It's April 23, 1997. I'm on my third day of boot camp in South Carolina. I had just joined the U.S. Army. I'm around people I have no clue about. I know nobody. I just got into my third fight in three days in the laundry room. And it was one of those fights where both of us are bloody. It was terrible, a very bad fight. It was his first fight; it was my third fight. My drill sergeants pulled me in. There were five of them sitting there. I'm on this side. And they said, Son, we just want to tell you something. Military's not for you. You need to go back home. I said, What are you telling me? They said, You don't need to be in the military. Do you even want to be here? You do not want to be here. I'm 17, 18 years old.

And I'm quiet. I'm not saying anything. They said, Look, here's what we're going
to do to you. Typically when this happens, this is your
third fight in three days, we absolutely do a dishonorable discharge, and we send you home. Here's what we want you to do. You have tonight to think about your decision. We think you're not made for the military. We want you to go and make as many calls as
you want. Tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m., you need to
tell us if you're staying in or going home. Our suggestion to you is you need to go home,
son. That's what you need to do. This is not for everybody, and it's definitely
not for you. So I go to my room, and I started making all
the calls. They gave me a room with a phone. I started calling all of my buddies. Every one of my friends, girlfriends, everybody
said, Pat, come home.

Every single person said, Pat, come home. I was fun. I was the guy you wanted to go out with. I was that guy. And I go to my bunk, and I had a friend of mine, Wiggins. I'll never forget Wiggins. He was from Texas at that time. And I had three songs that I would listen to on repeat. Back then it was a Walkman. So I would listen to my Walkman. And for the entire night, I didn't sleep. I listened to three songs. And all I thought about - I kept thinking about this decision. One song was Usher, You Make Me Wanna had just come out. The other song was by Blackstreet. I vividly remember these albums and these songs I listened to. It was Blackstreet, the song was Don't Leave Me Girl. [singing Don't leave me girl. . . ] And the third song was by Brian McKnight [singing - Until I feel your heartbeat pounding

next to mine. Those three songs, all night, were all I listened to. And I was very emotional. It was a defining moment in my life. I wanted to go back and party. It was the prime time of my life and partying, 17, 18. I didn't tell my dad. I didn't tell my family. I woke up in the morning. I went to the sergeants and said, I'm staying in. I'm going to make this work. And let me tell you what happened. A part of it was that now that they know that I'm in, all they thought about was finding ways to break me, to make sure I got out of the Army. They made me do more pushups. One day I was doing pushups, it was like our fourth day, I couldn't salute. Like I literally had to go like this to salute. I couldn't salute. My shoulders were gone.

They were wiped out. My legs. I had lost 24 pounds in two weeks because we kept running and running. Bet-David, four more miles! Bet-David, four more miles! And I can't stand running. Why am I telling you these stories? Everybody wants to be a deca-millionaire. Everybody says, Pat, how does it feel having all these millions of dollars and everybody around the world knows you and... All this stuff that they say. Yeah, that's great. You take the military out - I'm not who I am today. For everybody it's different. I'm here with 144 other entrepreneurs. I'm in Harvard, obviously, right now, Harvard Business School OPM program, and everyone I talk to, they typically have a one-year, two-year extreme hardship in their lives that they have to go through. For me, it was the military. Obviously, I lived in Iran - lots of hardship. I went through war.

Lots of hardship. I lived in a refugee camp. Lots of hardship. Parents divorced, streets, all that - lots
of hardship. Military, lots of hardship. And then it built me to the man that I am.
I was at 21, and then from there the rest was figuring out my way and what I wanted to do
with my life. So I learned 19 things from the military that
helped me become a millionaire. And I want to tell you about it today. We can replace millionaire with deca millionaire,
with entrepreneur, with CEO, whatever you want to call it - the title, for the sake
of the title, we used millionaire because somebody asked me, Pat, I want to be a millionaire. I'm thinking about joining the military. Mario what was the kid's name? DreFromTheBay, Dre, I want to give you some
love because this whole message was promoted by you. Dre said, Hey, Pat.

I'm currently in high school. I'm planning on taking a year off after I
graduate to serve in the military to learn discipline and work ethic for my future career. Can you please make a video on your experience
in the military and maybe some advice on points that follow. So let me get right into it. I learned 19 things that military helped me
with. And I'm going to get right into it and I'll
go through them very quickly. #1: Managing Chaos. Military was all about managing chaos. Everything's happening at the same time. You have to find a way to be poised and we
saw people that couldn't handle it. I remember one of the exercises that we had
right before you graduate is you have to low crawl under these wires while above you semi-automatic
weapons are shooting right above you. And that's all you're hearing. It's late night. It's raining. It's heat. It's humid. It's terrible.

