What if you did not know who Elon Musk was, would you drive a Tesla? This just validated my point. The bigger the personal brand gets, the better your business does.
And then eventually the brand gets bigger than you. So many times content creators want to go wide very early. That's a mistake.
Here's our formula on coming up with ideas. You got to just press record. Welcome back to Think Media.
You're about to hear a session from Pat Dad that was recorded at our conference Grow With Video Live. And here's what's coming up. The importance of building a personal brand.
and a business brand, Valuetainment's five-step content creation cycle, and 10 things every content creator and business owner needs to know. Now, if you haven't got tickets for the next Grow With Video Live event, of course, link in the description down below, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that later, but let's cut into this session with Pat Dad. How many of you guys are still not convinced you ought to create video content? Be honest.
It took me many, many years to want to create content. How many of you guys are not convinced? You ought to create video content.
Raise your hand. Be honest. If you're convinced, I can leave, guys.
Everybody's already in. You're already going to create video content? Okay.
Well, then let me sell it to you from a different angle, okay? This picture right here. I've never met the man in the middle, my grandpa. I met all the other four.
I never met my grandpa. He was dead when I was born. Would have loved to have met him. Never met him.
I got a very simple question for you. How much money, be honest, on the dollar amount? What would you give, dollar-wise, to get a hundred hours of content of your grandparents and great-grandparents? What would you pay?
Scream out the dollar amount. Somebody said priceless. What's that word to you? What's that word to you?
By the way, how many of you guys get emotional just thinking about it? See, that gets me emotional. That gets me emotional.
Because I've never met that man. One day... You grandkids are going to hope there's content of you. So for some of you that are sitting there saying, why am I waiting to create content? The argument is over.
You're not doing it for you to become famous. You're not doing it to make more money. Create content because your grandkids are hoping you produce content so they can study you when you're no longer here with us.
Does that make sense? So now, let's continue. If you're going to create content, there's three levels to creating content.
I'll go from the lowest level to the highest level. You pick and choose which one of these moves you. Number one, it's fun.
It's fun creating content. There's nothing like it. You sit there and go back to the old videos. It's entertaining.
The second reason why you ought to create content is fame and money. Now, if you're not somebody that wants the fame and the accolades that comes with it, no problem. Some people are driven by that. If you want the money, that also comes with that because your credibility goes up. And last but not least is legacy.
Why you ought to create content. You future grandkids and great-grandkids are going to want to see it. Now, how many guys here, when you say legacy, how many guys here ever get this feeling that you feel like you were put on this planet to do something big?
How many guys really feel that way? Don't just raise your hand to raise it. How many guys actually believe that?
How many guys actually are like, my life's been a weird life. I feel like I'm here to do something big. Okay, great.
Years ago, I heard a message from Dudley Rutherford, a mentor of mine. This was 15 years ago. And he talked about the seven.
Mountains of influence to climb. And he explained which one of them was the toughest one. And he went through it. He said, pick one of these mountains to go to the top to make positive impact. But I'm going to tell you which one is going to be the toughest.
I said, what are the seven? He shows it to us. One is art, entertainment, and sports. To some of you, you want to create content because you know a lot about, how many guys know a lot about sports?
How many guys know a lot about sports and you actually have good opinions about sports? Yes or no? Okay, that's one way to create content.
How many of you guys know a lot about art? How many of you guys know a lot about NFT? How many of you guys know a lot about baseball cards? How many of you guys know a lot about collectibles?
How many of you guys know a lot about collectible cars? Anybody knows about things like that? That is a form of art, right? The other one is business, to make it to the top, okay, where you have influence. The next one is education.
The next one is family. Then it's government. Then it's media. Then it's religion. Faith.
Pick and choose. No matter who you are in this room, make your impact in one of these seven pillars. The one he said that's the toughest one to do is media. So I'm sitting there listening to him give this message.
I said, you know what? I was, I don't know what year this was, 2007. I went to my pastor because I was like trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life. And I go up to him and said, hey, you know, I'm trying to really figure out what to do with my life. I'm making a lot of money.
I met the girl I'm about to marry. And things are going really good for me. I said, do you think maybe I'm supposed to be a pastor?
He says, listen, there's a lot of things you may be. be supposed to do. Being a pastor is not one of them.
So don't even do that. That's not for you. You go to business. That's okay. Good, man.
I got one of them out. This is great. That's not me.
So I go to the business side, right? The point is pick one and climb up. Don't try to pick every single one of them.
I chose my route, which one it was going to be for me. So how about you? What are you going to be known for? What are you going to be known for?
And by the way, you know what, you know when I knew I was going to do something big with my life? When I no longer answered this as a joke. When it wasn't like, I'm going to be, no, no, boom.
And everyone's like, and I'm like this. I'm not playing. This is what's going to happen to our life.
Sat my family down, 26 years old. We came out of a birthday Christmas party. Wasn't too happy about the way one of our relatives talked to my dad.
