This post is based on the video – How To Build A Business From Nothing
Antonio: Gentlemen, Antonio here with Real Men Real Style. And I’ve got this special guest. So, I just did an interview for Pat’s channel, but this is Patrick Bet-David over at Valuetainment. And I have to admit – so you guys always ask me, Antonio what channels do you watch?
You guys know I watch lot of fashion and style channels, but I also watch a lot of entrepreneurial channels. You guys know I love entrepreneurs. I love people that are going out there changing the world.
Well, I’ve got one of those people right here. But, Pat, maybe you can tell my audience who many of them don’t know you, you can tell a little bit about yourself and who you are.
Patrick: Sure. So, first of all, thank you for having me on your channel. We love what you’re doing as well, so feeling is mutual with what you’re creating. You know the best guy on YouTube you can think about on teaching how to on the best educators in that topic in my opinion the best guy.
But, so for my background, I was born and raised in Iran. I lived in Iran ten years. I was born October 18, 1970 which was peak of the revolution in Iran. Ten years war the whole nine yards. Then, Khomeini dies June, 3, 1989. I’m in school. We escaped six weeks later. I went to a refugee camp in Germany for about two years. Then, we come to the States – Glendale, California.
I go to school and I’m the kid that had the 1.8 GPA, I didn’t do too well in school and right after school, I joined the military. And, like I was reminding you before about me learning early on that the reason why I chose army and I learned a lot about marines and I had to learn to forgive that, you know – you know, that no one’s perfect especially marine friends like yourself that – but I have to learn that early on from the forgiveness level.
Antonio: We’ll leave it at that. You guys will have to go watch and I’ll link to it in the description. The interview I just did with – with him on his channel, but, yeah…
Patrick: So, first of all, when I say this I’m teasing. This is an officer who went to –got his undergrad and he goes to UT. I don’t have that kind of a resume like and of – if I was a soldier, I’m a private I’m saluting to him when we’re in the military, so thank you for your service.
Antonio: But, what we’re talking about success here.
Patrick: Right.
Antonio: And we’re talking about symbol – we’re talking about symbolism, success, and a little about style here. But, I mean you had some great success. You have how many agents now working?
Patrick: Right. So, I mean I got out I wanted to be a bodybuilder. I was going to be the next Middle Eastern Arnold Schwarzenegger marrying a Kennedy and become a Hollywood superstar and I digress and went into the financial industry with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter a day before 9/11. And, after Morgan Stanley I want to Trans America on October 20, 2009 which is seven years ago from today.
Seven years ago, we started PHP Agency became official at a one office in Northridge, California. We had about 66 agents what started off with and today, we have 2,500 agents in 49 states. By the end of the year, we’ll be all 50 states. So, we started off one state, 50 states and business has grown and accidentally four years ago, three years and eleven months ago, we started a YouTube channel called Valuetainment. Initially, it was called Two Minutes with Pat and then we realized I don’t do anything in two minutes, that was problematic.
All the episodes will be seven minutes, eight minutes, but the episode was called Two Minutes with Pat. So, it was pathetic, it was – it was that tells you how much we knew about what we were doing. Maybe that’s the reason why we only had four hundred [subs] our first year.
And then, we focused on the topic of entrepreneurship, it’s something that I know a lot about and we got right into it and the next thing you know it started doing [rolls].
So, I run a full time business. I have staff here you are on my headquarters you walk around. We have home office support here not counting our independent contractors and then our executives in the field that run the sales offices and our vice presidents that we have in the field. And then, our vendors that we have and then our support team technology IT people that we have. And then, at the same time, I do YouTube part time. So, this has been a part time gig.
Antonio: So, I was watching one of your other videos, I’m going to link to it down the description. But, it was your friends from way back, they were saying about, okay, anyone we saw is being successful, it was not going to be you.
So, how did you go from the bodybuilding the army to being good at finance because that’s what I’m assuming is you actually have to be good at finance to have a company with almost 2,500 agents?
Patrick: Right. So, I think there’s a few things. One is I think the word entrepreneur when you think about a word like if you think about – if I – if I were to say something and you have to say that first word that comes to your mind. If I was the greatest basketball player of all time, you would probably say Michael Jordan, let’s just say. You know the greatest baseball player of all time, you may say Babe Ruth. The greatest president of all time, you may say Lincoln or Reagan or Kennedy or whatever.
