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The Importance of Self-Awareness – Life Lessons for Entrepreneurs – 231

The one thing that might be most helpful to every entrepreneur is sometimes the most difficult to learn. It’s not something that you can understand by working longer hours, sleeping less, or assuming more responsibility. 

If anything, it might help if the entrepreneur makes a point of working less, sleeping more and learns to delegate. 

Today on the AM/PM Podcast, Tim Jordan welcomes someone who made his way through many different e-commerce selling channels before finding his sweet spot, representing other brands. 

Nick Shucet is the CEO and Founder of Romans Tide, a full-service, results-driven Amazon Brand Management Agency dedicated to helping brands maximize their sales potential in the Amazon marketplace.

Nick says that it was after falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from an unloved job, that he decided that he needed to change course. He says that understanding the value of failures fueled his rise in e-commerce and allowed him to grow as a businessman AND a human being. 

Later, after finding himself in a position to scale up, it was a solid set of standard operating procedures that helped create a solid foundation for growth. 

Nick says that success quickly followed his better understanding of the value of self-awareness. 

After that, it was smooth sailing. 

In episode 231 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and Nick discuss:

• 03:45 – Falling Asleep at the Wheel 
• 06:15 – Viewing Failures as Lessons
• 08:30 – Having a Plan is Crucial 
• 10:00 – Wanting to Learn More than Where to Put a Comma 
• 13:30 – Becoming the Right Person
• 14:00 – Effortlessly Making Money was a Great Feeling 
• 16:00 – Nick’s Journey Through the Selling Platforms  
• 19:30 – Shifting from His Own Products to Managing Brands   
• 21:30 – Life Lessons from E-Commerce   
• 24:00 – E-Com Tools, Finding Good People and Replacing Yourself
• 28:00 – Self-Awareness Comes First
• 31:45 – Procedures and SOPs Help Create a Business Structure  

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
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• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Tim Jordan: When it comes to succeeding in business or really succeeding in anything life, we have to be self-aware. We have to know where our strengths are, what our weaknesses are. Understand what we’re doing well, what we’re doing poorly, how to correct them self-awareness is an integral piece of success. In this episode, we’re talking a lot about how to find that self-awareness and what to do with it. Stay tuned.

Tim Jordan: Hi, I’m Tim Jordan. And in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life, fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock, but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.

Tim Jordan: Welcome back to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast. I’m your host, Tim Jordan. And today we have a special guest, Nick Shucet. Did I say that right?

Nick Shucet: You got it right. Nice.

Tim Jordan: I feel like this is a common thing, everybody that we bring on here, I have trouble with their names. Because it’s so odd. And before I hit the record button, I’ll ask you, is this exactly how you pronounce it? And then as soon as we hit the record button, I go, Oh crap. Brain fart. How did I say that? So, Nick Shucet. All right. So right. So, Nick, I know you’ve been in the entrepreneurial space for a while, talking briefly before we get started. And you were telling me a little bit about really getting started, especially on Amazon in 2015, you had done OA, RA, wholesale, private label. And since then you have built a brand management company and worked with some of the biggest brands out there. Yankee candle and like some of these huge ones. And you since started Romans tide, which is a– basically a brand management agency where you’re helping brands represent themselves on specifically that Amazon platform. But I say all that correctly?

Tim Jordan: Yeah, that’s right.

