August 4, 2024 • 36 mins
Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown. In part one of this special edition of the Stephen A. Smith Show, Stephen A. sits down with Valuetainment Media Founder/CEO and PBD Podcast host, Patrick Bet-David, to discuss, the upcoming presidential election, his American journey, family, and business success.
On The Stephen A. Smith Show, Smith gives you his renowned point of view, breaking barriers beyond the world of sports, and tackling pertinent issues across entertainment, pop culture, society, business, and politics. Three times a week, you'll hear his LIVE unfiltered opinions on the day's biggest headlines as well as straight-shooting interviews with top celebrities, game-changers, and thought leaders across the societal arena. The Stephen A. Smith Show is sure to entertain, inform, and motivate anyone who tunes in.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's up everybody. Welcome to the latest edition of The
Steven A. Smith Show, coming at you as I love
to do at the very least three days a week
over the digital airways of YouTube and of course iHeartRadio.
As always, I like to take a moment to thank
my subscribers and followers for continuing to support the show.
We've now eclipsed seven hundred and twenty thousand subscribers. We
continue to climb every single day by the thousands. Can't
(00:34):
thank y'all enough for the love and support. Keep it coming.
By the way, over the last two and a half
to three months, we've eclipsed more than one point two
three million downloads on iHeartRadio, So I can't thank them
enough for their support and for you all supporting me
on the audio side. Just keep the love coming and
I'm gonna keep on coming. To continue to like and
follow the show, just click the bell to get informed
(00:55):
for all of our new content, and then you too
should consider yourself the newest member of the Steve A.
Smith's Show family. This is a special edition of The
Stephen A. Smith Show. It's not just because I'm on
vacation and this is airing while I'm on vacation. It's
because I took time on my vacation to go and
interview my guest today in person, one on one. Patrick
(01:17):
Bett David is his name. He's an entrepreneur. He's a businessman,
a highly successful businessman. I might add, the founder and
owner of Value Tainment. Obviously the Patrick Bett David podcast,
which is extremely popular as well. Both have seven figures
in terms of subscribers and followers, and his growth continues
(01:38):
to elevate each and every single day in an exponential fashion.
I might add. Now, some of the things that you
may hear on this show with him today my sit
down with him are not the opinions of Stephen A. Smith.
If they were, I would tell you so. They will
be his opinions and his alone. I'm quite sure that
(02:00):
served by a lot of people in the conservative community,
even though he doesn't consider himself a conservative, he calls
himself an independent. Nevertheless, I thought it was important to
hear from him, not just because of his positions in
a world of business and finance, insurance, entrepreneurship, just being
(02:22):
a business leader, but also his unapologetic opinions about the
world of politics and what's going on in today's society,
today's culture inside and outside the beltwegh and how the
lives of so many American citizens are being affected by it.
Although obviously he has parents that were born in the
(02:43):
Middle East and he's a Middle Eastern Nevertheless, you listen
to him, you hear what he has to say. There
are millions upon millions of people who gravitate to his
every word. They listen to anything that he says, whether
they believe it or not. They want to hear what
he has to say because it's interesting, it's compelling, it's informative,
and it's unapologetic. I would know because I'm one of
(03:04):
those people, and I wanted to use it as an
opportunity to highlight what the agenda the Stephen A. Smith
Show was is and will forever be as long as
I'm in front of these cameras and these microphones. I'm
not of one monolithic viewpoint. I'm not an individual that
just wants to hear one side and doesn't want to
give another side an opportunity to open and express themselves.
(03:25):
We've seen an abundance of liberals come on this show
and speak from their minds and their hearts about things
that they felt would affect our society in their eyes
for the betterment or to the detriment. Well, guess what,
there's another side that feels exactly the same way, albeit
for different reasons, and we want to hear them too.
(03:46):
I wanted to use this opportunity with him, this interview
with him, to highlight for you my audience that people
who think differently than me, who feel differently than me,
that don't share my ideology of independence, that veer strongly
to the left or to the right, you are welcomed
(04:09):
on this show. I want my audience to hear what
you have to say. As long as you're respectful, as
long as you're informed, as long as you're a court
you have a core decency about you in terms of
how you articulate your positions, and you're not just parading
insults all over the place. I'm good with you. I'm
good with you. You can be heard on this platform,
(04:32):
on this show. That's what it's all about. We can't
move forward and get better as a society if we're
not willing to engage in dialogue and make sure as
many people as possible would a decent core about themselves
get an opportunity to be heard. That's what I consider
Patrick David to be. Patrick Bett David, that is. I've
(04:55):
met him a few years ago when he came to
New York to interview me one on one, shortly after
he had interviewed the late Great Kobe Bryant. We kept
in touch sporadically over the years. I ultimately was a
guest on his podcast, and for the first time, he's
a guest on mine. We speak quite often these days
(05:16):
off the record, on the phone, or whatever the case
may be, and I've grown to become very, very fond
of him, and I think the feeling is mutual. It's
not gonna stop me from asking the questions. However, it's
certainly not going to stop him from giving answers. Some
of the answers, I must warn you you might not like.
(05:37):
He does not care, and quite frankly, neither do I,
even if I disagree with him, because all sides need
to be heard. That's what the Stephen A. Smith Show
is about. That's what it's going to stay about. So
brace yourself and buckle up. It's about to come your way.
(05:57):
The first of a two part interview with the one
and only Patrick Bet David for Value Tainment and the
PbD podcast. He's up next with yours. Truly, don't go away,
trust me, you don't want to back with Patrick Bette
David in a minute. Everyone knows how demand excellence, and
(06:24):
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(07:07):
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Speaker 2 (07:23):
Prize picks, pick more.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Pick less. It's really that easy. It is my honor
and privilege to have my next guest. I'm not gonna
mince words. I gotta get right to it because I've
been waiting to interview this match. I don't even have
questions in front of me because I know stuff is
just gonna float right off of it. About who I'm
about to talk to next. Demand for Value Entertainment the
(07:49):
PbD podcast. Patrick Bette David himself is sitting right next
to me. My man, how are you? My man? Is
good to see how you think? I can't complain, man,
I can't complain. First of all, how how's life these
days for you? Let me just get this straight, because
we're sitting here in the aftermath of a presidential debate.
(08:09):
You are unapologetic about who you're going to vote for,
and you have been telling everybody and and and their
grandparents that you see what's going on on the left,
et cetera, et cetera. What has life been like for
you over the last couple of weeks, and so since
that debate has taken place.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Since that debate has taken place, well, I mean this
is probably the most uh. If we were to talk
about a you know, person who is the face of
a league, okay, in sports, your sports guy, if you
were to say, what is the worst performance the MVP
or the face of the league has had in a
finals game, in a fight where you're so disappointed? Who
(08:49):
would you say? Right? And no matter who you ask, left,
right or center, everybody will tell you this is the
worst performance we've ever seen in the history of any
presidential debate. Doesn't matter who you put up.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The Reagan versus Reagan versus Jimmy Carter, No, no, no,
this is Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney. The first go round, well.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Romney got it the second goal round and in Romney
on the third goal round. I was on a flight
one time with Bill O'Reilly from Burbank to Vegas, and
this was an event he was doing back then, I
think with Dennis Miller, just like I don't know, whatever
the time is when Romney and Obama are going back
and forth, and I said, hey, what the hell happened?
Romney had the lead in second debate, third debate, he
got all soft, he says, because Romney got feedback from
(09:31):
his marketing team that single women voters don't like the
way they were hard on the Obama on Benghazzi. He
took that council and he lost. He could have beaten Obama,
but he didn't go strong on the third one. Now,
there's never been anything worse than what we saw here.
We've never seen anybody choke, not being able to deliver
a single message, allowing Trump to have that one hit
to say, honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you. I
don't know what he just said, and I don't think
(09:53):
he even knows what he said. So now the real
thing is going to be how quickly the DNC is
going to be able to replace, If so, if not.
There's many moving parts, but we're living in uncharted territories
right now. We're gonna see what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You know, it's interesting because you've talked and we'll get
into all of this because I don't know too many
people you haven't interviewed. To be quite honest with you, you
sat down with me years ago. This is before you
brought me to your studios here in Florida. But we
sat down when he came to see me in New
York City. You've interviewed the great, late, the late great
Kobe Bryant. You've interviewed a plethora of other notable figures
inside and outside the world of sports or what have you.
