36. Patrick Bet-David: Author of Your Next Five Moves

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 36 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author Patrick Bet-David. From a humble beginning as a young immigrant escaping war-torn Iran with his parents to Founding his own company, Patrick has gained a firsthand understanding of what rags to riches means and how it is fueled by freedom and opportunity, the core tenets of the American dream. His introduction is very special, so I'll let him tell you more at the start of today's episode. But before we jump in, I'd like to let you know that our conversation today is all about Patrick's brand new book, Your Next 5 Moves. It was an excellent read and I would highly recommend it. To anybody looking to increase their knowledge around business strategy. We filmed at his offices in person outside of Dallas, Texas. His offices were beautiful. And Ryan at Book Thinkers co-hosted this episode with me today. So don't be shocked when you hear some other voices in there, unless you are watching on YouTube, and it is available on YouTube if you'd like to see us in person. Now, P.S., Patrick has the coolest bookshelves ever. And I posted a couple of videos of those on Instagram. So go check those out. Without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with Patrick Bet-David. Hello, Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books. We have Patrick Bet-David. We're actually in his office today and we're discussing his book, Your Next Five Moves. So, Patrick, how are you doing today?

Very good. Good to have you guys here.

Yeah, we're very excited for the podcast. And so I think For those in the audience that don't know who you are, I'd love to have you just give kind of a 2-minute version of who is Patrick Bet-David.

Born and raised in Iran, lived there 10 years. Um, uh, when Khomeini died, 6 weeks after that we escaped, went to Germany. I lived at a refugee camp for a couple years, and then from Germany came to the States, joined the Army at 18, went to the 101st Airborne Air Assault, got out, wanted to be a bodybuilder, you know, the whole night I was going to be Mr. Olympia. Going to Hollywood, you know, marry a Kennedy and be a governor one day. And then I married a Hutman. I married a completely different girl. But I started working at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter a day before 9/11 at 22 years old. Fell in love with the financial industry. Was with Morgan for about a year. I left with Transamerica for the next 7 and a half years. And in October of '09, started my own insurance company with 66 agents. Today we have around 18,000 agents nationwide.

Wow.

And then accidentally throughout the process started a YouTube channel. We later on named it Valuetainment, which that's got a few million subscribers now.

Well, I love, I love what you've done with Valuetainment specifically because I, I kind of see myself coming up in the same role that you did as far as reporting. So I love interviewing people like you. We love reading your books and interacting with you. On one hand, I get to provide the audience some really cool information they get to learn, but then I get to absorb your wisdom And we get to kind of infuse that directly into our business. And so that's what you were doing with Valuetainment at first, right?

Yes, absolutely. Yes, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's a form of that. Do you guys have kids yet or no?

Not yet.

No kids yet.

Okay.

It's a form of documenting. Like, for me, I would sit there and I would say, you know, I'd love to know what my grandfather did when he was 28 years old. You know, like, I'd love to— what would you pay for that? Actually think about Yeah. What would you pay for your grandfather to have uploaded 1,000 videos of what was on his mind in the '50s? There's not a number for what we would pay for that, right? So, I said, you know what? One day these kids are gonna say, what was Daddy thinking about in 2020? What was he thinking about in 2018? What was he thinking about in 2016? And that by itself of documenting, and then sometimes as you're going through a process, whatever that process may be, you're raising money. Well, document it. You know, how did you come up with raising your money? You have to fire some people, make an episode. You want to find out how to scale, what formula works for you, go ahead and make it 17 ways on what you did. So I would literally sit there and I said, what did I do here? I'd write the notes, it's an episode. I'd write what mistakes, I'd write, make the episode. I would do— I would make the episode. And that became a business model for us. And then it led to who we wanted to interview, people that I'm interested in, whether it was bodybuilders, politicians, mobsters, business people, billionaires. Comedians, and that kind of turned it into what it is today.

Yeah, no, I love that story. Very similar, like I mentioned, to what we're doing. And I also have a little bit of that feeling of I'd like to document everything I'm doing for my future generations. And so, uh, just a quick funny story. At the end of every week on Sunday, I record a 1-minute video that is basically a highlight of the week. What were the best things that happened in the week? What am I the most grateful for? Only takes a minute. And at the end of a year, and I'm not at a year yet, you could watch that entire year back in less than an hour. And so you get to go through the highlights, look at your facial expressions, kind of see what you're feeling.

