Leading and running two very successful multi-million dollar companies would take an exceptional leader, and an exceptional example of that would be our today’s guest: Mr. Patrick Bet David. Patrick is a refugee from Iran, joined the military, before starting his venture in a business career in the financial services industry. In his early days, he said his dream is to become a body-builder and maybe join Hollywood. But his love for numbers paved the way for him being a financial advisor before building his own agency. He met a girl who he dated before who was a financial advisor for Lakers players and he saw that she makes good money. He got interested and dive into it without having a degree.
After a tenure with a couple of traditional companies, he was inspired to launch PHP Agency Inc. Today, he has 16,000 agents in 49 States with over a half a million square feet of office space. Patrick is passionate about helping the next generation of entrepreneurs by teaching thought-provoking perspectives on entrepreneurship and disrupting the traditional approach to a career. Not only is he successful in his agency and making courses available to other CEO’s and thought-leaders, but he is also very popular with his media company: Valuetainment, which has been referred to as “the best channel for entrepreneurs.”
Be prepared to be inspired today, as Patrick will share how he successfully lead two very successful businesses simultaneously, what his mindset has been, what’s his leadership skills, and how he imparts them to his family, especially his kids. This episode is the one with so many nuggets, so if you are in a place where you can take notes, you definitely should. Apply them, and they will definitely change your life.
Here’s What You Missed
- Patricks’s early life and how it shaped him into who he is today
- How Patrick successfully run two multi-million dollar company simultaneously
- During pandemic: Passion or Profit?
- What to teach your children so that their dreams becomes a reality
- What’s his number one key to success?
- How to be a good leader
How To Take Your Business Seriously?
Knowledge Nuggets
[8:17] I don’t commingle the two businesses. There’s complete different platforms that we have. And once you do that, you earn respect from both sides of the audience and they trust you more to do business with them.
[11:54] there’s one of three gifts that we all have. You’re either a great writer. You’re either a great with audio or you’re great on camera. Whichever one you’re good with lead with that
[15:03] I think too many people do too creative stuff, way too early.
[18:04] I’m a 20, 20, 20 guy, meaning first 20 years of your life, try to not make a big mistake where you ruin your life. The second 20 years is find a career and stay in it for 20 years and make your money. The next 20 years, I’m going to combine my passion and business together. The last 20 years for me is going to be contribution.
[19:19] Money’s gonna make a lot of the big decisions in your life and you cannot treat it casually. You have to take it very seriously. So profit matters just as much as passion does and value does.
[23:12] As a parent, ask these questions: If you had to show certain values and principles to your kids, to give them the biggest upside to have their dreams become a reality, how would you change your approach to your example you’re giving to them because they’re going to duplicate you in what ways would they need to live to have their dreams become a reality? And if they do what you do as a parent, will their dreams become a reality?
[25:02] I just want to find what excites them the most and what their strengths are. And then I want to put them in that environment that highlights their strengths and their gifts.
[28:07] The number one key to success in my eyes is learning how to process issues.
[35:03] I think a lot of times leaders are afraid of having civil conversations with people that you have to have would push buttons because they are so concerned about being like all the time. And I think in the world of leadership, you gotta be able to have the courage to do that.
[36:54] Go find somebody that’s strong and shadow them for as long as you can, until you no longer need them.
Important Reads and Links
Patrick Bet David Website: https://www.patrickbetdavid.com/
Patrick Bet David Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIHdDJ0tjn_3j-FS7s_X1kQ
Patrick Bet David Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickbetdavid/
Patrick Bet David Twitter: https://twitter.com/patrickbetdavid
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Casanova Brooks:
What’s up DreamNation. We are back again. And we have my brother, the man, I don’t even want to say the myth in this one, but definitely the legend mr. Pat Bet David. For anybody who does not know, I’m sure they’re probably living under a rock, but I’m so excited to bring you on today. This is going to be a really good conversation and the way that I always love to start this off for people who don’t know is I always like to think of us as entrepreneurs thought leaders, Changemakers, just like superheroes.
Reason being is because we’re constantly flying around the world. We’re putting on our Cape and we’re trying to solve the world’s biggest problems. And so behind every Superman, there’s a Clark Kent. And for a lot of people that follow you, I know myself included. We all look at PVD as a Superman, but tell us who is the Clark Kent behind Pat Bet David.
Patrick Bet David:
Pretty simple guy. I mean, if you a guy that loves a good book, a good movie, my, when I used to have my office in Woodland Hills LA back in the days, I would always come at 11 o’clock and my assistant always knew where I was at because I would have a popcorn all over my suit. And she would say you were at the movies again, weren’t you?
