Patrick Bette David is the CEO of nine companies and has a new book out called Choose Your Enemies Wisely, Business Planning for the Audacious Few, which is available on Amazon on December 5th. He s been around a few times and has been around here for a few years, and he's been around for a long time. He's been with me on a few of my shows, and I think he's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met.
00:00:05.000Ash Wednesday, which I don't know if this is going up on Wednesday because we have to pre-tape with my guest today because he's busy.
00:00:13.000He's running like nine companies or something, but he has a new book, Choose Your Enemies Wisely, Business Planning for the Audacious Few, and you can actually pre-order it on Amazon.
00:00:23.000It's available December 5th, and I've done his show a few times, and he's been around here.
00:00:27.000Mr. Patrick Bette David, how are you, sir?
00:00:37.000Because, you know, no matter how crazy things may be that, you know, not everybody knows about, at the end of the day, man, if you're living in America, if you can go out there and, you know, voice your opinion to the best of your abilities, live your life, you're in the arena competing You know, getting shots taken at.
00:02:09.000You can practice jokes on them, pranks on them, they're the best.
00:02:11.000I mean, you can clear out their savings account by pretending to be a Nigerian prince.
00:02:15.000You know, of course, that's a felony though.
00:02:18.000Didn't a guy just do that and steal eight billion dollars and he's going to jail for maybe a hundred years or ten years and his mother wrote a paper from Stanford.
00:02:42.000Yeah, no, the problem with the internet is it's too easy to sometimes, you know, there's a generation gap.
00:02:47.000So, I mean, my grandmother, you know, rest in peace now, but she used to have her home office, she would say, this is where I do my forwarding.
00:02:54.000I was like, oh, that's why I get 15 emails from you.
00:02:58.000Before this, you never walked up and physically handed me a picture of Michelle Obama with what appears to be a penis.
00:03:04.000Like, there was a level of propriety that you didn't do that.
00:03:07.000Grandma gave you pictures of Michelle Obama.
00:03:09.000Well, she's like, you know, she's a man, you know, that kind of thing.
00:03:28.000I mean, how do you run nine companies?
00:03:31.000Because I want to get to your origin story, I guess, if you will, but that is something that right away on its face just sounds shocking to people.
00:03:42.000When I say nine companies, you don't start like that.
00:03:46.000Well, you know, when I went into financial services with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, I left.
00:03:51.000I went to Transamerica World Financial.
00:03:53.000I was with them for seven and a half years, and then at the tail end of it, I watched Jerry Maguire, literally.
00:03:59.000After Jerry Maguire, I write a 16-page, you know, what we ought to do to take this company to the next level, with nine ideas that I have, and I emailed it.
00:04:08.000Back then, I emailed it to the CEO of Agon.
00:04:11.000And he responds back and he sends it to a guy named Jack and Jack calls everybody that didn't respond to me to fly out to Orange County, have a meeting with me for 7-8 hours and I proposed everything and then nothing happened.
00:04:22.000So I went back and I said, okay, no problem.
00:04:56.000They want a check, we give them a check, and then they never leave and they had never plans of leaving anyway, so we don't believe you.
00:05:02.000I said okay fair enough I think that's a fair assessment so a month later I had an event in JW Marriott Palm Springs called saving America doing the impossible this is 09 and I'm dressed as George Washington you can actually find this picture it's pretty funny my wife is dressed as Lady Liberty this is three weeks after we got married 40-foot Mount Rushmore four or five hundred people in the audience the events called saving America doing the impossible I bring a Larry Greenfield from Claremont Institute to talk about the history of capitalism.
00:05:33.000I bring Dudley Rutherford to talk about the Star Spangled Banner.
00:05:59.000But then throughout that process, I'm producing content with Valuetainment purely for entrepreneurs and business owners.
00:06:05.000And the entire time, you know, my audience is small business owners, salespeople, executives, C-suites, founders, and my content is how to raise money.
00:06:13.000You want to raise $10 million, here's how I did it, here's 10 things to look out for.
00:06:17.000You want to sign a lease, I have a half a million square feet of office space nationwide, these are the 20 things you should be looking out for, this is what that guy's thinking, this is what you're thinking, here's how to negotiate with them, boom.
00:06:28.000You want to fire somebody, hire somebody, hire C-suites, so that was my content for 5, 6, 7 years.
00:06:33.000And then my interest became, I get a call from somebody from Peru, a booker saying, you know, I heard you on KRLA with Bill Martinez and, you know, I think you need to interview this guy named Michael Francis.
