your next 5 moves

Summary of
YOUR NEXT FIVE MOVES
Master the Art of Business Strategy
By
Patrick Bet-David
Introduction

After watching the world chess champion, Patrick Bet-David couldn’t help but notice the similarities between chess and business. To win at chess, you must constantly think fifteen moves ahead. When you apply tactic in business, you can predict your future and control all of your opponent’s moves.
Most of the time, people don’t think more than one move ahead, and ego, emotions and fear usually drive that move. This book will teach you how to think five moves ahead, which is more than enough to help you anticipate the future and make smart strategic decisions.
After learning how to take the vision of a chess grandmaster, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, see where you want to go, and calculate the best route to get there. This book will be your guide.

In order to become a grandmaster at chess, you need to master many skills like recognizing your position and predicting what your opponent will do. The same applies in business, to become a grandmaster at business, there are five moves you need to master to achieve your goals and anticipate future outcomes.
The first move you will learn is mastering knowing yourself. You will not be able to think ahead if you are not self aware. By knowing who you want to be, you will know which direction to take and why you are taking it.
The second move is mastering the ability to reason. Processing issues will give you the ability to make choices no matter what the stakes are.
The third move is mastering building the right team. You will only grow after you surround yourself with the right team. Having team members that you trust will create a profitable culture and will speed up the business.
The fourth move is mastering strategies to scale. To create exponential growth, you will need to learn how to access the investors funds. After you gain the growth, you will have to maintain it. By being paranoid, you will be always ready and alert for any threat.
The final move is mastering power play. You will understand how to win the battle against the Goliath of your industry. Using social media, you will be able to control the narrative, cultivate your power and leverage your clients.
By the time you have mastered all the five moves, you will stop making one-move decisions that are guided by your ego and emotions, and you will have all the tools you need to become a grandmaster in the world of business.

Who Do You Want to Be?

The most important part of starting a business is asking yourself: Who do you want to be? Some people dream of making $400,000 a year. Some want their private plane. Others have no interest in material things.
You should listen to your own thoughts because your decisions will be guided by who you want to be. There is no difference between a kid asking for guidance and a CEO managing a million-dollar business. It all starts with answering the question: who do you want to be?
You need to answer questions to realize your true desire. Most people don't know who they want to be. It's normal for most people not to know the answers immediately. Life is a process of reflecting and finding answers to better understand who you are.
This move is essential to know how committed you are. If you want to build a small candy store business, you don't need to be the hardest working man to run it. But if you want to change the industry, you must be equipped with the right team, the right plan, the correct data, and in particular, the right story. Take your time to make sense of your story of who exactly you want to be.
We can talk all day about what you can achieve: the cars, the money, or the mansions. But before that, you will face a lot of trouble and experience a lot of pain. You need to make pain your fuel. Those who endure the most pain have the highest chance of making their business successful.
As people grow older, they lose the big dreams they had when they were young. Life gets in the way, and the plans don't go as expected. We lose faith in our ability to achieve anything and stop dreaming big. We start aiming low and playing safe due to the fear of failure.
The only thing preventing you from being great is a vision and a plan to accomplish it. When you are fighting for a dream bigger than yourself, it will fuel you with passion and motivation. This will make you find joy in your struggle. You just need to identify who you want to be.
In 1999, Patrick Bet-David was 20 years old. After leaving the army, he planned to become the next bodybuilding champion, an actor, and finally, a governor.
His first step was to get a job in a local gym. After a lot of searching, he got a job at the smallest gym in the area. Regardless of the bad situation, Patrick worked hard until he got promoted to the Hollywood Bally gym. His plan was working. He was making $3,500 a month, which was a fortune compared to what he made in the army.
One day, Patrick’s manager offered him an assistant manager job at the gym that paid $55,000 a year. The only condition for him to get the position was fixing a failing gym. Patrick’s competitor for the job was named Adwin. The failing gym was achieving 40% of its goals. After 90 days, Patrick reached 115% of the gym's goals. He outperformed Adwin in all measures.
Patrick went to the manager's office expecting him to be pleased by his performance. He also expected to get the position he was promised. But he found out that Adwin already got the position. Objectively, Patrick should have gotten the promotion, but he didn't because Adwin had been working there for nine years, and Patrick was there for just six months.
Patrick quit because there was no point in working at a place where there were no clear directions on how to advance in the company. That was a defining moment in his life. He looked inward and thought about who he wanted to be and where he wanted to go.
Once he got the answers, his next move was clear. Patrick found a sales-based job with clear expectations and an ability to grow. He learned that satisfaction could only be achieved when your decisions align with your values and beliefs.