I said, have what? My 85 year old friends, you know, I’d go watch movies together with them. But somebody with a big dream, somebody who had a chip on his shoulder and one wanted to go and find out what his upside was. And, obviously from there, it led to where it’s at today, but, quite a simple man behind a whole, market or the brand that you see with Valuetainment.
Casanova Brooks:
Got it. Let me ask you have been in my eyes, one of them biggest storytellers, right? And one of the greatest storytellers, like I put you up there with a lot of people, just like a will Smith. And I want to know, did you always have the ability to tell these stories, or was this something that you worked on over time and you built up your craft?
Patrick Bet David:
I think I was always a storyteller. You know, typically sometimes people want to say, you know, downplay it and do all that stuff. I can’t do it with that. I was not good. I was not a hard worker my entire life, but I always told stories since I was a little kid. It was always a, “what if” it was always “imagined this”?
I was the kid in junior high school that you would walk. I had a friend of mine named Adrian. Who lived a complete opposite side, but he would walk with me and he would say, Hey, Pat, tell us a story. And I would tell a story for 30 minutes and we’d be going down or I’d be asking questions. The most common question that you’d be getting from.
If you were walking with me, is, would you rather be Michael Jackson? Michael Jordan, the president of the United States, Bill Gates, the richest man in the world. If you have to choose between those four, what would it be? And then we would debate for 30 minutes. Why would you pick Michael Jackson? Why not Jordan?
Why not? President? Why not the richest man, if you’re the richest, man, you can buy your sports team. If you’re a president, you can make the decision. If you’re Michael Jackson, you get to party. So we would have a lot of those types of conversations. And it was all fun. And now we talk about it and we laugh about it, but that was 30 years ago.
Casanova Brooks:
Wow. Now for anybody, I guess I’m familiar with you because I followed you for so long. You came here as a refugee. You came here from Iran, right? And you remember so much of the war between Iran and Iraq and things like that. But for you, when you. Now looking at the business that you have now, did you always know that this is what you wanted to build?
Or was this something that just kind of fell into your lap because you come from military to then getting into sales? Like, did you always have this big dream?
Patrick Bet David:
This was me. I wanted to be a body builder. My dream was to be a bodybuilder. I was going to go out there and compete. That was going to go be Mr. Olympia. I was going to go be in movies. I was going to do Hollywood. I was the middle Eastern Will Smith. That’s what my friend would call me. Yeah, I was that guy. That’s who I wanted to be. But at the same time, I liked numbers. So numbers were always a. Oh, very attractive to me. I always liked numbers, stats, formulas.
I would fail all my classes, but I would ACE calculus and I was the curving calculus. And it was always an interesting dynamic on how was it that you failed biology. And even if you’ve got a hundred on the final, you still wouldn’t get a D. But how was it that you understand calculus and math as if it’s so easy to you?
What is the difference? I was a numbers guy, so. When I was approached to get into the financial industry by a girl , whom we used to date back in the days we met at Venice beach, she would pick me up in a different car every time we’d go out. And I finally asked her, I said, how do you make your money?
She said, I’m a financial advisor. I said, who for? She said for a lot of the Laker players and she was in her mid twenties making very good money, half a million, all your income. At that time, it was a lot of money. And I said, you know, I’m very curious, how do I, I get into it. She said, we need a degree.
You got to go to UCLA. I want UCLA, all this stuff. She was telling me. I said, I’m not going to UCLA. I’m not going to go get a degree. I don’t have the patience for school. She said they won’t hire you. I said, well, let me see what I can do. And eventually I, I submitted my resume on my cover letter. I put the best joke I had at that time.
And I sent it to a hundred different places back then it was about faxing. And the letter said, if you’re laughing after reading this joke, this is exactly how my clients are going to feel. If they do business with me, they’re going to love me. If you want somebody to like this part of your team, give me a call.
I sent a hundred resumes. I got 30 call backs. I got 15, the interview offers. I got three job offers and I started off with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter day before 9/11. And then from, being a stockbroker was serious. Seven 66. I chose insurance. And then from there to today, we grew from a being an insurance agent to now we have 16,000 agents in 49 States with out over a half a million square feet of office space.
And in the last 90 days during the Corona virus, we typically average three to 5,000 policies a month. We’ve been selling around 10 to 12,000 policies a month. The last 90 days it’s been the best profitable months. We’ve had five months in a row. And it’s been a pretty wild ride, but that’s, that’s kinda what happened with it’s me from the direction I was to where I went into financial industry.
