No Strings Attached with Dr. Mark Goulston
Ken Sky 1:07
Hello and welcome to another episode of no strings attached. I'm your co host and Executive Producer Ken Sky. And I'm excited to tell you about our guest today. Shane is a serial entrepreneur, an Amazon expert whose career spanned for more than 30 years, earning over $1 billion dollars. His Amazon products have outpaced fortune 500 sales on the platform, selling millions of units worldwide. Many of these multimillion dollar companies noticed which led him to become one of the world's most sought after Amazon expert. He has a new book coming out soon called billion, the king of the thrill pill cult, and chronicles his rise to fame and fortune. And he also has a podcast with the same name too. As always, we're currently streaming live on LinkedIn, which means you can interact with us by writing in the comment section. Any comments you have any questions that we can respond to them while we're live. Without any further ado, please welcome Dr. Mark Goldstein.
Dr. Mark Goulston 2:14
Okay, Okay, enough of the applause already. Oh, Ken, it's good to see you again. And I am equally excited to have Shaheen on, you know, we both known him for a few years, I may have known him for a few years more. And he is he is amazing at being able to see things that other people can't see. And he has this knack of pointing out things that are hidden in plain sight obvious, but you never would have thought of them. And plus, he's one of the most generous, successful people that I know. And he's part of an organization that we all belong to. And he just gives away tips and information if you're interested in selling anything on Amazon or just just improving any process to become successful if you have anything to sell. But he's just he's also big hearted guy. So Shaheen, welcome.
Unknown Speaker 3:09
Thanks, Doc. Great to see you.
Shaahin Cheyene 3:12
It's great to see you and, and he's a man of many backgrounds, often we catch him when he's riding a bike or he's doing other things. So Shaheen, how are you doing today?
I'm doing amazing. It is a glorious day outside. I feel like all the stuff with Coronavirus is slowly dying down, people are becoming a little bit polite, or people are becoming a little bit nicer, at least in California, you know, I feel like we're coming to a good place. And, you know, there's I think, you know, a sense of relief, you know, across the board here. So, I'm really excited Doc, I think this is a really good time. And, you know, I, you know, throughout my career, I really felt like, you know, the one like, really good quality that I've that I've honed is kind of being able to look past the storm and see the opportunity on the other side. And I think now is going to be a time like no other for our opportunity here. And I know a lot of people like changemakers and thought leaders like yourself, are feeling the same way.
Unknown Speaker 4:20
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I think many of us are feeling that the lights about to turn green. And one of the reasons I'm so excited to have you on is that when the light turns green, there's going to be people who get quickly way ahead of everyone else, and there's going to be the majority of people left behind and and in some of the great things I've learned from you is how to be in that first mover pack that pack that gets way ahead. So imagining the light is turning green. What What is some of the tips that you can give people who want to be ahead of the pack
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Yeah, I mean, okay, so I think that's, that's one that I've thought a lot about. And actually, there's a guy who is one of my heroes, this guy, Richard Koch, and he just wrote this book called unreasonable success. If any of you guys want to check out his book, I've got no relation or contact except the occasional email with Richard. But his book is phenomenal. And he talks about, you know, the things that lead to people having unreasonable success, right. And that's really what we're talking about. In a lot of ways, I think it has to do with surrounding yourself with people who are succeeding, and that's what you and I do. We put ourselves around other thought leaders, other change makers, people who are leading the charge on a lot of these things. And you know, for you and me, it's like we see them every day. So it's like, oh, it's, you know, it's a Tuesday at the office. Right. But for the majority of people, if they saw the people that you and I communicate with the people that were around, these are leaders and cryptocurrency, people that have created cryptocurrencies that are changing the world, leaders in media and entertainment and technology, in all these fields of business, and those are the people that we surround ourselves with. So when you are me have an idea. That idea is amplified by orders of magnitude, just from our network alone. There's another great book by a professor, Professor Bara bossy, and I believe he's a Portuguese professor, I could be wrong, but he wrote a book called The success formula. And in it, he talks about that, what are the two key elements of success? He said, he researched and he studied people who for years who are successful, and he tried to find what's the algorithm behind these people? What makes somebody successful and somebody else not? And can you guess what those two items might be? Those two things, the two elements that make somebody successful?
