John: Light that sparks Fire Nation, Johnny Dumas here. And I am fired up to bring you our featured guest today, Dr. Gentempo. Patrick, are you prepared to ignite?

Patrick: I have the fire department on standby, John. I am ready and prepared.

John: Love it. Patrick is the founder and CEO of Action Potential Holdings. He is a serial entrepreneur, who has launched and sold several successful businesses. He is sometimes referred to as the philosopher entrepreneur, as he brings the foundations of what he refers to as applied philosophy to money, capitalism, and value creation. Patrick, I've given Fire Nation just a little insight, so share more about you personally, and then expand upon the biz.

Patrick: Sure. I mean, my background, which got me, I guess, launched in my career starts in my teen years, where I was an athlete, but I've always walked a bit to a different drummer. So when I was in high school as people were getting into the normal high school sports, I got into martial arts, specifically karate, which was outside of high school. But I ended up excelling there. You know, not to self aggrandize, but I ended up as a five time New Jersey State Champion and two time National Champion. So in my senior year of high school, when I – you know, when I was there and people knew about this, you know, it started making kind of headlines, the wrestling coach asked me to come out and to, you know, go for the wrestling team that year, which I did.

And I ended up, as it happens, I think; with most entrepreneurs have this particular story, where a tragedy in their life actually is an inflection point that lead them in a new direction. And in my case I ended up injured and saw a medical doctor, where I was given, you know, three types of drugs to deal with – you know, like a pain for the pain killer, anti-inflammatory for inflammation, a muscle relaxer for the muscles, and I fortunately for me, these medications ended up not working. And it sent me to the chiropractor. And I went to the chiropractor. And after my first adjustment there – and I didn’t realize they were a different kind of doctor with a different orientation and a different set of principles from which they operated.

But I had like a 90 percent result after the first adjustment. And I was like: wow. And I looked at the guy and I said, “Why didn’t anybody else do this to me?” And he started to explain to me the philosophy and the principles from which he operated as a chiropractor, and I tamed so much sense to me about the body being self healing and the nervous system being the master system that controlled the body, that I right then decided I wanted to be a chiropractor. And it's amazing how in life, you know, a moment in time that can sometimes take minutes, literally can put you on a different path that you otherwise weren’t on.

I walked into that office on one path for my future; I walked out of that office on a different path for my future, what I call a pivotal experience. So I walked out of there and decided to become a chiropractor. I enrolled in chiropractic school. You have to go pre-req, so I did my pre-reqs first. And went to chiropractic school in Atlanta at Life University. And then, got out of school, started a practice. And there's so many stories I can get into as far as the details there, but, you know, launched into that business. And while in practice, a colleague and dear friend to this day, walked in with a technology that basically was a diagnostic technology. It was kind of in its infant stages at that point.

Not really utilized at all in the profession. And I realized that one of the challenges I faced as a chiropractor in business was that I was selling a product I wasn’t sure I was delivering in. I think this will go for a lot of people in the service based business. It's not just healthcare, but any type of a service based business. I was selling a product I wasn’t sure I was delivering in, and this particular technology started to objectify what I was doing. And it translates into some years later, developing it, getting a couple of patents on this technology. And, you know, years later developing a company that you ended up with nine – roughly 9,000 clients on six continents, you know, it became a very successful company within the industry that I had sold a couple of years ago.

And now Action Potential Holdings is my new venture, where we get involved in multiple things because of my kind of ADD spirit, where it's hard to focus on one thing at a time. I like to get involved in multiple projects that align with my values. And that’s kind of the brief thumbnail as to how – you know, where I am right now.

John: Well, Patrick, we're gonna dive into those thumbnails and really pull out some pretty powerful stories. But, you know, one thing I want to mention to Fire Nation real quick from what you just shared is: Fire Nation, be open to experiences in life. You know, Patrick went into a doctor’s office, just thinking it might be another visit. And if he had just kind of been numb to his experience and to what was going on, you know, this whole world would have never been opened up to him. But, you know, he was curious, he asked questions and he was open to experiences. And you never, never know when that pivotal moment will happen. I mean, it happened, you know, for you Patrick, you know, in this doctor’s office.