If you tell me what you think about entrepreneur what do you think about, I think about math is what I think about. And why math? Because to me everything that runs that light is all math. The amount of circles that’s has got there, this is math. These cameras use math support. This is an angle that’s rectangle it’s math. Business is math.
You – when you were talking earlier with 242, he was talking math of color coordinating uniforms, all you need is four shirts, two suits, two shoes you can combine, that’s purely math to me.
But, the transition in my life when you say my friends, no one in a million years thought I was going to do anything, no one, not a single soul. I joined the army because I was not going to be accepted by any –community colleges wouldn’t accept me.
You told a story that was very touching on what happened with your sister in 2009 and I experienced something similar to that. When I get a call, my dad had a major heart attack. My dad has had thirteen heart attacks. He’s had six angiograms, six angioplasty, three stents in his heart.
And, when he had his heart attack, I went to UCLA Medical Center in LA and I never forget when I went I went upstairs and all the nurses I was so annoyed with everybody because nobody was around. I’m just kind of like why is my dad not getting better treatment. Well, that’s a government service, you’re not going to get the best treatment because we don’t have the money to give him the best treatment.
I went downstairs in my car, I cried like a little baby for one hour in my Ford Focus and I was so disappointed with myself that here’s a man that brought me to America with my mother. It cost them a divorce. They sacrificed every single friendship and relationship and family and everything they ever knew. It’s not like they came here at 22, they came in their 40’s. And here I am lollygagging with my life and this man is having all these heart attacks because of stress of finances.
He works at 99 cent store in Inglewood. I was so upset with myself, I’m so upset with myself that I’ll tell you the next day my eyes were completely changed I got a hold of 83 questions in August of 2003 that I went to El Matador Beach by myself for six hours. I went to one of these, I call it the ultimate self-discovery questionnaire that I have on my website and, from there things changed.
I look at things differently, everybody that wanted to ask me to go club I was very good at clubs. If you went to clubs with me, you will have a good time with me. I was fond at nightclubs ladies all that other stuff. I just found that the only girl you ever kissed is your wife which is unbelievably impressive. We’re part of the same club. Me too baby, just you’re the only girl I’ve ever kissed too.
But, I was a complete different thing. Once the shift happened, I told my friends don’t call me about nightclubs, don’t call me about parties, don’t call me about anything. It was a certain level of obsession that almost – and I understand from their point of view, I rub them the wrong way because it was too much of a 180.
So, a lot of my friends you talked to, they’ll say this that we would have never thought Pat would do this, but I was not going to let my dad die without him seeing my kids one day. That was very, very important to me. And, thank God he’s still around. He’s 74 years old today, he is still around and all my kids he’s had a chance to see and that was very important to me. So, that was my driving force at that time.
Antonio: See a lot of people that watch my channel, they think it’s about style in clothing and that’s not exactly true. If anyone’s watch my channel they know that this is about helping men be better men. One of the things we always talk about guys is an emotional component to get you to transition whether it’d be to dress sharper or to turn your life around and actually – so, you started studying finance and just getting into this? Why finance?
Patrick: So, I’ll tell you the truth here, I’m going to have to confess. I’m at Venice Beach and this one girl approaches me very attractive girl when we start talking, okay? And this is in 2001 and so we start going on dates and every time we go on dates she has nice cars. She picks me up in a Porsche, in a Mercedes, in a Lexus and I don’t have the nicest cars at that time.
So, finally I said, how do you make your money? And she says, well, I’m in the financial industry. And I said, “Who are you with?” She said, “I’m with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.” I said, “I want to work at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.” She said, “You can’t, you need a degree. You got to go – I went to UCLA.” She went to UCLA. I said, “I’m not getting a degree.”
And so, you know, eventually I send out a hundred resumes to Morgan, Merrill, Schwab, Smith Barney, all these other guys. And when I send the resumes, I – my resumes obviously is terrible because resumes army, it’s Bob’s Big Boy which I don’t know if you know Bob’s Big Boy?
