Patrick Bet-David, CEO of Valuetainment / PHP Agency 4 Stages Of Fulfillment

Thank you for joining me on the success story podcast where we speak with incredible leaders and mentors who achieve success through trials, tribulations, wins and losses. Very excited to be sitting down with Patrick Bet David. Now if you've been living under a rock and you don't know who Patrick Bet David is, a very, very brief intro before I throw it over to him. So he is a true immigrant success story coming over from Iran when he was 10, was in the military in the 101st Airborne before sort of venturing off an entrepreneurship. He launched a PHP agency, an insurance sales marketing distribution company at a very young age before 30. He is the founder of Value Taiment. So millions of you, millions of followers, billions of views and also of the vault, a success conference for entrepreneurs, business-minded individuals. And he also hosts a ton of 101 interviews to name some of the people, Magic Johnson, Robert Green, Mark Cuban, Steve Wozniak. So I'm a little bit fan-boying right now, but I appreciate it, Patrick, for joining me. But give me a rundown of your origin story. Warner raised in Iran, you know, 10 years. War happened, escaped into Germany, lived at a refugee camp, came to the States, joined the Army, got at the Army, started working at Morgan Stanley Deanwood, or a day before 9-11, became a financial advisor. Went to Trans-America, then I left October, 09, started my insurance agency with 66 agents. And then we grew it from 66 agents to 14,000 agents nationwide, 120 plus offices last month, in a month of March. We had our biggest march ever, we sold 6,310 insurance policies last month. And some will run $25 million of a nudie's last month, which is our record as well. And that's on the business side, and on the personal side, you know, on the value-taking side, I run a media company. We started as a just a simple YouTube channel, that now turned into, you know, 15 employees out there that worked just for value-taming media, and we've, you know, taken it from where it was towards that today. So question, so I have a couple questions, and I'd love to get your input on this. So you started a great, you know, very successful company. Why did you decide to build out your own personal brand to the extent it was a value-taming with the vault? Like a lot of people have these incredibly successful financial companies, but what's the reason for value-taming? That's a great question, you know, it's two things, you know, now with days, you have two brands. Back in the days, you only had one brand, you build a company, and that's what it was, right? And some people would become celebrities, and they would make a name for themselves, and they'd have a TV show, or they would be a writer, or an author, or some like, I'm talking to 80s, 70s, you know, that era. Today, you have two brands, you build the company, and you build yourself, and if you don't develop your own brand, a lot of customers want to know the story behind the business. They want to know who the founder is, they want to know who the voice is behind the company, they want to know how he got there, they want to know what he believes in. They want to know who he likes, is he a Laker fan, Clippers fans, Raptors, baseball, football, hockey. You know, how does he feel about what's going on social issues, a little bit talking about, you know, current events, they just kind of want to know more about it. And then if you don't create a brand today, you will not be able to control the narrative. So a lot of times, there are different forms of bullying today, a form of bullying, and somebody that's got a bigger audience than you that they can bully you. And if you don't prepare yourself knowing the next five to ten years, you need to have a big audience where you can have your megaphone to make some noise, then you will be somebody that may have a good-sized business, but somebody else may be bullying you around with the voice. So you got to be able to match on that set as well. So those are a couple of the reasons why I decided to build a brand. And now that you've built it, now that you've built it out, I think value came before the vault, correct? Phenomestaken? Yes. Value came in came first. Yes. So the purpose of the vault is just to expand the reach or what's, I guess, what are you doing with that piece of it and why is it important? So the vault is something I did because they asked me to do it. I don't have time for the vault. My board doesn't want me to do the vault. You know, right now, there's guys that are wanting to pay me. I had two contracts of people paying me $400,000 to do an event in Dubai, and I simply go and I speak for three, four days, and they sell the tickets, and there was one in Australia. I don't have two weeks to give away from my life today. I'm sitting on a company that I have board, I have employees, I'm dealing with investors, I'm dealing with lawyers, attorneys, and you know, all of these guys and then on the way to Dubai, I tend to create content to stay there and then I have three kids and eight year old, a six year old, a three year old, I married, I have to travel constantly to go visit my offices, so I don't have that kind of a luxury to do that at this phase of my life. Once I sell one of my businesses, then I can, but not right now. So the vault happened once a year for us together to buy a team of the nudity together, the vault community together, and then we'd get together, I teach for three days. And we go from A through Z on how to identify your next 15 moves, no matter what phase you're at. And we had people come in there from running a small business, doing a half a million dollars here to run a big business, doing a couple billion dollars here from 42 different countries. And