(10:30):
But I know what level of passion you have for
this particular subject. Are you of the mindset even though
I know that you want Trump to win? Are you
of the mindset that, in Biden's case, he should step
out of the race or he should finish the deal?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Do you trust in his way to communicate any message
with anybody? Do you trust him? Because this is how
it works in the world of business. Okay, let's just
say stephen A, you're running a three and a half
trillion dollar your company. Let's call this company USA. Okay.
Let's say I on behalf of you. I'm gonna go
(11:08):
negotiate with another guy named g or another guy named Vlad,
let's just call him Vlad. Or let's let's call another
guy named Zelensky okay, okay, or or another guy named
Raissi or whoever come and a that's running Iran, the
late Raisi. Would you trust Biden on behalf of you
to go negotiate with any one of those guys. I
(11:30):
don't think you'd say yes today exactly. So we are
the owners of this country. We're the voters, right, we
are voting for somebody on behalf of us to go
negotiate in a favorable term for us. It's very simple.
You have to negotiate favorable terms on the two hundred
million dollars we gave to Zelensky. You have to negotiate
(11:52):
in favorable terms on to put the fear in, you know,
putin to not do what he's doing to you know, Ukraine.
You have to put the fear in g So to me,
it starts that simple. It's not even about me and
Trump are not friends. I've never broke bread with him
to have like a conversation. You probably had more interactions
with him one on one than I've had with him.
I've met him out of UFC fight. Dana made the introduction.
(12:14):
I've been to Marlago a couple of times. I've met
a son, I've met him, I've met Donna a couple
of times.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I've never seen him since two thousand and fourteen's advice
last time. That's the last time we saw each other.
And when we had a game at the next game,
and he introduced me to Bill O'Reilly at that particular
moment in time, and I was the person he called
in twenty fifteen, fourteen rather when he was trying to
purchase the Buffalo bills, and he said to me on
the phone, he said, Steven, Ay, I want to get
(12:39):
the I want to get the bills, he said, but
I got a feeling these folks are going to get
in my way. And his exact words to me, and
I've said this publicly, so I'll echo it to you.
He said, if them fuckers get in my way, I'm
gonna get him back. I'm going to run for president.
That's exactly what he said. He said this to you.
He said this to me at twenty fourteen. Wow, he
(12:59):
said to me in twenty fourteen, you're trying to get
the bills. The price for what was one point four billion? Yeah,
you know he didn't. He wasn't able to get it.
And there you have it.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, so think about it. By the way, I spoke
to him and I said, I'd love to see you
on stephen A. It's one of the first things I
told him. I said, I'd love to see see you
on steven A. I think that would be an entertaining interview.
If you interviewed Trump.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I wouldn't run from it. I'd gladly interview.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I know you would, And I think it'd be very
entertaining for everybody to watch. And if they're watching it
right now, they ought to consider it. Especially if they did.
Logan Paul would be a very different kind of an
audience to speak to because a big part of the
audience listens to you. So for me, you know, I
just the three interviews today. Today's you know, whatever the
day is, day after fourth of July. We're sitting here.
You're working a day after fourth to July. Most of
America right now is like now, it's my four day weekend,
(13:39):
all this stuff, right, we're grinding, we're working. I asked
one of the guys, I said, hey, you're interviewing today,
says yes, So you sure you want to work for
a company that's working on fifth of July, day after
fourth of July, he says. I asked the question myself, right,
do you think President Biden is working on the fifth
of July. Do you think he's working six days a
(14:00):
week the way Trump would do? Do you think he
would pick up the calls. Do you think he would
pick up the calls more than a newsome. Do you
think he would pick up the calls more than any
of the other candidates. So the fact that they have
him over a Trump as a candidate, I trust Trump
in the locker room to sit down and talk to
these guys with Gee, did you hear the story that
when Byron Donald's was on State Steel. The other fellow
(14:22):
that was with him that said, Hey, what's the best
Trump story that you have? He said, he goes one
time assistant talks to the Taliban and he says, hey,
I want you to know something. We're about to exit
Afghanistan when I get reelected. When we do, I swear
to God if you do anything to any of my soldiers,
even a hair, if anything happens to them, I'm going
to kill you. I'm telling you this respectfully. I don't
want to have problems with you. Trump gets up, takes
(14:43):
out a sheet of paper out of his pocket, hands
it to the man with a picture of his house
and his family and walks out, Wow, see I want
Byron Donald Donald associate next to him on Sage Steele's
I'll give you the link afterwards told the story and
guess what do you believe that kind of a story.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I do.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I do belie people say something like that, I think
we need strength today we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Let's get into you for a quick second here For
people who don't know you, just read it from my
note because I'm gonna make sure I have it right.
Immigrated to America when you were ten years of age
after your parents fled Iran as refugees during the Iranian Revolution?
Is that correct? Yes, they were eventually granted US citizenship.
Of course, you joined the US military served in the
one hundred and first Airborne after high school. Is that correct? Okay,
(15:24):
so looking at the patriots of it, I see you,
I see y, I see I see you. Launch PHP
mean PHP Agency eight and insurance Sales Marketing and Distribution
Company before you turn thirty? Is that correct? So when
you think about yourself as a person living here in
America as a guy family fled from Iran, you're here
in America, this American citizen that you are, this pride
(15:46):
that you have talk to me about what your vision
is of what America should be, what.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
America should be. Okay, so take a look at this.
You're the greatest guy in sports commentating ever. Right, You're
the goal. Everybody calls you to go. I'm not saying
you call on it. We get to say that you're
the goat in the face of if I want to
find out what something happens. But hey, Lebron James contract
two years, one hundred and two million dollars and he
didn't decide to take a lower contract together all one
(16:12):
hundred four million or whatever it is to get Paul
George or DeMar Derozen or any of these guys and
Clayton Thompson at the option they went elsewhere. What does Stephen,
they say about this? Okay, got it all right? I agree, disagree,
but I want to know what you have to say. Right, Okay,
you're black, I'm middle Eastern, Stephen. I had a one
point in GP in high school. I don't think you
had a one point in GP in high school. But
I had a one point in GP in high school.
(16:34):
Parents got a divorce to each other twice. They married, divorced,
then remarried, I'm born, then they're divorced. Okay, that's my upbring.
And my mother said they were communists. My dad's side,
they're imperialists, so they their biggest back. They were both
the same religion, but politically they were on the complete
opposite ends. One side, my mom's side they would say
rich people are greedy, my dad would say poor people
(16:56):
are lazy. So who's right? Who's wrong? Right? When I
was fourteen years old, I come home one day and
I asked my mom. I'm like, mom, politically, what are we?
She says, we're Democrats. I said, really, yeah, why are
we Democrats? Because Republicans are for the ridge and Democrats
are for the poor. I said, no way. Yeah, I said,
when I grew up, I want to be a Republican
one day. I didn't say things like that, just like that. Wow,
(17:19):
So when I grew up, I want to be a
Republican one day. I have no clue what we're talking about.
I can't stand politics because politics divided the two people
I love the most. I'm not even interested in politics. Right.
So I go to the army. I get out and
I learned about financial services, and I get into it.
A day before nine eleven. I'm working. I'm oregain Stanley
Dean with it. Then I get into insurance and then
(17:40):
a regular guy like me. In September of one nine,
I started an insurance company out of Northwridch, California, from
sixty six agents. I focused heavily on recruiting only because
to move a half a million insurance policies, I can
do it on my own. We went national. We build
an insurance agency of fifty thousand insurance agents. I sold
it for a nice multi, multi, multi nine figured check
(18:00):
that was eighty three percent owner of the company.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Access to three hundred million correct.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So, and it's going to end up being probably more
because there's more things that are coming with it. And
then I took that and I always saw things as
what problem do you see? What is the solution? Right?
Every product or company we've ever developed, whether it's the
Bedevid consulting, you go to bedevid dot com. It shows
our five by five philosophy had different stages. A founder
(18:25):
goes through different problems. How do you overcome these five
different problems? Manect where I'm talking to a lawyer one time,
and this lawyer we have a seven minute call. He
bills me for thirty minutes, and I call him. I'm like,
why are you building me for thirty minutes? We had
a seven minute call? He says, well, because your minutes
roll up. I said, not to thirty minutes. He says,
maybe to ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Says no, that's what
it is. I said, what do you charge by the minute?
