America is Collapsing Like Rome | Patrick Bet David PT 2

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu
Episode: America is Collapsing Like Rome | Patrick Bet-David PT 2
Date: July 12, 2024
Guest: Patrick Bet-David (Entrepreneur, author, host of Valuetainment and PBD Podcast)
Theme:
A high-impact, raw conversation about the collapse of traditional values and incentives in America—paralleling Rome’s decline—and what it takes for individuals to develop real strength, resilience, and self-determination in a society beset by confusion, soft standards, and political turmoil. Tom and Patrick probe the reasons behind declining family structures, the misunderstood power of aggression, and how finding the right enemy can catalyze extraordinary personal and societal results.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Decline of Family and Social Cohesion in America

Timestamps: 01:23 — 05:52

• Alarming Data:
  • Solo living has skyrocketed (from 7 million living alone in 1960 to 38 million today, a 442% increase).
  • Births to single mothers: 4% in 1940 vs. 40% today. America now leads the world in this negative metric, outpacing China, India, and Middle Eastern countries where families stay together.
• Root Causes Discussed:
  • Welfare state policies (FDR, Lyndon Johnson) and tax systems disincentivize traditional family structures.
• Role of the Father:
  • Fathers provide three critical things for boys: love, fear, respect. Lacking this, boys are more likely to become “net negatives” to society.
• Patrick Bet-David:
  • “A father gives one of three elements that you need as a kid growing up. You have to be loved, but you need somebody you fear and you need somebody you respect.” (04:40)

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2. The Tension Between Power, Aggression, and Modern Values

Timestamps: 05:52 — 15:11

• Power Perceptions:
  • Over past decades, the drive for power and aggression in personal achievement has become frowned upon.
  • Patrick references "Power vs. Force" by David Schwartz: true power arises from courage upward on the consciousness scale, not merely from anger or desire.
• Healthy Selfishness and Leadership:
  • Leaders need a mix: about 70% selfishness (drive, vision) and 30% selflessness (empathy, care).
  • Patrick Bet-David:
    • “People who ended up winning at the highest level… they seek power, they had selfish desires, they were greedy… and they were more of a positive to society than people who didn’t have those four things.” (14:31)
  • Tom Bilyeu:
    • “To gain control of your life, you must have at least power. …It’s really a battle to get better at something that matters to you and serves yourself for sure, but also other people.” (15:11)

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3. Ferocity, Aggression, and Resilience: Building an “Audacious Few”

Timestamps: 15:11 — 26:15

• Entropy vs. Creation:

  • Tom argues every day is a “battle against chaos” (i.e., entropy), requiring aggression/fierceness to impose order.

• Team Roles & Leadership Levels:

  • Patrick describes “flag carriers” vs. “alphas” (e.g., Lincoln vs. Grant, Reagan vs. Bush Sr.), noting that each role has room for excellence but not everyone is cut out to be “number one.”
  • Historical Example:
    • Winston Churchill was called to lead Britain in WWII despite being widely disliked—his “wartime leader” qualities were irreplaceable.

• Parenting, Presence, and Protection:

  • Citing his personal life, Patrick says a real man brings “love, fear, and respect” to his family and organization.
  • “There needs to be a certain level of fear and respect where a man imposes.” (Patrick Bet-David, 26:37)

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4. America’s Loss of Shared Identity & the Crisis of Values

Timestamps: 32:06 — 42:46

• Patriotism as a Liability:

  • Tom recounts how flying the American flag in Los Angeles is now perceived as a right-wing symbol, a stark contrast to his 1980s childhood.

• Battle Over Values:

  • Tom frames America’s current struggle as a “conflict of values,” not just misunderstanding. Both sides think the other is not only wrong but dangerous.
  • “We’re in a fight over values. …It isn’t that they don’t understand your position; it’s that they think you are wrong and that you are going to ruin lives.” (Tom Bilyeu, 33:00)

• God-Shaped Hole:

  • Tom and Patrick discuss how, in the absence of religion, people replace it with ideologies, activism, or material goals, filling the “God-shaped hole in their heart.”

• Why Create Content?:

  • Tom’s mission is to “be a steward” of powerful transformative ideas, to help others—especially the “average” person—escape limiting beliefs and self-imposed powerlessness.

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5. The Mechanics of Influence, Incentive, and Societal Decay

Timestamps: 42:46 — 67:21

• “Selling” What Works:

  • Patrick urges those with evidence and results (in life, business, family) to “defend what works” and not go silent—otherwise, false philosophies win because they’re loud.
  • “If you have proof that a certain way of ideas and philosophies works, sell it constantly and protect it and defend it. Don’t play vanilla, don’t play neutral.” (Patrick Bet-David, 47:21)

• Hiring and Attracting “Tens” (Top Talent):

  • Tom outlines what draws A-players: a compelling mission, meaningful autonomy, real challenge, proper compensation, and a peer group of other A-players.

• Incentive Programs and Migration:

  • Patrick points to migration away from places like California and New York to Florida and Texas as evidence: “the incentive program” (taxes, opportunity, quality of life) matters more than ideology.

• Middle Controls the Country:

  • “The independents and libertarians rule America. …It’s the 12% in the middle that run America.” (Patrick Bet-David, 59:51)

• Systemic Madness:

  • Tom and Patrick agree: when incentives are misaligned, or values are missing, systems (families, companies, nations) spiral into dysfunction.
  • "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome." (Referenced by Tom Bilyeu, 67:21)

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6. Choosing Your Enemies, Tapping “Dark Energy,” and Pursuing Mastery

Timestamps: 67:21 — end (approx. 85:00)

• ‘Enemy’ as a Driver:
  • Patrick introduces one of the book’s core ideas: powerful people select their "enemy" (obstacle, rival, adversity) wisely, and the right enemy fuels enormous achievement and perseverance.
  • Quotes Read by Patrick:
    • “A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” – Balthazar Gracian (74:13)
    • “If you have no enemies…small is the work that you have done. …You’ve never turned a wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.” – Charles Mackay (74:23)
• Wrong Enemy = Wasted Life:
  • Tells a transformative story: a woman realizes she’s wrongly made men her enemy, achieving business success but loneliness—a cautionary tale about picking “enemies” that waste your life.
• Tactics for Self-Mastery:
  • Emotional stakes (the need to prove doubters wrong, or make someone proud) drive transformative achievement.
  • Patrick Bet-David:
    • “People who have the right enemy in their lives, they’ll be willing to tolerate way more pain than those that don’t.” (83:54)
  • Final note: It’s about “you versus you.” The ultimate win is being privately, honestly proud of what you’ve become and sustained.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A father gives one of three elements that you need as a kid growing up. You have to be loved, but you need somebody you fear and you need somebody you respect.” – Patrick Bet-David (04:40)
• “People who ended up winning at the highest level… they seek power, they had selfish desires, they were greedy… and they were more of a positive to society than people who didn’t have those four things.” – Patrick Bet-David (14:31)
• “To gain control of your life, you must have at least power… It’s really a battle to get better at something that matters to you and serves yourself for sure, but also other people.” – Tom Bilyeu (15:11)
• “If you have proof that a certain way of ideas and philosophies works, sell it constantly and protect it and defend it. Don’t play vanilla, don’t play neutral.” – Patrick Bet-David (47:21)
• “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.” – (Referenced by Tom Bilyeu, quoting Charlie Munger, 67:21)
• “A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” – Balthazar Gracian (74:13)
• “You have no enemies, you say, My friend...If you have none, small is the work that you have done.... You’ve been a coward in the fight.” – Charles Mackay (74:23)
• “People who have the right enemy in their lives, they’ll be willing to tolerate way more pain than those that don’t.” – Patrick Bet-David (83:54)

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Timestamps: Key Segments

• 01:23 – Patrick on the decline of family, fatherless households, and societal consequences.
• 05:52 – Tom and Patrick debate the negative connotations of “power” and the necessity of aggression.
• 08:02 – Patrick describes the “power vs. force” consciousness model.
• 15:11 – Tom frames life and entrepreneurship as daily battles against entropy and chaos.
• 21:39 – Leadership levels: “alphas” vs. “flag carriers,” Churchill vs. Chamberlain.
• 26:37 – Patrick: “What should a real man be like?”; love, fear, respect trifecta.
• 33:00 – Tom on the “fight over values” and the loss of shared American identity.
• 42:46 – Patrick: the importance of defending the “winning” ideas and not being silent.
• 56:06 – Tom and Patrick discuss attracting top talent (“tens”) and the role of incentives.
• 59:51 – Patrick: “It's the 12% in the middle that run America.”
• 67:21 – Tom: values, incentives, and the humanitarian crisis in American attitudes.
• 73:10 – Patrick: why you need a meaningful “enemy”—and how to choose wisely.
• 74:13 – Two powerful quotes about the necessity of having true enemies.
• 81:00 – Case study: a woman learns her “enemy” was wrongly chosen, at great cost to her happiness.

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Summary & Takeaways

• Family erosion, declining resilience, and a loss of meaningful values in America mirror late-stage Rome.
• Strength, power, healthy selfishness, and the ability to choose and face “enemies” are essential not just for personal success, but for societal health.
• Aggression, when balanced with selflessness and driven by purpose, is not a vice but a requirement for impactful leadership and survival.
• The culture war is not about facts but about values and incentives; only a loud, clear minority needs to shift for the broad direction of a nation to change.
• Having the right “enemy” (obstacle, opposition, or personal challenge) is a primal source of energy and transformation. The wrong enemy wastes lives.
• Influential people must loudly advocate for proven ideas—not just to “win” arguments, but to ensure the next generation has the chance to be strong, free, and flourishing.