Antonio: I don’t know Bob’s Big Boy.
Patrick: It’s Burger King and Haagen-Dazs. Okay. So, you – there’s nothing impressive about Haagen-Dazs, you know, there’s nothing impressive about Bob’s Big Boy. And at Burger King they never even made me a cashier, at least let me touch the money. They said you can just be a chef is what I call myself. You’d say whopper no onions, I made it for you. That’s what I did as a 6’4” guy wearing an extra medium shirt, small shirts and I’m making those whoppers.
So, I sent my resumes and I said, that’s not going to give me the job, but I had to be creative. So, I put the cover letter, I chose my best joke and I put it at the top. Opening line cover letter is a joke. Then, below the joke it says, “If you’re laughing and this made you smile and you feel better, this is exactly how my clients are going to feel when they do business with me. If you want somebody like this part of your team, give me a call.”
Okay? Thirty calls out of the hundred resumes. Fifteen of them were simply calls to say you’re hilarious, but we’re not interested, you’re not qualified.
Antonio: Yeah.
Patrick: I’d say Goldman Sachs is not going to hire someone like me. But, luckily I got fifteen calls that were interviews. I went in I got two or three job offers. I chose Morgan Stanley and that’s how I got started. As a matter of fact, it was a day before 9/11. My first day was Monday 9/10.
Antonio: Yeah.
Patrick: With Morgan Stanley. I’m supposed to go to New York to the World Trade Center next day. Morgan Stanley’s headquarter of 3,600 employees is in the World Trade Center. 9/11 happens the next day, so it wasn’t the best time to get into the industry, but that’s how I got involved in the industry.
Antonio: I love the fact you throw out a hundred resumes and you took that unique approach of which only fifteen people really were serious. Of course, fifty one let you know you’re funny.
Patrick: Yes.
Antonio: And probably wished you good luck. And I think you really humanized a process which can almost dehumanized people. And you were able to most importantly get the job offers and get your foot in the door.
Now, getting your foot in the door is one thing, but actually becoming good at this. How did you stay focus in – I mean you’re talking about you didn’t see yourself as maybe the smartest guy, but you still were able to be good at this?
Patrick: Yeah. So, for me, I did a video for twenty years, I’m 38 now. Okay, let’s just say since I became in sales, I got into sales at 20 years old. For eighteen years, we talk to people and we ask them that corny question that everybody asks which is what’s the key to success. You get asked that a million times, right?
What’s the key to success? Hey, Antonio what’s your key to success to the channel that you have? And what’s the key to success to life? And we have all these answers. So, I’ve collected all the answers, people would say, you know, key to success in life is marrying the right person. Cool. That’s great. Write it.
The key to success is hard work, key to success is respect, it’s love, it’s faith, it’s capitalism, it’s loving people and caring and giving back and ta ta and all these stuff that you hear about. Great.
But, it’s still not the answer to me, so I wanted to find that if I could transfer one skill to my two sons and my daughter. What is the one skill I would love for them to learn? And finally, I came to conclusion and in my mind now no one can change my mind in this area, yet, not one has yet to make me believe that certain thing is more important than learning this one skill set and here’s what it is.
I believe everything in life is about solving for X and the most important skill set you can learn in life is how to process issues. What do I mean by how to process issues? When they say the key to success is marrying the right person, I say that’s the – that’s not the seed, the seed is you have to learn how to process issues on who the right person for you is to marry, right?
For instance, how to process issues is if a kid you tell him don’t do drugs, don’t do this, don’t do that. Here, son, I want you to watch a scene here from Walk the Line and Walk the Line, you know, Johnny Cash is offered by Jerry Lee Lewis these drugs to take and he says take any. He says I don’t want to take any, says, look, Elvis takes it, then he takes it.
We can show that scene to our boys, but that kid is going to be offered cocaine or drugs or ecstasy or whatever it is nowadays. I need to teach him how to process issues when that happens. I need to teach him how to process issues when a girl comes and says, hey, let’s smoke this weed together and let’s have sex. If you smoke it will do this.
I can’t tell him don’t do it, but I can teach him how to process issues, right? Because you and I faced it, not you and I, because we kiss one girl, but they’re going to face it, right?
