Hack & Grow Rich Episode 111: Why you don’t fit in and why time management doesn’t work

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, book, Bart, shaheen, called, hours, misfits, business, hack, talk, fucking, amazon, delegate, friends, read, mainstream, sell, Michael stipe, fit, hear

00:06

Hey guys, I'm Bart Baggett, I'm your co-pilot to the hack and Grow Rich podcast. This is a simple journey through the mind and through the Pocket Books and toward more wealth and success. The genius behind this podcast is my partner, the Amazon mastery course founder, author of billion Shaheen, Cheyenne Shaheen. I always mispronounce your name because I'm from Texas. So I know it's not Cheyenne like Wyoming. So how do you pronounce it given your mixed heritage?

Shaahin Cheyene  00:35

Yeah, we just go with Shaheen Shan, and for those of you guys who are just tuning in, we've got Bart Baggett, here, who really is a badass in many ways for you guys who don't know him, but he is an author, and just a general motivational human being I think, and you know, this was one of the really cool things when I first met you, I heard you speaking on stage to at that time, it was hundreds of high achievers, alpha males, who were there to learn. And I was just floored, I was like, wow, this dude knows what he's doing. And then of course, when I met you, I was thinking to myself, wow, you know, like, I wonder if this dude really likes, if the image that he projects is really who he is right? Or is he? Or is it like one of his masks? And when I actually got to know you, I was like, well, he's actually way better than that image, which is rare, sort of

01:36

common. I remember that lecture, I think it was something about the five success secrets. And remember, like three or 400 people and I think on stage, we brought up a billionaire, a woman who had just sold the company. And we had this in-depth conversation with the mentality of thinking like a billionaire. And of course, I'm not a billionaire. So I can't claim that I am. But I really loved that lecture. I didn't know that was the first time you saw me speak professionally. That's very impressive. Thank you.

Shaahin Cheyene  02:00

Yeah, no, it was amazing. It was really great. So I think, you know, one of the advantages of doing this show together is that we both really want to do this guy. So you know, you know, as time stands right now, neither one of us get paid for doing this, we do this out of just passion for the topics that we talk about, but also just out of trying to be of service to the community in general. So what Bart and I are doing here and presenting this information to you in the best way that we can, is really for your benefit more than anything. So really, you know, kind of try to understand that. But today, we're going to be talking about one of the things that Bart brought up to me earlier today, which is time management. So how do you manage time? And, you know, what are some of the hacks as far as hacking time management? And also, you know, we're going to talk about fitting in. I think a lot of you, especially if you're listening to this podcast, or watching one of our channels, might have a feeling by now that you don't exactly fit in everywhere. And you might have the feeling that you may have been or still are a little bit of a misfit Bart, do you feel that way at all ever?

03:27

It's funny, we, I was walking with a friend of mine, and we passed this really large truck from like, 1965 Yeah, kinda like someone be a serial killer and or something. And I just tell her story. I said, you know, when I was in high school, my dad had four or five vehicles, and I used to drive this milk truck to school. And the kids would kind of make fun of me because it was like, Is this all you can afford? And it was absolutely not a price issue. We used to paint like Happy birthday on the side of the truck. Like I was clearly embracing, being a misfit and being ridiculous, like it was being silly, you know, and then the kids will go out and smoke pot in the truck, and I get all upset about it on lunch breaks. It was really funny. But it was obvious, like if I'm an old truck, but the point was, I didn't care that didn't fit in. In fact, I embraced it. As a young guy. And I also especially during high school in college, I didn't have one click, I wasn't an athlete, I just was kind of the funny guy that everybody either kind of liked or kind of hate, depending on you know what, into the joke, they were on. And so for me, it's always been a kind of a badge of honor to not be fitting in. And as I've gotten to know people like you and other leaders, I think some of the most successful people are those that are brave enough to not fit in, not comply and have a knee-jerk reaction to authority. And some of us just aren't employable. I don't know about you Shaheen, but I'm not employable in a traditional sense. Because I have four businesses, I run my own schedule. I sometimes I sleep till 10 sometimes I'm up at five. It really depends on what my day has. And so for me, I think I think I'm not that typical because a lot of entrepreneurs got started in their own business because they didn't want to comply, is that your experience being an entrepreneur and having entrepreneur friends?

Shaahin Cheyene  05:10

Yeah, a great place to start, right. So I don't I don't think it's just entrepreneur friends, you know, my friends are pretty diverse as I know, yours are as well. I've got friends that are artists, friends that are authors, friends that are academics and intellectuals, friends that are doctors, all these things are not necessarily business, they should have a sense of business. And I think most of my, you know, friends and buddies do. But in general, you know, I'll tell you it started for me bar when I was five. Right. And I was in Iran. And, you know, we were basically just street kids. I mean, you know, not by street kids, I mean, you know, we would leave like five-year-olds, we would just leave the house. And we would come back when we felt like it was like that kind of thing. And by the way, Iran, one of the safest places in the world, by the way for, for that kind of stuff. So it was very safe, you know, we would go out there be no, you know, you wouldn't really be worried about the stuff you worry about here often, right? So that kind of stuff just didn't happen, especially back in the 80s. I don't know about it now, but I hear it's still very safe. But you know, we will go and we will come back. And we were just you know, kind of this ragtag, like, you know, group of like, you know, misfits hanging out there. And then, all of a sudden, overnight, my life change. I moved here to the United States and went to school in the 80s. And this was right during Iran contra. We've talked about this before, so I'll be brief about it. And it was the first time I realized that I did not fit in. And it's really interesting. I don't know if you've heard it. Do you ever listen to there's a podcast that's on Spotify, by the way, we have no connection to it. I wish we did. But it's Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama. Talking about cool stuff. Have you had you? Did you listen to this podcast?