Nick Shucet: Cool. And I know that you’re responsible every year through your agency for millions of dollars of sales, I assume profitably and continuing to grow your building and launching your own brands and private label businesses as well. So you’ve got a lot going on. And since you’ve been through that whole spectrum of Amazon selling from the RA to the OA, to the wholesale, the private label to working with our clients, I’m interested to hear your perspective on a lot of things, because you’ve done a lot of it. And on this podcast, we don’t always talk to Amazon sellers. Although a lot of us that our listeners are e-commerce sellers. Today, folks, we’re not getting deep into like how to sell on Amazon. That’s not the point of this, but we’re talking to somebody who has experienced a lot of the struggles that we do. A lot of the lessons that we do. And today he’s going to go through some things like failures, heartbreaks, discoveries, success. And then he’s going to talk about some valid points in the lessons and kind of like practical lessons of how to apply some of his experiences to our lives. All right. Well, we’ll just go ahead and jump right into it. If you have any other kind of intro that I missed, go ahead and hit that. And then let’s start talking about failures. It’s not fun to talk about. I’d kind of like to hear some insight into this.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. So, I’ve had a lot of those over my life and failure when I look back on it has always led to opportunity as long as I’ve maintained an open mind to that possibility. I got into Amazon– well actually it started on eBay was like where I started and is because I had a failed landscaping business. I had went into business with a friend of mine. I had a job doing– working at the sanitation district for the Hampton road sanitation district. I was doing rotating shift work, going through a tough relationship, just had my first son. And I kept falling asleep at the wheel, coming home from work, doing shift work. It happened three times. I was like, I’m done. I quit. So I quit that job, got alone for 20 grand, and started a landscaping business with a buddy of mine. I went absolutely terrible, right? Like I lost all the money, messed up our friendship. And I actually ended up moving back in with my dad because I was broke and I just had my son. So luckily I was fortunate enough to have somewhere to stay, someone to feed me. And this thing came across my plate of selling on eBay. And it was like $20 to get started. So I just jumped in and went for it, hit that pretty hard for three months, got some sales. And then I moved over to Amazon. So that journey would have never started without falling asleep at the wheel, driving home from work, or getting a loan for 20 grand and just it going completely wrong. Right. I’d probably be somewhere like moving a pile of rocks right now or something like that.

Tim Jordan: I know that we’ve never met until this, but interesting story. My first real business venture was a landscaping company that did not go very well. It was bad. I think I was like 20, 21. Didn’t really know how to manage this. I had a bunch of employees completely the same thing took on way too much debt for equipment and all this stuff. And it was a nightmare, but I tell people all the time like that blood, sweat, and tears from that helped set me up for figuring out easier ways to make money in life. And interestingly enough, I got into Amazon by first looking into eBay as well. So, the landscape to eBay, to Amazon world.

Nick Shucet: Very interesting. Yeah.

Tim Jordan: And that sucks though, when you have to move out and then move back in.

Nick Shucet: Yeah, it was tough, man. It was tough.

Tim Jordan: And us, especially us guys, we have an ego. We want to be self-supporting, we would take care of ourselves and to have to call pops and say, Hey man, you can’t come back. That’s pretty rough. But I know a lot of entrepreneurs, successful business people that have that story, and sometimes even much older. I right now know a guy who has at one point a pretty successful business owner and he is 37 years old living in his mom’s basement. Kid you not. With wife and kids by the way, because he had to declare bankruptcy and he had nowhere to go. So, but I’m sure, two years from now he’ll be on a podcast talking about his incredible success. So you never know. All right. So, keep going, keep talking about some of the stuff.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. So, I kind of ended up conditioning myself to always see failure as an opportunity now. And when I get something wrong, I just take it as a lesson. And I think that’s one big thing that a lot of up and coming entrepreneurs need to keep in mind, failure is the pathway to success. Just don’t really dwell on it. Just focus on getting better and learning from it. And now anytime something bad pops up, I just, I don’t really get too down on myself on it. So, when I first got on Amazon, I had a bunch of stuff that I threw up to list and we were doing fulfilled by merchant at the time and you couldn’t get the buy box for like 90 days after a sale. So when I got the, when I finally got the buy box, I sold so much stuff that they actually shut down my account temporarily for a velocity review. So it was just like another hurdle. And like at that time it was pretty defeating. But I look back on it and it’s the pathway to success. I sold so much stuff in one day that Amazon was like, Whoa, what the heck is going on? So, they had to make sure I was doing everything correctly. So it’s just another example of hurdles that will come into your path as you’re reaching success, whatever path you’re on, wherever that’s taking you.