It happened for me being stuck in traffic one day while I was driving to work. I mean, we never know Fire Nation when this pivotal moment’s gonna happen, but when it happens, you need to be open to that experience. And again Patrick, we're gonna dive into your story and pull out a couple great stories specifically from that. But before we do all that jazz, we always start with the success quotes and why you chose to share this?

Patrick: Contradictions lead to destruction. And the amount of destruction is relative to the level of the contradiction. And I think that applies for entrepreneurs in an extraordinarily important way. One thing I’d like to say to everybody who’s listening is that money is not the only entrepreneurial reality. We have different areas of our lives. We do have our careers. We have our financial life. We also have a personal life, which is us separate from the rest of the world. We have a relationship life, you know, spouses, children, what have you.

We have a spiritual life. So we have all these different elements of our lives, and what happens when you're not in alignment, when you have incongruency, or in this case as the quote says, when you have contradictions, it will lead to destruction within your life. So given that, you know, what I spend a lot of my time thinking about is how to create congruency. And something I’d like to share relative to this, is that I believe what is the barrier to entrepreneurial growth is when entrepreneurs get into a predicament of what I call maximum tension. Imagine what's driving you in your personal life is let’s say pulling you east, you know, just to visualize that in your mind’s eye.

And what's driving you in your career is pulling you west. And you will get to a point where you're driving in opposite directions, or you have these contradictions of driving forces in your life, to a point where you get at maximum tension, which is the key answer in my mind. I spent years thinking about what prevents people from doing things that would make them more successful? Why would people know things that they could do that they're currently not doing that would take them where they want to go? And, you know, I've spoken at many many seminars. I used to travel 150,000 miles a year, you know, lecturing, teaching, what have you.

And I could tell you that that was one of things that always disturbed me that people would come to a program, and they’d have that Jacuzzi experience: it would feel good while it's happening, but the next day it would have no impact on their life. So I want to know why is that?

John: Or maybe they’d even be really dehydrated.

Patrick: Yeah. Well, maybe that’s it. We just hydrate them and that gets it all – you know, gets it all done. But in the end, you know, what I realized is that they're at maximum – there's no room, there's no space in their life because of these conflicts or contradictions they have, to fit anything new in. They have an intension to wanna grow. They have an intension to want to make things better. And they don’t need to learn something new necessarily, they already know things they could be doing to make life better, but they don’t do it. So the real question is why aren’t they doing it? And to me, I think, the answer is because they have contradictions that limit their ability to make moves.

So if you're thinking east and west, if you can align all of those things north, now you’ve put energy into that system and things take off. So the deep implications of contradictions and how they lead to destruction in life, I believe, is profound. And that’s the one quote that has made a big difference in my life.

John: Yeah, for me Patrick, I can vouch for that in every way shape and form. I was living a life of contradiction for over six years. You know, going to law school, corporate finance, commercial real estate, chasing the money, and chasing the success and the respect, but all the time coming up short and getting burnt out and never finding any of that. And especially not finding happiness, but when I aligned what I wanted to do, you know, with what I knew I should be doing, you know, that’s when everything changed. So Fire Nation, like evaluate your situation right now. Like, are you living lives of contradiction, or are you working at least towards aligning it?

And obviously by listening to this show, and all the shows that we put out here every single day, like, you are at least working toward aligning, so good for you. And Patrick, Entrepreneur on Fire, is a unique podcast in a number of ways. The most specific way is we really focus on the story, on the journey. You know, not the overarching aerial view and perception of things because we as humans learn so much from stories and you have some great ones. Some great successes, some great ah ha moments, so we're gonna dive into all those. But before we do, we always start with a failure, with a setback, with an obstacle or a challenge.

So Patrick, take us to a moment in your journey when you failed, and share with us the lessons you learned.

