The Brutal Truth About What It Takes To Transform Your Life | Patrick Bet-David

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You posted something a few weeks ago and it said

half the battle in life is believing the future looks bright,

especially when nothing around you suggests it will.

The easiest thing to do is to blame others,

assume bad intent and expect the worst.

Those who believe the future looks bright tend to create it.

How can people, when they're in that moment,

that darkness where nothing seems fair,

how can they find the light?

What's the alternative? It's the first question.

What other choice do I have?

So I got two choices in that moment.

I can sit there and think nothing's going to go right.

Poor me. It's unfair.

I cannot believe this happened. I cannot believe it.

And if you have that mindset,

you're guaranteed to get the results that you're thinking.

Things are not going to work out for you.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to sit there.

I'm going to be like, listen, at least I have this.

At least I have that.

At least I got this going on.

We were in the army one time in boot camp.

And me and this one guy,

he just got a letter from his wife leaving him.

And I will never forget we're in the bunk.

We got 67 of us at this one floor.

And I'm looking at him,

African American guy,

probably 25, 26 years old.

He's crying.

And I go up to him.

I'm 18 years old.

I said, are you good?

He says, no, I'm not good.

I said, what happened?

Hands me the letter.

His wife left him for another guy that he knew.

They were friends.

So imagine you're in a setting where you don't have access

to call her for six more weeks.

Because it's the second week of boot camp that we're in.

There is no texting.

There is no let me face timer.

There is no WhatsApp.

This is 1997.

I joined April.

I eventually got into this.

This is like first week of May.

Second week of May.

What are you doing in a situation like that?

Imagine you're running.

What are you thinking about?

We have imagination.

What are you visualizing as a man?

That your wife is hooking up with him.

And what is he doing to your wife?

This is your wife.

She just left you.

And you have to stay focused.

And you have to do push-ups.

Some people are screaming in your face.

What am I going to do about it?

Super, super difficult for him.

And I said, there's a listening.

Can you walk?

Yes.

Can you talk?

Yes.

Can we do this?

Yes.

I said, look, man.

Let's just kind of start with that and get back at it.

To me, the idea of optimism, you know, feeling that everything's going to work itself out.

I grew up in a very difficult environment where I didn't have a lot to look forward to.

But to me, I look forward to one thing on the weekend.

I look forward to one thing on the weekend,

tantantantantantantantantantana,

that song, its NBA playoffs 90,

NBA basketball of NBC,

Ahmad Rashad, the lacers,

I look forward to watching a game on Saturday.

That was enthusiastic,

no matter how bad Monday or Tuesday was.

So that came back to here,

now growing and building a business

so you always have to look forward

on what's happened in the future

and that optimism will give you more chances in life.

You know, I played the victim for a lot of my life

and I was in jail for selling drugs

and my cellmate got me into fitness.

And I remember he was asking about my story

because he's like, you're gonna work out with me someday.

I was in the middle of opiate detox.

Horrible, horrible, for weeks.

And he's like, what happened to you?

Like, what did you do?

And I'm like, my parents got divorced,

kids picked on me.

He's like, no, like, what did you do?

And essentially, he said to me,

he's like, equipping, it was exact words.

And I was like, what?

You're blaming everybody else for your problems

but yourself.

And he's like, you have the choice to change.

You have two choices.

Be a man, look yourself in the mirror

and say you got yourself here

or be a little good cry in the corner

and say, well, is that conversation changed my life?

Or because for years, I was blaming the boogey man

for everything.

And it feels good because then it takes your power away

and you don't have to be accountable anymore,

but it's a trap that so many people fall into for years

if not decades.

It's so true.

It is so true.

Just right now, I came from the second sit down,

I'm doing with Terence Howard, the actor.

And this is the first time I've seen him say,

you know, his first time he went on Cosby's show.

They did his part and built Cosby afterwards

and said, hey man, that was a very good part.

I think you could maybe be a regular here.

And then he goes and tells all his friends,

hey guys, I'm gonna be on Cosby.

I'm gonna be his 19 years old.

And then no episode with him in it.

So he's furious.

He comes back.

He goes through the studio, walks and sees Bill Cosby,

says, hey, can I talk to you?

He says, come into my office.

He says, I noticed you didn't use my clip.

I was in Cosby.

You said, I'm gonna do great.

He says, yeah, not everything makes it in.

He says, but what you said I'm gonna be back on,

you said we had something.

Yeah, but my thoughts changed.

He says, but you make this promise on what about this?

He says, yeah, and I changed my mind.

So he says, from that moment when I left,

I kept blaming him for everything.

And then I realized, yes, what?

If you don't change your own way of doing things,

sometimes things are not gonna go your way.

Sometimes you are doing the right things.

Sometimes he has a person just doesn't want

to give you that opportunity.

Sometimes a client changes their minds.

You'll close a big deal.

You're about to get a $10,000 check.

And you're all happy.

You're going to the bank, client calls and cancels.

Now what do you do?

You were already counting the bills,

your car payment, your phone, your this, your that.

And now I changed my mind.

These things are gonna happen.

But if you think long term,

and you're able to make it past the tornado,

and you take personal responsibility,

you have a fighting chance.

And you have quite the transformation story as well.

You were a party or you were somebody

that didn't take life too seriously.

And I know when people party, I'm a former drug addict.

So I can understand that those habits can be ingrained in you.

And it can be hard to make change

because you've been doing certain things for so long.

Like how did you go from living in that, you know,

that forward focused story, you tell off,

that dad's hard attacks to kind of really changing things.

So if you ask my friends,

and you say my friends from high school,

or even my friends from Army,

that was Patrick a guy that smoke weed,

they would tell you, Patrick never smoke weed.

I never smoke weed until I was 22 years old.