06:58

I've heard about it. But I have not had the privilege. But what a great concoction of two interesting people.

Shaahin Cheyene  07:04

Absolutely. Yeah, both guys that you just start like, you know what, there are world-class as far as what they do. I mean, Obama, of course, being a world-class statesman, regardless of your political affiliation. You know, because on the show, we don't really talk much about politics and that kind of stuff. But I'm talking about just his demeanor and his statesmanship. Right. He's an intellectual, he's an attorney. And then you've got Springsteen, who's this, like, he's the boss, right? He's this musician. But one of the interesting things that they were talking about on you know, I think it was the first episode was just this feeling of not belonging, Obama being born in Hawaii, to a black father, and, excuse me, Obama being born in Hawaii to a black father and a white mother. And, you know, Bruce Springsteen growing up in this small town and in Jersey, where, you know, and surprisingly, both of them had some Irish descent, European descent, which I was, was it was a shocking thing to hear. But they both kinds of were misfits. They didn't belong. And then you look back through the history books, and you look at and I'm not talking about, you know, hundreds of years ago, even though you can argue that even in biblical times, that people who we look at who was successful in those times were misfits. I mean, certainly, you know, the traditional biblical story is a story of misfits. But you look back at Steve Jobs, right? Complete weirdo, otter mutant, you look at, you know, some of these other people, you know, people that you and I both know, that are hugely successful. And you're like, dude, these are not the cool kids at school.

08:43

Like, what's interesting, they're cool. Now, one of our mutual friends Nolan Bush, now, who hired Steve Jobs, you know, he's like the crazy professor. And, and, and sometimes we get to spend time with him. And he's got this great idea, you know, and he's over 70s Ivan's greatest ever video game, and he's still just as enthusiastic as he must have been in 1975, trying to sell his first video game, you know, to Radio Shack, and then there's just no way he's ever been normal. I mean, he's such an interesting guy. He looks sort of like the professor on Back to the Future. You know, I mean, he's just like this crazy ideas, idea, guy, and he's such a lovely human being, but, but he was smart enough to hire Steve Jobs, and then smart enough to put him on the night shift because he couldn't get along with the people on the day shift. So he's like, I love nutty people. I love brilliance. But if they don't have social skills, we'll put them on the night show. Like that's so interesting to have that kind of foresight to recognize talent and genius, and then tolerate noncompliance, or what I call defiance, meaning that it's a knee-jerk reaction to authority. I don't like being told what to do. You know, it's kind of like we want to have that swashbuckling cowboy who's the Bruce Willis in the famous movies from the 80s you know, epi a mother bleep you know that that sort of American cowboy mentality, I think runs really strong through not only Americans but entrepreneurs around the world where we do want to be the guy that slays evil dragons, but we don't have a boss. We want to be the hero of our own stories.

Shaahin Cheyene  10:18

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, look at Elon Musk. Right. The two richest men in the world right now are Ilan Musk and Jeff Bezos, both fucking mutants, you look at Bezos with his laugh, you know. And you look at musk who's like, he's kind of like, out of shape. And he likes to sleep on the floor. And he likes rockets, but he likes to make flame throwers. I mean, he's, and you hear him talk. And he's like, he's an academic, he's as close as you get to a guy that's intellectual and academic who could talk rocket science but then can go out there with the cool kids and talk about Dogecoin. And, you know, all these other types of like, happening things. He's that smart. But, you know, if you rewind back to either of these guys, to any of these guys, back to a point where they were not billionaires, and you know, you go back to their childhoods, these were not the cool kids. These were not the jocks, who were, you know, taking the prom queen home, and that this is not who these folks are. So I guess, one lesson is, be nice to nerds, because you never know what they will become super important, right. But I think the other thing is, you know, especially for people, you know, I think now in their 20s, because I think, you know, in your 30s, you kind of start getting a sense of like, really who you are, and then by your 40s, you know, most people have a family or you know, their, their, their well on the way to starting one, and they've kind of got their foundations laid out. But in your 20s, you still likely don't quite know exactly who you are exactly who you're going to become, you might have some idea, but you still don't know, because you still have some formative decades ahead of you. And one of those, you know, I mean, especially for me, and I'll tell a quick story if I can, because I know we're gonna be doing a shorter show today. But, you know, one of those things was that I did not really fit in, you know, and I look back to when I was a kid, and you know, there was no box that I fit into, right, I was like this Iranian kid, but I had all these business ideas. And you know, I was hanging out with some of them, like, bad kids, but like, I really wanted to fit in with the good kids. And none of that really made sense. And, you know, I look back in my 20s. And, you know, again, you know, comes full circle to you know, one of my mentors, we talked about them, him this author, Stuart Wilde, who, you know, just said, you know, you know what, dude, like, the weirdos are the cool fucking people. And those are the ones that you know, are going to be making this impact in the world. And that was kind of his teaching. He's like, Look, come with me, you know, if you like the traditional spirituality, you like the traditional, all that stuff. There are lots of traditional people out there, go to your Deepak Chopra's and, you know, the Tony Robbins and whatever. But the thing that separated stir wild from the rest of them was that he was like, I curse Not me, but stir wild. I curse too. But, you know, Stewart would say he drinks he smokes, you know, he, you know, he dates he does all those all. He's, he's covered all the sense. So, and he's like, and if you're, you know, one of these, these, these folks who don't fit in, you're okay. And he developed this whole philosophy around that, which was the coolest thing, because it really, you know, it kind of was in his books and his recordings. But you really had to be there around the guy and the time to kind of understand because you'd show up in a room and he'd have a bunch of people come and you'd be like, I get it. These are all fucking mutants just like me. And at that moment, you would realize that, you know, being strange is not something that you should be ostracized for. It's what's going to make you into the Jeff Bezos or the Elan musk of what you want to do. And so, I guess, for me, especially, it's owning that weirdness. When you really realize that bar, and you really realize you know what, I'm a fucking weirdo. I'm a fucking mutant. And I will not fit in in any one niche, even with the weirdos and that's okay. I can hang with any of them. And when you have that, that's the ultimate power and flexibility because you've taken ownership of all your shortcomings. You're good to go. I think.

