Bedros Keuilian: Building Seven-Figure Businesses & the Immigrant Mindset

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 624 with Bedros Keuilian.

Welcome to the Show

Tom Rowland: This is the Tom Rowland Podcast, fascinating stories to amaze, encourage, and inspire you in fishing, fitness, and the outdoors. I started this podcast as a way to connect with my friends, people that I admire and respect, and you. It has been a learning journey that's made me a better person, a better fisherman, a better father, and a better athlete. I'm so happy that you're on this journey with me, and I'd love to hear from you with show suggestions, guest suggestions, or questions. The best way to get a hold of me is through text. You can text (305) 930-7346 for the fastest response. But if you prefer to email, you can send that to podcast@saltwaterexperience.com — that's a dedicated email address just for the show. If you like this show, you can show your support by posting about it on social media and tagging me. Text the link to a couple of friends that may also enjoy it, and subscribe and leave a five star review if you feel like I've earned it. The website is tomrowlandpodcast.com, and that is where everything lives — all past shows, the How-To Tuesdays, the Full Lengths, and the Physical Fridays. And the social media is tom_rowland on Instagram, or you can go to our big account, saltwater_experience. I hope to hear from you soon. So now let's get on to today's show.

Bedros Keuilian: Hey friends, I'm Bedros Keuilian, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Bedros, welcome to the show.

Bedros Keuilian: Yeah man, thank you for having me, Tom. Appreciate it.

Tom Rowland: Well, I'm a big fan. I have read your book, I've listened to your podcast. Ray Care had so many great things to say about you — lots of people have, actually. So I'm really excited to have you on here, and you have an amazing story. You really do have an amazing story.

Bedros Keuilian: Well, I gotta tell you, I kind of feel like the Cinderella Man sometimes, where I've lived two very different lives in this great country of ours.

Tom Rowland: Well, would you mind kind of walking us through your story, all the way from the beginning? I think it's really important, just for people that may not know who you are, to set the stage here.

Escaping the Soviet Union

Bedros Keuilian: Yeah, you bet. Well, the best way to say it is I always tell people I'm the immigrant edge in the American dream. And the reason I say that is because my family and I escaped the Soviet Union in 1980. In fact, later this month, on June 16th, it will be forty years since we escaped. But I share this with you because when we came to the United States, you kind of have this idea in your head that America is — I remember hearing my mom and dad say — there's all this great opportunity and there's this freedom, and you could do anything you want. There's no socialism, there's no communism. Now keep in mind, my dad was a member of the Communist Party — he did not want to be a member of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. So when we escaped, we escaped into Italy as a family under the guise that we were going on vacation to Italy and that we were going to return back to Armenia, which was part of the Soviet Union then. Of course, we never returned. When we got to Rome, Italy, we went right to the American consulate, and my dad said, "I'm a Communist Party member and I'm denouncing communism, and we'd like to apply as refugees to come to the United States." So hearing what America was as a child, and then experiencing it the first few years, were very, very different, because what I hadn't factored in my head as a child was that I didn't speak the language. I didn't understand English. I didn't understand the culture. Yes, it is the land of opportunity — one thing I remember my mom and dad saying is that stores have food around the clock in them, because where we come from, you have to wait in line for hours when food is delivered to a grocery store. You might get to the front of the counter and they'd say, "Sorry, we're all out." Water was rationed in Armenia. Gas was rationed. Electricity was rationed. Everything was available here in the States, with one exception — if you had money. So we not only didn't understand the language or the culture, but we were also broke. You might imagine that was a very big culture shock for me, because with my dad being a member of the Communist Party, we were pretty well off — as well off as you could be in a third-world communist country. And so we get here, and I'm like, well, this sucks. I'm getting bullied, I'm getting beat up, I'm being made fun of. We lived in Section 8 housing. My mom, my dad, my older brother, and my older sister all worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. Thank God there was Section 8 housing — government-assisted housing, food stamps, and so on — which helped us get by, but we kept moving from one apartment complex to the next, one filthier than the other. In fact, within about a year of being in the United States, in Santa Ana, California, one of the apartments we lived in was so filthy that I remember some nights waking up because I would feel things crawling on me — there were cockroaches, and I would have to shoo them off my body and start crying and freaking out as a kid. In that same apartment complex I got lice, and my mom and dad couldn't afford lice treatment. We were literally living off pennies, and every penny mattered. My mom had my dad siphon gasoline out of a parked car, and she washed my hair with gasoline, because the alternative was to pay three dollars for lice treatment at the drugstore, and we weren't about to do that.

I share this with you because I grew up in a lot of adversity. I grew up with a broke mindset. I would hear my dad constantly say, "We keep running out of money before we run out of month." He would have to pick and choose whether we were paying the water bill or the electricity bill in whatever apartment we lived in, and that's with government assistance. I share that with you because all of those adversities we dealt with — being an immigrant, a foreigner, getting picked on and bullied, not having enough money, wearing funny clothes and hand-me-down furniture — all of that adversity turned out to be an advantage in my life. Because as I grew up, learned the language, understood the culture, started working, made money, and became an entrepreneur, I realized that what I was experiencing in this country was the true American dream. And that American dream is available to all, even now, more than ever. Had it not been for the adversity I experienced as a young man growing up in this country, I don't think I would have been equipped to deal with the adversity I experienced as an entrepreneur — building a business, experiencing failures, debt, competition, market crashes. I feel like I was well-equipped to deal with that from a young age because of the training I got as an immigrant. So truly, I'm the immigrant edge in the American dream story — the Cinderella Man, if you will. So grateful for this country, and for my mom and dad, who, in their forties, risked their lives to come to a new country and bring their family so their kids could have a great opportunity like I've had. What a blessing, man.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's incredible. One of the things I talk about a lot is how weakness is sometimes a strength, and that story encapsulates it perfectly — how something that's perceived as your greatest weakness eventually turns out to be your greatest strength. And you've lived that all the way to today. And we haven't even gotten to the rest of your story yet, which I know, but the audience doesn't. The immigrant mentality has helped you in work ethic and so many other things. When did the entrepreneurial spirit start with you?