I smoke weed with a girl and a friend.

I probably smoke weed five times in my life.

Then when I was at Bally's,

I worked with a guy who worked with a cocaine guy.

And I did two lines when I was 21, 22 years old

at a club in Third Street in Santa Monica.

And then I did half a pill of ecstasy.

That is it for me with drugs, just so you know.

So to the average person,

they laughed at that and saying,

whatever you haven't tried this, no.

But everybody around me, my friends,

they all were into it.

My deal was alcohol and women.

I drank a lot.

I would finish a bottle of tequila

in the Army every week.

Literally every week I drank a bottle of tequila.

So that was my thing.

We'd go in Nashville, Tennessee,

party, do all this other stuff.

And then one day, you know,

I see the life I'm living

and I'm starting the benefit that I had is

I got into reading books very early, 21, 22 years old.

When I got out of the Army,

I got into reading books.

And I said, you know what,

I'm gonna read these books.

Rich that poor dad.

How do wind friends and influence people?

Thinking, grow rich, loss of success,

psychosybronetics.

Anyways, I started feeding power versus force.

I'm like, wait a minute,

what the hell am I doing with my life?

I shouldn't be doing any of this stuff.

And then came church and then came change in disciplines

and then came me dating a girl

that we're about to get married

and have to be together for two and a half, three years.

I told her the magical words

and I said, before we get married,

I wanna do something.

She says, what do you wanna do?

I said, I wanna go one month without sex, you and I.

She says, what?

I said, I wanna go one month no sex, you and I.

She starts laughing.

I said, no, I'm dead serious because I love you,

but I wanna be married to you.

I want you to be my wife.

Let's go see if we can do one month or not.

First week, it's Friday night at a big expedition.

We get back from the movies.

It's 11 o'clock and now we typically would sit out there

in the parking lot and we would have some fun.

She said, what do you wanna do?

So I gotta drop you off.

So she really don't wanna do anything.

I said, I wanna know, let's see what we can talk about.

We didn't have a lot to talk about.

Don't get me wrong, we had a very good connection together.

But long term, she wanted to go to Hollywood route.

I wanted to go a completely different route.

Long story short, that didn't work out.

And you know, she's happily married.

Today have three beautiful kids.

I'm happily married.

I got four kids myself, but I made different decisions

because I wanted to get the real meaning of life for me.

I really wanted to find out what that potential for me look like.

So I cut out video games early on,

and after the army, I was not a video game guy.

I cut out the party stuff.

I cut out my obsession with women.

And then I said, let's replace it with books,

business, health, and faith, and see what it does.

And then my life changed in ways I never imagined.

The life I live today is still a movie to me.

This isn't something, if you ask any one of my friends

that I went to high school with,

not one of them would say, I was gonna end up

being here right now, none of them.

So it was some of those choices that I made

where I cut out the bad habits, the bad things I had,

and life changed for me.

Choose your enemies wisely.

One of my favorite books I've ever listened to, by the way.

And if people listen to that or read it,

I highly recommend, they'll know that you didn't just go

from point A to point B.

There was a lot of zigzags in between,

a lot of loss, a lot of heartache and stress

and financial stuff.

Do you believe in order to get from the point A to point B

that people see, you have to compound small wins

and continue to go through adversity?

I don't think you have a choice.

I really don't think you have a choice.

I think the guys that are winning at the highest level,

that thick skin comes from somewhere.

Your ability to go through difficult times comes from somewhere.

You'll see stories about comedians who won

and they're crushing it.

And then in a podcast when they get vulnerable,

they'll talk about how difficult they're upbringing is.

Look how funny Theo van is.

You watch Theo van, you're like,

this guy is just ridiculously funny.

He had a challenge in upbringing,

a different kind of a weird one.

Look at Kevin Hart, tough upbringing with his father.

You look at all of these guys.

And then you see some of the guys that make it

to the highest level and they win.

And I realize the pattern that they had three things in common.

The people that become the greatest at what they do,

one they had experience unconditional love

from one person that's all in a typically it's their mom.

One person had to offer you unconditional love.

You keep screwing up, they still love you

because it makes you say, how can a love exist?

I've let this person down so many times she still loves me.

Thank you.

Number two is someone that no matter what you do,

you will never get approval.

I got my college degree, but you weren't valid,

Dr. Ian, I made $100,000, but you don't have a college degree.

I just started my own business.

We did a million year.

Yeah, but you don't own a house.

I just bought a big house.

Yeah, but it's in a bad community.

I just, no matter what you do that person's never

gonna give you the approval.

And then the last one is you choose in the right enemy.

You choose the right enemy.

It brings out the best and you choose the wrong enemy.

Kim bring out the worst and you have seen people

choose the wrong enemy and they destroyed their lives.

I've seen people choose the right enemy

and they just sometimes people choose those

that believe in them as their enemies.

And sometimes people choose somebody that wants the best

for them, but just because they challenge you

and push you as an enemy, that person's not an enemy.

That's an ally.

You're not choosing the right enemy.

That's somebody you want to be close to,

just because they're always challenging you

and pushing you, that's not an enemy to your delusional.

You want to choose the person that's easy

and you can be accepted around them

no matter what you do.

No, it's okay, relax.

Oh, it's okay, eat this.

Oh, it's okay.

Don't do, oh, it's okay, sleep it.

Oh, it's okay to do that.

Yeah, but that's your enemy.

That's the other person.

The person that's pushing you, challenging you,

confronting you, directing you to say,

hey, man, you complain too much.

Hey, man, your language is weak.

What do you talk like?

Who talks like that?

I just don't like him.

You know, he's my enemy.

No, no, that's it.

That's your ally.

So unconditional love, no matter what you do,

you won't get the approval.

And last but not least,

choosing the right enemy.

You do that.