And you're low crawling. With this noise. That's chaos. You're panicking. You've never been through that before. What do I do? There was a kid on the base that same day,
there was a kid on the base that had to do this. He couldn't handle it. He stood up. Boom! Done deal. That's kind of like in business. You feel like there's so much chaos in business,
you don't know how to handle it. All of a sudden you make one mistake in business,
one stupid mistake, you lose your entire business because you don't know how to manage chaos. That's one thing I learned from the military. #2: Mission Driven Military is all about mission. We have a mission and here's what we have
to accomplish. Entrepreneurship, if you can figure out a
way to make your business or the money part, you want to be a millionaire, you want to
be a successful CEO and entrepreneur, mission

driven. What is your mission? You've got to go complete this mission. You cannot leave a mission and say, Oh, whatever. No. Mission driven, let's complete this mission. What is the mission? Let's go complete this mission. That's exactly how the military is, and exactly how it is with business as well. #3: Learning how to get a lot done with limited resources. You know a lot of times people will say, Well, Pat, I wish I had money. I don't know a lot of entrepreneurs that started off with ten million bucks and somebody game them the money unless it was their parents. I wasn't one of them. I'm not coming from a family that's very wealthy. My mother had to go back to Iran because she ran out of money, and my dad was a cashier at a 99 cent store. You know, both of them were good people. My dad was the hardest working person I know.

But we didn't have any money. So I started off my business by making sales,
$100 commission, $200 commission, $500 commission, $1,000 commission, and I saved, right? And then I was able to open up my own office,
and I was able to hire staff, and an assistant, and all this other stuff. But in the military, you've got to learn how
to make things work on limited resources. Like think about it. We go to the field and you're going to whatever
is going on, there's a mission, a war, there's something going on, and you're living in the
Humvee or you have a small amount of water, and you have a little bit of food, and you
have a couple of food that you're eating, and how long is this going to last. And we've got to make sure that our rations
are going to be lower and this. . . And the same thing goes with business.

Sometimes you've got to work with a limited amount of resources that you have. Learning how to multi-task. I know a lot of times there are a lot of people that talk about multi-tasking is not a possible thing to do. The Power of Habit, which is a great book, it's one of my favorite books of all time that I've read for business. But I'm here to tell you, I hate to say it, there's multi-tasking in the military. You can't just say this, All I'm doing is standing here on guard, and I'm just watching over there. Really? While you're doing this, you're speaking to somebody, and you're waving people, while you're looking over there, and you're going like this and like that, and you have to go lower and you have to position yourself, and you have to drink some water to stay hydrated. That's multi-tasking.

Business is the same thing. You may be doing something here, while you've got to do this over here, and while you're handling this. How do you do that? Well, I don't know how to multi-task! I'm sorry. In the world of business, there's going to be many instances that you have to somewhat learn to multi-task, especially during the survival phase, until you can get a ton of support and match up the areas you're not good with, with a support team. Hire staff, hire your support team, hire your team. And then you're able to do what you're very good at. But during the survival phase, you're going to be multi-tasking quite a lot, as you're building your business. I learned that in the military. #5: Learning how to perform under pressure. I think sometimes people are afraid to perform under pressure, and more importantly, let me say this to you.

You'll learn a lot from anybody on how they perform under pressure. Now keep this in mind. Let me say this. And stay with me. I'm going to say it slowly. Nobody performs better under pressure than they do when there is no pressure. Let me explain. Robert Horry was known as a great three-point shooter. He won seven championships, right? Great. When do you think he shoots better threes? In practice, without anybody looking at him? And there's nobody guarding him? Or in the game, with three seconds left on the shot clock. Of course, practice. However, here's the difference. There are people that perform better under pressure than other people perform under pressure. They're both under pressure, one outperforms the other one. I can tell you in the world of business, you've got to learn how to perform under pressure better. When you're in war, when you're military, when you're a soldier, you learn how to perform

under pressure. The same thing goes with sports. Some of you have played sports, organized
sports, and you know how it is when it's last minute and your coach is telling you, You've
got to do this, we're counting on you, and all this. And some people can't handle being counted
on. We're counting on you, this is good. You've got to make this. . . . Oh my God, everyone's counting on me. What if I don't do it? I'm going to be a loser. See? That's when you learn about somebody, when
they have to perform under pressure. And that's when the leader is born, during
moments like that. I'm a by-product of that 17, 18 year old kid. I would give anything to have a camera watching
myself at that 17, 18 year old guy, when the five drill sergeants gave me the option to
come back home and party and said, You are.

not worth staying in the military. I'd love to see that. This 37-year-old version of PBD is built because
of that 17, 18-year-old version. PBD made a decision during pressure time, just like you're
going to make some decisions during pressure time. And while most people give up during those
pressure type situations, you're not. You're going to stick through. And it's going to be difficult, but you're
going to stick through. If you do, obviously, that's where the payoff
comes. #6: Military taught me how to manage risk. Everything is about managing risks. What is managing risks? We flank left, we have a risk here, because
the enemy's on the other side, and we have to figure out what they're going to be doing. If we go this way, we're looking at mountains.
We're going to need to climb so we may get over the mountains, but we're going to be
tired.