From a Tailor Shop to Personal Training

Bedros Keuilian: Well, you know, I guess it started when I was younger, because my dad, in the old country, was a tailor. Everybody worked for the government, so he worked in a men's suit manufacturing plant. When we came to the United States, he had all these different jobs — pumping gas at an Arco station, delivering newspapers in the middle of the night, working the kitchen at a pizzeria in the afternoons — and he realized none of that was going to be a career for him. He figured a career would be if he could save up enough money to open a little tailor shop in Anaheim, California, hemming clothes and doing what a tailor does. He bought a failing tailor store from a guy — this is a crazy story, man. The place was called Joseph's Tailoring. In the back were all the sewing machines and everything a tailor needed, and the front of the shop was men's clothing — brand new suits, brand new jeans, like Levi's and Jordache, and men's shirts and ties. I think it was selling for around $15,000 for the whole store, and my dad was scratching his head thinking, this is a smoking deal. I remember him and my older brother — who's fifteen years older than me — talking about it. Well, we found out later why my dad got such a good deal: the previous owner had a gambling addiction. He'd gotten into debt with all of his customers, borrowing money from his rich customers and gambling it away, and he just wanted to get rid of the store and the lease and walk away with some cash in his pocket — the inventory alone was worth around $30,000. So my dad was wondering why the deal was so good, and soon enough, people came in to collect on their debts, and now there was a new owner, and my dad pieced it together. The business had a very bad reputation, and it took just over two years for my dad to get it to stand on its own, for people to get the word out that it was under new ownership and that the tailor cared and was really good at what he did. Before he knew it, he'd built the business — he was there twelve hours a day, six days a week — and it ended up buying him a home and a couple of rental properties. He was able to put a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. More than that, after school I would go there rather than going home — my mom would pick me up and bring me to my dad's shop in Anaheim. By that point, being the youngest, I'd learned the language the quickest and lost my accent, so my dad had me working the front counter. When someone came to pick up their pants — where my dad had replaced a zipper or fixed a hem or a cigarette burn — he'd tell me to try and sell them a pair of socks or a tie while they were there. So I learned entrepreneurship, salesmanship, rapport-building. It didn't hurt that I was young and small and cute — some little guy trying to sell you something, you're just going to buy it. And the more they bought, the more I got addicted to it. I realized, okay, I think when I grow up I want to own a business — though I had no idea I'd go into the fitness space and end up owning one of the largest fitness franchises, Fit Body Boot Camp, and end up authoring a book and all these things. I just knew I liked this entrepreneurship stuff. I wasn't worried about working twelve hours a day like my dad, because I always had work ethic, and I liked the idea that the more I sell, the more I make. I was making money for my dad, but if this was my business, this would be my money.

Tom Rowland: I've told my kids two very important skills in this world — you need to learn how to sell anything, and you need to learn how to be a carpenter. Those two skills can take you a long way. If you buy a house and want to renovate it, you don't have to ask anybody, you can just do the work yourself and save a tremendous amount of money. And if you know how to sell, that will take you a long way. You learned that very early. So how did you get into the personal training space, going from that into Fit Body Boot Camp?

Discovering Fitness and Personal Training

Bedros Keuilian: Well, for me it was out of necessity. Having an ethnic mom and dad, it's not like they knew about high-protein, low-carb, low-fat diets and all that stuff. When you're trying to get by, you're eating whatever government food they give you — imitation Velveeta cheese, off-brand peanut butter, white bread. And when the bread got old, my mom would batter it with flour and eggs and fry it — so now you're eating fried bread. Is there anything worse for a man's diet than that? So growing up, by the time I got to sophomore year, I was about thirty, thirty-five pounds overweight. Junior year comes, and I realize, holy crap, next year is prom, and I want to ask this girl, Nakia, to the prom. When you're thirty-five pounds overweight and you don't have the self-esteem and confidence, all you're thinking is, if I were in better shape like the athletes who play football, I'd have a better chance of asking her out and her saying yes. I was kind of the pariah at school — I didn't have a clique I belonged to. I wasn't with the nerds, I wasn't with the musicians, I wasn't with the athletes. During lunchtime I was the kid who just walked around the quad, couldn't wait until lunch was over because it was awkward for me. But in my science class, my science partner was a guy named Dave, who was the center of the high school football team. In science class we were chummy, we were friends, but outside of science class he'd shun me — he was part of the cool group and I wasn't. So I said, "Dave, how do I get jacked like you? I want to ask Nakia to the prom next year, and I need to lose weight, I need to get muscular." And he said, "Tell you what, one of these days I'll take you to the school gym after school." So he takes me to the gym, and it was the most intimidating place ever — I'm awkwardly working out, the barbell alone is all over the place, I've got no proprioception, no balance, no mind-muscle connection built yet. Everyone's grunting and squatting and deadlifting and benching all this heavy weight, and I'm thinking, what am I doing here, I don't even belong here. But Dave keeps bringing me back, and soon I'm starting to see development in my body. The summer before senior year, I get a gym membership at a Bally's Total Fitness — they no longer exist. I started reading muscle magazines like Flex and Muscle & Fitness, and realized what I was eating as an Armenian wasn't conducive to the outcome I wanted, so I started changing my diet. That summer, being a young man, I lost thirty, thirty-five pounds. I came back senior year looking lean and athletic, and people were taking notice, and I thought, this is it, Nakia is mine. Now, I never had the courage to actually ask Nakia to the prom, so I never ended up going. But people treated me differently — I went from being invisible for three years to being visible and likable in my fourth year of high school. Nothing about my personality had changed — nothing changed other than my physique — but all of a sudden I was visible. So I realized that when I got out of high school, I wanted to help more people achieve this transformation — not so much the physical part, but because of how I felt and how people treated me, I wanted more of that for others. So I got certified as a personal trainer and worked in a big box gym, not realizing that one of the skills you mentioned — sales — selling socks and a tie as a cute kid is one thing, but selling a $500-a-month personal training program is a whole different thing. That's a high-ticket item. If you don't have the skill set, it doesn't matter how jacked you are or how educated you are — I knew where all the muscles originate and insert, I knew the ATP system, I knew all the ways carbohydrates get stored in your body and used as energy, but I didn't know how to sell. So I was the personal trainer with three personal training clients, and I worked weekends as a bouncer at a gay bar because it paid more than the straight bars, and I made ends meet working at Disneyland as a busboy and a fry cook. I had three jobs even though I only wanted to do the one thing, which was personal training.