Tim Jordan: Yeah. And you’ve seen that like that chart with the up and out chart, like the day in the life of an entrepreneur, like one moment you’re on top of the world. The next year, like I suck, the next moment you’re like, Oh, I completely crushed that. The next moment. You’re like, Oh my God, I’m going to pissed off everybody and be a massive failure. But I agree, part of being successful entrepreneur is understanding how to manage those heartaches and struggles and the problems because they are going to happen. Like there is no risk mitigation. You can’t avoid it all it’s going to happen. But for me, taking a deep breath, turning my phone off for a second, going for a walk outside and realizing, Hey, this crisis is temporary, has always been really important to me.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. And I think that’s where having a plan comes into play. When I first started, I was just winging it. I was just kind of going with the flow. And then, I met my wife and my wife was like, you got to stop working seven days a week and all day and all night and all this stuff. So I started to kind of create more of like a job for myself, and set hours with goals, and having that goal always allows me to stay focused on what I’m working on and the plan that I’ve set for myself in the face of those ups and downs. Right. Because you’re not going to get rid of the ups and downs, like they’re always going to be there. So I think what sets the successful people apart is they stay on their path, no matter what is thrown at them.

Tim Jordan: Yeah. Completely agree. Any other heartbreaks that are relevant to share in all this?

Nick Shucet: Yeah. I just think, just looking back on like school and the way, I was raised and didn’t really have a lot of direction. And school kind of was like a failure for me. I ended– I dropped out of school at 16, got a GED and went to work, school just wasn’t for me. And that was always kind of disappointing and always will be, uh, because I love to learn. I just didn’t want to learn, like the proper place to put a comma and stuff like that. So, It’s just kind of sad, and, I’ve got three kids myself now I’ve got one that’s eight years old and I see him in school. He’s been coming to the office with me actually. So again, that failure and the way that school kind of failed me, I see it as an opportunity to see how I want to teach my son things. And he comes to the office and the first thing we do is make a to do list, like that’s not something I learned from school. It was something I learned from being a business owner and wanting to accomplish my goals. So that always kind of weighs on me a little bit. I wish school would have been a little different for me.

Tim Jordan: So let’s talk about your discovery. I mean, you’ve talked about failed business, suck to school,16 year old high school dropout, all that good stuff, but at what point do you feel like your life really started to turn around in this of discovery? There’s definitely a lot to that journey. Like some very personal failures, like failed relationships is a big one. I just really– that really boils down to confidence in myself. And I think that’s what can be applied anywhere in life, whether it’s business relationship or whatever. Because I went through these struggles that helped me identify things I needed to work on. And then after my son was born, this relationship was falling apart and I realized I had a lot of work to do on myself there. And it wasn’t really about finding the right person. It was about becoming the right person. And I think that applies anywhere in life. When you truly know who you are, what you want to do, what your goal is, what your idea of success is, and you really believe it, and it’s not influenced by outside circumstances. It’s all coming from you and what you want to do, then you become unstoppable. Like, nothing is going to get in your way. And I think that’s very important on that path of self-discovery is really understanding what you want as an individual and what success means to you.

Tim Jordan: Sure. And it’s interesting, you’re talking about really accountability. Maybe it’s our generation. Maybe I’m just sensitive to seeing all the time, but I see so many people always blame everybody else, or everybody wants somebody else to bring them success or to support them or to help bail them out or it’s somebody else’s fault that you’re upset or that you, and what you said, I think is very valuable, the most successful entrepreneurs or people that I know in general, just kind of man up and handle it. They understand that you can’t always change your circumstances, but you can change the way you handle them and take advantage of them. A quote that I just recently heard was a sail– it’s something that equivalent of a sailor cannot control the wind, but he can control his sails. Right. So like we can just whine and moan about the wind blow in the wrong direction and we can flip her sails around, keep moving. So yeah.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. You got to focus on what you can control, and that’s been a big lesson I’ve learned over time, in my personal life and in my business.

Tim Jordan: So at what point do you feel like things really changed and you started finding “success”, it wasn’t when you sold a few things on Amazon or eBay, like at what point do you feel like things really started to turn around in your life and you really started getting a grip on things and becoming more stable and more satisfied?