You know, it typically tends to produce a very strong

ambitious human being.

You know, one of the things that I did was

I thought about what would make me angry

when I would work out.

Like I forgot I had a jail.

That's what helped me get through.

It was like the people who bullied me in childhood

and stuff that happened to me.

Yup.

And then I found that that got me so far

and I had to choose different enemies

because I found myself just angry at the world

because I was constantly thinking about the people

who wronged me and I caught myself

at times slipping back into the victim mindset.

There's a lot of people that go through adversity

as a kid and they're trying to turn that pain into purpose.

How can they make that leap from like using that as fuel

to then moving it into the next direction?

Listen, you got anything I can use to drive you

at the beginning, I'm gonna do it.

Anything.

When I, over the years I've recruited

and built a lot of different insurance agencies

in America and I would use a method called a lock on method.

I would look at a person and say,

is this somebody for me to put 90% of my time into?

And typically the things I would look at

before I put my time into that person

as has this place, person plays sports before.

Why?

If you played high school football, high school basketball,

high school baseball, travel soccer,

and you played it in your teens for four years,

here's what you generally experienced.

You experienced your coach, pushing you, challenging you,

you experienced losing, you experienced injury,

you experienced teamwork, you experienced what it was like

when a guy blocked for you or the,

you're about to lose the game bottom of the night inning

but that short stop made the cash through to first.

Without him, you were about to get the loss

because of him, you're a hero, the pitcher, you're like,

man, it's good to have good people in your life.

If I didn't have that short stop,

so you realize you need people,

I saw patterns of people that played sports,

three, four years with a tough coach,

they were generally easier to work with and coach

than somebody who never had that experience of playing sports.

They were sensitive.

A person that didn't play sports,

they were typically sensitive if you gave them feedback.

They were typically someone that was soft.

If you had a little bit of military background,

drill sergeants kind of pushed you

and got that stuff out of you.

So to me, as I sit down and go through it,

that's a choice the individuals got to make.

You know, it's truly a choice.

Eat your head towards a terrible life.

You're going to lose decades of your life

and you don't even know it.

So make the better choice for yourself.

But you know, a Mario Aguilar,

one of my guys bought me a gift,

a Xerox management manual, sales manual from 1969.

Why Xerox?

If you look at which companies produced

some of the best sales people in the last six years,

Xerox is always on the name that comes up.

If you go right now, you chat GBT,

what fortune 1,000 companies produced the best sales people

who has a reputation for that the last six years?

You'll see Xerox will be in a top five list.

So guess what?

Why is that systematic?

A guy at the top taught people follow up,

taught him how to confront,

taught him how to do customer service,

customer experience.

If you look at management, Jack Welch,

if you worked under Jack Welch,

people wanted to recruit you because they knew,

especially if you had work under Jack Welch,

if your resume said,

report it direct to Jack Welch for seven years.

Oh, you want this guy?

You come here,

we'll put you and give you a heavy position.

Why?

If you made it under a Jack Welch,

that means you are a Jack Welch,

that means you can handle the tough love,

that means you can handle being pushed,

that means you can handle the pressure.

We want somebody like that.

So to me, you know, the same way you look at a resume

and somebody said four jobs and four years,

I'm like, I'm gonna be the fifth job.

Why am I hiring you?

You know, it's the same way you're going to be judged

for the choices you make, whether you like it or not.

And if you want the kind of credibility

and respect when you walk into a room,

sometimes that takes years to regain.

But the reality of it is just like in Christianity,

not the nomination,

they'll say there's such things as,

you know, I'm a born again Christian,

you'll hear that phrase,

there's a born again executive,

there's a born again CEO,

there's a born again founder,

there's a born again father,

there's a born again husband,

hey, from today on, that's it.

The old guy's dead.

Decision is cutting away.

I'm gonna make a decision to cut away from the old me.

New person is here,

everything I'm working on,

developing a new guy, I'm good.

I know I've been mistakes.

I'm gonna be making better choices moving forward.

Then at first people don't believe you.

They think you're foolish.

They're like, whatever.

You're gonna go back to drugs.

You're gonna go back to drinking.

You're gonna go back to not taking care of your mind.

You're gonna go back to gambling.

I get it, why don't trust me?

It's a fair judgment that I deserve

because I've been doing this for 18 years.

I get it.

But wait for me six months.

Six months said, oh wow, interesting.

Is he gonna break again?

One year later, wow, he's changed.

Two years later.

Three years later, everybody forgot.

And it's just an old story.

And I had a guy with me that's been working for 20 years.

He had such a massive alcohol issue.

Six years ago, I'm picking him up from prison.

And it's 3.30 in the morning.

I'm pulling up in my Blue Rolls-Royze and Oak Cliff Texas,

which is the worst part of Texas Dallas terrible.

The prison's there.

I go and everybody thinks I'm a lawyer.

He gets in the car.

We're driving back to his house.

I'm dropping him off.

30 minutes drive.

He's saying, you're not saying anything.

I said, I have nothing to tell you.

You typically have a lot to tell me.

I said, I have nothing to tell you.

Pat, you have to talk to me.

He's crying in the car.

You have to tell me something.

I said, I have to tell you nothing.

No, no, I said, moving forward,

you're not reporting to me.

You're probably gonna get fired.

You're out of the circle.

You're not gonna work with me directly.

They're probably gonna fire you

unless if you commit to something with them.

I'm no longer.

I said, you're not grateful for your life.

I said, you're not grateful for what God's given you.

And I can't do anything about it.

You lack perspective.

We come back.

He says, give me one last chance.

Every night you need to go to AM meeting.

Every night for a year, he goes to AM meetings.

The guy that sat down with him was my previous CFO.

He has a tough conversation with him.

He accepts.