Jim Franco and the Fast Track to Success

Bedros Keuilian: One of my three personal training clients was this older guy named Jim Franco — an entrepreneur in his late sixties, very direct in how he spoke. He'd come to the gym, and I'd see him pull up in a different car every day — an SUV, a Mercedes, a sports car. I said, "Jim, how many cars do you have?" He said, "Oh, I've got four cars." I said, "I've only got this old beat-up truck." He said, "You know, when you make enough money you can have as many cars as you want," and that blew my mind. Then I asked, "How is it you get here at two-thirty in the afternoon — are you retired?" He said, "No, I'm the founder and CEO of my company, and I can leave whenever I want because I've got systems in place. I've got people who run the systems, and the systems run the company." I thought, holy crap — little did I know I had a built-in mentor. As I was training him, he was mentoring me, and I soon realized I had to become the Jim Franco of the personal training world. He had a software company in the automotive industry, and through his mentorship and guidance, I ended up borrowing $55,000 from him at 8% interest and opening up a little personal training studio. That was the kickoff of me getting into the fitness industry as an entrepreneur. He mentored me and taught me how to sell, how to market, how to retain clients, how to ask for referrals, how to reactivate a former client — things I did not know. They don't teach you that in any manual when you become a personal trainer. Hell, they don't teach you that to doctors or dentists in medical school either. Ironically, those were the skills that helped me make hundreds of millions of dollars, and that ultimately helped me parlay it into Fit Body Boot Camp, the international franchise that it is today.

Tom Rowland: It's incredible — so far there have been two people in your life who were incredibly instrumental, Dave your football-playing friend, and then Jim. Did you have other people in your life you looked up to, or did these two really stand out as a big part of your life?

Bedros Keuilian: I think those two really stood out in terms of what I wanted to do in my life and how I wanted to make money — I was taught that. The other person, really the first person, was my dad, because as an entrepreneur, if you're not willing to take risks, forget it, you're not going to make it. The economy is on its way to crashing right now as we're filming this — crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, has crashed 34, 35%, just like the stock market. I just dropped another $55,000 into it, because while everyone else is running away from it, I'm running into it, because I'm buying at a cheaper price. I've learned to be a risk-taker. I started Fit Body Boot Camp, our franchise, in 2009-2010, at the peak of the housing market crash, when unemployment was over 11%. I've been conditioned by my dad to lean into risk — he risked his life to come to the United States, he risked everything to put money together and buy that shop, he risked it buying a home and renting it out. Between my dad, Dave, and Jim Franco, I started connecting the dots — that mentors are important in your life, and that no man is self-made. When people say, "I'm self-made," it's like, no you're not — if your mom didn't feed you and change your diapers, you'd be dead, so right there you're not self-made. And if your dad wasn't around, well, you're welcome — because he taught you that you can survive on your own, that you can be resilient and resourceful, but you're still not self-made. Some people are an example, like my dad was an example of how to be a risk-taker. Some people are a warning. Either way, no one is self-made — no one is born in a bubble and raises themselves in a bubble. Through all these mentors, I quickly realized there had to be someone out there running gyms better than me, so I started looking for that mentor. There had to be someone who was a better speaker than me — which was easy to find, because I was a horrible speaker — so I found mentors who were professional speakers and paid them for coaching, and paid others to teach me marketing. Before I knew it, I was paying Joe Polish, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy, and Jay Abraham, and each one was stacking on top of the other to make me this ultimate entrepreneur with the mindset that I will stop at nothing to succeed. Because of Dave, my dad, and Jim Franco, by my mid-twenties I knew that mentorship was the fast track to success in anything you want to do.

The Panic Attack That Changed Everything

Tom Rowland: That is awesome. Part of what I wanted to talk to you about today was the Modern Day Knight program, which is basically mentorship. How do we get from there to having the freedom to start another business like the Modern Day Knight program, which is obviously very close to your heart — you're following your purpose. A lot of people are mired in just being the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, which is obviously doing incredibly well. How do we go from that point in the story to where you have the freedom to start looking at other things, like the Modern Day Knight program?