this next one that was scheduled for July and Miami, we were expecting 4,000 people from 120 different countries, but obviously Corona virus threw a little bit of a curve ball in it. So we're seeing what we're going to do next. But that's why the vault conference started. So I love, I love the initiative because it makes a lot of sense to me for entrepreneurs and what I'm trying to draw out of this and I want to get your input. People that work in companies that aren't by their own definition entrepreneurial, how can they take the lessons from the people that you're, you know, you interview on your on value team and on throughout the vault? What's the game plan? What's the playbook for people in organizations that for just like we're just shocked recently, they lost their jobs, never thought they're going to lose their jobs. How do they adopt an entrepreneurial mindset, even though they're working within an organization, build the brand, you know, branch out? That's a phenomenal question. We addressed it on multiple of our episodes. I got a guy from IBM that made me think about your question. He asked me question three years ago, he says, listen, Patrick, I'll follow all your content. I love what you're talking about. You keep talking about entrepreneurship. You have no idea how bad I want to be an entrepreneur, but I feel guilty the fact that I don't want to leave my job. I'm making 280 a year. I got a wife and two kids and we went back in forces, should I? Am I feeling the wrong way that to feel like I'm really maximizing my talents, I have to leave the company, to start a company, or can I still stay at the company I'm at? So I said, look, you're making a very good point and you're asking very reasonable question. So when I say entrepreneur to me, it has two sides to it. I have entrepreneur. I have entrepreneur. The only difference between an entrepreneur and an entrepreneur is who started the company. But they think the same. Let me say this one more time. The only difference between the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur is who took the risk to start the company, which is the founder. Everything else, they think identical, meaning they don't work regular nine five hours. They're not the kind that's just the business as usual, hey, am I going to get my 401K benefits on my expenses and my, you know, they don't think that way. They think equity, they think valuation, they think about profit sharing, they think about growing the company, they think about recruiting the right talent, they think about scaling, they think about differentiation, they think about a blue ocean to have in the company, they, everything's the same, everything's the same. This is why an entrepreneur within a company 100% of time, if he's a real entrepreneur, she's a real entrepreneur that's working, they're going to end up owning equity and they eventually end up being one of the C suite executives in the company. So when the company gets acquired or sells or gets bought out, they're one of the bigger shareholders and they get a fat check. This is why Steve Balmer's worked 40, 50, 60 billion dollars, depending on when his network's being calculated, he's never been an entrepreneur, he's an entrepreneur. And Steve Jobs is a great example of somebody who went from being an entrepreneur to back being to a entrepreneur when he started Apple, he was an entrepreneur when he started Tixar, he was an entrepreneur, but when he went back to Apple, he was an entrepreneur, he was no longer an entrepreneur, the second time background at Apple. So people don't have to feel guilty, but if you're going to stay within a company and you're going to say, I want to go out and take this company to the next level, you've got to be thinking about somebody that owns the entire company, what would you be doing to grow on the company? And eventually, you'll be asking for equity and if you prove that you own, you bring enough value to get equity to the company, you will, if you don't, I guarantee you, somebody in the market place is going to pick you up, I guarantee you, someone in the market place is going to pick you up. The CFO was a guy that was with another company making it salary and we picked them up, we brought them on board, he is a very well known CFO in the local area. We brought him on board because he wanted to find an equity position in the company. So I said, listen, you're working like that and how about you find match your salary and I pay you a little bit more on your salary and I give you a percentage of the company and we go take this thing to the next level, he says, I'm all in and he came on board. So if somebody is an entrepreneur and a company you're with, mistreats you and takes you for granted as an entrepreneur, I guarantee you someone's going to recruit you away. So it's a win-win. I love it. I love it because not enough people, not enough people hear that and I think that people get stuck and they get depressed and they get sad and they're, man, it's, I love that you're saying that because I agree with 100% of that and I think that that's what I want people to understand when they, when they consume your content, when they listen to content that is traditionally like focused on entrepreneurs, it's not, it's not just focused on entrepreneurs, it's content oriented, like it's oriented at their success and they have to internalize that and realize that they can be more than just, I don't know, like a pawn in a corporate environment and I think that a lot of people get stuck in that and that's really what I wanted to bring out because that's hitting a lot of people hard right now. But no, so that's, now one other thing that I wanted to bring up, I was doing a little bit of research as I try and do before I do these podcasts and on your website you mentioned