(18:47):
He says, no, lawyer charges by the minute. I said,
I'm going to build a website or an app one
day that I get to pay people by the minute.
Later on we built man net. You have a minute
to connect. Let's manect. And now on email, I can
send you an email. The chance of a person a
cold email respond back is less than one percent, a
DM is less than three percent, a tweet is less
(19:07):
than five percent, or a LinkedIn is eight percent. On
manct ninety four percent response because you're paying for it,
so they'll respond back. Right. So everything in America, when
I look at is if we're gonna be in the
business of looking at only problems, look at the problem
and then blaming Kim and blaming Kim and blaming him
versus here's a problem. What can I do about it.
If we're more going in the mindset of what can
(19:29):
I do about it, we can decrease entitlement. We can
give more people figuring out ways to make money on
their own. We don't need to sit there and say, hey,
we'll pay your college. Don't worry about it. You don't
have any money, you don't need to pay for it.
We're gonna forgive you. We keep going with this mindset
of wanting to take pressure away from people, then all
of a sudden, one day we're waking up thirty four
trillion dollars and then who's gonna pay for it? These
(19:49):
kids are gonna say, hey, mom, Dad, what did you
guys do about all this stuff? Well, listen, we just
kind of pushed the problem over to you. Guys figured
out it's okay, it's not a big deal. You'll pay
it off. How do you pay that kind of money?
You either write it off or the dollars worth shit,
or your taxes go up. But the pressure, regardless is
on the next generation. So I think a part of
it for me is for this generation to kind of
stand up and say, what can I do about it? Individually?
(20:12):
Then vote accordingly, then go make your money and then
find a way to get involved in public service, church,
charity or politics. That's so.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
And your businessman, and I think that your resume is atypical.
You're far more successful than most businessmen in my estimation.
But your mentality, your mindset is you just highlight It
seems to me indicative of what every boss would want.
Don't come to me with problems. Come to me with solutions.
Now you can identify the problem if you bring me
a solution, right, But if you just come in to bitch,
(20:42):
win and moan, I don't want to hear it. Is
that basically what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, I mean anything it is, right, Like if I'm
hearing a you know sports, you know what, it's the
coach's fault. Let's fire another coach again, it's another coach.
Is how many coaches faults? Is are going to be? No? No, no,
it's the GM's fault. No no, no, it's the owner's fault. No no,
this person's fault, you know. And then you finally eventually realize,
here's what I'm willing to do. My name is Dirk Nowitzki.
(21:08):
Hey Mark, I'm willing to take a pay cut to
bring two new players in because i want to win
a championship and I'm going up against a team called
the Miami Heat that has Bosh, Dwayne Wade and Lebron James.
You end up beating those guys. Yes, for the rest
of your legacy, you're always going to be able to
say you beat a prime weight, a prime Lebron, and
a prime Bosh. That's a pretty good story to tell.
(21:30):
But that's because you took a pay cut. So, hey,
you want to win a championship, Dirk, I do. What's
your solution? Pay me less but bring me better place great.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Let me get a little personal with you if you
don't mind.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You just highlighted how your mother told you this is
a Democratic household, and you instantly said, I'm a Republican.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
How is your way to be a Republican?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I want to how was your relationship with your mother?
How would you describe?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Great questions? So I would never be where I'm at
right now if it wasn't for my mom and my dad.
Let me explain to you why this is going to
make a lot of sense. My dad, I'm having a
conversation with this Guy's like, well, let me tell you
I just made fifteen million dollars and I'm thirty eight
years old.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I have a five year old, two.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Year old, and one year old, and I'm deciding to
just stay home and never work again because I want
to be able to give my kid to what they
never got from me, what I got from my daddy.
I'm like, bro, what a lame way of looking at it.
He says, what do you mean? Can I be directly?
She says, I said, okay, what do you want to
transfer to your kids? What are the top five things
you want to transfer to your kids? Never thought about
it that way? Well let's start thinking right now. So
(22:31):
what do you want to I want to transfer them?
Love awesome, She'll be number one. What does he want
to transfer to them? He's like stuck. I said, we
tell you when my dad transferred to me. From the
day I was born till today. My dad's worked six
days a week, not because he has to. He used
to work because he had to. He stopped working because
(22:52):
he had to, but he still works six days a week.
And Iran he worked from Monday and Iran the Sunday
is Friday there, so we only have one day off.
In Iran. He would leave at five o'clock. He'd come
at eight thirty, worked every single day and he drove
two hours to his job in a city called Kataj.
We lived in Tehran and he drove a gan gianna
is like a pintle in Iran. And then we had
a renal when we started making a little bit more money.
So my dad taught me hard work. My dad worked
(23:14):
at a ninety nine cents store in Inglewood, down the
street from Great Western Form in a plaza for people
that know that area right next to video twenty twenty.
If you know what that area is, that's where my
dad was. And he taught me never to be afraid
of the truth. He was tough on me on keeping
my ward. He dropped out of school in eighth grade.
Knew nothing about Matt couldn't read or write, but he
(23:35):
shared values and principles to me right. My mom, on
the other side, was the most paranoid person I've ever
met in my life. I've never met anybody more paranoid
than my mom. My mom was always worried, you know,
the warrior versus a worrier. My mom was the ultimate warrior.
Panic anxiety stress. A lot of it passed down from family,
(23:57):
but she was always worried. If I came home one day,
I didn't know who I was with that day, I'd
have to see where my mom is that day. Are
you crying today? Are you worried today? Are you happy today?
So I to learn very quickly to size up who
I'm talking to too. Okay, So it kind of gave
me the ability to have a little bit of study
of human nature and body language because I had to
do it early on. Right, My mom was good in math.
(24:21):
My mom was overly paranoid, which you need in business,
overly skeptical, slow to trust anybody. All of those qualities
can work in your favor in business. Right. Sometimes in
personal life it can hurt you, but in business it
can help you. They obviously clashed it and work out.
My mom. I'm getting her place right now. It's just
coming down here. My dad lives with me. So we're
all going to be within a literally within the next
(24:42):
sixty days, we're all going to be within a point
four mile radius, all of us. And I've worked hard
to get it. I'm very happy. Yeah, But you know,
when we're younger, we only see the ugly side of
our dad or mom, and we're rarely seeing the good side.
And my pastorom has told me something when I was
twenty five years old. He says, the father son relationship
(25:04):
or the parent child relationship goes through three stages. First
you idolize them, then you demonize them, then you humanize them.
Your goal is to go through the humanizing phase as
quickly as possible. The later you go, the fewer time
you're going to have with them relationship wise.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
And how do you expedite that process get through the
humanizing staates?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
You can't man to each is different, you know, it's
like you can't do it, Like you know, how do
you how fast do you find a wife or a
partner to be made? You can't expedite that process. That
part is tough, especially nowadays. Marriage all that's very, very hard.
But you do your best to try to gain wisdom
by making a lot of stupid mistakes fast. The faster
(25:44):
you make mistakes, the faster you gain wisdom. Sometimes we
make mistakes slower. I'm about making mistakes faster, and I
learned that later on as well.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
What's the stupidest and biggest mistake you.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Make trying to force to change people? So, for example,
rather than skin you who you want to be and
what do you want to do? It was just telling
you who you should be. And I never worked, you know,
I was in my first seven years of being a
sales leader. I never built anybody. Never. For seven years,
none of my sales guys ever made any real money.
(26:16):
Maybe fifty two hundred thousand dollars yet, but that's not
real money. You living in California. And then one day
I took full inventory. I'm like, listen, you're making money,
But how come you guys are not making money. You
can't sit there and point it at them?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Why is it?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Then I realize, Okay, driving people isn't based on what's
important to you, It's about what's important to them. When
I wrote the book Your Next Five Moves, Move number
one steven A was who do you want to be?
The sooner I can identify who you want to be,
the better I know how to drive you right, And
(26:49):
everybody's driven by you know, different things in life. Like
I got four kids. My oldest is into politics and
is into movies. He's twelve years old. So I'm taking
him to you know, the Film Academy here in New York.
The next couple of weeks to spend some time with him.
My youngest son, ten years old. He could care less
about politics, and he's okay with movies, not crazy about it.
But he's all sports. He's got the bo Jackson body,
(27:11):
like the big butt, the legs. You know, Dylan is
the athletic guy. It's all he wants to do. He's
in camps, he's playing with high school players right now,
in college players. That's all he's obsessed with. Right so
the sooner I know what matters to them. I know
my daughter wants to be a baker. My three year old.