00:08:14.000And then I started noticing how, when we're appointed in 49 states, how, I'm in Texas, but I'm still paying taxes in California, and I'm paying taxes in all these other states because insurance money.
00:08:24.000So I'm like, okay, this is interesting what's going on.
00:09:28.000You know, a pastor of mine, Dudley Rutherford, who married my wife and I, one time he gave a talk saying there's seven pillars in America to climb.
00:09:39.000It was military, family, church, entertainment, media, and he's got a list of sports, all these things he's listed, and I said, the most powerful one to climb is media.
00:09:58.000And then you start noticing what's going on with media and what the messaging is, who's giving it, who's telling it, what they're doing, the level of trust in media today, how it's declining.
00:10:32.000When writers went on that strike, these guys couldn't do anything for four weeks and they came out with a podcast.
00:10:39.000And you're watching, you know, mainstream media with MSNBC, with Fox, Murdoch on his way out, you don't know what his sons are going to do, Ted Turner.
00:10:46.000At the end of his book, when he writes the book, you know, he claims how disappointed he is with what the product of CNN turned into.
00:10:53.000If you've never watched or read the book Ted, highly recommend it.
00:10:57.000And at the end there's an interview being done with him that this was not the product I produced.
00:12:13.000Let me kind of figure it out for myself.
00:12:15.000And then today, from having been in business and watching people that, the more you did for this guy, The more he hated you later on, because you stopped doing for him, he was expecting you to do forever.
00:12:28.000The less you did for this guy, and he independently, you gave him a little bit, he won, he was more grateful.
00:12:34.000You had a better relationship with him.
00:12:36.000So, that dynamic happened over and over and over again, and one time, I'll never forget, one of our guys in our company who was a socialist.
00:12:44.000And he hated capitalism and all this stuff, but he wanted to sell insurance because he wanted to make more money.
00:12:49.000Every time he would send me a book about the dark side of capitalism, the history of capitalism, slavery, all this stuff he would send me.
00:13:04.000I said, did you do this by yourself or was this the help of you and your 50 guys?
00:13:08.000He says, no, this is the help of me and my 50 guys.
00:13:10.000I said, so here's what I wanted to do.
00:13:12.000I'm sure you're going to be in on this one.
00:13:14.000I'm thinking about taking this $20,000 that you earned, but you really didn't because it's you and the 50 guys, giving your 50 guys $400 a pop.
00:13:22.000And telling him that because you're so noble, you want to give these guys the $400.
00:14:29.000And in my experience, the most generous people who I've met in my life, and I know this isn't always the rule, have been people who've been very successful and very wealthy.
00:14:37.000And some of the most selfish people that I've met and entitled have been poor people.
00:14:42.000Where I did realize, just being around these folks, I was very fortunate, I realized, okay, it just amplifies character.
00:14:48.000And if you're a bad character, it'll amplify it.
00:14:50.000So we, as Christians and as conservatives, are beholden to try and perform ethically.
00:14:56.000Like I always say, with what I do, this is business, but it's not just business.
00:14:59.000If it was just business, there would be ways to squeeze more money out.
00:15:04.000We have to behave ethically, but I have met a lot of wealthy people who have been incredibly generous, where I probably wouldn't be here today if they didn't help.
00:15:10.000You know, bring me on to consult early on with social media, you know, when I have a small YouTube channel.
00:15:16.000These were people who said, hey, I could use someone like you to help me kind of learn how to do these things and market.
00:15:20.000But before we get to that, I think because we're getting into business, a lot of people don't realize, you know, they would think, You're someone who went to, you know, Stanford, or some expensive school of business, you know, Ivy League.
00:15:29.000You're a guy, you were originally from Iran.
00:15:32.000And English is, you learned English later, right?
00:15:47.000So, was the Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic?
00:15:50.000Because you know what they were saying.
00:15:53.000Did it say the stuff they said that it said?
00:15:54.000By the way, I could understand everything that we're saying in Passionate Christ, because you can understand what they're saying.
00:15:59.000What are they just saying, like, watermelon, peas, and carrots, like, extra dialogue, and everyone's like, he's anti-Semitic!
00:16:02.000Funny, the other day watching a video from Netanyahu from 2001 in a small group setting where he's talking about, don't worry about Americans, we can convince 80% and they're on our side if we want to do anything we want to do, and we're sitting there saying, is this really what he's saying?
