- There's a big flash behind us,
my dad says don't look behind you,
it's me and my sister sitting in the back seat.
We look behind us, a bomb dropped 50 yards behind us
and the bridge is going down.
[Jazzy Music]
- It's funny how big the numbers sound
because I thought a million was a lot
until I (bleep) did a million sales
and realized it's nothing.
Margins are 20(bleep)% and it's like,
"Oh, I made 20 grand this year,"
and I signed a million dollars worth of checks
on both the front and the back.
(laughs)
- They finally let you out the office?
- I know, right?
- Neither of you look like you've seen the sun
in a long time.
(drumming)
- Hey welcome to Dallas, huh?
You seen Brian?
- He's taking a nap.
(laughing)
(electro-pop music)
- Reppin' the BOLD hat, I like it.
(sighs) Texas.
- You want me to tell you what the reason
why we're in Dallas today?
Our content with (unclear) got us here.
- Oh, for sure. 110%
- I can't tell you how many times
I thought like, "Man, if I could
just get in front of somebody that's done
a hundred million, that's done a billion dollars
from nothing, figured it out, seven months ago.
My accountant said, "Dude, you should not do that.
Don't spend your money. It's just vanity."
Ben. Accountant, Ben.
I love you, buddy.
You do a lot of amazing things.
- Yeah, Ben almost didn't have me hired.
- Yeah, dude, Ben didn't want the guy
behind the camera hired.
- Thanks a lot, Ben.
- Because he's crunching numbers
and said it doesn't make sense.
Don't spend the money on doing all this extra branding.
It's cool, but it's not gonna close business.
Does it close business, Steve?
- 100%
- Right here.
- Alright.
You guys are in the middle
of the road, by the way, just so you know.
(upbeat electronic music)
- Hey, how you doing?
- Pretty good, how you been?
- Pleasure to meet you.
- Good to meet you. Shocked. You guys look good.
_ We've only been here for since December 4th.
This is all getting done next four weeks.
It's gonna be a slide.
- No way!
- So after you're done watching a movie,
you literally come down the slide.
Mario, who's idea was the slide?
- You were the initial one.
- You know, you never lose the kid side of you, right?
You got a couple items here
with MJ, with Gretski, with Magic.
This painting, here, that took a while
for this to get finalized.
- I want to talk to other successful entrepreneurs
who have interesting, unique, genuine stories
that I can ask questions and literally learn from you.
And therefore, then the audience learns.
So through me, I'm giving value back
and then also showing what we're doing
and how we're doing it.
I know what PHP is.
I know what valuetainment is.
I've seen a ton of your content,
but for those one or two people
in the entire world that don't know who you are
and what your companies are, what do you do?
- So I run a financial firm so I'll tell you
how this whole thing got started.
I get out the military. I was originally born
and raised in Iran, lived there for ten years.
(Unclear) dies June, 3rd, '89. We escaped.
I go to Germany.
I live at a refugee camp for two years, which was wild.
And then that's when I first learned how to sell.
At the refugee camp, I was selling.
And so from there, I come to the States November 28, 1990.
It's amazing, I'll never forget that day.
I said, "Mom, where is Rocky?"
She says, "What do you mean, 'Where's Rocky?'"
I said, "We're in America, Mom. Where's Rocky?
I wanna see Rocky." You know, where is everybody?
And I'm looking around saying, "I don't see Rocky." (laughs)
To me, it's such an innocent feeling.
You thought everybody was a Hollywood star.
Truly, we thought everybody was a Hollywood star.
I had a 1.8 GPA.
I was not a kid that did good in school.
After high school, I joined the Army,
went into the Army for a few years
at the 101st Airborne. I got out, had no idea
what I originally wanted to do career-wise.
I didn't know I was gonna get into body-building.
And it didn't work that way. I met a girl named Jeanvier,
and she picked me up in a different car everytime,
and I would say, "Man, what do you do?"
She said, "I work at Morgan-Stanley."