Unknown Speaker 7:08
I would think drive has to be one of them. Maybe not drive, and also persistence, you know that they're undeterred that no matter what gets in their way, they're going to pick themselves up. I recently spoke, interviewed someone who said, she, in fact, we heard we actually heard her this past Saturday, it was Amelia, she talked about loving failure that she sees failure as not as a failure, but sort of as a chance to pivot a chance to just sort of reset. So but those those would be my guesses.
Unknown Speaker 7:46
Yeah, so interesting. So broad categories help sell books, but they're really, in my opinion, Bs, because there's all shades of grey between success and failure, and if and hate failure, so a different story. But here's the thing, the two elements that he talked about, number one, was performance. Number two was network. And in the absence of performance, it's just network. That's it. So you look at an artist, for example, and he studied, you know, big blue chip artists, right? Like, there's a guy called john McHale, buskey up, I'm sure you've heard of Basquiat and his work, he was around with Warhol. Well, why don't basky out too. Was he an amazing artist? Okay. Our people will argue, but if you talk to art historians, and art professors, and people that are really knowledgeable, they'll say, you know what, it's decent color theory. And you know, the art isn't really that much better than other people in that era, there were established artists in that era that were far superior performance wise skill levels, right. And their artwork sells for five grand 10 grand a basket just sold for $48 million. There's another one I think is the wrong option for $138 million. Right? What is it that made him so many degrees more successful? And the answer to that was network he didn't, like you said Dr. As part of it. He didn't just lay around as a kid. He walked into coffee houses with art that he hand drew as a homeless kid in Brooklyn, on postcards. And he threw them in Andy Warhol space, while Warhol was there with the who's who of New York society. And he threw those postcards in Warhol space until Warhol bought them. And then he founded Warhol until Warhol took him into the factory and had him doing art with Warhol. And that created a landslide of networks for him that created that success. So how do I find what the next trends are? How do I find what's successful, what businesses are successful what the next things are, it's through our mutual friends. So for example, Ken retal, ski founder metal, he has always and I've known him for 25 plus years always been on on the leading edge of finding products of finding trends that are going on, I talked to him all the time I pick his brain, right? All the people within our network contribute to this insight that I have. Right?
Unknown Speaker 10:16
So how do people get it? Okay, so how would you? How would you recommend people get into these networks? Because there's probably a lot of people viewing and listening and saying, Oh, I'd want to be part of that. So. So what are some keys to being able to get into that kind of network and have the network accept you, and embrace you and support you?
Unknown Speaker 10:39
So okay, so I think this is a process? That's a really good question. So I think the first and most important step, Mark, and I don't know if you would agree with me or not, is that I think you need to have a mind mind shift, a mindset shift that you belong to that club, a mentor of mine, a guy named Stuart, while he wrote this book, called The trick to money is a fantastic new age group, the best of the best. You know, he created that whole genre of New Age books, and he passed away some years ago. Stuart would always tell me, you know, what, fake it till you make it. And you got to always sign up for the club. So you got to join just in your feelings. So if you see a bunch of people out there, and you know, the guy sitting in his Lamborghini, and he's having his coffee in the, you know, fancy cafe in Rodeo Drive, and he's sitting there, you know, if you look at him, and you go, that effin a, whatever, right? You're not joining the club, buddy. Right? And that's so often, especially with millennials, they do that, right? If you're hating on people, if you have time to hate on people, you're not joining the club. Right? If instead you walk up to him, there's one of my favorite YouTube Tick Tock instagramers. He walks up to people in the supercars and they go, excuse me, what do you do for a living? Just straight to you, they'll walk up to a guy in a Ferrari tap on the window goes, excuse me, what do you do for a living? Right? And he's, but he's genuine, and he just wants to learn. And I think that's one of the things that's made this kid into a phenomenon, right, but he's joining the club. And so many times these guys have been like, Oh, yeah, come on, in, hop on in the car, right? And then come come to my mansion in Miami and clone the boats. Right? And you join, you join from from, from really your heart, you stop hating on people that are successful, and you start learning from them. Right, then you can do anyway, all around you is affluence, wherever you're at. And so the first step is to have that mindset change, where I can be part of that, right? Stuart would always tell us, hey, even if you don't have any money, go to the most expensive hotel in town, pre