Sat everyone down. I said, Dad, the world has no clue who you are. They're going to have to kill me.
The world's going to know your last name. It's over. And my sister's looking at me in my ear like, Dad, look at me. The world is going to know. You last name.
They're going to know what the Dad's are. They're going to have to kill me, but they're going to know who you were. I'm going to tell the world about how special of a father you were. No one talks to my dad like that ever again.
Guys, I'm a regular guy. Nobody knew who I was. Boom. Like this. Game over.
Something switched. I wasn't the same ever again. So when you answer this and you're not joking and you're serious, the world's going to believe you.
Do you understand what I just said right there or no? And by the way, don't be afraid when people laugh at you and they say, oh, come on. Yep, that's what I'm going to do.
That's what I'm going to do. This is who I'm going to be. You make that decision. So now, you're building two brands today. Very simple.
Personal business. It's no longer building a business brand. It's you're building a personal brand and you're building a business brand.
The bigger the personal brand gets, the better your business does. If you know how to control it. The bigger your personal brand gets, the business takes advantage of it.
Let me ask you a question. If tomorrow Elon Musk leaves Tesla, do you buy more Tesla stock the next day? Why not? What's Tesla worth today?
Shy of a trillion dollars. How many of you guys drive a Tesla here? Raise your hand if you drive a Tesla. By the way, look at the hands real quick. That's crazy.
That's crazy. How many of you drive a Tesla because of Elon Musk? Raise your hand. Look at the hands. Look at the hands.
Look at the hands. What if you did not know who Elon Musk was, would you drive a Tesla? This just validated my point.
Pay attention to your personal brand. So now developing your personal brand. This is me. That's me at 18 to the right when I was wanting to be a bodybuilder. I'm in the military.
That's the kid. Okay. Later on, I had a vision on what I wanted to do.
I saw a guy like me, a regular guy with a one-pointed GPA, not from a wealthy family, changed his life because of capitalism. I said, I'm going to show everybody else to do the same as well. We grew a small insurance company with 66 agents to, we've licensed 35. We have 20,000 active agents.
But the point is we went from a small insurance company to a bigger insurance company. And you know how many people would say the following? What do you do, Pat?
Never once on my YouTube channel, if you watch my YouTube channel, you will never once see me say I run an insurance company, apply here to be an agent with us. Not one video will you ever find. I kept the two brands separate.
But what people in the industry started saying is, Pat, you're running insurance? Yeah. Man, I want to be part of insurance. Boom. My brand elevated.
The insurance company followed. And then eventually the brand gets bigger than you, where it's a standalone without you. That's the goal of where you want to be with your company because that's where the valuation goes up. So then because of this, you write books, you number one Wall Street Journal bestseller.
It's the highest ranked it's ever been with the book because the brand keeps getting bigger. So the book comes out a year and a half ago. It's selling more copies today than when it came out the first month. I don't know if you heard what I just said. The book is, you know how books typically come out, it sells the most in the first month?
The book is selling more today, a year and a half later, two years later than when the book came out two years ago. Why? The brand's gotten bigger. As the brand gets bigger, all the opportunities increase as well.
So now, content. Comedy, pranks, politics, dating, how-to, men, women, conspiracy, history, books, you choose. You can write, you can do video, you can do audio. I prefer video because video turns into everything. If you do video, you can be a podcast and you can have somebody write it.
Video goes through everything. Audio doesn't go to everything because audio can only go to audio and text. Text can only go text. It doesn't go video but video goes everywhere.
This is why Senna is hosting the event around video. So now you pick and choose your topic. Let me kind of give you an idea what happened with some of the things that we do.
So now how to increase your own brand awareness. PR, write articles, easy you can do that. Controversy, how many guys are not comfortable taking controversial positions because it may hurt your business brand?
Raise your hand. There may be a time when you can't do it. If you can't do it today, don't. And by the way... If that's not you, don't do it.
I'm very comfortable being controversial, but I don't recommend anybody being controversial if it's not your, if you are controversial and you go to sleep all night thinking about the video and you can't go to sleep, don't create it. But if it's your personality, then go at it. You can't change that anyways. That's you, right? Game changer, home run.
Like one of the things I did a few months ago, this was about a year ago, on 4th of July, I made an announcement. And I made a video and the media called me, I was on all over TV, I wanted to pay $5 million to have President Obama and President Trump sit face to face, have a three-hour conversation together, $2.5 million to the charity of Obama's choosing, $2.5 million to Trump's, what do you call it, charity of choosing. Let's get together, have a three-hour conversation. I'm willing to bet America wants to see how united the two of you are. Are you up for it?
And I put $5 million on the line. One side agreed, the other side didn't agree, but guess what? Everybody called, and everybody said, hey, let's get more eyeballs behind it. That sometimes you do a certain home run shot.
That video right there, Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 Seconds, how many of you guys have seen it? Who's seen Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 Seconds? Do you know 10 years ago what it meant for a video to go viral?