So which risk is more important? If we go straight, we don't really know what's
going on if it's straight. So if enemy's on both sides, we're going to
be in right in the middle, and that's ambush time. We're done. No matter how we flank, and however we go
through it, we're a done deal. So what risk... Do we stay here? The risk if we stay here is they attack us. What if we retreat? If we retreat, then they're going to be known
that we're afraid. You have four choices. Five choices. Left, straight, right, stay, retreat. Do I send somebody? There's risk. The same thing with business. Do I go here? Do I go here. What do I do here? You're managing risk as a business owner. And to create wealth, it's all about managing
risks. Now keep in mind, I want you to understand
this part.

Everything I'm telling you, you're seeing
the final product, and you're saying, Oh my God, Patrick speaks and I feel like... This is the final product of me having
to go through those types of situations, just like you're going to need to go through those
types of situations. #7: Thick skin. And I'll tell you what part of the military
taught me thick skin. Oh my gosh, the military's sarcastic. I mean, everybody. I was in a motor pool, which means I was a
Hummer mechanic. If you're in a motor pool, some of the most
sarcastic people in the military work in the motor pool. We're under the Humvee and I was working on
16 Hummers that were assigned to me, and then I had five LMTVs and FMTVs, and I was a Hammer
driver, these massive Hammer drivers that we would go, which was fascinating.

That's what I worked on. Those were assigned to me. So mechanics are out there, and just saying the most random things to each other. When I was in boot camp, can you imagine your drill sergeant saying the following thing to you: Hey boy. Hey boy. You got a girl at home? I do. Do you know who she's with right now? Your best friend. Your best friend right now. She's moaning right now his name. Your girlfriend. And you have access to no phone for two months. Figure that one out. It's like you're mentally off for two months. That's what they're telling you. And they're writing you letters, and your letters you get a chance to write on Sundays to send them out. Can you handle that? That's the thick skin part. So let's take that and let's talk about business. Oh my gosh! Somebody's said I'm not interested in your product.

Someone quits. Are you kidding me? That's thick skin. Sensitivity. This person screamed at me. This person hung up on me! This person closed the door on me. This person said this behind my back. This person bought the product then he cancelled, and then they told everybody I'm terrible! Thick skin. Thick skin. You need thick skin. Military teaches a lot of thick skin, and you need thick skin to be a millionaire. #8: Tribe We learned how to have a tribe. Everything for me was about camaraderie. My boy Bradford, McElroy, Felix, there's a long list of these names, Chip, Klingerman... these were brothers of mine. I mean, I'm talking brothers of mine is what they were. And we had amazing camaraderie. We had amazing camaraderie together. Amazing! I'm talking we had a tribe that we'd go out and everybody backed everybody up.

Let me explain to you what I mean by this. It is an element of gang type of a thing in
the military. You become a gang. I was part of the 326 engineers at the 101st
Airborne Division Air Assault. It was part of HHC, and our crew, me and Bradford,
my buddy. If anybody said, like one day Bradford came
back to the chow hall, and we're sitting there, and we were so competitive. Who could do more pushups? I'd beat him in pushups. Who could run better? He was a much better runner than me. Who could do more sit ups? Who was a better wrestler? He was a phenomenal wrestler, that's what
Bradford was. Love. Our relationship - we were - if we bled, you
would think we were related to each other. One day we got into it. And I said, Bradford, let's go to the racquetball
court.

We went to a gym. And we went in there, and then I said, You ready? Yes, ready. Two girls were playing racquetball. I said, Do you mind if we use the racquetball court for about 10, 15 minutes? Sure. I said, Bradford, you're upset with me? Yeah, I'm upset with you. I said, Let's take it out on each other and see what we can do. Alright, no problem. Ready, go? Boom. We started. We started with pushing. The wrestling. Then swinging. Then punching. Then bleeding. Then hugging. Then leaving. Then some other people made fun of us and then fighting them. That's the tribe. Now I'm not telling you to go start fights with everybody. I'm not endorsing that. I'm 18 years old at that time, and there's a very high level of knuckleheadness in that.