Study the Most Important Product: You

Knowing what you want to be is a process that takes time. Only in movies does a person suddenly get motivated to understand who he wants to be. Knowing yourself is the hardest thing in life, but it is the beginning of wisdom.
You need to spend more time studying the person you will spend the rest of your life with: yourself. Instead of spending your time learning how to influence people and understanding their behaviors, spend it on understanding your own strengths and weaknesses.
Shawn was an old friend of Patrick who had a few jobs before his thirties. Eventually, he worked for Patrick as an insurance salesman. One day, Shawn called Patrick and said he didn't want to work in the company anymore. Patrick met with Shawn and asked him about how every job he quit was his boss's fault. It was always someone else's fault and never his.
Shawn, for the first time, started looking inward rather than being angry at Patrick. Shawn found that he wanted to quit because the new guy under his supervision had surpassed him, making him feeling bitter and envious. Patrick asked Shawn: Who do you want to be? He suggested that the new guy may have different dreams. Maybe the new guy wanted to be a millionaire, and Shawn didn't.
Shawn thought for a minute and said making $150,000 a year, coaching a small football team and being present with his kids would be enough for him. But he feared that that would be dreaming too small.
Shawn asked Patrick what he wanted out of life, and Patrick said that it doesn’t matter. What’s important is who Shawn wants to be, and once he gets a clear answer, he won't be envious any more.
Shawn was relieved. His answer was to stop comparing himself to other employees. Having dinner every night with his family was more important to him than being a millionaire.
Shawn, like many other people, had been chasing false versions of what motivated him. He wasn't honest about who he wanted to be, and that made him envious. He became truly fulfilled only when he aligned his career with his true self and real desires.
Here is another example. When Patrick was still selling gym memberships, he worked with a guy named Stuart. Like Patrick, Stuart also started his own insurance agency. One day, they were having lunch and discussing their goals. Stuart said that he wanted to be the owner of the largest insurance agency in California. Stuart wanted to work hard for a few years, make a lot of money, and then take it easy for the rest of his life.

But Patrick said that he wants to own the biggest agency in America. Stuart thought that Patrick was delusional. Patrick explained that Stuart was thinking too small when the potential was so big. Patrick wants to change the world and make history, while Stuart was chasing an easier life.

Stuart was driven by being financially free. He now makes $500,000 a year and barely needs to work. He knew what drove him, and got to it. Stuart probably wonders why Patrick is still struggling with the stress and pressure of hundred-hour workweeks when he has already made so much money.
Patrick did not stop because he didn't reach what drove him yet. His goal wasn't to be financially free. Even when he almost went bankrupt, he never regretted his decisions because the money did not drive him.

You need to find what drives you. It is going to be different from everyone else. Once you realize what drives you, you won't need an alarm clock anymore. Until you reach your goals, you will be more motivated than ever.