Antonio: Yes.
Patrick: The point is when you ask what was the key to success for me in the business, I had to process issues and ask myself what is my number one product. And my number one product wasn’t math, my number one product was people. I had to understand people. I had to study people, I had to watch people.
When you and I were interviewing and in the middle of the interview, I just realized half the questions I shouldn’t have even asked you, it’s not even – to ask you for what? You already know exactly who your customers, you already know exactly what you’re doing. You are so clear and self-aware of what you’re doing with your business that if anything anybody can learn from you is to know that you’ll learn who your ideal customers and you tailor to them.
So, for me I had to learn who my customer was and it was people and I had to learn how to deal with people. And the numbers was easy because with the numbers, yeah, I’m not the smartest guy at the company. Our president is a guy that took [Jamdap] public and sold it for $680 million. Now, that guy is he can do laps around me.
Our chief compliance officer has every single license under the sun, he was my branch manager in 2002. He’s our chief compliance officer. I am not smarter than him, but it’s people. Then, you have to put a team of special – specialized people around you while you know how to deal with the people if you can put specialized knowledge around you, then you have a solid team that can help you grow your business.
So, I would say that’s probably the – the top reason is I process the issues of what was the number one thing I can learn and the number one thing guy to learn in my business was people.
Antonio: All right. We’re going to go with that. So, I want to transition the interview a bit away from talking about, you know, the business side, let’s talk about like symbolism. So, I’ve been walking around your office and I’ve looked at – I mean from the logo of your company and from the name of it to the colors that you chose. Can you talk a little bit about that like?
Patrick: We’re really going to get into this, this is exciting. So, the truth is we are a gang except we are running a business. That’s really the truth.
No, but, you know, you and I were talking earlier and you said how much you miss the military, the part of it of camaraderie. And, you and I were kind of talking about it briefly.
When I got out of the military I talked to my buddy, Jeff recently. He and I were speaking and he works Special Ops and this guy called him super soldier. He is – he was the guy that I mean him and I were buddies and you know what it is when you have your boy in the army , no one can separate the two of you. You guys are just buddies. He backs you up, you back him up.
That level of camaraderie I got in the military was very important to me to my life. So, when I came out and I started a company it was very important for me to get that same exact experience and feeling to the people that work in this company and symbolism is a part of it.
If you think about – I was at a dinner at Wayne Hughes house. His son’s house in Malibu and they brought a speaker — Wayne, he was the founder of Republic Storage it’s worth around $4 billion. I think it’s like the 72nd richest man in the world.
And they brought a speaker, Dennis Prager, they brought. And, you may know Dennis Prager. They brought Dennis Prager and he got up and he spoke, he said, “What makes religions powerful?” I think about what he said. So, I’m like, whoa, we’re going in a deep end right now because it’s now controversial conversation, what religion? He said rituals.
He said what makes a great sports team special. Okay, now we’re going to the safer. He says rituals. When you play for Notre Dame and you go through the thing, you hit the – what makes the Celtics so special? Rituals. What makes the military so special? Rituals. What makes special family so special? Rituals. So, what are your rituals?
So, now our company we have rituals, you know, for Valuetainment we have a very unique logo. We call the [Ligon]. There’s a lot of meaning behind that Valuetainment logo that we have with the color that we have PHP with the red, white, and blue. And the hand, there’s a meaning behind that because for a guy like myself, I mean I did not get to where I’m at because I have these special abilities and I’m just extremely smart, etc, etc.
I got to where I’m at because somebody at some point inspired me lifted me up pushed me, challenged me and they were willing to take the time to educate me and I was serious, I was committed, but they’re willing to take the time to help me and they help me get to the next level and that list is a long list of names.
So, symbolism is it has to mean a lot to you, you can’t just put it up here and say, hey, you know, this is cool, it’s going to get people’s attention. We had somebody on YouTube just took our logo and they changed the I’s literally just the I’s and they added it to their logo. And I’m like looking at myself saying, you can do that all day long, but it’s like the people in China that take a logo of Nike and they call it Nice you know. But, and the swoosh goes the other way around. You’re not going to be Nike. It has to have meaning to you and every one of these logos has a lot of meaning to us, has a lot of meaning to us.