COVID. And sit down in the lobby and have a coffee, it might cost you $7. That's an expensive coffee, but no problem. sit there and take all day sipping that coffee. Why? Because you're joining the energy of that big hotel with the big marble arches. And the people walking in with their Ferraris and Lamborghinis. And, and, and you make yourself part of that club, just in your own energy just in your own feelings. So it sounds really esoteric, and I'm not, you know, a big fan of woowoo, or any of that stuff. But in reality, it works. Because you start bringing that kind of stimulus of wealth of success of abundance to yourself, right, just by deciding You know what, I'm not going to be unable and hate on these people. I'm going to be a part of this, I am now part of this club, maybe just a little bit, maybe just a little bit. But I'm sitting here at this cafe, and I'm doing that right. Or you go to the most expensive car dealership in town, and you tell them you're interested in the latest Ferrari or whatever, and you look at it, you smell the seats, you see how that leather smells, you see what the key looks like, you see how they treat you when you walk in there. Right? And you are taking ownership. So that's the first step. The second step is that you need to have access, and how do you get access? Well, you know, you don't make any friends staying at home by yourself. You just don't um, things are changing as things are opening up, you know, with with this whole COVID thing. So putting yourself out there being a part of other functions, joining groups like the one that mean you are members of you know, and just being open to what else is going on. If you do that, people will connect with you and you will have an opportunity to connect with people. The third is finding mentorship seeking a mentor. Now we you know, I run a mastermind group for Amazon for people that are interested in selling and making money on Amazon, but you know, we're not going to talk about that now. But that's another way to do it. You know, when people want to join, that type of thing, you can join a group. So we have a group where you know, we've got just under about 100 people and they all are from different levels, people from different areas in the world, and their goal is to create recurring, Predictable Revenue. So they don't have to sell their hours. And this is what I teach and what I encourage people to do. You know, because I've made my money and in my lifetime, over a billion dollars in revenue, my goal now in life is to empower people to reach the absolute level of freedom. And what that means to me is being able to do what you want, when you want with whoever you want. Super simple. So how do you get that freedom?
Unknown Speaker 15:39
So do you think it helps when you come from broke when you come from? I mean, sometimes young people when they, when they have too much, they don't have the same drive the same hunger? But do you think it helps to come from, you know, if I don't make it happen? No one's gonna make it happen. And I'm and I'm not just going to end up on the dregs or an alcoholic. So what's your What was your background?
Unknown Speaker 16:08
Well, I came from Nef. You know, my parents were immigrants, we came here from Iran. I left home when I was very young, about 15. And did whatever I had to do to succeed. So you know, I slept on the beach, I slept in my car, I slept on couches, I did whatever it took to succeed. And, you know, there were days where I didn't need it didn't matter. Right. I had that discipline. And, you know, that discipline came from, you know, young age, you know, I was interested in martial arts. And, you know, I built a pretty strong martial arts practice from a very young age. And that gave me kind of the mental discipline, the Eastern philosophy and the fortitude to be able to do that. To your to your to your first question. Having Money makes everything easier. Right? I know very few people who would argue with that, having money makes most things easier. However, where I think you're coming from is Can it be an impediment? And the answer is, yes. But there are other things, I think, that are more important than drive. Right? If you have enough money, you don't really have to be that driven. In fact, most of the successful people I know, practice some degree of being lazy. So it just depends on, you know, again, where you're at, in that trajectory. Ultimately, you want to get to a point where you can be, you know, a lazy CEO, where you can have your stuff on autopilot. And again, you know, more of what we teach in Amazon mastery, you know, where you can have your stuff on autopilot, you can, for example, have virtual assistants all over the world, managing your businesses be diversified enough, where you know, something happens to one business, the other business picks up and be able to live your life in absolute freedom. Freedom is the ultimate luxury doc. And you know, that's right, you so you know, being practice, you had patients every day, right, that basically took up all of your time. Right, and but now you have a much higher degree of freedom, and you get to do what you want, when you want, and you're impacting more people on a wholesale level by doing that. So the impact of the work that you're doing has has gone up exponentially. And the work that the physical time that you spend has gone down dramatically.