The Incredible Power of Processing Issues

People always talk about the keys to success. You will hear stuff like marrying the right person, focusing on health, working hard, etc. But the reality is you are going to face tough times: your customer walks away because you can't lower the price, a pandemic causes a 40% income drop, or your kid gets into a fight at school.
An amateur tends to panic, but a professional doesn't. A professional’s first step is always to "process" what is happening while staying strong and focused. Stoicism, the ability to control your emotions, is vital for a professional because emotions can harm judgment. Sadly, this is a lesson people learn the hard way.
Life will keep happening. Your response depends on how you process issues. Most business people don't fail because of a flawed plan or corrupted management. They get bankrupt because they refuse to abandon their pre-learned ideas about life and work. They don't learn from the problems they face.
Common sense can be taught and learned. Once you understand it, making well-calculated decisions will come naturally to you.
Not so long ago, Patrick was a high-tempered CEO. In 2013, he had a severe panic attack that sent him to the hospital and kept recurring for 18 months. Those panic attacks happened mainly because of indecision. Patrick’s inability to trust his decisions made him unable to sleep and made his heart pound faster.
It wasn't the eighteen-hour day's workload that affected him, but the constant thinking about his problems. Patrick kept thinking about all the conversations and decisions he had made over and over again. This was affecting both in his personal and professional life.
His mind was restless because he was anxious about making a wrong decision. Patrick thought of every issue as having just a black-and-white answer, as if there was only one right solution to the problem. But trying to find the right solution was unproductive and exhausting.
No matter your issues, there is always a way to solve them calmly and effectively. Problems are unavoidable, so you better get a good grasp on them. To do that, you have to keep processing problems constantly.
Processing is your ability to pick the best decision using the information you have. It is about putting every challenging issue you encounter through a meticulous mental study and being firm about the decision you made.

The Myth of the Solopreneur: How to Build Your Team

It doesn't matter how smart or good your strategy is. If you are playing a solo game against a team, you will always lose. No matter what industry you are in, working well with other people is the key to staying successful.
Thinking five moves ahead will stop your ego from telling you that you can do it all by yourself. If you can achieve so much by yourself, think about what you can do with a team of like-minded individuals.
When Patrick turned twenty-seven, he was the best at his job as a salesman, but he had a lot of trouble learning how to manage others. He kept improving over time, but five years later, Patrick still struggled. He realized that dreaming big alone won't get the job done and looked for the right team to improve his company's profits.
Before recruiting people, you must first answer the question: why would people work with you? Before your business gets big, you don't recruit people for the company. You recruit them for "you". At the start, you won't be able to offer people a huge salary. So, you need to be a good enough CEO who they can believe in.
You need to ask yourself: will people win if they get close to you, and will their lives improve? You need to build a list of people whose lives have been enhanced by you. You must build a good benefits program for your employees. To attract good employees, they need to see that you have something to offer them.
Instead of selfishly looking for what people can give, you must focus on what you can give them. Benefitting people around you will improve your worth as well. When people around you win simply because they are associated with you, you know that you are succeeding in life.
After having a list of people who you have benefited, you can start making the team. That team must help you solve daily problems and reach long-term goals. Take care of these people, and they will take care of you.
Remember that when you recruit the best people, you’ll have to keep re-recruiting them. Your team members are constantly getting new offers. That’s why there are headhunters whose job is to find the best talents and send them to other companies. If your employees are the best, you better know how to keep them.

Create a Principles-Based Culture

You can't make your business succeed without making your team members believe in it. Part of that is having symbols and slogans that shape your business's culture. Big companies such as Google and Walmart are not so far from being religions. Like all religions, they have believers and rituals. Each big company follows commandments and strongly believes in its business plan and cultural practices.
Make sure that a common belief unites you and your people. Believing in the same thing energizes the business. It helps to keep you strong through hard and good times.
Having good ideas and talented people is not enough. If your team members don't share similar principles and beliefs, they will never reach their full potential. It doesn't matter if you have the best people. You cannot sustain what you have built without having shared principles.
Being a good leader is about making others perform better in your presence and ensuring your effect lasts in your absence. It is one thing to figure out who you want to be. It is another to make the entire company practice the same core values with or without you being around.
Before Patrick married his wife, he sat down with her, got a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down all the principles they would follow. When they wanted to have kids, they did the same thing. As a result of that, his family has a culture. They have beliefs and clear values they stand for as a family, such as respecting each other and improving together, and stuff they don't tolerate, such as bullying.
It is the same for his company. Patrick keeps repeating the principles of his culture over and over again. Patrick repeats his business values so much that his team makes fun of him for doing it so often. He believes that if your people are not mocking you for repeating your message, you haven't repeated it enough.
Many entrepreneurs suffer from problems such as employees fooling around, being lazy, and doing immoral things to make more money. The cause for these problems is being unclear about the company's culture and not hearing their values and principles enough.
You need to be relentless about your culture in your personal and business life. You must keep reminding people of your principles. That will make those values and principles always stick with your family or team.
Trust = Speed: The Power of Reliability

