130. Shane Baldwin | The Honest Lie

And that's what I'm teaching in my book is how to control the matrix rather than being controlled by it.

Hello, BookThinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, BookThinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors. And as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Shane Baldwin, author of The Honest Lie. Shane was on his way up to making it big and then found himself convicted for securities fraud. He ended up having to serve 5 years in prison, but that pushed him on a profound journey of self-discovery introspection, and healing. He is now a successful entrepreneur, a success and mindset coach, mentor, speaker, and is on a mission to help anyone he can break free from the matrix and change their life. I highly recommend you check out his newest series, Making a Million in 60 Days, on YouTube. It's pretty powerful. This episode is hard to sum up in a few words. It's such a transformational one that I believe can change the trajectory of your life if you learn, implement and allow it to. In this episode, you'll learn about Shane's upbringing, how an angel intervened with who he was raised by, how he went from prison to becoming a successful businessman, why you're being run by the Matrix, how you can start to open yourself up to the success you desire, and how you can navigate the Matrix. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Shane Baldwin.

Shane, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you feeling today?

Amazing.

Yeah, I'm feeling amazing too. I'm excited for today's conversation. Before I have you introduce yourself, I'd like to read something from your book. It's a poem on page 43 by Jesse Rittenhouse. All right, so here it is. I bargained with life for a penny and life would pay no more. However, I begged at evening when I counted my scanty store, for life is just employer. He gives you what you ask. But once you have set the wages, why then must bear the task? I worked for a menial's hire only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked, life would have willingly paid. So I wanted to kick off there. And, uh, just set the, set the stone for everybody today that this is what we're gonna be talking about, that, uh, life is going to help you fulfill your dreams if you can state them properly. But Shane, welcome to the pod, man. Why don't you introduce yourself? Tell everybody a little bit about who you are, about this book, about this journey you're on. Let's hear it.

I guess it depends on, uh, I'm Shane Baldwin, but it depends on where I'm at. Listen, if you go to the South, they call me Sugar Shane. If you go into prison, they call me the Mormon Wolf of Wall Street, and the guards will call me Dwight. So my full name is Dwight Shane Baldwin. If you want to read my rap sheet, look up Dwight Shane Baldwin and you can see my rap sheet.

But if you go to the South, it's Sugar Shane, and in prison, it's the Mormon Wolf of Wall Street.

But yeah, I mean, I have a crazy story. I was adopted as a baby. My birth mother was like 14 or 15 years old when she got pregnant by my birth father, who was like 19 or 20.

This was in 1979, 1980.

Today, he would've been in jail. I had this amazing opportunity to meet them.

In fact, if you go to YouTube and you type in Shane Baldwin adoption, I recorded me meeting them for the first time when I was 33 years old.

And I had this amazing experience to ask my mother, her name's Michelle, hey, why did you decide to give me up for adoption?

And she said, listen, I've never told anybody this because people would think that I was crazy, but I'm telling you, an angel came to me and told me that I needed to do that. And I just thanked her because I got adopted by the most incredible people on planet Earth, Dwight and Cindy Baldwin.

And my father, I would say from a talent level, is like a 3 out of 10 as far as just God-gifted talents.

He's just, you know, was a farm boy from West Ogden, Utah, no education. But he is on a work ethic standpoint, 10 out of 10, and intellect standpoint, Through the roof, highly intelligent man, but just not blessed with you know he was never an athlete. He was never the cool kid in high school.

He got picked on. He was kind of nerdy, kind of dorky. You know he just he just didn't have the the the the I guess the mojo, but he had the mindset. And and so with me, I was actually very fortunate to have a lot of gifts.

given to me. Um, I was the athlete. Um, I was that guy that got the girls.

I was the high school quarterback. Um, I played AAU basketball.

Like, I had these natural gifts and abilities that he didn't have because he wasn't my biological father. But fortunately, he introduced me to books like Think and Grow Rich at 12 years old. Think and Grow Rich. How How to Win Friends and Influence People. These were the books that my dad introduced me to and started teaching me because those were the books that influenced him to be successful. A guy with no degree, I don't know if you've read this story in my book, but his story is in there. He was a police officer, decided he wanted to work for Merrill Lynch, had no degree, no background, no experience. After a year, he persuaded them and they gave him a job. And after 20 Something years later, he retired having managed $1.5 billion, being one of the largest financial advisors in the world out of Ogden, Utah. And so, I was raised by some incredible people. When I was 19 years old, I chose to go on a Mormon mission for my church, and I got called to South Africa.

You don't get to choose where you go.

I don't know if your audience or you, you've seen the guys in the white shirts and the black badge.

So that's what I chose to do at 19 years old.

You just put in your papers, they call it. You put it in and you wait to see where they're going to call you. They could call you to Pocatello, Idaho, or they could call you to South Africa or anywhere in between. And I got called to South Africa, and that was in 1999. And it was just a beautiful experience for me where I was able to serve the people of Africa. I learned 4 African languages. I speak Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, and Tswana. I don't know if you've ever heard of that language, the click language they call it. It goes, so I learned that language.

And for a white guy to learn an African person's language in South Africa, where there was the apartheid and major differences between races, was a big deal.

And it was a big deal for them. It showed them that, that, hey, I'm no different than you. In fact, I want to be just like you. So I did that for 2 years. Came home, married the girl that was waiting for me. We got married fairly quick. I went to school at BYU Hawaii.

There's a couple different campuses for BYU, one in Provo, one in Idaho, and one in Hawaii.

And anybody with any brains, you know, would choose Hawaii.

Like, if you're going to go to BYU, you might as well go—

well, go to the one in Hawaii. I bought some franchises and was involved in a business called Cleanflix. So I started a business, bought some real estate while I was in Hawaii. And by the time I left school, man, I was— I had a net worth of a million bucks. And I got—

I dropped out early.