Casanova Brooks:
Got it. Now, a lot of people, they seen the, obviously you have the PHP, but then you have Valuetainment talk to me about where, because the reason why I bring this up, a lot of people right now, they have their personal brand, but then they’re also trying to build a business on the side and they don’t know if they keep them separate or if they have to be an all in one, it seems like you’ve been able to figure out how to keep them separate, without trying to really convolute them.
How has that, is it just about you have enough help? Or was that the direction in the beginning that you knew you were going to keep them separate?
Patrick Bet David:
Right now I have to keep them separate. So let me explain to you how this works for me. So one, I don’t sell my PHP products to Valuetainers at all, zero. So for example, when I put the vol conference last year, my agents were not invited.
So they bought a thousand, $2,000 ticket. It was refunded, only the five board members were invited. Nobody else was invited. So they couldn’t do that. Now the other part is. Valuetainers contact me and they say, Hey, I want to buy some insurance policies that I can’t help you. You got to find somebody. So I don’t commingle the two.
If it happens, it’s accidental. It doesn’t happen itentionally. PHP side. If the PHP folks want to buy courses, they cannot buy courses. You can’t buy my courses. I don’t sell it to you. Meaning I’m not selling courses to make money off of you. You’re in the company.
So as long as I separated the two businesses, what happened is. Valuetainers said, well, I thought originally this guy was going to use Valuetainment to sell me a bunch of insurance policies. You guys never sold me anything. That’s the Mo that’s the model, because it’s a bigger picture of what we’re doing. And then the PhP folks were like, I think this guy’s creating all these courses because he wants to sell it to us.
You are not selling any of it. Matter of fact, I never share Valuetainment videos. Ever with PHP if they watch it is because they watch it. It’s not something that’s part of our Mo that, Hey, subscribe, and do this. Nothing at all. There’s complete different platforms that we have. And once you do that, you earn respect from both sides of the audience and they trust you more to do business with them.
And that’s one of the things that I did when I was able to separate the two. And then as far as how the businesses work, I have employees that only work for Valuetainment, I have employees that only work for PHP. And we’ve been able to manage that accordingly and it’s worked out pretty well for us. it was a, it’s getting more challenging today because the Valuetainment brand is now bringing a lot of money in more than it was ever before.
And PHP has grown to a point right now that we have to do a lot of different things with PHP, where they’re going to be separated here very soon in two separate offices. So I’ll be running a company from one office and running a company from a different office before a long time you could manage it to be and to get them the same office.
Casanova Brooks:
Got it. Do you think that it was that people could do this now? And the reason why I ask is because that feels like that there’s a lot of red tape that goes into that. And do you gotta have a lot of income for somebody else right now that’s looking to build two different brands right now. Do you think that they could do the same thing or would you not recommend it looking back at all the challenges that you’ve had.
Patrick Bet David:
I highly recommend it. If you’re willing to, to be serious about it this morning, I was doing my private, the monthly webinars. It’s 75 CEOs from 50 different countries and we go through processing issues together. They range between doing a million dollar a year business to a couple hundred million a year business.
And we talk about the challenges that are facing. And, and one of the things we talked about is a couple of the guys who run businesses, they do $5, $10 million a year. They want to write a book and Hey, Pat, what can I do to write a book and sell a lot of copies and what can I do and how do I get myself to have a presence?
And I said, tell me your name. And I went online and I looked at their entire profile and I said, okay, you got 112 subscribers on YouTube. The other guy had couple thousand subscribers on YouTube. Your videos are not consistent. They don’t come out on the same day. You’re just kind of sporadic. We put a video here and then one, three weeks later than one, a day later than one, five weeks later, you’re not consistent.
You’re not taking social media seriously. It’s more like a one night stand to you in a marriage. And the one thing you have to realize about building a brand, if you decide to build a brand from the one night stand perspective of let me get a viral video to help me become a celebrity. It’s not going to work for you.
It’s not for you. Skip it. Don’t try to create content. If you’re going to make social media part of your business, there’s gotta be a business and a system behind it. Meaning people look at social media and they say, “Oh my gosh, that guy makes the perfect short clip videos on Instagram. And look how it’s going.
I bet it costs a lot of money to edit that into transcribe it. And this guy’s doing YouTube editing with these intros and that guys. Twitter content. And he’s always busy on LinkedIn and he’s doing stuff on Tik Tok and then there’s podcasts, audio. How do you keep up with all this stuff?” Here’s how I started:
there’s one of three gifts that we all have. You’re either a great writer. You’re either a great with audio or you’re great on camera, but you’re going to be good at one of these three things. Whichever one you’re good with lead with that. For example, if you’re a good writer, start writing a blog a week, one blog a week about a topic, you know, a lot about, for example, if you’re a real estate person, Write.