Now, are you only saying the good stuff or you're saying the bad stuff as well?

Well, for this, this is kind of my gratefulness time capsule, so it's only the good stuff in this. But I do journal a lot, and so I've got all the records.

Matthew McConaughey just came out with a book, and he talks about the fact that he takes, you know, 36 years— I don't know what the timeline is— of him journaling, and he wrote it down, and he Anytime he wants to go through, he says, when I went through a breakup, what was I thinking about when I was— it's a very great way of doing it. By the way, what was that movie where the kid kept documenting every— he was a Marine. Was that Avatar where he had to document in a camera and he would say, today, you know, I went over here, here's what happened. I think it was Avatar when he was documenting, right?

Prior to going into the—

Yeah, prior to going into actually, you know, whatever the place was. I think that's a brilliant way of doing it today.

Ryan just finished reading Matthew's book.

Well, yeah, Matthew's book was amazing, but I was gonna say you smashed my TV before I had an opportunity. No, but I also, I also think like part of what both of you guys are doing that is really cool is it does give you some opportunity to shadow, you know, like when you're interviewing people and we have the opportunity to interview you, we can see kind of how you're coming across, some things that mean a lot to you. It's shadowing, not in the way that some of your peers here can, but it's, it's a little bit more than mentorship. And, uh, you know, we can feel some of the energy and stuff like that as well.

I agree.

Let's talk a little bit about the book. So right in the beginning, in the introduction, you have this metaphor about a chess player, a chess player who can see 12 moves in advance. Why only 5 for the book?

That's because of Simon& Schuster. It was supposed to be your next 15 moves. So my original title was Your Next 15 Moves. They said, that's a terrible title. I said, what's terrible about it? It says 10 moves. We got to take it back 10 moves, then it's a great title. So they named it Your Next 5 Moves. And I think they made the right decision with the title. Originally was supposed to be called Solve for X, then Solve for Y, and then eventually became Your Next 5 Moves. So the credit goes to Simon Schuster for picking the 5.

For those in the audience, we've got a lot of young professionals who maybe are in debt or experiencing heartbreak, a lot of the typical things that you also experienced when you were younger. I loved how right in the beginning of the book, you say 1.8 GPA, parents were divorced 2 times, I had a ton of credit card debt, $49,000 in credit card debt, all of these otherworldly problems, and then look at where you are today. And so what kind of advice do you have for somebody who's just starting out, maybe wants to be an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, and is looking for those kind of first steps? What are the first steps that somebody should take?