So I was a junior when I dropped out. I got offered a job to go work with my dad at Merrill Lynch. And my job at Merrill Lynch was just to network and convince people to move their money from wherever they had it to Merrill Lynch. So I played tons of golf. I got down to where I was about a scratch golfer. And I went to sporting events, sat on the front row, hung out with some of the most wealthy people in America, and did my best job to persuade them to move their money to Merrill Lynch and was able to triple the size of my dad's business over the course of those 3 years that I was there. So I was there from 2004 to 2007, decided I wanted to be my own man, a big boy, and start my own investment company, which I did, called Silverleaf. I failed for a solid year, lost everything that I had made. Uh, and then I ended up finding my opportunity, which was to buy bad debt secured by real estate from failed financial institutions during the Great Recession. And, um, I bought close to about $800 million worth of bad debt secured by real estate, um, all over the country. So from a real estate perspective, I've touched almost every asset class. Um, I've owned every type of real estate that you can, from mobile home parks to huge apartment complexes, to huge office buildings, to small strip retail centers, to private golf clubs, to public golf courses.

I mean, I've, I've owned a, a ton of different things.

And in 2012, the FBI investigated me on a couple of deals that I did where I did the wrong thing.

And, uh, they offered me to a deal to go to like a federal camp, take my cell phone, golf clubs, do 10, 20 months, like no time.

And I turned it down. They held a grand jury. They decided not to indict me. That was a huge wake-up call for me. I was like 31, 32 at the time. I had my own private jet. I had 2 airplanes. Like, who needs 2 airplanes? But I had 2 of them. But it was a wake-up call for me. And I decided to divest myself from, you know, all of the business stuff that I had going on, settle out my business affairs. And I turned to more of my spirituality.

Wow.

And decided that I would start really reading, and and and really reading. You know, I had been reading lots of self-help books. Self-help books were pretty much all that I read.

I either read biographies, autobiographies, or self-help books.

That's it. And I really started to dive in to everything, even outside of self-help religious texts. I never can say this right, but it's called the Bhagavad Gita or something like that.

Bhagavad Gita.

Yeah.

You got it. I read that. So, I studied Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, the Gnostic Gospels, the Nag Hammadi Library, like the Kabbalah. Like, I just dove into everything, including my own religious texts inside of the Mormon faith in a quest for purpose. In 2013, I read a passage in the scriptures and it's in Revelations and it It was a phrase that says to go no more out. I'm like, what the heck does that mean? The scripture goes, to him that overcomes, him will I give a pillar, and he'll have this great place in my Father's kingdom, yada, yada, yada, and he shall go no more out. And that got me thinking big time. I started thinking, what does it mean to go no more out, right? And I'm like, I'm such a dumbass. I've probably been going out a lot. I probably come down here, think I know what I'm doing, Return back home to report, and they're like, "Dude, you didn't do what we sent you down there to do." And so I got to go out again and go do it again. And I'm like, "This time I'm going to get it right. I'm going to start asking. If if the scripture says asking you shall receive, well damn it, I'm going to ask." And I started asking questions like, "Who am I?

What is my purpose here?" And and that's the quest I went on in 2014. I made a million bucks on a transaction. And I went to the mountains, prayed. I told God, I've been a horrible steward with money. I said, what do you want me to do with this money? He said, I want you to give the majority of it away to random people, not charities, just to random people that I'll guide you to. So I started in Utah, and then I moved my efforts to Mississippi dressed as a door-to-door salesman, started finding people in need in Natchez, Mississippi. And that was my best experience with money. in my life. I found more joy, more peace, more happiness finding people that I was guided to, not, I mean, you could call it random, and giving money away. And it changed everything for me. I found my purpose. I understood after doing that exactly what I'm to do here on the earth. And based on that, I told God, I said, listen, man, I still feel inadequate. I know my purpose. I know what you're asking me to do, but there's no way I can do that. I'm not smart enough. I'm not talented enough. You're going to have to teach me. And I said to God, be careful. This is for everybody who's listening. Be careful what you start telling God you're willing to do because he'll give it to you. It is true. Ask and you shall receive. And I told him, listen, man, if I got to sell all my belongings, my Porsche, my house, everything, and go live in a tent, for you to teach me, I'll go and do that. A few months later, I was arrested by the state of Utah on the same charges the FBI had dropped 3 years prior. And it took me a minute, but I realized the tent God wanted me to live in was that 80-foot cell. And that began my prison journey. And there were the first couple of months that I was in there, I doubted my purpose. Even though I had been told, I doubted it. And I started to want to not live anymore and wanted to check out from this life. And in the process of trying to figure out how I would kill myself, I started writing the book The Honest Lie.

It was all—

it was the culmination of everything that I had studied—

religious, spiritual, self-help, The Secret, manifestation, all of those things.

Yeah.

Came to me at that moment in time, and with a golf pencil, I wrote the book that you have in your hands. And I tell people this all the time: number one, this book saved my life, and number two, there's no way I wrote it. There's— I read my own book and I'm like, wow, that's really good. Um, I will not give myself— I, I was just the instrument, the conduit that was able to, to put, put it down, but There was definitely something moving through me when I was in my cell writing. I was in there with a cellmate and he was maybe 10 feet away from me, and I would get really hot when I would write it and I'd have to take off my shirt.

And he could feel like a fire.

He could feel heat like emanating from me as I was writing this book. And, and it did. It saved my life. Have you gotten to the part where I have my dream?

No.

Okay.

Anyways, I had a dream. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but in this dream I was told I needed to be there for 5 years, and I was shown and, and given blessings and promises of what would happen if I would accept that. And, um, I was told that I would help many, many of the inmates in there, but the inmate I would help the most was actually myself, and I would draw closer to Source Closer to the Savior, Jesus Christ, and, um, if I would accept that.

So, I woke up from that dream. I called my attorney. I said, I want to take a plea deal.

And he's like, Shane, you can beat this.

So, in the world of finance, you have what's called a PPM. Are you familiar with that PPM, Nick?

No. Okay.