Antonio: Now, what about the culture? It seems like – I noticed everyone’s office, I mean you actually put time and a lot of people with the environment that they’re working in, look like they’re having a lot of fun. I saw that everyone decorating…
Patrick: Yes.
Antonio: Somebody went rock and roll, they pointed that out to me to Mario. I mean do you feel that the environment we put ourselves in actually has an effect is that important?
Patrick: Yes, absolutely. You know we happen to be in the most boring industry in the world. I hope you know this. Like I don’t know if you know what I sell for a living…
Antonio: I was going to say…
Patrick: I’m going to say — I can say it, we sell life insurance.
Antonio: Yeah.
Patrick: That’s what we sell just so you know. You know what life insurance is? It’s life insurance. You know what we have to talk about, this is what we talk about. Bob, Mary, what are you going to do one day when Bob dies? What are you going to do with these three kids?
Now, let me tell you nothing about what I just told you is exciting. Well, you know what happened this week? Here’s what happened this week. We had an 82-year old grandmother who just passed away. Her final expense and burial is covered. She died yesterday. We got it. We had a spouse, a husband that I know who met her, his wife, Erica who’s a sweet– she work at engineer lady that’s making 150, 160 extremely brilliant.
They meet each other, you look at him you’re like, my gosh, I am just – you guys are perfect for each other. Last week motorcycle accident, boom. It happens. I love riding motorcycle, it can happen to the best of us, but it happened to him. That’s the industry I chose to be a part of. Now, that gets my heart and initially it didn’t because I thought it was purely business and talking about dying, but there’s a crusade and a heart behind the industry why I chose to be a part of. Now, I’m in love with this industry.
But what’s the boring part of it? Look, I dress like this and I brought you in because I think our guys can learn a lot from you on how incredible of an educator you are when it comes unto style. There’s a lot of solid education you bring to people on style.
But, I want to mix up the life insurance industry. I want to disrupt the life insurance industry. I don’t want the life insurance industry to just go out and everybody wears Brooks Brothers all the time with Cole Haan shoes and trying to attract millenials and Gen X’s and Gen Y’s because they’re not turn on by that.
When you look at the industry that went from a half a million license agents in America 1974 to today, it’s roughly 200,000 life insurance licensed agents. How do we go from a half a million to 200 when the population is 1974 is 209 and now, we’re at 317 or whatever the number is today. How do we increase the population by 50%, but agents decrease by 60%, how did that happen?
They have completely forgotten how to connect with the audience. So, going back when you say the industry and the company was this intentional. I think, one, you got to know your product which you do. Two, I think you got to let people represent themselves. Mario loves Metallica. What’s your favorite? Is it Metallica? What’s the song that you like to play with, the guitar?
Mario: Fade to Black.
Patrick: Say it again?
Mario: Fade to Black.
Patrick: Fade to Black. And he plays it and let me tell you. I watch him, he’s in the zone. That’s Mario.
Paul, he loves to watch the movie, I don’t know why he loves to watch a movie. We found out about this earlier, the documentary. Paul is so driven by movies and his favorite movie of all time is what? The Forty Year Old Virgin. I don’t know why he loves the movie, but he loves that movie, right? He is fascinated by that movie.
And, we were trying to figure out why all this time, but he loves the movie. So, if you go to his cubicle maybe you should get some b-rolls so we can show it. It’s all Hollywood, but that’s him. He is like the most incredible editor I’ve ever met in my life. You see any of the videos that we do of editing? He does it.
Antonio: Yeah. And, after this afternoon, he’s going to be a great dresser as well.
Patrick: He is going to be a great dresser because you – you brother we brought you and Kelly Nishimoto. Some of you guys got to see this because…
Antonio: We’ll link to that video. We’re going to have lots of videos for you guys.
Patrick: So, we chose Antonio’s because we said we got to bring two of the best stylists I know, one from the men’s perspective one form a woman’s perspective. Kelly Nishimoto who has her own show and she had Something New Something Borrowed. She’s very well-known in Hollywood.