00:16:15.000We've got to kind of find out, because we're just reading the, you know, captions.
00:16:24.000Very quick way to humble brag, but I'll allow it.
00:16:27.000And you were, then you were, obviously you moved to Germany, then the United States.
00:16:30.000You were in the military for a period of time, then went into business.
00:16:34.000But a big part, you know, when we were out at your, I guess, compound in Florida, you told me kind of your testimony, too, about becoming a Christian, that you were an atheist.
00:16:41.000And it was almost George Foreman-esque, as far as your conversion.
00:16:45.000It wasn't like, ah, I guess I'll be a Christian.
00:16:48.000Tell me kind of what that's like, because I think a lot of people may not necessarily know that about you.
00:17:11.000I said, why is it that if we're getting bombed in Iran, the parks I'm going to, that building we used to go to, the whistling sound, tabajo, tabajo, alamate kermes, attention, attention, the sign of red means that planes have crossed the border, and boom.
00:17:25.000So all of these thoughts that stay with you Yeah, I don't believe in God.
00:17:29.000We go to Germany, my parents get a divorce, I even get less, you know, desire to want to have any kind of closeness to God.
00:17:38.000You couldn't get, I was a guy at church making fun of the pastor.
00:17:41.000And I go to the army, I'm in boot camp.
00:17:44.000And in boot camp and AIT, I had one to hire a PT score, so they gave me and a few other guys the opportunity to go spend time at this one camp for two days.
00:17:53.000And this guy had the swing from trees into the lake and pool table.
00:17:57.000I'm like, this is great to get away from all the stuff we're doing.
00:18:00.000But with one caveat, every night we have to listen to him do Bible study.
00:18:03.000And by the way, even then, that's 97, the military, 20, 26 years ago.
00:18:07.000So I was sitting in the back and I would play with the billiard balls in the back.
00:18:10.000I would just kind of do my thing and he's doing his thing.
00:18:13.000And then at the end of it, he comes up to me and says, Hey son, my parents gave me this Bible as a gift in 1974, December 24th of 1974.
00:19:09.000So Scientologists are trying to get me to become a Scientologist, and I'm going to their facility in Hollywood, and in Mormons, I'm reading all this stuff about Gordon B. Hinckley, the virtues, all this stuff.
00:19:18.000There was actually great things, and I watched Mormons, how united they were.
00:19:21.000One day, I'm in the office, this girl comes in, she says, I just watched the greatest movie of all time, this is probably gonna win an Oscar.
00:20:53.000One church I went to was called the Los Angeles Church of Christ.
00:20:55.000This guy sits me down, a guy named Edward, never forget.
00:20:58.000I'm sitting there with my girlfriend who's an actress in Hollywood and beautiful girl and he says, so when's the last time you guys had sex?
00:21:06.000I said, right before this meeting, he says, you can't come to church if you're not going to commit to, you have to drop sex.
00:21:35.000And I say, listen, I want to test something with you and I. Because if we're going to get married, I want to know if this is more than sex.
00:21:41.000She says, okay, what do you want to do?
00:21:42.000I said, I want to go one month no sex.
00:23:07.000And we're talking on philosophy, debate, all this stuff.
00:23:09.000Eventually, the crazy thing, most people won't even believe this if I say this, I was the guy in Old Pasadena in front of nightclubs at 1 o'clock in the morning holding a John 3, 16 sign at 25 years old.
00:24:00.000I'm like, dude, I can't have $49,000 and I can't even afford to pay nine bucks for movies for this girl.
00:24:04.000I felt like I was just, I was not a man at that.
00:24:08.000My dad would always say, when men don't have money, They're not good for society, so you have to be able to contribute to have your manliness.
00:24:15.000We're in the car, we get into a big fight, and then we break it off, and she leaves.
00:24:20.000I'm in the car, expedition, this is 1.30 in the morning at this point, we finished the movie, and I say, God, I haven't spoken to my mom for five years, but if you exist, I would love to talk to my mom.
00:24:31.00030 seconds later, my next tell, I get a call from a block number.
00:24:35.000Brother, this is like a, I've told this story, it's a very weird moment of my, scariest moment for me.
00:24:40.000I don't want to answer the phone, and it's one of those flip phones, and I flip it, and it's my mom crying.
00:25:09.000Either this is ironic or this is real, but the level of coincidence is a little too real.
00:25:16.000I could have chosen to say it's ironic.
