What's up guys? I'm so excited to bring you today's episode with a powerful Rakes to Riches story with a self-made millionaire. Bedros Kullian is a mastermind entrepreneur with a savage mindset for success. He's buying multiple brands and businesses, including his own Fit Body Bootcamp.
Today we're exposing how hyper-successful people get their morning routine and have its right, how to set yourself up to win the battle of business, and the rules and rituals you need around your social media news. I hope you guys love listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. And if you do, please leave a review of our podcast that really is the best way to support what we're doing so that we can get the show out to more people so that they can develop an unbeatable mindset for business and success. I'm Tom Billio and welcome to Impact Theory.
Bedros Kullian, welcome back to the show. Tom, thank you for having me again. I'm Stokesman. So why is it that people that are hyper-successful are so obsessed with getting their morning routine right?
And what should everybody watching this right now do to make theirs crispy? That's a really good question. I think the morning routine is something that will set anybody up for success, right? Because when you wake up and I wake up and the next guy wakes up, we all have about the same number of time.
Actually, exactly the same number of time. And so since we know that, that means what you do versus what I do matters. And so if I'm screen sucking, the moment I get up, I'm looking at social media, what's going on Facebook, who's talking about what on Instagram, and you're like, hey, I've got this GSD list. I call it the get shit done list.
And the GSD list is you're just going to wake up and dominate your day. Like my morning routine is wake up. Never hit this news button. We've talked about this on your show previously.
Drink my 30 ounces of water because Sean Stevenson said so. And then take a shower and then end up downstairs with my protein shake and my coffee and more water and work off my GSD list. Like that sets me up to win. Checking in on social media is not part of my morning routine because all of a sudden, something on social media might trigger me to feel like I'm missing out.
Might trigger me to feel like I should have been in an event might trigger me to feel like a sense of guilt, a sense of shame, a sense of whatever. And any of those things, any of those feelings and emotions are not things that I would take into the battle of business. And I'm in the battle of business because when I make money, I can have a greater sense of meaning with it. And so I cannot take emotions and feelings and thoughts that I got from social media, especially in the morning to the battlefield of business where I do most of my heavy work in the morning.
So that morning routine sets me up to win. And soon as I'm done with my GSD list by about 9 a.m. Like you can say you're clocked to me. I go right to the gym and work out intentionally put my phone and my cubby at the gym.
And because then I'm susceptible to looking at the screen. And if I'm doing that, all of a sudden my workout is less than stellar, which means I feel like a failure. And now I'm more likely to compound failure throughout the day. So that's how I look at it.
So conversely, if I slept in, hit this button, didn't drink 30 ounces of water, just took a sip of water, now I'm going to be late to work. I feel rushed. The subconscious mind is telling me that I'm a loser, I'm a failure. I'm an imposter.
I'm going to lead a international franchise or a supplement company or write another book when you're a loser dude, right? The subconscious mind speaks to us. That's the inner critic. And so to shut down the inner critic and give voice to the inner advocate, a strong warning routine sets you up to win the day, win the day, win the week.
And then off you go, you want a year and then a decade. So crazy to me how much that matters. Like you can get off by just a little and your efficiency starts to be off. And then the day just isn't as useful as it could have been.
And it really, it really does start with morning, like getting people to understand if you get the morning right, then the rest of your day you're going to be able to be far more productive. And when you start stacking those things, that really is the difference between somebody that accomplishes a lot and somebody that doesn't look, I don't want to deny the intellect plays a big role, education plays a big role. But if you are inefficient, to your point about, okay, we all have the same number of hours. So it comes down to how are you spending your time?
But there's something like, I might have wanting to say more words because there's something ineffable that I'm not capturing yet, which is there is a really subtle difference between a high performance day and a mediocre day. And when I think about, certainly the thing that has been my superpower is I'm able to generate momentum. So I can go from standing still, nobody knows who I am, nobody believes in what I'm trying to do. We don't have a company incorporated like all of that.
And then, oh, you know, those firms like getting the machine moving is so hard, that's what I can do. And whether that's a new project, whether that's a whole company, whatever, I can get those early things going, every day feels like that. And on the days where I am battered and beaten psychologically, and I what I call hiding in bed, and I'm hiding in bed, and you just even if I just miss getting out of bed, because I give myself 10 minutes, if I get out of bed in 11 minutes, I'm like, oh, I know where this goes. There's something I'm pushing against that is stop either I didn't go to bed on time, I didn't sleep well, I'm stressed, whatever, but there's something going on that made getting up unusually hard that day.
And then it just spirals. And so getting people to understand how important it is to do the most important things first, do them efficiently, get the psychological momentum going so that you can believe in yourself. You have that credibility, you get going. It really makes a big difference, but it's hard to explain.
It is hard to explain, but sometimes you don't need an explanation. For example, if you just watch what winners do and do what they do, odds are you will eventually have a similar outcome. Great example is, I believe you may have shared this at either Flash and Elevator Nights when we all spoke there, or it might have been when you were kind enough to come and do my podcast, but you said, if I wake up with, correct me if I'm wrong, if I wake up within 20 minutes of my alarm going off, I don't go back to sleep, I just get up, I'm like, I'm adopting that. I'm adopting that.
Now, if it was some crackhead who Rob Banks says that, I may not adopt that, but you're someone I respect that I want to be like, and emulate, you know what, I'm going to add that to my repertoire. Like, I don't know why Sean wrote in his book, that he didn't drink their damn water in the morning. I don't care why I trust him, and I trust that he's a great scientist, and he's all about human optimization. I'm going to do that.
