You're now listening to Hack and Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. Yeah, I tried other jobs selling, buying a pizza franchise, selling real estate, and selling vacuums door-to-door. So I was doing all that, but I hadn't started a product and built a business and so this was eventually, when I started, it was the first shot but I kind of knew deep down. It was the right shot to take. But yeah, so but so I'm thinking of the idea or excuse me I graduate from college and move in with some buddies and it's 1982. I'm 22 years old and we start sketching words out of the dictionary. That was it. I mean there was no grand plan. There was no game. We're just having fun. Well, we get home late. Now there are three guys, six guys were just playing this silly game. We were having a ball every night. And so the entrepreneurial spirit started kicking in. I'm going you know this is going to be a good board game because in 82 there were no video games. Everybody played board games. So that was the vernacular of the day. And then, of course, I procrastinated for three years. Are you ready to go, man? I'm good. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm gonna be, you know, I went to Europe. I kept waiting tables. I wasn't ready and I just couldn't get out of my way.

You're now listening to Hack & Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. Where do you see vaping moving in the future? Do you think that inhalation is going to be a means of delivery for other things like medications, I've seen one vape that was caffeine, right? Yeah, I spent a lot of time building this technology for pharma companies as well. All the big pharma companies, all the big tobacco companies were very interested and I've built several iterations of vaporizers using sound sonic technology.

You're now listening to Hack & Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. There's another story where while I was you know, living in these abandoned buildings and on the beach and all these places, I managed to get myself a job at a copy place, at a Kinkos copy. It was at the time and I remember we were in the back. I was making photocopies for Scientology because that's it was right next to the Scientology building. Yeah, they would have these like, billionaire contracts that they made. People sign and like there was all this paperwork and I'd be like send the copy machines. I was a kid and I remember that I had this boss who was like this evil man like he was like the monopoly guy. He was like you know, he had this like a cat and a cane and a mustache and all this stuff and I would sleep behind the copy machine because it had a nice droning hum. It was warm back there and I could sleep for a few hours so during my shift. I would set the papers, the contracts to print and I would fall asleep behind the copy machine. Didn't think much of it, but one day I woke up and like to a kick in my side and like his like cane and he's like standing on something beating me behind the machine and me looking going hey, what the man and you know, him like kicking me out. I didn't get my paycheck, right? Mind you, I was sleeping in wherever I could sleep. I didn't have money for food. He wouldn't give me my paycheck.

You're now listening to Hack & Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. Positive momentum and negative momentum. When things happen that are crappy, they seem to happen one after another. It affects your attitude, your mindset, everything. And when good things happen, the key is always to keep your foot on the gas and get back to basics. Always grind. Put people in your corner who support encourage you. And what you did, which I love is you were taking every situation in life, you even when you had the chip going back to what you said at the beginning of this interview, when you had the chip on your shoulder, you didn't say, what was it you said, you know what? I'm going to take what I don't have. And I'm going to make something of that. Everything you did was in your favor. Using it in your favor to drive you to do the things that would drive your success and I think that's a phenomenal lesson that everything is good and bad.

You look at somebody one of my all-time heroes of all time. Is this guy Alan Watts? Alan Watts was a philosopher. Are you familiar with Alan Watts at all? Yeah, Alan Watts was a philosopher in the 1950s and 1960s up until I think the 70s when he passed away in I think close to 73 who was responsible for bringing the wisdom of the east Zen philosophy to the west and he did it in such a digestible way that even today, people are remixing his words, his spoken word along with electronic dance music. But Watts was one of the most self-realized people of his time because he took that opportunity to self-reflect not only on his strengths but also on his weaknesses. And similarly, I learned early on that it's not as important to learn what you're good at. Because like we said you can hire people that are good at the things that you are not good at. But it is important to know what things you suck at, what things you are horrible at, what things you will never be great at. Not because you put yourself down, not because you are down on yourself, but because then you have a true knowledge of yourself and you can act closer to the truth.

But the fact is you have to use every tool in your arsenal and you have to find out what tools the competition isn't using and you have to jump on it. Like I don't know, but you gotta jump on it like it was a gazelle and you're a lion in savannah.

When the decision is made, the doing becomes effortless. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that once you become resigned to achieving the results that you want to achieve and you decide that you are willing, you don't might not have to do it but that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get it, very little can stop you. Sure, if you die, get hit by a truck or something, maybe. Outside of that, I wasn't willing to take no for an answer and there was zero indication if you saw it in my face that I wasn't willing able or interested in doing the impossible.

But if you go to a restaurant and you're not happy, ask for the manager. You will be amazed at how far they will go out of their way to help you out. Smile. Always smile. Don't be aggressive. People are uncomfortable with tension. So it's not going to be to your advantage in these situations to create tension most of the time. So don't have tension. Just smile. Maybe start with a compliment. You know what, I know that the waiter is working their butt off tonight, I can see how busy you guys are and I just got to tell you those bread rolls that you brought us were spectacular, but we've been waiting 45 minutes for our food and I just wanted to know if there's anything you might be able to do for us.

Resilience. People are going to try to knock you down. People will put you down but it's how many times you get up when that failure happens and also there is an element to it of not giving an about what people think of you. You cannot care what other people think. Other people's opinions only matter if they coincide with your belief structure and your reality distortion field.

Most CEOs that are where they're at, we tend to think that people that are CEOs are these people that have gone to school and done you know the things by the book and they come out like this no and I teach this all the time to my students, my students in my amazon course is that those guys are the smartest in the room for a reason and that reason is not that they've played by the rules. The reason is they didn't think outside the box. They crushed the box. These are real next-level thinkers.

It's true. There's no participation prize in the real world. There's no participation prize on Amazon, you don't get an honorable mention for having good intentions. So you have to go out there ready to crush and if you can't handle that, get a job, go work for someone and sell or be a socialist. There are plenty of countries that would love to have you as a socialist, you know, and I know there's a whole political movement of like, oh, everybody should be free and give the money away and feed the homeless and you know what? Get three kids and start an Amazon business. See how socialist you are? You won't be that socialist once you have written your checks. Go read Ein Rand the fountain header atlas shrugged and let's see if your philosophy doesn't change a little bit.

The fact is that on amazon they want you to know very carefully very, keenly that you are playing in the big boy sandbox. That sandbox is not yours, it is theirs and they will not hesitate to slap you with a suspension if you violate their terms of service or even if you don't. Maybe you have a competitor that doesn't like you, maybe somebody wants to take up your market share, this happens all the time on Amazon and they will slap you with a fake copyright infringement.

So whatever service business you're in or product business those reviews show up and they're probably not on your platform. I have hundreds of reviews on Shaheen, on my computer but they're not necessarily on amazon, on google maps, or each website because I don't own all those platforms. I have to go dig them up, put them in a graphic, put a photograph on them, put them in an email like we're talking about 20 years worth of reviews.

People who do impossible things, people that are leaders are generally broad-stroke guys and what I mean by that part is that they don't tend to get overwhelmed by the details. The people who are generally not hugely successful are far more concerned about the specialization and the this and the that and the little details of things which is the reason why rocket scientists aren't the wealthiest people in the world.

So there’s mixed messages and there’s vulnerabilities and if you know how to exploit those vulnerabilities you can win, which is why I oftentimes you know I get asked to talk about black hat tactics and grey hat tactics yeah you know white hat tactics and the fact is there’s nobody who is successful that just does everything strictly by uh TOS, you know terms of service you know we follow what they tell us to do.