14:54

It's really interesting. You refer to Tony Robbins in Deepak Chopra as mainstream because when they start Back in the early 90s, and 80s, they were definitely not mainstream. Tony Robbins was walking on fire or he was basically doing snake heel, you know, Snake phobia, five-minute phobia cure. And so what if you were talking to a four-year-old businessman in 1985? Jim Rohn, the fewer browns, those are the mainstream, those are conservative professional speakers. And religious wise, obviously, when the Beatles started bringing in yoga in the West in eastern meditation from India, they were cutting edge freaks in the late 60s, you know, but again, these are these ideas became mainstream over 30 years, the image that pops into my mind when you talk about Jeff Bezos is there's a before and after, and he's a picture of him like pitching Amazon-like in 1994, whenever started or anything six, and he looks kind of like an old Bill Gates like big square glasses, kind of bald head, sweater vest. And then there's another picture of him walking, and he looks just like Vladimir Putin. Like he's got muscles and a vest like an army vest on and he's got shaved head and he's got glasses, and that's like the 2021 version. And you're like, Whoa, how does someone transform? Oh, yeah, $2 billion, you can probably afford a personal trainer. But I think it's more than that is that it said at the time, we think we're completely outliers. And then that becomes mainstream, because people go, Oh, yeah, this is pretty great. And so if you're thinking that you're really a mutant right now, you may just be mainstream in 10 or 15 years, they all catch up to you and go, Hey, this is totally normal. I mean, this is 2021. When I started pitching, why, hey, I can tell your personality from your handwriting. It was like, it was like astrology people confused. They didn't even know it existed. I even had Mel Gibson go, you can do what with your handwriting. Like just it just wasn't a thing people knew about. And now I would consider it kind of mainstream people use it to hire people who don't have that weird look on their face. Like oh my god, that's just so odd. You read minds to like, no one ever says that to me. But 30 years ago, it wasn't mainstream at all. You know, now it's part of the psychological, you know, conversation with cognitive psychology. And so yeah, I stuck with it being the weird guy. And now I'm mainstream, which is odd because I still think I'm the weird guy.

Shaahin Cheyene  17:15

Yeah. , no, it's true. It's true. Those are really good points. So I'll share a story with you, which I think is kind of cool. I think I may have shared this on a past podcast, but who cares? It's a pretty darn good story. It could just be you and me talking. I forget sometimes. So it is 1998 ish. And I am in, I believe, Ireland, or London. I think we might have flown into London, one of the two. And we had gone to a concert with Michael Stipe of REM. And he was there. Super nice guy. super weird too, by the way. And we get invited to a party after now. But mind you, we were at the REM concert with Michael Stipe and the entire band of YouTube. And so I'm in a room with these guys. And I'm just like these I grew up on the Joshua Tree right that was the album that I must have listened to 1000 times. And now I'm like getting like vegetable croakies and I look and it's the edge handing me a napkin. I'm like, Thank you edge. And so they're all like, you know, guys, we're, we're, there's a party we want to go to you know, it's George's party. And I'm like, Okay, cool. They're like, yeah, yeah, just roll with us. And I thought to myself, okay, George George. I like who's George? They're like, you know, George Michael. And I said this to so many of you guys who well who read my book by this point because the books not out yet will be released in August my book billion. I tell a story about how I was super, superly obsessed over George Michael, in my teens, and there's this crazy fiasco that happened. I tried to look like him in school, and it did not go well. So you'll have to check that out. But so now I am being invited to George Michaels's party. And this was back in I think he was doing a cowboy and Angel theme. I think he had an album or song called cowboys and angels. I know he had a song called that or a song with that in the lyrics somehow. And so and I'm going with Michael Stipe in YouTube, the ban YouTube. And I had you know, this was you know, at the height of the success of herbal ecstasy, you know, and everybody was like, oh, here's this kid, he's made a billion dollars and you know, I'm on all the newspapers and magazines so I was kind of floating around in these circles. But even this was way over my head like you know, these rock Gods I was just, you know, I didn't know what to say to them. Right? It was just like, is bizarre being in a room with these people, seeing them as normal people, and just having normal conversations. So then the night gets crazier. And we end up at this I think it was like a bar-restaurant kind of situation. And we walk in with Mike Stipe and YouTube. And of course, Donovan, the singer who's a friend of mine was there with us, you know, Mellow Yellow Donovan and his wife, Linda. They were with us. And so we all just play it was like this all-star cast to people and me walking into this, you know, restaurant, I'm like, Okay, this is going to be a very interesting night. And we get in there. And there's George Michael, you know, super gracious, super-nice, you know, hanging out there, you know, just having fun. And you know, he greets us. All right, he comes straight to us. And we get taken to this table. Now, this gets even crazier. So there's everybody who you could imagine they're at this party. Dude, Elton John, was there at the table at this party. So you've got Elton John, George, Michael, you to Michael Stipe, a couple of randoms, and me sitting at this table. And they're all completely normal. They're just normal people. I mean, yes, they're rock gods, but I'm just like talking to them. Probably the most distant one was Elton John, his bit older than the rest of the guys. And I remember just looking at all these guys. And it was in that moment that I realized, well, first, I was wondering, like, are they wondering who the fuck is this kid like sitting at the table with them? Cuz I'm the only one that doesn't have like 50 Platinum records and you know, fill stadiums.