Nick Shucet: I actually remember, I was at Disney with my son and we sold a product on Amazon. We were drop shipping it from a manufacturer and I made $300 on that sale. And I was at Disney and I was like, wow, I made it.

Tim Jordan: That $300. But the problem is you are spending $30,000 at Disney at that moment.

Nick Shucet: Yeah, man, I mean, Disney was definitely expensive, but just being able to make money without exerting so much effort on my end, right? Like if we go back to the landscaping example, you’re doing someone’s yard and they want, however many river rocks, put around their house. Like that’s hard work. And like you have to be there, you have to be present for the most part to make that job happen. Here, I’m just walking around, having a good time with my family. I check my phone, see the notification and I’m like, I just made 300 bucks off of one sale. So that was really when I realized that I was on the path that I want to be on. And I dived in deeper, we– brought my wife, my wife was working for Geico at the moment. I had her come work with me and just paid more attention to the Amazon business model and really just dug into it.

Tim Jordan: So you just mentioned something, you said you are on the path, right. And a lot of people will find a little bit of success and they’ll stay there. They’ll start getting a few sales or they’ll start doing something and they’ll say, Oh, this is where I need to be. And what they don’t realize is maybe that path is still going to continue. They’re going to continue to find better opportunities. And I’m looking at my notes here. You started with OA, RA, wholesale, private label. So you went from drop shipping something from manufacturer, making $300 to actually building your own brands and trying to create your own products. But you’re not even really doing much of that anymore. Right now, the majority of your time is spent working with other brands. So I know there’s got to be some sort of applicable story and moving and moving and moving and moving and finding the place that you settle in, with the most degree of success and comfort. So tell me about like that migration, how long did that take from all these different business models and how did you go from drop shipping, something, you know, from manufacturers until now you’re representing other brands. Some of them, very, very large recognizable brand.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. So, we started out with the drop shipping and like I realized there wasn’t, there weren’t– there were things I couldn’t control that I wanted to be in control of. So that’s why we moved to the more of like the retail arbitrage model. We were buying stuff upfront and we got in like pretty good with, like store managers and store owners. They’d call us early, open the store early for us. We’d give them like a gift card after, we’d go in there and spend like $15,000 or something like that. And just really developed a really good relationships with them. And that allowed us to have a little more control over the inventory and making sure customers were getting orders because it was already at Amazon. And then that led me to realize like, Hey, the Amazon it’s really, I need to get more into the volume and cashflow opportunities and things like that. So we wanted to buy even more stuff. So that’s why we looked at wholesale. And then with wholesale, there were still some things we couldn’t control. So we wanted to create our own products. So, that’s what led us to that. And the one thing I didn’t really realize about private label at the time was just all the other stuff that comes along with it, building your brand and copywriting, and the keyword research, and the tools that you need to use to properly do those things. So, I dug into that stuff and that allowed me to pick up a lot of other skills and really expanded my network. So now I started going from doing everything myself to realizing I had too much to do and I needed help. And it became more about networking with good copywriters, good branding people, website people. So I’d started developed this network and these skills that I realized were pretty unique and that other people needed this help as well. So that’s why we decided to do the brand management because now we could kind of offer that as a package to other brands specializing on what we would do on Amazon. And it allowed us to bring more revenue into the business without having to buy so much inventory.

Tim Jordan: Yeah. And it’s interesting hearing you say that, because I know so many people that have kind of discovered that as well, because operating a e-commerce business, you have to become an expert in a lot of things from logistics to import, to copywriting, to branding, to social media. And sometimes it’s a lot. And sometimes we determined like, Hey, there’s one thing we’re really good at. I’ve got, I’ve mentioned a former buddy who was selling, and he figured out that he’s really good at prep, warehousing and logistics. And now his bread and butter is a logistics center. By you doing brand management specifically in Amazon. You don’t have to tell Yankee Candle what their next scent should be, how to produce the glass jars and how to fit the lids. But if your bread and butter is like, man, I can move this thing on this specific platform. That’s really cool. You can hyper focus on that. And I’m seeing a lot of successful business owners, friends of mine that are hyper-focusing on one specific thing. They’re still involved in e-commerce or whatever, lane they were in, but hyper-focusing allows you to become exceptionally good at that one thing. So, do you feel like this is where you’re going to stop? Do you feel like managing these brands particularly in Amazon is the final version of this or what’s next?