I honestly think that the people that have an edge over their peers are those who know clearly what they want out of life, period. I don't care what it is. You know, I have a guy that's making a couple million a year. He came in with he and his wife to do business plan together. And I'm looking at him, I said, can I ask you a question? He says, yeah. I said, what's up with your eyes? He says, what do you mean what's up with my eyes? I said, your eyes used to be focused. Why is it so loose? And why is it so like chill and so just casual? I mean, what happened to your eyes? What are you talking about? I said, go in the mirror and look at the eyes real quick. So he goes in the bathroom. I said, look at your eyes. I said, I want you to take this picture with you. This is the picture taken 5 years ago and compare these eyes to your eyes. He goes and he says, what do you recognize with the guy's eyes here versus yours? He says, this guy's determined. I said, why are you so comfortable right now? What the hell happened to you? What happened to that fire you had? You wanted to go out there and dominate the marketplace. What happened? Are you rich now? Are you making good money now? Are you at a point right now where you're comfortable? And he's like, man, I never thought about it that way. I said, look, the whole thing— this is a conversation we had this week. We got a very, very big competition going right now in the company. And it's extremely intense. So look at it this way. I called a couple of my guys. One of my guys, he said, Rodolfo, I'm stressing. We had a call at 7 AM. So in life, you got 4 things you need to do. You got to outwork your peers, you got to out-improve, you got to out-strategize, and you got to outlast. Okay, so let's unpack each one of these. Outwork. Anybody can outwork anybody. Somebody that works on a farm outworks everybody, but how come he's not advancing? Because it's a linear outwork. You just work your tail off and you don't improve and you stay the same. So you're a hard-working person, which means what? Great for society. But you're not going to have exponential growth in life. Then you have the next person, which is those who are out-improving. There are a lot of people that keep reading every single book on the planet, but they're still staying the same. Why is that? Because they're not working their tails off and they're thinking just because you read the books, you're going to be successful. Reading books by itself is not going to do nothing. For you. There's a lot of guys that want to come out with books because they read a lot of books. No problem. But there's a different element to somebody that writes a book based on what they did in their lives versus they wrote a book because what they think the 17 keys to success are. So you got outwork, you got out-improve, right? Then you got out-strategize. This comes last, by the way, because you never know who is the best strategist. Nobody knows it, right? Say we have a pretty girl at a club. The 3 of us are there, right? We all like the same exact girl at the club that we want to go talk to. Okay, fine. Now, your strategy may be direct. You're going to go and say, hey girl, can I buy you a drink? Right? His strategy may be, you know, I'm going to have my buddy go talk for me. Okay? And hey, can you go tell her that I like her? And she's like, why doesn't he go? Doesn't he have the guts? Another person's strategy may be, I'm just going to go tell her I like your hair and just walk away. Drop a compliment. Hey, I'm not really too interested, but I like your hair. Very cool. And walks away. That's 3 different strategies at a nightclub, right? Yours, it's right off the bat. She's either going to say yes or no, but immediate rejection. Maybe you don't mind that, you're cool with that. Yours, you don't want to take the rejection directly, so you use your friend. Your friend, the other one, is willing to go and just compliment and walk away. She's going to be like, that guy's not trying a lot, why is he not interested in me? She may want to be with that guy. Everybody has a different strategy, so this is going to be years before you get good at doing strategies. And then last but not least is what? Outlast. How do we know which one of you guys is a stud? You know, people on social media are very quick to pick somebody. Oh my gosh, he is the face of social media influencer. How do you know? You know how early it is? Like, how do you— 20 years ago, there was a guy on TV. His name was Morton Downey Jr. I don't know if you guys seen his documentary on Netflix. Have you seen a Morton Downey Jr. documentary? I don't know what the name of it is. If you've not seen it, for 18 months, he passed Montel Williams, He passed Jerry Springer. He passed Oprah Winfrey. For 18 months, he was number one. You know how long he lasted? 18 months. You know what happened 18 months later? Crash and burn. He was gone. But for that 18 months, they thought what? This guy's gonna be the greatest showman ever. He would come smoke cigarettes, call people out, bring people on, and he was— if you've never seen it, it's a must-see TV, right? But he lasted 18 months. Then you look at a guy like Trump that becomes president, is the most hated guy in the world. Why do people hate him? He lasted a long time. He recreated himself multiple times, right? People sit around and say, well, you look at this, you know, other person on who he is and look what he's done. The most hated people are typically the ones that can last a long time because most can't. So those who can, they don't like the people that can't. So look at everybody on social media today. Who would you say are the biggest influencers? Okay, it's a lot of names. We have no clue what these guys are going to do 10 years from now. You go back 5 years ago, there was another person's face on social media every single day. You don't see it anymore. What happened? Because this is not a 1-year game. It's not a 2-year game. So you go back and you ask, what do you say to people that are thinking about doing something long-term? The sooner you know who you want to be in life, the sooner you know that, the sooner you're willing to do the outwork, out-improve, out-strategize, outlast, the only other thing that's left at the end is one thing. It'll take us a while to realize who thinks the biggest because everybody claims they think the biggest. That takes 20 years to find out who really thinks the biggest. Sometimes it takes 30 years. to find out who thinks the biggest. Elon Musk is now worth $100 billion. And the competition between these guys that are competing, 5 people right now are worth $100 billion. One of them is the Louis Vuitton— is it the Louis Vuitton guy that's worth $100 billion?

Yeah.

The other one is Elon Musk, and you got Gates, you got Zuck, and you got Bezos. They're worth $100 billion. Bezos is worth nearly $200 billion, right? But if you were to bet right now, next 5 years, who do you think is gonna be the richest man in the world 5 years from now? Some people may say Bezos.

Yeah.

Right? Some say Elon.

Yeah.