So, if you're a super wealthy investor, uh, they call them accredited investors. So, your net worth more than a million bucks. I think that's what the accredited investor is today. That's what it was back in 2008, 2009. Anyways, they sign a document that's like this thick that basically says you can lose all your money. You're only relying on the information that's in here. If anybody told you anything, any email, any text, anything outside of what's in here, it's irrelevant. And it just protects you 6 ways from Sunday. And if you actually read the PPM, you would never make the investment. Because it basically says you can lose all your money. So, I had everybody, I spent $100 grand on that document to protect myself. And my attorney's like, hey, your document's really good.

It's the reason why the FBI didn't pursue you. And I think we can beat it. And because of the dream I had and because it was so clear to me, I said, I did the wrong thing. Whether I can beat it or not, I did the wrong thing. I lied to people. I was dishonest. I defrauded people. So I would much rather pay the karmic debt in this life than have to pay it at some point later. So, um, he said, okay. He went to the prosecution, said, my guy wants to take a plea deal. We negotiated it out. He's like, hey, you'll probably only do 20 months, so don't worry about it. The judge sentences me to a 4 to 30, minimum of 4 years, maximum of 30 years. And in Utah, I think there's only like 2 or 3 states in America that are indeterminate sentencing. And what that means is it's totally up to a board of pardons, a group of 5 people, to decide how long you're going to be there between 4 and 30.

Oof.

And so when I got to prison, I saw the board of pardons. It had been 18 months that I had been between county jail, my time in prison, that I went to go see the board of pardons. And I was thinking, oh, maybe I'm going to get out.

But I knew that this 5-year thing was like in the back of my mind, and I had already served 18 months.

I saw them and they gave me what's called a rehearing, which meant, hey, we're going to see you again. And they told me they would see me again in April of 2020. Well, I got arrested in April of 2015, and if you count that up, that's exactly 5 years. At that moment in time, I knew everything, every call it dream, vision, whatever you want to call it, was true and that I was exactly where I needed to be.

And I really leveled up my intention to serve the inmates there. I was able to be around every kind of inmate because I was a white-collar guy. They didn't have to segregate me. I could live with the hardest-core gangbangers and I could live with the most vilest sex offenders. and everything in between. So the first, you know, couple years of my incarceration were spent with hardcore gangbangers, murderers, like hardcore guys. And I was able to talk to them. Now, when you look like me, you have no tattoos, and at the time I didn't have a beard, I would look like a pretty boy. And if you look like a pretty boy in there, they think you're definitely a sex offender. So they would come up to me and they would be like, hey man, what you here on? And I'd be like, I'm, I'm here on securities fraud. And they'd be like, sure, that's what every sex offender says. Go show me your paperwork. So I'd have to go and I'd show them my paperwork and it said securities fraud on there. And they would be like, oh, like the Wolf of Wall Street? I'm like, yeah, man, but I'm like the Mormon version. Listen, Mormons aren't supposed to have sex until they're married, which is what I did. Mormons don't drink, they don't smoke, they don't use drugs, they don't go out and party. And that was my life.

So take The Wolf of Wall Street, take that out of his life, and that was my life.

You know, fast cars, jets, planes, hanging out with celebrities. That was my life. So they're like, oh, we're going to call you the Mormon Wolf of Wall Street. So in prison, I got known as the Mormon Wolf of Wall Street. What was cool is the heads of gangs viewed me as kind of like a resource. Like, hey, we can sit down with this guy. He's a business guy. He's a smart guy. Uh, and I was able to talk to them about their business, their illegal business, and use the principles that they use and say, hey, you can use this in real estate, you can use this with cars, you can use this with legal stuff. Just quit doing dumb stuff.

Just don't do illegal stuff. The, the concepts are the same.

And listen, gang members and gang, gang life is actually pretty awesome from the standpoint of their values, the loyalty that exists there.

Their code of conduct.

Like, if you could apply those kinds of disciplines instead of nefarious activities to legal activities, it's pretty awesome, actually.

And then that was my message to them while I was in there.

Um, about, um, 2 and a half, 3 years in, they came to me and they said, hey, do you want to move? Do you want to go over to— it's called Ochre Five. Ochre Five is kind of like this place where it's, uh, It's all pretty much sex offenders. Low, low security, tons of freedoms, but it's segregated to keep the sex offenders away from the hardcore guys because if sex offenders get around hardcore guys, like, they're going to get their ass beat. And that's just the reality of the situation.

But the living over there, you got jobs, you got tons of opportunity, no locked doors, you're not confined to a cell there. So there's a lot of benefits.

So I moved over there and I spent another 2 and a half years really studying sex offenders and the mind of a sex offender. And, and I got really mad, actually, not at the sex offenders. I got really mad at, at the industry of pornography because every single sex offender would tell me that it started by pornography. And it can just be soft pornography that moves into hardcore pornography. And if people knew today that potentially by viewing pornography you could end up a sex offender in prison, you would avoid pornography like the plague that it is, because you would be like, I don't want that life.

If you saw a sex offender's life in prison, it's probably—

in my, in my opinion, you are better off being completely homeless begging for food than being a sex offender in prison. And pornography is what creates that in every single instance of a sex offender. You cannot find a sex offender that didn't have an issue with pornography. So my message is, I'm an anti-porn guy. Quit watching porn. It will ruin you. In fact, its sole purpose is to destroy love. And if I was T-negative, my sole purpose would be to destroy love too. And your generation, Nick, faces a very tough road. You see, when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, I had to go sneak into Uncle Jimmy's basement, look under the mattress to find a Playboy. Today, it's in your pocket, readily available.

And oftentimes, you can come across it without even like trying. It's just—

it finds you even if you're not looking for it. And so you got to be on your guard. So my message to your guys are, if you're into self-help and you want it to really work, you could read every self-help book on the planet. If you're watching pornography, it destroys everything that you've done. It's like going to the gym, working your ass off in the gym, and then eating at McDonald's every single meal of the day.

I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you.

Sorry, I've talked a lot. But anyways, I've been waiting to unload because I had been told from a higher source that I had to keep my mouth shut when I got out in 2020, that I couldn't do any pod— I did one podcast.

That's all. Just so at least my story was out there.

And it was a pretty light, fluffy version of my story. So, being able to come on a platform now, and I'm totally open, I want to get my message out there. And it's 2023, and I've been told that I got the green light now to go ahead and share my message, that the world is ready for my message.