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This episode offers a masterclass in how modern incentives, cultural confusion, and misunderstood virtues are shaping (or misshaping) the next generation—while providing an unapologetic call for individual audacity, clarity, and responsibility.

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Patrick Bet-David]

If you look at data, yes, from 1960 till today, our population has increased around 90%. But in 1960, 7 million people used to live by themselves. Today's 38 million.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Whoa.

[Patrick Bet-David]

442% increase, right? So what happens when we're alone? You don't have competition, kicking your ass, challenging you, pushing you, having all that stuff taking place. Standards today are slightly lower. You can look at strength with men, with boys, what they have going on. Then there's another data that's deeply concerning. When you look at from 1940, the percentage of kids that were born to a single mother in 1940 was 4%. 1944%. That means 96% of kids that were born in 1940 were born in a household of a mom and a dad in today we went from 4% in 1940 to 40% today. That's 10x A data we do not want to be bragging about. By the way, worldwide we're the worst. When they look at data, China, India, they keep it together. We don't keep it together. Middle Easterns, they keep it together. Muslims keep it together. But. But in America, we've gone a completely different way. Now some people Will say this was FDR's bad policies because the whole welfare state, some will say this was Lyndon Johnson. But regardless who we choose to blame and put the responsibility on, here's what we will look at. A father offers two things that naturally comes to him when it comes on to boys. So when we're talking, choose your enemies wisely. I'm talking to Tom Brady and I said, tom, when I look at somebody that does something very big, they have three things in common. One, they experienced unconditional love. So somebody that, no matter what you did, you got arrested. Oh, my God. Babe, are you okay? What happened in jail? Did they do anything to you? Like, you can't do nothing wrong in this person's eye. Like, you actually understand, I cannot believe this human being loves me and I can go to jail. You still love me. Freaking awesome, right? We need that. The second thing we need is an unbelievable amount of pain from someone you loved. Meaning no matter what you and I do, we can never make this person happy. You can win Mr. Olympia. You can become a billionaire, you can become a president, you can become whatever you want to become. This, to this person's eye, it's always going to be like, yeah, whatever. But, yeah, whatever. So you're never going to win this person. And your entire life, you pursuing, converting this person and baptizing them into finally celebrating your success, right? And the last thing was you choose your enemies wisely. Brady chose his enemies wisely. Dana White chose his enemies wisely. You got a lot of these guys that you look at. So where am I going with this? You come back to the boys. You're asking about young boys, not having a father. Father gives one of three elements that you need as a, as a kid growing up. You have to be loved, but you need somebody you fear and you need somebody you respect. If a boy is raised most boys, you get to an age. I remember one time, I'm 14 years old, my mom is hitting me, and I'm like, what are you doing? Your hand hurts? What are you doing? It's the last time she hit me because it hurt her when she's hitting me. I'm 14 years old. It's doing nothing to me. That was the last time I said, you can hit me all you want. It's not going to do anything to me. So what happened in that moment? I no longer feared her. I no longer saw her from an authority place. I just saw her from a place that I love her. Not fear, not respect. Like, you're gonna make me do Something. You can't make me do anything. I'm coming on at 10 o'.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Clock.

[Patrick Bet-David]

My parents were divorced. I'm coming home. Whatever time I come home. Where were you? Not your business. I'm home. Right? That, that kind of respect that a kid will have. But a father, if you have fear, respect and love, that boy has the highest likelihood of doing something big with his life. Our current incentive program in our current tax system in America doesn't reward husband and wives having kids together. That decreases the chances of a boy being raised by a father. What does it do? Produces reckless criminals, produces kids that don't have order, produces kids that think they can do whatever they want to do and essentially they become net negative to society. So you asked me a question. I would say yes, but it's a multi dimensional answer.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. So when I think about what it takes to form a strong man in a time where the thought of power itself is considered negative. So this would be now, 23, 24 years ago, I created a domain called seeking power. And I remember telling people about it in the beginning and there was just sort of an intuitive, oh yeah, I get it, that's cool. But somewhere over time that became like, oh, power. Like that's such a gross thing, it's almost disgusting to want power. I was caught so off guard by that because I had my head down. I was building something and I was building things in a way that absolutely required aggression and power. And when I look at people that want to do something big in their lives, that aren't able to generate power, they're not able to tap into aggression, I'm like, you're not going to be able to do the things you want to do. You're going to have a sense of internal weakness, a sense of frustration, not knowing how to make the things come true in your life that you want to. And then if you layer on top of that a victim mentality and somebody tells you, no, no, the problem is that somebody's holding you back or whatever. You suddenly have a story for why you feel the way you feel, but it's not the true story. And so to me that creates this like death spiral of for forget. Like I'm not doing it as like a keep off my lawn thing, but I'm really mortified by what is being pushed as like, this is what we should aspire to. And reading your book was really interesting because your book isn't about how to make strong men, but the tactics of getting successful at building a business. And obviously it's More nuanced than just building a business, but is an easy way to talk about it. You basically spend 300 pages talking about how to cultivate, capture and use aggression. So walk me through what. What is the trick that people are missing one. Do they need to understand power? Revere power. What is power?

[Patrick Bet-David]