If a video got 2 million views in 24 hours, that was considered viral. You know what it is today? It's 10 million.
You got to get 10 million in 24 hours. That thing within 24 hours got 10 million views. A week later, 30 million views.
That video has been shared on so many different people. It's got about a half a billion views. That one little video that we did, Life of an Entrepreneur.
You know how much money we spent on that? $3,100. You know how much eyeballs we got? A lot more than that. Okay, so you pick creative ways to get eyeballs out there as well.
Strategic partnerships, influencer marketing, wow experiences. A couple of the things that we did is wow experiences. You own brand.
That read bookshelf, I had it custom made. I would do my videos and people would say, man, can I get that read bookshelf? That's a really cool bookshelf.
Man, I'd love to get that bookshelf. Well, then do something with your own language. If reading is your MO, like I think today the market is wide open for a book club. I think a real book club with real reviews, with somebody that reads real books on a specific topic, I think that's a seven million subscriber channel, right? If you are doing that.
But we did that as a branding. Industry research, giveaways, there's so many ways to do things. And then most important thing I'll tell you guys when it comes down to this for you to be thinking about is who you choose to, which community you choose to be a part of. People used to always say, well Pat, I don't see you at all these other events that everybody speaks.
That's intentional. Why? I see myself with this community. If I'm watered down with everything...
then I'm everybody. I'm not everybody. I relate to this person. I'm trying to get into this community.
I relate to John Rogan. John and I now have a friendship together. Okay, when I go on the podcast or we go to a fight together or we're having dinner together, there's a relationship. Pick and choose which community you eventually want to be a part of and find your way in that direction. Does that make sense to everybody?
Don't try it. And by the way, you know who that community is. And what may be for you is not for somebody else. Pick and choose that community and find a way to get into that community.
Because then automatically the market's going to brand you with that community, good, bad, or ugly. If it's you, go for it. Next, business brand.
Okay, let me give you a couple other things here. Starters. Those who haven't started and have no social media. Those who have some subscribers. Those of you that already have a platform with a million subscribers.
I'll show you what a couple things we did. Here's our formula on coming up with ideas. We sit, we ideate. Like today during lunch, Senna got an example of how we ideate. From ideate, we research.
After we research, we adjust. Then we come up with the script and the content. And then there's a call to action. We put the video together. This exact formula is how we came up with all our business videos.
Okay? Every one of them. Did you hear how I said the single mother, the mother that's going to private public school that doesn't want to go to public school homeschooling, we came up with seven episodes together?
How quickly we said those 15 points? That's how we come up with that content. Right?
So now, this was our test, step number one on testing. We came up with a content called Two Minutes with Pat. I said, I'm going to do 100 videos, two years, one video a week.
We did two years, one video a week. Only one video was two minutes. Every other video was more than two minutes.
Eight minutes, nine minutes, 20 minutes. People would complain, you're lying. This is not Two Minutes with Pat.
Okay, this is Eight Minutes with Pat. Change the time up, right? Well, we tested. Then we got clear.
We got a vision with Valuetainment. And then it became a niche. Our niche was business and entrepreneurship, right?
This was specific to what we did. And through these segments, then came a couple home runs that we hit. We got lucky.
Nothing wrong with lucky. Then you got to take a few timeouts. We've taken three timeouts so far.
One of them we took at 100,000 subscribers. One we took at 450. One we took at 2.9 million subscribers. And we're coming back to Valuetainment and creating content next week. Every once in a while you take a timeout. You come back and say, okay, what's our next move?
Then you go to the next one. So test, step number one. What's next? Test, vision, identify a niche, get lucky, take a timeout.
And repeat this process over and over again. So now. We got many different channels. Our main one's got 3.38 million subs.
Our short clip's got 275. The podcast we started's got 203. Our Valuetainment Money's got 61,000 subs. Our Russian Valuetainment's got 290,000 subs. It's all in Russian.
Our Spanish, we just started, got 12 and a half, and now we're creating content by recruiting other people. So you can do vlogs, how-tos, interviews, content partners, many different things, and now you can turn them into reels. There's so many different ways.
One video goes into so many different pieces of content. Now we've done original series, Mafia States of America, 10th series documentary, I don't know if you guys have seen that or not, Perfilis, a lot of different things. But here's the format.
So this is one way. How many of you guys do an actual podcast? How many of you actually do a podcast? Okay.
Podcast system is simple, but you've got to stay consistent. You don't do one this weekend and you do the next one seven weeks from now. You do it every week for it to work. So podcast, we do an episode.
with Jordan Peterson, gets 774,000 views. That's great. But then we do short clips that goes on other channels.
This is a two-hour interview, but we got 15 short clips out of it. The 15 short clips got 9.1 million views. Itself, the interview only got 774. The short clips got 9.1 combined, 9.9 million.
At this point, it's over 10 million views. So that is a system. You do long form.
You hit up different topics, you cut them in different short clips, and by the way, this is just YouTube videos, views. This is not TikTok. This is not Jordan Peterson putting on clips that he puts on Twitter all the time. This is not Instagram or Facebook.