Real estate. And what kind of topics do you put up best, best time to buy real estate. Great, worst time to buy real estate, nine things to know before buying a house during the pandemic. These are titles you come up with, right? You know, five qualities of a real estate, you know, five qualities to look for before hiring you real estate agent six, hidden fees, real estate agents.
Don’t want you to know about you do the kind of titles you put up and people, what are the six hidden fees they click on it, right? Or you put a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I read it. Okay. So, so that’s writing. If that’s your strength, podcasts, if you’re audio, sit there, get your phone, doing audio posts that it’s not hard to do.
It’s cheap nowadays, and you can pretty much shoot for free and you can post one audio podcasts per week. Not complicated YouTube for the first two years, I made one commitment to myself. One YouTube video a week, it was called two minutes would pass and we posted a one a week and that’s all I did. I didn’t do more than one a week, but I did every week.
And it was at the same exact time. It was on Tuesdays every week, Tuesday, 8:00 AM a video, went out two minutes with Pat. We did 104 videos. So that’s two years after the 104 videos. I sat there and I said, what do we want to do now? Is this working? Do we want to scale this? Do we want to take it to a different level.
I got a couple of videos that ended up doing well. I got one article that ended up doing well. I wrote a article about the movie limitless with Bradley Cooper. Did they came out. I said that Einstein used NZT. It was shared tens of thousands of times, but that was seven years ago, eight years ago, pre anybody knew who Patrick Bet David was.
I didn’t have a YouTube channel. I had nothing going on. I was just writing an article a week. And then once I realize it’s working, then I sit now I’m going to put money into it. And then few million dollars later, obviously at this point of the game, the Valuetainment brand is a whole different story.
You’re getting a hundred thousand dollars sponsorships. You’re getting people that are wanting to advertise that you’re turning down and you’re staying true to your audience and your brand. And now it’s turned into a company and this is a company that’s going to end up competing with NBC CNN Fox. A lot of these other guys Valuetainment media will be.
And this is just the beginning. So it became an accidental media company is what it turned into.
Casanova Brooks:
Got it. And that was exactly what I was wondering because right now, a lot of people that are wondering, obviously during the pandemic, should they be going after that profit or should they be going after their passion?
Right. And for you, it seems like they used, started out going after your passion, because it was something that you loved, which is the financial services. Am I right? Or you said it was accidental. Did you have an intention to go after profit or passion in the beginning?
Patrick Bet David:
So, and so that’s a great question. I’m going to give a little bit of a different answer than what most people tell you.
Here’s how I work. I think too many people do too creative stuff, way too early. Okay. And, and what do I mean by this? Let me explain. So. You know, Hey, go pursue your passion. You’ll never work a single day in your life. Great. My passion may be backgammon. I love playing backgammon. I’m very good at the game.
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to professionally be a backgammon player and have my life be what it is today. Okay. Did I wake up in the morning saying I love life insurance? No, I never said that. What happened with life insurance? I said, I want to find a career. I love numbers. I went into Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, and I started selling some insurance policies.
Then a 19 year old kid named Gilbert, whom I was a training. This kid was an incredible kid. He was a, at the time, I think he was a Jehovah witness guy. And he would pray for everybody was so random. The guy had like an old soul and everybody liked him and trusted him. He was homie. But he had an old soul.
He has something special about him. So would say, Hey Mary, do you mind if I pray for you? And people were not Christians, they’re not Joel, but they’re like, what do you mean? Let me just pray for you. And then he would pray interesting. And wasn’t overbearing. Okay. Come to my church. Let me tell you the profit of this.
No, he would just say to me, pray for you. And he was an insurance agent people trust in 19 years old, one day he’s going home. From Glendale community college, as he’s driving down, he’s about to make a left turn. The driver’s taken it because his car broke down. He’s in the passenger seat. When the guy’s making a left turn, the other car coming, doesn’t see, it’s a red light, hit some in the side.
The car turns goes into the telephone pole. 19 year old kid dies like this. I go to his funeral. Couple of thousand people showed up to his funeral. I’ve never seen a funeral with that big for 19 year old kid, 2000 people show up. So I go to the funeral. And afterwards we delivered a policy to his parents.
His parents didn’t have a single insurance policy. This kid bought a a hundred dollar insurance policy and he called me to cancel it. It was $60 a month. It was a permanent insurance policy. We gave $50,000 to his mom and his dad. It was the only baby they ever had. The mom and dad couldn’t get pregnant for seven years.
Right before they adopted a baby. They said, let me go and pray one more time. If we believe in God, let’s wait More month. One more month. The baby ends up being, they ended up getting pregnant. So they call them the miracle baby. They call him Gilbert. Yeah. And the mother said, if this, if I get pregnant, I will commit the rest of my life to got.