Unknown Speaker 18:36
So I don't know if you can address this. As I look at LinkedIn, I don't see I could have it wrong, but I don't see LinkedIn, necessarily as the land of entrepreneurship. I mean, you know, entrepreneurs are on LinkedIn. But you know, when you look at LinkedIn, there's a lot of people working in large companies, they're looking to make sales, they're looking to find a job and that kind of thing. Any tips, you can give any of those people who feel almost imprisoned by that, you know, what are some steps and maybe you've already given them you know, it's not, you know, you know, open up your mindset, instead of having this, staying in that corporate lane, where you don't think outside the box, maybe be curious, or maybe just schedule, maybe schedule on an hour every day, I'm going to do stuff that's outside of this inside the box living, but it would seem to me that a lot of LinkedIn people would love to have your life and have your freedom, any tips that you can give them so they could break free?
Unknown Speaker 19:44
Yeah, look, you're not going to get rich working for somebody else. Unless you're a C level exact and you get you know, stocks or whatever, which is, you know, 1% of the 1% you're never gonna get rich working for somebody else. So ultimately, you're going to want to work for yourself and the way that that works is you You have to be in a place where you have that foundation, right with anything in life, right? You got to be stable, right? Before you can go on to have a relationship like, you know, call the people that you that you coach and that you've seen, right until you have that stability, you can't go to the next step. So same in business, you got to be stable, you got to have enough financial resources for six months, where you can say, you know what, I'm cool, where you can give your middle finger to any boss that you don't like, and be fine. So your first goal has to always be, I'm going to get comfortable and have six months worth of reserves of financial reserves. So no matter what happens, I'm okay for six months. And you know, what, if it takes a little longer, I can squeeze I can have you know, a few less Starbucks, I'll be okay. Right, you can squeeze it to eight months, right. But generally, that's the first step is you've got to have foundational thinking, because nothing good happens overnight. It just doesn't. Right. It takes time. It takes time to build legacy, it takes time to build these business, especially on Amazon, it takes time. Right, all these guys gurus, all these people selling courses and selling this diet and coaching, whatever, it's all Bs, everything good takes time. Now, you can work a little faster, you can work a little slower, you know that stuff? That stuff is is negotiable. So the first step is you build the foundation. The second step is you use a proven system. Right? My good friend and mentor Wayne boss always teaches us, you know, three elements, right? knowledge, courage, action, the three steps, right? So you get the knowledge, the first step, right, where do you get knowledge, you can buy it, you can rent it, you can steal, it doesn't matter, you got to get that knowledge, right? Once you get that knowledge, having that knowledge gives you the courage to move to the next step. Right now I know, I know how to open the parachute. And I know that 99.9% of the time, it's safe. If I do it in this way, I now have the courage to pull that shoe. Right. And once you have the courage, that gives you the ability to take action, the one element that nothing else is possible without. And when you have those three elements, knowledge, courage, and action, you can accomplish anything. So in the example of wanting to start a business on Amazon, the largest platform in the world that's open to every single person on the planet right now, to go on there and sell, you know, with virtually little or no money, you can start a business that can grow to be a multi million dollar business, just like we did just like we teach people how to do every day. You know, if you want to do that, you got to have the foundation first, then the knowledge. So you go through a process of acquiring knowledge. Either you join a group, or you read books, or you research online, you get that knowledge, and having that knowledge gives you that confidence. And that's really the three prong approach that we teach and that, you know, I teach all my students and share with all my clients.
Unknown Speaker 23:07
Could you whet our appetite with a piece of knowledge about let's say someone wants to be successful on Amazon? So what is some of the early hires that people get that you teach them that they never would have thought of? Because the promise of no strings attached is that we share information that people would say, I never would have thought of that. And I think that would work. So any little gems you can share just to whet people's appetite. So I never would have thought of that. Maybe it's possible. Just maybe it's possible for me to be successful in Amazon.