Trust is a very complex multidimensional system. You may trust a team member to handle sales but not human resources, and you may trust another with information about your plans but not your future strategy. You need to understand what to trust others with. For example, trust that your enemies will always spin stories about you intending to drive you out of the market.
Trust and speed are inseparable because speed is when you can trust several people always to do the right thing. Whether you sell a product or a service, speed is critical. Time is money, and the faster you move, the more time you'll have. How fast every component moves impacts the speed of your business. When every department of your business trusts the others, they can work as fast as possible.
For a plane to lift off, it needs to go as fast as 184 miles per hour. It is the same for a business. You need to reach a certain speed to lift off, sustain that speed and avoid crashing. You can only reach that speed by having a reliable team around you that you can trust.
Patrick has worked in the life insurance industry for a while. It is an industry where people anticipate death, not because they might die tomorrow, but because their families will suffer if they don't prepare for it. Thus, Patrick learned that setting contracts is the same as anticipating things going wrong.
In the business world, you are going to be fooled and tricked so many times. You must learn the importance of anticipating issues and putting down a signed paper to protect yourself from the unknown.
Many people get married, and at the start, they swear to live for each other until they don't. They grow to hate each other and decide to get divorced. They contact their attorneys and spend thousands of dollars until they are mentally and financially tired.
It doesn't have to go that way. Before you marry, you must sit with your partner and plan for the worst to happen. Write down a contract about what happens if the worst-case scenario occurs. As an entrepreneur, you must handle your business the same way. In the worst-case scenario, a handshake deal and a word won't be enough.
A soldier would give up his own mother under torture, so remember to be realistic about the details of your contracts. You need to be cautious about trusting anyone in your team, particularly with information that could hurt you or your business. Some say that by signing a contract, you are planning to fail. The unfortunate reality is that the other person is not always equally honest and sincere as you may be.

Scaling for Exponential Growth

In the US, you can list a company for $200 and start calling yourself a CEO. You can also make business cards with the letters "CEO" next to your name and start handing them to people. However, you can earn that title only when hundreds of people call you a CEO. For that to happen, you must start scaling your business.
At any stage of your business, you will need a source of money. For example, you can borrow from your family, spend your personal income or find a venture capital investor.
In 1995, Jeff Bezos was trying to raise money to start Amazon. After much work, he raised $1 million from twenty-two people at roughly $50,000 each. At that time, the first question everyone asked was: what is the internet?
In 1999, Jack Ma started Alibaba in his apartment. A year later, he received $20 million from one investor. Nowadays, capitalizing on your company and finding investors is easier than ever.
To be convinced, investors need to know how the money will be used. You need to put yourself in the investors' place. They want to see if you can make profits out of their investment. The investors need to see that you have a plan whether you need the money to hire a team, increase production, or patent your trade secrets, etc.
You must show the investors what makes your business different. They need to understand why it stands out and what are its comparative advantages in the marketplace. You must provide the investors with numbers because they will walk away if you don't show them the projections and the valuation.
There are different types of investors. You need to know the ideal investor for your business model. Determine if you need your investor involved in making decisions or if you want full control over your company.
Some investors want to have a quick cash grab, while others don't invest in companies that are made to sell. They want to know if you would sell the company in a few years and return their investment or if you would keep growing. You must do your research on the investor you are dealing with.
People don't write checks without making demands. Whenever you ask for cash, it comes with requirements. You must be prepared to either lose some control over your business and have big investments or retain that control and lose the opportunity to raise more money.
If you don't want others telling you what to do, you will have a tough time finding an investor. Venture capitalists want to work with agreeable entrepreneurs who are open to suggestions about how they should run their businesses. If you view their recommendations as interfering with your plans, you need to look for more passive investors, such as banks.