Okay? I'm not endorsing any of that right now to
you. The point I'm trying to make to you is we
learn how to create a tribe. In the world of business, when you build a
business, this is my suggestion -- there's many ways you could do it. For me, I love a team that is committed to
one another, that's willing to work their tails off to make sure the mission becomes
a reality, and if there's a tribe component to it, it is more important for everybody
to be able to count on one another. You learn that in the military. I learned that in the military. Again, a part of that you learn in sports
as well. Next is leadership. You learn how to lead very, very quickly. You have no choice but to lead, because everything
in the military is leadership. So you're either going to lead, follow, or
get out of the way. You've heard that many times.

But there was a development process to it. So the whole get out of the way part is a
saying. You say get out of the way, but at the same
time, you're developing the people. I was being developed. I was developing other
people. People were being developed. We were all being developed in the military. There was a leadership development component
in the military that was constantly taking place. Leadership. Next is learning other cultures. And let me add something on the leadership
side. A lot of times people have somebody in the
company that they say, Oh, I just don't like this person. Boom, boom. They're gone. But there's no leadership development. Now, keep in mind, there are certain people
that don't fit the culture. If somebody doesn't fit the culture, there's
a wrong hiring process or the person that was getting the job lied during the hiring
process and they were BS-ing you a lot.

And many people will do that. Let's take that part out. Let's say that doesn't exist. Everything was right. And you hired properly. And they said everything properly. Great. And they have a few things they need to do, but they fit the culture very well. It's on you to lead and develop them. You can't just give up on people and say, Screw it. You know what? You're fired. That's leadership development. That's the same exact way it's in the military. We don't give up on our peers; we develop them, right? Next, learning other cultures. I had to learn how to deal with folks from Mississippi, who were Caucasian. I had to learn how to deal with Mississippi folks who were African American. I had to deal with folks who were from North Dakota, a certain faith I had never heard before. I had to learn how to deal with people from Utah.

I had to learn how to deal with people from New York, who were Puerto Rican. I had to learn how to deal with different gangs in the military. It attracts a lot of former gang members. I had to learn how to deal with people that looked to me and said, Wait a minute. Now keep in mind that my look - I was shaved and Middle Eastern. Where are you from? Iran. You know, misconceptions. I had to learn how to deal with misconceptions. You're from Iran? You're Middle Eastern. So what. Why are you in the U.S. Army? Misconceptions. I had to learn how to deal with those ethnicities and nationalities. In the world of business, you know, my company looks like the United Nations. We have every single nationality out of our 2400 agents, you name a nationality, we pretty much have it. We have all the different faiths, we have all the different backgrounds.

What are we going to do? Say no, we only work with this type of. . . No. I want to be able to work with everybody. The
military taught that part to me in a tremendous way. Next, adapting. You learning how to adapt to the situation
that you have. And adapting, sometimes you have a long time
to adapt, sometimes you don't have a long time to adapt. You've got to learn how to do both. In the world of business, you want to become
a millionaire? The market changes. What do you need to do? Oh my gosh! Did you see what happened to the market tank? [Snap] Adapt. Oh my gosh, we have a new president. This is so scary. What are we going to do? This man is the worst man of all times. This woman is the. . . [snap] Adapt. Oh my goodness! Did you see what just happened to the stock
market?

[snap] Adapt. Just adapt. Oh my God, my best client. [snap] Adapt! You won't believe what just happened. [snap] Adapt. You've got to learn how to adapt. You've got to learn how to adapt. The military teaches you how to adapt, and in the world of business, you've got to learn how to adapt without complaining. Next, survivability. You've got to learn how to survive with what you have. In the world of business, you need to learn how to survive. Next, independence. I learned how to be independent. I think one of my biggest challenges when I talk to young men, especially in America when I speak to young men is how dependent they are on their mom and their dad. How dependent they are. Dependent on somebody else to do everything for them. Clothes. You know, wash clothes. Every single thing they're depending on somebody else to do everything for them.

It is not a good thing. It is not a good thing. I'm a big fan of 16, 17, 18-year-olds joining the military for a year, two years if they're undecided about what they want to do with their lives. It will teach you so much discipline. And even though I joined the U.S. Army, I suggest Air Force because it provides better education as well and the opportunity for coming out. You do a lot more things, but you can do Navy, Marines, whatever it may be. Independence today is very difficult. Cutting the umbilical cord with mom and kids and all that stuff is so difficult for some people. The military teaches you independence. Next is strategy. Everything is about strategy. You've got to learn what you're going to be doing with strategy. In the world of business, you need to be strategic. The next point I learned is health. You've got to exercise.