So, I'm ready to roll, man. So, sorry if I freaking talk so much.

Oh, don't apologize. Hey, it's your time to shine, and you have a fascinating story, and you know that. I mean, Mormon Wolf of Wall Street, 5 years in prison, everything in between. Uh, it's fascinating to me, and I think it'll be fascinating to everybody else. Uh, there's so much to unpack. Let's start. I mean, I have a whole legal pad full of questions for you. Um, you're in prison, you're hanging out with these gangbanger types, the head of these gangs. It reminds me of another guest we've had on the show, Robert Greene. He wrote a book called The 48 Laws of Power.

Right.

And that book is one of the most banned books in the U.S. prison system.

Yes, they wouldn't allow it. And I had read that book when it came out, and I've read it multiple times. And I will tell you this, it's one of the greatest, most dangerous books on planet Earth. And if you are not prepared and in the right mindset to read that, it can be the most dangerous. If you're in the right mindset, And you unders— you understand what you're reading because he's giving you— he's just giving you information, and you can use that information however you want. But it is something that you need to tread lightly and make sure that you're in the headspace of love, not hate, empathy, uh, not narcissism. Because if you're in the wrong headspace—

and I was when I read that, I was in the wrong headspace when I read that.

It can, it can mess with you too.

Yeah, no, it's a good point. I asked him on the show, why did he write the book? And because it does get used for a lot of harmful activities. And he said, because he wanted to expose the power dynamics that were happening in Hollywood. He was sick and tired of watching people pretend to be for the best social causes, but behind the scenes be focused on power-hungry money situations. And so he wrote it to expose people and Whenever I recommend the book, I recommend it from a defensive perspective. Read the book so you can understand how other people might be taking advantage of you.

And I've read it in both, with both eyes. So, I've read it with the eyes of my guy, CR, the Silver Fox.

Yeah.

Gary Clark. He refers to me as, because he knew me as the Shane 1.0 that was money hungry, power hungry. narcissistic. And now he knows Shane 2.0.

And I've read that book, both 1.0 and 2.0, and I derived completely different things from it from both experiences because of the eyes that I saw it through.

Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. Well, let's talk a little bit about your book. So, you decided to write it while you were in prison. In the way that you describe being a muse, it reminds me of Steven Pressfield. He's been on the show a couple of times. He talks about the invocation of the muse from The Odyssey, essentially the idea that these ideas exist sort of like a universal consciousness, and they're waiting to be downloaded through vessels like us. And so when you are ready for the information to flow through you, it will. And so it's really interesting to hear you talk about it like that. Why do you think that God in this situation, or the universal consciousness, chose you to filter this information through?

Number one, I was in a state of humility. So, I think for anybody to channel anything from any source, they need to be humble. And you can either choose to be humble or you can be compelled to be humble.

And in this instance, I was compelled.

I was— my wife had just filed for divorce. I'd lost everything and I'm sitting in a jail cell. So, number one, I was humble. Number 2, I was asking. I was praying, really praying, really. Like, most prayers don't make it past the ceiling. I hate to say that because they're completely unintentional. They don't have the same kind of vigor and power that I was calling upon at that time when I was contemplating ending my life. So, that put me in a unique position.

Now, when I met my birth parents in 2014, the first thing they told me is, hey, do you know you're a direct descendant of Samuel Clemens or Mark Twain? And I think our ancestors play a much larger role in our lives than we understand. And they are constantly trying, if we will allow them, to download information to us that they're learning From the unseen world, and so I feel like Mark Twain played a role in that.

Can I pause you real quick, Shane? Can you can you see this quote right there?

The man who does not read good books is no matter than the man who can't. And who said that?

None other than Mark Twain.

Check it out.

So check this out. There's a you'll see it in there. There's a phrase that said— it goes like this. It's kind of a riddle. Right is right.

It's in my book. Right is right.

Wrong is wrong. Wrong is sometimes right, but right is never wrong. So, I get out and I start Googling all my quotes just to make sure I wasn't ripping somebody off. And I Googled that, that whole thing that I just told you. And guess whose name showed up? Mark Twain. And this was his quote. Right is right.

Wrong is wrong.

Right.

And that was the end of the quote.

And what he's learned since he's passed on to the other life is he says, oh, actually, right is right, wrong is wrong. Wrong is sometimes right. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions and they end up being the right thing for us. But anytime you make the right choice, it's always the right thing. And so, I was able to finish off that quote for him. That's why I know that our ancestors are playing a role. And because I was so tight with Napoleon Hill, Because Napoleon Hill was one of my mentors, because I read everything from him and I read his book every year since I was 12 years old. I would read Think and Grow Rich and anything by that man. I feel like he also—

I opened myself up to receive information from him.

So, when you read my book, it'll feel similar to a Napoleon Hill. Now, I didn't have access to Google. I didn't have access to any books. When I wrote my book, I had a golf pencil.

And legal pads of paper. So, the poem that you read when we started this was a poem that I had memorized from Think and Grow Rich because it's in Think and Grow Rich.

Yeah. The process that you go through in your head of consulting your— what did you call them? Your invisible—

My imaginary mastermind group. And I ripped that off from Napoleon Hill. Now, I added some pieces to it because He doesn't go through the level of detail like I go through. So, I took what he created and then made it my own. And that's the great thing about books. That's the great thing about what's going to happen to my book. And what I'm so excited about is to learn from other people that read it and get different things out of it so I can learn from them.

Yeah. No, I love it. I actually— so, I'm not sure if I told you this, but I have my very first book coming out in November. And yeah, thank you so much. It's all about how to read books like this and take this information and implement it. So you actually have a quote by Napoleon Hill in the front of the book that I'll highlight for everybody one more time. I posted it on Instagram twice now, but the quote is, action is the real measure of intelligence. And I believe that through and through. But the reason that I'm bringing this up is because in my book, I talk about the Knights of the Round Table. you know, the noble group of men that King Arthur would have consult him on matters of great importance, right? And I, in my book, I wrote this 2 years ago, 3 years ago when I first started sketching it out. I consult this invisible, you know, round table of people that I have. All of the books that I've read, these people sit at my table and I'm able to filter decisions through them. So it's just so funny how You do the same thing and you just call it something slightly different and you use it slightly differently than I do. But yeah, it's fascinating.