You put everything together, it's about 35 million views. I'm purely giving you YouTube data. And what does this pay? I don't know, $70,000, $60,000. Some of you guys know the numbers better than I do on what this pays.
That's what the AdSense pays with YouTube. Now, some of you are saying, well, Pat, How long is it going to take me to get there? It's going to take a minute. We start in 2013. It's 2022. This is not like a one-year game plan you're going on.
This is a 10-year run that you're making a commitment to. This is not a one-year commitment. If you're trying to hope that you get lucky and a video goes viral, we didn't get any luck for three and a half years.
Nothing happened for three and a half years. Then boom, something took off, okay? And then reminders for content creators.
More intentional content that's quality equals more influence. You're able to control the narrative. Whatever the market says, you can control the narrative by creating your own content. Find the one word that works for you and what doesn't. Collaborate accordingly.
Don't prostitute your brand. Study your data. Show mistakes and vulnerability. Focus and stay consistent. Challenge people to question their views.
Know the difference between today and evergreen content. We have content that gets views. always. We have content that only gets views for 48 hours. Certain, like Amber He and what's his name, John Depp, no one's going to search for that 10 years from now.
Make sense? These are some of the things we've done to create content. Having said that, reminder at the end as we're talking about which, you know, mountain to climb, pick and choose your mountain. Take advantage of the next two to five years that's coming up. Put a goal in place to add an additional zero minimum to your net worth the next two to five years.
And I'm going to pause at this point because Senna's got a few questions to ask me. Imagine being in the room with some of today's top personal brands, video marketing experts, and online entrepreneurs. This year, you will have that chance at growwithvideolive.com. Grow With Video Live is the number one conference for building your personal brand and growing your business with.
online video. This year's speakers include Dad Ramsey, Pat Flynn, Chalene John, the Think Media team, and many more. So go to growwithvideolive.com to get your ticket today. I feel like we got to experience a really special moment too with that opening there.
I love your book, You Next Five Moves, and I kind of want to get your author notes on literally you wrote down your moves that you did to build. value attainment and I want you to capture these and we have exclusive author access to these moves and so as you write these down I want you to be thinking about this for you personally it's the end of day one let's put together a game plan let's put together our moves and so this is how 15 moves to transform a weekly segment into a channel focused on entrepreneurship now your channel could be focused on whatever you want he talked about the seven categories and there's so many but apply this to your channel so Pat Let's dive into this. And can I get your author notes on these? Sure.
All right. So spend, number one, spend time getting clear. On the vision.
Expand on that. What are some tips when we have multi-passions, we feel like we're everywhere, we're chasing shiny objects, we're comparing ourselves to others. What are your tips for getting clear, number one, on the vision?
So the challenge with social media today is there's so many different people, right? There's so many different influencers and some have a different style. Like, you know, I had a guy the other day ask me a question and he said, hey, should I drop F-bombs because I see some people who do and it's working out well for them. I said, what do you mean drop F-bombs? because maybe that's why I'm not getting any subscribership.
I said, that's not why you're not getting subscribership, okay? You don't need to start cursing. People are not coming for that. Is who do you relate to?
Like, who is you? When you watch everybody, who is you, and what is your area of expertise? For us, we sat there, and I said, this is how I talk.
This is how I tell my stories. This is my style of communication. This is what I know a lot about. This is what we want to go to next.
Here's where I see the market's lacking. And then this is us. We're sticking to here.
Versus, but I also want to talk about this, and I also want to talk about this. The more you stay like this at the beginning, the more you can go like this later on. The challenge isn't that you will never be able to go wide, because so many times content creators want to go wide very early.
That's a mistake. Stay here at the beginning. Then as you get bigger and bigger, then you have the opportunity to go this way.
The same with creating wealth. A lot of times people read books on multiple streams of income. You know, that's how you make your money today. Maybe.
But to me, I would much rather put 10 years in one industry like this, then make a few hundred million dollars or 10 million dollars or five million dollars, and then I'll go like this. But not I do this and I do this and I do this and I do this and I do this. No.
Pick one thing, stick to that, and then you'll have the biggest advantage later on. Number two is consult with our creative team to brainstorm new names for the channel. So if we're launching a new project, and I want to hit this from a couple levels, you're far along in your career. You had dollars as you started Valuetainment. But let's hit level number one.
What's your advice for somebody on that tip that is thinking, I don't necessarily have a creative team. I'm trying to sit down and maybe start building a team. Resources are maybe limited.
We have so many entrepreneurs, though, in the room. And they're maybe trying to get the mindset of investing, how to build a media company, how do I hire. Let's speak to level one and then maybe those that are further along.
So, look, I'm coming out. A guy at the airport we're talking to, a Syrian guy. He's an actor, trying to make it in Hollywood, but he's also in Miami. So we're talking, I said, you know, if I wanted to be an actor, here's what I would do. Notice how Adam Sandler makes movies with the same five guys over and over and over again, okay?
