made a little bit of money and wasn't really worth it. I used to think that those were wasted years that that was like, you know, time that I wish I could get back, or if only I'd started earlier. But now I kind of look back at at those sorts of things as there were always some kinds of marketing lessons or, if nothing else, reminders that, that, you know, time is such a such a precious thing, I guess. And sometimes, if we have, like, a plan, we have to get it done yesterday, as opposed to waiting five years until everything works out just right. And so do you kind of feel the same way that, like, you know, back, looking back at those kind of failures, even if something totally crapped out, like there are always some kinds of lessons for you to in the future. Nope, there you are. I lost you

Bedros Keuilian 16:29 there for a second where you said you kind of feel the same way want to repeat that piece again. Yeah.

Robert Plank 16:33 So do you sort of feel that same way that those those past failures kind of gave you the the marketing knowledge or or taught you to do things in less time, or, I mean, and any kind of, like, big lessons there, even from, like, the failures were, like, at the time, you thought completely useless, but now years later, like, there's always some sort of nuggets in there, right? Dude,

Bedros Keuilian 16:55 not only did I think that those failures back in the day were useless, I thought they were useless unnecessary, and I felt bad for myself. I felt sorry for myself. Today, I look back at those lessons, and I look at those as battle scars, and that's wisdom that you can't get at a university from an MBA program. You can't get that from anywhere. You can maybe get it from a mentor, but not even from a mentor, because sometimes we're so egotistical that our ego says, Well, that happened to you, but that would never happen to me. Let me tell you, Brother, if it's happened to you, you're not you're going to make sure it never happens to you again. So some of the greatest lessons I've had were the failures of many businesses, of many ventures, of partnerships, where I thought that was unnecessary, that was cruel. Why would the world do this to me? I thought I was meant to be successful, and today, those are the lessons that I not only teach to my coaching clients, but use to shortcut the success of my newest ventures.

Robert Plank 17:55 So when your coaching clients, or even maybe you sometimes if the doubt ever creeps in, or if you feel blocked or procrastinated? Do you have any usual like go tos or reminders or lessons of things that kind of gets you out of a funk, get you motivated, energized again? Yeah,

Bedros Keuilian 18:12 I'll tell you. The thing that I always go to is, what because, look, I'm human. I have funky times too. And when you're running a international franchise, while you're writing a book, while you're running a coaching program with over 1000 coaching clients in it, there's a lot of moving parts of my business. Man, I've got a big team behind me. And for all that to happen, I do have some funky times, and we do have the Federal Trade Commission that we have to abide by because we're a franchise, and so we get 11 audits a year voluntarily. And so those things do bring a man down. And the thing that I always remind myself is this is one a choice that I've made because it's an obligation that I have, and those two things bring me back up. No one is forcing me to be an entrepreneur and to go through the shit that I'm going through. It's a choice that I've made. And number two, it's the obligation and duty I have, because I know this is my gift, like I know this is the purpose why I'm on this planet. And if everybody who goes through any kind of funk or depression or setback or challenge or adversity goes, Hey, this is a choice that I'm making. I put myself in this position, I could stop anytime I want, but I'm not gonna, because this is why the Lord or the universe has put me on this planet. Then you will never give up.

Robert Plank 19:31 I love it. That's a great reminder. So basically, take ownership of the decisions that have led you here. Life didn't happen to you. You happen to life. And so I don't want to keep you here for too long, but I want to make sure that we know all about we know all about your speaking, your books, any project you have going on, so Can you unpack some of that for us? Yeah,

Bedros Keuilian 19:49 yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate the opportunity for that. So I've been blessed enough where I've got a wonderful team of 45 people who work with me here at the headquarters, and they run majority of our franchise. Business. And so that's kind of set on autopilot and growing rapidly. And my coaching business, of course, that is very automated as well. I've got great business partners and coaches, co coaches, who help grow that empire as well. And so recently, I wrote a book called Man Up and man up. The whole title is actually, man up, cut the bullshit and dominate your path, and it's really for entrepreneurs who are always stuck in this place where they're spinning their wheels, they know they're they have more potential, they know they can make more money and more impact, but they're stuck spinning their wheels, and man up teaches you the three very specific things that you need to focus on to grow your income and make a bigger impact. So that book, man up, comes out July of 2018, and the only other thing that I've actually started recently is I love coaching. I'm just I'm meant for coaching. I'm meant to serve. And so now that I've been able to build myself an empire and automate the thing, I started a mastermind called the Empire mastermind for entrepreneurs who are making seven figures, who want to 5x 10x 20x their income to come into that group. And that's been really fun to work with, really high achieving entrepreneurs. And, you know, take their problems from their industry and reverse engineer that. Engineer it, take it apart, put it back together and make it more successful. Super

Robert Plank 21:22 cool. And where can people find that empire, mastermind?

Bedros Keuilian 21:26 All the information for my mastermind and my upcoming book is on Bedros coolie in.com

Robert Plank 21:33 Cool. And is there, is there an easy way to spell that, or is there, like a shorter link for that?

Bedros Keuilian 21:39 You know, unfortunately there isn't. The good news is, if you write, if you come any anywhere close to Bedros coolian on Google, I'm the only guy that pops up. It's such a unique name. So you can just write Bedros, B, E, D, R, O, S, and I'm the only guy that pops up,

Robert Plank 21:52 perfect. So Google is your friend. So so great stuff and lots of interesting things to sort of chew on here. And so, you know, we talked about, you know, keeping it simple, and having that process and knowing that sort of success is your obligation, and all that, and so, you know, having said all that, I mean, do you have any kind of final thoughts of encouragement or reassurance, or any kind of final thoughts for everyone listening today?

Bedros Keuilian 22:16 Yeah, yeah, I do. And this, this is a thought that I was somebody would have shared with me in the past, it's that people always overestimate what they can achieve in one year, and they underestimate what they can achieve in five years. And I know the internet seems to promise us very quick, fast results, and it's really taken our attention spans and made them shorter. But if someone could just put their head down and work on a project or a passion for five years straight. I promise you, there'll be a seven figure, multiple seven figure industry. But everybody seems to want it now or yesterday,

Robert Plank 22:51 or they give up too soon. Yep, I completely upgrade. Well, cool. Well, lots of interesting stuff today, and everyone make sure to go to Bedros, coolian.com and like Bedros said, Go to google search Bedros, you'll find him very easily. And so I want to thank you so much for stopping by and for live streaming this on your end as well, and for just kind of sharing with us a little bit of your story, a little bit of your insights, and just things that we can all take away for those times when, like you said, we know we can do better, or maybe we haven't fulfilled our complete potential, or we feel like giving up, or we feel like there's a better way always good to have that refresher, those reminders of what we're all are capable of. So thanks for sharing that with us, and thanks for sharing what

Bedros Keuilian 23:32 you know today. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, Robert, go right now

Robert Plank 23:36 to Robert plank.com/itunes to subscribe to the show, listen to other episodes and rate and review the show you.