That’s the story painful story. I’m right there. And I’m like, just to talk to him, I thought it was just selling an insurance policy to get commission. In that moment, I realized, wow, there’s so much power behind what I do. I had no idea. This kid only paid $60 a month premium for four months, $240. We give a hundred thousand dollars to his family.
How do you pay two 40? And you get a hundred thousand dollars. This is, and I sat them. Everybody needs this product. So I became aware of the power of what I do after. Right. You got involved. So let’s talk about passion. Once I knew what we did change people’s lives. I got hooked. Then I said, I’m going to give it 20 years.
And the reason why I said 20 years is because a lot of times, people always looking elsewhere. What if I do this? What if I do solar? What if I do real estate? What if I do stocks? What if I do that? They’re all over the place. I’m a 20, 20, 20 guy, meaning first 20 years of your life, try to not make a big mistake where you ruin your life.
Get big mistake is what getting caught with cocaine. And, you know, you go do five years and you have to sit there and always explain the fact that you did this and it’s okay if it happens, but you’re hoping you don’t make a very big mistake. And the first 20 years, the second 20 years is find a career and stay in it for 20 years and make your money.
So if I go in and do 20 years into an industry and make my money, so I go into financial and say, am I the 20 year run? I made around $300 million. So I make $300 million the next 20 years, I’m going to combine my passion. And business together, which is media. And the last 20 years for me is going to be contribution.
Whether it’s going to be sports, politics, education, schooling, that’s from 60 to 80, but that’s the increment. So the whole concept of passion, profit value, you know, and, and what you pursue. I think there is a motivational video message of what people say, and it can get some views. I’m not the motivational video guy.
I’m the guy that’s going to tell you if you’re going to have a wife and kid, and you’re going to be married, you’re going to have to be able to put food on the table because there’s nothing more annoying than a husband and wife fighting over money on a daily basis because the husband or the wife made bad choices with money.
Money’s gonna make a lot of the big decisions in your life and you cannot treat it casually. You have to take it very seriously. So profit matters just as much as passion does and value does.
Casanova Brooks:
Wow. No, I think that that’s perfect. Perfect answer. And that’s exactly what I wantedto know. For you. You’ve worked so much at a time and people have asked you this question a lot, but I wanted to see if your perspective changes as you get older.
Cause right now you work as hard or maybe as much as anybody does and you pride yourself on that. Do you feel like that you wish you had a little bit more harmony between your work and your life balance? Because for everybody that sees you’re running a company with again, 16,000 agents, but then on the other side, you’re constantly putting out a lot of content.
So for you, do you wish that you had more harmony looking back on it? Do you wish that you would have set things up differently?
Patrick Bet David:
That’s a great question. You’re asking. And for me, you have to realize I was raised by a father that I saw once a week and Iran, you work Monday. Iran Sunday is Friday. Okay.
So Friday you’re off. And then you work Saturday through Thursday? No, you’re off Fridays. Okay. Fridays the Sunday. Just kind of try to visualize that. So my dad, I never saw my dad. He left at five 30. He came at nine o’clock. We were asleep at eight 30. We never saw her dead, but we saw him once a week. And when we did see him, it was our day.
Meaning woke up in the morning, we went to park, we went through church. We went to grandma’s. We came home, we ate, he took a nap. Then we watched a movie together then we had dinner and then we went to sleep. It was very systematic. My dad was all about system because he felt kids needed systems and a predictable model to follow that made them have some confidence behind it.
So years later, I asked my dad a question. I said dad, let me ask you a question. You said what? I said, you worked very hard. He said, I did. I said, I only saw you once a week. I said, yes. I said, did you ever miss it? Like, do you ever sit there and say, I wish I didn’t work as hard to have more time with me.
He said never. I said, why not? He says, because my goal is to build you into a leader. Selfishly, I want to be around you 24 seven, but how selfish of me to not teach you the hard work that I learned from my dad, then I’m being selfish. He says, I want to teach you to be a leader. So your dreams become a reality.
If I, it was around all the time and you saw me all the time, you going to think that’s the norm. And you were raised to think that’s the norm and you’re going to be financially struggling the entire time, because it’s tough to build anything big, doing nine to five, or do an eight to five. There’s gotta be period of your life, where you’re running and gun it.
So I took that element and added it to my philosophy on what my kids it’s the same way. The difference here is the fact that my dad wasn’t a CEO and a founder. He was an employee. So he didn’t have the luxury of building a company in a way where his kids wanted to be there every day. He didn’t have the luxury of putting a basketball court in his office, where as kids want to come in and play basketball, he didn’t have the luxury of putting a slide or an arcade or pool table or a ping pong table or a gym, or all these different types of games.