I trust you as an entrepreneur, and so when I look up to you in this category of life, I'm going to do that. And so I just started adopting things. And I think there's a gift to just being, for lack of a better term, ignorant. Like, you know, ignorance is bliss.
So much of my success has just been because no one told me that I couldn't fly. No one said those, you don't have wings. And so I was like, watch this. And I flew.
I mean, I created a software company with no software background, a franchise without any, without a dropout of college of 32 days, right out of junior college, right? They're like, well, you don't have a lot of reason. Why did you drop out? I just felt like I didn't belong.
I was constantly, just like high school, I felt constantly behind, and I figured, all right, I'm going to go to junior college and see if I can get on track. Because, you know, they say, go to college, we're new to, like, I would be the first family member to graduate college, because remember, we escaped Soviet Union came here when I was six. And so it was a big deal. I felt that pressure on me.
And I truly wanted to have a college degree just to say, I've done this, right? But just like high school, it felt like I didn't belong. It felt like I would have to study three or four or five times harder than everyone else. And I remember in high school, the foil method, remember foil first, in or out or last.
Nope. See that no one does. Never heard that. But it was part of algebra or something.
Oh, my God, I cheated my way through all the mathematics. No, I didn't. God bless you. I was so bad at it that I remember showing my answer and the teacher going, but that's, you're not going to get credit because you didn't do foil.
And this is the only thing I remember about high school because she like chastised me so much. She said, you didn't do the first in or out or last. You didn't show your work. You got the answer.
I remember thinking, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, man. I'm going to produce a result. I knew that I was going to do my own boss. I'm going to be my own boss.
I need to produce an outcome. And people are going to produce outcomes for me. I don't care how to produce it. Don't produce it ethically.
Don't produce it by cheating someone, killing someone. I'll produce the outcome I want. And I will actually reward you for producing it faster instead of doing this amount of work. If you can do this amount of work and produce the outcome, our industry rewards that.
The education system doesn't. And so the same thing happened in college. So like 31, 32 days in, I'm like, all right, I'm falling behind. I feel like a dumbass.
I'm having to study three, four times as much to remember things that I feel are irrelevant to my path in life. And so I moved on and was like, all right, full-way entrepreneurship. Any of that chip away at your belief that you could do the entrepreneurship thing? Or you just knew this isn't going to matter?
I felt that I was so unemployable in terms of like every job I got fired from also, right, except for Disneyland. I worked at Disneyland for six and a half years. I didn't get fired. I quit every other job I got fired from.
The Bagel store on by Beble Island, Adventure City, you name it, every place. And so I was like, I'm unemployable. No one wants to employ me. I know I can be a better boss like, and have people like me who are, I don't know, maybe a bit of misfits, free thinkers, outcome producers without showing the work, work for me.
And I'll create my own little tribe. I've always known I was a black sheep. And so school and not doing well, school did not deter me from being an entrepreneur. In fact, all I did was say, this is your only path dude.
No one's going to employ you. You're unemployed, but you're going to lose every job you have. And it was because of the conflict that I have. I always questioned authority.
And I think that's a great behavior to have. But know that if you constantly question authority, you're probably not employable, right? The whole idea of having a boss is there your source of authority. And so I always questioned authority.
I questioned education system. And so I knew that I had to beat my own path. So all I did is solidify my resolve. Yes, interesting.
The idea of questioning authority. So that's always been my problem. I've always had a problem with authority. I'm not even sure.
So I mean, like 50% of us is hardwired. So I'll say that for whatever reason, I just always had an issue with that. So yeah, that's definitely, but I'm very employable. I was an amazing employee.
So it's weird. It's like this bizarre conflict of I hate it. I hate people being able to tell me what to do, which is why I was so hell bent to become my own boss. But I would silently conform.
So it's really interesting and bucking out of that is difficult. I actually want to talk about that. There's going to, I think a huge part of this conversation will end up being about that. But first, I want to talk about imperfect action.
Yes. So we've got our Monaing routine. We know we need to be hyper-efficient. I still think I've failed to convey like that real subtle nuance of what a big difference.
But if people can just, like you said, model the behavior, great, so people have that on lock. But they're going to, most people are diminished by the failures by not being good at school by whatever. They've been kicked in the teeth and not in life. So they convince themselves they're not going to be able to do it.
And the number of people, no matter how many times I say, because I talk a lot about you need to learn, right? So whatever you're going to do, you're going to learn about it. But then people end up in the death loop of like, I'm going to learn for nine years, because I don't think I understand. And I'm like, no, no, if you learn something in the morning, you start using it in the afternoon.
So like you have to go right away. Otherwise it's, it's all going to be book knowledge. It's not going to be practical. It's going to be theoretical.
It's not going to be applied. So what is imperfect action and how have you mustered the courage to actually do it when you know that failure is so possible? So I'll start with the idea of failure first. And I learned from the Pullian Hills book out winning the devil that there is no such thing as failure.
I have refrained it in my head as I will experience temporary defeat many times in my life, but I will never experience failure. And once you accept that, why what's failure? Why won't you expect failures of choice? And so if you choose not to, like if you choose not to drink any more water from that cup, no matter how much I make you, you choose not to drink it, it's not going to happen.
So it's failure when you actually stop trying? It's when you stop trying, it's a choice to stay down, right? And it's okay to stay down and gather your wits and then get back up, hence making it temporary defeat. The moment you choose to stay down, right?
Because I'm not trying, you have given up. So let's just say giving up instead of failure failure shouldn't even exist. It's temporary defeat. So once I know that, I'm like, well, there's no such thing as failure because I choose not to accept their knowledge.