You ever read the book Power vs. Force? I'm certain you've read the book. Okay, Power vs. Force. A guy like you, good luck putting it down. It's written for a guy like you. So the author, David Schwartz, talks about different levels we go to where we calibrate. At the bottom, whatever these eight levels are, you're trying to force life. And then the next levels, you actually start gaining power. You start becoming powerful, right? So at the bottom, the lowest level of calibration he talks about is shame. Then it's guilt, apathy, fear, anger, pride, desire, like I desire drugs, alcohol, stuff like that. First level of consciousness that you start gaining power and control of your life is courage. You have the courage to be wrong. You have the courage to fail. You have the courage to talk to people you disagree with. Courage. Then it goes willingness. Then it goes acceptance. Then it goes neutrality. Like, I can stay neutral. Like, you have a very high score. If you look at the book, your score is going to be high. Because you have courage, you're willing, you're able to stay neutral and process both sides of the story. Acceptance. Then it goes love, joy, peace, enlightenment, and enlightenment. There's only been two or three they put at that level. This is when you're talking about Jesus, people like that in regards to the aggression you're talking about or the. The power. Why should somebody have, you know, fight for the power or how to go about getting the power? It all comes back down to what level of a life you want to live. Okay, I'm having a conversation with this guy and I said, do you believe in God? He says, I don't believe in God. I said, okay, so what is God? Everybody has a God. It doesn't matter who you are. You got a God. No, I don't. Yeah, you do. No, I don't have. I don't. I don't have a God. Oh, really? No. Why are you building a YouTube channel with 4 million subscribers? This is the guy I'm talking to. You know who he is. Why are you building something like this? What. What are you trying to get? What are you seeking? Maybe your God is data. For some people, God is sex. For some people, God is porn. For some people, God is drugs or attention or whatever it may be, right? Power is a similar way as well. You know, Years ago, Phil Donahue was interviewing Milton Friedman. We're talking 50 years ago. This is in the 70s, 74, 78. He's wearing a yellow, if you put it. I think it's like 43 minutes. And Phil Donahue, who at the time was a socialist, you know, it kind of came from that side. He says, so why do you think, you know, what do you think is the problem with all these greedy people in America? And Milton Friedman smiles and he says, it's always the other fellow that's greedy. Right? You're not greedy at all. He's saying to him, he said, oh, we're definitely not greedy here. It's always the other person, right? Everybody's greedy. Everybody's selfish. Everybody wants power. Everybody, you know, wants to get a certain level of attention. Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants affirmation to be affirmed and say, you know, know what? You're a leader. You're a co. You're a rock star. You're this. We want that. That is a form of us being almost proud of ourselves, that our existence was worth it. Everyone's going through this journey. How you go about it is trying to question everything. You know, I remember this whole concept of selfish. Now. That guy is selfish. That guy is selfish. And then you'd say, I'm not selfish. And you would fight it. But you know what? You got lucky. I didn't get lucky. You don't know how hard I work to be this. And then eventually I'm like, I'll dance with you. You got lucky. I agree. You're selfish.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You don't have anything to say because everybody is selfish. Everybody wants to be lucky. I don't mind being lucky. But here's what happened. In the book, there's a section where we talk about the selfish selfless score, right? What percentage of you is selfish and what percentage of you is selfless? So we had a focus group that we did, and we're asking a group, we said, what is a person who is a hundred percent selfless, zero percent selfish look like? And what is a person who is a hundred percent selfish, zero percent look like, then who is actually more of a net positive to society? You know what conclusion we came with? The person that's selfless probably smells, doesn't take care of themselves. They don't care about themselves. They don't wear nice clothes. They don't eat good food. They don't take care of themselves. Everything's about other People, it's in a state of conformity. And the other person that's selfish 100% probably doesn't make a good friend, probably doesn't make a good spouse, but they probably look good, they probably smell good, they probably make good money, they probably eat good food, they probably find a way to win. Do you want that person as your CEO? No. Do you want that person as your husband or your wife? No. Do you want that person as your president? Absolutely. No. But guess what? Individually, just for the sake of selfishly not embarrassing themselves, they're going to do things because it's all about them. So then we broke it down and we said, what level of calibration is good to be a CEO of a company? Okay, do you need a 30. 70. 30% selfish, 70% selfless? Well, no, that's bad. Why? Because we need you to have big dreams. We need you to be pursuing something. We need you to be after something. If you're not pursuing something, why are you coming to work early? Why are you spending a weekend thinking about ideas? You're not going to be thinking about that. Somebody's driving by the freeway. The average person like, oh, nice thing right there. You're going to be like, babe, can you pull over? Let me go in there. Oh, I just got an idea. Think about it. Look at it from this angle. What if we did this to the company? And what if we brought this product? Let's walk inside and see what this building looks like. Because you're constantly thinking about getting closer to the vision that you have. So we learn the profile of somebody that is at the right scoring to be a leader is 70. 30. 70% selfish desires. You're going after vision, who you want to be, the life you want to build. Then 30% is selfless. That person makes for a good father. That person makes for a good husband. That person makes for a good leader. That person inspires others to go. That person challenges others. That person's not going to get too content, too comfortable. So as we're talking about aggression or power or any of that stuff, you know, somebody may be listening to this and they're going to say, man, you are not my cup of tea. Totally get it. I'm not for everybody. But the right person watching this, they're going to be like, that makes a lot of sense. I've never seen selfishness explained that way before. That makes a lot of sense. I've never heard Milton Friedman explaining greed that way before. That makes a lot of sense about power. Okay, let me find A way for me to become a net positive to society. And then you kind of go through that process. But we got a lot of words that we have a hard time with because somebody told us it's a bad word. You know, be powerful, have power, be selfish, you know, greed. No, no, no, I don't ever want to have any of those. And I don't want to be lucky. When you break it down and you actually look at it, people who ended up winning at the highest level, they got lucky. They seek power, they had selfish desires, they were greedy, ended up having a life that they had, and they were more of a positive to society than people who didn't have those four things.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I also inspire people. There's. To me, I think what all this ultimately boils down to is nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to feel out of control. And once you understand that to gain control of your life, you must have at least power. By my definition, my quick way of defining power is close your eyes. Imagine a world better than this one. Open your eyes and go gain the skill set necessary to actually make that world come true. And so it's really a battle to get better at something that matters to you and serves yourself for sure, but also other people. And if you live in that pursuit, you will very quickly realize that you are up against the world's tendency to move towards chaos. Now, people hate it when I frame it in that. This is just the second law of thermodynamics. The world moves towards chaos. That just is true. It's entropy. But I guess because it has a weird word attached to it, people don't really stop to think about it. But if you're trying to be an entrepreneur, I will tell you there are two enemies that you're going to face. Your own mind and entropy. And entropy, as represented by your wife, falls ill at the worst possible time. When you have a major presentation, you have a competitor that's trying to take you out. You get sued by somebody in a moment of fragility, whatever. Like there is going to be a litany of problems. Every day is like getting kicked in the face. And in those moments, the only way to persevere is with a level of ferocity. Like you have to be able to push through those storms to inject enough energy into the system that you can bring order to an otherwise chaotic system and move it in the exact direction that you want it to go. But to do that, you really have to be able to get aggressive. That's the. The kindest word I will Give to it. You're very unabashed about talking about. I'm using my own words, but talking about aggression. In your book, what I call the dark energy one, do you agree that the reason that you. The reason that I would want men. Anybody listening to this? Any man, certainly out there, anybody that's training you to. You should have a gear that is soft. You should be able to be gentle. I'm not trying to create people that. That only have one gear, but one of your gears should be aggression. Focus, determination, the ability to run through a wall to ensure that something gets done that will not happen by accident. You are absolutely going to have to make that a value, turn that value into a set of skills, courage, being one of them, and then pushing yourself forward in a very specific way towards a very specific aim. Do you agree with that need or in my mess.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I love the way you put it. I love the way you put it. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need, all in one place, from H vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H. VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-granger. Visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. So the key word here we use is business planning for the audacious few, right? Audacious few. Audacious few. It's not for everybody. It's the audacious few. For example, when you break down who you want to be in life, okay, I don't know if you're a sports guy or not. You watch a sports team, there's a guy that's just a supporting cast. That's what he does. That's the role he's going to play. There's a guy that is coming off the bench and he does what he does. Then there's a guy that's the flag carrier to the best guy, okay? Each Team's got a flag carrier in a lot of places. There was this player named Paul George. He runs a podcast with one of my good friend Dudley Rutherford's son, Dallas. They do a very good job together and they interview other basketball players. And he said something so powerful in one of the podcasts. He says, look, it took me years to realize I can't win a championship as a number one. He says, I've been the best player on a team. I can't win a championship as a number one. I can win a championship as a two and a three, but I can't win as a one. Guess what? He realized he has to be a flag carrier. He's not a one. This week I had Ron DeSantis on the podcast. Governor Ron DeSantis. Right. Should watch the whole thing because it's a pretty fiery caused.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You have so much content now that,

[Patrick Bet-David]

well, ended up causing the number two trending hashtag for two days.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Did you guys end up arguing? Because the part I saw, you guys were very cordial.

[Patrick Bet-David]

We, we didn't end up arguing, but I asked him a couple tough questions about marketing his boots and all this other stuff and a video of him. Trump. Anyways, it was, it was a bunch of different things we talked about, but when I'm talking to DeSantis, I asked him the following question. I said, I think there's two different types of presidents. And he says, what type? I said, one is Alphas. Yep. Lincoln is the Alpha. Ulysses S. Grant is the flag carrier. He became a two term president. Not a great president, but he was not an Alpha. Okay. He needed Lincoln to be the flag carrier, too. Ike, Alpha. Nixon, he was a flag carrier. John F. Kennedy, Alpha. LBJ took him out. He became president. Allegedly. You got Reagan, Alpha. Okay. Senior is a flag carrier. You got Obama, alpha. Bill Clinton, Alpha. Those two are Alphas. Trump, Alpha. George Bush, the son, flag carrier, father lineage, Prescott. Then you have Biden. Today, he's a flag carrier. He, he's way of becoming a president was Obama. You're the greatest, you're the best, you're this, you're that. Boom. This is your opportunity for being loyal to me. Now I will come work for you. You become the president. Right. I asked Governor DeSantis, do you think you're the Alpha or a flag carrier? Okay. Now his answer could be whatever he thinks it is, but the market's going to determine whether he's an Alpha or he's a flag carrier.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What do you think he said? Alpha. Well, technically he said, I'm a leader.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And by the way, you may be an Alpha in a room of 50, you may be an Alpha in a company of a thousand. You may be the Alpha in a company of 100,000, you may be the alpha in a state of 30 million, but you may not be the Alpha in a country of 340 million. Alphas have levels and it depends what level of an Alpha you can be. And that's very tough to swallow for everybody. It's not for everybody. And why is that? Here's why. You said something very interesting. You used a couple words and you said, you know, two reasons. Business, all this stuff. You know, your wife gets sick and you're going to an appointment. What do you do with that? There is no manual that says, hey, when your wife gets cancer, 19 steps on what to do next. There is no such thing as that. Your son just went through this. Here's the eight steps on it. There is no manual for that in life. And by the way, the people who went through those situations like a. I recommended this book recently. I read the book 2008 when it first came out by the coach of Indianapolis Colts. The book is called Quiet Strength. Tony Dungy. Okay. I don't know if you know the story or not. He's coaching the weekend of Super Bowl. He's about to win his first super bowl ever. Okay. His son dies at 23 years old.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Jesus.

[Patrick Bet-David]

His son dies at 23, 24 years old. There isn't a single person in the world that's expecting this guy to be there on Sunday to coach. If he didn't, what would you. And I say we wouldn't judge him. We're like, dude, what are you talking about? Totally get it. This guy chooses to show up to the game with a smile on his face. He says, because I believe he's in a better place. He's with God right now. I'm at peace. They win the game. I got the chills all over my body. He writes this book, Quiet Strength, incredible book. I remember I heard this guy speak, gave a talk when he came out and go explain that to somebody and say, hey, you should go coach. Nobody has the permission to tell anybody to go coach. That's the individuals level of handling chaos, pressure, pain. And everyone's different in that. There's not a manual for that. However, where I'm going with this on the alpha side is if you want to be the guy of the guys of other guys, you can't go by the standard as Everybody else does. For example, World War II is taking place, okay? Chamberlain is doing what he's doing. Uk, the most hated guy in that country is a journalist who talks shit about everybody, okay? Who Chamberlain hates. Disgusted by him, very arrogant, very cocky, pompous sometimes. If Twitter was around when Churchill was around, he'd be on Twitter all the time. That kind of a guy. He had an opinion about everybody. And he was only 5, 6. You know what Chamberlain has to do? He has to beg Churchill to show up. Churchill shows up. The only man that was able to face the most feared man in the world was Churchill. Churchill may be the reason why we're doing this interview in English and not in German today. Think about the power of that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

However, gave me the chills.

[Patrick Bet-David]

This guy Churchill that we're talking about was hated, but he was a wartime leader. When war took place, everybody had to call the person they hate the most because they. They knew they were not cut for that job. It's not for them. So there's the levels of alpha, there's the levels of success you want in life. There's a reason why Jordan said, you know, if you don't want to play, you know, but I'm going to win in the last tense. And he starts crying. You know, you're like, dude, I can see this guy's fire. That's why there's only one mic. That's why we were all glued to the screen for five weeks on Sundays, watching two episodes from 8 to 10 o'. Clock. And we were all blown away by how this guy was wired. But who got pissed off afterwards? Scotty Pippen. And then Scotty writes a book. And in the interview, he's being asked, scotty, how do you want to be remembered? And he's got a smirk on his face. He says, I want to be remembered as the greatest of all time. Dude, you're not a greatest of all time. You're top 50. See, he forgot he was a flat carrier and he wanted the respect of this guy to have the respect of this guy is not duplicatable. That's a lot of effort. So for somebody watching this, again, choose your enemies wisely. But it's business planning for the audacious few, not the timid majority. It's not for everybody. This is for the audacious few. If you feel you're part of the audacious few, this book's for you. If not, it's not for everybody.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is admittedly meant to be inflammatory, but I care so much about the answer to this that I like the inflammatory Nature of the following question. What should a real man be like? I believe there are a set of things that, that I am perfectly comfortable laying out saying this is what I think. What should a real man be like? What are the qualifications?