You would have kids want to come here and play around and run around. I have that luxury. So during the pandemic for five months straight, my kids pretty much four months straight. My kids were here every single day. It’s swapped between the three kids and they’d come in and you had homework every day.
You have to make 102 shots, not shots, but make 102 shots basket. My eight year old and my six year old, you have to read 40 pages of a book. My older was eight 40 pages. My middle one was 20 pages. The six year old, you have to watch a one hour documentary. So both of them watched the entire last dance. And then you have to give me a report on it.
And he has to do 25 laps of swimming every day. And that was your day. And then we played. And they were watching me doing conference calls. They were watching me doing meetings. There were watching daddy scene work and they’re all over me climbing on top of me. Like if I was on a podcast, they were down here and they’re messing around.
We’re rested, we’re doing all this other stuff. You know, I think most people, if they look, look at it and they sit back and ask themselves the questions slightly differently, which is if you had to show certain values and principles to your kids, to give them the biggest upside to have their dreams become a reality.
How would you change your approach to your example, you’re giving to them because they’re going to duplicate you in what ways would they need to live to have their dreams become a reality? And if they do what you do as a parent, will their dreams become a reality. If the answer is yes, keep doing it. If the answer is no, you may want to make some adjustments.
Casanova Brooks:
I love it for you. Are you have your kids started to show that they want to be creators? Right? Because me having the podcast, me being excited for interviews, my son sees it. Right. Yeah. And then looking at you to looking at Instagram, he sees all those things because he’s starting to become exposed and obviously there’s power in just seeing those numbers, regardless of the substance.
Since behind it. And you obviously have really big numbers and a lot of substance have your kids started to say, Hey dad, when I grow up, I’m going to be a YouTuber. And if so, what’s your response on that? Because obviously it takes a lot of consumption to get that love for it.
Patrick Bet David:
Yeah, the oldest one has he likes to do videos and, and kind of see himself and you all have they’re on Instagram accounts that I manage myself and I’m just kind of building up to one day, pass over to them.
And, you know, some of them, the oldest one does the middle one loves the camera while I’m doing a podcast with you. My wife sends me a picture of him. Saying this kid is so confident. The guy is so comfortable in his own skin. The guy looks like a little middle Eastern whiteboard, Bo Jackson. He’s got the perfect pot and the big calves, and he’s very strong, but he’s got a big heart, but he’s competitive and, different.
But the point being is, I don’t know what it is to be raised in an environment where my father creates content and runs a business. I don’t know. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to these guys and what they’re going to want to do. The only outcome I have with my kids is one thing. I just want to find what excites them the most and what their strengths are.
And then I want to put them in that environment that highlights their strengths and their gifts. That’s all I want to do and where they decide to go from there. I’m all cool with it. You want to go? You know, like my oldest loves dirt. He’s loved dirt since he was eight months old, he always went to dirt.
He always wanted to see ants and dirt and playing in the mud and, you know, crickets and frogs. He just, I don’t know, he just loves it. He loves that stuff. Right. And the middle one is very different. He’s competitive. He likes fashion. Like he picks his clothes from a young age. You would say, no, I’m not going to wear that shirt.
That doesn’t match. I don’t like the socks. Can you give me a different one? He wouldn’t go to school for 30 minutes. You argue with my wife, I’m not going to school wearing this. And I’m like, what a strong personality I’m impressed with this kid. The youngest one is a bully. She’s a smack talker. She talks shit.
So she has a complete different approach where she may end up being a lawyer. She may have a strong personality doing what she’s going to do, but I’m looking to see what they’re eventually going to want to do with their lives. And then I’ll just water them with people who are experts in that area that can eventually and get them to the next level.
That’s my approach with the kids.
Casanova Brooks:
Got it. Yeah. And I love it. And I seen a video where you were talking about your daughter and you didn’t know how, you know, what she was going to be when she grows up. And my daughter she’s two and a half, but definitely going on 21. So it’s the exact same thing. Every day.
We say that she’s a pistol self. One thing that I think that has driven so many people to you is the fact that you can be polarizing, but at the same time, you’re polarizing when it comes to true leadership. And I think one of the videos that I know went viral was the wartime versus the peacetime leader, which came out of the segment of the book.
But something else that I caught, which was maybe six to eight months ago, and you were talking about leadership and how one thing that particularly stood out to me is you said something along the lines is there’s diff there’s a difference of having someone who believes you versus believing in you.