something. Napoleon Hill's book, this Laws of Success and 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 and 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. And 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 keep some keep some keep some keep some they can't even read a book or listen to an audio book because the notifications distracts them of what the contents 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 wanted 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? What's your EBITDA? You know, how big is the team? Oh, look at Ben, 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 securities have 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 let's talk about that getting started. So your 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 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 cents store. He's working out at the 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 sit right next to Kobe. You're going to watch him playing. You're going to hear him talk trash from the bench. Now, I want to go to Europe. I want to go to, you know, US Open. I want to go to Derby. You just tell me what you want to do. I'm going 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, you know, 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 bought 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? You know, 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 come start thinking about purpose. You start asking weird questions and 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 you know, what kind of a person you want to be? How do 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 king purpose. I love that and I think that it's unfortunate because not a lot of people get to many of those stages unfortunately. I think like you mentioned a lot of people are just struggling surviving. So much out of this. Okay. When you see people come out of this on the other side, what do you think is going to change about people's perception on life, security, money, value? Do you see massive changes or do you see people defaulting to the way they acted before pandemic? Oh, you're talking about the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, in particular like this is a major major shift in what secure what's safe. Well, let me tell you here's what's going to happen. Just like always. Okay. When you get punched into face the first time, there's a couple things that's going to happen to you as a boy. You're either going to be scared the rest of your life or you're going to come out and swing and you're going to get your ass kicked and then you're going to go to your mommy and say, mom, I think I got to go to take some take one to class and fighting classes. Then you're going to go train for six months. Then you're going to go find that kid that punched in the face. Then you're going to go knock his ass out and then you're going to say, I'm going to rest in my life because you can't have that kind of a nightmare to rest your life. You know, you have a girl you go to a club. You ask a girl out. She says, I'd never date an ugly girl ugly guy like you. Then you walk away and you feel like crap and I do it. I'm ugly. That's what she said. Then you go to the car. Then your friends don't know why you want to leave because somebody dumped you or rejected you and it felt bad. Then you never ask a girl out. Then you're single to your 27 years old and all you're doing is swiping right and you're just trying to get hooked up but you ain't got a serious girlfriend, right? Okay. So if you're going to sales in real estate, your family doesn't sell their home through you. Your cousins don't sell it through you. Your auntie who loves you doesn't sell it through you. Your own mom doesn't have you as a real estate agent. Your friend's dad who loved you and looked up to you because you played good sports and you always liked you. You were the favorite friend. He didn't put his house through you. Six months into you've not made a single sale. Then you say real estate doesn't work and sales don't work and then you give up and you go back to being average and ordinary. This is the part of life, man. I mean, this is this is when heroes are born. You know, my dad and I were talking and he called me, says, Pat, what do we do with this pandemic? I said, what do you mean? He says, how come you're not worried? I said, you want me to be worried? He said, yes. I said, what do you mean? How come I'm not worried? So every time I watch you, you're not, you're not looking worried. Why are you not worried? I said, you worried? I'm a little bit worried. I said, okay. I said, let me ask you a question. He says, what's that? I said, when we were in Iran, how old were you the first time you got a bomb down? This is what you mean? Let me ask you one more time. How old were you when an enemy of the country you lived in bombed your city that you lived in? He says, I was 44. I said, okay. Prior to that, happened and did you ever read a book or a manual 27 steps on how to handle being bombed on? He said, no. I said, I was seven years old when we got bombed on. He says, okay. I said, when we went under the stairs because the bomb dropped right next to our house and our building shook because we knew the next bomb, if the whistle was coming, it could be ours, but it skipped us. Do you remember that? I do. You know how much I remember the look you had when I looked at your face? He says, what do you mean? I said, I was glued to your face. He says, why would you glue to my face? I said, because your poise gave me confidence. Every time I looked at mom, I thought we were going to die. Every time I looked at you, I thought we're going to make it. He says, so what's your point here? I said, what's the first time in your life you've experienced a