21:40

You had really long hair at this time, right? You look like a super hippie, long hair, like on the cover of your book.

Shaahin Cheyene  21:46

Yeah, maybe. Right there. There you go. low tech. I was just holding up my shirt to show a picture of me taken by David LaChapelle, which is on the cover of my book billion for those of you guys who are listening. So yeah, so you know, and I just looked at all these guys, and how normal and down to earth, they were. I mean, it was really surprising. And then it clicked for me. You know, I was like, what's the one thing that all these guys have in common, and it was that none of them really fit in. They didn't fit into any mold. And they're all musical geniuses. They were all like, you know, miles above and beyond the rest, you know, and their music lives on forever. But really, they didn't fit in, and they owned it. They were okay with it. I mean, I looked at Michael Stipe, you know, he's just we, uh, now if when if you look at me, he's got like this big beard. And he's kind of awkward. And you know, you look at any of these guys even like the, you know, the Rockstar, Rockstar, Rockstar, when you really see that, you know, once again, these were not you know, the bully cool kids, these were the kids that were weird. They were, you know, they had these like hidden interests that may not have been cool at that time. And so that was an insane night. But it really led to that realization that you know, you got to embrace your inner weirdo, you have to embrace this side of yourself, that really makes you cool. And at the same time, like and I know you teach this a lot, be able to not give a fuck about what other people think about you.

23:33

It's really hard to teach, I think there's a couple of books with that in the title, you know how not to give a flying F of what you think about and it's challenging and I think about the there's a concept of the need six human needs I and I write about it in the book called success seeker the rich and happy but absolutely got it from Anthony Robbins. So I give him full credit. There's the Maslow hierarchy of needs, which I think we all kind of know about or his chart security, etc. But Tony has a twist on it. I don't know if Tony invented it. But essentially, it's like you have a need for, you know, the community has a need for significance. And you have a need for companionship and intimacy, right. And he said, what's interesting is those are on polar opposites. So the more significance you have, the more isolated you become. And so super famous people have security guards, they've got private numbers like they've got gates, they end up isolating themselves because they have such significance. Some of them live really lonely lives. And then the other times if you have all this connection, then you don't have any significance because you're in the same pool. So you're talking about a sort of this human need to to be unique and different and to follow this blazing path which could end in horrible meaning, you know, most musicians are or have such a risk to be able to move to Hollywood and become an actor, musician. Yet if they break through, man, the benefits are outstanding. But when you're a musician and you're struggling and you really believe in yourself, that's a very lonely time in your life. And it's very easy to give up. You always hear sir, about the fifth Beatle. You know, there's just things couldn't hang in there, they got married, they had kids that they took security take the easy path, instead of taking that really hard path, which doesn't always work out. I mean, you're the one one of the few people I knew, all right, know that your first or second business, you kind of hit a home run. But it was pretty cool for you to do that. And even read Shaahin's story, it'll be in the billion books, but like you hit a home run round of the bat. What's interesting is you tend to also continue to hit second, third, strong base hits, because you're not dumb. A lot of people get one movie roll that one hit album, and then they completely burn out. They end up in rehab, you never hear from the rest of your life. How is it that you not only did well in your first venture, but continue to sort of have a stable family life, have great friend friendships, and continue to build businesses in a way that really you never, and I know, I'm saying you never fail? Because we've talked about before, we're used to getting limited failure and feedback, but we're not risking everything at our age, you're risking small and then you're hedging your bets, you're hacking, and then you're exploding on something you really get. That was a long question to ask you. How is it that you, you know, still retain your uniqueness and your creativity, but you avoid these huge failures in your businesses?