Therefore, I will only see temporary defeats in life. And the more things that I attempt to do that are new, the higher the probability of having temporary defeats. However, each one of those defeats are a lesson that I could learn from and improve because of human mind, a psyche and body are very adaptable. Playing ping pong against one of your guys here was different than playing against Lisa, your wife who's a beast at it.
And so I had to adopt the body is so adaptable. So knowing that if I learned something first thing in the morning, I want to be able to use it as soon as possible. I don't want to wait till it's perfect. I don't want to wait till we have a trademark where the copyright, like I was the one out the gate launching Fit Body Bootcamp before was trademarked.
My training was like, stop. I will always lean into imperfect action because I do know that the universe will collude with me will conspire with me when I am leaning into imperfect action. I can always course correct as I go. See, people always are so black and white, bro.
We are so black and white. And I was the king of black and white. Like, if I do this, and if it doesn't work out, then I will fail. With that mindset, and if that's the only outcome you choose to accept, that's scary, that it's either going to be a win or fail.
What if it's somewhere in the middle that there's a temporary defeat and they're freaking back at the car and go down the next road and then temporary defeat back at the car and go down the next road. So imperfect action tells me that the universe will reward the person who acts the quickest. That's just how the universal collective consciousness works. If we know that to be true, then I will take an idea that I learned.
I will launch it immediately, and I will course correct as I go. And the universe will reward me because of that. And again, you say the universe a or a man of faith, right? I am a man of faith that there's a God higher power, the book that you gave me, my friend, the power of myth, Joseph Campbell, who really talks about consciousness and our human animals.
We are consciousness writing in this meat sack that's a human animal that has impulsively wants to eat and lean into comfort and convenience and greed. And if this was the only cup of water left and a few hours went by, one of us are going to want to attack it. That's what the human animal wants to do. Consciousness goes, I'm just going to look through these windows called the eyes.
I'm going to control my human animal. Most people are their light, their inner radiance are so stifled. The way I showed it at the project, and we'll probably get into the project later, but imagine this light bulb and it goes bright within. That's our radiance.
We are connected to the source of God. And all of our consciousness together is the universe. And so if I take that bulb and I put a black blanket over it and another layer of black blanket and another black blanket soon, you barely see the glow. Most people, their radiance, has been stifled because they put food, drugs, alcohol, infidelity, pornography, laziness, binge watching television, all these layers of distraction over their radiance, they're supposed to glow so bright that if you were able to remove all that, everyone's got that great consciousness.
But all those blankets on top of your light, cycles it and therefore you become more of a human animal because you've stifled consciousness. And so the word greatest work we can ever do in our life is the work we do on ourselves, which is really removing all of those layers of blankets so that the light can shine bright. And then you know this, you walk into somewhere and people are magnetically attracted to you. It's not for any other reason.
Now then you've done the self work. Your Tom 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, just like I'm Bader was 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. And therefore people are like, man, there's something about this person. That's the universal connection.
We don't have consciousness. Their human animal can see that this person is glowing brighter and they're attracted to that. And it's our job then to go, let me help you expose your radiance as well. So the first how do you how do you start falling those napkins, the black cloth?
How do you kill those off? Self awareness, right? Self awareness first. Let's talk about money.
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Until you realize that you are a human animal, I realized that I was a human animal. Meaning you have impulses? Impulsive. That you're emotional.
That you react on emotion and not logic. That you make decisions on feelings. And sometimes those are somewhat permanent decisions based on temporary feelings. And we've all made those.
I'm not pointing fingers. I was a king of making bad decisions on temporary feelings that later led to regret. But 11 years ago, I had this massive panic attack. And I talked about that in my book.
And thank God, man, for that panic attack, because I was 37 years old. I thought I was having a heart attack. I'm like, I'm at the peak of my prime. Fitby who came starting to thrive.
Like just blowing up, it's becoming this international brand. We got recognition from Ink magazine and entrepreneur magazine. Yet my marriage was starting to fall apart. My babies at the time, they're 14 or 15 and 17 now, they wouldn't come running to me when I come into the house because I give off this tense energy.
And I would impulsively just emotionally eat when I get home. Bagels and cream cheese because I needed the dopamine hits. Yet I was running the fitness franchise. So I was incongruent with the fitness industry that I'm supposed to be in.
I'm making videos at the time on YouTube from the chin up because I really want to show the pouring out of shape that I was in. And so I share all this with you because that panic attack led me to realize, okay, one, it wasn't a heart attack thing for me. The doctor did the EKG test and was like, hey, you're good. But how's your life?
I'm like, well, I'm stressed. I'm like drinking NyQuil to fall asleep every night and taking Vigoden to fall asleep. And when we got out of all and drink a whole bunch of coffee to then kick that foggy headiness from the drugs and night before. And so I was always behind on schedule, felt like an imposter because I would expect something from my employees that I wouldn't even do myself.
I share all this with you because that panic attack, which felt like a heart attack, led me to start doing some self work. The self work started with the therapist because I didn't want to take the kitty Xanax, dude. I was on Xanax for four days. And I don't know if you've ever taken Xanax, but for me, it felt like someone turned off my creativity switch.
Like if we have all these different switches, someone just like a dimmer switch brought it down to like one. And so all right, I don't feel anxious, but I also feel like trying anything so I'm just chill out at home. Like four days in, I'm like, this is how I lose it all. So I went back to the doctor, I'm like, dude, I can't take this stuff.
He goes, well, to manage your stress and anxiety. He thought about talking to a therapist. I thought that's for crazy people, right? But reluctantly, I found a good therapist, Dr.