[Patrick Bet-David]

What should a real man be like? You know, for me, I had a man, Monty, he would say something. He would say, you know, your house, every 90 days, you should, you know, they should feel the fire, but not enough to burn a house down. But every 90 days, your kids should see what you're capable of, okay? Where they're like, oh, I just saw that side of that, okay? And his reference was with your people you're working with, with your salespeople. Now today, God forbid you say this on HuffPo. They're going to say you have mental issues, okay? You need to go to therapy. You need to go hire Jack Nicholson to go through a real life of anger management and your Adam Sandler. And, you know, you have issues. You have. You have anger issues. But there, there needs to be a certain level of fear and respect where a man imposes. But you don't have to use. You know, the reason why they call it a great equalizer, the gun, is because you knew I had it, but that doesn't mean I use it. What's the whole purpose of jiu jitsu or martial arts is for the other person to know. Look, bro, you just don't want to fight. That's all there is to it. I have no desire to fight you, but if we do fight, it's going to be very bad. There's this video on, on TikTok and Instagram that went viral. And this father is outside. This guy's punking his daughter every time he walks by, says, bro, what's wrong with you? What's the matter with you? And the guy's swinging. He says, don't do this. I don't want to do this to you. He starts swinging. He said, I'm telling you, I'm telling you again, don't do this. I'm going to hurt you. The last time he does, the dad picks him up, drops him to the ground, drops him, grabs his hands, doesn't punch him. One time, he said, how many times did I tell you? Don't do this. I know what I'm doing. Cops come take him and go away, right? The marketplace should know what you're capable of. Now, to get to that point, takes a while when you're a kid. When I talk to my kids and we talk about the values and principles we have, where we lead, respect, and prove love. We don't get bullied and we don't bully. That's our principles that we have. My son knows the market. Today for him is the school he goes to. The school just needs to know what you're capable of. One time, marketing's gonna do its part. Everyone's gonna talk to each other. You don't need to do it 50 times. You don't need to do it a hundred times. You need to do it one time. Once they know the other people are like, you know what? Not the biggest guy. But I just don't wanna mess with that guy. Cause he's annoying, he's gonna keep fighting. You leave that guy alone. Let me pick on this guy, right? And then that guy's job is to do the same thing. So from that perspective, I think it's good to have a reputation, a marketplace. I think it's good to have a reputation within your family where your spouse feels protected by you. When we got married, at our wedding, at the end of the wedding, everybody's hammered, everybody's drunk. And I got up to give a speech. I said, I got a couple things I want to talk to you guys about. There's 500 people at the wedding. I said, one, I don't know how long we're going to be married. We're going to take it one year at a time. But if we take it one year at a time, maybe we'll make it. I can tell you guys, all right now, I think we can make it for one year. Every year, we've taken it one year at a time. We're at the 14th year. We just crossed 14th year. Okay, two. I said, if you come to my wife at any time without us telling you if my wife is pregnant, you will never see us again. It's none of your business. You go through me and you don't ask that question. Because you don't get to put that kind of pressure under my wife and say, you guys are not getting pregnant. Are you sick? Are you? Is it him? Is this thing not working? Is your thing not working? Don't ask me that question because you'll never see us. And I'm being. I have some levity while I'm saying this where it's not like I'm being a drill sergeant talking to everybody, but it's a way of managing expectation where my wife feels safe to know. You know what? We're going to be okay. I think if you ask that, from the man standpoint, there's an element to it as a husband, there's element to it as a father, there's an element to it as a son to protect your father, there's an element to it as a brother to make sure nobody messes with your siblings. Then there's an element to it when you become a CEO of a company to know that you're a formidable guy, that people are not going to bully your company, and if they do, you're going to have their backs, you're going to stand up in politics eventually you get to a point where if you become a president, unfortunately, one of the biggest problems we've got in America right now is those three components that I talked about. Love, fear, respect. Love, fear, respect. If a father has all those threes, you're a trifecta. If you are loved and you know how to love, if you know how to impose the right amount of fear, and if you are respected, you have to make sure that makes for the best cocktail of parenting and leadership. As a president. As a president, if the enemy fears you, if the enemy respects you, it doesn't matter if they love you, but if they fear and respect you, chaos are down. We have a president today, unfortunately, that's not feared, that's not respected, and is not loved. What happens worldwide chaos, when you have leaders at the top, at the top leading the way as the number one alpha and there's not fear, respect and love catastrophic situation you're in. And that happens in marriages, companies, parenting as well as countries.

[Tom Bilyeu]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system,

[Patrick Bet-David]

they matter even more.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no

[Patrick Bet-David]

