Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

Let me tell you a story before I share my review of this fascinating book by Pat.If you met me 5 years ago and told me that one day:- I will be running a million dollar company- I will be reading 4-5 hours a day- I will be spending tens and thousands of dollars on books/education- I will wake up at 4:30 AM sharp day in and day out- I will be working out every single day religiouslyI WOULD HAVE LAUGHED AT YOU.I would have laughed hard and long at you. But, all that changed when I first found a video from Patrick Bet-David.I had just started making some money online selling products and I was searching for something related to money on YouTube and I found one of his videos about "becoming wealthy."I can still remember the video was about 10-12 minutes long and I watched it few times. Patrick ideas resonated with me and then for the next few months I watched every single video on his channel that had anything to do with making money and business.I wish I had a friend, brother, uncle or someone like Patrick in my life because my life would have taken a complete different path.The ideas and strategies Patrick shares on his channel and in this book are things that if applied will change your life.Let me share ideas I learned from Patrick and his videos/book.1. Thinking - Learning how to think is a lost art. 99.9% of population don't know how to think, they know "WHAT TO THINK" but not "HOW TO THINK" learning how to think is one of the most important tools that every single human should learn. But we are in a period where most people would rather get shot than to learn how to think. It sounds so easy but yet its one of the hardest things. The reason being is that if your brain is cluttered with garbage how are you supposed to think of gold? This theme alone is worth the price of this book. Teaching people how to think should be a course at high schools.How do you go about thinking? I suggest you start by reading works of David Hume/Kant/Plato to get a gist of how other great minds think and process information. The reason I suggest these three is that you will look at the world COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY afterwards in terms of how people come to conclusion on a given topic. So basically an understanding of epistemology. My life changed when I realized that.2. Decision Making - Most people make decision without giving it any thought. If you wanna be successful then learn how to make superior decisions in your life. The best way to go about decision making is to have a checklist/framework that you go through every time you have to make a decision. Pat shares one of his strategies in the book however I have found that everyone's different and you can use what works for you. One of my favorite trick is to always look at the "CONS" of whatever I am trying to do. Let's say I wanna buy a car I would go on Google and look for all the "cons" associated with that car. Because the joy of something doesnt last as long as the pain of something does. Another quick strategy is to look at the best case, ok case and worst case of your decision. The best book on decision making is Thinking Fast and Slow and a video by Charlie Munger on YouTube (The Psychology of Human Misjudgement) a must watch.3. Learn how to hire - Most people hire people that are cheap just to save money but if you wanna beat competition you gotta hire best of the best, they are the best for a reason. Imagine Patrick having in your team. He's gonna charge you a lot but one advice of Pat can change the course of your business and make you 1000x more. Learning how to hire the best is another skill that you should learn. This one is hard to learn but Pat has a video on his channel where he shares some great strategies and also in his book about building teams. Having a great team will take you to your goal 100x faster. I learned this the hard way.4. Knowing yourself - Before you know the world you gotta know yourself. I personally found the questions Pat shares in his book is one of the best to know who you are. For instance, what drives you? Is it competition or anger or to prove someone wrong? The day you know what drives you to work is the day you will make some of the biggest gains. For instance, I could never ever wake up 4:30, I tried everything but nothing worked until I watched one of Pat's video where he talked about "motivation" it changed my life. For most people they try to get motivated through quotes which gives you a short boost of motivation but then it wears off. To be motivated 247365 you gotta get that fire in your belly and that fire will only ignite if you have a cause. In my case it was to prove a girl that I was never ever ever ever born to be average. When I think about her then waking up at 4:30 or working days without sleep means nothing. It happens naturally. I do not need to be motivated I am motivated 24/7. I do not need anyone to tell me to read 500 pages book I just read it. This is one of the best parts of the book. Pat also has a video about this which everyone should watch. That video alone is worth millions of dollars because if you can be motivated 247365 then you will eventually get on top of Mount Everest.5. Strategy - This book's parallel to chess makes perfect sense, for instance I can help anyone become a strong chess player (given they know the basics) within 1-2 days. There is no magic to it but that in chess what happens is that beginners learn tricks/openings and spend too much time on doing tactical puzzles but the problem is that in real game of chess vs a strong chess player you are unlikely to get into a tactical position where you can play your tactical move that you learned in practice. Worst of all, you won't even know you are in a tactical position.The remedy to all this is a simple strategy. Instead of learning openings or tactical positions what if you lure in your opponent to a specific position for which you know all the tactical ideas. This is one of the MOST PROFOUND IDEAS in chess. When you play vs a great chess player they lure you into positions that they know inside out.Magnus doesn't know 900 million different chess positions but he knows 90 positions INSIDE/OUT and he has practiced those positions for hours, day in and day out. So when he plays a game all he does is that he gets his opponent into those positions. Of course at grandmaster level this is hard because his opponents are as strong as he is but you get the idea.Why I am telling you this?Because in life/business it's pretty much the same thing. Instead of getting into a position that your opponent knows better try to get into a position that you know better.Let me give you few examples:Let say you are going on a date, you can just go on about it as you usually do and have a small probability of success (whatever is success to you) or you can plan a strategy ahead of time so that you get into topics/places/positions where you know what to say/what to do in order to increase your chances of getting what you want. That means from booking the exact table at a restaurant to the exact time to the exact food you will order to exact drink you will drink. For instance, in my business no matter which city I go to for meeting the first thing I do is find the restaurant where my meeting will take place and I find the people that work there and hand one of them who will be there at that hour $10-$20 and tell him/her that I will be here tonite and if they could do XYZ (whatever I want them to do to set in the position I want the conversation to start with). This works like magic for dating and meetings because in every case I start in a position where I have the upper hand to set in the mood/tone.This strategy of getting people into a position where you have got the upper hand is something that your next five moves should be all about. This book will help you do that.6. Power Plays - If you are dealing with anything related to business and people in power then you have to understand that unless you are a born Machiavellian, you are going to face a lot of stress. You don't get on top just like that and once you are on top you don't stay on top just like that. I am not saying you have to do illegal stuff but you have to learn Power Plays. Pat shares some of his ideas and I also recommend you read 48 Laws of Power. A must read for anyone who wants to learn more about human nature. A great companion to that book would be Michael Korda's Power. Do not believe what people tell you about the game on top. The game on top is dominated by sharks, you can be a seal and get eaten or you can be a shark yourself not to bite others but to protect yourself from others.I could write forever about Patrick and his ideas and how he changed my life but that would take thousands of pages, so I recommend you get this book and learn the art of thinking ahead of competition.By the way, I have never met Patrick but it's one of my goals to meet him one day and shake his hand and thank him for changing my life. I would never be where I am today had I not found Valuetainment on YouTube.Patrick you are a god send my friend and you are a great man on a great journey.