Patrick: Well, you know, my context is that failure really isn’t failure unless you give up. Otherwise, I think it's what my friend Rick Sapio calls it, he says, “Oh, that was tuition.” So you pay tuition is probably the better context than I failed. But if you gave up, then it is true failure. But I would say probably the one that comes to mind first is – at least there's several that I could probably point to. But the one that comes to mind first is several years ago, when we first launched our company and we were growing year over year 100 percent growth, year after year, after year, after year. You can't not sustain that kind of growth after probably five or six years like we did.

And now, I'm saying: hey, you know, we're doing pretty well. We've accumulated some cash and some assets; maybe it's time for an acquisition. And that seemed like the next way to try to grow and to keep that appetite for growth going. So we acquired a company, but what I did in the process is I short changed some of the due diligence. I like to move fast. I don’t like to sit around. I'm very like – I don’t have a mindset for getting deep into the weeds, deep into the details necessarily. And even though, you know, I paid high level experts, you know, I tried to find the best experts: accountants, lawyers, etc, which I think are really important.

I made the mistake of not listening to them. When it came time to go into the deeper due diligence and do the audits, and go deeper into – I mean, these superficial audits, yes, we're going deeper into it and starting to really verify a lot of things. You know, they were saying to me, “You got to do this.” I'm like, “You know, let’s just get this deal done. I don’t think we need to go that much further. I kind of trust where we are right now with it, you know, let’s go.” And the long story short is that it translated over the next two years to be two of the most stressful years of my life trying to hold this company up because I didn’t audit things that I should have, and I had complete misrepresentation as to what I understood, you know, the asset was that we were purchasing.

It translated into probably well over $2 million dollars worth of losses. And more important than the losses, I think, was the stress and the toll it took on my life trying to hold it all up because I don’t quit. I don’t like to give up on things or let go of things. I want to make it work. So in the end, you know, it was a pretty damaging thing not to do proper due diligence. Not to take my time to do due diligence on a major transaction. And wanting to move too fast, which is a virtue, but it's also a vice sometimes. And I think that in the end, you know, what's the lesson that comes from that?

Is that, you know, sometimes you have to slow down and take a step back and make sure that you don’t cut corners when you're doing very important transactions.

John: So Patrick, there are so many lessons to take, and I love that one that you just shared. And, you know, when you first started sharing this story, you were talking about how, you know, your philosophy about failure is – you know, and a lot of times, unless you quit, failure is just paying tuition. And that brought up, you know, one of my past guests who was sharing a story about how, he invested $23 million dollars in an entrepreneur, and that entrepreneur’s venture. And that entrepreneur lost it all. And, you know, my kind of response to that was: well, you obviously never invested with that guy again. And he was like, “Are you kidding me?”

He’s like, “I invested $23 million dollars in that guy’s tuition. You better believe that that guy’s learned a lot and that I'm gonna get my money back and then some from this because, you know, that’s exactly what he went through, that tuition. He learned all of his mistakes, all the failures, obviously with my money, and it hurts, but now down the road I trust in this guy like I did before, he’s gonna learn from that.” So, you know, that’s just kind of a perception that you really need to realize Fire Nation, that when you do fail, the only way you're really having a total failure from that is if you're not stepping back, learning from the situation, and then applying it to future endeavors.

So Patrick, let’s kind of shift gears now. Because, you know, you just shared that tough time that, you know, cost you $2 million dollars, you know, two years of your life, that stress and everything that went with it, all because you didn’t do the due diligence, which is a great lesson learned for our listeners. But now let’s talk about an epiphany that you’ve had, a light bulb, an ah ha moment that at some point Patrick, you had. And specifically, you know, that moment in time is what I want you to share with us, and then walk us through the steps that you took to take that ah ha moment, to turn it into success?

Patrick: Mine is probably not much different than the story you told earlier, as far as you being in a car and, you know, recognizing this is not your purpose, this is not your destiny basically. And I think mine came in a similar way. It required tragic circumstances. You know, a lot of people use getting hit by a truck as a metaphor, but I actually got hit by a truck.

John: Oh, wow.