He went from about to kill himself with his story.

To now he works with us.

He does very well.

He makes a million out of your income.

Beautiful wife, beautiful kids, beautiful family.

But by the way, we forgot any of the stuff

that he did seven years ago

because he proved to us that he's truly changed.

Does that make sense?

So the judgment that we were given him, he removed it.

And that's kind of how life works.

He recreated his reputation.

And everybody can do that based on their choices,

but it's not easy.

It's very, very hard to do.

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And I've heard you talk about like the McCona Hay's

famous quote where it's like your hero

should be your future self.

Do you think it takes something like that

to create this future identity of yourself?

This thing is so fun.

This life, it's sometimes you're like

going through such these seasons

and sometimes you're going through such an amazing season.

And then sometimes you're sitting there with a person

and having a great conversation.

And you know, this morning I want to watch my daughter.

She was four years old doing a show at our school.

And she was part of the tiny dancer at the church.

She was dancing.

I'm standing right there just looking at her

and I can't wait for her to see me.

And so daddy's here, you're safe.

And then I walk to the side and she spots me.

She runs up, just throws herself at me, lifts her legs up.

I'm hugging it.

We're sitting there having a good moment together.

My son is over here.

We're laughing.

My other daughters there were laughing at how she's moving,

how she's dancing.

My wife is sitting over here.

And no one exists around me at this time.

My life is amazing.

But my dad is 83.

My biggest fear at six years old

was possibly losing this guy.

His time is coming up.

83 years old.

He walks different.

You know, his body is very different.

It's frail.

It's not the same as it was.

But we still have good conversations together.

I'm 47, I'm not 37.

I'm not 27.

Body's different at 47 than it was at 37.

Then it was at 27.

You know, you're not a five days apart.

You're an October 13 baby.

I'm an October 18 baby.

But they change.

But it's also like, that's cool.

You know, you sit there, you realize how amazing.

We got this one chance here.

And it's not always going to be great.

It's not.

But if you don't look at this and say, man,

let me go enjoy this thing called life

and get some experiences and, you know,

do something that it can make an impact.

So when one day I'm no longer here,

yeah, they'll eventually forget about you

because that's kind of life moves on.

We're all coming here and then you move on.

But at least some impact is left.

At least you build something you're proud of.

People look back and say, that's my dad.

That's my mom.

Yeah, I mean, you have to think about your mortality

and what kind of an impact you want to make.

So to me, if you don't see the bigger picture

of how lucky we are to have a shot at building a good life,

even do after we screwed up, you like gratitude,

you like perspective, but just take a step back

and realize we are some of the luckiest people alive.

Even if you got nothing, you still have more than a lot

of people that are billions of people

don't have a lot of things that you have.

Trust me.

But that gratitude is hard to do when life is tough.

It's not easy.

You got to still find a way to do it.

No, when you have nothing going for you,

that's like the only thing you can really lean on, right?

It's gratitude.

It's true for like your legs and your harms and your health.

And I think that people have a hard time

because they want to think positively.

They want to be confident.

But yet their bank account has nothing in it.

They don't have a relationship.

They're out of shape.

They have no real metric to look at.

Like my life is going in the right direction.

How can people get past that?

Starts with you.

Make a change.

Start keeping your word.

Increase your credit score.

The same way we have a credit score when you buy a house

or you buy a car,

it's because you don't keep your word

of making that car payment.

So your credit score drops.

You did not make that mortgage payment on time.

Your credit score drops.

Everybody has judged on how well of a job

you do keep in your word.

If you're a project manager, does it get done on time?

If you're a general contractor,

do you build a house on time?

If you're a kid going to school,

do you go to school on time?

If your father or mother picking up the kids,

do you pick them up on time?

If you're a CEO running a Fortune 500 company

that's a publicly traded company,

do you deliver on your estimates that you had?

You know what you were going to be doing?

If you're a president,

do you deliver on the policies that you said,

everything is about keeping your word.

And it starts off with the smallest thing.

I'm going to walk.

I'm going to walk outside 20 minutes.

Okay, great.

Did you keep your word?

I did great.

Do that one month straight.

Your respect goes up.

You know, I like one of the things I had.

Every time I have one of these health people on the podcast,

I change something big about my health.

I had Paul Saladino on about a year ago.

Last time I had Celsius.

I used to drink two or three Celsius a day.

I haven't had a Celsius drink since that day, okay?

Then I had Gary Breckon change with him.

What he said, then I had Dr. Ronda Patrick on two weeks ago.

I've been fasting every day.

I moved up my dinner.

Typically I have dinner on 7 7 30.

I have dinner at 445.

I don't have dinner late.

Unless if I'm going out with somebody entertaining

and maybe I'll have some oysters, something like that.

But I try to bring my dinner to 445.

I don't need anything in the morning,

including piece of gum, including honey on my tea,

including any water that may have sugar in it.

No, it's just regular water, regular tea.

No.

And guess what, I feel better.

I feel hungry.

I feel like I'm in a hunt at this.

So to us, hey, you keep your word

when you're making small little commitments.

You start seeing your respect goes up.

You know what, when I say something, things happen.

You know, when I say what I'm gonna be doing,

everybody builds a reputation.

Some people have a reputation for being tough.

Some people have a reputation for being good at making money,

some people have a reputation for being fun.

Some people have a reputation for being a womanizer.

Some people have a reputation for being good with

the way they write or text or call or speak or podcast.

I wanted to build a reputation that when Patrick says

he's gonna do something, he's gonna do it.

because both your enemies, your friends, your family,

your allies all benefit from it.

If your enemies know when you say,

here's what we're gonna be doing, they're like,

oh, I definitely don't wanna hear it from him.

There's a benefit of building a reputation

when you say you're gonna do something, you do it.