Shaahin Cheyene  26:22

So you can spread that out into periods of time, right. So now like what we talked about on the Amazon course, and to all my Amazon students, and by the way, you know, I talk about this on every show, but if anybody wants a free course, you don't have to spend any money to learn how to sell on Amazon, reach out to me directly and I'll send you my one hour course it's normally 200 bucks. I'll give it to you absolutely for free just by saying hack and Grow Rich podcast. But what I wanted to say is that the way that it worked for me was that I just did not give a fuck first. You know, I didn't need to read a book, I guess like all these books with, you know, fucking the title. I guess millennials really need to be yelled at for them to understand. The reality, right? Our generation was like, go get it the giant within you can do it. Right. And then you got to be like, Fuck, right, like the Gary Vaynerchuk talks and you know, even Tony Robbins is cursing now because he's like, no one's listening. That demographic. They're, they're watching instant tik tok. So he's like Fox fucking Oh, yeah, yeah. That's like, there's a guy watch Jocko willing, like, I really like him because he like yells, and he's like the all American Navy SEAL guy. And I can see how he speaks that generation. Okay, but so my, my first tactic may or may not have been a good tactic, but it worked is burned all my ships. So I made a decision, I decided to go through with it, and that I was going to succeed no matter what it took, remember, the ultimate secret to getting anything that you want. And there's a great book about this by the same title, not by me is you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get it. And for me, Bart, I was, you know, pedal to the metal, right? Like, there was nothing that I wouldn't do, within reason and the law to get what I wanted to get into getting where I was going to get, and I didn't care if I was going to it was it wasn't a question for me, of Shaheen, are you going to fail? And then where will that put you that anxiety did not exist, what it was was, I'm going to do this until I succeed. So it was me going out there with a bat and just swinging, continually swinging, until I hit that ball out of the park or until I hit something out of the park, I was not going to quit. And if the bat broke, I would get another bat. And if if that bat broke and the ball broke, I would get another field it didn't matter. Like whatever it was, I was going to do it until I succeeded. Now, the caveat is, I had nothing to lose. You're so much more motivated when you come from nothing. And we talk about this often how I had a backpack when I left home with everything I owned, and up until I don't know the end of herbal ecstasy. I made a billion dollars in revenue, that backpack was under my desk and packed. And I remember it always had a new pair of shoes in there because when I got my first you know, I made my first $100 of disposable income. I bought a pair of shoes because I was like you know what, if I lose everything tomorrow, I'm gonna have a new fucking pair of shoes on my feet that I can wear and walk to whatever my next destination is. I was ready to lose it all again. Because it didn't matter. I came from nothing. So when you have that mentality, you're willing to burn your ships. It doesn't mean be stupid. It doesn't mean like go in like say a few to your boss and like, you know, cut everybody out when you have nothing holding you up. It means foundational thinking, build out the foundations that we talked about. You need a job, something that's bringing in revenue, you need, you know, at least two or three other types of income hopefully one of which is e-commerce. You know, I sell on Amazon to this very day, Amazon, Amazon seller, and teach people how to do it. But once you have that foundation, you build that foundation out, and you use foundational thinking, then you just don't give a fuck, it doesn't matter. Because if you fail at one thing, you still have the other pillars, you're still good to go, you know. And for me, that's what it was. But you know, which I think brings us to our final topic before we close out for tonight, which I know you want us to talk about. And we could really do, I think, another show, we could even bring some experts on. And, you know, let me start with time management. So there's a lot of books out there on how to manage time and bar, I know that you're very proficient at this too, because, you know, anytime we meet, you're always on time. You know, you're super respectful of other people's time. And also, I see you have a good amount of time to do what you want to do with who you want to do, which was our definition of freedom when we started this podcast. So doing what you want with who you want, when you want. So the first thing you need to know about the time for the viewers is that we all have the same amount of it, no matter if you're Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, or if you're me, or Bart, are you watching or listening to this, we all have 24 hours in the day, I don't know anybody who's invested more than 24 hours in a day. So what we know is that those 24 hours, we all have, you can't get more, you can't get less, that's what you're dealing with, you got to figure out how you're going to allocate them. And I'll tell you, man, you know, I've got friends when they open up their phone, there's like color-coded appointments, like you know, every minute of the day spoken for, they've got people looking for them, especially high achieving friends who, you know, have those kinds of calendars. And for me, I'm usually open, I'm flexible. First thing, do not sell your hours, you may talk about this a lot. But and I know you're a big proponent of this, and it's one of the things that you teach to your students as well. Guys, do not sell your hours, if you're currently selling your hours as one of your pillars as your job, that's fine. But you want to get in a position where you are not selling your hours, I've got three primary courses of income, and then a bunch of other things that bring in revenue for me. My first thing is my Amazon business we sell on Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, all those my second line of business is I teach people how to do that. And the teaching, you know, really is a labor of love. But you know, it does bring in revenue. And the third thing is we have the best Amazon agency in the world where people come to us, we charge a ridiculous amount of money, but we make them a ridiculous amount of money by accelerating their products. The third, really is me selling my hours. And that is not the thing I'm most excited about. But the impact that it makes by being able to help these larger brands sell makes sense for me. And now I'm at a position with my agency, where I have quality people working for me where I'm utilizing other people's hours, my hours are fairly limited as far as the agency goes, but if someone's willing to pay, you know, the rate, and I feel that I can be a value, I do step in and provide service, but it is not my most favorite thing to do. So that's the first thing, get yourself in a position where you are not selling your hours. I think the second thing is really going to be that you need to have an understanding mindset. And that mindset is dude or dude s you cannot manage time, time is not something that you can manage. Okay, you can be organized. You can be at the right place at the right time. You can be thoughtful, but you cannot manage time, all the books out there all that stuff on time management, it's all bullshit. I don't know anybody who's read a book on time management, who you know, is a better person for it or like you're like, man, wow, your life's really an order now. Right. The third thing that I would share with you on this is that there are a couple of guys and I'm going to give you the lead, who has written the book, get these books, that's all you will ever need. There's a lot of the second rates, the third rate fourth Ray guys out there talking about productivity, selling productivity books, I'm going to tell you the one book that you need, and it is the be-all-end-all. Even if you don't read the book, and you just get the notes somewhere online. There are lots of great services like scribed or any of those, although I do feel every single person should read these two books that I'm going to tell you about. You'll be fine too. You can watch their videos, you can watch their lectures, and they really come down to an organ organizational type thinking. But when somebody wants to make an appointment with me Personally, it goes in my calendar, my system puts it in a calendar. And that's it. More often than not, I don't make appointments, I say, call me anytime. And people can reach out to me, these are people, I do business with their friends, they could reach out to me anytime. And that takes the pressure off of having to be at a certain place at a certain time, and also have missing appointments. If it's important, we will make an appointment, we'll do it. So this is the one and only book that you will ever need on productivity and time management. It is the Canon it is the Bible, it is the only book that you will ever need to be a well-organized and efficient human being. It's called getting things done by David Allen. And this guy is a ninja. He is a jujitsu black belt, although I think he's a karate black belt, actually. Or he does take on door karate or one of those he's a legit black belt, but he's a black belt at organizational thinking and productivity. And he's written the Canada productivity, getting things done. He's got, I believe, a follow-up book called owner, the same thing. He's got a follow-up book called Making it all work, sorry. So there's making it all work. And then getting things done is the book that everybody needs, making it all work. It's another thing. And you know, as far as efficiency goes, nothing better than the 8020 principles by Richard Koch, you know, 20% of the work we do brings about 80% of our results, be more efficient, and your time becomes your own. Figure out what are the unnecessary things we talked about Bruce Lee, I know you love this quote, Bart, absorb what is useful, discard what is useless. Add what is specifically your own. And that's it get rid of all the bullshit, right? There's probably 20% of the stuff that you're doing right now, that is bringing about 80% of your results. So get rid of the bullshit. Do that 20% focus on that. And you'll have 80% more time. What do you get Bart? Bart, your audio is muted.

