Bedros Keuilian - Man Up: How to Cut the Bullshit and Kick Ass in Business (and in Life)

I D LIKE TO THANK my family, mentors, clients, team members, and of course my publisher, Glenn, as well as my editors, for your support, help, and patience. Thank you, Craig Ballantyne, Lewis Howes, Joan Arca, Ryan Holiday, and Jimmy Soni for your ongoing support and help in bringing this book to life.

Finally, Id like to thank Howard Wasdin, retired Navy Seal, for writing his book, Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper. It was this book that led me to read eleven other books written by Navy Seals, and through these books I got to see the commonalities in what makes a great warrior, leader, and team member. Mr. Wasdins book was published in 2011this was the beginning times of the entrepreneurial struggles I was going through as I was building Fit Body Boot Camp and attempting to manage a fast-growing team. I was depressed, lost, and in massive debt at that time. I picked up Mr. Wasdins book on a whim, to have something to read at night before bed as a form of distraction, to occupy my mind from my business troubles as I fell asleep.

Never did I imagine that one book about Navy Seals would lead to another book and then nine more. In these books about our great warriors, I discovered over and over the six pillars of leadership that I forced myself to learn and used to grow Fit Body Boot Camp and that I shared with you in this book. Ive read several of these books repeatedly and without them I could not have evolved into the entrepreneur and leader I am today. Without evolving into the leader that I am today, I could not have built the businesses and made the impact in the industry that I serve.

Thank you, Howard Wasdin, Marcus Luttrell, Robert ONeil, Jocko Willink, Leif Babin, Mark Owen, Adam Brown (RIP), Chris Kyle (RIP), Brandon Webb, Eric Greitens, William McRaven, and Rorke Denver. I thank you all for your service and sacrifice for our great country and for writing the books that not only helped make a leader out of me but allowed me to write this book for entrepreneurs worldwide.

Bedros Keuilian is the founder and CEO of the Fit Body Boot Camp franchise as well as a sought-after speaker and business consultant. Keuilian is also an investor in more than a dozen companies ranging from subscription software platforms, digital ad agencies, franchising, and business coaching services.

Keuilian is the Immigrant Edge and American Dream, known as the hidden genius who entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, and thought leaders turn to when they want to turn their businesses into industry-leading empires.

Learn more about Bedros Keuilian at ManUp.com. While youre there, be sure to request your free leadership training course.

T HERE WAS A TIME when I was not qualified to write this book. After all, Im a foreigner from a Communist country. (Fun fact: real My father was actually a member of the Communist Party.) I was born in Armenia, a tiny country on what used to be the southernmost part of the Soviet Union. I could have very well been assigned a job working as a grocery store clerk, cab driver, or a car mechanic somewhere in Armenia had we not escaped the Communist Soviet Union in June of 1980.

My father bribed a Soviet government official with 25,000 rubles, which had taken him more than five years to save up, and my family (consisting of my father, Krikor, forty-six; mother, Suzy, forty-two; sister, Julie, twenty-two; brother, Sarkis, twenty; and me, the six-year-old baby of the family) escaped to Italy. Once there we went to the American consulate, declared ourselves as anticommunist political refugees, and asked for permission to come to the United States.

Permission was granted, and our lives would never be the same. My dad had $184 and we, a family of five, could only bring two suitcases. We arrived in America on June 15, 1980, landing at JFK Airport in New York. I remember thinking the whole airport was a city! It was a bigger and crazier swarm of people than Id ever seen in the villages back home. We had nowhere to stay, so we spent the night in the airport. My dad hadnt slept for days, but he stayed up that night to watch over all of us and our things.

The next day we flew to California, landing at LAX. My dad had a friend of a friend in Southern California. He agreed to pick us up and drove us to the nearby city of Cypress. My family sat in the back of his van, and I looked out the window and all I could see were lights and cars and wide roads. We were all dumbfounded and in aweand that was seeing it in the dark! It was a forty-five-minute drive, and even in that short a time, we knew it was a big country. Certainly bigger than where we had come from.

We were given a spare bedroom in this mans apartment. All five of us lived in that one room for a month, like wed come through Ellis Island in the 1900s and moved into a tenement. The morning after we arrived, this uncle lined up a paper delivery route for my dad that paid him ten dollars a night. At 2 a.m., my dad would leave us, get in the same van, and start throwing papers onto front steps. By day three, he got a second job as an attendant at a gas station. By the end of the week, he got a third job as a dishwasher at a pizzeria. The following week, my brother got a job at the same gas station where my dad worked. In one of the scariest moments during that early difficult time, my brother was robbed at gunpoint. He came home in shock. A couple weeks later, someone else tried to rob my brother at gunpoint again. My brother, for some reason Ill never understand, tried to grab the gun. The guy shot a few rounds that barely missed my brother, a near-death experience that would stay with him his whole life. Welcome to America.

My sister, who was now washing dishes at the pizzeria where my dad worked, came home upset one night. She told my dad about how the restaurant owner would take a sip out of her cup, just to make sure she was drinking water and not Sprite, because he wanted to make sure she wasnt stealing. Needless to say, she was grossed out that this guy sipped out of her cup every damn day. She was being paid less than minimum wage under the table. She couldnt say a thing to him. We needed the money, so she had no other choice. I remember when I overheard that my sister was unhappy with her job, I promised myself that one day Id make so much money that shed never have to work for someone like that again. Today she works for me, from home, on her laptop doing customer support.

I was only six years old, but I can remember that times were tough: We were broke, didnt speak the language, didnt understand the culture, and didnt know how we were going to make it. My brother and sister would come home crying every single day because they didnt belong, missed their friends, and wanted to go back to Armenia. We were yelled at and harassed on a regular basis, called every bad name in the book, and told, Go back to your own fucking country, you fucking foreigner. That was how I learned the F-word.

My father wondered if he had made the right decision for his family. He had a sense that things would get better. He knew that we were in a wonderful country that offered us freedom and the opportunity to make something of ourselvesbut first we had to overcome being poor and foreign.

Sometimes you can take a look at someones later success and assume that they had a cushy life or an easy journey. Let me be clear: Ive eaten out of dumpsters because at times we had no money for food. Ive worn clothes we found in the trash that were more than a generation old and a couple sizes too small. Ive had my hair washed with gasoline when my parents couldnt afford lice treatment. Wherever the bottom is, go a few feet deeper, and thats where my family and I started.