Last Wednesday, Bet-David Consulting (BDC) concluded its 2024 Sales Leadership Summit (SLS), an exclusive two-day seminar led by serial entrepreneur and Valuetainment CEO Patrick Bet-David. The 300-person conference gathers elite sales executives looking to network and learn how to build the perfect team. The event sold out seven weeks in advance—including all the $25,000 VIP tickets for room and board on site at Mar-a-Lago.

SLS 2024 kicked off at the Hilton of West Palm Beach, where general ticket holders registered for the event, shopped for merch, learned about Minnect, and mingled at the pool afterward for drinks and cigars.

The next day started early with the CEO mastermind session for “CEO” and “VIP” ticket holders. In a small dining room on the Mar-a-Lago property, executives got personal by sharing their most pressing business problems. Patrick addressed their issues point-by-point.

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Then began the first general session in the grand ballroom, where Patrick delivered a five hour-long masterclass lecture on everything related to leadership in business, paying special attention to crisis prevention.

Some examples of topics discussed on Day 1:

• 10 biggest shipwrecks in history
• How many famous founders started off as salesmen
• How one’s stage of life affects one’s reliability, and how this should factor in when picking members for your sales team
• The dangers of the temptations that success brings and the harsh reality of market cycles, booms and busts

Day 2 started early in the morning and lasted nearly nine hours. Topics included:

• A list of 20 reasons why people quit on you
• How to remain inspired months after the conference
• The margin of learning that separates you from your superior competition
• How humility leads to knowledge
• The importance of people skills and social interaction even when you’ve “made it”
• Always have cash in the bank even if you think you’re doing well
• How HR is the number one most important thing.
• The difference between working hard and merely staying late
• The superiority of biographies over business books in your first five years as a sales leader
• 90 percent of your competition will quit in the next ten years. They’ll retire, they’ll sell their companies, etc. But in order to outlast, you must survive them first.

After inviting brave volunteers to show off their persuasion skills, one audience member earned Patrick’s complete approval, getting dubbed the “hero” of the event for his outstanding example.

For a final exercise, Patrick asked the room how many opportunities to save or raise money they have discovered through identifying leaks and leads. One attendee said $38 million. Another said $45 million. A third said $50.6 million—in referrals alone.

The event came to a close with the premiere of Sam Elgart’s high-end commercial for Minnect, coming out soon on Valuetainment platforms.

Finally, the attendees were invited to a cocktail party at the Mar-a-Lago pool with delicious picanha beef, cheese gnocchi, and truffle risotto for dinner.

Testimonials

One attendee I met was Chris, an entrepreneur based in Dallas. Originally from Toronto, Canada, he moved to Texas during the COVID pandemic. Through social media he connected with his cousin, who grew up in Mexico, and together they started a roofing business. He has been struggling upward to grow it ever since.

He has been watching Patrick since he was 17-years-old. He stumbled upon Patrick’s video, “How to REALLY Become a Millionaire,” when he was looking up advice on how to build a company. He was instantly hooked on his business content, and became a fan of the PBD Podcast from the day it was launched.

Every time the conversation went back to PBD he got emotional. He said he has been such an inspiration and a guide through the troubles of business. His number one obstacle at the moment is building and retaining a sales team. Employees quit on him or lack the drive and ambition he has. He learned from Pat that the number one most important element of business-building is making sure your team shares your values. If your team doesn’t want to “make it” but just wants to coast, you will never surmount the challenges of business at the highest level.

Each month the Valuetainment team reads a book from Patrick’s favorite books list. I recommended our book of the month from March called Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. He immediately pulled out his phone to an already-made note titled “Books to Read,” ready to jot many more down throughout the two days ahead.

Related: Patrick Bet-David’s Top 24 Books for 2024

Another challenge he faces is getting his business partner, his cousin, to understand the importance of strategizing. While he stresses that his cousin has been instrumental in the company’s growth, and has a massively positive effect on its daily operations, he has a very different philosophy of business. His cousin thinks entrepreneurship is all about straining like a workhorse to improve the bottom line each month and nothing else. So when Chris tries to set up meetings to discuss the future of the company, its hiring practices, and its values and goals, his cousin brushes it off and ignores it. This is a very common divide between partners that we hear about all the time. Again, I told him that the lessons in Built to Last, which Valuetainment has deeply internalized, address this problem. Companies that chase dollars, sales, and the fads of the day never last. Only those that get clear on their underlying passion by looking deep in themselves and constructing their business mission around that passion can last 100 years and become truly iconic firms. Such companies conceive of their product as a temporary hypothesis to meet that goal, and discard their product or their internal systems if another product or system works better.

Another attendee I talked to was Robert, a middle-age CEO and founder of a security systems company. He used to install security systems in commercial buildings for a company whose owner treated the workers badly and didn’t utilize resources efficiently. So he took matters into his own hands and started his own.

He was enjoying a decent degree of success, but things really took off when the New York City government dropped a big contract in his lap, asking him to provide security to numerous buildings throughout Manhattan. The only problem: he didn’t have the staff to meet such a massive volume of work. So he had to rapidly grow his company and quickly learn how to scale. That’s when he found Patrick’s business videos online, particularly one titled “12 Mistakes I Made My First Year as an Entrepreneur.”

From there, he discovered the PBD Podcast, as well as the numerous other shows Valuetainment produces. He has attended the Vault multiple times, attended our live events such as SOSCAST with Fresh and Fit and our town hall with Vivek Ramaswamy, and is now trying to convince his 12-year-old son to come with him to this year’s Vault in August. In fact, he approached me because he recognized me from one of our newest shows, The Unusual Suspects (hard to believe, I know). He loves Vauletainment’s signature brand of fusing entrepreneurship with the questioning of established social narratives. He tries to impart the psychology of “Future Looks Bright” to his children against the victim complex ideology.

Video footage of SLS testimonies will be released soon, so check back to hear more from our attendees about their experiences at Mar-a-Lago.

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Tickets for SLS quickly sell out, so follow Patrick and Valuetainment on social media to get notified when the tickets for the next event drop.

Likewise, tickets for the 2024 Vault Conference, to be held in Palm Beach from September 4th to the 7th, are selling fast. Be sure to grab passes for you and your team by clicking the link here.

Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.