00:25:18.000I chose to believe it was God and He has my back and He's had my back from day one.
00:25:24.000That level of confidence I got from that moment that somebody was watching me and had my back is the reason Why I am where I'm at today.
00:25:35.000I make my decisions purely knowing he has my back.
00:25:38.000And if you ask me what's one of my biggest fears?
00:25:40.000One of my biggest fears in my life is losing his favor.
00:25:44.000I can't tell you how much that scares the hell out of me.
00:25:46.000Because to me, in life, when you get a person that has your back, And they have your back like you've seen endless times they've had your back.
00:25:57.000You take that for granted and you lose it?
00:26:07.000The four kids, my wife, my dad now living with me, my biggest fear at the time when I was not a Christian was my kids never meeting my dad because I never met his dad, my grandpa.
00:27:16.000Mine is, not necessarily losing favor, but I do understand that, you know, I do have, one thing I'm very fortunate, I can certainly relate with that, you know, you've met Johnny Boy and Gerald.
00:27:33.000I have lifelong friends, but certainly standing, you know, before the throne of God, And at some point he's going to list your talents, right?
00:27:44.000We've all read the parable of the talents.
00:27:45.000I know it's a different term, talent, but that's the word that's used.
00:27:49.000And him showing a list of what I could have done with it.
00:27:52.000that I was expected to do with it and I didn't and throw it away. And that's what keeps me
00:27:58.000doing it. Look, I don't run nine companies, but there were years I was working 80 hours
00:28:05.000for years. And I just thought, I never want to throw it away. Once there was momentum, I thought,
00:28:09.000well, it is my duty to do as much with this as I can. This is a very hard business as well.
00:28:34.000Because, you know, when I got married, At the end of the wedding, we're in Glendale, California, and I get up and I give, we've got 500 people at the wedding, and I said, hey guys, on one side is all the green-eyed, blue-eyed people, on the other side is all the hairy people, because it's Middle Easterners and Caucasians, because my wife is from Texas.
00:28:53.000So, and by the way, one of the best jokes one of my friends told me, one of my groomsmen who was so hammered, he was so hammered it's not even funny.
00:29:00.000He gets up, he says, so look, I can tell none of you guys want to dance because you're concerned whether this marriage is going to work out or not.
00:30:26.000I'm living for what's been put on my heart.
00:30:28.000At the same time, if we can find people that are good running mates, even go at it.
00:30:32.000One thing in a book that we talk about, you said, you know, Gerald, and you said John, Johnny boy.
00:30:35.000So one of the things we talk about in the book, because as a person who runs a company and you run a business, you eventually want to have a circle of people you trust.
00:30:46.000So one day, one of my guys that wants to be in that inner circle, I'm picking them up from jail.
00:33:16.000They don't need yes men, but they need corner men.
00:33:19.000So they need someone, you know, these guys are out there, they're taking the blows, they're in the fight, they go back into the corner, and if you're winning, if you're doing well, you need a pep talk, great, keep doing what you're doing, maybe some advice, some improvements.
00:33:29.000If you're not, they need to put the ice on the swelling on the eye, put some Vaseline in the cut, try and get you back out there.
00:33:36.000Because not everyone can be out there actually taking the blows.
00:33:38.000Not everyone, there's one prize fighter, but it takes a whole team.
00:33:41.000And a yes man is useless, and we saw that, for example, that's what happened with Mike Tyson, perfect example, with Buster Douglas that night.
00:34:10.000Because even, by the way, if you're the prize fighter in your company, you know, at some point you're going to be older, and you're going to be the corner man for your son.
00:34:17.000You know, we all transition in those positions.
00:34:20.000And it made a lot of sense because I think sometimes people think loyalty or someone
00:34:29.000Everyone, sometimes, you know, look, you run nine companies.
00:34:31.000I'm willing to bet, outside of the people who you discuss, like who you trust, who you
00:34:36.000know really closely, you probably don't get a lot of pats in the back.
00:34:39.000You have to give pats on the back, right?
00:34:40.000You have to do that as a leader of your company because those people have to feel appreciated.
00:34:44.000I'm willing to bet you don't get that as much.
00:34:46.000So you need some people around you who kind of give you that feedback so that at least you know what you're doing is either correct or it's not and some, you know, you're not shooting the dart.
00:34:53.000There's also part of it where, you know, I'm talking to Brad Lee the other day.