37:10

As a lot of really good information there, Shane, you know, what occurred to me is, is we do all had the same 24 hours. And one of my big shifts came in the last 20 years when I realized that I was sleeping about eight to nine hours a day. And some people brag about sleeping four or five hours a day. And I thought, Wait for a second, that person has four more hours a day than me. And that doesn't seem fair. And so, you know, I've read a bunch of quotes that real successful, you will get up at five in the morning. But that's just not true. But I did read that Edison would take naps, Thomas Edison. And those meditative naps would were his most creative ideas come from just like what you know, we heard about, oh my god, I had this idea in the shower, because you're focused on something else. And you're totally relaxed. It's almost like putting into an alpha trance. So I just decided to take my sleep back. And I made a very conscious point to take nutritional supplements and sleep and track my sleep, I have a sleep app that tracks my hours. And I'm down to five to six hours of sleep pretty consistently with the nutritional stuff. So that immediately bought three hours back in my life. And unless I'm super tired or exhausted, I still do that. So that's the first kind of hack is to get your sleep under control. I don't think if you have a belief that you need nine hours unless you're 90 years old, or you're five, I don't think that's true. And then you cannot manage your body. Right. The second thing that really was an eye-opener, and I had that probably been doing this 20 years, it's now part of our life designed by a prism. I think the domain is prism life design, comm PR SM, and one of the things we teach I've just never seen taught anywhere ever. And what it was kind of like from the business coaching at a business coach that kind of helped me develop this. And I would track not the things that were productive Shaheen like writing a sales letter sending emails, all those key I guess they call them KPIs. You know, in the business world. Keaton was killing haters, right. So like if they're sending an email or make a sales call, like, that's pretty overwhelming if you're tracking all those in all your businesses, but you should. And so for me, I realized that I don't want to work for less than $1,000 an hour. And I'm also like you, I don't want to put an hour on my time. But in some cases, in some businesses, you kind of have to have an hourly rate. So years ago, I just put like, $1,000 an hour on my website, and no one wants to pay that because it's ridiculously high. But then I realized, Hey, I'm getting $10,000 for an hour speech. So really, um, $10,000 an hour, but that's a press performance, right? That's a really crafted performance that took years to develop right or if you're brock Obama, you're getting 100,000. So so but I do think that's a great tip. Try not to get into that. I'm going to get back to enhancements in a second. But the most important thing is that you create, delegating systems, and then look through your day your whole week and look for anything you're doing. That's not making you $600 an hour. So the dishes, the cat box, the laundry, all these things which you've been told you have to handle yourself, I have somebody do all that for me. And as long as I'm not paying them, like 600 bucks an hour, or whatever it is that I'm making an hour. So what you do is you take your real income, let's say you're making 100 grand, right? And this is your job and you're saying I'm working eight hours a day, you divide that and figure out what your hourly rate currently is not necessarily what you want it to be. But if doing dishes, you can get done for $10 an hour, and you're making 63 you let someone else do the dishes, let someone else do the laundry and you go work on your business, you go meditate. And this is what really was shocking. So I track this. Probably for four years in a row, I tracked my enhancements, which means working out taking vitamins, juicing, carrot juice, relationship time, like I would track anything that enhanced to me personally. And when I was having really good weeks, like 3536 37 points, we kind of use this Excel spreadsheet type format, I made more money. And so when I took care of myself, I had more I had better month revenue-wise, which means that I was spending more time at the gym with my girlfriend jogging or juicing, right? Instead of working yet, I always made more money. And it was very counterintuitive because you always heard you got to work more, you got to work more. So what I taught me when I teach my students that in the life design program is that when you put yourself first, your emotional well-being, your creativity is more effective, all your work is more effective. And then you're also forced to learn how to delegate and get rid of all these low-income tasks so that you can when you do work, whether it's two hours a day, which sometimes I do, or whether it's 10 hours a day, those are so productive and so high impact that it can change your life. So that those are my really big hacks is is is focus on your personal well being. I don't keep a massive to-do list. I'm a lot like you Shaheen My days are normally pretty wide open. And it would seem counterintuitive. You have for businesses to have an open schedule. But remember, I hire and delegate everything I possibly can. And if I do anything more than three times I write a procedure. And I hire someone to delegate it. Because I am like we talked about the top of the show. I'm a cowboy. I'm a john McClane like I'm a rebel like I don't really want to be a slave to my own schedule because they don't have any freedom. And since that's why I have gotten busy in the first place is because I love my freedom, freedom to create, read and play guitar for him to go to stand-up comedy, none of which I'm getting paid for. But you know what? I'm paying myself because someone else is doing all the little stuff. And so to me, that's how you creative freedom, especially if you're on 123 or four businesses, get on up or get on Fiverr hire people to delegate everything you can. And just make sure that when you are working, you're making eight $900,000 an hour cumulatively, for doing what is that you do that's in your lane in your brilliance lane. And so if I'm not in my brilliance lane, I want to delegate it.