Bedros Keuilian: That's a really good question, and once again I have to point back to adversity and how adversity ultimately becomes an advantage. While I had mentors who taught me entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, follow-up, retention, referral generation, and reactivation, as you start building a brand you start getting an assistant, then another employee. Right around when I had six or seven employees — this was the year 2013 — I had a massive panic attack. I'd never had a panic attack before. I'd felt anxious, I'd felt stressed — what entrepreneur doesn't feel stressed and anxious throughout their life as they're building up? But this one morning, as I was getting ready to leave my home, I thought I was having a heart attack. I was 37, 38 years old. I remember thinking, okay, this is how I die — and it's so weird how quickly you accept death. And then I felt this immense sadness, because I realized I was letting three people down: my wife, who I was supposed to protect and be there for; my son, who I was supposed to teach and raise to be a modern day knight, a chivalrous young man who's purpose-driven and confident; and my daughter, who I wasn't going to be able to walk down the aisle someday. I'd gone up to my guest house that morning to get my shoes — I'd left my tennis shoes there the night before because I play the drums barefoot. As I bent down to pick up my shoes, what I thought was a heart attack started taking place. I stumbled out of the guest house thinking — and this is what's weird, man, men are so stupid — one, I accepted death that quickly; two, of course, all the sadness about who's going to take care of my family; and three, I thought, they cannot find me at the end of the day in this guest house, because if they do I'll have rigor mortis and look swollen and nasty, and the last image of me can't be that — my family would be traumatized. So my plan was that if I could just stumble down the staircase and die on the pool deck, my wife would find me sooner or later when she let the dog out, and I'd be fresh enough that I'd look somewhat normal. I know it's twisted, but that's literally what went through my mind. As I stumbled down the staircase and got to the pool deck, I don't know if it was the fresh air or the movement, but all of a sudden the tightness in my chest went away, my heart rate went back to normal, the tingling in my hands went away, and I was left standing in a sweaty puddle thinking, I just dodged a heart attack. Well, work wasn't going to wait for me, so I put my shoes on and went to work. That night I told my wife, "Guess what — I dodged a heart attack this morning." She said, "We're going to the doctor." We went, they did the EKG and all the tests, and the doctor said, "You didn't have a heart attack, you probably had an anxiety attack. Are you stressed and overworked?" And before I could answer, my wife said, "Yes, he is, he's a mess."

What ended up really happening — the reason I share this with you — is that I'd become a great entrepreneur, in that I could market, sell, and create a product and a service. But as my team grew, I was not a great leader. I'd never been put in a position to lead, and leadership is not factory-installed in most people. So when the time came to actually lead, I didn't know how to communicate well, I didn't know how to ask my team for what I wanted, I was passive-aggressive with them, I didn't know how to discipline them. I felt like they had it out for me — why aren't they working as hard as me? But who's going to work as hard as you for your own business? If the leader at least gives some vision, some direction, some KPIs, then the team can see it and execute on it — and I knew none of that. I realized in that moment that I was the problem, and that leadership was the problem, and I lacked it. So I went all in on learning about leadership. I spent the next three years learning how to lead my team. My team grew, and now we have well over seventy team members here at HQ and across the nation, and I was able to recruit other leaders to come in as VPs, directors of operations, and COOs. Before long, my plate was empty enough that I could do something like the project, and help other men who were in my position — who'd built a business but were anxious, suffering in silence, feeling like they were just running on a hamster wheel. Yes, I was making a lot of money, but I couldn't sleep at night. I was taking NyQuil to fall asleep, then I started adding Vicodin on top of the NyQuil, and a pot of coffee and pre-workout to wake up in the morning. I was on that cycle, and I realized very quickly — one, leadership was the problem, and two, there were some issues I had to deal with. So when I asked the doctor if he could put me on Xanax, he did, and within a week of being on it I had no desire to perform in my business — no creativity, because it just numbs you. I went back a week later and said, "Doc, this isn't working." He said, "Well, you've got to go do talk therapy — you need a therapist to give you tools to deal with your anxiousness and your stress." In talk therapy, within four sessions, my therapist, Kevin, taught me HALT — hungry, angry, lonely, tired. When you're in that state, you're more likely to have an anxiety attack or a panic attack. The alcoholic is more likely to go back to the bottle, the gambler is more likely to go gamble. And anxiety is anticipation of future pain — so rather than anticipating the pain, deal with it, have the communication, solve it, lean into it. He taught me some tools, and within four weeks I had no anxiousness, no feeling like I was going to have a panic attack. On the fifth session I said, "Kevin, looks like we're done here, you gave me the tools I need, thank you, see you later." But he'd built such a relationship with me in those four and a half, five weeks that he asked, "Before you leave, is there anything else we need to talk about — maybe your family growing up, anything that took place in Armenia?" I thought about it and said, "Nope, everything's good." He said, "Are you sure?" I said, "Listen, I grew up in a rough-and-tumble environment because my dad's a former communist, and I grew up around gangs here in Southern California, but none of the beatings my dad gave me and none of the gang violence I experienced held a candle to what happened to me in Armenia." He looked at me and said, "Holy crap, what happened?" And I broke down and started crying. For some reason he'd built such rapport and trust with me that I felt safe enough to open up about the fact that I was molested as a young boy in Armenia, between the ages of four and six. When we escaped, my mom and dad still didn't know that they'd freed me from that constant molestation by two older boys.

