What seemed totally harmless to me ended up getting me fired just before Christmas.
It sucked.
In my early 20’s I worked at Disneyland…
…it was a great job to have because you’re working with so many different types of people… plus working at the magic kingdom gave me a LOT of customer service experience which I feel is very important for business owners to posses.
Of course, at the time I had no idea that I was learning such valuable skill sets.
One year, around the holidays, I decided to look for a side job to help me generate some extra money for Christmas. I have a lot of nieces and nephews so Christmas would get pricey.
And since my personal training “business” was unsuccessfully puttering along I decided to apply for a job at a new amusement park that was just opening up… Adventure City in good ‘ol Anaheim, California.
Nothing like working at two amusement parks…
Anyhow, when the good folks at Adventure City heard that I worked at Disneyland, they gave me the job on the spot.
And just like that I was the new restaurant lead for Adventure City, which pretty much meant I was in charge of the staff that worked in foods, kept the schedules tight, and made sure the foods where maintained at the right temperature and rotated on time.
As you might imagine amusement parks tend to hire lot of college aged kids – Adventure City was no exception.
One Friday night, once the park closed, I decided to let some of the closing staff at the main restaurant take home some food that was otherwise going to end up on the “spoilage” list – – tossed out.
I figured these guys and gals could use some free food and saw no harm in rewarding them for their hard work that night by letting them take some of the leftover food home.
The next day management found out and I was fired.
I hadn’t even been there three weeks yet… lol
Frankly, I didn’t even think I was doing anything wrong.
After all, I was the restaurant lead. And I made a judgment call in rewarding the staff who worked extra hard that night by giving them food that was destined for the dumpster.
But rules are rules, said the VP of the park as he fired me and walked me out the gates… humiliating.
(That was one of the many times that I realized that I’m unemployable.)
There I was a few weeks away from Christmas and I was out of a job that was supposed to help me earn more money for the holidays.
In hind site I realize that I didn’t even need that second job. I had a job… a career route… a passion, and it was training clients and helping people with their fitness and fat loss goals.
But the problem was that I only had three clients.
I had been certified for over a year and ONLY HAD 3 CLIENTS.
See, to me, the “problem” was that people couldn’t afford personal training.
And that the economy was slowing down.
And that I didn’t have my own gym to train people at so I had to train people in their homes.
I gave myself one excuse after another why my personal training business struggled and why I had to keep my day jobs.
I blamed it on everything… I didn’t know how to market, or how to sell, or how to ask for referrals, blah, blah, blah…
While that part was true, the fact is… what I lacked most was confidence in myself.
See, I had self limiting beliefs and that’s what was stopping me from growing my business and reaching more people in my community.
In fact, I’m sure that subconsciously I did things to self-sabotage just to prove my self limiting beliefs.
It wasn’t until I met my first mentor (a client), Jim Franco that I realized the problem was with me and the limiting beliefs I had about myself, my abilities, and the results that I was capable of delivering.
Jim has a special way of putting things: “Bedros, you’re an awful business person and you need help”.
I had totally sold myself short and used every excuse in the book to blame every other circumstance but myself.
It’s funny how once Jim helped me realize my value and helped me build my self confidence I was inundated with opportunities left and right.
It almost felt like clients where coming out of the wood works – I went from selling small blocks of sessions to big multi thousand dollar training programs almost overnight.
It starts with you first.
See, we always have a choice in life…
You can either have limiting self beliefs and come up with excuses why things aren’t going your way…
Or you can believe in yourself and have confidence in your skills and abilities to change people’s lives and know that they are willing to pay handsomely for the outcome that you deliver.
How you frame it to yourself and what you believe deep down inside is what’s going to determine your level of success.
It’s really as simple as that.
Talk soon,
Bedros Keuilian
P.S. Here’s another great example of that…
She went from looking for jobs in a strip club to being a super successful fitness business owner.