$180,000,000
Patrick Bet David
Net Worth
Born in (City)
Tehran
Born in (Country)
Iran
Date of Birth
18th December, 1978
Date of Death
-
Mother
Father
About
Patrick Bet David is a successful startup entrepreneur, CEO of PHP Agency, Inc., emerging author, and Creator of Valuetainment on Youtube. As a natural critical thinker, Patrick takes complex leadership, management, and entrepreneurial ideas and converts them into simple life lessons for today's and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.
Early Life
His family immigrated to America when he was 10-years old. His parents fled Iran as refugees during the Iranian revolution and were eventually granted U.S. citizenship. Patrick was born in Tehran, Iran in October 1978 at a time when the country was in a serious political crisis. Due to the hard life that his family experienced due to this crisis, his father decided that they would flee to America. In between Patrick and his family spent over two years in a refugee camp in Germany where any form of hope of survival was dim. Patrick was twelve years old when they eventually moved and started living in the United States in the early nineties. After finishing his high school education, there was a need for him to get a means of sustenance therefore he enrolled in the US Army where he served as the 101st Airborne Division.
After a tenure with a couple of traditional companies, he was inspired to launch PHP Agency Inc., an insurance sales, marketing, and distribution company – and did so before he turned 30.
PHP is now one of the fastest-growing companies in the financial marketplace. Patrick is passionate about shaping the next generation of leaders by teaching thought-provoking perspectives on entrepreneurship and disrupting the traditional approach to a career.
After serving time in the army, he was discharged and got a job at Morgan Stanley in 2009. He worked diligently till he attended a life-changing dinner event by award-winning journalist George Will.
Road to Success
After that dinner event, Patrick was challenged and thus decided to launch his website called Saving America followed by a radio show in Los Angeles after he started the website. Patrick’s main intention was to encourage and teach people about financial literacy and responsibility. To this end, he also opened an agency that could dispense with a number of services that were touted on the website and the radio show. The agency offered different services including settlement of debts, offering term insurance, and permanent cover on various entrepreneurial fields.
The agency is Patrick’s ticket to prominence and notoriety. The agency that is widely known as PHP which stands for People Helping People is the avenue that he uses to articulate his vision and mission. Here, he gives financial advice to people with his main selling point being that people should avoid debts at all costs. He acquired this knowledge and experience when he became a member of a marketing organization in a period between 2002 and 2009. Therefore, he had the requisite entrepreneurial and marketing knowledge and experience prior to the formation of his financial services agency.
According to his LinkedIn page, Patrick is worth over $42 billion. The humble Patrick is reputed to be one of the richest people in the world and this has been attributed to his passion for helping other people improve their financial status. According to one of the quotes that have been attributed to him, as depicted in his Agency’s home page, every day that people wake up to undertake their daily routine, fate will always step in at one time. Unfortunately, people do not know when the time is and that is why they need financial nous and insurance to be able to take advantage of this time when they reach it.
Challenges
Patrick had done a video explaining the challenges he faced and the lessons he had to learn, trying to pass them on to new entrepreneurs. The points he covered were:
#1: Sacrificing the 9-5 Salary
First, you have to be prepared to sacrifice your 9 – 5 salary. Having a salary is warm and fuzzy. It’s a nice, comforting pillow. As a 9 – 5 employee, you have a salary and benefits such as health insurance. You know that no matter what, worst-case scenario, you make your five or eight grand a month. As an entrepreneur, your salary goes out the window.
#2: Capital Management
The next of the ten challenges every entrepreneur will face is capital management. What do I mean by capital management? That’s the time clock on how much you’ve saved compared to your expenses. You constantly hear the clock ticking, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. If you manage your capital well, it allows you to stay in business long enough to make it as a business owner. You have to know how to manage your capital to stretch it out as long as possible
#3: Processing Issues
Next, processing issues. As an entrepreneur, you have to process many unknown issues you’ve never experienced before. You’ll often say, or think, “I never knew. . . ” It’s going to happen. So if you don’t know how to solve for x, you’ll have a hard time. You need to anticipate that there will be many unknown, unanticipated issues that you need to solve that no one tells you about ahead of time.
#4: Team Building
The next of the challenges that every entrepreneur will face is team building. You’ll face the challenge of building a team when you realize you can’t do it all. And it comes down to how well you build a team.
#5: Vision
Next, is casting a vision others want to belong to and be a part of. You have to constantly cast a vision of where you want to be a year, three years, five years, ten, and 20 years down the line. Everyone around you believes in the vision based on how you cast it. If you can’t cast the vision, you’ll lose the best type of talent.
#6: Loneliness
Next, you will be lonely. There will be many lonely nights. There will be many days where you’re going to sit there by yourself saying, “I don’t know if this is going to work out.” At times, you’ll have no one to call. No family, friend, girlfriend, husband, or wife. You can’t complain to any of them because YOU decided to become an entrepreneur. Nobody forced you to become an entrepreneur. You decided. And the last thing you want to hear is, “I told you not to do it!” So there will be a lot of lonely decision-making processes. You’ll experience a lot of lonely mornings, lonely nights, and lonely weekends.
#7: Taxes and Lawyers
The next of the challenges every entrepreneur will face is taxes and lawyers. You pay taxes on a new code as an entrepreneur. You will need a CPA that knows how to transition you from W2 to being an entrepreneur. You’ll also need lawyers to protect your business and advise you on how to structure your company. For instance, you need advice on LLC, S Corp, C Corp. This means you’ll need to speak to lawyers and CPAs in ways you probably never have before. They’ll tell you things you’ve never heard before. You may be tempted to sit there and act like you know what you’re talking about, but you have no clue what they’re saying. You don’t want to admit it because they’ll charge you more, but you need to ask. Say, “I don’t understand. Can you please explain this to me?”
#8: Many Different Hats
Next, you’ll wear many different hats. You’ll be a salesperson one day, clean the kitchen the next day, and file paperwork another day. You have to do it because no one else will. You have to answer the phones sometimes, and get back to texts you probably shouldn’t as the CEO, because you have to wear a lot of hats.
#9: Knocked Out
Next, people will want to knock you out. You’ll have to deal with people that want to put you out of business. And you’ll say, “How brutal is this? You can’t be this cold.” But it’s the world of business. You’re taking a piece of business away from them, and they want to put you out of business.
Failures
Before going down the route of success, Patrick had to walk down the path of failures multiple times. So much so, Patrick was on the verge of giving up on building himself the dreams he had so passionately endeavored. But thanks to his efforts, now we get to gain the benefits from his wisdom that he gained from stumbling, second-guessing, and failing.
Quotes
- The downside is that a person spends $20 to watch that hero instead of being that hero himself.
- If you always make the right decision, the safe decision, the one most people make, you will be the same as everyone else.
- We never feel completely ready for life’s big decisions; but in taking the leap, we push ourselves to the next level.