Most humans, like, I have never— you're the first one that I've met outside of the people that I have personally coached and mentored. So, I've never personally coached or mentored you. You're the first person I've met that also actually takes the action. So, you take the theory and then you put it into practice. So, that's why I think I'm so kind of drawn and connected to your energy because I think you take what you read and then you put it into practice.

Yeah.

I remember, now we're talking about me for a minute, but we can extend the podcast if you— I remember the first— so, when I was in college, I took an internship at a software company and I was on the phones. I was selling the software. And I ended up working for them full-time out of school as well. And each time I would sell one of these software packages, it would have to go through a 4 to 20-week implementation period, depending on how big the company was. That was also the same time that I started reading books. And so naturally, I would go through an implementation period action where I would implement and be a guinea pig and try out everything that I was reading. And it's funny because in my book, I actually talk about the first time that I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And I had highlighted over 100 different things to review and implement, which was an impossible number, but that's how excited I was to take action on the information that I was reading. I knew that only by taking action and implementing the information could I create my dream life. And so, yeah, man, I feel totally connected with you on that as well.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, it's amazing. So, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the term matrix. Obviously, you decided to use it in your subtitle. You told me, I think offline, mind that you've consumed like 1,000 hours of the Tate brothers and how they talk about the matrix. But you're not saying escape the matrix, you're saying navigate the matrix. So, why don't we spend a minute and talk about what is the matrix and why should we not escape it but navigate it?

Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit about movies.

I love movies.

In fact, I love them so much that I owned a movie rental company. I love movies, and I believe movies are a way that God can speak to us if we're being intentional about the movies that we want to see. And for me, in 1999, when The Matrix came out, it hit home to me. I'm like, oh, oh, okay, I see what's going on here. And it made sense to me, and it resonated with me as though it was information that I already knew, right? So, um, if you look at Neo and you take that story— and I don't know how, I don't know if the Tates heard me talk somewhere before I went to prison or what, But I was talking about this concept of the matrix back in 2008. It's become very popular now. But Neo didn't escape the matrix. Yes, did he unplug from it? Was he controlled by it? No, he figured out a way to not be controlled by it, but to control it. But he would go into the matrix all the time. Half the movie is him in the matrix. So if you think it's all about escaping the matrix, then you misunderstand. What the matrix is altogether. You have to be able to plug in. And I tell people this all the time. If I continue to speak at the level that I would prefer to speak at, people would hang me on a cross. They would think I'm crazy. So, I got to go into the matrix. I mean, Neo's not in there telling everybody, hey, wake up, you're in the matrix. He's in there. He's just navigating it. Napoleon Hill, in his book, Outwitting the Devil, He talks about drifting. He says 98% of all people on planet Earth are drifting, which what he's really saying is 98% of people are in this matrix. They're an NPC. They're letting the matrix control them rather than them controlling the matrix. So to truly navigate the matrix, it teaches you how to flip the script, how to go from being controlled by the matrix to you being able to control the matrix.

And that's what I'm teaching in my book, is, is how to control the matrix rather than be being controlled by it.

And, and so I'm outlining how you navigate it.

You navigate it by what you think about.

I mean, it starts there because your matrix is decided by what you think about. Your reality is what you believe. If you believe in mental illness, then there's mental illness. If you believe in depression, then there's depression. But for me, I don't believe in it. So therefore, it has no power over me. So that's the matrix, right?

That's allowing the matrix to be able to not control you, but rather you control it.

And that's what I'm really attempting to do in my book is teach people because it's even harder today than it's ever been. The matrix has more control.

Over the minds of human beings than ever before, because of all the propaganda, because of all the screen time, because people don't take time to think for themselves.

They're constantly allowing somebody else to do the thinking for them.

Yeah, you and I are cut from the same cloth, man. I believe everything that you just said. Everything from can I get an amen? Amen. Yes. Amen. I believe all of it. There's a metaphor in the beginning of a book called The Mastery of Self by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. And he says—

He's amazing, dude.

Yeah. Yeah, he really is. And he talks about this party. Like, let's say, boom, you're in the middle of this party. You're the only sober person there. You look around and everybody's drunk, swinging from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other.

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And you're at the party. And that's kind of how I feel after reading all these personal development books. It's like, I decided to wake up. I'm a lion instead of a sheep. And you still have to navigate, right? Because you can't take a drunk person and shake them out of it. You have to slowly take the drink away. You have to slowly say, hey, everybody, like, there's this better version of reality that exists. And you can read books like this. And once you continue to read books like this, it's not just going to happen like that. You can wake everybody else up. And so, it's a great mission that you're on, and I love that you're doing it.

I'm trying my best, man. I've seen things, I've been places, I've done things that most human beings will never see and will never do. Most will never own a jet. Most will never own a private golf course. Most will never play golf with Michael Jordan, and most will never see an 80-foot cell and do 5 years in prison. So, I've seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And the truth is I found peace in the lows. I didn't find peace in the highs. Now, what's cool about where I'm at now is I know where peace is, yet I can still enjoy the highs. And I was seeking those highs to find peace. If, and and this is for your viewers. If you think that by reading self-help books, your life is going to get easier, better, whatever, I got news for you: it won't. In fact, you will face more failure. You will go through more difficulty, and eventually it will absolutely be much much better. But the only way it gets better is through a little. adversity along the way. And adversity is beautiful. Adversity, like, I love Rocky. I love Sylvester Stallone because in my mind, that story epitomizes what it is to fail. His story, his personal story epitomizes that. And the Rocky story is his story. And I love it. I love it so much that I memorized a quote that he gave, and I would say it to myself in prison over and over and over again. And it goes, and you've heard it, it's not about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. So, if you know what you're worth, go out and get what you're worth, but you got to be willing to take the hits. And that's the truth for anybody that's trying to do something that is extraordinary. You got to be willing to take the hits. If you don't want to do something that's extraordinary, then you can be part of the 98% of people. And you can live a comfortable life, a conservative life, but at the end of the day, I promise you, you'll return home and you'll find out that, oh, that wasn't what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to take some risks. I was supposed to push myself to the next level. And you might just go out again.

