Lessons - Success & Purpose | Patrick Bet-David, Founder of Valuetainment & PHP Agency

Welcome to the lessons episodes of Success Story. These lessons episodes will be shorter clips from past guests, accomplished value community members, and myself. In each short episode, we'll feature concise and insightful, actionable conversations and tactics, providing you with real-world strategies and tips to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. If you're seeking a no-nonsense approach to growth and progress, you've come to the right spot. Settle in, take notes, and enjoy. Now one other thing that I wanted to bring up, I was doing a little bit of research as I tried to do before I do these podcasts, and on your website you mentioned something. Pauline Hell's book, The Laws of Success in 16 Lessons, is the best book for entrepreneurs to read. Can you go through why some of those lessons are so important? Yeah, I think, look, you have to realize everything is based on the face of your life, your currently at. Laws of Success is probably not the number one book on my list at this phase of my life, but it was the number one book when I was about to get my company going and I'm 30 years old. I have to study how to concentrate, and he spends a lot of time explaining concentration in a way that others don't talk about. Some of the biggest challenges that a lot of people that started business or want to take their game to the next level is they don't know how to concentrate. They're always distracted, they're caught up in notification world. Every single notification keeps them, keeps them, keeps them, keeps them, they can't even read a book or listen to an audio book because the notifications distracts them of what the content's being shared on an audio book or a book. So, you know, that book was critical for me at that phase of my life. Today, you know, I'm reading stuff that people would be bored out of their minds if they read it back then and I would be bored out of my mind if I read it back then. So many times when you're asking questions and wanting to know about book advice or things like that, I always ask the question, tell me what phase of career you're at. What are you worth right now? What was your top line revenue last month? How many team members do you have? How liquid are you? How much cash do you have? What did you make last month? How big is the team? Oh, look, then I know based on your face to make a recommendation that's suitable for your level. Then if you're somebody that's saying, I just did $28 million last year. I'm at 73 employees from dealing with some compliance issues and I'm trying to get my technology going and my cyber security is having some challenges and the general counsel that I have is not the best one. I feel like he's overcharging me by this many fees. Then it's a complete different book I'd be recommending to you, but laws of success for any entrepreneur that's just getting started, it's number one on my list. So let's talk about that, getting started. So your story is like, you know, the traditional core tenets of American dream, like you built yourself from literally coming over as an immigrant, what drove you at the beginning to be this, you know, obviously you didn't see yourself becoming this eventually. It's I think it's hard to see the forest of the trees, but you pushed yourself and you kept pushing yourself and what drove you to do that? It's a good question. So for me, you're talking to a guy that was a hardcore party animal, I partied seven days a week, and I was at bars every night. And this is what I did for a living until I was 23 years old. And in one day, my dad has a hard attack. I go to the hospital, I'm medical, UCLA Medical Center, and I see him being mistreated at the hospital. I have a fallen out with the doctors. They kicked me out of the hospital. I'm sitting in my car, emotional as hell. Don't know what's going to be happening. Made a decision that night. I woke up the next day and nobody recognized me because my eyes changed. It went from the eyes of a guy that was, his target was every woman I could come across to. I couldn't even see women anymore for 17 months. My entire focus was, this man is not going to die. He is never going to worry about money ever again. He's going to leave that 99 cent story. He's working out at Inglewood. And that's exactly what happened. He left, I took him to Hawaii. We went and traveled the world. I said, whatever you want, you just tell me, what are your dreams? I'm going to have your dreams become a reality. I want to go watch Kobe play. We're going to go to the right next to Kobe. You're going to watch him play. You're going to hear him talk trash from the bench. Now, I want to go to Europe. I want to go to US Open. I want to go to Derby. You just tell me what you want to do. I want to take you to it. So that was the beginning of it, right? So now for everybody else that's listening, there's four faces you go through about, making money and being financially free. Number one is survival. A lot of people are making money to survive. They're barely trying to pay their bills. A lot of the people that are struggling right now in America or around the world who didn't prepare for some kind of an event like this, a pandemic, they're driven by survival. They've not been prepared. So they're going to go through a very difficult time right now because they don't have a lot of choices. Whatever opportunity comes up, they got to take you to pay their bills to survive. And when you're surviving, it's kind of like being underwater. You're trying to catch breath. And every time you come up another wave hits you, another wave hits you, you don't even have time to think about dreams because all you're thinking about is the next breath. Then the next phase of status. Now you're above water. Now the waves stop. Now you look around and you say which direction you want to swim. I'm going this way. So status is your sister about a house. You don't own a house. I want to also go buy a house because my sister has a house. Your friend from high school, bottom Mercedes S class, you're driving a Toyota Corolla. You also want to go buy a Mercedes. So it's about status because people around you are driving you to compete. And it's a good place to be because it comes to the next level. Then eventually after you're done with the status part, then it becomes about freedom. And freedom is about how much money do I really need in the bank? I need a million dollars in a bank. Okay, great. I'm going to go get a million dollars in a bank. How much money do I have? So nobody can bully me around with a job or a position or money or any of that stuff. I'm sick and tired of being bullied around simply because I don't have enough resources and finances in order. Well, I'm going to go get free financially. Then comes purpose. And purposes when you now are above water, you decided to swim this way, then you build your little town, then you have some resources, some money, the right contacts. Now you say, is this really life is what life is all about? And we're 2.8 million. I have a nice car. I've been all over the world. I've had dinner with the most incredible people. I kind of have an idea about politics and faith and marriage and relationship and money. If this is all life is all about, this is kind of boring. What do I want to do next? Then you start thinking about purpose. You start asking weird questions. You start visualizing what life is going to look like with your wife and kids and family and husband and peers and mom and dad. And what kind of a person you want to be, how you want to contribute back to society based on what the life in the world has given to you so far. And then you go into bigger picture. Most people don't really make a run at that part because it takes a lot of work and effort. But some do. So when you're asking that question, originally it was just the chip on my shoulder to make my dad no longer have to be pushed around. Then it was about freedom and then came purpose.