pandemic that's killed so many people. He said 77 years. I said, Dad, I'm going through that 41 and a lot of people are relying on me to be poised. And if we made it through war, we're going to make it through this. If America made it through a John F. Kennedy assassination and everybody thought it was going to be over with, we made it. Then his brother died, then his Martin Luther King, then Reagan attempt that assassination, then 9 or 11, then 2008, then this is this. This kind of stuff's not going to stop. So when you're asking me a question, you think what's going to happen now moving forward with people post this event, you're going to see some people that used to be scared, but they're going to be 100 times more scared. You're going to see some people who were nobody's who are about to become rock stars, heroes, war time heroes, the types of people that families rely on, the types of people that relatives rely on, the types of people that communities rely on, and the types of people that around the world are going to listen to their voice and saying, man, I just bring a lot of comfort to me. And I'm confident when the guys, I don't agree with everything he says, but every time I listen to him speak, I just feel a little bit more confident. So those that are scared are going to be more scared and those who are looking for an opportunity to become a hero, this is the training ground for them. These are the only times you need for heroes to be born. Heroes are not born during good times. Heroes are only born during strange, scary times. So if you ever wanted to be one, this is called the training ground. You're one hell of a storyteller too. I appreciate it. That was a great analogy. No, I totally understand where you're coming at with the ability for people to sort of take advantage of the situation, both as leaders, but also in their own lives, because this brings us back to safety, security, and where you're going through your career. What are you doing to take advantage of the opportunity to sort of solidify your status in life? If you've been laid off, there's going to be sets of people that are sitting at home watching TV waiting for this to be over, and there's going to be sets of people that are doing something, learning something, starting something, and it's not, it may not be glorious, but it's something. That's what, I think that that's the first step. If people are sitting at home, and for example, they've just been laid off, and they're not learning the skill, they're not building out a brand, they're not trying to start a side hustle. It's simple things. It doesn't have to be so glorious or extravagant to be something that you can be proud of, but I think that this is, again, it's a push. You mentioned before, it's the direction that you choose to go in. Are you just going to be more scared, or are you going to come out of this on top? But I really appreciate the bond analogy, because you're right. Nobody, nobody has a 27-step playbook for how to survive a bomb. That's very good. You've built out a lot under throughout your career. What is next for you? What is next for me? I am right now going through growing the insurance company, which is growing at a great pace, but we have some people that want to acquire the company. Probably in the next 12 to 24 months, I'll be stepping on as a CEO, and I'll be driving the media company by attainment. That's what's going to be taking place. I'll go at that for the next 20 years, and then a bunch of other unique projects that I'm working on right now that's growing. But I'm just barely getting warmed up. I like it. Now, tell me something. You're an incredible host, you're an incredible entrepreneur, but most importantly, what I really value in what you bring is your incredible storyteller. I just mentioned this, but you really do, you enable yourself to, I don't know, deliver so much value in a very short, succinct way. I think that's valuable for a lot of people. I know that I could learn a lot from that skill set. Telling stories is everything. Telling stories is sales, telling stories is relationships, telling stories is business, telling stories is branding. How do you find a way to tell stories in such a way that it allows you to deliver so many insights in such a short period of time? Does that make, does that a tough question to answer? I apologize. I just, I noticed that you do it very well, and that's why I wanted to understand if you, if you ever put thought behind how you do it. Yeah, you know, so, so, I mean, it's a good question. I have a whole video about the art of storytelling on value attainment, but to just kind of simplify this for you, you know, people ask me a question, they say, Pat, why do you always talk about pulling pranks? You know, the other day, I pulled the biggest prank on my entire company. We have 14,000 insurance agents. I made a video, and I sent a video to everybody saying there's a new law that's officially been changed on April Fools. And I said, all insurance companies moving forward require every agent to give a sampler their urine for every policy they write. I said, so moving forward, we now have a urine bank in Dallas, and all your urine samples will be here. So if you write 20 policies in a month, you need to send us 20 samples of your urine. And I went on for 15 minutes, and I gave all these regulations. And we're getting emails and all because people didn't finish to watch an entire video to know it's a prank. So people are concerned, why do I need to send my urine? What are the best kind of cups to buy? And I cannot believe I need to send urine. This is uncomfortable for me. How can the state do this? And I said, it's just a prank, right? Why do I do that? I mean, we're living in a time right now where people are scared. When people are scared, what