When you go back and look at the pattern of my life — having a chip on my shoulder, feeling like I had to be successful at any cost, feeling unlovable, sabotaging my own success, poor communication — all of that was really a byproduct of trauma I had experienced and never processed, walking around with a chip on my shoulder as a victim, as a broken man trying to shelter and protect myself with money and wealth. So many men do that, and it doesn't really work. As I healed, and put myself through six-week challenges — training for a marathon, doing MMA and jiu-jitsu, you name it — I realized there's something about voluntarily putting yourself through suffering and adversity, and then also working with a therapist on your own traumatic situations and healing from it. As I did, I became a better husband, a better father, a better entrepreneur, a better leader. Fit Body Boot Camp hit the Inc. 5000 list two years in a row, then the third year it hit the top 200 franchises in the nation, and the fourth year we hit record numbers — and that is not a coincidence, man. The leader healing, the business skyrocketing, the relationships blossoming — it was all happening at the same time.

Birth of the Modern Day Knight Project

Bedros Keuilian: When I wrote my book, Man Up, in 2018, I talked about working with a therapist, about doing these six-week challenges and putting yourself through hardship for periods at a time, and how you grow from it, how you meet your higher self, how you reach a greater level of mental toughness and discipline — I call it "the other place." You go into that other place, the other room, where you become unstoppable. Every one of us has that, but we need to deal with some level of adversity to get there. All these guys started reaching out to me after reading the book, saying, "You ought to put together some challenge, some experience where we could feel that." So I decided I was going to find a Navy SEAL to be my lead instructor — I already had an angry Marine who was a coaching client of mine who could be another lead instructor — and I needed someone to teach MMA and fighting, and someone to teach pistol and rifle manipulation. I would teach the mindset, business development, and building a routine to win in life. So the five of us ran our first Project class for men. I just put up a post — no website, nothing — and said, "It's $12,000 for three days. I'm looking for twelve men to come and go through this seventy-five-hour experience with a Navy SEAL, an angry Marine, a SWAT operator, an MMA guy, and me. There's a bell — if you ring it, you quit. But if you make it to hour seventy-five, we're going to an awesome steak dinner together, and you're part of this amazing brotherhood." That was almost three years ago. Since then we've run fourteen classes. Over 135 men have graduated from the Project, and over 212 men have attempted it — about a 25% dropout rate; they ring the bell and quit. I told Ray, the SEAL, "We do not need a bell." He said, "Yes we do — if you want me to run this like Hell Week." He used to be a Hell Week instructor, a BUD/S instructor. He said, "Those guys who go through actual Hell Week volunteered for it, so it's easier for them to quit. These guys are paying $12,000 apiece for three days — they're not going to quit after paying that kind of money." I said, "Alright, we're not going to need it, but ring the bell." Dude, I was blown away when guys would just get up from the beach or the asphalt or the mud pit or the ice bath and say, "I'm gonna ring the bell." I'd try to talk them out of it — it would maybe last twenty or thirty minutes, and then they'd get right back up and go ring the bell and quit anyway. So we do have ringers, sadly, but the Modern Day Knight Project builds mental toughness and personal discipline, and helps every man work through his own baggage — because one out of every four men has been sexually abused, one out of every three has been physically or verbally abused. No matter the abuse — physical, verbal, sexual, emotional — it lights up the fight-or-flight system in the brain and creates trauma, which then creates a false identity: that we're unlovable, that we're not meant for success. We start to put an upper limit on how much happiness and love we can accept, and that's how we tear up our relationships and our business success, because our identity tells us we're not supposed to get there, that we're a messed-up person. The Project works on every category of man in those seventy-five hours, and those who graduate become part of an ongoing brotherhood — we connect twice a year in person, we have a private Facebook group, and it's this awesome healing experience.

Tom Rowland: Man, I love that. I did something similar before you started the Modern Day Knight program — I did SEALFIT, the Kokoro, and I talk about it on the podcast all the time because it was transformative in my life. It hit almost all of those things. But where I see you doing something differently is there's more business built into it, and then there's this community that follows. Ray had talked about the community, and I also had Rich Vanek on the show, and he talked about the community that follows the Modern Day Knight program. When I finished SEALFIT, I reached out to as many people as I could and stayed in contact with a few, but not all, and I wish I had, because we went through some things that only we will know — it rocked you to the core, stripped you down to absolutely nothing, and then because of the people around you, you were built back up. It's interesting — this is another thing I've talked about a lot, so if you've heard it a million times, sorry — but at SEALFIT we were encouraged to talk and help each other. Then I did another one called GORUCK Selection, where you're not allowed to talk to anyone — it's a violation if you try to help anyone. I made it through SEALFIT with the help of all my new friends, and in GORUCK we were doing almost the same thing, but it was much, much more difficult. I learned lessons from both — it's easier to succeed when you have a team around you, and if you try to Rambo through life, it's very, very difficult.

Bedros Keuilian: I like the way you just said that — if you try to Rambo this life, it's very difficult. We are tribal, we are pack animals, and anyone who thinks they're a lone wolf, that they're self-made, that they're an island, is going to suffer.

Tom Rowland: Yes, and suffering is one thing — a lot of people can suffer and still be somewhat successful. But when you have a team, and you learn that helping someone else at your darkest moment will lift you up more than almost anything else you could do, that's a big lesson. I really like what you're doing, embracing business and entrepreneurship along with the routine and the habit, and how you're going to get incredible momentum from this program, and unlock parts of your brain and your potential that you didn't even know you had. But where are you going to be in two years? How do you keep that going?