So being consistent and not being a victim

or two common themes we've talked about.

And keep your word.

And keep your word.

What are their big life decisions

do you think are important for people?

Cut out the drugs, you can cut out the alcohol,

cut out any of that stuff that slows you down,

change some of the people around you that are negative

and are crap magnets, including some family members.

Change your language.

I audit people on the words they use.

I'm like, don't use weak words like I'm tired.

Don't use weak words like, I'm just so tired.

I'm just like, oh my God, stops.

It's a turn off when somebody talks like that, right?

I can be sitting next to somebody and I talk to them.

Just by the way they speak, I catch weak words.

And when you catch weak words, a person with weak words

can't manage others.

And if you do, you can't in a high standard environment.

So you've got to protect the words

that's coming out of your mouth.

You know, sometimes you slip, you're like,

well, why am I talking this way?

No, no, upgrade the words, upgrade your environment.

I can't go on on this for hours and hours,

but those will be some of the things I would share.

That was one of the biggest shifts I made

was changing the people I spent time with.

I say that you got to spend time with people

who have common futures and not common past.

And that hit home with me because I was a guy

who had a party to all of that.

Yeah, common futures.comapest.

Because as a kid, you know, I partied a lot,

did a lot of drugs and that was like my crew.

Where are you from?

You're from Maryland, Maryland, Baltimore.

And so you were born and raised in Baltimore.

Yeah, born and raised in the Baltimore area.

And so that's all we did.

And so that's what I was used to.

And so it wasn't, it was when I stopped doing drugs

and I got into fitness, I would go hang out with my old friends

and there was something different.

Like they would go and do drugs

or drink a bunch or whatever.

And I was like, why does this feel weird to me?

Why does this feel like an awkward first date

when I have nothing in common with these people?

And I had to make that decision that's like, okay,

they're in my past life.

I need to cut these people out.

They're not bad people.

They're just not aligned with where I'm going in the future.

And that is really stuck with me

and something that's that I've used to be successful.

Good for you.

Respect to you.

It's not easy to do.

It's very hard to do.

But if you're able to do it, life changes.

You know, sometimes for us,

I had one of my guys that I've mentored for over 20 years,

no longer, but I used to mentored this guy a lot.

He's probably one of the 10 people in my life

that I've spent the most actual hours with me.

It's in the thousands of hours

that this person spend with me.

Why don't you wear having a conversation?

He says, you know what?

I don't know why, but why is it so important to me

what you think?

I want to get to a point that I could share less

about what you think about me.

It's a really, yeah.

I said, why do you think you care about what I think?

What do you think you care so much about what I think about you?

I don't know, but I don't like it.

I said, okay.

All right.

I said, so what's wrong with that?

Tell me what's wrong with that.

You said it's kind of going through the whole thing.

All right.

I said, see, if you make a list of people in your life,

that you rank them by who on that list do you care about

on what they think about you and you rank them?

Like I care what my kids think about me,

but in what areas, not the fact I'm tough with them,

I'm gonna stay tough with them.

But I care about the fact that they're gonna go out there

when the kid offers them drugs for them to sit there

and say, and the kids that are offering them drugs,

they don't have a good relation with their dad.

I want them to say, man, my dad's gonna be hurt by this

if I do it.

I love my dad.

He loves me.

And I'm good, guys.

That I care about that, right?

If I go and I think about my dad,

I want to make my dad proud.

So I care about that, but my dad didn't want me

to leave the previous company,

start my own insurance company because he was afraid.

He was afraid I was gonna lose everything.

I already had a great life.

I was already traveling the world.

He's like, what are you doing?

What are you gonna give all this up

to go start your own company?

I am.

Why?

Because I don't like what this other company stands for

because of three people.

He says, so you're gonna leave?

He says, yes.

My pastor called everybody.

He says, bad, you can't do it.

I said, dad, I'm doing it, but I did a party for him.

I wanted to make him proud.

But guess what?

I care about what he has to think about me.

And in all of a sudden, I noticed who's not on the list

and I said, why do I care so much?

Oh, done.

These guys, why would I care about what they think?

It became so simple when you make a list of saying,

who are the top 10 people that you care about?

What they think about you?

List should be a short list,

but that also doesn't mean everything you do.

Not every decision.

My, I have relatives that were not happy about me

marrying my wife because my wife's wife

and I'm Middle Eastern.

And I grew up around Middle Eastern,

minus my time in the military.

In the military, I was around everybody,

but in high school, I was around Armenians,

so serious.

Iranians, no, I married my wife.

We got letters.

She got letters saying, how could you marry somebody like,

pad, do you know about his temper

and all this other stuff and how hard charge he is?

You want something like that?

And I got letters.

Why would you marry a white girl and ta-da-da-da-da?

The day before I got married,

I'm getting letters about why are you getting married?

Man, I'm good.

My dad loved her.

I love her.

We have a good relationship.

We've been married now for,

it'll be 17 years in June.

I think we're gonna be married together for 40 years.

I don't know.

We take it one year at a time.

I've been saying this since our wedding day.

When I got married, I looked at everybody.

I said, I don't know if we're gonna be married

for 20 years.

We're taking it one year at a time.

We've been taking it one year at a time

for the last 16 and a half years, right?

For healthy kids, we're happy.

Life is good, we're grown, we're doing our thing.

But to me, it's very important to make a list

of the people, opinions you carry.

You have to be honest with yourself

because some people are on that list

that you shouldn't care what they think.

And that list shouldn't be 50 names, 200 names.

This should be very tight list.

Max 10 names, healthy five names.

For me, I have four kids, I have more family.

So that got a little bit bigger

but around 10 names is where it needs to be.

And then you'll walk better.

You'll make decisions easier.

You'll second, guess yourself less.