do we need? You need humor. You need levity. You need laughter. You need inspiration. You need hope. That's what the tank needs today. You know, when you're eating food, you can't use the same recipes for dessert as you're using for salad as you're using for main course as you're using for a drink. It's all different recipes because there's timing for it. Storytelling to me, it opens up people's ears to actually be receptive to the idea you're trying to transfer to them because I can try to convince you logically of what may make sense. And you'll say, yeah, okay, whatever. Or I can give you a story and illustrate an example. You're going to say, huh, that's interesting. I get it now. So storytelling just allows people to be more open-minded and just logic. This is why they say facts sell. Facts tell stories sell. Stories do all the selling. Facts just tell people and you can move a nation logically. You can only move a nation emotionally. That's very good. And that's something that I sort of I noticed in your interviews that you bring out in the people that you interview. That's why I wanted to double down because I don't think there's very many people that focus on telling stories. There are some obviously, but I think it's a skill set that is agnostic of industry. So I appreciate that. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, you mentioned that Napoleon Hill's book is something that you would have used and you would have recommended for people that are earlier on in their journey, whatever that may be. What is something that you rely on now? You speak to some of the most incredible people of our time. So where do you go to learn? I have advisors. I have a whole board. I have people that give me direction. I have people that have bounce ideas off of on a daily basis. I have people that I'm held accountable to. I have funds of people that have $2 billion who rely on me to make the right decisions. So many times I'll call them and I'll bounce an idea. So what do you think about this? What do you think about that? So what if we take this route? What if we take that route? I have several people around me that on a monthly basis, I go and process issues with and this has always been the case for me. Once I figure this part out, I mean, it's painting behind me. Every day, I come to work. I look at this painting behind me. That's Milton Friedman, Martin Luther King, the Shaw Senna. That's myself, Tupac Lincoln, Kennedy and Einstein. And there's a bunch of different hidden messages in there. I had this custom made by a local painter here. Every time I come to work, I look at these guys and I'm thinking, what would that guy do? What would he do? What would he do? What is he thinking about? How would he handle a situation like this? But I have a lot of living mentors who advise me in many different aspects of my life. And some may give me counsel on marriage, but I'll never take advice from them on business. Some may give me counsel on business, but I will never take advice from them on marriage, if that makes sense. You don't take advice from somebody on all aspects of your life. Some may give me a spiritual message, but I would never take message from them physically because they're out of shape. Some may give me a physically in shape, address them, they're advised because they're in shape, but I wouldn't take any advice from them on any other aspect of life. So you have to know who's giving you the advice based on the credit credit history they have of being an expert in that topic. And if you do that properly, you'll typically get the right kind of counsel. Unfortunately, too many people take advice from the wrong people. You know, these times, what these times are exploiting is you're realizing who's counsel isn't ever green. You get a lot of people on social media that are great at saying cash is trash. Cash is trash. Cash is trash. Cash is trash. Cash is trash. And people are like, oh, that's right. Cash is trash. I don't see a single person worldwide saying cash is trash right now. Everybody wishes they had more cash. You can say cash is trash when the economy's going up. And the economy expansion is 129 months straight. You cannot say cash is trash today. You can say, real estate is the American dream, real estate is the American dream, real estate is the American dream, real estate is not the American dream. Entrepreneurship and equity only the piece of a company, that's the American dream, not real estate. It's an element. It is not the American dream. You know, all these people counted on real estate to create their wealth. How many people are doing reports right now? There's going to be more people being laid on their payments today in America than ever before. Yeah, people that say don't study politics. I stay away from politics. I used to subscribe to that mindset until I read a quote by Plato that says, those who think it's foolish to study politics will be governed by fools who do. Let me say it one more time. Those who think it's foolish to study politics will be governed by fools who do. So you think it's foolish. You're not going to study politics. A fool is going to study politics. He or she will govern you. Now you have to do what they tell you to do because their laws dictate the land. So if you don't study politics, you may be voting the wrong people in just because you like them. You don't understand their policies. You're just kind of like, I like the way he sounds. He sounds good. So no, you got to question everything and see which people's advice and counsel is evergreen and more latch onto that and eliminate 90% of influencers who are just talking and they're loudmouthed with no value behind it and you're realizing they have some cracks in their philosophies. You got to kind of identify them. By the way, that means