Notice how Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, how many times they did the same thing. Notice how Bradley Cook and Jennifer Lawrence keep coming. Notice how people that started making movies, John Favreau and Vince Vaughn, how many of you guys have seen Swingers? If you have ever seen that documentary before, it's a true story, by the way. Okay, you watch all these movies, right?
And you're like, okay, wedding crashers. They keep doing things together. This is the point.
If you're at the beginning and you don't have a lot of resources, pick three to five people that also want to create content and then collaborate with the technology you buy together. I'll put 500. You put 500. Let's buy a few things together. And then let's use it. And then you'll find people.
I'll be your camera guy. You be my camera guy. Hey, I'm learning how to edit.
Can you learn how to edit? There's so many. Nowadays, everything is accessible for people to learn how to edit.
I got a 10-year-old son that's learning how to edit. I mean, it's so easy today to learn, but I would probably find another group like here. This is a great place to network and meet other people.
When this event ends, don't go to your room or just go by people that you know. Go shake hands with people that you were impressed with the most. Go network here and say, hey, here's what we're thinking about doing.
What's working out for you, right? And then start a community and build on that. Today's iPhone. is what a great camera was 10 years ago. A $3,000 camera, a $5,000 camera is today's iPhone.
You can create picture-perfect content with just a phone today, and almost everybody here has got an iPhone. What about level two? You're wanting to scale up, and you're scaling value attainment. I just saw a picture of your building. You're putting the logo on the outside.
It's new levels. For those that are maybe like, okay, you're adding personalities. You're looking for talent to... make your content even better, what are just some brief tips on what you think about scaling to the next level of a media company? So the media company, it's something that it's got to matter to you because it's a very hard game.
It's not easy to be able to go do that. But if you do want to go that route for us, we're recruiting talent right now. And the talent kind of has to fit what our main core values are. The number one core value for us is capitalism. I'm concerned about America today.
I'm concerned certain arguments about certain economical systems is convincing people today. And I see a lot of people, this is a challenge a lot of times with doers. A lot of times doers are quiet. Complainers are loud.
Doers are quiet. Doers just kind of put their heads down and go build their family, take care of their wife, their husband, their kids, they're good citizens locally, and they have a lot of tolerance. So when people are talking and they're loud, they don't say anything. What they don't realize is happening is the people that are in the middle that are oblivious think the complainers are right and you're wrong for staying quiet.
So my fear... is the fact that this great system of capitalism that allows a regular guy like me to win at the highest level, at the level that I'm at right now, and other people in America, around the world, especially a guy that left Iran, people think that's a bad system. Yeah, I'm going to explain the story in a completely different way.
Okay, I'm going to go out there and make my nose in my own way to make sure people still see that capitalism, the most fairest system that's out there for people to build their dream life, whatever that may be. You may want to just make $100,000 a year being at home. You may want to make a million dollars.
You may want to be a billionaire. It doesn't matter. Capitalism allows for all those systems to be in place. Capitalism allows somebody to go with a company.
I'm reading a book right now called After Steve, meaning After Steve Jobs. It just came out a few weeks ago. And it tells a story about how many people that got stock options at Apple, that's worth 100 times today, 10 years ago when they were like, guy was in there, next thing you know he's got $18 million in stocks. Some of you guys may not start businesses, but some of you guys may team up with a Senna and the company grows and you're part of that grind together and you win that way. There's so many ways to do it.
But for us, once your messaging is clear, then the world starts realizing that you really stand up genuinely for that message, then people show up and when they do, realize that you sold the vision and the dream, you have to come through on that vision and the dream. If you just say it and it's lip service, everybody will realize it. And if you want to build that media company, it's 60 to 80 hours a week for a long time.
So if you really want to do that, cannot wait to see you guys do that part. The right person who wants to build a media company and compete at that level, nobody needs to sell you or push you away from doing it. You're going to do it and you're going to be okay with the work that it requires.
That's level two, man. Tip number three or move number three, and I love this one, is buy and study every book on marketing and media that exists. I can't believe you. I was like, wow. I mean, how many?
But I want to hear from you. What would be some of the top, first of all, of course, the principle is if you ever want to kind of move into a new vertical, study the greats. One of my favorite tips from you is there's a certain number of reviews.
What's your criteria for the books you should read? It used to be 200. Right now it's probably 500. At least 500 reviews. If I want to, like, I got two boys, two girls. If I want to learn how to raise girls, I'll buy any book on a father raising a daughter over 500 reviews. And I want to read those books.
Powerful. Okay, so what are a couple books on marketing and media that you'd recommend this room read? It's the old one, The Advertising Man. Old movie? Yes, it's the old one.
Anything with Kellogg. There's another one called Positioning, which is fascinating. Positioning is fascinating. Contagious is a must.
It's an orange book. There's so many of them. I did a whole video when I said the top ten to read on marketing, but...