You'll take responsibility more and like,

now I'm good.

Here's what we're gonna be doing.

All right, great.

You'll lead better if you ever do that.

Do you think the path you took

to change your life is repeatable

for people who are feeling lost?

For others?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Like the other day, we're doing an exercise.

It's a good question you just asked.

And one of my managers, her name is Taylor.

She's phenomenal at what she does.

Me, her, Aaron, and Mario, we made a list.

Okay, and they're asking me, Pat,

I wanna be better at managing my guys.

What do I do?

I said, great, before we talk about what you can do,

she's talking about how can I become better

at duplicating others to succeed, right?

Duplicating others.

So what you're asking is, is it repeatable?

Is it duplicatable?

Can somebody else get the same kind of results?

And here's what I said.

I said, people we recruit, what do we get

that we don't do that they bring to the table?

What is not that you can't duplicate?

And they're sending them, I don't understand the question.

Okay, what do you bring to the table

that I didn't help you get?

My IQ, yes, it's got nothing to do with me duplicating.

Like I can't duplicate IQ.

My EQ, I can't duplicate EQ, EQ personality.

I can't duplicate the personality.

So you and I can't be like Theo Vaughn,

that's his personality.

You and I can't be like Marcelo Hernandez to comedian.

We can't be like, you know, a Matthew McConaughey

or Tom Cruise, that's the personality.

You can't duplicate that.

Then character, honesty, integrity,

that your parents did that to you

and your choice, your fate, your decisions,

that's not my responsibility, that's on you.

Authentic, some people are fake, some people are authentic.

I can't, if you're authentic,

that's you get the credit for that, right?

And we wrote a couple of the things here.

Then it was like the next part is on what to duplicate.

Whenever it was nonverbal, the other one is verbal,

meaning caught, taught.

Okay, so what you bring to the table,

personality, DNA, character, talent, IQ, EQ,

we don't get credit for that, right?

Then what you can catch from working with me,

the impact that make of teaching you, hey, Johnny,

here's what you need to do.

Read this book, follow the script.

This is your schedule.

Here's how many calls to make.

Follow the structure, dude, okay, that's teaching.

And then it's catching.

Catching is if you spend the entire day with me today

for morning till now, you'd walk away saying,

holy shit, this guy's schedule is back to back.

It's way more than what I'm gonna say on this podcast.

Every time somebody comes here to our property

and they come and walk around,

we have three different buildings,

one of them we're about to sell,

which was a bank we bought.

And the podcast that was in the vault,

the other one is a building we bought

that we turn into our cigar lunch or private member

which now we're turning to a restaurant.

And then this 11 acre campus that we bought,

not a land list, we own the land, right?

When somebody comes here and you're like,

oh my God, what do you guys do?

What is this?

This is really what, yeah, holy shit.

I didn't know you guys said this, we do.

Then somebody will come and monitor and see how I work.

And then they say, oh, and by the way,

when somebody comes and watches how you work,

they make one of two decisions.

One of them is, oh my God, this is what it takes.

I'm not doing it.

Or it's gonna be, wow, I got the blueprint.

Let's go.

But one of those two decisions is gonna be made.

So duplicators, it can somebody repeat this.

Number one, the stuff that's your DNA personality

character, all this stuff, no, that's on you.

I can't be like you, you can't be like me in that area.

I can't be like you, you can't be like that in that area.

Cut, if I watch you do a hundred episodes of podcasts,

I can see how you prepare for it.

I can see that you have notes here, that you wrote down.

I can see the format that you follow to write the notes down.

I can catch how you do this.

Then I can catch how you prep,

let's just say I'm your driver or your right hand guy

and I drove here with you.

And I saw what videos you watched of me.

Do you go to filters, most views?

Do you watch those videos first?

Do you go to Twitter to see my last hundred tweets?

Do you go to Instagram to see what stories I put up

to see what's the most freshest thing on my mind?

I don't know, but there's a format.

Look at how you started today's podcast.

You got a tweet or a Facebook post

that I put up two weeks who you started with that.

That's a format.

I can catch that from you, right?

90% is catching, 10% is teaching.

It's not even close.

Well, I think it goes back to your environment

who you spend time with, right?

Because I think, you know what I'm saying?

90% is catching, the intent percent is teaching.

Like, somebody told me this quote, 25 years ago,

there's more caught than taught in parenting.

There's more caught than taught in parenting.

My daughter was two years old.

One day she comes, she's like, what the heck?

I said, what did you just say?

What the heck?

Brooklyn.

I said, babe, what did you learn this from?

And in my wife's like, babe, you always say, what the heck?

She caught this phrase, what the heck?

School calls me saying, hey, your son dropped

a few bad words today.

Really, tell me which ones?

Well, the S word and the F word.

I said, I will take responsibility for the S one,

not the F one.

The F one he learned in school, the S he learned from me.

And the teacher's like, oh wow, you're very straight up.

I said, no, what are you hungry to tell you?

I said a lot around the kids and I probably shouldn't.

To that's me, he caught that from me,

but I don't say F around them.

So he picked it up from somebody else.

Okay, well, thanks for that.

Well, father, can you please slow down?

I said, well, I think about it, you know,

but I'm being honest with you.

So to me, the replicating part is you,

is caught, is taught.

Taught is important, but oh my God,

catching you to so critical.

And it goes back to the way you carry yourself, right?

And setting the example and being the model.

And that's what they say in parenting,

like modeling behavior is like one of the most important things,

like just kind of just how you just referenced that.

It's very true.

This is why for me, when I would do conference calls,

my kids are watching me.

If I'm in the car, they're around me.

I want them to hear daddy negotiate.

If I'm running a meeting, if the kids don't have any school

and no practice and no sports,

they're at the office here all day.

They're running around, they're picking stuff up

on what's going on.