Bedros Keuilian: It creates accountability, and we all know that which is tracked and measured gets improved. When you have guys from your class and other classes as part of a community that meets up twice a year in person, and connects regionally and constantly through the Facebook group — they do business together, they get tattoos from each other because a couple of them are world-renowned tattoo artists, some are amazing financial advisers, and now Rich Vanek met a guy in the group and they're business partners together. When I see that happen, I think, holy crap, we created something so much bigger than us, and it brings me so much joy. To see these men heal — because I take them through a journaling process called "killing your toxic cognitions," which are the false beliefs you hold about yourself — there are really three things that separate the Project from anything like it. One, I believe money is a weapon, and we have to make an obscene amount of money to have financial freedom, and then let that cup overflow so we can help others — churches, causes, charities — and that's a gift I have in entrepreneurship, so I teach that. The second is that journaling process of killing the toxic cognitions, realizing that whatever experience happened to you doesn't define your identity — it's just a blip on the timeline of your life. For the first time ever, these men brutally talk about what happened to them, and look left and right and see that no one is judging them, that others have gone through similar experiences, and they realize they don't have to carry that heavy burden anymore. And the third thing is the brotherhood beyond the seventy-five hours that keeps them connected and accountable. Sometimes I think I didn't even start the Project — it just kind of worked through me and became this thing. Ray and I joke that if we got hit by a bus, we've got easily another ten guys from the brotherhood who could step into our position and keep running this thing.

Meeting Ray Care

Tom Rowland: I love that. How did you and Ray connect?

Bedros Keuilian: Well, you've had Ray on your show, so you know he's a very colorful individual. About three and a half, almost four years ago, I was asked to do a keynote presentation at a big event in Miami. One of my dear friends, Jason Redmond, also a Navy SEAL, was a speaker at that event, and he introduced me to another SEAL who was in the same BUD/S class as him — this stacked powerhouse of a man, Ray Care. Ray, with his magnanimous personality, said, "Good to meet you, I'm the opener to the opener to the opener for you" — and that immediately got me to laugh. After my presentation, I could see out of the corner of my eye, in the shadows offstage, someone with his back to me, and I thought, that's Ray. Afterward I asked him, "Buddy, was that you? What were you doing?" He said, "Oh, I wanted to make sure I heard your whole presentation — I had to pee, so I was peeing in a bottle." I thought, alright, that's interesting — I didn't realize that's what I was getting into as a future business partner. He said, "Hey, after lunch, you want to go hang out at the bar?" I said sure, I'll have a drink with you. He said, "We're going to do this thing called the Stuntman." I asked what that was — figured it was like a Shirley Temple, the name of a drink. So he tells the bartender, "Two Stuntmen, please," and the bartender looks at him like he has no idea what he's talking about. Ray says, "Give me two shots of tequila, two limes, and the salt shaker." The idea is you sprinkle salt on your hand and snort it, shoot the tequila, then take the lime, open your eye, and squeeze the lime juice into your eye — and there you have it, a Stuntman. I was in all kinds of pain with fluids running out of my body, and Ray said, "You're a good guy." I said, okay, if you say so. Then I asked him, "What do you do — are you an active SEAL?" He said, "No, I work for the three-letter agency" — meaning he still went on deployments as a CIA contractor. I said, "Look, I'm looking for someone just like you — who knows fitness, has a larger-than-life personality, has your kind of background — for an experience I want to run in a few months. Can I pay you to do it?" He said, "Yeah, but it has to be June or July — those are the only two months I'm here in the States." So that's when we ran the first one, and it was successful. I said, "Ray, this was successful, I want to run a second one — when are you here?" He said, "October, November, I'm back." So we ran one in October — a bigger class, just as successful. I said, "Ray, I think we can make this a thing." He said, "Really?" I said, "Yeah, but I don't want to do it around your deployment schedule — I want to run this five or six times a year." He said okay, and I asked what the agency was paying him, and when he told me, I said, "You can turn in your resignation, you're hired." And that's how we got into business together.

The Squire Program: A Rite of Passage

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. There's another element to this story I'm very interested in — I know you just finished a class with the Squire program. Tell me about the Squire program.