Patrick: And I what's in New York City. I was – you know, I had gotten out of chiropractic school. And it's – God, it's such a long story, but I'm gonna really kind of shorten it up here. I had ended up through a series of interesting circumstances through my mother, on the Regis Philbin show, that morning show that they have. And I – there was – they were having this contest called The Morning Male Contest. They had ten contestants. And we had t come out in tuxedo and bathing suit. Now, I just had gotten out of chiropractic school. I'm ready to embark on my chiropractic career, kind of moving in that direction, and my whole purpose was tied up in it.

And suddenly, the next thing you know I'm up in New York City. I get into this contest on TV. I end up winning this contest. And then the next thing you know I've got agents calling me, and I've got scripts in my hand, and I'm running all over Manhattan. I moved to Manhattan. And, you know, I'm suddenly in on this acting career. You know, I'm in acting class. And I completely take a left hand turn from where I thought I was going. And one day I'm on my way to class. And quite frankly, you know, the reality was, I wasn’t that great at it. I was getting a little bit of work here and there, but it wasn’t like: boy, I'm just a natural born actor that should do this.

But, you know, my agents had enthusiasm, and they felt like, you know, I was – you know, I appealed to the crowd, the TV audience, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And somehow this all got, like it was like an infection in my brain. So I ended up on my way to acting class one morning. I'm on my bicycle in Manhattan and a truck pulls out and cuts me off. I skidded on jet fuel that was spilled on the road. Slid underneath the truck, and it literally started to pull out and it ran over me. So my leg’s broken in a couple of places. We weren’t wearing helmets back then, bad head injury. I get scraped up and taken to the hospital.

And I'm on my back laid up and out of commission. And as I'm laying there somewhat depressed, I'm starting to again think about my life. And then it occurred to me, and it was like an epiphany that I just had at that moment in time. And literally right after that I moved out of the city and I got on the path to my chiropractic practice again. And then from there it leads to all my entrepreneurial adventures subsequent to that that I sort of described.

John: I mean, wow. I mean, let’s just call a spade a spade here, Patrick. You're pretty susceptible to pivots. You know, you're kind of that guy that, you know, one day you're in doctor’s office and you're like, “Wow, I'm gonna be a chiropractor.” And you go off on that path. You know, the one day you're on Regis Philbin and you're like, “Okay, I'm gonna be an actor.” And you go off on that path. And, you know, that’s not a bad thing Fire Nation, you know, to get excited, to get motivated, to be open to these experiences that are happening. And, you know, my biggest take away Patrick, from what you have been going through is, you know, it is important to listen to your heart, to listen to your intuition, and to follow that as kind of your North Starr.

But at the same time, you can't misinterpret outside influences. You can't interpret what agents are telling you and what, you know, the TV is telling you, and what things are telling you as your own purpose, as your own tuition, unless it truly is. I mean, you have to Fire Nation at some point step out of the noise. And really identify yourself, and feel with your heart, you know, what path you're on and is this right one? And Patrick, what would you say to that, and how would you kind of talk Fire Nation through, you know, stepping outside of that noise and really staying true to your North Star?

Patrick: You know, it really gets kind of easy, at least in description, but maybe not in practice, and it's this: my mistake, which is a mistake that I've also made subsequent to that, but it's only in hindsight that I see the mistake – or am able to characterize it in the words I'm about to use, is that I took opportunity over values. And I believe that’s where we get into trouble. When we chase opportunity as compared to drive with our values, and make decisions, or what we call value based decisions. When we take opportunity over values, invariable we're gonna get ourselves in trouble and find ourselves compromised.

So I think that’s really the lesson. Don’t take opportunity over value. Stay with your values.

John: Opportunities over values. And don’t take those opportunities Fire Nation, over values, powerful message. And Patrick, let’s take about 60 seconds here and tell another story. This story I want it to be a moment in time. So I take us to that moment, your proudest entrepreneurial moment.

Patrick: This is probably the toughest question for me. And I've given it some thought, and I would say that it's maybe a weird answer, but every day is my new proudest entrepreneurial moment. And, you know, why? Because every new day, I have marked my past by living my values. And then I start each day creating my future where I am healthy and fit, financially abundant, spiritually fulfilled, experiencing a legendary romance, and focused on the unlimited possibilities in my career. And this leads me, you know, in my being on the most fundamental level, of being a happy person.