Why? What are you going to do when you go 36 hours
on a shift? What are you going to do when you're tired? Boom, you're dead. Your unit is dead. Then what? So you're the CEO, you're the entrepreneur. You need to be ready to take your business
to the next level. You may be working harder than ever in the
next two years, three years. You're tired. What happens? You're dead. Your business closes down. Why? Because you got tired. Why did you get tired? It's because you gained some weight. Why did you gain weight? Because you eat fast food. Why do you eat fast food? Because your excuse is, I'm an entrepreneur,
I don't have any time to prepare my food. So you go eat fast food, and then you put
on weight. I don't have time to exercise. That's your excuse. I don't have time to have a proper diet.

That's your excuse. Instead, you don't need to bread. You don't need to eat sweets. You don't need to eat ice cream. Why do you eat those things? That ruins your energy. You can take the steps and walk up instead
of taking the escalator. You don't have to take the elevator. You can exercise and get a Fitbit. You can track your exercise routine. This is health. Military's health, business is health. Next is preparation. Lots of preparation in the military. Lots of preparation in the world of business. Then you have paranoia. You learn about paranoia. What's going to happen if we do this? You need a little bit of healthy paranoia. Again, you've heard me talk about this book
in at least five of my videos. Andy Grove wrote a book, Only the Paranoid
Survive. In the military, paranoia is very, very critical. Very, very critical. In the world of business, paranoia is also
very critical.

I was just talking to an entrepreneur right now who runs a business doing 20 million dollars per year, and it's doing very, very well. And I pulled him aside and said, You seem a little too excited. I just want to give you some counsel and feedback. When you're this excited, this is when you've got to be more paranoid. And he looked at me and said, What do you mean? I said, Don't be too fired up and too excited. Be more paranoid. Think that tomorrow everything is going to be taken away from you. Be more paranoid. He said, Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Be paranoid. You need that in business as well. And then work ethic is the next point. And the last one to me is discipline. If you don't have work ethic and you don't have discipline, kiss the world of business goodbye. Literally. Just don't go work as an entrepreneur.

If you want to be a millionaire, and you're not disciplined, and you don't have work ethic, it's not going to happen. And if you do get lucky and make a million, guess what? You're going to lose it all. You're going to lose it all. You don't want to work and make the money, and then you lose it all. You've got to have a strong work ethic, and you've got to be disciplined. So, with that being said, DreFromTheBay, Dre, good request. I'm glad we did this episode, and now you know I'm a big R&B guy. I did a video about R&B, but now you know what R&B I listened to back in the day. And by the way, I'm not a fighter. I'm a lover. This was back in the days when I used to do a lot of foolish things when I was 17, 18 years old.

I can't think of the last time I got into
a fight. Now my fight is to help inspire as many people
around the world as possible to become entrepreneurs. My fight is a whole different fight. I've got
going on right now. It's still a fight. It just doesn't require these [fists] any
more. These [fists] have been retired for a long
time. So. Here's what I need you to do. Questions, thoughts, comment on the bottom. If you haven't subscribed to the channel,
you know what you've got to do; subscribe to the channel. If you haven't shared any of our videos, please
share this video, tag somebody, whatever post you're watching with anyone you know who's
a veteran. Sometimes veterans don't think they can become
entrepreneurs, and they have a lot of the qualities to become entrepreneurs. I want to be able to get a lot of veterans,
military folks, soldiers, who don't know what

to do next, they need to watch this video
to know they already possess a lot of the capabilities of being able to become an entrepreneur;
they just need to learn how to ship it. So share this video with them, and then what
else we got? I think we're at 92,000 subs. We are this close to 100,000 subs to celebrate
this thing together, thanks to all of you awesome fans, awesome Valuetainers who do
what you do. I get a lot of private messages recently with you guys telling me, Pat, I
got nine more subscribers for you today. I got 10 more subscribers for the channel today. I got eight more subscribers. We're getting a lot of videos of people becoming
great students of this channel. I'm getting emails of how much note-taking
is taking place, how specific people are learning and studying. There's a lot of people that watch this content,
but I suggest you study this content.

It's a big difference watching it one time
as motivation, and you forget. Studying is taking notes and processing issues,
and then going back and looking at it again. I love how great students people are becoming
with the content that we have here. With that being said, stay tuned for more
exciting messages that we have coming up from Harvard here. I can't wait to introduce you to a daily
experience I've been having here at Harvard, which is going to be fascinating. That will be launched very soon. Take care, everybody. Bye bye.

19 Military Lessons that Made Me a Millionaire

19 Military Lessons that Made Me a Millionaire

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