Nick Shucet: Yeah, I think it’s definitely going to be more of focusing on our own brands, especially once we make the sales that we want to make, and have a good bit more money in the bank to really see what we want to do with it. But my biggest– I like being busy, I like working, I like helping other brands. But I got three kids now, so I really want to do what I need to in order to secure us financially and then really be able to focus on just living a great life with the kids and my wife. So I think I’m kind of in the middle of like a shift where I’m realizing that, you know, my family needs more of my attention, and a little bit less on work. So, I don’t think we’ll scale the brand management side of things anywhere crazy. I know some guys in that industry that are doing some pretty big things. But I really liked the idea of developing our own products and our own brands.

Tim Jordan: So, here on the podcast, we talk more about general entrepreneurship than specifically e-commerce, but as I’ve said before, most of our listeners are e-commerce sellers and that is you. You’ve been through like the journey of a typical e-commerce seller from figuring out yourself, doing it yourself, having success. And now you’re successfully doing it for other people as you’ve gone through this from falling asleep at the wheel, having kind of a tough, tough starting on this. What are some of the practical lessons that you have discovered that you would share with our audience that you’ve kind of discovered through your five, six, seven year journey?

Nick Shucet: Yeah, it’s– I’d say that I’m trying to think of like the ones that have had the most impact on me. Because I thought differently in the beginning, right? Like I thought I was saving myself money by doing everything myself. Now I realize I’m just, I was just costing myself money and drawing out the process, but it would have been very difficult to convince me of that four or five years ago. So, I think the biggest thing I realized is working with the right people, surrounding yourself with the right people and, hi, I’m a big fan of like having a coach or a mentor, listening to people who have walked down the path that you’re going down to help you avoid some of those mistakes or just recover from mistakes faster. So like when I first started out, I was a part of a great Facebook group. Like I don’t know that I would have made it without that group. And now that I’m in– still in the e-commerce space, I’m still a part of a really great group, the Million Dollar Sellers Facebook group. And like, I can reach out to those guys about anything and they have answers to uncommon problems or something that I haven’t ran into previously. And then just having like a community of people to support you, when things are tough and also to celebrate with when things are going well has been huge, just knowing it’s like working with the right people without managing them. It that’s been really good for me, and really just finding the right tools to use, and learning those tools really well. I used to jump around from tool to tool and thought I needed this and I needed that to make it all happen. And now I realize, like I just need to really dial in on a few things and just really get good at using those tools to get the job done. So, I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned over the years is leveraging the right assets, that are going to move me closer to my goal has been huge for me.

Tim Jordan: Yeah. And tools is an interesting thing because there’s always a new tool in their shiny object syndrome and regardless of what business you’re in, what vertical you’re in, that’s always something people talk a lot about. And what I see is I see people jumping around and trying to learn all these tools to get a 1% increase in efficiency or effectiveness when by jumping. And you have to reteach yourself how to use this stuff. If you just stick with what you’ve got, as long as it’s good, stick with what you got, and learn how to use it better. And I have seen people with login sheets for 60 tools that they’re using. I’m like, what in the world? How do you even, like comprehend all of these things and they’re not using any of efficiently. So, it sounds like the main three practical lessons replace yourself. That’s something I’ve struggled with because there’s a lot of things I suck at bookkeeping is not one of them. Right. Like I understand– it’s weird. Because I really understand accounting very well, but it’s just, I’m not going to sit down and work on spreadsheets and go and reconcile my accounts. Like I have to outsource that. Right. I understand how digital marketing works. I understand how Facebook ads work, but I am not an ads guy. Like I have to outsource that. And it’s tough for us because one, a lot of us are like bootstrap solopreneurs. And we think we can’t afford that when a lot of times we can’t afford not to outsource that, but we also have a little bit of this arrogance. Like I listened to this podcast, I took this course. I am an entrepreneur. I can do it all. And I agree, like we can’t do it all. There’s things– we need to hyper-focus on certain things puts the rest out. So replacing yourselves first one, the second one, you said it was the right people, right. You’re talking about groups that you’ve been in. I have a really good relationship with a lot of groups. I even just partnered with my coaching and mentorship group with Norm Farrar. Bringing Norm in to my inner circle was massive. Last night we were having a coaching call. It was like mind blowing, the stuff he brought. And I was thinking to myself, gosh, if I had not built this relationship and like shut up for once to listen to what somebody else has to say, I would not have gotten all this. And then the third one you’re talking about is finding the right tools. What’s that old analogy. If you have six hours to cut down a tree with an ax, you should spend the first five hours sharpening the ax. Right? Like that makes a lot of sense. And it doesn’t always mean more and greater just means getting workflows, getting SOPs, learning how to use things appropriately and moving forward. Any of the practical lessons you would add to that list of three?