Some say Elon, but if you had to say amongst those 5 guys who thinks the biggest, thinks the biggest, it's probably gonna be an Elon Musk conversation because he thinks the biggest. It's not money, it's not freedom, it's think the biggest. I wanna put a civilization on, all this stuff. So again, all of that stuff, but the sooner a person knows who they want to be in life, the kind of a life they wanna live, They have an edge on everybody. Unfortunately, most people don't know it in their 50s, and we're talking about people in their 20s and 30s. If you can figure that in your 20s, you're ahead of the game.

And you have, you have this personality assessment that people can take. Will that help them find those core values? Because you have a, you have a quote in the book that says something like, the ultimate clarity comes from identifying your core values, or something along those lines. So what, what steps— maybe it's that personal, that personality assessment?

It's a great question. So So I have 3 kids. I have Patrick, Dylan, Senna, right? Each of them are driven by a different thing, very different thing. My middle one, Dylan, is very competitive. He looks like Bo Jackson. He's the guy that just fully— he's got the perfect butt with the dimples and the thighs like this and cut up, and he's got calves. How big are these calves? This guy's calves are like, like this, right? And he's a, you know, jock, and he just— everybody likes him, and he's so cool, so humble, likable. Everyone likes this guy, right?

Okay.

He can't stand losing. So I'll play basketball with these guys 2-on-1, and I'll say, oh, you quit? Oh, you quit? I'm gonna beat you right now. Go ahead, have your Sunday as you quit, right? You know, you can't beat me. So we didn't show up. So you're not playing defense? You're tired now? Oh, you're done playing defense? No problem, I'll play defense on you. And he gets feisty with me, right? So what am I doing with this kid? Now, some people may say that that's not a good thing. That's this— always people can say whatever they can. There's a scene in the documentary The Last Dance Where it's Jordan's father and the oldest brother, Adrian, I believe, that are going in the house. And Adrian was a handyman and Jordan wasn't. And his father tells Jordan, oh, get out of here, you're just a kid, you don't want to really compete, you don't want to do anything. And Jordan was furious. Now, his dad knew what he was doing to his son. Jordan says years later, says, you have no idea how difficult it is when a man is doing it to you at that age because you don't know what you're going through. It's mental torture when somebody does that to you because you're like, what am I going to do to win your acceptance? And, you know, what do I need to do? Sometimes great coaches are like that. You know, you play, sometimes fathers are like that. That's why father-son is always a certain level of tension. If you look at boys having challenges with anybody, it's their father. Daughters are typically with mom because moms are tougher on daughters and dads are a little bit more gentle. And dads are tougher on boys and moms are gentle with— this is why they say mama's boy or daddy's girl, right? Okay. So while you're going through figuring yourself out to see what it is, the world's going to test you in many different ways. A girl's going to break up with you. It's a great test. You ought to go through it. A friend's going to backstab you. It's a beautiful thing when that happens to you. You know, you're going to lose everything. It's a beautiful thing. You're going to be humiliated publicly by everybody. A relative of yours who you think believed in you is going to say something that's going to come back to you. You're going to be like, Mom said that about me. My brother said— these are all beautiful things, but in that moment, it's mental and emotional torture. So as you're going up, you're asking a question: how do you know to find out what drives you? Because of that personal identity test in the book where you find out what drives you, right? There's 20 things that drives you, and everybody's different by what they're driven by. You know, some people are driven by a madness quality. I need an opposition. I need an enemy. I gotta have somebody I'm gonna go up against. Jordan looked for an excuse to have somebody they're going up against. Some people are task-oriented individuals. I have to get this done, then I do this, then I do that, then I do this. It's advancement. I just gotta be able to advance. Some people are purpose, you know, they have to be able to make a difference and all. Some people, it's lifestyle. Am I gonna get that house? I'm gonna get that girl. I'm gonna get that car. I'm gonna get— and it changes in life. But if I try to drive you in your 20s based on the 60-year-old version of you, I lose. I'm working at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I'm a broker. I go in front of a bunch of clients that are worth $10 million and I'm trying to win their business over and they're all in their 60s. Here's what I sound like. Hi, thank you for coming out. It's great to have you here at the restaurant. You know, enjoy your dinner. I said, can you imagine one day you have a house that you're living in, a corner lot, 10,000 square foot house with Ferraris parked outside, you putting the best parties together and everyone's coming over to your parties? And everyone's looking at me like I've lost my mind. What is wrong with you? I'm like, why am I not getting their attention? Who cares about a Ferrari and a 10,000 square foot house when you're 65 years old? The first thing a 65-year-old thinks about a 10,000 square foot house is what? You know how long it's going to take me to clean that house?