At that time, my resume was Haagen Dazs,
was Bob's Big Boy, was Burger King,
was Army and Bally's. That's it.
- Wow.
- I don't have a fancy resume, right?
- Right.
- So I changed my resume's cover letter,
and I see now how you go to schools and they say,
"Write your resume like this."
I say, "Screw this." That's not gonna work.
I change a resume, the cover letter at the top.
I put the best joke I had at the time, okay?
And underneath the joke, I said,
"If you're laughing, this is exactly how
my clients are gonna feel when they do business with me."
They're gonna love me.
If you want someone like me part of your team, call me.
When we were in Iran, and we were getting bombed,
the only savior for us was humor.
So we had to laugh. I mean what are you gonna do?
Laugh it off. We're getting bombed. Ha ha ha.
It didn't hit us, and you joke
and you go to the next one.
That's the only outlet you have.
The only outlet you have is to laugh.
I mean you realize the value of laughter.
So I faxed it out to a hundred places:
TD Waterhouse, Morgan, Merrill, Schwab.
I even sent it to Goldman Sachs.
(laughing)
Goldman would never hire me, but I sent it to everybody.
I had no idea who Goldman is, I just saw.
Here's a list of financial funds.
- Right.
- And then next thing you know, I get 30 calls.
Out of the 30 calls, 15 were just calling to say
very creative approach. We like it.
The joke is hilarious, but you're not qualified.
Three different offices took me
to the last interview and offered me a job.
I chose the one that was closest to me.
And then in October of '09, we started PHP Agency
with 60 agents out of Northridge, California.
- Where did Valuetainment come from
because that's a whole other-
like I see how it's related,
but I can see how it doesn't seem related at all.
- Yeah, so originally I would make CDs.
Okay.
And then I had these CDs I would make
and everybody wanted them.
And so next thing you know would become a fight.
"I got Pat's CDs," and "Hey, I'm in Canada,
and I'm listening to your CDs."
And they would send me- "Are you ever gonna make more CDs?"
- What was in the CDs?
- Just stuff on selling, motivation,
how to make phone calls,
all the stuff that were on these CDs.
Mario suggested, "Hey, why don't we
start doing some videos?"
We start writing everything down.
So okay, we bring value, we entertain,
and it started becoming a movement.
How about we call it "Value," for value, just basic value.
"Tain," tain is entertain. "Ment" was movement.
So Valuetainment, and we named it Valuetainment.
- The challenge I'm actually going through right now
is we're having so much growth.
June to November we doubled the size of the company.
We've probably increased another 25% in the last two months,
and we've just closed a bunch of new contracts.
We're gonna probably increase it
by another quarter or third in the next two months.
The biggest challenge I'm having right now is like,
"Okay, this is awesome, all this, great (bleep)."
Now I've gotta make sure that
we have the infrastructure, the talent.
Did you experience growing pains like that
as you started to build this?
- Yes, so let me ask you,
who's your Chief Operating Officer right now?
- Me.
- So who's the CEO?
- Me.
(laughing)
- Got it. So now let me ask you personality type.
Which one are you more? Are you more the CEO or more COO?
Your personality type.
- CEO.
- Okay, you will realize 90%
of your headache's gonna be operations.
- Right.
- 90% of what keeps you up at night is operations
because if you had the operation problem solved,
you can do what you're good at.
And so when you're wondering saying
should I hire this guy, he's a $200 thousand a year guy,
and he wants equity, and he wants this,
and he wants bonus, and he wants this.
Oh my gosh, this is too much. I'm giving up too much.
It's worth every penny. People you know, they have your COO.
- Yeah, it's networking.
_ Yes.
- Yeah. And if you don't tell anybody
what you're looking for,
no one's ever gonna find it for you.
- Step one is knowing exactly who you need.
- Right.
- Then it's networking.
- Is there a thing that you know
that makes somebody a good fit culturally
because obviously it sounds like a lot of it is the buy in,
making sure they're a part of the team.
- Well you gotta connect with whoever it is,
COO or CEO, right?