Shaahin Cheyene  43:06

I love that. So to recap, hack your sleep and look after your own well being we should have my buddy, Dr. Michael Bruce, on He is the author of the power of win, which is a book that teaches you how to hack your sleep. So I think that's amazing. Figure out what your hourly rate is. So you know, that's an awesome hack, Bart. So I think what you were suggesting is figure out any tasks that you, you do, how much it would it be worth it for you to do it? So if you're hanging out, you know, light bulb, is it worth it for you to change that light bulb out for 20 bucks? Is it worth it for you to change for $1? Is it worth it for you to change out 50 cents, and figure out what your hourly rate is what you charge? And anything less than that goes to the third hack, you utilize somebody else's hours. Right? So I love that use somebody else's hours. There are people who sell their hours joyfully. So use somebody else's hours. We talked about that in my course to Bart hiring VA is virtual assistants, we have all kinds of hacks for that, which are amazing where you know, you're utilizing an MBA, college-educated workforce for, you know, just a few bucks an hour to run your business for you. And your final hack was to create systems which I love. And you know, any successful businessman, I'll tell you, a business person will tell you that you have to create systems and utilize those systems. So that's great. You should write a book about that. I love that, that those four things could be like, how about this unfuck your time.

44:43

If you use the F word in a title, it's going to be a best seller. That is the Acme Hack number five use the F word whenever writing new books.

Shaahin Cheyene  44:53

Talks where it's just like same time management stuff everyone else's teaching but you just use fuck a lot.

45:00

That's generally my language Anyway, I'm not really a G rated not because the topic is I, I've never cared enough not to cuss. I was at one of my Christmas parties with my stepsisters, and she literally pulled me She says, Barney, you keep using the F word. My family's so offended. And I was just like, well, they should get over it. Like I'm family like, I'm, this is my story. Like it was so weird to be language shamed at like a family Christmas thing because someone else had a belief system. And that was awkward. And I was like, man, I just never, I never cared. If they don't like me. They don't have to hang out next year. And guess what? I haven't seen them since then.

Shaahin Cheyene  45:41

So long-term language. That's language shaming. Okay. No, can you see my screen?

45:49

Oh, yes. Look, that's the opt-in page that gets Bart's book. I think that gets burps book calm. And if you go to the slash free, you can get the other book to Success Secrets of the rich and happy and that's just for the listeners. Thank you, Shane. I love both of these books. They're, they're real transformational. For some of them, the audible is not ready. But at least some of the audio is ready when you do the download. And hopefully, I will finish up the full audio book by the end of this year. Thank you. So let's get Bart's book calm a lot of language in that book, actually, no language shaming, language, empowering. And then you are Amazon secrets. How do they get ahold of your current course which I'm really excited about getting in myself actually?

Shaahin Cheyene  46:30

I'm going to share that as long as you can just say tits up one more time. And this one because we got a lot of calls about that comment. And I really, I think it was one of your best quotes. I've got people who have been watching the podcast and use the term tits up now for the first time.

46:44

But you know, I actually googled it because I used it and I was like, man, things are gonna go tits up if we don't get our shit together. And what it means is bad like it's a dead dead dead hog, I think is what Google said, is that the hog dies and the tits are up. And for some reason, people love that phrase.

Shaahin Cheyene  47:00

guys go to get Bart's book, he's given his book for free if you go forward-slash free, and you get Bart's book, and you kind of get to know him a little bit better learn about his book success secrets. Now, Bart, you said that you were going to be recording your book yourself? Is that right?