Unknown Speaker 23:46
Yeah, sure. So, you know, the first aha moment that I think most people have, is that you don't want to create a product, and then go out there into the world and find the market for the genius idea, Doc, I got this genius idea for this better mousetrap. And now I'm going to go out and find people who need a mousetrap. And then you go out there and you find out you know what, people just want a cheaper mousetrap. They don't really want a better one. They think the mousetraps are pretty darn good at catching mice. So where are you at, you've got a warehouse full of 50,000. mousetraps that you don't know what to do with it. Instead, we work backwards, we go ahead and we look at products that other people are selling. We look at what the market needs, we look at the traffic going to those products. And then what we do is we go in there and we create a product to match the market need. Rather than finding a product and going out there and finding a market for it. We do the opposite. And that's worked swimmingly over the course of the last several years. The second aha moment that I could share with you is that the riches are in the niches we say this often and what that means is, is that the further down you go, the more niche you get, when you're discovering what your product is, the better off you're going to do, because you're going to have less competition for that market. So if you were to tell me, hey, I want to sell cell phone cases, I'd be like, oh, a lot of people selling the rights of race to bottom, you got lots of competition. But if you said, Hey, I'm now I looked at cell phone cases, there's too much competition. But then I looked at clips for cell phone cases. And then I looked at magnets that you stick on the back of cell phone cases. And those magnets are doing really well, because photographers use those magnets to fasten the cases to their tripod, and there aren't that many people selling it. Now you're getting into it, you might actually find out that the glue that you glue, the magnet on to the case, is selling more than the cases or is a much better bet for you. And that's the algorithm that we teach how you find these niches, how you find these products, and get them to create, you know, at first, you know, it's not a lot, it's 510 $1,000 a month. And then from there, you grow, you make 50,000 100,000 I've got clients that are making millions of dollars selling, you know, a number of products on the Amazon platform. It's all possible now, because it's an open door policy. Anybody could sell on Amazon.
Unknown Speaker 26:19
You just triggered something. Do you know the story of IDEO and how they how they find out customer needs in markets? No. So idea is one of the top design companies in the world. They designed a lot of the Apple products, and they have something called ideal University. And I think it's something you can enroll in if you're watching this. But what they do, and I interviewed Tim Brown, he's the chair of IDEO. He was the CEO for 20 years before that. And what they do at IDEO is they have people from all backgrounds. They'll have computer scientists, programmers, psychologists, sociologists, biologists, historians, and they basically say, go out and be what we call be a first class noticer. So it's not like the person who's going up to the Ferrari and saying, you know, what do you do as a job? They'd say, jeez, if you see someone frustrated with something, go up to them and say, I couldn't help but notice you seem frustrated about something. What are you most frustrated about? You know, is there anything in this store or what you're looking at that actually makes you angry? And so find out what it is that they're most angry about? Because anger leads to action? Or if you see someone and they're delighted about something, some product or something, and you go say, Boy, that put a smile on your face? What are you smiling about? Well, I like this is what would put a huge smile on your face in that product. Well, if they could do such and such. And then what happens is they have all these people from different backgrounds come in, because they all have different perspectives, a psychologist, things different from a computer program. And then they all come together, and they have these creative collisions. And they say, What do you notice? And then they allow that to morph into, you know, something, here's something we discovered that really ticks people off. I mean, it ticks them off so much, they would buy anything that would make that go away. Or here's something that we're finding that excites people in a particular area. So So that's something you can do that seems to be similar to what you're saying is go out there and identify something that nobody's seeing. But you don't necessarily have to be the visionary. You just have to be the person who notices emotion and people and ask them what the emotions about, see what they tell you. Yeah. Does that make sense at all?
Unknown Speaker 28:50
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and it's it that's so important, like, I look at, also, you know, like, you know, looking at people's emotions and how people buy things, and seeing that, you know, it's, it's really a, you know, most decisions start emotionally, people think they're thinking logically, but it's really emotions that drive everything that we do, you know, just like I tell my wife often, that, you know, I refuse to buy things from people I don't like. And, you know, it's a human fallacy, right? Because I should buy you know, whatever, you know, the better product is, but I'll eat at a crappier restaurant. I will, you know, purchased an inferior product. If I like the person who's selling it to me. It's kind of like my way of voting for how I feel my world should be. Oh, and I think everyone's like that. I think it's so important, you know, to be be a good gauge of those things.