You gotta connect with
who you're gonna be working with.
The connection has to be there with the two of you.
If there isn't a personality connection, it's problematic.
- Yeah.
- We wanna head out? Okay.
Yeah, we're gonna go to a nice place.
These guys take care of us. They're good.
(upbeat electronic music)
- As a kid, were you like, "I'm gonna make it,"
driving around in a Rolls.
- No, not at all.
- Did you ever think conscientiously,
"I wanna live that lifestyle."
- Well this Rolls for me was, I remember going to Iran,
and we'd go to the Shah's castle. It was a museum.
He had multiple Rolls-Royces that were given to him.
I said, "You know what? It would be kinda cool
if one day I got a Rolls-Royce."
By the way, do you see the black marks
on the back of my seat or no?
That's my kid, Dillon,
(laughing)
who I tell him a million times,
"Don't put your shoes on there."
As they're getting it, they say this,
"Yes, Daddy, we know. Don't touch the white.
Don't touch the white."
(laughing)
- What would you say to somebody
that maybe is struggling as an entrepreneur
and maybe they're not gonna make it
to align themselves with a CEO
to propel their career and to,
"It's okay, you don't have to be a CEO."
- So Tom, who worked for Sprint PCS,
and when Sprint PCS decided
to come out with their cell phone,
Tom came out with the first campaign $99.99 unlimited.
So then he says, "I wanna try being a CEO."
He becomes a CEO of GOTv. He's not happy.
They sell it. Then he goes and becomes a founder,
by himself, of a digital publishing company.
He hates it. Then one day, he and I
are having a talk together and he says,
"Pat, it took me 50 years to realize
I am a very good number two.
I hate being a number one."
- Wow.
- But I'm the best number two you'll ever find.
- Right.
- All of us have a skills orientation,
where maybe we're math-oriented,
maybe we're logic-oriented, maybe we're communication
and logic together that makes us great salespeople.
So we have a skill-orientation that we were born with.
Oh, he's always been so good at math.
Well, there's another orientation,
a second orientation, and it is to say you're either
an originator, you're an organizer, or you're an operator.
And the originator are like true serial entrepreneurs
who are already starting things.
An organizer is the ones that immediately
come alongside like the second third people
that joined Microsoft so if you have a mathematic
aptitude and a passion for financial services,
and you are an organizer, you get Patrick Bet-David.
Now, over time, there's a third dynamic,
and the third dynamic is basically all of the human parts
and the stresses that go with that.
For me, I discovered having been a number one,
been a number one, been a number 16,
I know enough about what it is to be a CEO
and a founder to say, "I know what you're feeling."
There's a slice of me that knows exactly
what he's going through and that's his lane to drive.
And that's his passion, that's where he wants to be.
So I'm gonna make him successful doing that
as well as scale the company.
Go hang out with the incubators
and the accelerators and the Y Combinators
and saying, "I've got a passion for this space,
and I got aptitudes here, but I'm not kidding myself.
I'm not gonna walk into anybody with a business plan
and get funded, but you know what?
I think this space is freakin' insane and interesting,
and I'd love to join teams there."
Just know who you are.
- Right.
- Know exactly who you are.
- Everybody wants a number two,
a good number two. Everybody.
Most number ones think everybody
wants to be a number one, and they don't.
There's gonna be a lot of these pivots
that needs to be made because there is somebody
in the world today that is thinking about
creative ways to put you out of business.
- Yeah.
- That's the world of Capitalism.
There are thousands of people today
that are thinking about putting
marketing agencies out of business,
insurance companies out of business,
restaurants out of business,
car dealerships out of business,
gas stations out of business.
Everyone's thinking, "How can I eliminate you,
and replace you with my idea."
- Yeah.
(poppy jazz music)
- So what's the vision? What's next for you guys?
- We're gonna keep growing the company.
People that we're now doing some business with,
working with, investing in the company.
Clearly we're doing something right
or those things wouldn't happen.