Just a quick note: I have both the audiobook and hardcover versions and they are both very good. Patrick is a great narrator and I enjoyed his other two audiobooks, especially "Doing The Impossible: The 25 Laws for Doing The Impossible," as well.This book is an excellent book to help those are uncertain about what they want out of life, how to start a business, maintain a business, and survive in a business environment. The book emphasizes self awareness, knowing what you ultimately want out of life and a job, and after that how to structure your career path around that if you are someone that want to run a company by giving the reader 5 moves to think about. The book is well thought out and recommendations are backed by life experience, but throughout the book the reader is told to use their own judgment and not to just take the recommendations as orders. The 5 moves are broken down as follows with some highlights I picked:1. Know yourself: be self aware; know who you want to be, what you want in life. Do you want to be a CEO, intrapreneur (someone who is not necessarily a founder but a key member of building a company without being the CEO), an influencer, etc.? What drives you--job promotions, lifestyle, fame, helping others?My favorite part of the book is actually here, right at the beginning. Patrick talks about how a heart attack his father had helped guide him to removing distractions out of his life and to focus on bettering his life and his family's life. Although based on the "Know yourself and what drives you" theme, it is obvious we all have a desire to have a nice life, and we all will have different definitions for what that may be. It is important to realize we have competing desires with our one for a better life, no matter how seemingly innocent they may be, and that we need to remove these competing desires as barriers to do the work and make the sacrifices necessary to fulfill our desire for a better life.2. Ability to reason: the book speaks about great processors of information and gives 8 traits for them, but the first two are the ones that I find most important--ask lots of questions and don't care about being right or wrong initially, just in reaching the truth. I appreciate the frankness here because many people, not all, try to act like they know everything and have to be correct, both in business and in life, and they end up hurting their relationships and prospects of success do this. If those people would focus on improving and not worrying about how not knowing everything appears to others they would succeed more.3. Building the right team: understand your teams desires; talks about firing people, which as someone who may not be a CEO but has worked with coworkers who should have been fired, I am glad he does not shy away from doing what is necessary for the good of the team; communicate expectations--you'd be surprised how many people/bosses do not do this and act angry when something is not completed at the time or in the fashion of their desire. By communicating expectations, the level of urgency and detail required for the task is conveyed and the employee knows exactly how to prioritize their work--for some bosses I've had, if they said to do something in an open ended fashion, they wanted progress to be done on it, but for the day to day tasks to take priority; others wanted it done and handed over to them with a quick turn around regardless of other tasks. People are not mind readers and clear communication can help avoid unnecessary friction.4. Strategy to scale--raising capital; accountability; building systems for measurement and making things systematic to easily train the next wave of talent. My favorite parts were the respect shown for predictive analytics and recommendation of codifying your business methods to more easily train the next wave of talent in your company. If more company's took this approach, they'd save tons of time and grief (I have been on the receiving end of the grief due to poor training).5. Power plays: beat the dominant entities of your industry and control your narrative and brand. This one has quite a few points to get into, but one thing I will like to point out is the point of not prostituting your brand. Patrick lives this. He does not talk about the company he runs, PHP, much on his Valutainment YouTube channel. He uses it when he draws on his life experiences, yes, but he does not promote it. This built my trust in him and I will vouch that he seems like an honest person that knows how to respect his viewers/readers/customers time and will not jerk them around.He will make mention in the book to use your own judgement and not necessarily just go by what he says. He does not try to come across as a know it all, but as someone who has gone through many different situations, learned many things, come up with strategies for putting a situation in his favor, and being highly curious and willing to evolve and change his thinking. If you are looking for guidance on figuring out how you be self aware, aware of coworkers/employees desires, how to build a company, maintain it, and grow it, this will be a solid and perhaps even indispensable source of knowledge for you.

I have read a lot of books but none have given so much direction and insight on all aspects of building a team to scaling a team. It is an easy read and worth reading a second time in order to receive ideas you missed the first time reading it. The book is filled with examples and other books to properly move your business from A to Z.Love it and Recommend to EVERY business owner in any fieldJudi