You know, the thing about marketing is people think sales and marketing is the same thing. You know this. You've been in business long enough. There's a different ability in marketing versus sales.
Sales is, here's the options. Let me find out what your pressure points are. Let me get the objections.
I know the FAQs. We're getting to a point. Which one do you want to go? Do you see any reason why we shouldn't get started today?
No, we do. Marketing is storytelling. Knowing who not to compete with. You know who's going to be a waste of time, that you're going to lose that battle. Like, look at Jake Pat.
Jake Pat fought two UFC fighters. Where did Jake Pat fight him? Did he fight him in UFC rules or boxing rules?
Boxing. Why did he fight him in boxing rules? What would have happened if Jake Pat fought Ben Askren in UFC rules?
Who do you think? It's game over. So look how much of a genius he is where he's getting people to fight in his turf. So marketing is you getting your story to be in an area that you have an advantage, not your competitors. Number four is identify who we don't want to be as much as who we want to be.
What a powerful move. Yeah, very early on. I mean, I used to ask myself, do you want to get married? Do you want to have kids? What's the point of getting married?
Everybody said, I want to get married. Why do you want to get married? That's what you're saying. Everybody's getting married around me.
Who cares if everybody's getting married? Why do you want to get married? No one's ever asked me that question before. Maybe you want to ask that question.
Why do you want to get married? Half the time when you date, it's not about what you're looking for. It's what you know for a fact you ain't looking for. You know what I'm saying?
It's like, listen, after the last two, I know for a fact I'm not going to be wanting this, this, and this. All the other stuff I can tolerate. The same thing goes with business, right? Who do you not want to be?
Look at everybody in the market and say, I'm not that guy. That's not me. This isn't me.
Not who you want to be. You already know who you want to be. It's who you don't want to be.
And that part takes a little bit more work to figure out. Move number five, make the channel about the mission rather than my personality. And one of the powerful points in your talk was you're building a business and a personal brand, but you're saying make the channel about the mission.
Explain that. Yeah. So, you know, Again, if you're trying to be an individual brand alone, it's not the mission. It's got to be around you and your personality.
That's going to be fine. But if it is around building a company around the brand, it's got to be a mission. All of a sudden what happens? The following. Say for instance, how many of you guys have seen that one channel, it's called Dad How Do I?
Have you seen that channel, Dad How Do I? Have you guys heard of that channel, Dad How Do I? Do you guys know how many subscribers he got in his first month? One million subscribers in his first month.
Okay? One million. The guy's in his mid-50s, right?
So he says, hi, I don't know what his name is, we've communicated a few times. He says, today I'm going to show you what to do if you have a leak in the plumbing. This is what you do. It's a five minute video and he shows you how to do it. Today I'm going to show you what happens if your doorknob breaks down.
Here's how to fix it. You go to Home Depot, you buy this, this, this. You're just kind of like, what a sweet man. I love this man. I need to know because secretly I have no clue how to fix my plumbing when it leaks.
Other people need to watch this as well. Cool. For that, the mission is more about I wish I had a father like him growing up that taught me how to do this.
People connect with that. But to him, that's him. It's not really I'm going to take over the world. I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do that. But if you're trying to build it into a company, the mission is going to matter a lot because people connect emotionally to a mission. This book, again, I'm reading after Steve. One of the guys that's around with Apple who had a different way of looking at the company than Tom Cook, he kept trying to think about the way that Steve Jobs built a company because to him, it was all about think different versus to Tom Cook.
It's, hey, what does Spotify charge? This much? Let's pay this much.
Boom. Now we've got 20 million reoccurring people that are using using our Apple. But Steve Jobs would say, I don't care what Spotify charges. We think different. You use Apple because of this.
So Apple has lost the mission and division. It's become a little bit more logical. Even though it's a $3 trillion company right now, $2 trillion company right now, the younger generation is not saying, I want to go work for Apple.
The younger engineers coming out saying, I want to work for who? What's the younger generation say they want to work for? The younger engineers coming out of Harvard, who do they want to work for? One guy, Elon Musk. Because to him it's what?
We're going to go to Mars. We're going to go to this. We're going to go build this. We're going to, so it's like the mission, the vision, man, I want to be around this guy.
I want to work with a guy like this. That's when you're drawing people in. So yeah, the mission and the vision is going to matter if that's your vision. Number six, create a new logo, name, and website that embodies a leading educator.
This is maybe something we don't take that seriously. We just throw up some channel art. We get on Canva.
We do some things. This was a serious move for you. Explain that a little bit.
Yeah, again, if it matters. My son picks out his clothes. My middle son, my second son. My oldest son, he'd go out with sandals.
He could care less what he wears. I'm not even kidding with you. My middle son, he goes, he takes my cologne, he does this, he puts the gel.
perfectly, puts his necklace out, he puts the belt, tucks his shirt in, perfect nice shoes, and he walks out like this, okay? To him, he's a brand. To my oldest son, he could care less.