Yeah. You remind me of something that I find myself talking about with friends and family a lot, which is how much I dislike the U.S. traditional education system. Because we're taught that failure is a bad thing. We're taught to avoid getting Cs and Ds and Fs by taking a risk because you'll get made fun of in the classroom. See, unlike you, I mean, I did play football and I was captain of the wrestling team and stuff, but I had a ton of social anxiety when I went through school in English-forward classes like history or English or whatever the case is, Spanish class, because I was embarrassed whenever I failed at something. I was ridiculed by other people, laughed at, made fun of, and therefore, I tried to avoid failure. Then I become an entrepreneur and it's only through failure that you start to move forward. It's completely backwards.

Amen. Dude, you honestly, it's because of the time that you've invested in books, which in my opinion is the most Like there's power in the page. I'm telling you right now, Team Negative does not want you to read a page. They would rather you not read at all. They would rather you listen to it. They would rather even, hey, just download it onto a screen, but do not read the page. Don't read the page. This page is intelligent. It used to be a tree, man. Read the page. Get the page. There's power in the page. You can write on the page. Like, there's, there's something about seeing these, these things on a page. There's so much power in the book if you're really tuned in and you just hold a book. Like, I know a book is good. I go to Barnes& Noble. If you see me in Barnes& Noble, I'm holding books and I'm closing my eyes. I'm not reading the pages. I'm feeling the energy of the book. I know that sounds crazy. That's like tree hugger type shit, but that's what I'm doing. I'm holding it and I'm saying, what kind of energy does this book hold? And it's this energy that I need, and I can feel it. And so I would, I would advise everybody, and that's why I'm so pumped to meet you, because of— I love the business you've created. I think it's so cool because you get to do what you love. You get to grow and learn every single day. You get to find authors like me. I'm a nobody. I don't even know if I've sold 100 books. Like I am an absolute nobody. I'm a gangster though. I don't care. Simon and Schuster, you offered me whatever, but you wanted me to take out the chapter on creative energy. I just gave them the bird. I don't care who they are. I don't care what they can do for me because I know there's power in these pages. And I know when they get in the right hands, the universe is going to do the work for me.

I don't need Simon and Schuster to do it for me, man. I got the universe on my side. I got Team Positive on my side. So it might take a little longer, it might be a little harder. That's okay. It just makes the story that much richer.

Yeah, it's interesting that you say Team Negative wants you to listen to books or read them on an e-reader. And what's, what's interesting about Team Negative, and we can say social media, is that our attention spans are getting lower and lower and lower and lower. We're becoming more and more impulsive. But when you read a physical book, Any book, fiction or nonfiction, you're practicing attention span. You're focused on something that will not disrupt you. And so you're learning to focus, do deep work, spend more time reflecting and thinking. And yeah, you're totally right. That does not happen when you listen to a book or read it on an e-reader device because notifications are going to pop up and you're still getting the blue light in your face the whole time.

Yeah. It's fine. It's good, but it's not the same. And do I listen to books? Yeah, sure I do, because I'm driving.

Yeah.

And there are situations where, you know, if as soon as cars become completely autonomous and I don't have to drive them, trust me, I'll be doing this in the car. I won't listen to it because it takes focus to do that. And there is such a lack of focus. Especially in America. Go to China. They know how to focus. Americans are the most unfocused people on the planet, and we need to fix that. And the only way to fix that is to grab a book, do what I call time blocking, set aside some time. I tell people this all the time. Now, Nick, I'll ask you, are you familiar with the law of tithing?

Yes.

Okay. In your mind, what is the law of tithing?

You give a percentage of your income For instance, to the church. It's the, it's the first place that you pay your money. And so in The Richest Man About— yeah, go ahead.

How much, how much is a tithe? If you looked at the word tithe, you know, 10%. You got it. So it's 10%. Now I'm gonna flip the script. Nobody teaches this.

I'm so glad you have me on my show because I have so much stuff to say.

But listen, tithe your day. Well, what does that mean? How many hours in the day are there, Nick?

24. Well, in your day, well, yeah, 24.

24, technically, if we're counting down hours. And what would it be? What would 10% of that be?

10%, 2.4.

2.4 hours. So you should spend 2.4 hours daily on personal growth and development. That's your tithe every single day. So that means gym time, that means reading time, and you shouldn't start your day until you've completed that thing. Exactly. And if you tithe your day, if you tithe, that's, that's tithing. Tithe it to yourself. So there's this, this— Jesus is asked, hey, what are the 2 great commandments? And Jesus actually gives them 3, but we still call them 2. He says, love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love yourself. How do you love yourself? Tithe your day, invest in yourself. And then after you've done that, after you've tithed your day, Now you can effectively serve your neighbor, love your neighbor. So, 2.4 hours a day should be spent at a minimum tithing your day. That's gym, that's reading, that's preparation, that's thinking, that's meditating, whatever it is that is considered in your box of self-development. 2.4 hours minimum a day.

Can I tell you something funny? Some people will find this funny. They'll say, oh, it's a little woo-woo, but I have a very clear correlation between tithing my day. So waking up, doing my meditations, doing my affirmations, going to the gym, crushing it at the gym, getting home, showering, reading, and then starting my day and a successful afternoon from a sales perspective, an internal team perspective, whatever the case is. If I don't tithe my day, If I don't go through that process, then I have a much less successful end of my day. There is— my entire team will tell you this— there is a very clear correlation between the two. My sales percentages and success rates go up. Everybody's happier. Things seem to be like synchronistically happening. And so, that's why I tithe my day every single day. I don't miss a day.

That's why.