Right. And I don’t know if you remember this live that you did one night, but I wanted you to talk about that because I feel like for running even a company with 14,000 people, really, even 1400 people that takes a lot. How have you been able to strengthen your leadership? You know, over the course of the years, like, is there been a mentor?
Has there’ve been something that you’ve always turned to because a lot of people right now we’re trying to get into this entrepreneurship world. We’re even having no five different employees or team players. It takes a lot to adapt to those different styles. What’s it been like for you and how have you strengthened your leadership over the years?
Patrick Bet David:
So, so to me, years ago, I was having to sit down with a bunch of guys in 2006 and they were asking question, what is the key to success? And one guy said, marry the right person. Another guy said, hard work. Another guy said, you know, have a relationship with God. Another one said saving money. Another one said, you know, being good with numbers and other ones that being good in sell all this stuff, they said, right.
I said, okay. And I’m for a couple of years, I believe this thing. And then I believe this I’m like, man, I gotta figure out there’s gotta be one thing above everything. Right? What is it? And finally, I came to the conclusion that the number one key to success in my eyes is learning how to process issues.
That’s the number one skillset. Okay. To me, happiness and fulfillment is about being aligned. But to me, the number one skill set is learning how to process issues. So what is processing issues? Processing issues is different about how you react to a problem that’s within a second, you got to make a decision what you’re doing right now.
Processing issues is different than what am I going to be doing this week to maximize my returns of this week. Processing is different than Newman’s strategic thinking for 2021. What are we going to do in January, February, March, April, our numbers. And then processing issues is different for longterm thinking five, 10 years.
What am I going to do next 20 years? Processing issues is also different when you’re debating religion. It’s also different when you are debating politics. It’s also different when you’re debating who to vote for, you have to ask yourself how have my parents voted their entire lives. I’m African American, 88% of African Americans vote Democrat.
Is that what I’m I guess I’m going to do, why am I going to do that? I’m Armenian, I’m a Syrian 65% of them vote Democrat. Why am I voting Democrat? I remember growing up in a family, my mother said that were coming into my dad’s side that were imperialist. And I remember being a kid. I had no idea what politics were, but I remember one time I asked my mom, mom, are we Democrats or Republicans?
And I’ll never forget when my mom said, my mom said, we’re Democrats. I said, why? He says, because Democrats are afforded poor and Republicans are for the rich. I said, I want to be Republican. She’s like, what do you mean? Do you understand? Like, I didn’t say I want to be Republican. Like pro-life, pro-military, I’m like, I want to be rich.
I hate being poor. I can’t stand being poor. I hate the fact that I don’t have any allowance. I never had an allowance as a kid. My mom’s never given me an allowance ever. I’ve never had a single penny of an allowance. I hated that part. Figure out a way to do a bunch of them. I said, you know, one day I’m going to be rich, but I questioned it.
Why are we poor? Why are we on welfare? Why are we going through these things? Why I’m sick of this thing, right. It really ticked me off. So then to me became where I’m doing a course right now, we’re sitting down this Saturday to come up with the course because on the voltage Academy, I post different courses.
And one of them is advanced business strategy, which is the wall vault conference. It’s specifically for founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs. The other one is a sales course, but I was asked to do a course on public speaking and storytelling and how you give messages and. In an environment of a zoom or public or smaller one-on-one and all this other stuff.
And Marty, you asked the question. So, so how do you view public speaking? I said, as a debate, he says, what do you mean? I said, public speaking is all about a debate. I don’t understand. But what do you mean? I don’t look at it as a debate. I look at it as a speech. I say you’re debating. No, you’re not. You’re giving a speech.
I said, you’re debating. Let me explain. What do you mean? Here’s what I mean when you’re getting up and presenting an idea. You’re not presenting an idea to people that 100% agree with what you’re saying. You’re presenting an idea what happened to bring up facts, stories, compassion, understanding of the audience history what’s happened, how times have changed and how people want things to change.
I have to change the way they’ve used certain things and how they vote for an idea of business finance, marriage, raising kids. Like even you asking me a question, I just gave him an idea about. Why it’s once a week because of my dad. That’s a debate. Someone’s going to say I disagree. That’s public speaking.
Right. Okay. So then I learned leadership is all about the debate guys, whom I pay $400,000. You a great guys, a doctor, but he’s very lazy. He’s not a hard working guy. And he benefited from being with me early on and he came in and he’s a guy that never quit. He was there. So eventually his block of business got thick and then insurance, the longer you’re on it eventually works out for you.
He should be at a $2 million a year income. Right now he’s only making $400,000 a year and he didn’t like capitalists. At all, he would always link capitalism to slavery, African American guy, very good friends. His kids talked to me all the time. They went to good schools. I’m talking Morehouse, you know, these schools, these are not small schools.