Yeah.

I don't want no 10,000 square foot house at 65 years old. What they wanted is what? Imagine your grandkids are coming over to you because you have an income stream that pays, pays you for life. And they come to you for Thanksgiving. They choose to come to you for Christmas rather than the other in-laws because you're the family that's slightly more successful, because you put a park in the back that the kids are going to have fun, because you got a swimming pool, you got a slide. You got— imagine you set that kind of— and your grandkids. What else do you have more than grandkids, right? Grandkids and grandparents have one thing in common. They have a common enemy, the parents, right? And you're talking their language. That's what they're interested in. Then I go give a presentation to a bunch of 25-year-olds. You know what the presentation sounded like? Look how royally screwed this up. So guys, imagine if one day you have a stream of income coming in of $10,000 a month and you're 65 years old and you have nothing to worry about with retirement. You have the best health insurance. They're sitting there saying, I could care less about health insurance at 25 years old. What's the moral of the story? You have to learn how to drive yourself Based on what phase you're in, and you have to learn how to drive your people around you based on what phase they're in. Many times that could change. If you poke the wrong thing, it doesn't do anything. If you poke the right thing, you're introduced to a human being you've never seen before. That's a challenge. Most people can't get into that part. That's why great coaches make $20 million a year, $10 million, because they know exactly where to poke you. Well, if you know how to poke yourself, You're ahead of the game because now you know how to challenge yourself. Very hard to get to that point, but those who end up doing big things in life that we read about, they internally know how to do that to themselves.

I know you had a question specifically about driving leadership. I mean—

Yeah, I mean, I had the privilege of working behind a chief executive officer directly for him for the first 7 years of my career, and he was always plugged in. I mean, he was plugged in on Sundays when we had to close a deal, we were working nights. And he would drive his people in that way by leading by example and showing them that if you're doing these types of things, then you can create wealth for yourself. Because we also had great incentive plans, a lot of the things you touched on in your book. So I'd love to hear about how you drive your people because it is unique. Um, it's unique and it's also very authentic. I mean, it's, uh, you're having authentic conversations that are a lot of times tough conversations with your people.

Yeah, so it's, it's not easy at first. Let me explain why. Because when you first want to set up an environment like that, you haven't yet validated that your methodology works. So there's gonna be a lot of people that can be like, look, how do I know what you're saying is correct? So there's going to be a lot of pushback at the beginning. Well, maybe you don't know what you're talking about. Maybe your style of leadership doesn't work. But when you find your first true believer that buys into you and they say, No, I fully understand what you're doing. And then that becomes a standard that you're not constantly compromising. Then you can really scale. But it's not an easy thing to do. And this is why it's not an easy thing to do. I'm at Neiman Marcus and my middle son, Dylan, he always likes to climb on top of me. And he's 5 years old at the time. This was 2 years ago. And he's just wrestling, climbing on top of me. Daddy, I got your neck, and all this other stuff. And this lady looks at me and she starts laughing. I remember when my son was that age. I'm like, oh, cool. So how many kids you got? She said, I got 3 kids. How old are they? Oh, they're in their 30s now. I said, give me 3 advice on how to be a good parent. She says, I'll give you one. One. I said, sure. She said, but this one could change your life. I said, tell me. She says, you know how you threaten your kids that if they don't do something, you're going to take something away from them, or you're going to give them a pow pow, you're going to discipline them? He said, yeah. I said, yes. He says, don't ever say it if you don't do it. He said, if you say you're going to do something Discipline them, even if it hurts. You got to keep your word because you lose your word with your kids, now you don't have credibility. Sometimes bosses, leaders in department, they say, if we don't do this, we're not going to do this, or if we don't do this, we're going to do— if we do this, we're going to do this. And so often, good or bad, they don't keep their word. So you know what the people say on the team? Ah, he's so full of it. It's okay, let him say what he's just upset, right? He'll get over it. He'll get over it. And then boom, nothing happens. You have to deliver on what you're doing. And the more you do that, this thing, everything that comes out of here has got a credit score. This mouth of yours has got a credit score. Yours got a credit score. Everybody here has a credit score. Some people, unfortunately, we can't run a credit score on your mouth. We can run a credit score on your finances. We can run a credit score on your health. We can run a credit score on your body fat. You're probably 13%, 15% body fat. We can run a credit score on everything except for your word. But the people that work with you, they can run a credit score and they'll say, he's about a 780. Whatever he says, it's gonna get done. She's about a 680. He's about a 660. He's about a 730. Everybody has a credit score. The higher the credit score you have of what you say, the better quality people end up being around you. The better quality people end up being around you, at that point you just decide what you wanna do. The rest is history.