room for shipping delays.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Loving America shouldn't be political. I wish I could say who the following person is, because people know him, but I have somebody I'm friendly with. I would not call him a friend. I just don't know him well enough. But people certainly know his family. And he said, oh, I put an American flag up in front of my house. And I was like, I guarantee that's going to get torn down. He was like, yeah, it already has been. And I, I was like, I hated that. I. That that was obvious that in Los Angeles, flying a flag is a political statement. That for many, borders on right wing extremist. And that is so startling to me as a child of the 80s where I was supremely proud to be an American. It was awesome. And I could take it for granted. I mean, obviously not everybody in America loved America, but that's how it seemed. I thought all of us, like, there was just enough people that were so proud of America that you could take for granted. So I never knowingly ran into anybody that didn't love America as a kid. It was an awesome feeling. And as that has waned, I've often said to my employees, like, I'm sad that you guys didn't get to grow up in the 80s when you knew. Look, true, not true, almost doesn't matter. But you knew America was the greatest country in the world, that the world was going to get better by the day. You knew who the bad guys were, you knew who the good guys were, and you were it. Like we were exporting our culture everywhere. Everybody wanted to come to America. It was awesome. And to have watched that flag is crazy. Now, for me, the way that the you, you speak as a warrior for the cause, that's my language, clearly not yours, but like, that's how you feel to me. And that isn't my natural voice. And I get a lot of shit from people I respect a lot in the natural way that I talk. You said I was very sweet. I'm actually not trying to be sweet. I'm trying to exist in the world of actually understanding all the pieces that are at play so I can build a strategy that will actually be effective. And so what I see is that you're in a fight over values. And as long as you understand that you're in a fight over values, and then you can either realize you have to convert them religiously because values are religion, you have to convert them religiously, or you have to defeat them. I won't even get into what that means, but those are your options. And so I'm simply trying to be honest with myself about what, what the battle really is. Because it isn't that they don't understand your position, it's that they think you are wrong and that you are going to ruin lives. And I think that's how you think about them, that it is. They are wrong and they're going to ruin lives. And I will say people with ineffective ideology are wrong and they're going to ruin lives. That's certainly my stance. So then it just becomes a question of where do we, where are we all drawing lines about what's right and what's wrong. But once you like, to me there are only two conflicts you can have. There is much to do about nothing where you just have different base assumptions. So we believe different things to be true, but we don't even realize it. So I believe the world works this way, you believe the world works that way. And if we could at least explain that to each other, then we could be like, oh wow, if the world really did work that way, then I would understand why you see it that way. Collision of values is, there is a God, God is good, God is right. And God gives us these commandments in a book and if you adhere to them you're good. And if you don't adhere to them, you're bad. Now if I don't have that value now we've got a problem because there's, it's not that you don't understand what I'm saying. Like I don't believe in God. As far as I can tell, it is just self evident that there is no God. Now however, and this gets where I drive people crazy. But since I know everyone has a God shaped hole in their heart and that you eject religion at your fucking peril and what we are living through right now is this is what it looks like when you eject religion, it will get filled with something because people have a God shaped hole in their heart. They are going to have a religion, they are going to have something that makes them feel like a Messiah 100%. And the fact I've heard you talk about this, so I know, you know, George Soros literally referred to himself as a God and said that I have a messiah complex that I worry sometimes will get out of control. It's like, yeah, that's the human condition. And so we all want to feel like we have done something so grand and so joyful to this world that we feel a bit of that messiah complex. And I'm team B, Paranoid Team Distrust Yourself. That's my team. I think people blind themselves and act a fucking fool and they take everybody down with them. Now I'm also optimistic and I know that we're capable of love. And so right now I have kind of a, a dark hat on because I want people to understand what my position is. My position is people are fucking stupid. They do dumb shit all the time and I'm one of those dumb people. And so I'm really trying to understand what's actually happening because I have my God, as you said earlier, they have their God and I could get them to understand my God, which is probably rounded closest to freedom, and they're still going to disagree. And now, because I know how violent and destructive humans can be, for the last three years, I have been like, ooh, you know, when an earthquake first starts, you don't know if it's going to be bad or really minor. When 2020 popped off. I'm very fortunate to have an extraordinary view, but from that extraordinary view, I could see LA burning. And one of the photos on Twitter was a picture of my house, and it said, burn the rich. And I'm watching LA burn as I'm reading that tweet, and I'm like, well, then I feel the ground slipping underneath me and I don't know how bad it gets. And so I opened all this with, now's the time for paranoia. I don't know what the future holds. Maybe tomorrow everything's great and Israel diffuses and Ukraine and Russia defuse and all is well, and Taiwan gets left alone for another generation. Maybe that'd be awesome. And I don't know. I don't know. I can't predict the future, but God damn, can I feel the sands moving under my feet? Yes. Do I know if it's about to be big or small? No.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Why do you create content?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why did I start or why do I do it now?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Why do you do it now? You don't have to do it. You have plenty of money. Why do you do it? You're trying to be famous. I don't think so.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't have.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Why do you create content?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I need to be famous. I create content because I don't think that's you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I. I don't see you as a guy that's doing it because you want. Can I take a selfie with you? Tom, I don't see you as a guy like that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. I do it for one reason and one reason only. I really believe that I am of average intelligence. And the thing that separates me and my beautiful house and all my money is that separates me and all of that from an average person is a set of ideas. And these ideas don't feel like they are mine. I feel like I am a steward of. If I were really going to put, like, hard language to it, I'm a steward of the Dao de Jing meets Carol Dweck's mindset book, with a little bit of Angela Duckworth and Jocko Willink thrown in for good measure. Those ideas are so powerful and so effective that if anyone adopts them, they will make their life better. Now, once you know that that is true, if you have my wiring, then you want to get those ideas out as fast as you can. So, a. I love seeing other people have that moment of awakening where they realize that they're capable of more. And I'll tell you a story. And this is. This is a true story, and it's one of my favorite stories. It's tragic, but I know it was real. Somebody I love and care about very much, who, at a time when nobody knew who I was, and I'm driving a Ford Focus, I meet a former drug dealer, and he's working for me. And I say, look, don't bring violence to my floor, and I'll give you every opportunity in the world because I can tell you're smart. And so we have this pact, and he comes in and he works, and he's incredible. And he helps me unify a line made up of both Crips and Bloods. Long story. And he's like, hey, originally I was going to use this job as a front for my drug money, but, like, you've really shown me that I can actually leverage my intelligence to do something straight. Ended up being awesome. This guy turned his life around, turned his family's life around. It was unbelievable. It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my life is just having been some small part of this guy's transformation. Ends up getting killed by two kids who stole a car. Fucking stupid, but whatever. At his funeral, his daughter came up to me and said, actually, she said this from the front of the room. I want to thank Tom and Lisa. We all know my dad was a gangster, and you shouldn't say taught him ideas, but just to bring it full circle. You taught him a set of ideas. They changed his life, and they changed mine. And she ended up going from almost getting kicked out of school and to being valedictorian of her class, like, seven years later. I mean, she's absolutely unbelievable. And she's like, our lives will never be the same because of these ideas. And, dude, my whole life, because I believe in meaning and purpose. It's the most important thing. I'm highly verbal. I know I'm good at this. And so eight years ago, I said, put me in front of a camera, and I will get these ideas out to the world aggressively. And that's why I do it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Interesting. So profound story with that guy, by the way. If you don't bring violence to your blood, Crips unifies, then still in the Car, they kill him. I think there are certain people who have the ability to communicate a message and get people to see things that others cannot see, are almost responsible to do something with those gifts. You can choose to be 100% selfish and not do anything with it, or you can choose to do with it, which you are doing a lot with, with the ideas where the daughter says, you know, set of ideas that change the way I view things. Let's set faith aside. Forget faith. We're not debating faith or God. This is not the podcast to do faith or God. That's a simply a different conversation over dinner if we ever do it. But if you're a math guy and you're a data guy and you're a guy that knows X, Y, Z, then you know what works and what doesn't work. You know, what philosophies work and doesn't work. You can take the position of, you know, Patrick, you have your ideas and the people in California have their own ideas and, you know, they have their reasons for that. And you as a capitalist, you know, freedom, all this stuff, it's this great. But there has to be a way to measure and see which ideas produce better results. And then if you do, which is proven, then what's our job to do? Is our job to sit on the sidelines and not offend the people who were wrong and let them keep harping and convincing others that they're right? Is our job to sit on the sidelines and allow them to keep confusing kids in universities? Is that our job to do? Is our job to allow these guys that keep asking for $60,000 of tuition today, which when you look at inflation and cost of living, where cost of living has increased since 1980, 212%. But cost of education has increased 1200%. You mean education has improved a thousand percent over the last 40 years? You and I know it hasn't. You and I know a four year degree doesn't have any more meaning today than it did in 1980s. Maybe it had more meaning in 1980 than today because today our teachers are more political figures and they're more social, you know, organizers dividing people against each other. Yeah. So I think for me, I'm not worried about the faith conversation. I know what it is to be an atheist. I was one for 25 years. I have my own reasons for doing what I did. For me, it's more about a numbers guy, a data guy who watched everybody. My mother's side believed in rich people were greedy, and my dad's side Believed poor people are lazy. And from my mom's side, who were communists, whose bible was the Communist Manifesto, and my dad was an imperialist. It took me 20 years to realize who was right. Maybe even 25, 30 years to realize who was right. We had a family relative of ours, his name was Luther. Al. Jose. Amazing, man. This was my guy I looked at. Okay. When we were. When I was a kid, we'd go to his house in Upland. You know where Upland is? Upland is a couple hours away from here. San Antonio Boulevard, closer to like Rancho Cucumonga is where it's at like an hour and a half away from here. Okay. Without traffic, it's 45 minutes to an hour. Once here, we'd go to his house. You'd go all the way up San Antonio. Then you'd make a left on the street, and at the end it's his house. He had a massive 40 foot bird nest here, bird cage here. You'd pull up. He always had a Cadillac parked here. He liked Jaguar. And one of his relatives, Alfred, would live here above the parking lot, above the garage. And then you walk into the door. To the right was his office. You walk a little more, hallway. All the way down is his bedroom. He had a jacuzzi in his bedroom. Living room here. You'd make a left, come down here as the kitchen, big island. I would always sit closest to the window. My back's to the street. I would sit here and I would watch them talk because I'm not family. My dad was best friends with his brother since they were born in Iran. So Luther was an entrepreneur. He made a lot of money. He owned golf courses. If you went straight, you made a left. You came here. There was a pool table, he had a picture on the wall. Everybody was dressed white. Family, daughter, son, everybody. And then he had a picture with Al Gore, even though he was a conservative. Why do you have a picture with Al Gore? Good friends with Al Gore. Ask a conservative. Okay. And he would go outside, he had a big TV here. We would watch the bulls play pool, swimming pool outside, changing room here. Like a small little one bedroom. Plans, basketball court, tennis court here. And he had a garden of fruit and all this stuff. And I would watch him, how he would be with his kids. He would always poke and challenge him to debate issues. He would says, I no longer believe in God. At a moment today, you guys have been sold a bag of lies. Jesus wasn't real. And his kid, they would lose their minds and they would go on a three hour debate. And he would say, okay, I'm back to believing again. And he would say, next thing, such and such president is making a worst decision ever. How could you say that? That. And it was always, how could you say that? And the whole family was debating. I was fascinated. Every year I'd see him. So from 13 years old till 18, I saw him seven times. And I saw this guy as a possibility. One day I can be like him. Anyways, later on in life, I ended up winning in business. And he died four years ago. Three or four years ago. We're at Rafi's place in Glendale, and his daughter sees me. Jackie and his son Vladimir was a pastor now in San Jose. When I was a troubled teenager, he invited me to be part of this basketball organization called the Century City Basketball Association. Century City Basketball. We would play at Echo Park. Terrible community, Echo Park. So, like, not a safe place at that time. Not terrible community, not a safe place. So shootings, all this stuff. Blood crib, black diamonds. Everybody would be there and we'd play basketball, all of us. So he was patient with me as a kid. And then I joined the army, and boom. So we're at Rafi's place, and I said, jackie, I want to say something to your dad. He says, great. I said, do you mind if I come over? No problem. 20 people sitting at that table to have a big family. I says, uncle Luther, can I tell you something? He says, yes. He stands up. I speak to him in Assyrian and English, like. It's like Assyrian English together. Aramaic. I said, you don't know this, but for 10 minutes, I recite vivid memories I have of what this man did. Okay? And I kept saying, you did this one time, and you would do this and you would do that. And you said this to your daughter one time. He said this to your son. I was sitting there when you confused him with faith and business and this, this, that, and this is how you would watch Michael playing magic play, and you would do this. And I'm describing his entire house. He no longer lives in that house. He's crying. I said, you don't know this, but you're the reason I'm a businessman today. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. My dad played a role of love and being a man, but you played the role of me being an entrepreneur. He inspired me. And at 33 years old, I go to my mom and I said, mom, can I ask you a question? Yes. Why'd you always say bad things about Luther, what did he do to you? He always said he's rich, he's greedy, he's this, he's that. And my mom, I respect her a lot for what she said to me. She says, you know what? Maybe because once he made the money and he was running his companies, we never saw him again. I said, mom, he's busy, he's running businesses. We're not family to him. No, you're probably right. But I didn't like the fact that I didn't see him because I actually liked him. Like you tell me this At 33 years old, do you know how much this affected me? When I was 13, 14 years old, I thought this was a bad man. He says, no, you're right. And we just had this conversation. My mom's no longer a communist. But at that time, you know, that's the, what's the point here? The point here is if you have proof that a certain way of ideas and philosophies works, sell it constantly and protect it and defend it. Don't play vanilla, don't play neutral. I think sometimes us, you're no longer a small time guy, bro. You're a very big guy. We got a lot of influence. You got a lot of people that follow what you got to say. And you are very, you know, when you kind of, you do your humble brag, you're a super smart guy. You're like, you're a super smart guy. I'm not at your level of you're very, very smart guy on the way you process issues and what way you can talk and you're very reasonable and non emotional. You stay, you know where you are when you're explaining it. I think it's a risk for us not to defend the logical things that prove that way worked better. And then we sell it over and over and over again because eventually you're going to produce 50 other Tom Billews, a hundred other Tom Billews and that's all it's going to take. You're not going to need to have another million Tom Billy's. You just need 100 tom billews. If another 100 ton bill use do what you do, then we're protected the next 20, 40 years. But if we're a little bit too timid and too careful to defend ideas that have proven to have worked again, set aside faith. You can take faith any way you want to take it. I think we have to be louder warriors like you use, I use that word, true believer. Crusaders of selling guys, people about the Rich people don't pay taxes. You know what percentage of taxes rich Pay? The top 5% pays 80% of taxes. What are you talking about? No, AOC said this. No, no. This is pure data. How dare you say that? No, no. How dare she say that and confuse the out of you. This is data, guys. This is not for me. This is how taxes was paid to the irs. I never knew that. You sure about this? Go verify it. It's on the US Government website. That's insane. Of course it is. But they sold you a bag of goods and you bought it because it was for sale. Stop going to Macy's and looking for sale ideas. Pay full retail. And don't buy these ideas that are nonsense because they're stealing decades away from your life. That's the only difference for me where, like, I remember five years ago, when I started. 30 years ago when I started talking politics. Dude, trust me, I remember what everybody in the marketplace said about me. I know exactly what people were saying about me, because word would come back to me and they would say, kiss of death for PBD. He's done. We had 3 million subscribers at the time. And I decide to talk politics, and I'm like, dude, I don't know how to do this part because I know it's going to piss a lot of people off. But I'm respectful and I'm curious and I'll talk to anybody. I don't care who you are. You can be a communist professor from, you know, Riverside County. You can be, you know, Slavo Juicy. You can be anybody. I'll sit down with you. Let's have a conversation. Noam Chomsky, come on down. Let's talk. I don't have any problem, right? But we started a podcast on a Separate channel with zero subscribers. Our first live podcast was 57 people watching us. We got seven comments. We were so excited. Now, imagine how hard that is to do, because you got a 3 million subscriber channel on this side, and now you have to start from scratch, right? You know about this. I know you know about this. And then all of a sudden that grows, and now Valuetainment just crossed 5 million today. And PBD podcast is at 1.45, whatever it's at, right? And we're getting, you know, however many eyeballs on a monthly basis. What happened? Was it a risk? Yes. Did we get people thinking? Yes, people, stop me now. This like, man, I got to tell you, man, I never missed a podcast. How about the Entrepreneur? I watched that stuff, but I really want to know what you think about tournaments and. Da, da, da, da. Very interesting. What does this mean? This means I think people want to know a little bit more about what Tom Bilyeu thinks. That's all I'm saying. Maybe they want to know a little bit more because that brain has a lot to offer. And the life you've experienced can give people perspective, but more from a position of there is a scoreboard. This philosophy won, but this philosophy is louder. Don't let the noise convince you that this philosophy is not working. This is the right way to live. I think we have to sell that, and I think some people are afraid of doing that at that level. And let me ask this question. So let's have a little bit of a banter here. Exchange. I like this. What causes a company to attract tens? Meaning? If you read Stephen Schwartzman's books book, in it, he talks about how at one point, 30 billion auto guy, at one point he realized it's all about hiring tens. Not nines, not eights, but hiring tents. But most people can't afford tens. When you read Reed Hastings, no rules rules, they realize a 10 is the equivalent of 28s. Okay. One 10 is the same as 28s.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Sounds about right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Sounds about right. Okay, so what causes a company to attract tension?