I don't know anything about even my wife. I'm not babe,
what do you want to do? After we sold the company?
Where Monica having a conversation and we came back one
(27:32):
time and we're driving to go have our celebration dinner
when we're selling the company, and I said, Babe, what's
next for you? She said, what do you mean? Said?
What do you want to do next? He says, what
do you mean, babe? I said, we just had a
massive exit. What do you want to do next? Or
do you want to go next? Here's what I want
to do? Well, babe, that's a tough question, I know,
but let's start thinking about it. How can I support?
What do you want to do? So? Forcing biggest mistake
(27:55):
ever the moment I flipped at twenty eight, twenty nine
years old. Everything became so smooth and easier to deal
with people because if you didn't want to do it,
I'm like, no problem, do your thing.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So it made your better father?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Oh, I mean, my oldest son made me, really helped
me be a better father. But I learned how to
be a better father through my father and by making
a lot of mistakes with people I coached early on.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
A lot of mistakes made your better husband work.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
In progress, baby, work in progress. That's that's a lot
of work. Marriage is the hard hardest thing you'll ever do,
because because at least, if you have four kids, you
have four options. Right when you're married, you don't have
any other options. You know, at least if you work
with a client, and you can fire a client, you
(28:44):
know you can.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Assire next to one of my producers got married two
weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
There you go, you know, listen and I tell everybody
you know when it comes on to marriage. When I
was getting married, this lady named Claudia and her husband
at the time. All Fonso gave me a book and
it was called Advice from Husband and from Men and
Women who have been married for over fifty years. You
know what's an opening quote in the book, marriage is
the greatest mistake you'll ever make.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
The alternative is is is the market is filled with
a lot of people right now in their sixties who
have no kids. I understand, I be married and you
try to once they don't work out, and it later
it is what it is. But I encourage try and
get It's the greatest risk you'll ever take. But the
rewards are you know, when you have a child, you're
(29:27):
holding a child, you're talking to a child, you're having
a conversation with them, and they grow up and now
they're giving you feedback you're having really.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Telling you what you're wrong about. Thinking they know more
than you.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
What a beautiful thing to go through it.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
It's hard, it's annoying, it's hard, it's annoying as hell,
but it's it's very rewarding. And I tell you what.
The thing about me, especially they're like you, oh my lord,
oh my lord, my two daughters is something special. Man.
But I tell you this, much is the greatest thing
that ever happened to me, and I think it saved
my life because it gave me the balance. I'm able
to dial it back, really back and keep myself and
(29:59):
elevate actually my level of control because I got them
to think about it and not just myself. If I'm
just thinking about me, yeah, oh Lord, who knows what
mistakes I would have made. I'm with you, you know, listen,
I got to ask you this. I'm looking at this
one point ninety four million YouTube subscribers, five point six
nine million subscribers. With Value Tainment, you talked about asking
(30:20):
people what do they want to be? What do they
want to do? As you sit here today with those
numbers that I just threw out to you, with the
impact that you're having with your knowledge of business, the
kind of impact and influence that you're exercising because of
all the success that you've had with the PbD podcast
and other things, what do you want to do?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So politically, I can't run, right, so that option is
already out of the question. If loss were different, I
would definitely entertain it. If that was the case, I
would enjoy it. I think I have some ideas that
I think, you know, would be entertaining to impose and
sell and see if America would bite or not. But
so if that's out of the equation, I have no
interest in governorship whatsoever at all. Zero, not interested. I
(31:06):
don't want to do it. I think the Avengers, you know,
you got to kind of see what role you play
to me. Media right now is going through a massive,
massive disruption, massive disruption. Look what's going on with the
game this year right one hundred and ten million dollars
for the what was it, the Dolphins Chiefs game, And
now they're trying to buy potentially Super Bowl and pay
(31:29):
per view and maybe one day we're paying ninety nine
bucks to watch the pay per view Super Bowl. I mean,
it's a very different, you know, strategy right now with
digital and how it's going. And look what you're doing
right now, this is your show. You're doing digital growing
out exponential phase, you know, with your own content. But
everything today is about being able to control the narrative.
If you're not able to influence the narrative yourself, other
(31:52):
people will say it about you. But we're going to
do our part to sell the values and principles we
believe in the way we present our arguments and the
way we'll do it is we'll build the biggest army
of business people that follow our consulting firm. We consult
for a lot of businesses people don't know about behind
closed doors, and our consulting firm you can see it
(32:13):
at biddavid dot com. Bidavid Consultant has grown. We consult
for five thousand businesses sixty plus countries and it ranges
from how to raise money, how to do this, how
to do that?
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Well, I can vouse for you because you've given me advice,
whether I've asked for it or not. Sometimes I've asked,
sometimes I didn't have to, But I love our relationship.
Give I give you credit what credit is due. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So, but that part for us on the business influence side.
The politics side I started recently three four years ago,
was always business content and I'm always enamored by people
like you interview them. So long term we'll be getting
involved in movies, documentaries, OTTs. We got a lot of
We're about to buy any eleven acre campus here to
build our own campus, but we'll be playing on the
(32:50):
media space for many years to come.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
What do you enjoy most interviewing folks, doing talking to
the fellas while you're doing your podcast interviewing folks. Is
it sports figures, is it political figures? Is it just
whoever the newsmakers are in that particular moment. What excites
you most?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
What do I enjoy the most? Okay, the other day,
this is going to be a curveball. So I'm sitting here.
I get a call from one of my bookers. They say, hey,
you know Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, his brother wants to come
and talk to you. Really, yeah, the Mark Epstein. Yeah, okay,
sounds good. When Saturday morning comes here, we have a
(33:27):
two hour podcast, longest one he's done his twenty seven minutes.
We sit right there to our conversation. Wild stuff that
he said right that he's never said before. Next thing,
you know, hey, ice Cube, what about it? You want
to talk to ice Cube? Of course I want to
talk to ice Cube. We're talking hip hop, We're talking
the music I used to listen to with master Ace.
(33:49):
I don't know if you remember master Ace and rbo
Posse and Rapp and Forte, and you know, there's a
part of me that most people don't know. I grew
up with hip hop till two thousand and three is
when I stopped listening to Radi and All. I listened
into his audio books. I'm interested in talking to ice Cube.
I get a call from you know, sug Knight from
jail Yo Pi. I saw it at Yeah and talking
to sug Knight and we do five six seven, you know,
(34:12):
cole calls, not col calls, collect calls and he's doing
the call together, or Sammy de Boll or Kobe Bryant
or Shag or you. I'm interested in people. I like
numbers and I like people. Two things I like a
lot numbers and people. And also what I enjoy is
current events, reaction, strategy sequencing. What would I do if
I was in that situation? Like strategy sessions. One of
(34:34):
my favorite things to do, Steven A's strategy sessions, I
don't care what it is. If I'm sitting with Will Geddero,
we're talking about restaurants, how to make restaurants better, and
he's given ideas. I am obsessed with strategy sessions, right,
you know, how to grow channels, businesses growth. I enjoy
doing that, but generally I am very curious talking to
people and learning.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Then you have it that was part one of my
conversation with Patrick Bett David. Obviously, he's got a lot
of interested things to say, a lot of compelling things
to say, a lot of things that millions upon millions
of people would not agree with. Quite frankly, if you're
of the liberal tilt per se, you might be offended
by some of the things he had to say, depending
(35:14):
on how sensitive you are to some of the subject
matters he was willing to tackle. Nevertheless, the bottom line
is that he's just getting started. He's got a lot
more to say once Part two arrives this Wednesday, a
whole lot more to say. So stick around and make
sure you don't miss that. This is the Stephen Nick
Smith Show right here over the digital airways of YouTube,
along with iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio. Like I told y'all before, we're
(35:38):
gonna listen to all sides on this show. We're not
gonna stop. That's the way it's going to be. I'm
not one of those people that just believes in listening
to one side. I don't care how much I disagree
with you. I've been on the record. I've said this
on many many occasions, Ladies and gentlemen, I don't give
a damn who I'm talking to. I can interview anybody.
I want to hear what they have to say. I
want to hear their perspectives, and I want you to
(35:59):
hear their person respectives, and then leave it for you
to judge based on the preponderance of information and substance
of material or lack thereof somebody has thrown out. I
don't ever think that anybody would accuse Patrick bet David
of lacking substance. I can tell you that much. I'm
interested in listening to what the man had to say.
You thought part one was riveting enough, wait till you
(36:19):
hear part two. Stick around, don't miss it. Part two
is coming this Wednesday. Until then, this is stephen A
sign it off. See you in a couple of days.
What's up everybody. Welcome to the latest edition of The
Steven A. Smith Show, coming at you as I love
to do at the very least three days a week
over the digital airways of YouTube and of course iHeartRadio.
As always, I like to take a moment to thank
my subscribers and followers for continuing to support the show.
We've now eclipsed seven hundred and twenty thousand subscribers. We
continue to climb every single day by the thousands. Can't
(00:34):
thank y'all enough for the love and support. Keep it coming.
By the way, over the last two and a half
to three months, we've eclipsed more than one point two
three million downloads on iHeartRadio, So I can't thank them
enough for their support and for you all supporting me
on the audio side. Just keep the love coming and
I'm gonna keep on coming. To continue to like and
follow the show, just click the bell to get informed
(00:55):
for all of our new content, and then you too
should consider yourself the newest member of the Steve A.
Smith's Show family. This is a special edition of The
Stephen A. Smith Show. It's not just because I'm on
vacation and this is airing while I'm on vacation. It's
because I took time on my vacation to go and
interview my guest today in person, one on one. Patrick
(01:17):
Bett David is his name. He's an entrepreneur. He's a businessman,
a highly successful businessman. I might add, the founder and
owner of Value Tainment. Obviously the Patrick Bett David podcast,
which is extremely popular as well. Both have seven figures
in terms of subscribers and followers, and his growth continues
(01:38):
to elevate each and every single day in an exponential fashion.
I might add. Now, some of the things that you
may hear on this show with him today my sit
down with him are not the opinions of Stephen A. Smith.
If they were, I would tell you so. They will
be his opinions and his alone. I'm quite sure that
(02:00):
served by a lot of people in the conservative community,
even though he doesn't consider himself a conservative, he calls
himself an independent. Nevertheless, I thought it was important to
hear from him, not just because of his positions in
a world of business and finance, insurance, entrepreneurship, just being
(02:22):
a business leader, but also his unapologetic opinions about the
world of politics and what's going on in today's society,
today's culture inside and outside the beltwegh and how the
lives of so many American citizens are being affected by it.
Although obviously he has parents that were born in the
(02:43):
Middle East and he's a Middle Eastern Nevertheless, you listen
to him, you hear what he has to say. There
are millions upon millions of people who gravitate to his
every word. They listen to anything that he says, whether
they believe it or not. They want to hear what
he has to say because it's interesting, it's compelling, it's informative,
and it's unapologetic. I would know because I'm one of
(03:04):
those people, and I wanted to use it as an
opportunity to highlight what the agenda the Stephen A. Smith
Show was is and will forever be as long as
I'm in front of these cameras and these microphones. I'm
not of one monolithic viewpoint. I'm not an individual that
just wants to hear one side and doesn't want to
give another side an opportunity to open and express themselves.
(03:25):
We've seen an abundance of liberals come on this show
and speak from their minds and their hearts about things
that they felt would affect our society in their eyes
for the betterment or to the detriment. Well, guess what,
there's another side that feels exactly the same way, albeit
for different reasons, and we want to hear them too.
(03:46):
I wanted to use this opportunity with him, this interview
with him, to highlight for you my audience that people
who think differently than me, who feel differently than me,
that don't share my ideology of independence, that veer strongly
to the left or to the right, you are welcomed
(04:09):
on this show. I want my audience to hear what
you have to say. As long as you're respectful, as
long as you're informed, as long as you're a court
you have a core decency about you in terms of
how you articulate your positions, and you're not just parading
insults all over the place. I'm good with you. I'm
good with you. You can be heard on this platform,
(04:32):
on this show. That's what it's all about. We can't
move forward and get better as a society if we're
not willing to engage in dialogue and make sure as
many people as possible would a decent core about themselves
get an opportunity to be heard. That's what I consider
Patrick David to be. Patrick Bett David, that is. I've
(04:55):
met him a few years ago when he came to
New York to interview me one on one, shortly after
he had interviewed the late Great Kobe Bryant. We kept
in touch sporadically over the years. I ultimately was a
guest on his podcast, and for the first time, he's
a guest on mine. We speak quite often these days
(05:16):
off the record, on the phone, or whatever the case
may be, and I've grown to become very, very fond
of him, and I think the feeling is mutual. It's
not gonna stop me from asking the questions. However, it's
certainly not going to stop him from giving answers. Some
of the answers, I must warn you you might not like.
(05:37):
He does not care, and quite frankly, neither do I,
even if I disagree with him, because all sides need
to be heard. That's what the Stephen A. Smith Show
is about. That's what it's going to stay about. So
brace yourself and buckle up. It's about to come your way.
(05:57):
The first of a two part interview with the one
and only Patrick Bet David for Value Tainment and the
PbD podcast. He's up next with yours. Truly, don't go away,
trust me, you don't want to back with Patrick Bette
David in a minute. Everyone knows how demand excellence, and
(06:24):
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(07:07):
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Speaker 2 (07:23):
Prize picks, pick more.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Pick less. It's really that easy. It is my honor
and privilege to have my next guest. I'm not gonna
mince words. I gotta get right to it because I've
been waiting to interview this match. I don't even have
questions in front of me because I know stuff is
just gonna float right off of it. About who I'm
about to talk to next. Demand for Value Entertainment the
(07:49):
PbD podcast. Patrick Bette David himself is sitting right next
to me. My man, how are you? My man? Is
good to see how you think? I can't complain, man,
I can't complain. First of all, how how's life these
days for you? Let me just get this straight, because
we're sitting here in the aftermath of a presidential debate.
(08:09):
You are unapologetic about who you're going to vote for,
and you have been telling everybody and and and their
grandparents that you see what's going on on the left,
et cetera, et cetera. What has life been like for
you over the last couple of weeks, and so since
that debate has taken place.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Since that debate has taken place, well, I mean this
is probably the most uh. If we were to talk
about a you know, person who is the face of
a league, okay, in sports, your sports guy, if you
were to say, what is the worst performance the MVP
or the face of the league has had in a
finals game, in a fight where you're so disappointed? Who
(08:49):
would you say? Right? And no matter who you ask, left,
right or center, everybody will tell you this is the
worst performance we've ever seen in the history of any
presidential debate. Doesn't matter who you put up.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The Reagan versus Reagan versus Jimmy Carter, No, no, no,
this is Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney. The first go round, well.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Romney got it the second goal round and in Romney
on the third goal round. I was on a flight
one time with Bill O'Reilly from Burbank to Vegas, and
this was an event he was doing back then, I
think with Dennis Miller, just like I don't know, whatever
the time is when Romney and Obama are going back
and forth, and I said, hey, what the hell happened?
Romney had the lead in second debate, third debate, he
got all soft, he says, because Romney got feedback from
(09:31):
his marketing team that single women voters don't like the
way they were hard on the Obama on Benghazzi. He
took that council and he lost. He could have beaten Obama,
but he didn't go strong on the third one. Now,
there's never been anything worse than what we saw here.
We've never seen anybody choke, not being able to deliver
a single message, allowing Trump to have that one hit
to say, honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you. I
don't know what he just said, and I don't think
(09:53):
he even knows what he said. So now the real
thing is going to be how quickly the DNC is
going to be able to replace, If so, if not.
There's many moving parts, but we're living in uncharted territories
right now. We're gonna see what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You know, it's interesting because you've talked and we'll get
into all of this because I don't know too many
people you haven't interviewed. To be quite honest with you, you
sat down with me years ago. This is before you
brought me to your studios here in Florida. But we
sat down when he came to see me in New
York City. You've interviewed the great, late, the late great
Kobe Bryant. You've interviewed a plethora of other notable figures
inside and outside the world of sports or what have you.
(10:30):
But I know what level of passion you have for
this particular subject. Are you of the mindset even though
I know that you want Trump to win? Are you
of the mindset that, in Biden's case, he should step
out of the race or he should finish the deal?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Do you trust in his way to communicate any message
with anybody? Do you trust him? Because this is how
it works in the world of business. Okay, let's just
say stephen A, you're running a three and a half
trillion dollar your company. Let's call this company USA. Okay.