Kevin Downing in Brea, California. And we spent the next like 15 months every Monday, after work, I'd drive to Brea and I'd sit on his couch and some Mondays, I was like, Kevin, can I just, can I just curl up on the couch, pay you to just let me sleep here? Just take a nap. I'm just drained.
He would just have lighter conversations with me those days. Still charged me. And then there was days where we did the heavy work where I just felt like I was just walking to my car and it's parking a lot like I was just walking through molasses. Like we peeled away a lot of scars from childhood trauma, like being molested as a kid in Armenia by two older boys to just being bullied when we came here.
But all this to say, Kevin brought to surface self-awareness for me. And I realized that, dude, I shield and I soothe. The ego is a real thing and it is there to protect us. But the ego will help us shield and soothe.
So if I make a lot of money, I can surround myself with yes people and yes people are going to be good to me. They're going to be doing. So of course I wanted to make a lot of money. All this to say, self-awareness comes from self-work.
Once you do the self-work, you become self-aware. You're like, oh my god, I am flawed, Tom. I'm a horrible friend. When you're like, hey, how's it going?
And I'm like, what do you mean by that? That's because I'm reacting to some weird feelings that I haven't processed through. It may have happened as a kid, man, just because the way you said something gets triggered triggers me, right? And so I started to do the self-work.
It was ugly. It was not fun. I had weeks at a time where I had a process about what happened to me as a kid, man. Do I tell my parents around their 80s?
No, there's no point in telling them they're just going to feel the skill and want to tell the sooner and they're going to die with that memory. Like, so I keep it to yourself. So those are real things at the process. Do I share this publicly?
Well, I feel like I'm supposed to serve humanity and the selfish thing I do is each time I serve humanity, I serve myself. So I'm going to try and talk about this on stage one time. And one day came out on stage. I could see the whole audience swarming in their seats because who the hell wants to hear that, hey, look, if you've been molested or sexually or physically emotionally abused, you probably have trauma and you carry this shield and you're either shielding or soothing, soothing with drugs, alcohol, infidelity, whatever, or shielding as in not letting people win.
And so how's that showing up with your kids, with your friendships, business partnerships, your wife, your husband? And so the more I talk about it, and so I very quickly realized that, oh my god, talking about this allows me to have more aha moments, more aha moments lead me to take off yet another layer of that blanket and the light gets brighter and brighter and the bright of the lights, the light gets, the more people want to hear from me and talk to me and do business with me and stay around me. And I realized this is how we make impact. We all want to serve humanity.
We all know that we're on this planet for a reason. We have a higher level of purpose. And so we feel the gnawing in our gut. Like I want to impact lives.
I want to change lives. I want to inspire people. Cool. Start with fixing victim number one before you go fix everybody else.
You know, talking about the light. So there's two ideas in here. There's the universe is conspiring with you. I definitely love to know more about that.
And then there's the idea of the light is sort of already on, but you've covered it up and you just have to peel it away. How much of it is the light itself, even if you didn't have it covered up, do you is there a way to make that brighter? Like whatever that thing is, or do you feel like, no, we're born perfect and the life diminishes us. I do believe in again, I've got no signs to back this up.
You've probably had far smarter people sitting here at this table who could back this up with some kind of science. But again, I'm so convicted of my beliefs. And how about this? Maybe I'm absolutely wrong.
But just because I believe in this so much that I make it so if that alone makes me successful and happy in life and feeling like I've had some sense of meaning and significance, I'm good to go man. It's interesting. You actually said something earlier and I wanted to say, you know how crazy you sound right now, right? But it's so effective that I so here's another idea.
I don't know how to get people to embody this. But so what you said that made you sound crazy, but to me, I'm totally with you is you were talking about the failure and you're like, I refuse to acknowledge it. You both and you talked about this, but you both have to look at it, assess what went wrong, look at the data, learn from it so that you can do something more effective next time. And at the same time, you have to completely ignore whatever temptation you have to believe that that means that you're not going to succeed in the future and that this is somehow a commentary on your capabilities.
It's this really weird schism of you have to look at both things. So and I think that it's true what you're saying. So I'm not a believer in the universe is conspiring. I think the universe could give a shit.
Like it just it is there's obviously something that we don't understand. So whatever there is some sort of godish thing, there's something I don't understand, right? Why is there something instead of nothing? Arguably the most profound question that you can never ask.
I won't be realized on that. But so there's obviously something. Yeah, there's obviously something that I don't understand, but I don't think it's working for me. I think that there are a set of rules.
The world works a certain way. And so when you were talking about human as animal, that resonates with me. We, I've told my the people in impact theory university like a dozen times, if there's going to be an epitaph on my tombstone, I would like it to read, you're having a biological experience. Meaning even if there is a god that God has given you a set of physics, chemistry, biology, and they work a certain way.
And if you try to fight them, your life will be miserable because you will be unable to predict the outcome of your behaviors. If you can't predict the outcome of your behaviors, you won't be able to take right action, meaning the action that moves you most efficiently towards your goals. So I don't think it's working with me, but I still think everything you said is true. In that, if I align myself with the way things actually work, I'll make rapid progress.
So why does the world, I think the exact word you said where the universe will conspire with the person who acts fastest? I think that's true. I just don't think the universe is not the language I would use. So but it is so in alignment with the first person to act will learn faster than the next person.
They're obviously not afraid to fail. If they can lower their ego enough to take in the lesson of whatever failure they get by moving first, then they can improve and keep going. It's the action improvement and continuing to move. That's the conspiring.