It's a great metaphor.

Yeah.

I hope everyone in our audience took note of that one because that's huge.

Let's transition over to something that our audience loves— books. So in your book, you say that you kind of estimate 1,500 books. That's how many you've read. Number one, what are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on your life? I know that there are quite a few, but I'd love to kind of hear what comes to mind. And then number two, uh, what percentage of your success, if you had to estimate, came from the foundational principles that you learned from some of these great books?

I mean, you have to realize, for me, books changed my life. The moment I realized the power of books, I couldn't believe it. It was like a secret to me. I figured something out that nobody else had figured out. And then later on, you realize the people we admire the most, these were people that were readers. You know, they had— they were willing to take the time to read books. The movie Book of Eli, you've seen the movie Book of Eli, right? So here's this powerful man who's trying to get his hands on one book. And he knows if he gets this book, with this book he can rule what? The world, right? He can rule his little town that he has. And that book is the Book of Eli. And the Book of Eli is a Bible for folks that— what do they call that word when you're blind?

Braille?

Braille, yeah. So, only folks who are blind can read that, right? So, finally, he gets his hands on that Bible and he realized, man, I can't do nothing with this Bible. Denzel Washington was blind and he knew how to read the Bible like that. So, You know, the right book in the right person's hand, good things happen. The wrong book in the wrong business hand, people get killed. One wrong book in the wrong person's hand can ruin a nation. We've seen that happen in many different places. So, okay, so go back to me on what books impacted my life. It depends on different phases of my life. When I read How to Win Friends and Influence People at 21 years old, it was perfect because I just got out of the military and I was too aggressive. And my sister's like, I think you need to read How to Win Friends and Influence People. It was the first book I read. Wow, this is phenomenal. This is exactly what I need to read. So I read that multiple times. And then later on, you know, if I read a book called Psycho-Cybernetics, it was interesting to understand people. Here's a guy that's a plastic surgeon who one day realizes plastic surgery doesn't do any good for women or men. It doesn't develop confidence. Confidence comes from here. He would do surgeries and implants and all this other stuff, even 6 months later, that person's still insecure. What happened there? It's internal, right? Psycho-Cybernetics. Then I read Laws of Success, a gift given to me by Phyllis Brown, very, very special person in my life. So I read Laws of Success 11 years ago. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. I love this book. And that became an important book at that time. Then I read Hypomanic Edge, recommended to me by Byron Udell, where he talks about certain people that are hypomanic and why they're wired this way. Their brain is going. I'm like, oh, this makes sense. The 20 qualities of hypomanic edge. I relate to a person like this. Then you read Ayn Rand, you know, Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead. Then you read some political books and you do some philosophical books. But there's a lot of them, but it's at different phases. You can read the same book at 20, at 25, at 30, 35, 40, and at 20 will do nothing for you. 25, maybe a little bit, but at 40 can change your life. So sometimes it's when people ask for book recommendations, I always want to find out what phase they're at to give them a book recommendation of where they're at, not where I'm at. If I told you the book I'm reading right now, you would say, I really could care less about that book right there. But for my phase, you would say, I'd love to read that book right there. So, those are some of the books that have impacted my life.

So, for your next 5 moves, who is the ideal target reader? Who should pick up this book and read it?

