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 Hack & Grow Rich Episode 2: Enemies

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

enemies, business, people, sleep, smash, lawsuit, ignore, create, tension, windshield, apologize, talk, life, brush, teenage kid, convicted felon, livid, static, oftentimes, women

SPEAKERS

Shaahin Cheyene

Shaahin Cheyene  00:02

Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. I know a lot of you have heard that many times over and over again. So as you start in your business journey or in the next stage in your career, I would let you know that as you move forward, if you do not create any enemies, or if you do not have any enemies, you are doing something wrong. The second point that I'll share with you is that while you are sleeping, your enemies are planning your demise. I love to say that when I give talks to people, because I feel like people don't talk about this, and it really has the capacity to wake people up. So in your life, I'm sure you have some years on this planet, and you establish some friendships, but also you've established some enemies. The first thing I would say to the younger me is that in life, we never want to build enemies, where it's not necessary. And in our advantage. Now it's going to happen, you will develop enemies, if you're planning as Steve Jobs would say, in putting a dent in the universe, there are people who won't like you for who you are, there are people who won't like you, for who you for what you do. There are people who will not like something about you, we have to deal with all types of other people's limiting beliefs about themselves projected on to you. And there's also insecurity, there's people who will not like you're being successful, are you heading towards a stage of success. But here's the thing. In life, you do not want to create enemies on necessarily, because you are leaving open your back to getting stabbed by people who otherwise you wouldn't have to worry about. So business is very tricky. People in the music business will tell you this, people in the film business will tell you this, people in any business will tell you this, competitors are very aggressive. We talk about in my course. And in my book, when we look at any new deal, we always like to ask, who's the enemy? What's the terrain? And how do we win? businesses war. And there's a lot of analogies to the art of war, and war in business. So I really believe that you have to look at it that way. So Thing number one to recap, is don't create enemies. If you can apologize, if you can smooth things over with people, if you can. in Farsi we say come short, which basically means, you know, put yourself underneath people, put yourself beneath people and make yourself shorter than them Humble yourself, say, you know what, I'm sorry, but it's my bad, I apologize. If it costs you nothing but your ego to do that, it's going to pay off for you, in the long run, in the long term. humbling yourself and apologizing is huge. People don't do that anymore. So if you do that, even if you're wrong, you have a chance to turn an enemy into a friend. And oftentimes, the production of that tension, and then the release of that tension creates a bond between you and that person that may not have been there any other way. And I know women will attest to that. Because in relationships, oftentimes, women know with with other females, that when there's a moment of tension, and then they speak and they talk and they work things out that that connection with that female becomes a lot stronger. And it really is the same for for men, but we tend to be less in tune with our feelings and emotions, then women tend to be and also they tend to be much more communicative with each other. So try to make things good would be One of the things that I would tell the younger me now, where that takes us is thinking about in life, if you do create enemies, how you will react and what you will do. So generally speaking, you want to be able to ignore them without cost whenever you can, people will be absolutely livid at the fact that you succeeded, and they did not or you succeeded more than them. And that's okay. And if you can, if they do shoot arrows at you, and you can ignore them, it will make them more mad. But as long as it doesn't affect you, and you can brush them off, you are fine. Now, of course, if you need to defend yourself, that's a different thing. And it's important that you stand up for yourself that you defend yourself, and that you assert yourself as needed. But ultimately, you really do want to forgive and forget, and I'll tell you, in the ecstasy days, for me, my philosophy was to forgive and forget. Now, I took things very personally in those days. But when people were jealous, and there was a lot of jealousy around me, I mean, imagine a teenage kid that had made a billion dollars in revenue, hundreds of millions of dollars going in and out being spent hundreds of employees all over the world, literally selling pills. Everywhere, you know, we were selling the stuff for $20, a pill, our cost was 25 cents, unbelievable. People were naturally jealous, they didn't understand how a high school dropout, a kid with no business experience could be this successful. And so I would walk to places and people would push me people would be upset. You know, some people would love me. And that's great. But what I learned was that you want to be able to move fast through life. And what I mean by that is, there's a lot of static in between you, and your moment of flow, your moment of synchronicity, your moment of clarity. And if you get caught up in the static, it's like getting caught up in a spider's web, there's a chance you can get out. But likely not. If you get too stuck in that stuff. So you want to move around the spider's web, you, you don't want to try to tear it down, because you could get stuck in it. You want to move fast and move around it. And that's what I did. People would people would throw crazy lawsuits at me, people would smash my cars, people would do all kinds of nasty things. But it didn't matter. I was making so much money, I didn't care I had my windshield smashed in by a guy I was in a lawsuit with the guy actually hired a convicted felon to come out and smash my windshield as a message that if I continued in my defense against his lawsuit, that he would smash me or he would have this convicted felon do some god-awful thing to me. But I just brushed it off, I just moved on, I just moved on, I just moved ahead, I just move forward. I was in the flow, I didn't have time for that. And when you can get that tunnel vision when you can focus on your work and the value that you are bringing to the world, your message, your work. It's critical. You brush off all those things, and you just move forward. You don't have time for your enemies. And then later when you have time, you can see if it's worthwhile for you to change those enemies into friends. And for that there is great value and great benefit. Like I said, when there's tension, and then there's a release of that tension. There can be a connection in any relationship in any friendship in any communication, that can be a bond that is much stronger, much more memorable than in any other human interaction. So I wanted to share that with you. And also, finally, a reminder, this is why I say when you're sleeping your enemies are planning your demise is that you always have to be one step ahead. You cannot sleep metaphorically when it comes to business. Ultimately, I think my friend Dr. Bruce, the sleep doctor would tell you that you do need to sleep and I agree with that you need a certain amount of sleep biologically. But metaphorically you cannot sleep your business has to be constantly running you have to constantly be on top of your business on top of your ideas on top of your vision, on top of making things happen, and also keeping an eye on your back having people who watch your back to make sure that if you have developed any enemies, that they cannot hurt you or your business, but ultimately forgiven forget, ignore it if you can move forward in life and focus on the thing that drives you that thing that gives you purpose, and the purpose of your journey. See on the next episode.

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