But whether you believe that it's God that's going to work with you, the universe is going to work with you because you do it or you just fucking do it, whatever, as long as you're on that path, you're going to win. So I think we might be saying the same thing, bro. 100%. There's no doubt.
Because you just said that on your tombstone, if there's going to be anything, it's going to say that you're having a biological experience and this biological experience, said by God or whoever else, whatever else, right, there's rules to the game is kind of what you're implied. And that if you play by the rules that you're going to win, if you don't play by the rules, if you don't understand the game, it's going to be a painful life, a painful human experience, right? We kind of read that. And so the way I look at it is it's just that the source, universe, all of our collective consciousness together is like, we've all agreed subconsciously.
These are the rules. Every person knows that you've got to lean into imperfect action. Do they? I doubt what they do.
If you take out the layers, bro, take out the layers. It has a lot of work. This is why we all start off as some level of radiance. Like you look at a child so pure going back to the question you asked, like, is that light just on?
I believe we all have, I don't know, I think about electricity. So I'm going to say whatever, let's say this is 20 watt light, light bulb, right? We're all bored with a 20 watt light bulb and it's nothing's covering it. Oh, this is beautiful baby and we hold it and there it is.
And then mom and dad are like, oh, you're chunky. Oh, you're clumsy. Now you're starting to walk around. These are layers being put on.
Now you're planting in front of the TV a lot. And now because the mom and dad want to go on date nights and they don't make any for it. And Annie, they're going to slap the eye kind of front of you on date nights. And now your screen's sucking and now you're just seeing all this more blankets are being put on.
This light, the light, the source, your radiance is being stifled soon. You can become addicted to watching television becomes your thing and you don't connect and you don't know how to build rapport. Now you're a teenager and you're awkward and you're strange and you don't know and you're not playing video games or other socializing. I share all this with you because that radiance layer by layer from food to names like, oh, you're clumsy.
You're chunky. We're all our family. We're in our family's fat. The only times I heard that in my life.
So I was like, oh, I'm going to be fat strong. And so when I made this like big proclamation in 2010, like, fuck it. I'm going to train for six weeks and run a marathon. Like my inner voice was like, bro, you're a fat dude that just lifts weights.
You power lift. Like, but now I'm going to run a marathon. You just watch. So literally, the inner critic and the inner advocate are fighting within me.
And that was the first time I allowed the inner advocate to win and I hired a running coach and I said, make me a running program. I'm going to run the San Diego Rock and Roll marathon. My wife at the time ran marathon. It's like three a year.
And look what freaking hypocrite I was here, Tom. Joking me. I told my wife many years before we got married. We're still dating.
I was like, hey, you know, if you marry me, I'll run a marathon, right? Just joking me. But again, subconsciously, deep down inside. There's some truth to this.
That was me testing whether she's going to say yes or no, right? We're still dating or new with this whole relationship. So she's like, fine, I will, right? So then let's say three years later, four years later, we got married.
Bro, it was nine years in and she ran three marathons a year. So almost 30 marathons later I had yet what a liar I was, what a hypocrite I was. Now, one could say, well, I just joking, you said that and it really mean it at the time. I'm like, lifting all these weights, I'm deadlifting, I'm squatting, I'm a big boy lifting big weights.
God's made me to lift weights. You can justify it any way you want. Then you can always find evidence to back it up, right? Look at my traps, look at my shoulders at the time, right?
So I share this with you because one day she's like, hey, I'm going to run the rock and roll marathon. And I was like, cool, awesome, have a great time. I then left on a trip that day to run one of my masterminds, the time I was to run my masterminds in Miami, San Diego, Las Vegas. We're in Las Vegas and there's like 40, 50 of my coaching clients and Craig Ballantine is there as well.
I invited Craig to help coach this group with me. He was the guest speaker and Craig's telling one of the people who was complaining about procrastinating, yeah, I just keep procrastinating and I just keep doing all these things because I don't want to launch my products. I don't want to face the rejection of it potentially whatever, right? New entrepreneur.
And so Craig very crumajani goes, you know, you know, you know, cut that deadline and you get a cut that line in half again. And then he just starts lacing into this person. And I'm sitting here, I'm like, Oh my God, he's speaking to me right now. Here I am, nine years later, almost 30 marathons.
I've yet to make good on my promise. So I text my wife under the table. I'm like, why don't you say that marathon was? She goes in like eight weeks.
I'm like, great, sign me up for it, right? So she goes, I'll sign you up for the half. Every marathon has a half marathon. I'm like, that's bullshit.
Sign me up for the full marathon because I'm also all in on everything I do, which is a great thing unless you're like going to do cocaine or heroin, but I always make sure my diction is for good these days. These days, these days, full disclosure, these days, I am pretty obsessive. And I think that is a gift, but it could also be very damaging. Like under the right circumstances, you would find me dead in a gutter.
And so I have to be vigilant and militant in my schedule and the people that I surround myself with my thought patterns, all of it. Going back to Diana in the marathon. So she took me for the rock and roll marathon. I find a running coach and how the universe colludes with us, my friend, you're ready for this in that group, in that coaching group, was a woman named Jill Brewer, her website, I should not run with Jill.com.
She's a running coach. So at lunch, I'm telling her about it, not even connecting the dots. Like, hey, I just signed up for a marathon, I'm a bit nervous because I could live like a swaddick at bench, but run, I've never had to run, right? She goes, you need a running program?
I'm like, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna find your running coach. What I do, run with Jill.com. Like, Oh my God, she makes me a running program. Long before I train for six weeks, run the marathon.
