Early in his junior year of high school, Patrick suffered a knee injury that would wreak havoc on his active lifestyle. Instead of traveling across the US to play in basketball tournaments against the nation’s top players and earning a long-coveted scholarship to play in college, he was laid up in his bed recovering from surgery. Even after extensively rehabbing his knee, it was just never the same.
His dream of pursuing his athletic ambitions was crushed. Being known as a great athlete had been a huge part of his identity and now that it was gone, he was lost. Life unraveled quickly as he tried to find a new peer group, attempting to cope with the depression and pain by abusing prescription pain pills and alcohol. Things didn’t stop there, but I’ll spare you the details. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom that he realized he couldn’t do it alone. Now was the time to find some help and much-needed accountability, and the first thing that came to his mind was bringing back structure to his life.
And when he did, he became the incredibly successful person that we see him as today – a successful tech entrepreneur, an acclaimed educator, and a highly sought-after Web3 consultant.
“I needed structure in order to thrive,” says Patrick. “After my injury, my physical and academic activities came to a halt as my focus was divided between parties, girls, and other aspects of less colorful life,” he added, recalling his darkest days.
Patrick thrives in a structured environment. He’s a creature of habit and credits the consistency of the work that he puts in day in and day out above all else. But there’s more to his success.
“I take massive action and don’t hesitate in taking risks,” says Patrick, and he couldn’t be more candid. He has proven to be a fearless entrepreneur. At 21, he started a concert promotion business for Top 40 artists performing in Nashville without having a shred of experience. It was a side hustle he started in college. Having grabbed instant success at the outset, the venture eventually backfired and Patrick had to suffer the loss of $25K in the dead of night.
But did it stop Patrick from hustling? The answer is a BIG NO. He is simply not afraid of making mistakes. According to him, mistakes have been his greatest teachers so far.
Just two short years later, he opened a web development company right after the Web 2.0 evolution. The result wasn’t any different from the previous one. However, both failures left him with invaluable lessons.
Further, Patrick is a master of prioritization and management. When you see him working on something important, expect him to be fully engrossed in his work. His colleagues and close relatives say they have never seen him sitting idle. He is always either reading a book, delivering a speech, heading a session, teaching his coaching clients, consulting with businesses, or working on updating his goals.
Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer, is famously quoted as, “when you come out of a storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm is all about.” The later part of the quotation describes Patrick’s initial distress and suffering. Now that he has accomplished so much in his life, it feels like the initial ‘storm’ was merely a test to bring out his best, a test that he passed with flying colors.