I know you do. And that's what makes it hard for a guy like you or me to even travel because Then it's like, dang, I got my routine. Um, I changed time zones. Like, I try to— I, I'm— I've got to come up with a strategy to make sure that I continue to tithe my day when I'm out of my normal space and routine. Because I wake up at the same time no matter where I'm at. I wake up at 5:33 in the morning every day. It doesn't matter what day of the week it is. I go to bed at 10:33. No matter what. That's my— but sometimes I'll miss, and I hate it when I miss because I feel off. I feel like things aren't flowing right for me. I feel like those synchronicities aren't there. I don't feel like I'm in the right place at the right time. Right?

Right.

Yeah, I feel the same way. So yeah, we're cut from the same page, uh, or, or cloth as far as that's concerned. All right, let me go to some more of my questions. So tell us about Million in 60 Days. What day are you on right now?

Let's see, it's 10, day like 43 or something like that.

Yep. And how's the progress been so far?

I'm halfway there, which is pretty cool. Um, and you'll have to watch the show to see how I, how I did that, but it came from a way that I wouldn't have thought in a million years that that's what would happen. Um, so you'll have to watch the show. You can Find it on YouTube.

Um, that happened to you in 2014, right? You go into the gym, you meet somebody, and you do $1.5 million, right? Can you tell that story to everybody? Yeah.

So, so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make a million bucks. I go through the process. The process is outlined in my book. I become very intentional. I become very routine. My routine is everything. I won't miss if I feel prompted to speak to somebody, no matter if it's a homeless person. I gotta talk to him. So I start the process. 3 days in, I go to the gym I always go to. I see a guy in the gym, he's like 6'2, ripped, tatted up, and I'm like, okay, I gotta talk to this guy. He didn't look like a guy that would have the million bucks, but I had to talk to him anyways. He walks into the locker room, I follow him in there, and I say the dumbest thing. He's flexing in the mirror, showing off his abs, and I'm like, hey man, I wish I could have some abs like that. And he says, oh man, it's just hard work. And I said, hey, my name's Shane, what's your name? And then I got to shake his hand. I got to feel his energy. Shake his hand. He's like, my name's Jason. Got to get his last name now. Jason, what's your last name? He said, Jason.

I won't use his last name. Jason Smith.

And I'm like, Jason Smith, did you own a company called Paydirt? He's like, yeah. I'm like, you bought it. This is 2014. I'm like, you bought a property from me back in '05. He's like, yeah, I remember the property in Layton. And and I had never met him in person, but I have a photographic memory, so I remembered his name on those documents. And anyways, he's like, "What have you been up to?" And I'm like, "I had a company that bought debt." As soon as I said I had a company that bought debt, he goes, "You buy debt?" And I'm like, "Yeah. What have you been up to?" He said, "Dude, I just got out of prison." I'm like, "What were you in prison for?" He said, "I was involved in a group that." Was transporting 96 pounds of weed from Florida to Utah, and we got busted.

So I just got out of prison. I'm at a halfway house.

But before that, I had a hard money lending fund, and I need cash. I got about $5 million worth of loans here in Utah. I'm like, well, send me over what you got. I'll let you know.

He's like, dude, I have the file down in my truck right now. This is happening in the gym locker room.

He goes downstairs, he gets the file.

I thumb through it, and I quickly assess the value of the portfolio at about $3 million. And I say, hey man, I'll give you 500 grand. He's like, you know it's worth more than that. I'm like, yeah, I'll give you 500 grand. Anyways, he ended up signing the deal. I took that deal over to a wealthy guy that I know that buys real estate and debt, showed him the portfolio. He looked at it, he said, what do you think it's worth? I said, I think it's worth 3 million. He said, I think so too. What do you want? I said, 1.5. He signed a contract and bada boom, bada bing, million bucks. And I put up no money because I had it on contract for $500 grand. I had 30 days to close. So I just signed the contract, exchanged the funds, and I made a million bucks. Um, so that's how the story went.

And then you go up on the mountain, you pray, you give it away. It's the best feeling ever. It reminded me earlier when you were, uh, telling your intro story of that quote where you say, oh, you don't think money buys happiness? You just haven't given enough away yet.

And that is great.

And that's true. That is 100% true. When you knock on somebody's door and you find a lady that has medical bills, she's behind on rent, she's behind on car payments, and you take care of the medical bills and you make her current on all of her bills, there— I, I don't care what you say, there's no euphoria, there's no experience in my mind that is better than that. I haven't found anything quite like that.

Yeah, it's amazing. Um, by the way, I have— I've definitely been to Layton, Utah because I spoke at a conference once up in Logan and I flew into Salt Lake City, so I probably drove right through.

Oh my gosh, yeah. Logan's a pretty cool spot, huh?

Yeah. Do you know, uh, Kevin Karchner?

Yeah.

Yeah, Kevin Karchner, uh, he wrote a book, Fight Against Mediocrity. And, uh, so I spoke at his conference a couple of years ago. He's up in Logan. Yeah. Which is just funny. And also when you were talking about your Mormon mission, he went to Mexico and learned Spanish. You go to South Africa, learn a bunch of languages. So that's pretty cool. Do you think that the Mormon faith, uh, is one of the reasons that you are as successful as you've been and will continue to be?

No question. I mean, aside the doctrines aside, and then you just look at the, the what the culture teaches— don't drink, don't smoke, don't watch pornography, don't masturbate, wait to have sex until you're married, be, you know, self-reliant. These are all principles taught inside of the Mormon culture. And, and oftentimes when you meet Mormons, they're very industrious, they're very entrepreneurial, They're, they're go-getters. Um, we have a health code where you're supposed to— now, this is where some of the Mormons— hey, and you Mormons out there need to hear what I'm saying right now, and I'm guilty of this too— you're also supposed to eat healthy. Um, you're, you're supposed to, you know, eat things in moderation, eliminate, you know, lots of sugars. But we, we tend to go a little off course there as a culture. There, we, we like our Cheesecake Factory a little too much.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, uh, the matrix is a cultural construct that forces bad food down our throats all day long, every day, right? The food pyramid was inverted for the last 15 years and taught us all to eat the wrong things. All right, The Honest Lie. Uh, somebody's listened to today's conversation, they're like, all right, obviously Shane's a pretty cool guy, I vibe with the conversation, why do I need to read the book? What's the title The Honest Lie mean? Why should somebody read the book?

