Patrick Bet-David

Anyone who knew me growing up would have labeled me “least likely to succeed.”

My dad realized that the surest way to fail would be to fail to act.

Let’s get this straight right now: I cannot teach you desire. If you prefer to avoid hard work, if you feel no desire to do something important with your life, there’s not much I can do for you. This book is for people who are curious to find out what their best looks
like and are looking for the right strategies to help them get there. They’re not just looking for motivation; they’re looking for proven strategies that work. They want to find effective formulas to speed up the process of getting to the next level. Does that sound like you?

1. I want to make the name Bet-David mean something, so much so that my parents will be proud of the decision they made to leave Iran.
2. I want to work with people who keep their commitments—especially leaders with whom I work and who impact my career path.

3. I want a clear formula for how to get to the top based purely on my results. I can’t stand surprises or the moving of goalposts.
4. I want to build a team that has bought into the same vision I have to see how far we can go collectively. This includes running mates whom I can trust 100 percent.
5. I want to make enough money that I’m no longer controlled by other people’s politics and agendas.
6. I want to get my hands on every single strategy book out there to see the game from a broader point of view so I can learn how to minimize corporate bullying.

I’m inspired by this quote from IBM founder Thomas J. Watson:

IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream—my vision—was in place.

The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company that looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done.

The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there.

In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

What would [name] do?”

You want to be wealthy? There’s a book titled What Would the Rockefellers Do? How the Wealthy Get and Stay That Way, and How You
Can Too. Want to be more like the founders of America? Reference the book What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers.

The difficult thing was how much cowardice and wisdom sometimes looked alike—and how long it took to determine which it really was.