Here's the point. If your logo excites you because there's a story behind it, that's what matters. It excites me because the logo we have with the lion, the Valuetainment logo, it's a lion and an eagle. It's tattooed on Mario's forearm here.
It's a story about a fiction book I wrote that we're publishing right now. It's taken me 11 years to finally feel comfortable publishing this book because it's a story about me being from Iran, Assyrian. It's depth to me.
You'll feel it because it matters to me. But if it's like, listen, I really don't care about what kind of clothes I wear, don't worry about it. Neither do people either.
You may sell people in a different way. So logo and color only matters if you're that kind of a person. If you're not, don't overthink it. And maybe not a logo, if you don't have to overthink it, if that's not a value, but what do you think?
about the value of picking the right name, especially as a content creator in business or in any niche, as well as securing your website as a to-do list in these moves? It has to matter to you. Again, it goes back to you.
Okay, folks, on three, scream out your favorite name in the world that you gave to your kid, or if you don't have a kid right now, you would name your kid that name because you love it. You ready? On three.
One, two, three. Awesome. Okay.
For me, my favorite name in the world is first Pat, Gabriel, but Dad, Pat's me, Gabriel's my dad, but Dad's my last name, my second name, my wife and I love this name, Dylan. Do you know why I love Dylan? Does anybody love the name Dylan?
I love Dylan because I love Luke Perry. The guy was a stud, Luke Perry, right? I like this Dylan guy, right? Everybody had their own character. To me, Luke Perry was like the bomb, right?
Chill, cool, you know? I like the name Dylan. I like Dylan.
My daughter's name is Senna Rose Bedevid. You know why Senna? Because I love Ayrton Senna, the race car driver from Brazil. It's spelled the same way as a race car.
I've watched his documentary over a hundred times. I'll sit at midnight and watch the documentary of Senna and get the chills all over. Anytime I want to compete, anytime I'm in a place where I'm just kind of like, we're going to do something big, I put the documentary at night because my blood is boiling.
So my daughter's name is Senna Rose, but Dad Rose is my grandma's name. Senna is the race car driver's name. Everything has a meaning to it.
But to me, to you, if your company's name has meaning to you, It's going to have meaning to everybody else because of the way you sell it to them. Make sense? It's the best way I'll explain company names. Number seven is attend social media industry conferences and learn different strategies. Wow, you're making the right move.
And I just want to ask on that one, how do you decide you're super busy? You're running two companies at an incredibly high level, putting in a ton of hours. How much time do you budget for learning? And. conferences or continued education?
Regularly. I don't have a choice. Here's why.
This is my interpretation of what you just said. The only way, like I, in my mind, I'm convinced I'm not yet ready for the next level, whatever the next level is for me, right? In my mind. So if I want to get to the next level, I have to meet a new PBD, new version of myself. Okay.
So this year, I look at the weaknesses of our businesses and our management team, bless you, on the insurance side, on my sales side, and by Tom and home office side, right? By the time it was a startup, insurance, I hired five C-suite executives. They all have fancy degrees.
They all work for big insurance companies. And now they're coming to work for a guy like me. And I hired them all at the same time.
It's problematic when you hire five C-suite alpha people who are all very good at what they do, who have all been part of a publicly traded company, and you put them in, now you've got seven of them, and they're working with me. So I looked at everybody, and I started seeing that people are having a hard time having crucial conversations together. And I said, whose fault is this?
I said, okay, no problem. Here's what I'm going to do. There's an organization in Utah called Crucial Learning, okay? I used them 15 years ago or 12 years ago. Loved their program.
They're $15,000 to use. By the way, I don't make money if you call these guys. They're $15,000 to use, and then you've got to fly everybody in, and you've got to get a hotel room. It's around $30,000.
Two weeks ago, Tuesday, Wednesday, I brought them in. They trained 20 of my employees of Valuetainment for two days straight. I was in the room from eight o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon. The next day, Thursday, Friday, I flew them out to go to Addison, Texas. First one was in Fort Lauderdale.
Second one was in Addison, Texas. They trained all my C-suite executives and my directors for eight to four, two days in a row, because we needed to learn how to have crucial conversations together. Then I'm taking all my top 20 earners, sales leaders, and I'm putting them in the room. Then I'm going to have my 40 VPs take their 20 best salespeople.
sit them in the room to learn how to have tough conversations together. Because 90% of the reasons why companies don't grow and there's challenges in any organization, people do not know how to talk to each other in a tough way. They don't know, so they do the biggest mistake, which is what?
Don't even talk to each other. Do you know what happened ever since? By the way, and every time I've done these types of meetings, which I do a lot, the first person everybody wants to have a crucial conversation with is who? With me. They're like...
Well, Pat, you know, I want to have this conversation. I just want you to know I respect the work you do. You're a great leader. However, there's a couple areas I'm like, okay, give it to me, right? But I'm proud of them because they're learning how to do this.
