POV: You’re a senior in college, you just finished a great night drinking with the boys, and you met some girls at a party; you’ve had a wild night so far, and it just gets even crazier. Next thing you know, you wake up, having no idea what happened the night before. You realize that you have an exam in a few hours. You’re 21, and you’re just going to wing it. Your family is $100k+ in college debt, but you won’t get these years back, right?
How about another one.
POV: You dropped out of college, delivered food on a bicycle to survive, flew halfway around the world just to learn some life lessons. You started your first business, understood, implemented, failed, and repeated until you reached a success. You created systems to remove yourself from the business to repeat the same process with two other companies. People call you the ‘King of Systems.’ You’re 21, and you just became a millionaire.
Now one is the point of view of the average college student (yes, we know there are serious students out there, hence why we wrote average), and the other is the point of view of Shahrez Hayder, who has just become a millionaire at only 21 years of age.
Breaking Down the Mind of Shahrez Hayder
When we asked the president of Hayder Entreprises what his motivation was when he started his entrepreneurial journey, he gave us an answer that we didn’t quite expect.
“To become an engineer.”
One thing we’ve noticed about Shahrez Hayder in our interview is how blunt he is. Needing an explanation, we asked him to expand.
“To me, a business is a vehicle. An engineer makes a vehicle. The only difference is, some engineers make vehicles that can sustain more than others. For example, some planes can only sustain a cross-country flight with limited passengers, while others can fly across the world with hundreds of passengers. If one can engineer a business where it can sustain growth and put the right gears in place where it runs autonomously, you will have the ultimate cash flow vehicle. So my whole goal coming into this career was to become a business engineer.”
Now things were starting to make a lot more sense.
How Shahrez Hayder became the ‘King of Systems’
In his youth, Shahrez had a craze for the game of basketball. He would skip school just to show up to play his games. When he was in the 5th grade, Shahrez started taking basketball seriously to the point where he wanted to go to the NBA.
After breaking past the doubters’ barriers, Shahrez was selected to play at the highest level of high school basketball on a national schedule. His team played against top teams across the country, including players who now suit up in the NBA, such as Deandre Ayton of the Phoenix Suns and Josh Green of the Dallas Mavericks.
That year Shahrez learned something about himself that he would never forget. He could not process systems in his mind.
His whole life, Shahrez played basketball in a ‘run and gun’ type fashion, but on this team, things were different. His coach was big on systems. He had a playbook for everything.
“I rode the bench for the first couple months of the season. It was depressing, and It made me want to quit. I realized that I didn’t lack skill or confidence; I just could not process systems.
Once I sat there and learned how to process my coach’s systems, my playing time increased to the point where I was playing the majority of the game.”
Fast forward to today, Shahrez says that he looks for a system in everything. He dissects systems. He studies the largest companies and how they scaled overtime.
“There is a system everywhere. The schooling systems, the transit systems, the street systems, the governments, stocks, trades, everything. The universe is a system that works in perfect harmony. Even if you look at our natural systems, there is food for every living organism because of it. Those are blessings from God.” Hayder says
Putting the pieces together
We asked Shahrez how systems and engineering made him a millionaire at such a young age. Here is what he had to say:
“The biggest thing any entrepreneur can do is place systems in their business to remove themselves from it. Last time I checked, Jeff Bezos isn’t out there delivering packages for Amazon, but he did at one point. Jeff is an engineer, too, because he sat there and engineered a business model that could sustain growth. Not only did Jeff have a brilliant plan, but he also knew that to turn Amazon into a trillion-dollar company, he needed the bandwidth of a trillion-dollar company. Bandwidth can only be created by doing the following: Engineering systems and processes. That’s it.”
Shahrez claims that he is not a genius, but that he simply did what Jeff Bezos did at a much smaller scale.
He created bandwidth in all the businesses he started, which allowed him to scale fast.
Tips on How to Scale a Company Fast.
We asked Shahrez Hayder to give us his best five tips to those looking to scale a company. Here they are:
- Don’t go into the business with passive income in mind.
“The biggest mistake I see people make is they look for the passive before they even start the business. To me, that person is a newb. You can’t have a business without market validation or proof of concept. Make sure people are willing to buy your product or service before you start building around it. Once you get cash through the door, build systems to sustain growth.”
- Culture is the most critical system.
“Jack Ma said that he’s not smart, but he knows how to manage smart people. If I thought I was a smart-ass, then all my businesses would be a failure. We’ve built a culture in our company that allows for new ideas, collaboration, and one motivation we all live by. If you can’t manage people and bring out the best in them, then you will fail to build the most important system at scale for your business.”
- Implement fast.
“Jeff Bezos said that the reason why Amazon is so successful is because of the amounts of tests they can run daily. Jeff implements fast, and that’s why his team implements fast. The more you implement, the quicker you will learn, the quicker you will fail, and the quicker you will hit that gold mine that will make you a lot of money.”
- Be prepared for 80 hour weeks.
“When engineering a startup, I lock myself in my workspace for 12-14 hours a day. Sometimes I don’t eat; I barely sleep. I focus on the task at hand and lock in to get it done. Elon Musk said to try to achieve your 5-year goal in six months, chances are you will fail, but you’ll be a heck of a lot closer than if you took five years. This game is survival of the fittest. I was able to engineer all the starter systems and processes of one of my businesses within three weeks because I was prepared to sacrifice and obsessed with getting it done. After that, I sleep like a baby and eat like a king, yes I earned it.”
- Know your worth: Opportunity costs.
“I don’t mow my lawn. I don’t shovel the snow. I don’t go to the barber. I don’t go out to get food. To me, my time is worth $10,000 an hour. No, I don’t make that much. Suppose I could pay someone 20 bucks to mow my lawn or 40 bucks to shovel the snow or pay the premium on a haircut or meal to focus on $10,000/hr tasks, I will do that. Here is a tip: if you are doing a task that could potentially make you a million dollars, focus on that. Don’t waste your time elsewhere.”
Wrapping up
Shahrez’s team consults businesses on how to increase their bandwidth and scale to 7-8 figures. If you’re looking to learn more about Shahrez Hayder, follow him on all social platforms.