Nick Shucet: Yeah. And just to kind of reiterate on like the replacing yourself part, like understand what you’re not good at and what you are good at, like make a list of it, and then make a list of the things you want to do and you don’t want to do, and really try to focus on those things that you’re good at and that you enjoy doing. And when you find that, that’s kind of when the magic happens and like you mentioned, like networking with people, like when you can send a hundred emails a day and you know, 99 of them get ignored, but six months down the road, that one person answers one email and it can completely change everything. So, allowing yourself to be in a position to be able to capitalize on those moments where you make that right connection, or you make that right move, you need to go in deeper on that. Those things are easy to miss. If you’re trying to do keyword research, sourcing, shipping, labeling, like all those things, can bog you down. So, you really want to put yourself in a position to capitalize on those situations that present themselves that will really just exponentially take your business to the next level.

Tim Jordan: So you said that kind of, it was reiterating the replacing yourself. I feel like that’s separate. I think that this one is self-awareness.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. We get that. Yeah. I think I agree too, man. And that lies a little deeper.

Tim Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that self-awareness comes before replacing yourself, because if you’re not aware of what you’re good at, what you want to do, and what you want to do and what you’re good at, those are two different things. There’s a lot of things I’m good at, but I don’t want to do them. Like, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to. We talk about business, we talk about entrepreneurship. We talk about all that stuff, but we don’t always talk about the fact that we have a life or we should have a life. We have families, we have hobbies, we have friends, we have other things that we want to do. And that’s all important because if we’re just a hundred percent focused, life, life, life, life, life, is a hundred percent revolving around work. Like, and that’s all we think about, life is work. Life is work. We’re only going to succeed in life. If we build this business, like I think we’re missing out on something. I’ve started fishing a lot more lately. I’ll get up early mornings at like 3:00 AM and it’s winter time here. So it’s like cold as crap. And I’ll go crappie fishing for three hours. And it’s great because my phone isn’t ringing and it’s just me. And I’m looking at the water and I’m just, watching the ducks fly in. And like, I am– I literally have that on my calendar to do once a week now, because it’s something I like doing. And like, if you don’t focus on those things, you’re going to have trouble. And my ability to become more self-aware knows that I need time away from people to reflect. I’ve just got to go do my own thing. Have some alone time away from work phone off. So, you’re right. I think that the fourth point self-awareness is massively important.

Nick Shucet: Yeah. And Tim, I imagine, after you, when you take that time to yourself, it probably makes you better when you come back to the office. Right. Because you’re not like, man, I wish I was out fishing or something like that because you took the time to do that for yourself. And like, for me, it’s surfing, like when the waves are good, that’s why I started a business. Because the waves would get good and I have to go to work and I’d be like, the waves are good.