47:17

Yeah, there are about nine chapters already available there on the website in the video training area. But since I rewrote the book kind of completely last year, I think I need to go rerecord some of those sections because I updated some of the health stuff and then updated some of the money stuff as well just to make it a little bit more 2021. And so in the next few months, we'll have the whole audio book complete. It's just on my to-do list and if I had a time management book Shaheen, maybe I would have done this already. So the pot calling the kettle black apparently, I'm not following my own advice here. I gotta get to that,

Shaahin Cheyene  47:50

dude. So there's been a lot of buzz about billion, you know, my, my upcoming book, you know, we were in negotiations, but just pre COVID with one of the major studios and major producers and they brought in writers to write the story and you know, my story, you know, kind of people feel it's like Wolf of Wall Street meets, you fill in the blanks, right? So they think it's one of those kinds of stories. So they want to make a movie about it. They even cast did some pretty big names for it. And then COVID happened. And so now it's back in my court. But my agent wants me to do the audio book, and every time right, okay, so my book is like 330 pages, give or take. And dude, every time I sit down to do it, I'm like, Oh, my God, this is gonna take a long time. And so I figured it out. It's like, 16 hours. And I keep going back to like, I interview, you know, voice actors and they read in on like, they're really good. And they give me the demos, and I've even paid a couple of guys to record a couple of sections of it so I could see what it's like, and I love it. And then I'll tell somebody, like, you know, somebody in the business or a friend and they'll be like, you're gonna record it yourself, right? It's the first thing that comes out of people's mouths, that you're gonna do it right, you're gonna read it. I'm like, Dude, it's like 16 hours. Now the time I can figure out, but the patience of readings, 16 hours in a row. It is excruciating for me. So I'm going to do a bar, I'm going to record it myself. For anybody who's listening to this, there will be an audible book, and I will do it because I know I've got some really good coffee, and I've got some acceleron or nootropic pill that we make. I'm gonna pop some acceleron some coffee and I'm just gonna glue my ass to this chair and do it but can you share with me how I should get this done?

49:39

Yes, I will give you the ultimate audio book hack. You're gonna love this and then you've never heard this before. So one of the things you have to understand is you're it's 16 hours finished. But that means it's 32 hours of recording or more, because every sentence you may make a flub or make a mistake. And because The room tone is always different, especially if you change locations, it's really hard to just edit in one word. So here's the hack as you're reading this book, or they're scrolling through or your ad-libbing or whatever, keep a one of these. And this is what you call a Hollywood slate. And you can use your hand you can always clap, but your hands are going to get really read. Because what's going to happen is you're going to read something like this billion, how I became billion how I became the king of the thrill, kill Kult. space, and then what you do you leave spaces, and every time you make a flub, then what happens your editor can just scan through there visually, and he knows you made a flub, and then those long spaces can be cut down. And you've just made your editor breeze right through it. You don't have to worry about making flubs, here's the thing, you are going to make a flub, you're going to get too close to the microphone, you're going to have a spit thing, that all those little sounds are not acceptable on audio books. So as you listen to them, you're like, Whoa, I think I just popped my thing. You'd snap. Go back about two words, and continue from the full sentence. Don't ever do half a sentence. If you do that Shaheen, you will fly right through every chapter. And then give yourself a pat on the back, take a break in the start the next chapter the next day, and then let your audio editor fix all the mistakes. But if you don't use a clapper or this, they're trying to drop words in there trying to match words or trying to connect a word with an n because a lot of us much later switch to sentence. A lot of us mix our sentences together. Like you couldn't edit in that sentence. If I would have said a lot of us mix in our sentences you could edit in but that doesn't sound natural. So if you flub you got to redo the whole sentence over. Alright, that's my AUDIO BOOK technique. Now I'm gonna motivate myself to go finish up my success secrets of the rich and happy book, which is 434 pages, by the way, so I have you beaten by 134 pages. That's why I'm putting it off.

Shaahin Cheyene  52:19

I love that. And you just reminded me of one of my favorite products of all time. Bart, you remember it? The clapper claps off. The clapper. The original Alexa guys, for you guys who were not around in the 80s we had this thing that came out they made gajillions of dollars with it called the clapper. And it was a wall plug that had something in there that would hear when you clap was it one four on or twice for off and you could clap once and your lights would come on and clap twice and the lights would go off and they sold billions of those. Everyone had them. It was like the cool thing, right?

53:01

They were all over late-night infomercials. It was the thing to have it was like the Ron Coe thing. So good.

Shaahin Cheyene  53:08

Okay, so Bart, I know you're giving away your book for absolutely free for the first 12 people that go on to the website is up now. It is thrill pill cult.com. This is the website for billion how I became king of the throw pillow cult. This is for my upcoming book that's coming up in July, I will give you for the first 12 people, I will give you a billion t-shirt, which is pretty awesome. If you can see it's got a picture of me in my 20s on there, it'll have this picture on it. Make sure you specify your size. So just go right here on to the Contact link and go ahead and fill out the form. And at the bottom put hack and Grow Rich podcast send me a T-shirt. And for the first 12 people, I will send you a T-shirt Make sure to include your street address and your full name and email and I will do that for you. And also if anybody's interested in learning more about Amazon and selling on Amazon, reach out to me guys don't get taken in by fake Amazon gurus people on Instagram doing that thing that they do with cash. You do not need $1 to start your Amazon journey as an Amazon seller selling on Amazon FBA. I will give you my one-hour mastery Crash Course for free for zero, go to Shaheen Shan calm click on the link for the course, or reach out to me on the thrill kill Kult website. It's through a pill called.com and really appreciate you guys if there are any topics that you guys want us to cover. Reach out to anybody you want us to interview, reach out in the show notes. If we go with your suggestion, we will send you out a copy of Bart's book and a free three-oh call t-shirt billion three throw pill called t-shirt. Thank you for joining us. Today, Bart, you are a rock star. We appreciate you man really, really shared some gold nuggets. They're so amazing and we'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye everybody has a great day.