Everything's fine. I broke through some glass ceiling, some limiting belief that I was only made to do this. And so when we were born, we had this radiance, this light and families, meanwhile, your answer uncles, your mom's, your dad's, but soon they call you chunky and fat and clumsy and all this and you begin to buy all those things and your radiance goes away, your light dims, and you're just like this robot living other people's stories or narrative that they put on you until one day you decide to do the self work and peel back painfully the layers to expose the radiance of your whopping 20 Watts. Then you could do even deeper work and raise the wattage like a dimmer switch to whatever.
I don't know what the level is because I'm still the work in progress. If you ever have me back 10 years from now, I'm not going to be a higher version of myself. But that's where I am today is raising that wattage. It's really, it's a very interesting metaphor.
And I think that as people learn about the way the mind works and they realize that you have to be really thoughtful about what you allow yourself to think, I'm a big believer that you are what you repeat. And so whatever you allow yourself to repeat, you're going to become an even so the negative stuff, no matter how absurd, if you repeat it enough, you'll actually start to believe it. And the positive stuff, no matter how absurd at first it seems, you'll start to believe it if you allow yourself to repeat it. There's a really great book called Feeling Great by David D.
Burns. And in it, he talks about pattern interrupting. Like you have to pattern interrupt your negative thoughts. And that was something that really served me in the beginning.
I was so prone to believe negative things about myself that I just had to learn. I had to make a rule in my life. I don't allow myself to repeat negative things about myself, even if I think they're true, because it's not going to serve me. How do you interrupt your patterns?
I literally say I don't allow myself to think that no stop, I'll sometimes even say it out loud. Also, I have found that people ever find me making this face. That face breaks negativity. I can't hold that look on my face and feel negative.
It puts me in an aggressive move forward posture. Now, also, I find that I'm going to have those lines etched into my face because I do that so often, but it really makes me feel powerful. And so doing little things like that, no, I don't do that overwhelmed as one. I don't do overwhelmed.
And so I say that to myself all the time because I feel myself getting overwhelmed. And so I'm always trying to tell people, when I say I don't do overwhelmed, I don't mean that in like a cool way that like, I'm so tough. I just don't allow myself to go down that path. And because to your point about self-awareness, I've spent so much time identifying why I feel a certain way without judgment.
Oh, that's insecurity. It's emotional weakness, whatever, not in any way, shape or form, trying to be cool about it. Just okay, I feel that way because I'm insecure about this thing. Cool.
But because I have that level of self-awareness and because I force myself to do things that take my emotional awareness, I'm feeling a thing to being able to articulate what thing I am feeling and then why I'm feeling it. When I feel, to me, it feels like my brain is revving up. That's what overwhelmed feels like. My brain is moving faster and faster and faster and faster.
To the point where it's not a level of efficiency, it's overwhelmed. It's just too much. It's revving too fast. It's like being in first gear and stamping on gas.
That's exactly what I pictured in my mind is I do a car in park, yet stepping on the gas. You hear all this rev, but it's not any place where it's going to get momentum. Correct. That was a very interesting analogy.
That is exactly what overwhelmed feels like to me. So when I hear that, I'm like, nope, I don't do overwhelmed, stop. And just by saying that, breathing from my diaphragm, it's like you can change the neurochemistry. You're having a biological experience.
So I'm reminding myself, even going back to what you were saying, you're having a panic attack. You think you're having a heart attack. You go outside. I happen to have heard this story.
So I know you feel the sunshine on your face. You get some fresh air. You take some deep breaths. Oh, whoa, okay.
It's passed, even if it was a heart attack. And so changing your state, you know, just stealing directly from Tony Robbins, the ability to change your state will change your life. But you have to get control of that. And so getting people as all goes back to this, you have this glowing orb inside of you.
You have to understand, I think that you're pointing about, you can raise that up over time. That's the area to focus, whether you have it or not, when you're born to me, whatever. Our job is to uncover it, and then to raise that dimmer so that it's, it's really kicking off some wattage. But to do that, you have to think right.
What if the whole meaning of life was like we're all born with that orb, our light lit, fully covered with dozens of layers. Maybe you have 20. I have 18. He's got 32.
Meaning of life is uncovered. And when you don't, you will suffer with depression, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, which is consciousness telling you, you're not doing what you should be. You're shielding, you're soothing, you're distracting, you're doing all these things instead of working on self. Because when you take off that last layer, like potential has been achieved.
But well before, taking off that last layer, maybe five layers, six layers in, you're hitting your stride in life. Like I feel like the last, you know, the 11 years ago was when I had that panic attack, anxiety attack, that led me to Dr. Kevin, that led me to so much self work, a decade of self work, but about, I'd say about five years years in, so I started feeling like this rhythm. Like, all right, man, like I'm really going to fit body hockey sticks and more businesses and more opportunities and I get in the best shape of my life.
And it's not even like you have to take off that last layer to achieve bliss. Maybe that's like your peak state and whether we all get there or not. I don't know. But what if that was it?
You just nailed it. All of the meaning of life is there's your orb. Congratulations. It's covered with a shit ton of dunk.
Your job is to take the layers off and in the process of taking those layers off. That's the self work. That's doing the deep work. How more in life would you if we're like, yeah, I'm not what I'm supposed to do?
It's interesting. So I think that the that is so close to how I would define the meaning of life. The way I've always thought of it in my head is that first of all, whatever life only has a meaning that you give it. I don't think there is any truly intrinsic meaning.
But I think everybody should have an answer. My answer is the meaning of life. The reason we're all here is to see how much of your potential you can turn into skill set. And so if pushing metaphor in a mushroom, this is entirely the way you meant.