Stay Paranoid: The Grand Master Never Lets His Guard Down

There is no peace in the business world. You only get an illusion of it when things are going well. You can be at the top of the market, but you can't relax for even a moment because there is always someone planning to attack you. You must always be paranoid, which means constantly being alert for any threats on your success.
In 1965, the average lifespan for a top 500 company was 33 years. By 1990, the average became 20 years. That average is expected to drop to 14 years by 2026. Thanks to technology and social media, it is easier than ever to knock out the big companies controlling the industry.
It is required to have a high sense of urgency if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. You need to treat every day as a battle. Treat every situation as a life-or-death matter because all your competitors are willing to put their lives on the edge for their business. It is not that they are more intelligent or more skilled. But you need to be just like them: obsessed with winning.
You are your worst enemy. You spend all of your time thinking about what will happen in the future rather than living in the moment. When you are not urgent, you only get half involved in the present. You need to place yourself in a war zone where your back is against the wall, and your only option is to fight your way forward.
You don't need to be crazy paranoid, but you must be alert paranoid. Stay cautious of what can go wrong. Don't be a fool and think everyone around you is as faithful and committed without your supervision. Paranoia leads to curiosity, which leads to solutions. You must let your paranoia lead you to problems hiding under the surface.
When Patrick was in the army, they had a saying: "Stay alert, stay alive". You may notice that when you have one victory after another, you suddenly find yourself defeated. That happened because you have let your guard down. You stopped being the toughest person in the business. Don't let success kill your paranoia because it is the only thing keeping you alive.
Having a big ego is one of the most critical personality traits for every CEO. When you become successful, you will start receiving compliments from everyone around you because they want to get part of your profit. Having an inflated ego will blind you to making decisions that will kill your business. You must have a support system to keep you in check. Surround yourself with people who are unafraid of opposing your decisions and saying the truth.

How to Beat Goliath and Control the Narrative

When you are scaling your business, you will face your Goliath. Goliath symbolizes the company or the person trying to bully you out of the industry. He will be small at the start, like another sales person with more experience than you, and he will grow as you grow.
Before you try to face your Goliath, you should remember that he is bigger with more experience and resources than you. He also has a more known brand than you and a better reputation. All of that makes him comfortable at the top. Oftentimes, when Goliath feels like he can't be touched, he will become too comfortable and he will lose his paranoia. That is your opportunity to strike.
Not everyone can fight Goliath, your chances of beating him are minimal. For every story of the small one beating the big one like the rise of Amazon and Facebook from nothing, there are hundreds of thousands of stories of people losing everything trying to face Goliath.
Winning against Goliath is possible, but you need to be someone that can handle pain. You will be afraid, laughed at and bullied, and you will have to work ten times harder than you have ever imagined. If you are still willing to fight him, you will need to control the narrative.
When Patrick started, Goliath used all the power he had to bully him. His Goliath kept saying bad things about him and making rumors to try and destroy his reputation. But at the age of the internet, Patrick realized that he can control the narrative.
When people heard things about Patrick, they would Google his name to see how much of a horrible person he is. They found videos from Patrick and they saw that he is not the monster the other company presented him as. As a result, a lot of the people that heard negative things about him and went to look it up, ended up working with him.
Everyone is looking at you, and you need to disced what to show and broadcast in order to control what they think about you. Goliath can spend millions trying to destroy you and your reputation, and you can make a video on your phone and have a bigger effect on your story.
Cultivate Your Power, and Stay Battle Tested

The most important part of cultivating your power is learning how to use leverage. Having leverage means that you are willing to walk away from a deal, and you can do that by having options. When you are the one who needs the deal the least, you will have the ability to get the terms you want. If you must make a deal, you will be under the power of the seller, and the terms will not be in your favor.
Instead of looking for one house, analyze the market and find at least three options you will be happy with. Then when you go and negotiate with any one of them, you will have the ability to walk away because you have other options. When you feel that you are the only option for the seller, that means that you have leverage.
Patrick worked for Bobby, the CEO of a company that makes $8 million a year. The only problem with Bobby’s company is that $5 millions of his yearly revenue comes from one client. For a while that one client was satisfied, but over time, he started fighting for better terms. Bobby wasn't able to fight back because he didn't have any other options.
Patrick said to Bobby that his only option is to get more clients. Bobby needed to create leverage so he stops being vulnerable. Bobby did nothing and lost that client over time. He had to sell the company.
The key to cultivating power is having leverage. If Bobby had many options and was able to leverage his clients, he would have been the one deciding the terms of the business.