My mindset is so much bigger to where it's not like,
"Okay, can we get to the ten million mark?
Alright, can we get to the fifty?"
Already in my mind, we haven't hit a hundred million yet.
We're gonna do it. And now I'm like,
"Okay, like that's now small."
We're really doing what works.
We're gaining traction.
If we can compete with companies
that have ten times the assets, resources, talent,
and we're winning.
Oh, man, if we get ten times bigger,
where are we gonna be?
- By the way, a lot of times people ask questions
about where our ideas come from.
- Yep.
- I think it would be cool to kinda see this.
Where did I put the keycard here?
- I have mine here.
- Let me see if I got mine.
- Sir, do you have a badge for that door?
- I'm about to get one, sir.
(laughing)
With your permission.
- When you were a kid, you were in Iran,
you'd go to the refugee camp,
come to America, you don't know anybody,
how much of who you are today
is based off of that experience?
- One time I remember we were escaping Tehran,
and that day we got bombed,
the number was 167 times in one day.
We're driving over this bridge,
and all of a sudden there's a big flash behind us.
My dad says, "Don't look behind you."
It's me and my sister sitting in the back seat.
We look behind us, a bomb dropped 50 yards behind us,
and the bridge is going down, and he's driving.
I mean I'm seven/eight years old when this happened.
That stays so you're afraid,
"Am I gonna see tomorrow? Am I gonna live tomorrow?"
So that makes you be so grateful for us.
Listen, something bad happens,
a bad partnership, we lost something.
Listen, we didn't get bombed on today, bro.
(laughing)
We're okay, guys. Let's just get back to work.
You have a job, I have a job, we can work,
laws are free, you're free, I'm free.
We're okay, everything's gonna work out.
So that also gives you the level of optimism
and things into perspective so
when something very, very bad happens,
it's not as bad as you think it is.
It's helped me when I'm in my dark side
and I'm insecure and have these fears,
and I come home one night
and we're in business for nine months
and our savings, all my savings is depleted,
everything on credit cards.
I've never once missed a payroll.
We're on the last $13,000, I come home that night,
my wife had a miscarriage.
She's in bed crying, it's our first miscarriage.
We've just been married for 12 months,
and our anniversary happens and she has a miscarriage.
I have no idea what to do.
I'm praying, I'm talking, I'm asking,
I'm trying every single thing.
I just said, "I don't know if I'm cut out to do this.
Maybe I'm not suppose to be a CEO.
Maybe I'm just a good sales guy.
Maybe I'm not a guy that can be a CEO."
Honestly, that night, it was a very difficult
following day to get up and go to work.
But I said, "Look, here's what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna do my part."
And I know I can control my part.
I'm gonna go there early, I'm gonna stay late,
I'm gonna compete, I'm gonna give a fight,
and I'm gonna keep fighting.
And eventually things are gonna work out, and it did.
Following week we got a hundred thousand dollar check
that saved us from AIG.
We can act all hard and tough and, "Oh (unclear)."
I almost threw in the towel that day.
- Wow.
- And let me tell you, I was this close.
Most people have no idea how close that was.
- Really?
- I really doubted myself that day.
- What's the thing that got you
up that next day and still take action?
- When you hit that point, you kinda need to reflect
and just say, "I control my part. I'm gonna do my part,
and as long as I do... I leave the rest to the world."
But I don't wanna fail because
I was afraid of doing my part.
That part, I'm not gonna live with that.
There are no limitations on how
big of an income you can make.
There's no limitation on how
big of a business you can build.
There are no limitations on how hard we can work,
how much we can improve, how many books we can read.
The limitations are not on us.
The only limitations are if you make
the enemy bigger than it really is,
then you have turned a monster bigger.
He's not that big as you think he is.
It is a imagination.
He is just as afraid of you as you are of him.
Take the thought off that,
put the focus on the vision, and let's get to work.
Fellas, this has been a blast.
Appreciate you guys coming out.
- One, two.
(upbeat electronic music)
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