We brought her. She’s got the pink hair. You could put the pics so they can see. And then, we brought Antonio. And there’s a battle to see who can make a miracle happen for Paul. And Paul goes on his first date which attire is going to get the girl to say, oh, my gosh. So, that’s why we brought Antonio.
But going back to it, I think you got to – you got to kind of let people do their own brand and their own identity and we try to do our best for our people to do that, so it’s worked out well.
Antonio: I like it. I like how you’re – that’s very interesting point the number of agents has actually dropped. I had no idea.
Patrick: Yeah.
Antonio: Yeah, you’re in an industry which a lot of people just – it’s not something that you think people would – as a kid say, oh, I want to become a, you know, I want to sell insurance. I mean kids want to be astronauts. I wanna be cowboys.
Patrick: Yes.
Antonio: They want to be football players.
Patrick: Yes.
Antonio: All that fun stuff. And, but you’ve really focused in on the emotional component, I have to admit I never thought I would be talking about clothing, owned a custom-clothier get into the fashion or style industry. Earnestly it wasn’t attractive to me, but what keeps me in this is being able to work with men and to help me. So…
Patrick: And, you’re obviously doing that. You’re not just doing it out of small scale, you’re doing it at a very, very large scale yourself.
Antonio: Well, thank you, you know. Now, so you’re looking at, you know, your guys being able to go out there reach for people to be able to connect. How do you see image playing into that like style and clothing, how was it – do you have anything I mean besides you used to wear uniform?
Patrick: Yes.
Antonio: And it was one…
Patrick: Yes.
Antonio: If you saw a kid walking down the street let’s say 20-year old guy wearing a shirt, it’s got like a ranger tab right here. Are you going to take offense to that or you’re going to look at that and say, is he out of the, you know, ability to wear ranger tab? What actually kind of I don’t know it irk me. I’m not even a ranger, but I do know that…
Patrick: Of course.
Antonio: So, can you talk a little bit about how maybe your time in the army and going forward is kind of change maybe your perception of how you look at uniforms and how you look at clothing an image?
Patrick: So, I think this will be great for your audience because I happen to be a CEO of a firm that’s, you know, is called the fastest growing financial firm in America. We’re growing seven years, so we’re doing very well. But, sometimes I have to also explain who I was before I became the CEO the entrepreneur.
So, I get out of the military. My uniform in high school was, you know, a Dickie’s pants or, you know, whatever kind of shoes you wore. I grew – I’m a Payless kid, so we didn’t grow up having money. My mother, you know, I’m a welfare child parents got a divorce.
Antonio: Payless shoes are good for three days, the after that…
Patrick: [Laughs]
Antonio: Because I wore them too and they start to break down the sides. Do you remember that?
Patrick: Listen, there’s a story of me working at Burger King. My buddy, [Devine Cogen] if they watch this and [Devine Cogen], if you guys watch this, you got to comment on the bottom.
The biggest joke at Burger King was you can always tell where Pat is because a piece of his Payless shoe is like laying around everywhere, so you’re right about the three-day thing.
So, after that I go in the military and then, all of a sudden you wear these PDUs and you wear your greens and, you know, you have these, you know, quartermaster and they put them in and it’s creased and if you like starch. I fell in love with starch. I mean I just want to starch everything underwears being starched, you know, the first time you found out about starch, like sucks it’s got to be starched jeans.
You’d go around with these, you know, the whole lines, we don’t have it anymore, but I used to have it back in the days. And then, you get out and you realize you don’t need to starch everything, you need to kind of relax with the starch and you’re overdosing on starch.
So, I get out and I don’t know what to wear. You know this is – I’m 38, so at my time I don’t know if you even remember the nightclubs we’d go to was [Florentine Gardens] and it was a club called Vegas and it was what? Vegas and the [Don]. It was Vegas and [Don]. And the main DJs was [Richard Humpyvision] [Bad Boy Bill]. I don’t know if you remember any of this music.
So, it was muscle shirts. So, I’m the muscle shirt guys. So, picture the muscle shirt guy that weird-looking muscle shirt guys that wore the jeans the bell bottoms and the Skechers shoes. That was me that was my outfit. And I’m trying to get into the financial and no one’s going to invest you wear Skechers and muscle shirts and any of these.
Antonio: Yeah.