Bedros Keuilian: Well, again, this whole thing works through me, Ray, Steve, Aaron, and Matt, the instructors — we can't take any credit for what the Project has become, and what it spawned as the Squire program. Four or five classes in, these men who are graduating say, "I've got so much more self-awareness, I can communicate with my wife and my team better, I'm more emotionally stable, I've got more mental toughness, I know I deserve love and abundance and freedom and opportunity — if only I'd known all this stuff, like how to fight, how to use a pistol, how to shake a man's hand properly." We teach them things men unfortunately don't know anymore — like standing up to shake hands and making eye contact, opening a door for a woman or another man, standing in front of a woman on a descending escalator so you can catch her if she falls, standing behind her on an ascending escalator so she doesn't fall backward, taking the street side when you're walking down the sidewalk with someone. These are basic things that, once I learned them, I wanted to pass on to other men, and every guy would say, "Man, I wish I'd known this stuff when I was younger." I kept hearing that over and over. So I said, "Hey Ray, what if we created a thing?" At the time I was reading Joseph Campbell's book, The Power of Myth — fantastic book, very dense, so if you're going to read it, don't read it, just listen to the audio version, because I've been through it nineteen times now just so I can understand it. I have OCD — when I want to do something, I lock on and go all in, which is also a curse, but that's a whole other conversation. In his book, Campbell talks about how, for thousands of years, every culture and community had a rite of passage for boys. For a young girl, something physical happens — her menstrual cycle starts, she develops — that tells her she's now a woman. For a young man, there's nothing that happens around thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old that says, "You're a guy now" — maybe you get a little hornier, grow a mustache, get some armpit hair, but what's actually happening? So tribes and cultures created rites of passage. The Aborigines would take a young man around thirteen or fourteen, steal him away from his mom with the father's blessing, take him to the edge of the forest as the sun was going down, cut his arm just enough to draw blood, hand him a knife, and say, "Fend for yourself tonight — the blood will attract predators, you've got to find shelter, fire, food, and water, and don't come out until the sun comes up, and we'll be right here waiting for you." That young man, bleeding, has to fend for himself, and when he comes out in the morning, that was his rite of passage — he comes out as a young man, and now he has a seat at the table with the men of the tribe, where he'll learn to hunt, to fight, to protect, and he'll have a voice in decision-making. That's how tribes were tribal. Every culture had different variations of this. In another tribe in New Guinea, the dad and his close friends would wear evil-looking masks, like devils, and the mom would know that sometime that day they were going to come steal her fourteen or fifteen-year-old son from the house. She'd fight them — "No, don't take my baby, don't take my child, he's my son" — but they'd take him from her anyway, and right outside the hut they'd beat him up with these scary masks, just enough to let him fight back and win. After he takes a good beating and starts fighting back, they let him win, and at some point the dad takes off his mask, puts it on the boy's face, hugs him, and says, "Welcome to the tribe — you've won a seat at the table." That was his initiation, just like gangs have initiations, prison has initiations, the military has initiations — there's always an initiation into manhood. Now he's won the right to learn to hunt, to protect, to have a voice, to have mastery of some skill of value to the tribe — he's no longer a child, no longer dependent, no longer a liability, he's an asset. We are missing that in our communities right now. This is why young men who are thirty-four years old are still living in their mom's basement, playing video games, depressed and anxious and unable to sleep at night, because they're still dependents — liabilities, not assets, to their family and their community. This is why we're prescribing four times the mood medication we ever have in this country — because we have declawed and defanged young men. Just because you put a lion in a cage doesn't mean it doesn't still want to claw and hunt — that trigger to hunt and chase prey as a predator is still there. And then we wonder what's happened to our young men, why they're so-called "toxic" in their masculinity. Toxic masculinity shouldn't exist as a phrase — you're either masculine, or you're toxic because you've been declawed and defanged and not allowed to explore, to adventure, to experience battle. Not battle like going to war and killing people — maybe that too, if you join the military — but battle can be fighting the system and building a business amid competition. I've been in battle in the franchising space, and it feels good to fight that battle and come home with money and say, "Wife, I made money, let's get a bigger house, let's give our family a better experience, let's donate more to our church and our cause." A man has that desire, and when it's not encouraged and fulfilled, he starts to get depressed and anxious — that's what society is dealing with. So we committed to the Squire program — a fifteen-hour experience with the same instructors from the Project, but far less violent. It's a father-and-son experience where the fathers guide their sons through this rite of passage, and at the fifteenth hour we blindfold all the boys, and the fathers guide them through a scary obstacle course with bear traps, razor wire, and rusty nails. The idea is to trust the voice within — right now, that voice is the father's — while we instructors and our junior instructors give a lot of negative voices from the outside, trying to pull their attention another way. They navigate this fifty-yard obstacle course and get to the other side, where the dad takes off the blindfold, hugs him, and welcomes him into manhood, and says, "My friends and I will now pour into you as a man, son." Every class of the Squire program sells out — we did one in Maine with Ryan Michler, we've got one in July with Tim Kennedy and Wes Whitelock, one in North Carolina in November with Nick Kanalopoulos, and one in September here in Southern California with the original Project crew.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's amazing. What is it like at that moment when they're taking the blindfold off?

Bedros Keuilian: Man, I did this myself when my son turned thirteen — he's sixteen now. Since there was no Squire program yet, I created this whole experience myself, going to Idaho, where a friend owns a shoot house. I took nine friends with me, men I trust, who, God forbid I died, I would want to help lead my son. We put my son through a scary experience all day long in the shoot house in different scenarios, and then we all circled up around him and poured into him, and I said, "Son, congratulations, this was your initiation into manhood." I'd read a book called Raising a Modern-Day Knight when my wife was pregnant, and that's what gave me the idea. To this day, every class of the Squire program we run has, say, twenty pairs of dads and sons, eighty attendees total — forty dads, forty sons. When they cross that finish line and take the blindfold off, I'm six-foot-two, two hundred and thirty pounds, and I just want to fall apart and cry every time. It's something I never had, and I gave it to my son — I see how meaningful it is. My son and I are best friends now — we work out together every night, we play ping pong, we do the hot tub, we're inseparable. To see these dads create those relationships and bonds in such a short time, and then commit to their sons moving forward — yeah, it's emotional, it's healing, it's therapeutic, and it gives me hope for our country. This is such an amazing country, the United States, and we're one generation away from losing our constitutional rights, freedoms, opportunities, and liberties. If we don't pass this along to the next generation, they'll let go of what we have, and we'll become like all the others — because, as my friend John Lovell said, freedom is not the natural state of man. Sadly, men want to oppress and enslave other men, and we must have good men who are willing to stand in the gap.

Tom Rowland: Wow. And is that message received loud and clear in the Squire program?

Bedros Keuilian: Absolutely — that they have a greater responsibility than just their family and community; they have a responsibility to the nation and the freedom this nation gives.

Tom Rowland: I love it. Do they have a community after the fact — do these boys, now men, join their own community, or the Modern Day Knight community, or what's the follow-up?