But if that glowing orb is it's you now have something that's useful that lights the way that allows you to move forward in the way that you want, that feels really close to what I think people ought to be doing. It seems to me, and I've been on this path like intentionally and in a very focused way, like in a ruthlessly focused way the last decade, that for me, again, that is the meaning of my life. To just keep removing the layers. What is Bader's 2.0, 10.0 going to look like?
And again, but I'm also so convicted by my belief system that I can I also know I could will things into being so like a will universe to work collude with me, right? Conspire with me, which also goes back to like your rules, like I also believe the universe has rules and it's like, hey, man, you thought of something? Yeah, every second the passes says the universe to me in my mind, every second the passes, I'm going to make it less treatable. So you thought of something you just learned a new skill?
Do it motherfucker. Do it. You have it's not going to be right, Mr. Universe.
I know it's not, but you could either wait to get it down correctly, but you're going to be so in the deficit because all the number of minutes and hours and months to go by that I've stri- you know, all these strikes against you. Or if you do it now, take imperfect action, you just learned it, deploy it, you can course correct. But universe is testing you like, do I want to keep rewarding this guy for this idea? I'm like, oh my God, I did it.
It's scary. It's going to work. It's like, all the kind of work. Okay, well, great.
But can you fix it? Yes, I can. I'm going to keep fixing it. It's this cool thing where whether it's called the rules, call it the universe, I really believe that the self-work and the rules and taking that orb that's glowing and trying to raise its radiance, the more we do, we do develop these skill sets, like these skill sets exist, but we uncover them, unearth them, and then we could use it to make money, have meaning, leave an impact, have significance, create a legacy.
I suppose we can also use it for evil, but that goes back to character, core values, and all that other shit, right? Yeah, that's a whole other conversation because I think most people that from the outside, we go, that person's evil, they never think they're evil. But there's something you said that I want to go deeper on. So I am reading this book called The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley, and he talks about, because you were saying, like, you need to take imperfect action, the universe conspires with you, if you're the first person, that it's going to get harder the longer you wait.
And in the book, he's talking about the, a potential explanation for why that really is, and his theory is that because everything evolves, literally everything, that electricity gets invented and the light bulb is going to be invented necessarily after electricity. But that, it will be a certain period of time after electricity that you get the light bulb based on what kind of filaments are there, can you blow glass? Like, there's all these things that have to come together, right? So, and he points out that, like, we think of these moments of, that inventions are these moments of genius, and that it's this one person that sort of propelled this forward in this great leap, and he said he doesn't think that the world actually works that way, that what's happening is things are evolving and things will happen at a given point based on the evolution, and that there are, there are like eight different people that have been credited with the invention of the light bulb, and it's only because we're in the West that we think of Thomas Edison, but in reality, in different countries, almost at exactly the same time, other people came up with a light bulb, and that there was the same thing, I forget another really famous invention, I'm forgetting, it was a telephone or the phonograph, whatever, but it was like, they, the patent was filed in the patent office on the same day, and it's a really interesting idea, and Michael Jackson said the same thing, he called, I think it was Quincy Jones in the middle of the night, and he's like, Quincy, I just had an idea for a song and we have to record it, and he's like, why do we have to record it right now, Mike, it's like three in the morning, he said, because if we don't record it right now, Prince is going to, and he was like, but dude, it's just a random fucking idea that you've had, what are you talking about, how would Prince know?
He's like, no, like, once it's out there, it's out there. The ethers of the universe. Yeah, and I think what he was really getting at, excuse me, it's just getting at, it's just all this shit going on in the world, and it all comes together, and it, we're all the product of our time. This really freaks me out as somebody trying to have a second, like, arc in his entrepreneurial career.
It's like, I got it so right with Quest, and now I'm trying to do something totally different in a totally different field, and I'm like, ooh, there's really something to am I, am I of the moment? Because a kid growing up now, they're, they're just of the moment, they're not thinking, like, I didn't think about Quest. Quest was me, and look, it was me and my partner, something wrong, it was just confluence of three people, but just to keep it about the part of me that was me. I was reacting against being an entrepreneur, chasing money.
I was like, this is so gross. I just want to be myself. This idea, wanting authenticity, wanting to build community, all of this, but I had it as a, I was moving away from all the bullshit that I saw that I didn't like about building businesses, and it happened to coincide right with social media. Now, I was on the bleeding edge of social media, not because I was clever, because I was having a big emotional reaction, and I decided to pursue it.
And so I was of that moment. And so, all of those things that happened to coincide right as social media was coming, boom, Quest hockey sticks, it goes crazy. And like, if you think about what you built, if that had been in 2019, it would be a very different story. And so, all this idea of like, it's out there sort of an ether and are we able to have the balls to move when it strikes us, because it's out there for everybody?
Well said. You know what? There is something to, you know, being in that moment, right? And so, are you saying then that you feel like in the second arc, you feel differently than you did the first time around?
Like, you know too much? Are you too smart? Not that I know too much. It's that I really had to.
So I spent about a million dollars launching a comic book, and it was a financial waste, because I was making comics for when I was reading comics, and I was reading comics in the late 80s, early 90s. And so then my instinct was to make films like the films that I had when I was a kid, but that's done now. It's dead and gone. Like kids don't even think about that.
And so I in my 40s had to go in this journey of like, okay, wait, comic books are still getting turned into movies. So who's doing it right? That leads you to Japan, which then ultimately leads you to ask the question why does a single title, a single title bedroom in Japan out sells the entire Western comic market? Okay, out sells Wonder Woman, Batman, Spiderman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, all of it combined is outsold by Demon Slayer.