filtering anybody. That includes myself. You got to get your own philosophies in place by watching and listening to the right people. So that's what I say to you. How do you find those people? What's like, what's the, how do you like get rid of all the BS? Great question. You said you got a girlfriend. So I'm assuming you're not married with kids. No, no, no. Okay. So in life, we get judged on a lot of different things. When we were younger, our parents worried about who were our friends. Who your friends were? You were judged on who you are. Oh, you hang out with those guys. Okay. All right. That says a lot about you. You're going to get judged on who you marry. You're going to get judged on what career choices you make. You're going to get judged on how you take care of your health. You're also going to get judged on who you take advice from. And at part, there's not a 16 step process on how to do it. Some of it is intuition, but a big part of it is you doing your own due diligence to realize, is this person just kind of saying this to make money off me or what's, what's this person's motive? Yeah, I always go back to motive. What is this person's motive? Okay. A woman marries me. I have money. Her motive is she wants to be with somebody that secures that a bad thing. No, okay. Let me see if there's a deeper reason why she wants to be with me. Okay. I see the motive here. She wants her kids to be safe. That's a safe. No, no, no, no. I would want my daughter to think about that as well. Yeah. If you go back to note motive, it reveals a ton. Always go back to motive. If the motive is just for you to buy another of their products, well, eventually, you kind of know where the motivation is. If the motive is bigger and it's a certain sense of doing something that's a form of persuasion, not manipulation, because manipulation, I when you lose persuasions, I when you win, well, then that's kind of effective. I'm good with that. But if it's only one sided, I'm not good with that because that's a lot of side of victory. That only benefits one person. It's going to be a big part of your intuition and figuring out ways to filter things out. And that means studying what their motives are. Typically, when you do that, a lot will be reviewed. I love it. Okay. Last question, respectful of your time. One, this is a vanilla question, but I love it. One question or one question. One, one, one factor, one thing that you tell your 20 year old self that would change change your life for the better. Try to, you know, be as aligned as possible in life. You know, here's what I mean by alignment. I'm all about values and principles. Once, once my life, I live based on my values and principles. I sleep on a soft pillow. The moment I might behavior doesn't match the values and principles that I claim I live by, that's when you have internal conflicts. When you start having internal conflicts, you start, you can't get along with other people and get not get along with everybody else has nothing to do with everybody else. You're having the biggest battle with yourself. But the moment you figure out a way that your behavior matches the values and principles that you have subscribed to, you are fulfilled, your confidence, people feel the confidence in your eyes and your spirit and the way you move. And that creates a following that creates certainty that brings poise that helps you get to the next level. So I kind of tell my own self, figure out a way to be aligned, your behavior matching your values and principles, and a lot of good things are going to happen in your life. Awesome. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Patrick, how did people contact you, learn more about your payment if they haven't checked it out already? Yeah, well, I tell you the first thing right now is I got a book coming out with Simon and Schusser that we've been working on for the last five years called Your Next Five Moves. This is kind of what people have been asking me about again to write. This is a five step process for you to identify your next 15 moves. You know, the average chess player knows there are one, two, next three moves, one or three moves, pros, no five moves, masters, no 10 moves, grand masters, no 10 or 15 moves. In this book, you're going to get the formula on how I identify at any phase of my life. My next 10, 15 moves, about the time you're down reading it, you'll know exactly what your next 15 moves are. So the title of the book is your next five moves. And you can find that anywhere, it'll be launched June 30th, but you can already buy him at Barnes & Noble at Simon and Schusser or Amazon. Awesome. So next five moves you said, next five moves. Your next five moves. Your next five moves. All right, or at value payment. You got it. Yep, your website. If you go type an entrepreneur on YouTube channel, you'll find us. Nice SEO on that one. I love the keywords. All right, buddy, that's all I got. I really appreciate the chat. Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time and I appreciate the insight. This has been another episode of the Success Story podcast. If you haven't already, please like, comment, subscribe, share with your friends, families, peers, co-workers. If you want to check it out, you can stream it or download it wherever podcasts are found or you can catch it on YouTube. And as always, please leave us a rating. Any ratings fine as long as it includes five stars. As always, have a great week. Have a productive week and we'll chat again soon. Bye now. And Patrick, my friend, thank you so much. I really appreciate the chat. You got it, buddy. You got a great voice by the way. You take care of yourself. Yeah, you too. Stay healthy and you know what? I'm sure hopefully we'll chat again sometime in the future. I look forward to it. Bye bye. Bye bye.