Unknown Speaker 29:53
Oh, that's true. That's true. You know, I did something the a couple weeks ago, I I gave a talk to an accelerated group. And, and I probably didn't share this with you, but I'm wondering what you think of it. And I talked about how to think like Steve Jobs and Ilan musk. And I said, What visionary people have. And I said, they're not necessarily visionary leaders. I mean, Steve Jobs wasn't the best leader, he, you know, he kind of abused people. But the way visionaries think, is something we call the three DS, they decide they define reality. And so Steve Jobs would say, you know, technology's not going away. Computers aren't just for geeks, one of these days, everybody's going to have a computer, they're going to probably want one on their own desk. So he defined reality. You know, when he first got interested in computers, it was for geeks, but he thought this is not going away. And so he defined that future. Ilan musk did the same thing with electric cars, and then the second D, and maybe if maybe it's what you said, not, maybe it's probably knowledge, courage, and action. And the second D is you declare your intention to do it. I'm going to do this. I don't know how we're going to do it. But I'm going to do it. We're going to make a computer that's going to be fun. You know, so it's not just typing and stuff. And then the third D is you decide strategy, how are we going to do it? That's good. How are we going to do it? What are the actions we're going to take? Who are the people? And but but I especially liked the first the so what is so something that you you're a visionary, Shane, your you define reality and said, Wait a minute, Amazon's not going away. Wait a minute, anyone can sell anything to anyone. Wait a minute, the people that are in a huge market, it's going to be a commodity that they're going to be have to give this stuff away, because there's too many of them. Wait a minute, maybe I can just notice something. And it may not be sexy to find the glue that keeps a magnet on it. On a case, by boy, there's all kinds of cases, but there's not the best glue that glues the market. So so you have that quality?
Unknown Speaker 32:17
Yeah, you got to find you got to find the market and give the market what it needs. It's all about distribution. I talked about this in my upcoming book. Hey, I actually had a question for you. Have you ever met Dr. Paul Ekman? He seems like somebody you would know.
Unknown Speaker 32:33
I don't know him, but I have met him. Yeah. Okay. He's a hero.
Unknown Speaker 32:38
So you know, he, he wrote emotions revealed and did all that work on micro expressions. What do you think about that? What do you think about micro expressions?
Unknown Speaker 32:47
Well, I think they're incredibly telling micro expressions, and they reveal so much. I don't want to get into politics, but But boy, you know, if you want to see which politicians are lying or telling the truth, it is just it is just out there to be looked at. I mean, it's it's like, you know, but it's amazing. It's, it's amazing I, which, which triggers something else that I think is a flaw for some people I see in technology, or people who are left brain pure left brain thinkers, what happens is, is they get caught up in something that should be a certain way, according to their logic. And then they have something called confirmation bias. So they keep going out of the world to reinforce this view they have. And I'll tell you something that, well, I've gotten a little less sensitive, but somebody used to break my heart is is you could ride by new businesses that you know, are going bankrupt in six months. You say, what were they thinking? You know, they didn't think of the market, the location, the customer. They thought, Oh, I love this. Oh, we love mom's chili. The world's gonna love her chili. Let's put it up. And it's so painful to see people who, who, as you say that they get too much in love with what they have, as opposed to what the markets got to have.
Unknown Speaker 34:14
Yeah, there's a lot of vanity businesses like that, right, like wine, chocolate, you know, there's so many chocolate companies and so many wine companies because everyone's like, I love wine. I love Jeff. Let me buy a vineyard or I love chocolate. Let me buy a chocolate well, dude, every single chocolate and wine thing that you could possibly think of has been done. The market isn't saying please give me more wine or please give me more chocolate. So by creating those, you're going into really, you know, not a blue ocean, you're going into a red ocean, and you're going to have to compete and more times than not that ends up in failure, rather than thinking distribution first people so people often Come to me and thinking back to micro expressions and the work of Paul Ekman, you know, we often do intense research before we launch a product where I used to do focus groups where we would get people in there, we'd haven't behind the double glass. And you know, I, there's a part of me that wishes I never read any of Dr. Eichmann's books or watched any of his videos or took any of his courses, because you just can't look at people the same way anymore, after you've seen his work. Because those things, those little expressions, you know, he identified six human expressions that are universal doesn't matter if you're in Papua New Guinea, or if you're in Los Angeles, California, or New York, everybody has those same expressions, and they happen in a flash and a second. And if you can learn to watch them, you can really start to decode what people's true intentions are. So for those of you guys who