Great question. So, the way we— this book was written, the whole premise, you know, why I wrote this book is one day I woke up and You know, my girl wanted to break up with me, so she sends me a text, 6 AM. She says, I don't think this is working out. My mom's right. You love your business more than you love me. My mom called me with the guilt of, when's the last time you called me? What happened to my son who used to call mom all the time? You know, used to be a son that loved your mommy. What happened? So, guilt. So, first one was heartbreak. Second one was guilt. Third one was my best sales guy left me. He was the guy that was keeping me in business. And the fourth one was— My best client canceled. This is all happening at the same time. Okay, in a 15-minute morning, I wake up, I'm like, girl, mom, best agent, best client. Client and agent was an email. Mom was a voicemail. Girlfriend was text, right? So I'm sitting there saying, I got like 50 different emotions. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm just trying to get out of this whatever funk I'm in. Can something go right in my life? And in that moment, I'm thinking, saying, okay, what's the first? What do I do first? Then what do I do after that? What is the best move for me to make next? Do I call my mom and try to lose that guilt and start my day off with guilt? And no matter what I say, she's gonna be like, well, whatever. Yeah, we'll see. I know, but I know you don't. You're still guilty. Do I want to start it like? I don't know. Do I want to call my girl and say, no, I'm not going to go to work today. Come to my house and. Compromise my vision of who I want to be just because the sex is good? Yeah, I don't know about that. No, I'm good. Do I call my client and get him to stay, or do I call the agent first? Because the agent is the one that wrote the client. So let me call the client. So who do I call first? In that moment, all I wanted to know was what is the right next 5 moves, not what is, you know. So everything then for me became, what do we do next? So we— if you ever have a strategy session with me, we're in a room, we'll always say, okay, So, what do we got going on? We got this. Okay, what's the next thing we do here? This. Okay, what do we do then? Then we do that. Who do we call next? And we do— everything is step by step by step. Okay, 13 moves. So, we got our 13 moves here. We got our 17 moves. We got our 3 moves. And somebody will say, I think number 9 needs to be 6. Okay, let's move that. Tell me why. Because— okay, great. I think number 4 needs to be number 2 because we need to call— oh, you're right. Good point. 4 needs to be number 2. And then we find the right sequencing of who— what our moves need to be. So, You asked the question who this is for. Whoever who wants to know their next 5, 10, 15 moves. Your CEO.

Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs. Business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any premium selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand, scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up, but I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now back to today's episode.

Your top-line revenue right now is $22 million and you have an EBITDA of $2 million, 10%. Your margins are small. You'd like to take it to 20%. And in the marketplace, you want to sell, but if you sell it right now at $2 million margins on $20 million, 10%, you're probably only going to get 4x in your industry, which is $8 million, and they're going to want you to stick around for 2 years. So, if you're going to stick around for 2 years, why don't you find a way to increase your margins to 15%, 20%, and once you increase your top-line revenue to $40 million. So, what do I do right now to increase my— do I need to go get a COO? Do I need to go get the right CFO and start doing my— accounting the right way with a top 50 accounting firm. So, when I go to sell, I already have done it the right way so the value of my company goes higher because I've spent $60,000 getting the right accounting firm instead of my best friend who's been my accountant from high school. How do I tell my best friend I gotta fire him? Oh my God. That's that person. If you're 25 years old, you're sick of partying, you've done all the ecstasy, cocaine, pot in the world, and you're like, you know what, I'm done with these drugs. I drink too much and I'm sick of the crowd I'm around right now. I kind of want to figure out my life. My girl left me, this girl I loved, and I screwed up. It's because of me. Okay, what do you want to do next? What do I want to go and do with my life right now? You read that book. So it's, it's all over the place with what a person wants to do. The whole thing with this is by the time you run— you're done reading, you're going to say, okay, for me, I need to do these next 5 because I want to be this person. This is the life I want to have. And if this is the life I want to have, my next move is this, then this, then this, then this, then this. So It could be anybody from the startup guy to a salesperson to an employee to somebody running a $50, $100 million business.

Well, great answer. I love that.