So I recognize that ongoing happiness is something that is earned. And quite frankly, I think, happiness is winning. You know, the national championship, it was making – you know, when my business crossed the million dollar marker, the $10 million dollar marker, whatever it is, I mean, you can point to those things, or people that I've met. But I believe – really, if I'm saying: what am I most proud of? It's the culmination of my life, and being a happy person, and knowing that every day I get to live into it on a higher level.

So it's probably not the direct answer to your question, but it's kind of the way I feel about it.

John: You know, I think, we can kind of maybe even qualify this a little more. Because it sounds to me like you must have some kind of morning ritual, the kind that gets you going with this mindset, with this mentality. Can you kind of walk us through, you know, maybe the first hour of your day? Like, what do you do when you wake up in the morning?

Patrick: Yeah. Well, this goes to, you know, I think most personal habit. I do have a morning ritual and it's pretty dense. But I get up every morning and I say an affirmation out loud. I think it's enormously critical that in this one little hint could be huge. If you have an affirmation and you're reading it, that isn’t is the same thing as getting the vibration of the affirmation through saying it and feeling it and you're saying it. It changes everything.

John: Now, what has been like an affirmation you’ve found that really seems to work for you?

Patrick: Well, typically there's – and I have kind of two sections of it. But, you know, there can be – you know, my affirmation is a page long, so there's a lot of things there that I want to affirm. But, you know, I started out with the first line of it, which I say: is that from this room, with my intension, I will change the world. And that’s the first vibration that comes out of me in the morning, which is usually in the 5:00 hour. And if I sleep in a little it's in the 6:00 hour. And I'm not naturally a morning person incidentally, it's a discipline. It’s not something that I naturally biologically ascribe to. But that is like an example of the first thing that I'm gonna say out loud that I want to affirm.

That it's an empowering statement because where the day normally starts is where is stays. If you start it in a reaction, if you start it by opening up and looking at your emails, or looking at texts or whatever it might be, then you're going to stay in reaction all day. If you start focused and inspired, you're gonna stay there throughout the day. So that’s a part – so I do the affirmation out loud. Then I do a – I read also out loud my statement of purpose. I read out loud, also my goals. I have objectives that I do every quarter, so I read what are those objectives?

I read them out loud. I do a gratitude prayer after that, so that I sit – you cannot simultaneously feel like the victim and be in gratitude. So if you can meditate on, or pray on, what you are grateful for, that also puts you in a certain state to start your day in a certain way. And then, from there I go to a three monitor setup in front of me and I use Outlook. And on these three monitors, on the left hand monitor is my calendar, on the middle monitor is my emails, and right hand is my task list. So now that I've got myself into the mental state that I want to be in, next I'm gonna look at my day. I definitely do not look at emails yet.

I'm looking at my day. And then, I'm seeing what's on the calendar that day and figuring out in my mind how I'm prepping for that. Based on that day and what I have going on, now I'm going to my task list, which is my things to do today, and it should be empty. And I'm pulling things from other tasks lists, personal and business, and then my long term tasks lists, personal and business, once a week for those, and I'm moving them on to my daily task lists saying: okay, based how much room I have in my schedule, what time do I have today? How many tasks? Sometimes it's only one or two tasks. Sometimes maybe it's ten depending on what my schedule dictates.

Once I've gotten all that prep done, then and only then, if I want, I will look at my emails, or most likely I'm gonna say: I'm not gonna do emails yet. I'm getting up now and I'm going to the gym and gonna go workout. And then come back, and now I am empowered to start my day in the right kind of way.

John: Where the day starts, it stays Fire Nation, so choose to start the day with gratitude. I love that Patrick. And let’s bring things to present times and talk about you today. What is the one thing that has you most fired up right now?