[Tom Bilyeu]

You want me to give you the breakdown?

[Patrick Bet-David]

I want to hear from you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so number one is going to be a mission that is bigger than whatever mission they have in their own life that they are very excited about. Next one is going to be that you're building something that is novel and is actually going to allow them to bring the full weight of their talent and intelligence to bear. So they're not retreading old stuff. This is really something new.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Got it. The

[Tom Bilyeu]

world actually wants the product. They are compensated well. They have a sense of ownership, autonomy, and they're surrounded by other tens.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so compensated well. Did you say autonomy?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Autonomy.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay. And then last one was you're surrounded around other tens.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay. I'm not going to ask how many tens you have here because I don't want to cause a fight, but we won't go there. Surrounded by.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It isn't all tens. My team knows that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So, so, so when you look at this compelling mission novel, you know, full, you know, where we're going, what we're doing. World actually wants to prop product compensated well. Autonomy, surrounded by tents. To me, what does Blackstone do to get tens? Is the mission that insane? I don't know. What does Netflix do to get tens. What does Yahoo do to lose tens to Facebook? What does Facebook do to lose tens to Google? What are tens attracted to? To me, everything here. You could have an incredible mission. Check. You could have novel, man. This is. We're doing a really big thing. Historic. Check. World actually wants the product. Check. If the incentive program sucks, you're not attracting those people, period. Let me make go a little bit deeper for you. You live in the great state of California. You know California, how many people they lost between California and New York the last last year?

[Tom Bilyeu]

1.4 million.

[Patrick Bet-David]