I love that. Patrick, what about, you know, we have a very diverse audience and, you know, a lot of— so a lot of people read books. We are putting out technology to actually implement what you're reading from books. What drives you in your book, you say, is the impact and the help that it leaves your audience. How do people show that to you? So there's ways of like Amazon reviews. You probably have employees in your company that say, hey Patrick, I just did this, you know, which is a— which is something that you shared in your book. But you know, like we have— we have a buddy as an example. His name is Joe Gizzy. He read Jesse Itzler's book. He implemented the entire routine. He pushed it on Instagram every single day. All of a sudden, him and Itzler have the smallest connection, but it's so meaningful because now Itzler is like a mentor. You know, are there certain stories where people are starting to implement your things that really fuels you and is almost like an inspiration to you in some way?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I understand when you're explaining the part in the book where I talk about why I created Valuetainment, because I want to see other people who are executing the plans and strategies I'm talking about. So, when I run into somebody and they say, oh my gosh, I watch your videos, this has really changed, it's rewarding, it feels very good, but, you know, I don't yearn for that. I don't know if I would tell you like, oh, that is such an exciting thing for me. I don't care to be a motivational speaker. I don't want to be the guy that's on the circuit going. I turn down more than I accept. I don't do Valuetainment to sell stuff. This is the first time we have courses and you have to really be very good at searching my site to find a course to buy from me because I intentionally make it difficult. We may launch a couple things here because people are asking for it. Because with Vault, you know, we did an event last year that was a live event and people showed up from 43 different countries, 600 people. And this year we're supposed to do one in Miami and then the pandemic happened. So I went and shot the course Vault myself so people can go see the 2-3 day course that we put together because everybody was requesting it. But for me, it's more about You know, it's more about I have this vision of what my potential could look like, what my capacity could look like.

It's—

I have this vision. Okay. I don't know why I think I can be that person, and I don't know why I can't stop thinking about it, right? I think I can chase that and experience that, and I think the man upstairs is— in every generation, he chooses a group of people that become his soldiers during that season, during that generation. I don't know why I feel, you know, that I am responsible for wanting to do certain things with the story and the life that I've lived, and I want to fulfill that. That's what moves me. All the other stuff to me is secondary. For example, oh my gosh, what does it feel like, you know, I'd love to have a Ferrari or a Lambo or all this stuff one day. To me, it's kind of like you don't go to Starbucks and say, oh my gosh, I'm having a cup of coffee. This is ridiculous. I just had a Frappuccino. Oh my gosh, it's normal.

Yeah.

So this stuff needs to happen. You want the big house? It's gonna happen. You want the car? It's gonna happen. You wanna have great conversations with high identity people? It's gonna happen if you're chasing the capacity, not if you're chasing just to get to know somebody because it's cool. Not just like, you know, I said, I said 11 years ago, there's a video recorded of me saying And I'm dressed like Doc from the movie— Back to the Future. Back to the Future, and I'm literally dressed like Doc, and I'll say, and I said, this was shot in 2011, I said, one day Kobe Bryant's gonna be at our event. One day President Bush is gonna be at our event. One day the greatest comedian's gonna be at our event, and I'm dressed like Doc, and I'm painting the picture of the future, right? President Bush was at our event last year at Mirage. Kobe Bryant was at our event last year at Mirage. The year before was Kevin Hart. What, what happened there? It's not— it's part of the vision. It's what's supposed to come next. It's very normal. It's very natural. So yes, it's rewarding. Believe me, it's very rewarding seeing the Valuetainer audience around the world, and I'm grateful for every one of them that come and talk to me because I like hearing stories. But, uh, what, what really drives me is, uh, capacity, and I can't even tell you how how, how much that drives me.

That's great. Well, we've got to wrap up. We're running up against time here. We've got 2 things left. First, we know that you give out little gifts during a lot of your podcasts. So we brought you one of our t-shirts. It says Lifelong Learner on it. It's a Book Thinkers t-shirt. Yeah.

Thank you. Lifelong Learner. You will see me wear this, by the way. Book Thinkers. I love that. Thank you.

You're very welcome. And then the very last thing For people who want to learn a little bit more about you or your book, where should they go? What should they do?

I mean, you can get the book on Barnes& Noble and Amazon. You can go to the store to buy it, but you can go to Amazon and order the book, Your Next 5 Moves. If you want to find out more about the content, you can go on YouTube and search Valuetainment, and you'll see us all over the place.

All right, and I'll include links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you very much.

Yes, really appreciate your time. Good to be with you guys.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. To discover more books, more mentors, and more resources that you can use to achieve more and live better, make sure you check out our website at www.bookthinkers.com. There you'll find links to our mobile application, more podcast episodes, our shop so you can get some Book Thinkers swag, and our socials. With that, I'm signing off and I'll see you for next week's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.