How do we run a media company?

How do we run a consulting firm?

What are we saying to boardroom?

What's being negotiated?

Why did dad handle that that way?

Dad, why did you fire that person?

Dad, why did you hire that person?

Dad, why do we make that investment?

Dad, what do you think?

I think we made a mistake, lose that.

We did lose money and we made a mistake.

But what could we have done differently?

Dad, what do you think we could have done differently?

It's constant because shadowing is an edge.

It's massive.

If I can work around somebody and shadow them.

And if I can do that three months, six months,

12 months, two years, are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me?

Why is it that the VPs end up

becoming so many vice presidents become presidents?

Because they shadow the president.

You know, they're in the room.

They're seeing, oh, that was a dynamic with China.

But that was a dynamic got it.

Let me store it here.

I shadow it.

I saw it.

So very important.

So you got boys.

We're in like a men's mental health epidemic, I think,

right now with suicides and addiction.

Like, why do you think that is?

And what can men do differently to be

to kind of not fall into some of these unfortunate traps?

We're listening to what people are telling us

on how to raise kids.

It's a bunch of nonsense.

And we'll be told how to raise kids by people

that don't have kids or that are extremely sensitive.

Oh, my God, don't raise your voice.

Oh, my God, don't argue.

Oh, my God, no, no means no.

No, I'm going to raise my voice.

And we're going to have some tough conversations.

And why?

But why do you do that?

Because how do you think coaches talk to you?

You think a coach is going to say to you, honey,

please try catching the ball next time.

Catch the flip and ball.

We've done this practice around a hundred times.

Run the route.

What are you doing?

Right?

Oh, okay, that's the reality of life.

What do you think it's like?

You didn't hit your numbers.

Three quarters in a row.

You think the boss is going to come in.

It's okay, Johnny, we'll give you one more quarter.

No, no, no.

Hey, next quarter, you don't hit your numbers.

This is it.

I'm telling you right now, there's nothing I can do about it.

You're going to get fired because you haven't hit your numbers.

And you know, you're not working the way you were before.

I don't feel the intensity.

And you tell me where you want to go from you.

We'd love to keep you.

We'd love to have you be with us for 20 years.

But you're making it very hard for us to keep you right now.

So I don't know, it's your choices on you.

What do you want to go with this?

You have to confront.

So to me, I love when we argue,

because when you argue with your kids and you debate

with your kids, you teach them what?

You're teaching them debate.

You're teaching them how to sell.

You're teaching them how to negotiate.

You're teaching them how to ask for something.

All skill sets that's going to help them advance in their lives.

When I say no, I don't say, don't ever ask me again.

I say no.

I said no.

No.

And then he comes back with a different creative analysis.

I said, how come he's not coming back asking for it?

Come back and ask for it.

Renegotiate.

Why are you not coming back?

Reneganders, the kids are almost confused.

Well, you said no.

Why are you giving up so early?

Come back and renegotiate with your daddy.

Give me creative way of saying yes to you.

Okay, okay, I'll come back to you.

All right, what is it?

What if we do this, this, this and that?

No, I'm not good with that.

But if you do this, I would be open to this.

You'd be open to that, I would.

So what if we did that?

Okay, now we're talking the same language.

If that's the case, I'm good.

All right, I could teach and follow up,

because you got to learn follow-up,

have to battle where life is following up.

So you got follow-up with clients,

you got to follow-up with boss,

you got to follow when you're closing the house,

you got to follow-up with a deal that didn't go through.

You got, it's follow-up.

And then, you know, the fighting intensity side

to be okay in the storm,

because life you're going to be in storm.

Now, don't give me wrong, some kids are born.

We have four kids.

One of them is very calm.

One of them is very intense.

One of them is very philosophical.

One of them is just got a temper and competitive,

psycho-cycle competitive.

So yes, you manage them in a different way,

but you still, you still want to raise your boys to be tough

because, you know, and by the way,

I teach my kids about politics.

I teach my kids about debate.

My kids read books, you know,

my oldest son is right now going through the Bible,

the Quran and the Torah.

He's already read at the shrug.

He's already read as a Dante's.

And for now, I think it's called,

he's already read, he's at five, six hundred books already.

He watches Hillsdale College

to get the history of the Constitution,

to get the history of politics.

You know, I'm shaping their mindset.

So when they go into the real world,

and let's see what you want to do with it,

you pick and choose.

You gotta work with them to be tough.

I think it's a soft society

because one, fathers are not that involved.

They're not selling the right belief system.

They're scared, they're walking on excels,

and then by the way, if you see my kids,

like today, my 12-year-old,

I'm in the chapel watching a four-year-old daughter,

he's sitting on my lap.

Not because I asked him to sit on my lap.

We have a relationship, we have a bond.

I don't know what's gonna happen next five, 10, 20 years

because they're gonna go through their own thing,

they're gonna have different influences.

Some of the influences they get are not gonna like me.

Some of them are gonna be girlfriends.

All your dad cares about his money.

They're gonna date somebody that their parents

are not fans of where I'm at

because I'm loud with certain opinions that are,

they can they go through this phase, and it's okay.

It's okay as they go through it,

but as long as we're shaping them to be tough, respectful,

long-term, we have a fighting chance with them.

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You know, the show was called the adversity advantage,

and the reason is a couple of things.

One, to show that adversity has purpose in life.

And two, it's like what not to do.

Because I think a lot of people's problems

are they're caused by what they do during adversity.

They drink a bottle of wine every day.

They have too much sex to do all these things,

spend a bunch of money.

What do you do when you have a bad day?

Like, do you have like a recipe

like to kind of recalibrate yourself

when you're having a bad day?

Yeah, when I have a bad day, I'll come in.