Patrick: The thing that I'm most fired up about right now is actually something that I launched recently. It's a program called Philosophy Formula. And it's the culmination of, you know, over two decades of just the things I've learned, my thinking, and understanding the practical application of philosophy. When most people hear the word philosophy, they think of guys in robes from Antiquity walking around and talking about great questions of life, right? You know, what is – you know, what's the nature of reality? You know, what's the true nature of human consciousness? Or maybe the ultimate philosophical question: why is there something rather than nothing?

But here is the thing that most people don’t understand, but they get it when I explain it to them, is that philosophy is the most practical tool a human being, especially an entrepreneur, can hope to embrace. And I'm talking about putting dollars in your pocket practical. But unfortunately, we don’t engage in structure s of thinking that allow us to leverage our mind, our brain, our intellectual capital into creating outcomes in our life that we want. And doing so is a liberating experience that empowers the human being, that can help you succeed in all dimensions of your life, not just your business, but you relationships, your parenting, having a philosophy around your parenting that’s conscious to you.

Have a philosophy around love relationships that’s conscious to you. Having a philosophy around your business that’s conscious to you – I mean, where do you think your values come from? Your values come from your philosophy. Where do you think purpose comes from? Everybody talks about purpose, being purpose driven, etc, which I'm a big fan of. But purpose is not the foundation. Your purpose emerges from your foundational philosophy. So ultimately, everybody has a philosophy, the only question is whether you're conscious of it or not.

And if there are contradictions in that philosophy, the only possible result is destruction, the amount of destruction again relative to the level of contradiction. So I created a course now that we just launched and did the first class, and it was radically successful. From an outcome perspective as far as sales, it was 150 percent of what we projected. And as far as the impact, the testimonials that have come in has been substantial. So I'm getting – get ramped up now early in 2015 to take this out to the entrepreneur market. I'm really excited about it.

John: Boom. Well, we’ll definitely be sharing with Fire Nation exactly how we can get our hands on that, Patrick. But we are about to enter the lightning round. And before we do, let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors. Patrick, welcome to the lightning round, where you get to share incredible resources in mind blowing answers. Sound like a plan?

Patrick: It's a great plan.

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Patrick: You know, in my case really nothing. I started my first business in seventh grade. And I just think for me it was – I always wanted to take control of my own destiny. So I never was in a position where I had a quote, unquote job, and then, I had to figure out a way out of my job. I basically, you know, I worked. I put myself through college. You know, my first business after that was chiropractic. And, you know, so I worked for myself there in my own business. And I've never really been held back from being entrepreneurial.

John: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Patrick: I’d have to say that this comes from my friend I mention earlier, Rick Sapio, who I cofounded a business training company with. And we – basically three things. Number one: have a doorman. Number two: manage by objectives. And number three: create rhythms. Let me expand a little bit. What do I mean by have a doorman? Value spaced decision making basically works this way – and Rick wrote a book on this, I think, it's called Who’s In Your Room. So I’ll throw it out there to say that that would be a good book to read: Who’s In Your Room. But he said: imagine that your room – that your life is a room.

And standing at the door is the doorman that’s holding the list of your values. And the only person that gets – the people that get into your room, the only people that get in are people who align with those values, again congruency, non contradiction. And if you do that, you're going to have a lot more success in your life. And basically, he challenged me once. We're in an accountability call. I've been doing an accountability group now every week for six years, never missing a Wednesday morning with my accountability group. And one time on that call Rick challenged me and he said, “Any serious problem you’ve had in your life is because you let somebody into your life that should not have been there.”

And I said, “Oh, that’s bull.” You know, no – I mean, you know. And then I started to look at every big challenge I've ever had, bad things, lawsuits, what have you, and always because I let somebody into my life that did not align with my values. So having a doorman, I think, is important business advice. Management by objectives, I'm sure that people understand that you manage by objectives, rather than, you know, manage by task, it's powerful. And then with that create rhythms that anything that’s important in your life, it's rhythmic, rather it's a date night, whether it's meetings, whether it, you know, it's exercise.

It's got to be rhythmic. It's got be in the calendar and then it happens. And that’s liberating. Most people think it's confining, but that’s really liberating. So have a doorman, mange by objectives, create rhythms, that’s the best business advice I ever got.