And so I was like, how the fuck is that possible? And looking at it, then leads me to this idea that they call Shonen, which translates as the few years. So they had narrowed in on this idea, which is now I know, known as the Age of Imprinting, 11 to 15, where the brains in a really weird state, which is why Power of Myth, taking kids on these journeys that you guys are now doing, which is incredible, where you have to have this rite of passage. But the reason that a rite of passage happens at that fucking age is because your brain is in this hyper malleable state where it's no longer drinking from the parents and drinking from culture.
And so now in my 40s, I had to discover manga and anime and like really be in it. And so it's now very calculated. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to figure out like what this moment is.
Now maybe I've learned so much, that's perfect. And maybe I'm now because I feel like I'm at the cutting edge of something. I feel again the way I felt the quest where I see something other people don't see, but I had to brute force it. Whereas at Quest, I was of the moment.
So I'm like, I don't know, like my whole life I get to answer this question. It's fucking fascinating to me. I'm totally unafraid of failure. Like that just is not a concern for me.
Are you as into anime as you were in the comic books of our era? This scares me. I'm saying this to my mom this weekend. I don't know if everyone is as malleable as I am.
And they just don't do the thing. I have a process. I can walk people through it. This is what you have to do if you want to fall in love with something new.
Or is it not a process? Or it is a process, but that it won't work for most people. And it works for me because by nature, I just happen to be hyper malleable. I don't know the answer.
So I act as if anybody can do it, but I don't know if that's true. And I'm terrified by the 50% of us that's hardwired because some people don't meet minimum requirements. Well, can I say something about yourself that I figured out about you? Please.
You, my opinion, I'm just going to share my opinion. Please. I think you give too much credit to the hardwiring and not enough credit to the fucking savage that you are. Interesting.
I only think about the savage. And the only reason I acknowledge the hardwiring is I'm watching culture walk a stupid line where they're acting like there is no hardwiring and that's going to end in fucking disaster because you can no longer predict the outcome of your actions. So speaking of which, Bajros, let's talk about this new movement in your life. I know you're a sun setting the Empire Podcast starting something new.
Why? So the Empire Podcast, well, part of this phase is life. We all go through seasons of life. And so when I was broke and living in section eight housing, when we first came to the United States, all I wanted was money because I remember the conversation in our house.
And when you're the small one in the house, I was six years old when we came to America. So my older brother was 19. My sister was 21. My mom and dad and my older brother and sister were always talking about how we're running out of money before we run out of month.
Like every end of the month, it was always having to make a choice between do we leave the water on or the electricity on and it was always water because you could live in the dark. You can't live without water in the section eight housing apartments that we lived in in Santa Ana. And so I kind of grew up thinking like money's going to solve a lot of problems and so I want money. I want money.
And so as you become an entrepreneur, you have money and then soon you cover your costs and have a good life and give your family experiences and you start realizing, all right, there's more to life than money. And so seasons, phases of life. And so, but it turns out I was good at making money. You do anything long enough.
Maybe part of it is hard wiring. The other part might have been just leaving so desperate for it. I just looked at any mentor I could find from old school copywriters like Gary Halbert all the way to people that really focused on how the mind operates from like the Tony Robbins is and beyond. And so the Empire podcast was really about me sharing my gift of being an entrepreneur and how to turn any idea into a business and that business into an empire.
And then if you want to sell it, sell it, if you want to scale it, scale it and go on. But I realized especially right around 2019, 2020 with the pandemic and all that, holy hell man, like we are in a place where society is not doing well now. We see how depression and anxiety has gone through the roof. We see the prescription drugs for mood altering prescription drugs.
They're up by 400%, especially during the Corps of the pandemic suicide rates, all those things, right? And so I was like, man, I'm in a place where I'm able to mentor my kids. And they're staying at home. Thankfully, they're in a good headspace.
We're working out with them. We're going on hikes. We're talking about what's happening in the world like school. You know, we don't homeschool them, but when they go to private school.
And the way I explain to them is, hey, guys, this is your great depression. This is your great depression. This is your version of my 9-11, you know, that we experience with this uncertainty and chaos and economic crash, etc. And so rather than having them be afraid of it, like you guys are of age, you know, there were so 12 and 14 at the time of the pandemic.
And so talking to them, walking through it, because I just figured my dad never did that with me. Like I love my dad. He brought us here. He risked his life to bring us to the United States.
But everything else was on a need to know basis. And I didn't need to know. And so the Empire podcast was all about that, making money, building empires. The Bedros Kullen show that's launching here is me talking about culture, me talking about community, me talking about how we're, it just seems like it's a perfect scientific artistic design to they're trying to separate us by left and right, by black and white, by masking no masks, backs and no backs by if they can separate us by shoe sizes, bro, I feel like they would.
And I feel this day. Like do you believe in a grand conspiracy, the new world order, that kind of stuff? I don't know if it's a new world order, but I do believe that the day is a very smart group of powerful people that run the world. And there is a smart group of powerful people that are called the heads of state and the people that voted them into or not voted them that financially enabled them to get into there, have control.
A great example of that. And I always use it as a micro economy, like a micro scale. I'm the president, no longer the CEO, but I'm the president of the body boot camp, a franchise, right? You could look at as every franchise location, we've got hundreds of franchise locations as a state.
The clients in there as the citizens of that state. Now I could say that we're going to start using Tom Billie's water. And I can mandate all franchisees to start using it. And Tom Billie was going to give me HQ, the president, a kickback from using that water instead of the other water.