I got beat up by two lesbians in one night.
And no, this wasn’t a fetish thing.
The year was 1997. I was 22 years old, I’d gotten certified as a personal trainer a couple of years earlier, and I was working at a big box gym with exactly four clients.
I was a good trainer, but I had no idea how to sell personal training.
Common sense would have told you that I should have just gotten better at selling. Instead I figured, all I’ve got is four clients, I need more money, so I better go get another job.
So I became a fry cook at Disneyland.
And when the holidays were coming and I needed even more money, a couple of buddies from Disneyland hooked me up with weekend security at a club down the street called Oz.
During the day, Oz was a steakhouse. At night, it turned into a gay club.
At the time, the pay was really…really good. Like five bucks an hour more than my buddies were making as bouncers at other clubs.
By the third weekend, I found out why.
Skinheads would show up in the parking lot with bats and pipes, waiting for the club to let out at 2 AM so they could gay bash. The manager told us bouncers we couldn’t let anyone get hurt, so about once a month we’d end up in a fight.
I did not sign up for that.
I wanted to be a personal trainer.
But the night I want to tell you about didn’t have a single skinhead in it.
I get word that a woman is being yelled at and shoved into the fence out on the smoking patio. So I push through the crowd, and there’s this woman in leather, almost like a biker chick, with her girlfriend pinned against the fence, right in her face.
I go, “Hey, can you knock this off? You can take it out to the parking lot, but you can’t do it here.”
She gets in my face, goes “What are you gonna do about it?” and punches me in the shoulder.
Now what am I gonna do?
I’m not gonna hit a woman.
So I grab her from behind, pin her arms to her sides, pick her up and start walking her out, literally using her to push people out of my way on the dance floor…
…while she’s smashing my face with the back of her head and raking my shins with her construction boots.
By the time I get her to the front door and hand her off to our angry Samoan bouncer, my nose is bleeding and my tooth has bitten through my upper lip.
I go get myself cleaned up.
(I may or may not have shed a couple of tears.)
Then I head back out to the dance floor to keep an eye on things…
…and I get clocked from the right.
It’s her girlfriend. The same girl I just pulled out of a bad situation, and now she’s pissed at me for kicking her girlfriend out.
So yeah, I got my a$$ whooped by two lesbians in one night.
I share this with you because when you’re first starting out in business, you’re going to get the sh!t kicked out of you and do things you don’t want to do.
There I was, a personal trainer with four clients, a fry cook at Disneyland and a bouncer at Oz, all at the same time, and I still couldn’t get ahead. It wasn’t until I finally learned how to sell that I filled my schedule and quit the other jobs.
Well, I hope you don’t physically get the sh!t kicked out of you…
…but you will take hits, from deals that fall through, clients who walk and months where the money runs out before the bills do.
You need to learn how to pick yourself up, wipe the blood off your face, and get back to work.
Talk soon,
Bedros Keuilian
P.S. The come-up is going to hit you either way. It hits a lot softer when you’re taking those hits with people who’ve already been through them, and that’s what our next in-person meet up is coming soon.