John: Boom. Do you have an internet resource, like an Evernote that you can share with our listeners?

Patrick: I got to say this, at the risk of appearing like a kiss ass. I will say entrepreneuronfire.com.

John: Yes.

Patrick: I discovered it. And let me tell you why, I think, it's a great resource. I have a new rhythm. I just talked about rhythm. A new rhythm I put in my life, is midday. You know, I talked about the morning ritual, right, getting it off to the right start. I found that about midday, you know, you’ve gotten beat up enough during the first four, or five, or six hours that I put in 30 minutes of inspiration every day in my calendar, midday. I want to take a break and I want to get re-inspired. And these interviews have been perfect. They fit right into that half hour for me. So it's – you know, if you want to talk about a resource that pays off in dividends, and even if it wasn’t your show, I would – I don’t care what show I got, I’d be recommending this exact same thing.

Getting, you know, the Entrepreneur On Fire interviews on a daily rhythm because you do them daily, on a daily rhythm for half an hour of inspiration, it will be worth of millions and millions of dollars to your destiny. I'm absolutely certain of it.

John: Well, Fire Nation, I am blushing through the microphone. Thank you for that kind words Patrick, it really means a lot. And if you could recommend one book for our listeners, to go next to Who’s In Your Room, what would it be and why?

Patrick: The most important book I've ever read is Atlas Shrugged. And for me, I think, it's kind of like completing that book is sort of like a rite of passage for all entrepreneurs. So it's a dense book to get through, but what you experience through the journey of that fictional novel is extraordinary. And I've recommended it to thousands of people, not hundreds, but thousands of people. And to this day I still have people saying that book changed my life. So that’s my recommendation.

John: I can still remember where exactly I was, you know, like on so many days while reading that book and just having these kind of like ah ha moments. Like, the food that I was eating. Like, the chairs that I was sitting in, like when I was reading that book. And I can't say that about a lot of books. I’ll tell you I'm actually about three quarters of the way done Fountainhead right now, which is also quite a doozy by Ayn Rand, so two great books there. And Fire Nation, I know you love audio, so if you haven’t already, you can get an amazing audio book like this one for free at eofirebook.com. That’s eofirebook.com.

And Patrick, this next question is the last of the lightning round, but it's a doozy. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world. Identical to earth, but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have. Your food and shelter taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500. What would you do in the next seven days?

Patrick: Wow. That’s a very imaginative question.

John: It's evolved, let’s just say that.

Patrick: That’s awesome. This is where philosophy would save my life and create my future. I see it this way. The first thing I would do is ask myself the three cardinal philosophical questions: where am I? How do I know it? And based on this, what should I do? So you go to get a context for reality. And the more accurate you are in that context, the more effective you can be at succeeding in life. And next, I would find my purpose by assessing the following three things: what do I love to do? What am I great at? And what does this new world that I'm in now, what does it need? And if I can find the common denominator to those three things, I would find my purpose.

And then I would inventory my capital assets, which you said basically is a computer and $500 bucks. My intellectual capital, which is what do I know? And I’d build a path to achievement.

John: Well, Patrick, I love it. And let’s end today literally on fire my friends, with you sharing one parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you, and then we’ll say goodbye.

Patrick: Start to discover the role of philosophy in your life, which is values. And what your values are and why you hold these values? But the practical – I'm not an academic philosopher. I never studied philosophy in school. But I'm a practical philosopher. How to apply philosophy to create achievement in your life is something that you’ll never go wrong doing. And with that I created a URL: patrickonfire.

John: Yeah.

Patrick: So you go to patrickonfire.com. And there I’ll have information more about how to apply philosophy in your life in a practical way to achieve uncommon success.

John: I love that. And Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you have been hanging out with Patrick and myself today, so keep up the heat. And head over to eofire.com, type Patrick in the search bar. His show notes page will pop right up with his book recommendation, resource, and oh so much more. And don’t forget you can go directly to patrickonfire.com. And Patrick, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. And that for my friend, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flipside.