don't know, so, what I teach people to do, oftentimes, is when they come to me, and they're like, Hey, I have a really great product. I'm like, great, how many sales you have? No, no, no, it's just an idea. Okay, great. go sell it. Oh, but I don't have the product. That's fine. Go sell it. walk into a store and say, Hey, are you going to buy CBD oil? Oh, yeah, we buy CBD. Oh, great. I have a new one. What do you think of a lavender? CBD? Oh, we love that idea. We've never heard of the lavender CBD. Oh, great. How many would you like to take? Well, how much is it? How much would you like it to be and, and get an order. When you get an order, then you can make it and sell it. But you're starting with distribution. First starting product first is the biggest mistake you can make. You can get lucky. It happens. It happened to me. You know, when I was 15. I created herbal ecstasy. It became a global phenomena. We sold over a billion dollars before I was 18. You know, and I talked about that in my podcast and my book if you guys want to check it out. It's billion. How I became king of the throw pillow cult. But you know, at the end of the day, you know, yeah, we did a billion, maybe we could have done many billions, maybe we could have done 10 billion. If I had just looked at the market. Now it just so happened, that the market was there for what I was selling. And I had to match them up. And I got lucky, right? Sometimes you roll the dice and you get the right number. Sometimes when you're, you're playing roulette, it falls on double green, and you're on double green. So that happened to me when I was doing ecstasy. And of course, the elements of performance were there the product was good. It did what it said it was was gonna do. And the network was that I had built out that network over my time in the rave culture and electronic music scene culture. And I had built out that network. So I had network I had performance. The product was good. We had all those elements to it. But I went the long way. Right? And you say, Oh, well, you got there. Yeah, I did. You know, it doesn't mean you can't get there any other way. But now we want to use a lever, we want to use three ounces of pressure to achieve 3000 pounds of results on the other end. And how do you do that? It's not product first, its market first.
Unknown Speaker 38:13
We just gave me an idea that I'm gonna give out. So tell me what you think of this idea because it's half baked because you trigger I just interviewed a, a phenomenal guy named Steven Kotler. And his latest book is called the art of impossible.
Unknown Speaker 38:28
Love Steven Kotler.
Unknown Speaker 38:29
And, and he was phenomenal. Just you know, he was right before you this interview. And but here's an idea. There's something that I learned from a sales organization in Orange County. And it's called the impossibility question. So I won't go into it. But here's something you can do. If you're interested in defining that market. Go out to your, you know, go out to stores or businesses, restaurants who have anything that you that you'd like to that you like, and go up to the owner, and say, I'm doing a survey called the impossibilities question. And then you say, Well, what would be impossible for you to do? Or what product would be impossible to make, but if it was made, and you could sell it, it would be hugely successful. So when you ask people, the impossibility question, it but it bypasses you're coming up with something and people saying, well, that's impossible. And so it's also something you do with your teams, you could say what is something that you could do that would be impossible to do, but if you could do it would exponentially increase your results and guarantee you getting a big raise? And then they'll say, well, it probably be impossible to do this. Okay, what would make it possible, but I could see you going out and it's a way of gathering bring people from. And they'd probably like, I'll tell you people love answering the questions. I was actually on a television show called the view some years ago. And I think it's still going, and someone was miking me and the, with the segment producer. And I like to reward people who do a good job by helping them with their future. And I said, Where do you want to be in five years? He said, I'd like to be an executive producer. He wants to Ken skies job for no strings attached. And I said, Well, what have you been doing? He said, I've been doing this for about 10 years. And I said, What would be an impossible thing for you to do? But if you could do it would rapidly get you to be an executive producer, but it's impossible. And then he said, If I could find this person named shaundra Levy, who ended up dead, this intern from years ago, if I could find her and get an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters, who is still the main honcho on the show, Barbara Walters would say who got the story? So I said so. And what would make it possible is, so if your antenna is up, what is it that would so while Barbara Walters, that she say who's getting me these stories, you get on her radar, and it's tough to get on the radar. And what happened is, it was interesting because he left the room. And then he came back and it was much calmer. And he said, No one has ever asked me such a helpful question about my career. I've been known for 10 years. Thank you. So I'm just sharing that you could go around and I'm telling you, you ask people the impossible question. You're going to get some ideas, and then bring it home and see if it morphs into something.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai