How Patrick Bet-David Went From Refugee Camp to a $1B Empire

All the alarming statistics about child abuse and neglect—millions of cases reported each year, killing nearly five children each day—don’t begin to illustrate how victims experience abuse. In A Child Called 'It', author Dave Pelzer provides a rare and grisly glimpse into his experience of severe physical and psychological abuse at his mother’s hands.

In one of the worst child abuse cases reported in California’s history at the time, Pelzer was starved, burned on the stove, regularly locked in the bathroom with a noxious mixture of ammonia and Clorox, and forbidden from speaking to or looking at any of his family members. Through it all, Pelzer maintained an indomitable will to survive that’s a testament to the strength of the human spirit even under the bleakest circumstances.

What do master chess players and master businesspeople have in common? Both always plan five steps ahead. In Your Next Five Moves, entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David argues that what distinguishes exceptional business leaders from average ones is their ability to anticipate future events and plan effectively for them—ideally by thinking five steps ahead. To turn you into a master business planner, Bet-David presents five strategic steps you must start taking now: learn about yourself, improve your problem-solving skills, create a winning team, expand your business, and position yourself as an industry leader.

In each step, we’ll describe how you can enhance your ability to strategize for long-term success. We’ll also connect Bet-David’s ideas to those of other entrepreneurs and business leaders, such as Eric Ries (The Lean Startup) and Gino Wickman (Traction), so you get the greatest insight on how to build a successful long-term strategy for your business.

The time between starting a business and success is marked by endless ups and downs. This is normal and necessary for growth, and in The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky argues that you should embrace this often overlooked aspect of entrepreneurship. During the “middle years” of your business, you’ll develop the skills you need to realize your goals. The uphill climb will be uncomfortable, but Belsky insists that it’s worth it.

Belsky is an entrepreneur best known for cofounding Behance, an online platform for creative artists. In this guide, we’ll explore the difficulties he says you’ll encounter once your startup gets going, as well as the skills you’ll need to cultivate. We’ll discuss how to keep your team motivated and how to cope with success if and when it comes. We’ll also cover writings from other business experts who expand on Belsky’s ideas or approach his views from a different perspective.

The time between starting a business and success is marked by endless ups and downs. This is normal and necessary for growth, and in The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky argues that you should embrace this often overlooked aspect of entrepreneurship. During the “middle years” of your business, you’ll develop the skills you need to realize your goals. The uphill climb will be uncomfortable, but Belsky insists that it’s worth it.

Belsky is an entrepreneur best known for cofounding Behance, an online platform for creative artists. In this guide, we’ll explore the difficulties he says you’ll encounter once your startup gets going, as well as the skills you’ll need to cultivate. We’ll discuss how to keep your team motivated and how to cope with success if and when it comes. We’ll also cover writings from other business experts who expand on Belsky’s ideas or approach his views from a different perspective.

What’s the secret to being a great leader? Whether you’re in a warzone or on the front lines of a corporate battle, Extreme Ownership argues that the best leaders take full responsibility for everything in their world: not only their actions, decisions, and failures, but also those of everyone on their team. By practicing Extreme Ownership, great leaders achieve victory by prioritizing the team above all else and focusing on constant improvement—and in this guide, we’ll show how you can, too.

Authors Jocko Willink and Leif Babin are former US Navy SEAL officers who served in one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. They honed the principles of Extreme Ownership on the battlefield, then applied the same tenets to the corporate world as business consultants. In this guide, we’ll add broader context from other leadership books such as Built to Last and Team of Teams to better illustrate how to apply Willink and Babin’s leadership principles to your life.

In The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp argue that many leadership models are unsustainable because they don’t prioritize self-management and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. This causes leaders to burn out, lose their passion, and succumb to an unhealthy culture of competition and greed. As a result, employees disengage, turnover soars, and organizations break down from within. To overcome these issues, the authors argue that leaders must learn to understand and manage their emotions and mindset, communicate effectively with others, and align their actions and behaviors with their goals and commitments.

Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp present 15 commitments that conscious leaders must uphold to run an effective organization, which we’ve synthesized into eight primary behaviors. We’ll explain what each behavior is, why it’s important, and how to put it into action. In our commentary, we’ll further discuss how to improve your leadership abilities and adopt the authors’ recommended behaviors, citing experts like Brené Brown (Dare to Lead) and Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth).

What do master chess players and master businesspeople have in common? Both always plan five steps ahead. In Your Next Five Moves, entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David argues that what distinguishes exceptional business leaders from average ones is their ability to anticipate future events and plan effectively for them—ideally by thinking five steps ahead. To turn you into a master business planner, Bet-David presents five strategic steps you must start taking now: learn about yourself, improve your problem-solving skills, create a winning team, expand your business, and position yourself as an industry leader.

In each step, we’ll describe how you can enhance your ability to strategize for long-term success. We’ll also connect Bet-David’s ideas to those of other entrepreneurs and business leaders, such as Eric Ries (The Lean Startup) and Gino Wickman (Traction), so you get the greatest insight on how to build a successful long-term strategy for your business.

Many enterprises come and go, but visionary companies endure for generations. These companies are the gold standard in their respective industries, remaining prosperous throughout many decades and at the hands of many different leaders. Beyond attaining financial success, they’ve also become household names, ingraining themselves into our collective psyche—it’s hard to imagine a world without them or their products, from Band-Aids to Post-it Notes to Mickey Mouse.

But what is the key to these companies’ longevity and tremendous success? Bestselling author Jim Collins and Stanford professor Jerry I. Porras embarked on a six-year research project to answer this question. In this book, you’ll find the fruits of their research, learn the important concepts behind enduring success, and get practical advice for building a company that lasts.