Patrick: That’s pretty pathetic and embarrassing. So, then all of a sudden I get invited to my first introduction to the financial industry. And this guy says you got to come meet this executive, I want to introduce him to you because, you know, he may, you know, introduce you to financial industry. I’m at the gym, so dude just come meet with him anyways. I said I’m telling you I’m at the gym. He says, come anyways. Here’s what I wore at my first meeting. Ready?
I had orange Perfetto pants which Perfetto went out of business, but Perfetto pants were the best workout pants. My favorite by far. I wish they come back. I wanted to buy them out, but they wouldn’t call me back. So, Perfetto pants, I wore my Perfetto pants. I’m wearing tank tops and at that time my first time getting into the financial industry. It was summer time, so I had peroxide on my hair to get some orange highlights because when you put peroxide, you don’t want to listen to this stuff. So, he’s got good looking hair, so don’t listen to anything I’m telling you. Antonio’s son is back there, so I don’t want him to go home putting peroxide on his hair.
I had peroxide on my hair and my hair is orange black brown, very weird. That’s how I got started. I knew nothing about fashion. Zero about fashion. I don’t know how to tie a tie. I don’t know nothing about any of that stuff. And, I had to transition and I had to learn how to go from a guy who is clueless there to now I want to be a serious seven broker licensed agent and getting people to invest for me $100,000, $500,000, $300,000 or buying an insurance policy, it just didn’t make sense, so I had to get my uniform.
So, once I got the basic ideas about a uniform, the book that I read back then was how to – how gentlemen dresses or how gentlemen get dressed by Brooks Brothers sells those books, very good book. They also have How Ladies Get Dressed. And, I started reading a book, I really immersed myself into wanting to learn about – I mean I wish you were around in 2001 when I first started with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I truly wish you were around. You would have saved me a lot of sales being lost, but I started.
And, next thing you know I realized that some appointments, they would just kind of look at you like this and I said, wow, that look was not a good look because…
Antonio: So, this goes back to you studying people and…
Patrick: Oh, of course
Antonio: You realizing that there having – what you’re wearing is having an effect on.
Patrick: So, I met a guy named Glenn Hopkins who was in my class. Glenn Hopkins used to do Spiderman. So, he was a Hollywood guy and went to Morgan Stanley, killed it in the financial industry. He’s doing very well.
And so, we go to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter training in Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco for three weeks. And, I shared a room with a guy named Ed, real nice guy, but Glenn Hopkins and I became very close. And he said, I’m going to teach you a lot of things. He was 20 years older than me at that time, fifteen years older than me.
And he said – he says, look, let’s play a game. So, what game is this? He says, let’s go to a coffee shop, follow me. We go to a coffee shop. He says how much money do you think that guy is worth? I say, I don’t know. He says, let me tell you what he’s worth. Those shoes he’s wearing are $1,200. You know the – what do you call it? The watch he has on, it’s a $65,000 watch. Do you see the shirt? It looks like a cheap white shirt. That’s a $150 shirt from Neiman Marcus. The pants you’re seeing, those look like cheap Levi’s, right? Those are $300 jeans. That guy is – that guys is worth money, he’s somebody and no one would tell.
Antonio: Yeah.
Patrick: So, that guy put it in my head, start watching people, you’ll learn a lot about them. People that become millionaires and wealthy, they don’t whing any part of their lives even Zuckerberg who wears a gray shirt that we were talking about earlier, he doesn’t whing any part, they don’t – they’re not whingers. You don’t become a millionaire whinger and if you do, you’re going to lose your money. You – you didn’t get to where you are without being a disciplined guy. There’s a lot of discipline behind you that somebody can watch and say this guy kind of knows how to put it together.
So, you know being in the business that I have the money who doesn’t, it kind of gave me the opportunity to study, but I said I better be presentable myself and then from there I adjusted.
Antonio: Great story. Guys, we go on and on, but I want you to go check out Valuetainment. They got some great things going on there. I’m going to link to it down the description.
And, Patrick, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Patrick: I appreciate you for having me in.
Antonio: All right, guys, that’s it. I’ll see you in the next video. Take care.
This post is based on the video – How To Build A Business From Nothing