So to go back and to answer your question for you, 10 years ago when we were going to do creating content, I wasn't yet convinced. We went to a social media world. I don't know what it was.
It was in San Diego, and one of the guys, his name was Michael Hyatt. You may know Michael Hyatt. He's from Tennessee.
He used to run Thomas Wilson, I want to say. He was the CEO. And he got up and he gave a message. and about podcasts, and I said, you know what, I understand that. And another guy named John Lee Dumas spoke.
He was an Army guy, and I'm an Army guy. I said, if these guys are doing it, you know what, let me consider this. So they played a role in my life where maybe other people played a role in your life. So these investments, as you make these investments, everyone's going to have some kind of shift in you, but hopefully you get the right messaging to leave. But for me, it's ongoing.
That's probably never going to stop for the rest of my life. But number eight is start learning the language of media and what needs to be tracked. Of course, in your session, you hit a lot of this, but I'd love your author notes on learning the language of media, but also for you what matters when it comes to tracking in value attainment. Everything is data. So for me, Seven years ago, 2014 will be what?
Eight years ago, Tom Ellsworth, who is a guy that introduced me to Vistage, and I was part of Vistage, he was the guy that my pastor was like, you got to meet this guy, Tom Ellsworth, smartest guy in the church. I meet Tom, and then one guy whispers, he says, you know who that guy is? I said, I have no clue who he is.
He gave $660,000 to the church last year. I said, did he give $660,000? Yeah.
10%, 6.6, okay, respect. How you doing? Good to meet you, you know?
It's like, so then we start talking. I'm like, this guy's brilliant. So he was part of a company called Jamdad. They sold it to EA Sports for $680 million.
So we're sitting there, we're talking to each other, and while we're having this conversation, he starts mentoring me about media and all this stuff. 2014, he says, Pat, you need a BI. I said, BI? We need to hire a business analytics expert.
Like, how much are they? 60 grand. Nope, I'm good.
Not right now. We can't hire them. Just trust me, you need to hire a business analyst. I said, we can get one, eight bucks an hour. I mean, you understand what I'm saying?
It's like, listen, just trust me, it's 60 a year minimum. We have a good one, we'll get them. I said, okay, whatever, we can hire one.
He says, but my recommendation, we hire three. He says, we hire three, we keep two, and then one of them stays with us, that's the best one, we give him a raise. I'm like, so you want me to do 180?
It's not really 180. It's just I'm telling you. I'm like, so I said, okay, whatever. I'm not convinced, guys. I'm very skeptical at this time because in my mind, I'm doing 15 grand a month. And there's better places I can invest 15 grand a month in my eyes, right?
He says, just trust me. You hired me to be your president. Let me do my job.
I said, fine, whatever. So he goes. He hires the three.
Brings them in. Three weeks into it, these guys come to my office. They say, hey, Mr. Bedevid, we noticed a couple things we want to bring to your attention. Did you know that when it comes down to your ratios of licensing to how many new agents you bring, did you know that this state does the best ratios because of this person and that person? And did you know this state that we think are the best in the company, they're actually the worst in getting people licensed?
I said, let me see this thing right here. That's pretty sick. Is this serious?
Tom, this is big. I told you. So the next thing you know, I get on a call and I start going and visiting those offices.
Licensing came up. We doubled licensing. We went from 500 to 1,200. I'm like, and he said, hey, Mr. Dad, we have three other things we'd like to share. Whenever you have some time, we want to show this to you.
And I would come in. So if you look at this here, when it comes onto this data, you notice that pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. And I'm like, oh my God, that's awesome. So then one day I get out of control.
I'm like, you know what I want you to pull up? What? I want you to pull up which, this is kind of weird stuff, you're going to hear from me. I want you to pull up which Zodiac sign makes the most money in the company. So I'm thinking to see how good these guys are, whether they can pull it up.
No problem. Give us one day. Like these guys are serious.
The next day, do you know? And I'm thinking, because I'm a Libra, I'm like, for sure it's going to be Libras at the top. So I say, tell me who's at the top.
He says, well, the best sign for people who make the most money is Aries. I said, what? I said, what's two?
Cancer. What's three? You know who was last?
Libra was last. I was so dissapointed. I'm like, this doesn't work. This is not accurate.
I said, throw this trash away. I don't want to look at it again. But the point is, everything became data because I all of a sudden, it's like somebody put on a lens and I see a new dimension I never saw before. Data allows you to adjust and improve in areas and not put time in areas that you're not getting the return and put more time into areas you are getting a return.
Same thing that I did with the insurance company, we did the same exact way with Valuetainment. And obviously the data shows what happened with us, because without data, you're not gonna improve. So yes, great point on the data. If you're not doing it, highly recommend it.
Well, there's eight of your next moves. Can we give it up for Pat Dad? Hey, if you love that video, then you're gonna love the interview I recently recorded with Pat Dad going deeper into some of his tips. So just click or tap the screen to check out that video. smash like if you got value.
And my name is Senna Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. We'll talk soon.