And if you want to know the immediate way

to get rid of all of it for me,

is my kids being around me.

And I know it's not something that's duplicatable,

or replicable with everybody.

But if I got kids with me,

I'm good.

When I come home, I see them,

pain goes away immediately at these sets for me.

But I don't know if I, like last week,

we had a couple of days where I'm like,

yeah, I'm not feeling good about what's going on.

And then all of a sudden, I'm like,

no, I can't keep going like this.

I called an emergency meeting.

I took my three executives.

We went out to dinner.

I said, guys, let me tell you what's on my mind.

And I need your help with this.

Here's what I'm thinking about.

I laid out my concerns, what I'm frustrated with.

And I said, I want us to have a clear road

to a billion, to 10 billion, to 100 billion.

We don't have a clear road right now,

to 100 billion dollars.

We're having this conversation, my valuation.

And what we want to build, what we want to build,

we have a big vision.

So, okay.

If we drop everything we're doing,

and we only did one thing, what would it be?

And they say to me, da, da, da, da.

I said, okay.

I said, so, go a little bit more.

How much could this scale?

Well, if we did this, like right now,

we're getting a lot of companies that are coming to us

because are consulting from his boom and growing exponential.

We have 10,000 clients from 64 countries

that we do engagements for,

and they range from 50,000 dollars

to a 3.3 million dollar engagement.

And some of the companies coming and they say,

hey, can we give you some equity?

Can we do half cash, half this?

And the companies that have been with us

for two or three years will entertain it

because we know the operators.

And so now we're getting to a point

where people are coming up and saying, hey,

we'd like you to open up a fund

and we want to give you half a billion dollars to go,

because we have so many companies that are coming to us.

You make the investments, you take the risks,

you manage it, and then for us,

we'll bring the CEOs in, we'll have the CEOs become better

CEOs, we'll deploy to them exactly.

The very will company,

the benefits program we have,

how we do our calibration, how we do our marketing,

how we do all, here's how we do everything.

This is all yours, why?

Because we own 50% of the company,

because we own 100% of the company,

because we own 25% of the company.

So now we're deploying everything to you.

And we sat there, so what if we did this for 20 years?

What does 20 years from now look like?

And it was like, this is the range where we'll be.

And I said, that's believable.

Okay, great.

So it's as soon as possible trying to talk to somebody

to process the issue of what we can do

to make that issue or the problem better,

I want to talk to somebody,

what do you think about what happened?

What could we have done differently?

What about this, what about that?

If we have a bad day because,

I don't know, market dropped or tariffs got canceled

by Supreme Court or Bitcoin is down 50%,

or interest rates went up, I can't control that kind of stuff.

My frustration typically comes when we make bad mistakes,

or when we make certain things that's not moving,

that's typically my format on what I do next.

You control the controllables,

which I think is all you can do when you're faced with hard times.

I think so many people, they over index in the problem in itself,

and what they can't control instead of spending time

on the things that they actually have the control of.

It's true.

What would you say to the Pat and the Ford Focus,

knowing what you know now?

You got to go through it.

You just got to go through it.

You know, part of life with faith is,

the reason why we respect people who win at the highest level

is because people will ask,

do you ever think that you were going to do something big?

Like, you know, even the song for a podcast song is,

do you ever think you would make it, right?

I knew I was different.

Like I knew I was different.

I knew like the fire I had in my belly

to want to be somebody was so out of control high.

It was so high, but then on the complete opposite side,

I had no credibility to say I was capable of doing something big

with my life.

I didn't have anything to say.

Well, I was a high school quarterback.

We took the team to the state championship.

I never played organized sports.

I'm 6'4", 250.

I have never played organized sports.

How's that possible?

I never played organized sports.

I don't have, you know, where I was in the army

and I went to, you know, Delta four.

So special four, I don't have that.

I didn't have a 4.5 GP.

I had a 1.8 GPA.

I don't have a 1600 SAT or 1580 SAT.

I don't have that.

I didn't have anything to look at to say.

So it was always a guessing game.

Why do you think you're so special?

Why do you think you meant to do something big with your life?

Why?

So I'm like, I don't know,

but I cannot get rid of this feeling in my belly.

I can't.

I feel like my blood is boiling all the time

because I want to go out and do something big with my life.

I almost gave up.

I almost went back into the army and the 20 years

and that's all I was going to do.

Because I looked at the 3, 4,000 auto pension plan

I was going to give when I'm a 40 years old.

I almost did it.

I almost went back into the army.

So to me, it started off with that fire in the belly.

And then I remember when I hit MADE $250,000

and I started getting very good at the business

and insurance.

That's when I was kind of like, huh?

I think I can do a hundred million.

I think I can do it.

Why?

I don't know why.

I just think I can't.

What makes me think and do it?

I don't think I'm going to stop until I do it

because I trust my way of making decisions.

And then that led to next step,

and next step, and next step, and next step.

But even today, where I'm at today,

my aspirational vision of where I want to be in 10 years,

still a little bit like,

it's kind of crazy for you to think

that you're capable of doing that.

Who are you?

Why don't I believe it?

Yeah, but who are you?

Well, look what I've built in the past.

Okay, but this is complete different industry.

I get it.

That part of the unknown and the fate and the doubt

that whether you're going to pull it off or not,

that's the hell week.

That's the exciting.

That's why you get the credit from people to say,

man, you made it.

Man, you won, man, you pulled it off.

So I think a person's got to go through

the parts of the battle of the doubt,

close to giving up, and that's all part of the test

to tell the story later on to realize

the credit goes to that moment that you were about

to give up, you didn't.

That's where the credit lies.

I'm looking forward to seeing what unfolds for you

in the future, Pat.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Time, thank you.

Love this convoy.

I really enjoyed it as well.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate you.

Thank you.

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