Bedros Keuilian: Good question. We class them up together — every Squire class, the young men connect through a private Facebook group, and now we're actually creating a Mighty Networks group so it's not tied to social media, just a network minus the social media aspect. It's cool to see these boys swapping numbers and staying connected — they have their own little tribe of men now. I told Ray, if we do our job right with the Squire program, and we can run more of them across the country in the years to come, we should be able to work our way out of a job where the Project is concerned — if we do this right, we'll never have to run another Modern Day Knight Project class again.

Fatherhood and Raising Strong Men

Tom Rowland: Well, I think it's amazing — both what you're doing with men, having experienced something similar myself, and giving that opportunity to boys, no matter where you are in life, you can learn things about yourself, and it's an outstanding way to do it. My son did something similar — I'd had such an incredible experience with SEALFIT that I was looking for something like that for him. He did what they call a 20X — a short experience, maybe twenty hours, half the time of a Kokoro, at fifteen years old, and he came out the other side a different person. I bought him a shotgun afterward — he'd always wanted one — and it was his rite of passage: you did big-boy things, now you get a big-boy toy, you're no longer a boy, you now have the responsibility of owning a firearm, you're a man. He came away with this newfound confidence — he was confident before, but now he knew, I did this test, I passed it, and it was awesome.

Bedros Keuilian: There's a great book out there — let me grab the title, I think your audience would love it. Stand by while I pull it up in the library... Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge. He says that every boy is looking to hear one thing from his dad, and that is, "Son, you have what it takes" — in other words, you have what it takes to be a man. Mom can't deliver that, no one else can deliver that but the dad. So many dads are absent because of a fifty percent divorce rate, or of the fifty percent who are together, many are just emotionally absent, and they were never told that themselves, so they can't say it to their sons. That's one of the things we have the dads tell their sons at the end of the Squire program — "Son, you have what it takes" — because these sons go through some scary stuff during those fifteen hours, and then that final evolution, blindfolded, and you can just tell the son was looking to hear those words from his dad. It's a very different relationship moving forward.

Tom Rowland: Have you had communication with a lot of the dads about their relationship with their sons afterward?

Bedros Keuilian: We do. During the Project, there's a two-hour gap where we separate the sons and fathers, and take the fathers to a different building at our headquarters — we call it our learning center. Two of my instructors, Steve and Matt, the Marine and the SWAT guy, talk to the dads about how it's their job to let their son know he has what it takes, but you can't just tell him that — you have to put him through the test, and that's what this is. You can't withhold saying "I love you," and how you role-model your relationship with his mom is what he's going to go and duplicate. We educate the dads for two hours, and I had to do this once myself — I walked into that meeting instead of being with the sons like I usually am, and I said, "Guys, there's about seven of you here that I can look at and say, you look like a pumpkin, and your son looks like a pumpkin. You look like a pear, and your son looks like a pear." And then there's a guy who looks like an absolute beast, and his son looks like a beast too — the reality is they will model us. So I told these dads, in private, away from their sons, because I never want to embarrass them, look, you've got a duty and an obligation to take care of your health, to be battle-ready physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. There's a battle taking place right now, where forces are trying to disorient and confuse our kids about basic things, and we need fathers to step in, because there's a battle for the minds and hearts of our young men and women happening. If a man can't be physically fit, if he can't respect the house he lives in, how is he going to respect his son, his wife, his community? He's not. So those are some of the tough conversations we have with these dads as well.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, and needed. It's a strange thing — as a father myself, I had to come to the realization that putting your health first isn't a selfish thing. Putting in time for a workout, for physical fitness — that's not selfish, that's your duty, because you have to do that in order to take care of your family.

Bedros Keuilian: How can you be your best for others if you're not at your best? So you may just have to find a different time to do it — you may not be able to do it at your leisure at four in the afternoon when there are soccer games and wrestling matches, you might have to get up at four in the morning to do it. You create that time.

Tom Rowland: That's something I feel very strongly about, but I had to come to a whole different realization — this isn't me taking time for myself, I'm doing this for all the people around me. That was a big change. If people wanted to get involved in the Modern Day Knight program or the Squire program, what would they do?

Where to Learn More

Bedros Keuilian: Easiest thing to do is follow me or Ray on Instagram — my handle is @bedroskeuilian, and Ray's is @raycare. Or they can just Google "Modern Day Knight Project" and our site should pop up, and they can learn more about it. It's the most healing, intense experience any man could have.

Tom Rowland: I love it, man, I'm totally down with the whole thing, I think it's fantastic. I don't know how or where, but I've told Ray this too — I want to get together with you guys and do some training.

Bedros Keuilian: I would love that. Where's your base — where are you located?

Tom Rowland: Either in Florida or in Chattanooga, Tennessee — I spend a lot of time there, so the Florida Keys or Chattanooga. But I go all over the place, so I don't know — name it, and I'll try to be there. I really would love to, you guys have got a good energy and I want to experience it.

Bedros Keuilian: Thank you, appreciate that.

Tom Rowland: Well, thank you so much for your time — I know you're a super busy guy, and your story is incredible. If you want to learn more, Man Up is a fantastic book, and it's also on audio — I listened to it on audio and it's fantastic. And he's on a ton of podcasts, donating his time to spread his message, and you do a great job of it — you're a great communicator. Bedros, thank you very much, and we'll be back for another awesome episode next week. Do yourself a favor — seek out Bedros Keuilian, read his book, check out his podcast, and if you're at all interested in the Modern Day Knight Project, I think you should do it, and I think you should get your son involved in the Squire program too. Alright, that's it for this week — we'll see you next week.