Let's say I on behalf of you. I'm gonna go
(11:08):
negotiate with another guy named g or another guy named Vlad,
let's just call him Vlad. Or let's let's call another
guy named Zelensky okay, okay, or or another guy named
Raissi or whoever come and a that's running Iran, the
late Raisi. Would you trust Biden on behalf of you
to go negotiate with any one of those guys. I
(11:30):
don't think you'd say yes today exactly. So we are
the owners of this country. We're the voters, right, we
are voting for somebody on behalf of us to go
negotiate in a favorable term for us. It's very simple.
You have to negotiate favorable terms on the two hundred
million dollars we gave to Zelensky. You have to negotiate
(11:52):
in favorable terms on to put the fear in, you know,
putin to not do what he's doing to you know, Ukraine.
You have to put the fear in g So to me,
it starts that simple. It's not even about me and
Trump are not friends. I've never broke bread with him
to have like a conversation. You probably had more interactions
with him one on one than I've had with him.
I've met him out of UFC fight. Dana made the introduction.
(12:14):
I've been to Marlago a couple of times. I've met
a son, I've met him, I've met Donna a couple
of times.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I've never seen him since two thousand and fourteen's advice
last time. That's the last time we saw each other.
And when we had a game at the next game,
and he introduced me to Bill O'Reilly at that particular
moment in time, and I was the person he called
in twenty fifteen, fourteen rather when he was trying to
purchase the Buffalo bills, and he said to me on
the phone, he said, Steven, Ay, I want to get
(12:39):
the I want to get the bills, he said, but
I got a feeling these folks are going to get
in my way. And his exact words to me, and
I've said this publicly, so I'll echo it to you.
He said, if them fuckers get in my way, I'm
gonna get him back. I'm going to run for president.
That's exactly what he said. He said this to you.
He said this to me at twenty fourteen. Wow, he
(12:59):
said to me in twenty fourteen, you're trying to get
the bills. The price for what was one point four billion? Yeah,
you know he didn't. He wasn't able to get it.
And there you have it.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, so think about it. By the way, I spoke
to him and I said, I'd love to see you
on stephen A. It's one of the first things I
told him. I said, I'd love to see see you
on steven A. I think that would be an entertaining interview.
If you interviewed Trump.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I wouldn't run from it. I'd gladly interview.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I know you would, And I think it'd be very
entertaining for everybody to watch. And if they're watching it
right now, they ought to consider it. Especially if they did.
Logan Paul would be a very different kind of an
audience to speak to because a big part of the
audience listens to you. So for me, you know, I
just the three interviews today. Today's you know, whatever the
day is, day after fourth of July. We're sitting here.
You're working a day after fourth to July. Most of
America right now is like now, it's my four day weekend,
(13:39):
all this stuff, right, we're grinding, we're working. I asked
one of the guys, I said, hey, you're interviewing today,
says yes, So you sure you want to work for
a company that's working on fifth of July, day after
fourth of July, he says. I asked the question myself, right,
do you think President Biden is working on the fifth
of July. Do you think he's working six days a
(14:00):
week the way Trump would do? Do you think he
would pick up the calls. Do you think he would
pick up the calls more than a newsome. Do you
think he would pick up the calls more than any
of the other candidates. So the fact that they have
him over a Trump as a candidate, I trust Trump
in the locker room to sit down and talk to
these guys with Gee, did you hear the story that
when Byron Donald's was on State Steel. The other fellow
(14:22):
that was with him that said, Hey, what's the best
Trump story that you have? He said, he goes one
time assistant talks to the Taliban and he says, hey,
I want you to know something. We're about to exit
Afghanistan when I get reelected. When we do, I swear
to God if you do anything to any of my soldiers,
even a hair, if anything happens to them, I'm going
to kill you. I'm telling you this respectfully. I don't
want to have problems with you. Trump gets up, takes
(14:43):
out a sheet of paper out of his pocket, hands
it to the man with a picture of his house
and his family and walks out, Wow, see I want
Byron Donald Donald associate next to him on Sage Steele's
I'll give you the link afterwards told the story and
guess what do you believe that kind of a story.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I do.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I do belie people say something like that, I think
we need strength today we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Let's get into you for a quick second here For
people who don't know you, just read it from my
note because I'm gonna make sure I have it right.
Immigrated to America when you were ten years of age
after your parents fled Iran as refugees during the Iranian Revolution?
Is that correct? Yes, they were eventually granted US citizenship.
Of course, you joined the US military served in the
one hundred and first Airborne after high school. Is that correct? Okay,
(15:24):
so looking at the patriots of it, I see you,
I see y, I see I see you. Launch PHP
mean PHP Agency eight and insurance Sales Marketing and Distribution
Company before you turn thirty? Is that correct? So when
you think about yourself as a person living here in
America as a guy family fled from Iran, you're here
in America, this American citizen that you are, this pride
(15:46):
that you have talk to me about what your vision
is of what America should be, what.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
America should be. Okay, so take a look at this.
You're the greatest guy in sports commentating ever. Right, You're
the goal. Everybody calls you to go. I'm not saying
you call on it. We get to say that you're
the goat in the face of if I want to
find out what something happens. But hey, Lebron James contract
two years, one hundred and two million dollars and he
didn't decide to take a lower contract together all one
(16:12):
hundred four million or whatever it is to get Paul
George or DeMar Derozen or any of these guys and
Clayton Thompson at the option they went elsewhere. What does Stephen,
they say about this? Okay, got it all right? I agree, disagree,
but I want to know what you have to say. Right, Okay,
you're black, I'm middle Eastern, Stephen. I had a one
point in GP in high school. I don't think you
had a one point in GP in high school. But
I had a one point in GP in high school.
(16:34):
Parents got a divorce to each other twice. They married, divorced,
then remarried, I'm born, then they're divorced. Okay, that's my upbring.
And my mother said they were communists. My dad's side,
they're imperialists, so they their biggest back. They were both
the same religion, but politically they were on the complete
opposite ends. One side, my mom's side they would say
rich people are greedy, my dad would say poor people
(16:56):
are lazy. So who's right? Who's wrong? Right? When I
was fourteen years old, I come home one day and
I asked my mom. I'm like, mom, politically, what are we?
She says, we're Democrats. I said, really, yeah, why are
we Democrats? Because Republicans are for the ridge and Democrats
are for the poor. I said, no way. Yeah, I said,
when I grew up, I want to be a Republican
one day. I didn't say things like that, just like that. Wow,
(17:19):
So when I grew up, I want to be a
Republican one day. I have no clue what we're talking about.
I can't stand politics because politics divided the two people
I love the most. I'm not even interested in politics. Right.
So I go to the army. I get out and
I learned about financial services, and I get into it.
A day before nine eleven. I'm working. I'm oregain Stanley
Dean with it. Then I get into insurance and then
(17:40):
a regular guy like me. In September of one nine,
I started an insurance company out of Northwridch, California, from
sixty six agents. I focused heavily on recruiting only because
to move a half a million insurance policies, I can
do it on my own. We went national. We build
an insurance agency of fifty thousand insurance agents. I sold
it for a nice multi, multi, multi nine figured check
(18:00):
that was eighty three percent owner of the company.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Access to three hundred million correct.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So, and it's going to end up being probably more
because there's more things that are coming with it. And
then I took that and I always saw things as
what problem do you see? What is the solution? Right?
Every product or company we've ever developed, whether it's the
Bedevid consulting, you go to bedevid dot com. It shows
our five by five philosophy had different stages. A founder
(18:25):
goes through different problems. How do you overcome these five
different problems? Manect where I'm talking to a lawyer one time,
and this lawyer we have a seven minute call. He
bills me for thirty minutes, and I call him. I'm like,
why are you building me for thirty minutes? We had
a seven minute call? He says, well, because your minutes
roll up. I said, not to thirty minutes. He says,
maybe to ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Says no, that's what
it is. I said, what do you charge by the minute?
(18:47):
He says, no, lawyer charges by the minute. I said,
I'm going to build a website or an app one
day that I get to pay people by the minute.
Later on we built man net. You have a minute
to connect. Let's manect. And now on email, I can
send you an email. The chance of a person a
cold email respond back is less than one percent, a
DM is less than three percent, a tweet is less
(19:07):
than five percent, or a LinkedIn is eight percent. On
manct ninety four percent response because you're paying for it,
so they'll respond back. Right. So everything in America, when
I look at is if we're gonna be in the
business of looking at only problems, look at the problem
and then blaming Kim and blaming Kim and blaming him
versus here's a problem. What can I do about it.