00:34:56.000Brad Lee's a good content creator, very good content creator out of Vegas.
00:35:01.000And I'm talking to him that as you're moving up, you have to be very careful to filter out flattery.
00:35:07.000Because flattery is actually a terrible thing.
00:35:10.000You know, the whole concept with Marcus Aurelius who's sitting there having a slave ride behind him telling him, you know, you're not as important as you think you are.
00:35:17.000You're not as important as you think you are.
00:35:18.000You need people like that in your life.
00:35:21.000I agree the people to process with, the insurance company, You've read Meditations, I'm sure.
00:35:28.000Marcus Aurelius is fascinating to me, too.
00:35:32.000To me, Stoicism is almost practiced Christianity in the absence of grace.
00:35:38.000It's about doing the right thing, not for earthly riches, but for doing the right thing's sake.
00:35:42.000But at the end of the day, you do it and you die.
00:35:45.000And we obviously believe in eternal salvation, and there's a purpose as to why you're also doing the right thing, why you're following that prescription.
00:35:50.000But Marcus Aurelius was certainly, by all accounts, a good man, and then became addicted to opiates.
00:37:19.000And in Tuscany, Italy, moments happens where wife comes out, she hears news, she's crying, this is an incentive trip, and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.
00:37:29.000Here, all this money we spent, this is gonna, oh my God.
00:37:32.000So I said, okay, maybe there's a reason why this is happening.
00:37:34.000When that happened, people behind closed, I can't believe he's going through this.
00:37:38.000I can't believe he's going through that.
00:37:40.000I can't believe he's going through this.
00:37:41.000And I told everybody, I said, guys, here's all I'll tell you, okay?
00:38:12.000They're doing very well for themselves.
00:38:15.000My parents, my upbringing, my own flaws, my own big fall in my early 20s, massive fall, and I'm a 21-year-old guy giving speeches on yachts for a billionaire named McNulty who has a $65 million house, and I'm the guy that's giving this, and I'm making money, and I'm like the superstar coming up, you know, poster child type of a guy, and then all of a sudden, boom!
00:41:10.0002, and I have to find a way to make money.
00:41:11.000I go to a local swimming pool in Erlangen with my girlfriend, Katarina Staff, and we go and we say, hey, what can I do to make some money here?
00:41:19.000She said, well, you know, can you collect this beer bottle?
00:41:20.000Because Germans are famous for drinking.
00:43:08.000From the Glendale branch, gave me a job to be a financial advisor, changed my life, I started a day before 9-11, 9-10, got my Series 7, 66-31, 26 life and health, and boom, the rest is history.
00:44:12.00045,000 agents, you do a lot of business plans.
00:44:14.000And you watch who makes it and who doesn't make it, okay?
00:44:18.000And you'll watch a guy that comes in, one guy came in from Northrop, you know, master's degree, everything proper, looked so good, but I could never get him to go and nothing got him, you know, to go compete at the highest level.
00:44:30.000But logically, on paper, everything made sense.
00:44:34.000And then I would recruit guys that emotionally, they really wanted to win bad, but logically they had nothing, no substance, okay?
00:44:41.000So then I realized, you know, when I'm doing business planning, at first I would only do, don't you want a dream?
00:44:54.000So eventually it was two blocks, then six blocks, then eight blocks.
00:44:57.000It was 12 building blocks to do the proper business planning.
00:45:02.000But the biggest factor, biggest factor was the following.
00:45:06.000I noticed any of the guys that ever did anything really, really big, and I said this to Tom Brady when I was talking to him at the vault two months ago.
00:45:14.000One, they've experienced unconditional love from one person.
00:49:00.000Okay, to me, Brother, when I read that, oh, if I tell you stories of moments where somebody drove me to go to levels that got the best out of me, sometimes the best... I think we're going to have to go in my office after.
00:49:14.000You'll see some plaques that I have in there.
00:49:17.000But the point with that is, writing on a piece of paper, not positive, things people said to you, and you just read it.
00:49:25.000And you start realizing, wait a minute, this emotion I'm getting, I'm willing to take the rejection.
00:49:29.000I'm willing to take this, you know, late night, I got to get my degree for whatever you're working.
00:49:33.000I'm willing to go through the six hours after the kids are asleep to take that course online to get my real estate license.
00:49:37.000I'm willing to pay the price because I'm going to go out there and do something big, prove the people that believed in me right, and prove the people that doubted me wrong, and then eventually, my dreams are going to become a reality.