These are legitimate schools. When do we have any conversation to get? He says, listen, man, socialism’s the way to go. You have to get into the direction of socialism. You know, capitalism is all about the rich. I said, okay, cool. Sounds good. I kept that in the back of my head. One day he got out like a, you know, 10, $20,000 bonus.
And I called him. I said, congratulations, you got a bonus. This is how much I give them, you know, 10 to 20 grand. He says, Oh my gosh, that’s so awesome. I said, but bro, let me tell what I’m doing. I think you’re right. He says, what do you mean? I said, I think it’s unfair to pay this whole thing to you as a capitalist.
I said, I think it makes more sense to take this 10 grand and give $500 to your top 10, 20 best employees that you have. And give them each $500 and you’ll get 500 bucks, but everybody gets 500. Right. He snapped at me. How dare you do that? You can’t do something like that, et cetera, et cetera. how dare you do that? You can’t do something like that. To me. I said, no, you’re getting a bonus, but I’m doing what you said is right. Which is socialism. He lost it. Then I said, you’re right, you deserve this $10,000. Not everybody else. This is your check. You’re efficiently capitalist.
And he says, damn, I got it. Sure. The point is to say, I worked hard for this $10,000 bonus. I was willing to do that additional work during that time. So one time I had a conversation with the same guy and I said, you know, You have to realize this. And this is when this whole concept came about. I sat him down.
I threw him at his wife. They came out here. We had a meeting together. I said, you know, I hope you understand this. I believe in you from day one, but I no longer believe you. Just, what do you mean? I said, I know it’s an insult. It’s not a compliment. I don’t want you to take this as a compliment because I believe in your capacity of what you could do, world changing, you can make a very big impact in the world.
But I just don’t believe in the words that come out of your mouth anymore. You say things and you never do the last 50 times. You’ve said what you’re going to do. You haven’t done. So I just don’t believe you anymore. I believe in you that hasn’t changed. I don’t believe you anymore. And he started getting emotional.
I said, I understand why you would get emotional. This deserves tears. This ought to make a man cry. Because the last thing you want is somebody that you’re in business with to say that they no longer believe you. They just believe in you. Because there’s people that you sit there and an enemy you say, I believe in you in my enemy, doing whatever they can to put me out of business, but you don’t have to believe in them or you believe them that they will do whatever they can to take your piece of business away from you.
You never want your parents or leader to tell you that they believe in you, but they don’t believe you anymore. It’s very painful. So when you’re asking about leadership, he left, he came back and he changed his business and got a little bit better. But he took it personal. I think a lot of times leaders are afraid of having civil conversations with people that you have to have would push buttons because they are so concerned about being like all the time.
And I think in the world of leadership, you gotta be able to have the courage to do that.
Casanova Brooks:
I love it, man. Last thing I want to, I ask you, and this has been a phenomenal conversation because I knew that it would be, there’s somebody out there right now that listening to you, they’re super inspired. They want to blaze a path similar to what you’ve done, but they have that little voice in their head.
That little voice says that they’re not strong enough. They’re not smart enough. Or maybe they just don’t have enough resources. What’s the one thing that you would say to that person to get them to just take action.
Patrick Bet David:
Find someone who, is a great person to shadow that believes in you and do whatever you can to earn their respect.
And then eventually you’re not going to need them and you can eventually be an equal or maybe somebody that can be as supportive to that person. And you want a piece of their company, or you go do your own thing. So for example, Say forest. if I’m coming up and I want to create content, nobody, if I have a chance to create content with somebody who was a top channel and a top podcast, or, and I can do that and learn and collaborate and be somebody that’s number two, or number three on their show, I’m learning from them.
If I’m doing real estate and I can go work under a number one real estate agent locally in Minnesota, and this guy is killing it and I can just somebody that supports and I watch his work ethic, how he works out, how we negotiate, how we call. Then eventually you’re three months, six months, 12 months later, my belief goes up because I said, if I do this and what he does, I can make a million dollar, your income.
I can make $2 million. Your income is pretty amazing. Then my company goes up. If you don’t have it in you right now, go find somebody who does have it in themselves and be around them enough. Until some of their mindset and DNA rubs off on you. That’d be my number one suggestion for somebody who is coming up, go find somebody that’s strong and shadow them for as long as you can, until you no longer need them.
Casanova Brooks:
Got it. There you have it. People were mr. PVD. It’s been a phenomenal conversation. I’m blessed and honored that you decided to come onto the show, share your wisdom with us and remember DreamNation in the dream we trust. But just as he said, you have to take action. Otherwise it’ll only merely be a fantasy, we’ll see you on the next one.