If we're more going in the mindset of what can
(19:29):
I do about it, we can decrease entitlement. We can
give more people figuring out ways to make money on
their own. We don't need to sit there and say, hey,
we'll pay your college. Don't worry about it. You don't
have any money, you don't need to pay for it.
We're gonna forgive you. We keep going with this mindset
of wanting to take pressure away from people, then all
of a sudden, one day we're waking up thirty four
trillion dollars and then who's gonna pay for it? These
(19:49):
kids are gonna say, hey, mom, Dad, what did you
guys do about all this stuff? Well, listen, we just
kind of pushed the problem over to you. Guys figured
out it's okay, it's not a big deal. You'll pay
it off. How do you pay that kind of money?
You either write it off or the dollars worth shit,
or your taxes go up. But the pressure, regardless is
on the next generation. So I think a part of
it for me is for this generation to kind of
stand up and say, what can I do about it? Individually?
(20:12):
Then vote accordingly, then go make your money and then
find a way to get involved in public service, church,
charity or politics. That's so.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
And your businessman, and I think that your resume is atypical.
You're far more successful than most businessmen in my estimation.
But your mentality, your mindset is you just highlight It
seems to me indicative of what every boss would want.
Don't come to me with problems. Come to me with solutions.
Now you can identify the problem if you bring me
a solution, right, But if you just come in to bitch,
(20:42):
win and moan, I don't want to hear it. Is
that basically what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, I mean anything it is, right, Like if I'm
hearing a you know sports, you know what, it's the
coach's fault. Let's fire another coach again, it's another coach.
Is how many coaches faults? Is are going to be? No? No, no,
it's the GM's fault. No no, no, it's the owner's fault. No no,
this person's fault, you know. And then you finally eventually realize,
here's what I'm willing to do. My name is Dirk Nowitzki.
(21:08):
Hey Mark, I'm willing to take a pay cut to
bring two new players in because i want to win
a championship and I'm going up against a team called
the Miami Heat that has Bosh, Dwayne Wade and Lebron James.
You end up beating those guys. Yes, for the rest
of your legacy, you're always going to be able to
say you beat a prime weight, a prime Lebron, and
a prime Bosh. That's a pretty good story to tell.
(21:30):
But that's because you took a pay cut. So, hey,
you want to win a championship, Dirk, I do. What's
your solution? Pay me less but bring me better place great.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Let me get a little personal with you if you
don't mind.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You just highlighted how your mother told you this is
a Democratic household, and you instantly said, I'm a Republican.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
How is your way to be a Republican?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I want to how was your relationship with your mother?
How would you describe?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Great questions? So I would never be where I'm at
right now if it wasn't for my mom and my dad.
Let me explain to you why this is going to
make a lot of sense. My dad, I'm having a
conversation with this Guy's like, well, let me tell you
I just made fifteen million dollars and I'm thirty eight
years old.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I have a five year old, two.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Year old, and one year old, and I'm deciding to
just stay home and never work again because I want
to be able to give my kid to what they
never got from me, what I got from my daddy.
I'm like, bro, what a lame way of looking at it.
He says, what do you mean? Can I be directly?
She says, I said, okay, what do you want to
transfer to your kids? What are the top five things
you want to transfer to your kids? Never thought about
it that way? Well let's start thinking right now. So
(22:31):
what do you want to I want to transfer them?
Love awesome, She'll be number one. What does he want
to transfer to them? He's like stuck. I said, we
tell you when my dad transferred to me. From the
day I was born till today. My dad's worked six
days a week, not because he has to. He used
to work because he had to. He stopped working because
(22:52):
he had to, but he still works six days a week.
And Iran he worked from Monday and Iran the Sunday
is Friday there, so we only have one day off.
In Iran. He would leave at five o'clock. He'd come
at eight thirty, worked every single day and he drove
two hours to his job in a city called Kataj.
We lived in Tehran and he drove a gan gianna
is like a pintle in Iran. And then we had
a renal when we started making a little bit more money.
So my dad taught me hard work. My dad worked
(23:14):
at a ninety nine cents store in Inglewood, down the
street from Great Western Form in a plaza for people
that know that area right next to video twenty twenty.
If you know what that area is, that's where my
dad was. And he taught me never to be afraid
of the truth. He was tough on me on keeping
my ward. He dropped out of school in eighth grade.
Knew nothing about Matt couldn't read or write, but he
(23:35):
shared values and principles to me right. My mom, on
the other side, was the most paranoid person I've ever
met in my life. I've never met anybody more paranoid
than my mom. My mom was always worried, you know,
the warrior versus a worrier. My mom was the ultimate warrior.
Panic anxiety stress. A lot of it passed down from family,
(23:57):
but she was always worried. If I came home one day,
I didn't know who I was with that day, I'd
have to see where my mom is that day. Are
you crying today? Are you worried today? Are you happy today?
So I to learn very quickly to size up who
I'm talking to too. Okay, So it kind of gave
me the ability to have a little bit of study
of human nature and body language because I had to
do it early on. Right, My mom was good in math.
(24:21):
My mom was overly paranoid, which you need in business,
overly skeptical, slow to trust anybody. All of those qualities
can work in your favor in business. Right. Sometimes in
personal life it can hurt you, but in business it
can help you. They obviously clashed it and work out.
My mom. I'm getting her place right now. It's just
coming down here. My dad lives with me. So we're
all going to be within a literally within the next
(24:42):
sixty days, we're all going to be within a point
four mile radius, all of us. And I've worked hard
to get it. I'm very happy. Yeah, But you know,
when we're younger, we only see the ugly side of
our dad or mom, and we're rarely seeing the good side.
And my pastorom has told me something when I was
twenty five years old. He says, the father son relationship
(25:04):
or the parent child relationship goes through three stages. First
you idolize them, then you demonize them, then you humanize them.
Your goal is to go through the humanizing phase as
quickly as possible. The later you go, the fewer time
you're going to have with them relationship wise.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
And how do you expedite that process get through the
humanizing staates?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
You can't man to each is different, you know, it's
like you can't do it, Like you know, how do
you how fast do you find a wife or a
partner to be made? You can't expedite that process. That
part is tough, especially nowadays. Marriage all that's very, very hard.
But you do your best to try to gain wisdom
by making a lot of stupid mistakes fast. The faster
(25:44):
you make mistakes, the faster you gain wisdom. Sometimes we
make mistakes slower. I'm about making mistakes faster, and I
learned that later on as well.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
What's the stupidest and biggest mistake you.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Make trying to force to change people? So, for example,
rather than skin you who you want to be and
what do you want to do? It was just telling
you who you should be. And I never worked, you know,
I was in my first seven years of being a
sales leader. I never built anybody. Never. For seven years,
none of my sales guys ever made any real money.
(26:16):
Maybe fifty two hundred thousand dollars yet, but that's not
real money. You living in California. And then one day
I took full inventory. I'm like, listen, you're making money,
But how come you guys are not making money. You
can't sit there and point it at them?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Why is it?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Then I realize, Okay, driving people isn't based on what's
important to you, It's about what's important to them. When
I wrote the book Your Next Five Moves, Move number
one steven A was who do you want to be?
The sooner I can identify who you want to be,
the better I know how to drive you right, And
(26:49):
everybody's driven by you know, different things in life. Like
I got four kids. My oldest is into politics and
is into movies. He's twelve years old. So I'm taking
him to you know, the Film Academy here in New York.
The next couple of weeks to spend some time with him.
My youngest son, ten years old. He could care less
about politics, and he's okay with movies, not crazy about it.
But he's all sports. He's got the bo Jackson body,
(27:11):
like the big butt, the legs. You know, Dylan is
the athletic guy. It's all he wants to do. He's
in camps, he's playing with high school players right now,
in college players. That's all he's obsessed with. Right so
the sooner I know what matters to them. I know
my daughter wants to be a baker. My three year old.
I don't know anything about even my wife. I'm not babe,
what do you want to do? After we sold the company?
Where Monica having a conversation and we came back one
(27:32):
time and we're driving to go have our celebration dinner
when we're selling the company, and I said, Babe, what's
next for you? She said, what do you mean? Said?