Conclusion

Calculating many moves ahead is a skill that takes a chess player a lifetime to master. It is the ability to predict the future. If you can apply that skill in the business world, you will beat all of the competition.
In this book, Patrick Bet David taught you how to take the vision of a chess grandmaster and apply it in your business.
First, you learned how to identify your destination by asking yourself: who do you want to be? By reflecting on yourself, you can find your true desires. Having a clear goal will fuel you and help you find joy in your struggle.
Second, you learned that before studying the world, you must study yourself. Understanding yourself helps you make sense of your strengths and weaknesses. It will allow you to accept yourself and free yourself from self-judgment and envy.
Third, you learned how to process issues and stop making decisions driven by ego and emotions. You must gather enough information, take time to study them, and make well-calculated decisions.
Fourth, you learned the importance of building a great team. You learned that helping people is the best way to get them to help you achieve your long-term goals.
Fifth, you learned that every department must have the same values and principles for a business to succeed. Having a culture-based business will get all of your team members to be united under the same beliefs.
Sixth, you learned how to reach maximum speed by trusting others and making contracts to prevent worst-case scenarios. You must choose your team members well and trust them to do the right thing.
Seventh, you learned the importance of money while scaling your business, how to find that money, and how to convince investors that you know what you are doing.
Eighth, you learned why paranoia is a trait every successful CEO has and how to use it to your advantage. Paranoia leads to curiosity, which leads to solutions. Never let your ego blind you. You must have a team that keeps you on the right path and tells you their honest opinion.
After learning all these valuable skills, you can start planning your next five moves and take steps to achieve your goals and dreams.

Eight, you learned that in order to beat Goliath, you need to control the narrative. by using social media, you will have the same reach as the biggest company in the industry.
Finally, you learned that the key to surviving as a successful businessman for many years is to understand how to use leverage. By having options you will control the battlefield and be at a place of power.
You have learned the five key moves that would allow you to become a grandmaster at business: how to know yourself, how to reason, how to build a team, how to scale and how to use your power. You now have all the information you need to start following your passion and to achieve your goals and dreams .

Why should you read this summary?
Are you having difficulties identifying your current position and where you want to go?
Do you know how you could compete against the hungriest people at the top of the market?
Are you surrounding yourself with the people that can help you win?
Do you want to take the vision of a chess grandmaster and apply it in the real world?
In this book, the author Patrick Bet David teaches you what took him countless mistakes to learn. You will learn how to study who you are and who you want to be, how to process issues calmly and strategically, and how to build a team that shares your values and helps you scale your business.
If you have been making one-move decisions that are guided by your emotions, after reading this summary, you will be a grand master in the game of life. You will be able to calculate several moves ahead, predict what your opponents will do, and control their next move.

After watching the world chess championship, Patrick Bet-David couldn’t help but notice the similarities between chess and business. To win at chess, you must constantly think fifteen moves ahead. When you apply the same tactics in your business, you can predict your future and control all of your opponent’s moves.
Most of the time, people don’t think more than one move ahead, and ego, emotions and fear usually drive that move. This book will teach you how to think five moves ahead, which is more than enough to help you anticipate the future and make smart strategic decisions.

Who should read this summary?
CEOs
Entrepreneurs
Managers

About the Author
Patrick Bet-David is a multi-millionaire who never got a college degree. He went from serving in the army to selling health club memberships to starting his own financial firm and raising millions of dollars at the age of thirty. Patrick is also the creator of the YouTube channel "Valuetainment". Because of his unique approach to life and business, his videos have been viewed over a billion times on social media.