Yeah. So, there's— you've heard of affirmations. So, let's go back to Napoleon Hill. He calls them autosuggestion. And then you take it to the '80s, '90s, they use the term affirmations. Then you take it to Tony Robbins, who turned it into incantations, which is infusing emotion into your positive affirmations. And then you have the term the honest lie. So, an incantation can be something that is absolutely true about you, and you're saying it about yourself, right? But let's say that I'm 50 pounds overweight. Am I going to, you know, what would my affirmation be? Well, in that instance, if you said, I own and maintain a healthy body, well, that's not necessarily true at that time. But it's something that you want to be true, so it becomes an honest lie. An honest lie is something that isn't true about you today, but you want to be true about you in the future. So if I want to be a millionaire and my bank account is is a hundred bucks, you would have to say I am a millionaire. I don't know anybody who becomes something before they actually believed they were that. Before they became, they became it. So you have to almost trick your mind. You have to trick your mind that you're already there. If you want to be a millionaire, then act like a millionaire.

Talk like a millionaire. Walk like a millionaire. Dress like a millionaire.

Look like a millionaire. You know, don't think like somebody who's not.

If you're thinking like somebody who's not a millionaire, it's going to take you a damn long time to finally become a millionaire. And so that's the honest lie.

So. I coined the term because when I was looking at incantation, and I've always done my affirmations, I've always done that stuff, but I'm like, hey, some of these aren't necessarily true today.

They're things that I want to be true. So, that's why I call them honest lies.

I say, make sure you say your honest lies and your incantations.

Yeah, I love it, man. When I tell people about how to read books effectively, I say you have to state your intention for the goal in the beginning of the book. And in fact, I encourage people to write it down on the inside cover. And if you can add the word because at the end of your intention for the book, like, I'd like to find and implement 2 ways to more effectively navigate the matrix because I want to live my life to its fullest potential. I owe it to my family. I owe it to my friends. I owe it to myself. All of a sudden, it becomes more emotional, like you're saying, an incantation, an honest lie. And, you know, obviously when I'm talking about intentions, it's for the book itself. What you're talking about is for life, about rising to your human potential, about— I mean, we only live one life as far as we currently understand in most circumstances, so you might as well take advantage of it. And that's why I think reading books like yours is very important to help navigate the matrix. And listen, you've lived a very colorful life. You've learned a lot over time. You're not the same person today as you were in your early 20s. So why not bypass all the obstacles that we can and get to more important, bigger obstacles faster that we're going to learn from by learning from somebody like you who's literally condensed decades of information into days of reading? So awesome, man.

I tell people this all the time.

I'm not a theorist.

Like, I'm a practitioner of theories. I read theories, I put them into practice, I implement them. If I read something and I, I like it, then I'm gonna go try it and I'm gonna see how it works and I'm gonna try and implement it. And so what I've tried to do in my book is take all of the theories that whether it be Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, all the guys that I study, and I said, okay, I'm gonna go implement that. And I talk about that in my book and sometimes I fail at it and that's okay. Uh, the idea that failure's not an option is the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard. Failure is always an option, and it should always be an option that you go through. The only way to succeed is to fail. So failure only becomes, you know, permanent if you quit. Failure in my mind is just temporary defeat. You start again. If, if everybody that plays video games quit playing video games after they failed, well then they would never play video games. I don't know anybody that picked up a video game and beat it the very first time. They failed, they started again, and they kept going. So isn't that like life?

Yeah, Shane, you'll love this metaphor, and then we can wrap up. I love to tell people that if you read a personal development book and choose not to take action on it, it's just a form of entertainment. There's no difference between Shane who plays video games for 4 hours and Shane who reads The Honest Lie but chooses not to implement anything from it. They're both forms of entertainment. And so it's only through action that you start to change your behavior. It's only through action that your life improves. And I love that, man. I love it. Um, okay, for people who want to learn more about you, they want to check out the show that you're producing, they want to learn more about the book, where should they go? What should they do?

Okay, man, I got like 150 strong subscribers on my YouTube channel. I'm killing the game.

I'm one of them.

But you just type in Shane Baldwin. We got a bunch of episodes in the can that we're going to be releasing. And so, there will be 60 episodes total. When it's all said and done, there will be 60 total episodes. And it'll be whatever it's going to be.

I'm just trying stuff out.

I don't know what it means to be a YouTuber, but just type in Shane Baldwin. You can find it.

The show's called Million and 60.

I'm on Instagram. I respond to every DM. I responded to over 70 DMs this morning. So I got an ad running in Savannah, so I'm getting more DMs than normal because of that ad. But I will respond to every DM. It's just Shane Baldwin underscore on Instagram. I'm learning how to use the TikTok machine. I think it's Sugar Shane on there. And I'm on Facebook. I don't know how you find me there. Just type in Shane Baldwin. I think I pull up. But if you Google Shane Baldwin, you can find me. My book's on Amazon. If you want a signed copy of the book, you can just DM me and I'll figure out a way to sign a copy and and send it to you. I got to send a signed copy to India today because you're reaching out to me. Somebody in India that does basically what you do in India got a hold of my book. She saw that you posted, she read the ebook and was blown away, reached out to me and said, hey, I want to promote your book on my platform. And I said, well, let me, uh, send you a signed copy. Gonna cost me $213. to send a signed copy to India. But she was super cool. She got on the phone with me, and I feel like my book is going to connect with India.

At least I hope so.

There's a lot of people out there. I'd love to sell a lot of copies of the book because my mission is to change people's lives, to help them understand the divinity within, that if all of us are children of this supreme being, then we have that supreme being's DNA. Inside of us. We just have to activate it.

I love it, man. Well, thank you for spending the last hour and some change with me. I appreciate it. I know everybody's going to get a lot of value out of it. And, uh, keep being you. I'm excited to continue tuning into the show.

Okay. Love you, Nick. You're the man, dude.

Hey, you're wrapped. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, Please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.