What do you want to do next? He says, what
do you mean, babe? I said, we just had a
massive exit. What do you want to do next? Or
do you want to go next? Here's what I want
to do? Well, babe, that's a tough question, I know,
but let's start thinking about it. How can I support?
What do you want to do? So? Forcing biggest mistake
(27:55):
ever the moment I flipped at twenty eight, twenty nine
years old. Everything became so smooth and easier to deal
with people because if you didn't want to do it,
I'm like, no problem, do your thing.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So it made your better father?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Oh, I mean, my oldest son made me, really helped
me be a better father. But I learned how to
be a better father through my father and by making
a lot of mistakes with people I coached early on.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
A lot of mistakes made your better husband work.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
In progress, baby, work in progress. That's that's a lot
of work. Marriage is the hard hardest thing you'll ever do,
because because at least, if you have four kids, you
have four options. Right when you're married, you don't have
any other options. You know, at least if you work
with a client, and you can fire a client, you
(28:44):
know you can.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Assire next to one of my producers got married two
weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
There you go, you know, listen and I tell everybody
you know when it comes on to marriage. When I
was getting married, this lady named Claudia and her husband
at the time. All Fonso gave me a book and
it was called Advice from Husband and from Men and
Women who have been married for over fifty years. You
know what's an opening quote in the book, marriage is
the greatest mistake you'll ever make.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
The alternative is is is the market is filled with
a lot of people right now in their sixties who
have no kids. I understand, I be married and you
try to once they don't work out, and it later
it is what it is. But I encourage try and
get It's the greatest risk you'll ever take. But the
rewards are you know, when you have a child, you're
(29:27):
holding a child, you're talking to a child, you're having
a conversation with them, and they grow up and now
they're giving you feedback you're having really.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Telling you what you're wrong about. Thinking they know more
than you.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
What a beautiful thing to go through it.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
It's hard, it's annoying, it's hard, it's annoying as hell,
but it's it's very rewarding. And I tell you what.
The thing about me, especially they're like you, oh my lord,
oh my lord, my two daughters is something special. Man.
But I tell you this, much is the greatest thing
that ever happened to me, and I think it saved
my life because it gave me the balance. I'm able
to dial it back, really back and keep myself and
(29:59):
elevate actually my level of control because I got them
to think about it and not just myself. If I'm
just thinking about me, yeah, oh Lord, who knows what
mistakes I would have made. I'm with you, you know, listen,
I got to ask you this. I'm looking at this
one point ninety four million YouTube subscribers, five point six
nine million subscribers. With Value Tainment, you talked about asking
(30:20):
people what do they want to be? What do they
want to do? As you sit here today with those
numbers that I just threw out to you, with the
impact that you're having with your knowledge of business, the
kind of impact and influence that you're exercising because of
all the success that you've had with the PbD podcast
and other things, what do you want to do?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So politically, I can't run, right, so that option is
already out of the question. If loss were different, I
would definitely entertain it. If that was the case, I
would enjoy it. I think I have some ideas that
I think, you know, would be entertaining to impose and
sell and see if America would bite or not. But
so if that's out of the equation, I have no
interest in governorship whatsoever at all. Zero, not interested. I
(31:06):
don't want to do it. I think the Avengers, you know,
you got to kind of see what role you play
to me. Media right now is going through a massive,
massive disruption, massive disruption. Look what's going on with the
game this year right one hundred and ten million dollars
for the what was it, the Dolphins Chiefs game, And
now they're trying to buy potentially Super Bowl and pay
(31:29):
per view and maybe one day we're paying ninety nine
bucks to watch the pay per view Super Bowl. I mean,
it's a very different, you know, strategy right now with
digital and how it's going. And look what you're doing
right now, this is your show. You're doing digital growing
out exponential phase, you know, with your own content. But
everything today is about being able to control the narrative.
If you're not able to influence the narrative yourself, other
(31:52):
people will say it about you. But we're going to
do our part to sell the values and principles we
believe in the way we present our arguments and the
way we'll do it is we'll build the biggest army
of business people that follow our consulting firm. We consult
for a lot of businesses people don't know about behind
closed doors, and our consulting firm you can see it
(32:13):
at biddavid dot com. Bidavid Consultant has grown. We consult
for five thousand businesses sixty plus countries and it ranges
from how to raise money, how to do this, how
to do that?
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Well, I can vouse for you because you've given me advice,
whether I've asked for it or not. Sometimes I've asked,
sometimes I didn't have to, But I love our relationship.
Give I give you credit what credit is due. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So, but that part for us on the business influence side.
The politics side I started recently three four years ago,
was always business content and I'm always enamored by people
like you interview them. So long term we'll be getting
involved in movies, documentaries, OTTs. We got a lot of
We're about to buy any eleven acre campus here to
build our own campus, but we'll be playing on the
(32:50):
media space for many years to come.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
What do you enjoy most interviewing folks, doing talking to
the fellas while you're doing your podcast interviewing folks. Is
it sports figures, is it political figures? Is it just
whoever the newsmakers are in that particular moment. What excites
you most?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
What do I enjoy the most? Okay, the other day,
this is going to be a curveball. So I'm sitting here.
I get a call from one of my bookers. They say, hey,
you know Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, his brother wants to come
and talk to you. Really, yeah, the Mark Epstein. Yeah, okay,
sounds good. When Saturday morning comes here, we have a
(33:27):
two hour podcast, longest one he's done his twenty seven minutes.
We sit right there to our conversation. Wild stuff that
he said right that he's never said before. Next thing,
you know, hey, ice Cube, what about it? You want
to talk to ice Cube? Of course I want to
talk to ice Cube. We're talking hip hop, We're talking
the music I used to listen to with master Ace.
(33:49):
I don't know if you remember master Ace and rbo
Posse and Rapp and Forte, and you know, there's a
part of me that most people don't know. I grew
up with hip hop till two thousand and three is
when I stopped listening to Radi and All. I listened
into his audio books. I'm interested in talking to ice Cube.
I get a call from you know, sug Knight from
jail Yo Pi. I saw it at Yeah and talking
to sug Knight and we do five six seven, you know,
(34:12):
cole calls, not col calls, collect calls and he's doing
the call together, or Sammy de Boll or Kobe Bryant
or Shag or you. I'm interested in people. I like
numbers and I like people. Two things I like a
lot numbers and people. And also what I enjoy is
current events, reaction, strategy sequencing. What would I do if
I was in that situation? Like strategy sessions. One of
(34:34):
my favorite things to do, Steven A's strategy sessions, I
don't care what it is. If I'm sitting with Will Geddero,
we're talking about restaurants, how to make restaurants better, and
he's given ideas. I am obsessed with strategy sessions, right,
you know, how to grow channels, businesses growth. I enjoy
doing that, but generally I am very curious talking to
people and learning.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Then you have it that was part one of my
conversation with Patrick Bett David. Obviously, he's got a lot
of interested things to say, a lot of compelling things
to say, a lot of things that millions upon millions
of people would not agree with. Quite frankly, if you're
of the liberal tilt per se, you might be offended
by some of the things he had to say, depending
(35:14):
on how sensitive you are to some of the subject
matters he was willing to tackle. Nevertheless, the bottom line
is that he's just getting started. He's got a lot
more to say once Part two arrives this Wednesday, a
whole lot more to say. So stick around and make
sure you don't miss that. This is the Stephen Nick
Smith Show right here over the digital airways of YouTube,
along with iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio. Like I told y'all before, we're
(35:38):
gonna listen to all sides on this show. We're not
gonna stop. That's the way it's going to be. I'm
not one of those people that just believes in listening
to one side. I don't care how much I disagree
with you. I've been on the record. I've said this
on many many occasions, Ladies and gentlemen, I don't give
a damn who I'm talking to. I can interview anybody.
I want to hear what they have to say. I
want to hear their perspectives, and I want you to
(35:59):
hear their person respectives, and then leave it for you
to judge based on the preponderance of information and substance
of material or lack thereof somebody has thrown out. I
don't ever think that anybody would accuse Patrick bet David
of lacking substance. I can tell you that much. I'm
interested in listening to what the man had to say.
You thought part one was riveting enough, wait till you
(36:19):
hear part two. Stick around, don't miss it. Part two
is coming this Wednesday. Until then, this is stephen A
sign it off. See you in a couple of days.
Host
Stephen A. Smith
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.