1.4 million. You saw the stat. Do you know what state in America's 50th place for the most people lost last year? California. Do you know what state's number one? Fl. Florida's number one receiving net positive. Net positive population growth. Florida's number one. Texas. Texas number two. Then you got Carolinas. This just came out, by the way, very interesting number for you to look at because at the bottom is California, New York, Illinois. Okay. The economy is bigger in California. The economy is bigger in New York. The economy is bigger in a lot of different places. Why are they leaving? Because the incentive sucks. So if a state with better incentives is in place, like Florida, which means what? You keep your state taxes? If in Texas you keep your state taxes. Tennessee keep your state taxes. We'll figure it out in California. Why are gas prices in some places 7 bucks? Why are gas prices in certain places 5 bucks, 6 bucks? You got this gas tax on top of this cash tax. How come the other states don't have the gas tax? These are the incentive programs. Why did one of the biggest liberals in America that try to save the world? You really want to talk about climate change? No one probably did more good for climate change like try to do good for climate change. And a guy named Elon Musk, who voted for Obama, who voted for all these guys, who voted for Hillary. And this guy moves to Austin, Texas. Why would he do that? Why did the guy who tried to legalize marijuana for the longest time, who said, I'm voting for Bernie Sanders? What is he doing moving to Texas? Guy named Joe Rogan. Why did 40,000 employees leave Toyota go to Texas? Because of the incentive program. So where am I going with this? You and I are in the same place where everything starts off with you and I, like, what do I control? What can I do about it? Right? And as you get to a different level, I'm sure you've paid a lot of taxes. If I were to ask you about how much Taxes, you paid, you paid a lot of taxes for the money you've made. You guys build a billion doll company. When you have a billion doll company and you've taken money off the table multiple times, you know, and you're doing it in this state, you could have Your capital gains 23.8, but you got to add that 13.3 on top of it. So in your state, you sell, you get $200 million. In the state of California, you're going to pay roughly $80 million in taxes. But you do that in Florida or Texas, you're going to pay 60 million, $50 million in taxes. That $30 million stays in your pocket. Guess what? That's pretty attractive incentive wise. What else? When you look at it, you look at other people that want to live as well. The average person that's making 60 grand a year in California, dude, you have to live 80 miles away in Palmdale to be able to make it. And Palmdale is even getting expensive today. Quartz Hill, you got only a couple pockets. You can live to be able to survive with the kind of pay that this marketplace is paying you. So when I'm going back to the question and you said, well, what percentage of people are really going to be thinking about that question? This is the problem that we have. We think we have to win everybody over. We don't. We think we have to convert a 50% of the population. You don't. It's the 12% in the middle that run America. That's who runs America. You get 47% that's going to vote Democrat no matter what. You got 44% that's going to vote Republican no matter what. Then you have that middle, whatever that number is going to be that you're dealing with. You know, maybe it's going to be 42, 44. Then you got the libertarians degree and all this other stuff. The independents and libertarians rule America. So if those guys who have the ability to have courage to have a change of thought and are neutral, neutrality and are willing to accept alternative solutions and they're able to reason, well, guess what? They watch a podcast like this and say, shit, this makes a lot of sense. We have to change incentives. So what do we do? Either one you say, did, I have no desire to get into politics, so how can I help? Okay, no problem. Go back somebody up that you can feel that they can do it and start recruiting people to run, you know, behind closed doors. I'm recruiting people to run. Like I'm talking to people and saying, you Got a lot of values that people would love. I think you ought to consider it. Really? Yes, you ought to consider it. I never thought about that. I think you should think about that. Why don't you read these three books, see if it does anything to you. Why don't you go look at what the Bushes and the Kennedys had as a legacy? Their legacy was simple. In their family, you make money first. You take care of your wife, you take care of your kids. They have enough money to not have to worry about anything. They're set for school and all that stuff. You set yourself up a little bit of retirement. If you want to make a little bit more money, go for it. But last but not least, you got to give back to the country that give you this incredible life. How do you do it? Nonprofit. Okay. You either go into politics or church, but somehow, some way, you got to contribute. So I. I want more. Like, I used to not care about politics at all until I realized America's problem is, is the incentive program. The reason why we went from 4% of kids being born to single mothers in 1940 to 40% today is because of the incentive program. The reason why we have so many divorces in the world. We are leading the world. And divorces in ways that doesn't even make any. We're at. We're at 23.8. Some numbers, you look at where China and India are at 3 or 4%. Our incentive program sucks. When you look at small business owners, when you look at people going out there fighting for let's print more money. Every time these guys print more money, guys like you get richer every time they print money. You and I make more money because your money's in assets and your money's in equities. And that money's going to go to these equities. So the valuation of these companies flips. Like right now, everybody's worried about a market crash. You know what's bigger than a market crash today? You know what scares me more than a market crash today? A reverse market crash. You know what's a reverse market crash? It's what happened in Venezuela this year. Imagine stock market goes from 10,000 to 64,000. What? Like right now we have interest rates at four at 8%, eight and a quarter some places. But let's just say 8%. And real estate prices are going up. It's the least amount of refi we've done in 27 years. REFI application is at the lowest for 27 years. The amount of inventory of homes for Sale right now is the lowest we've had in 20 years. But real estate prices are going up. How so? Imagine if Powell today takes this 8% and he brings it down to 7 to 6, to 5 to 4. What happens? Market Dow goes to 60,000, 40,000, 50,000. Why? It's not because the economy is doing good, because we have that money in the market. It's going somewhere. So what happens? All of these people that were talking about, wow, look at the rich getting richer, the poor getting poor, your policies are printing more money, is causing the rich to get to richer and the poor to get poor because the disparity is getting wider. If the rich are making 12% on their money and the poor are making zero because they have it in checking accounts, what do you think is going to happen? Every year that distance is going to get bigger. So what do we have this year in 2023? Most strikes we've ever had. You ever seen any this many strikes in our lifetime? We're three years apart, you and I. I've never seen this many strikes. UAW strike, finally agreed. 42 bucks an hour. You got UPS strike. You got Walgreens CVS, you got Kaiser, 75,000. You got. There's so many strikes going on today. What are people saying? Dude, I can't make it. I can't make the money. In your state, California, they raised the minimum wage for fast food restaurants to whatever the number is, 22 bucks. And you know what? Chipotle and McDonald's just announced they're raising prices. Why? Because they have to. How are they going to make that money? You can raise minimum wage all you want, the restaurant is going to raise the prices. They're going to have to raise the prices. So now all these automakers that are sitting around saying, oh, you want us to pay these guys 42 bucks an hour? No problem. Guess what? The consumer is going to have to pay 1500 dollars more for the car they buy. Is the consumer okay with that? Because that's how math works. Math works that way. So to me, at this phase of my life, If a person's 20 years old watching this, don't worry about what we Talked about last 20 minutes. Just go make your money. If a person's 30 years old watching this and they got a wife and kid and their careers, like here, they're about to kind of go focus on your career, pay a little bit attention to this. But if you're 40 plus, 45 plus, and you're seeing what's really going on in the Economy. And you're like, what the hell are all these policies? I love my state of Illinois, but what the hell are we doing here? I love New York, but what the hell is going on? New York? I love San Francisco, but it's no longer San Francisco. Then you have to pay very close attention to the different incentive programs in other states and ask, why can't we do that in California? Why are we not doing that in New York? Why are we not doing that in Illinois? People in California are not asking those questions. So I love this compelling mission novelty. You know, novel world actually wants the product compensation, autonomy, surrounded by tens. But at the basic, most simplest thing is our incentive program at the top of our US Government today and by many states, absolutely sucks.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's interesting. So let's have a collision of visions here. So I think that every word you said is true. It is necessary but not sufficient to understand what's really happening. So it show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. So says Mr. Munger, and he is correct. When a system becomes deranged. So when you're talking about an incentive program which I know you leading sales teams have experienced, the madness that ensues when you get something a little bit wrong in your incentive structure and it incentivizes terrible behavior. I've seen that up close, uh, being in Web three, I've seen that up close where suddenly people are treating something that should be fun like a video and treating something that should be fun like it's a roulette wheel or a gambling machine. And so for sure, people are going to find like whatever little minuscule thing that they can exploit. But to me, the key is to avoid deranging the system as much as humanly possible. And the way that you avoid deranging the system as much as humanly possible is to give people values. Right now my big problem is that people are not being inculcated with values. And I can't believe I'm saying this because I am like the least conservative guy on the planet. However, I am so obsessed with what fucking works. Like what? What is the outcome that you want? If the outcome that you want is the America that you see or wherever in the world you are, okay, great. Then whatever you're doing is working for me. This seems like as close to a humanitarian crisis as you're going to get in the West. I mean, when I was a kid, I really believed I could do anything I set my mind to. And because I believe that, I went and did it. But if you don't like, I rem, dude. So I've worked in the inner cities a lot, and the first time I heard a kid say, I was like, why aren't you even trying? Like, bro, you're so smart. Why aren't you trying? Like, why? Why are you here working for minimum wage? This is crazy. I'll teach you anything you want to know about how to grow and climb up in the world. And he goes, oh, my mom told me that the world doesn't want people that look like me to succeed. And I was like, so fucking what? That's the worst advice ever. Assume it's true. Assume it's true. Assume everyone is against you now? What, you're just going to take it? You're just going to take the first minimum wage job on a line that you can get. You're not going to like, push yourself. You're not going to again, develop personal power, get so good at something. We both love Kobe. You got to meet him. And I did not. But he's got my favorite quote, booze don't block dunks. You can get so good at something that people can't stop you, even if they hate you, even if they're paid millions of dollars to be better than you, to stop you from doing a thing. This guy still scored 81 points by himself in a single game. Okay? In a game where often 80 plus points is all that's scored. Pure insanity. And so if this is why, like, I don't have kids. So the odds of me suffering from what I can see coming are very low. It is but a love for humanity that makes me want to scream. The whole idea of impact theory is I really believe the ideas that you believe about the world matter so much. They will control the quality of your life. And so now I'm just trying to make sure that people get high quality ideas about self ownership, about what you're capable of, about everybody should be trying to build as much personal strength as humanly possible so that they can do the things that they want to do in many different areas. So getting people to understand all ten fingers of responsibility should be pointed back at you. That if we want people to build a society that is better, they must believe in a grand vision. There must be a mission to their life, to the lives of others. That mission must have some tie to measurable results so that we don't just do what feels good or sounds good, we do what actually works. And so to me, there is a massive restructuring of the way that we think about raising Kids about the way. Certainly my contribution is once you come to work for me, cool. I'm not going to raise you. I'm not going to raise my own children. It's not the way that I'm playing. But God damn it, when you come inside of impact theory, we are going to run this in a way that's going to be effective. It's going to make you a better version of yourself. It's going to make you a better version of however you're contributing to the company. And that is a non negotiable. So everybody has to sign a culture document that says, and I quote, you must be a hardcore motherfucker. Like, period, end of story. And if P.S. that turns you off, great. This is not the place for you. But I know what it takes to actually fight against the chaos of the world. And you're going to have to choose your enemy wisely. In fact, this is something we haven't talked about yet. Part of what I'm trying to get them to now. I think you have to balance the beauty of what you're trying to do. I'm trying to make sure nobody gets to the age of 15 without encountering a growth mindset at scale through entertainment and ideas. Cool. But then you also need to be able to tap into the dark energy. And that to me, is about an ability to capture the energy output of the fire in your belly, for lack of a more literal expression. So tell me why when picking an enemy, it needs to be somebody that really makes me feel some kind of way?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Because choosing an enemy, how do you judge an enemy? There's 14 different types of enemy we talk about in the book. But the way you judge an enemy is the lifespan of how long that enemy can drive you. You may have an enemy that drives you for a day. You may have an enemy that drives you for 30 seconds. Somebody cuts you off. You got an enemy for about 30 seconds. Okay, you may have an enemy that drives you for a month. Somebody you're going up against for a sales contest. I'm going to beat that guy. Okay, cool. Short lifespan, not a big deal. Then you find an enemy that drives you for 5, 10 years, 20 years. Now you got something good. Unfortunately, Tom, most people choose the wrong enemy when they're. When they're competing. I want to read something to you. Is this the book or is this a different book? I think is this the book? Let me see if this is a book. I'm gonna. I'm gonna open this up and see if this is the Book or not. Let's see here. All right, hang on one second. If it is, I want to read this to you. Oh, shit. They sent you the heart.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Look at that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Look at you, buddy. Respect. I don't even have this. Literally, I'm telling you. I don't even have this.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Funny thing is, I didn't get it either. I got a PDF, so when I saw it here, I was like, who