Tim Jordan: Well, I was literally just using the analogy with somebody about, you have to slow down to speed up. And sometimes we feel like the only, we have to prove ourselves to our family. We have to prove ourselves to ourselves. We have to convince people this business and my dream to start a business operative businesses, like I have to do this. And we think every waking hour of every waking day, that’s what we have to do. So every hour, every hour, we’re in the car, we’re listening to podcasts for us and our webinars and we’re signing up for all this stuff. And the analogy that I’ve recently thought about as a horse, like if you’re traveling a long distance on a horse, you can just keep pushing that horse, keep pushing that horse, keep pushing that horse, and it’s going to get super slow and you’re eventually going to kill the thing you have to stop. And if you don’t stop and let it get water and rest and recharge, you will actually get there faster by stopping then continuously pushing forward. And that’s us. Like, we have to take some time for ourselves and it’s not just balancing. It’s not say, well, less time for work, more time for us. It’s more time for us so that we’re more efficient, more effective and more successful when we do work.

Nick Shucet: Yeah, exactly man. And I think that’s such a hard thing to wrap your head around when you’re like in that solopreneurs stage, and you might end up burning yourself out. Now, some guys, like, I wish maybe when I was like 20 or 19 that I could have lived that life where I’m just working all the time, but you get a little bit older, you start seeing someone, you have a kid like, you know, you just can’t, you can’t do it. So if you’re in that situation, you know, I definitely encourage you to pencil in some time for yourself on your calendar, just like you do a meeting.

Tim Jordan: Yeah. Absolutely agree. Well, this is really cool. It’s been good to hear kind of your perspectives and some practical lessons that I think are applicable to all of us. Anything else you would add? You’re standing on a stage talking to all these listeners, any other piece of advice or piece of wisdom you would share before we start to wrap up?

Nick Shucet: Yeah. One thing to help with replacing yourself and making time for yourself is dedicate time to writing out some procedures, some processes that you’re working on. That’s one thing that really helped me bring that idea to life, was I remember I took a week out of work, just to write out a bunch of SOP and that allowed me to really delegate properly and still know that the work was being done the way that I want it to be done, because that’s, I think what a lot of us think as well is like, Oh, they’re not going to do it as good as I’m going to do it. And you’re right. Like they’re probably not, but the closest you can get is having a thorough process written out, that allows you to maintain that quality of work. So, make that time for yourself.

Tim Jordan: It’s funny, all the people that I talk to and interview, a lot of them are saying the same things, and people are talking about outsourcing yourself, slow down, your trials are just helping you grow. You’ve got for those of you that aren’t watching the video version of this, Nick has a sign over his shoulder, says the trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths.

Nick Shucet: Yep.

Tim Jordan: Right. And the reason I think these themes keep coming up is because these are across the board, common for everybody. Like these are all things that people need to hear. These are all struggles that people have. These are all things that are very relevant to what we’re doing. So, for those of you that are listening, make sure that you take some serious consideration to the points that Nick’s brought forth and really take it to heart because I hear it so often that this is valuable. This isn’t just Nick popping in just spouting stuff off that works, works for him or is important to him or his experience like this is common, which means if you’re listening to this, this is going to be applicable to you.

Nick Shucet: Yeah, definitely.

Tim Jordan: Well, Nick, congratulations on what you’ve done. Dropping out of high school at 16 and driving a truck. There’s a lot of people that get stuck in that lifestyle and they will never have the money or the flexibility to take their kids to Disney, for example. Right. And overcoming that, especially, I’m just going to speculate here, but it’s a little bit tough for you. There’ve been points I’m sure where it was tough for you to imagine yourself running a successful brand agency that represents millions of dollars in sales because you dropped out of high school and you started driving the truck. You know what I mean? Like we’re all self-limiting so congratulations, man. I’m going to start following what you’re doing and I’m excited to see what’s kind of in store for Romans tide, which is your agency. And also let me know when you start launching these new brands that you’ve got coming up because I’d like to see what you got going on and see where I can help when I can for sure.

Nick Shucet: Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

Tim Jordan: Well, thank you all for listening. If any of you feel inclined to leave a review on over a platform you’re watching this or listening to this one, that would be really, really cool and helpful. We appreciate that. Thank you guys for all the love and support that you give to AM/PM Podcast. And we’ll see you guys on the next episode.