[Patrick Bet-David]

sent this to you? Do you know who sent it?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't know.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The team, really, so. Penguin send it. Okay, well, I don't have this. I don't have this copy. Sam sent it. Ethan sent it. So you got it directly from Penguin? Just so you know, this is the first time I'm seeing they are covered copy of this. Let me read this to you. Yeah. Okay, two quotes. One, a wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. Balthazar Gracian. Let me read the other one for you, which fires me up. Okay. You have no enemies, you say, My friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You've hit no traitor on the hip. You've dashed no cuff from the perjured lip. You've never turned a wrong to right. You've been a coward in the fight. Charles Mackey. Okay, all right. So you read this. Coward. I'm not a coward. I'm not going to be categorized as that. Totally get it. But if you're. If you're going to be doing something big, you're automatically going to have some enemies. Now, we're looking at Elon Musk earlier, and we're talking about him. And you look at Elon, who's been driving for this long, everybody asks, isn't this guy worth $300 billion? Yeah. What are you doing buying Twitter when you're worth $300 billion? You're already running SpaceX, you're already running Tesla. You got these trucks that all of us are waiting for. Okay? You got to figure what happens with that rock. You threw out the glass, that the glass broke. We got to fix that, right? And at the same time, how many kids you have? Nine or ten kids. And you're doing podcasts. You're always on podcasts. You're interviewing with people. How the hell do you have time to sleep? Why would you buy Twitter? And now you're the most, second most hated guy in America. You didn't become a friendly person when you Bought Twitter. You got worse. Why would you want to do something like that? Psychologically, you have to have issues. So then you ask the question, okay, say this guy in three years is the first trillionaire. Say it happens in a year. What do you think he's doing the next day after he becomes a trillionaire? You think he's taking three months off and going to Monaco? No, not him. Why? Because while the world thinks this guy's doing it for money, he's not doing it for the money. He's on a mission. Okay, fair. But why at that level? Because he's got something that drives him that none of us know about. Could it be his father? Very high. Likely. That could be his father. Could it be something else we don't know about? Of course. Could it be what these, you know, astronauts said about him and made fun of him? That we think space experiments should only be done by the government and not by free enterprise and free market? Maybe. And it got him tears. If you've never seen that 60 minute interview, I'm sure you have, right? It could be, but it's him now. Michael Jordan, same thing. Tom Brady talking to him. Same thing. Anybody you admire that's able to tolerate the kind of pain required to win at the highest level, they have an enemy that drives them. They're just not telling you about it. Most people will never disclose who the true enemy is. It's private. Bill Clinton in this one book, it's called Hypomanic Edge and, you know, first rate madness. I don't know if you've read these books or not. It talks about bipolar, hypomanic, you know, adhd. Why? All these people that end up doing something big, they typically are a little bit off. How does this guy, how is he capable of going 18 hours straight and he's still doing it? And he what's wrong with this guy? How can he do that? There's that element that they just can't help themselves, right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bill Clinton, you know, they asked him about his mom, him and his mom. His mom drove him a lot. Most people don't know about this. And in one of the interviews, he said, there's no benefit from me saying anything bad about my mom. Literally, there's no benefit for a man to say anything bad about their moms. You're not going to win. You're never going to be able to convince the marketplace you had a bad mom. As a man, you can do it. As a woman, you cannot do it. As a man, the market's going to Be like, how dare you say something now? Men can talk trash about their dads. The market will receive it. They'll make a movie about it. Right? But you can't do it about your mom. That was Clinton's who drove him. You know, people have it people now. At the same time, you know, 14 types of enemies in the book that I talk about. You know, there's also the concept of choosing the wrong enemy that could steal decades from your life, decades away from your life. Hypothetically, I'm doing an event at the Vault conference, okay? This is two years ago. And on the first night, we go through a personal audit questionnaire that you got to go through, and the next morning, you got to come back and talk about it with the group. And we're looking to see who's going to have a breakthrough based on the questions that you have to answer. Okay, no problem. These are 83 questions that I went through back in 2003 at the Matador beach here by Zuma. I'm sitting there going through myself, crying like a little baby. My note, the yellow notepad that I'm answering these questions, I had to break through. Boom. I added these into this list that people are going through, and they get to experience it for themselves. Who do you get along with? Who do you not get along with? Is there a pattern of people that piss you off the most? Why is that? Who do they remind you of? These types of things that kind of for you to see what you're going through. So the next day, 2,000 people in attendance. Everybody's given theirs husband and wife. This is the breakthrough we have. Another one is a breakthrough. We had one girl over here not getting up, or her sister's, like, elbowing her. My sister wants to say something. I think she really had a big B breakthrough. Babe, what are you doing? Babe, you got to tell him. Babe, tell him. Okay. She gets up. She said, pat, this is very hard. I said, what is it? So let me tell you who I am. I've done very well as a person who runs her own business. I make more money than all my exes. I make more money than the guys in my life. I make more money than any of my teachers. I do very, very well with the salon I run. I make very good money. My people make very good money. I have a nice house. I drive a nice car. I have money in the bank. I have all the Chanel purses. Everything. I said, okay, so what's the point? But I'm alone. I'm not married. I don't have any kids. I don't have a family. I don't have somebody to look forward to coming home to and talking to, celebrating any of this. I said, where are you going with this? She says, for the longest time, men have been the enemy. And I realized they're not. I'm wasting my time having men as an enemy. If you've ever seen a movie, Jerry Maguire, where all the divorced women are sitting around the table and they're bitching about men and their husbands and all this stuff, and a Jerry walks in, and she's like, I don't care. I love him. You guys can sit here bitching about all your exes all you want. I love this guy. I love this guy. I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want somebody in my life. They in that group had identified their exes and men as all enemies. She's like, I'm not joining your camp. You know how hard it is to leave a camp like that? These are groups of people that go through this. How about some of the people that are 65 years old that joined a feminist movement at 15 years old, never got married, have no kids. How many of these videos are going viral right now on social media? I wish I would have never joined a movement. I'm 65. I have a cat, no husband, no kids. What the hell am I working for? My parents are dead, and it's just me. What's that all about? So many people choose the wrong enemy, and it cost them years, if not decades of their lives. You have a person in your life that's challenging you, pushing you to get better, encouraging you, having high expectation of you. You think that's the enemy? That's not the enemy. The actual enemy in your life is a people around you that are saying, eat more pizza. Here's more cheesecake. Sleep in, don't get to work. Screw your husband. To hell with your wife. I hate you. Hate your boss. He's a. All he cares about is money. Those are your enemies. You got to step away from those types of people who ruin your Life. And then 17 years later, you used to work with a company that if you would have stuck around, you would have had a nice ex with $2.8 million. But you screwed up because you believe the other people that quit, and you never had that experience. And now you're sitting there for the rest of your life trying to explain to your kids why quitting was the right decision. But deep down inside, when you go to sleep and you're in front of the mirror. You know what you tell yourself? Made the biggest mistake. I should never have done that. So this is a very much of a emotional decision for a person to sit there. There's a formula on how to find that. I've been doing business planning with guys for the last. You know, business planning, you know how it is if you have a sales team, hey, let's sit down. Do your business planning for 2022. Let's do the business plan for 2006. How many years have you been doing the business? Imagine how many one on one business plans you've done the month of December with people, right? I would sit there and business plan. Here's a one page business plan, right? And what are your goals for the first quarter and how many calls are you going to make? And if you do this, what are you going to get yourself? I'm going to buy myself a new suit from such and such and Stefano Rich and I'm going to buy myself a C class or M5 or A range Rover. We're going to buy this house on a culdesac and all this other. And here's what we're going to do. Great. You have a little bit of dream. The rest is logic. You write this thing, maybe you look at it for a month. Done. You forgot where you even typed it out. You don't remember what's in it after March or April. Okay, where to me eventually got to a point where I judged the effectiveness of effectiveness of business plans based on how we would do business plans together. And I see how you respond to it, where your energy goes, how you come out the gates in every year. Then I said we're finally getting closer at learning how to do better business plans with people because you were able to pursue it. And it came down to 12 building blocks. Six of the building blocks were logical. Okay, we're talking systems, processes, things like that, capital. And then six of the blocks were emotional. You have to study your competition, but your competition is not going to drive you the way you identifying your enemy. People who have the right enemy in their lives, they'll be willing to tolerate way more pain than those that don't have the right enemy in their lives.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Can you describe why?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Because the point is if you don't do it for the rest of your life, the other person's going to be able to say they were right. And can you live with that? If yes, go for it, fine. If not, you ain't doing it for the money. You ain't doing it because you need another Lambo or something. You're not a car guy. We're talking earlier. This house you live in, that's a palace. A place most people around the world would dream about living in. This is a 8 Lamborghini garage that you turn into what you turn into. Cars don't drive you. Okay? It's not something that fires you up. Who cares if you pull up in a Lambo? Okay, maybe now this is bigger than that. This is about you being able to look at yourself in a mirror and saying, I'm proud of you. Others can say it too. It's great to hear it from your mom and dad. It's magical. I'm sure you remember when you heard it, when your family told you they're proud of you. Very emotional moment when you hear that, right? Some parents are loving. So some parents say the day you're born. Some parents don't say it until way later on. So if you got I'm proud of you very early just because you filled out a piece of paper, it doesn't have that big of a meaning. But if a parent didn't say that to you but 18 times while you're growing up, and then you heard the real I'm proudy at 32 years old, you're in the car, you're going to cry by yourself. It's a very monumental moment. You're going to. I remember that day when it happened to. I was speaking at this office on Cerritos and I pick up my mom from the airport. Hadn't seen him for seven years since I was in the army. And she sees what I'm doing and where I'm at at 26 years old, she's like, what happened to you? And you said, yeah, I'm proud of you. I remember my dad said it to me. I'm proud of you. We're driving back from Long Beach Queen Mary, and we're in the car and he sees what happened to me. And I told him, you don't have to work at a 99 cent store ever again. At Inglewood, right next to Great Western Forum. I don't even know how I drove home that night. I was flying. I wasn't driving. It's an incredible feeling. But as great as that feels, there's going to be a moment where it's, you're in the car by yourself. You're 43 years old, 41 years old, 39 years old, and you can sincerely say, I'm proud of you without low standards, that victory of you versus you is a powerful thing, very powerful thing when you go through that. So. And you're going to need that right enemy to drive you to go through those tough times, because they're coming. They're going to come. It's given.