You're now listening to Hack and Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. What I've learned from getting and being around seven, eight, nine-figure mentors and individuals I've been around, is that they think differently. And they see and they recognize. I know one of your strong suits has been recognizing trends and movements. Because the key is not jumping on a trend. The key is identifying behavior and when you look at things like that story there or even you know, your discussion of Amazon in general or the internet, I think what's more important than the lessons of what happened, is identifying the movements and the keys to success and the clues that are now moving at light speed, right? Now they're moving at a whole different level with NFTs and crypto and forex and things like that. So I love that that's how your brain works. Because I pointed out because I found that most super successful people that's the way they think.

You're now listening to Hack and Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. I know that there's, you know, there's a lot of people probably listening to the story with besides the fact that it's completely entertaining and they're going okay, George like what's the point here? And here's the point and the reason. I want you guys to start listening more is that success leaves clues. Look, I could go on and on about Shaahin, how like you had nothing, you know you hustled, you did whatever you had to do. I mean we're obviously, we're not promoting drugs and things. But that's not the point here. You guys got to listen to the fact that he was determined. He was recognizing certain things. He was persistent. But one of the questions I was going to ask you is what gave you this sense of, you know, from moving to the United States, right? And everything this constant sense of what looking for success and why that didn't appeal to you being a doctor, but why doing this did or being on your own, like, what were you when you grew up? Were your parents instilling in you this idea that you wanted to be successful or do you think you just because I mean, I'm not a big believer that people are just born wanting to be successful? It's usually a product of their environment. What is it that gave you that drive? What do you think?

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. And the first portable digital vaporizer. What year are we talking about? This one was probably late 90s early 2000, I think maybe 2000. I came out with this maybe somewhere around there and you'll notice that our patent is this drawer that pulls out and you would put your herbs in a disc. The disc goes in there, that was another one of my patents was herbs on disk and then you put it in here. And I mean this one, yeah, clearly it doesn't work. This is, you know, 20 years old or something but yeah, and then there's a digital readout. The first of its kind and you would inhale through here or through a tube that you put in there and then I remember, yeah, I mean we used all kinds of fancy things like LEDs were not a thing. We used them. There are cobwebs in here. How funny. When I was very big on building this and this feels like, it feels like a nice device. But the point is that we had two parts to our patents, one was being able to remove the plant matter from the heat source to prevent it from getting burned manually and the second was a digital temperature readout that allowed us to control the temperature with a thermoregulator so that the plants it was all around. You don't want to burn these plants. So you want to do it at a low temperature.

You're now listening to Hack & Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene and his co-host Bart Baggett. So by the time I was 15, I was like, man, I got to get out of here. I can't. If I stay here, you know, What's the path for me? And my folks would say, hey, you know, go to school five years ten years to get a degree. Become a doctor. You become a doctor young man, and I'd be like all right. Well, let me look at the doctor. I'd be like, look at Mr. so-and-so out the street and I'd look at the guy and he was bald and fat and the whole family was bald and fat. And you just look at the guy and I'd be like, wow. Yeah, he's got a Benz, but that's not him, the bank owns it, right? And that could be you, right? Yeah, you look at his car and you're like, man, you know, like his house. You're like the bank owns that and the guy leaves at 5 a.m. He comes back at like 8 or 9 p.m. and now he looks miserable. I don't want to be that.

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.

So I'll tell you one of the first things that I did. So once I made the pills and we got it into the hands of a few of these dealers. I decided that I was going to become a multi-million dollar company. I never thought we would break a billion dollars, but I thought hey, you know what, we're going to become huge and I thought one of the ways to do that was to license a picture of a famous person. So I walked in, I made a phone call. They said, what's the name of your company? I said, I just made it up on the spot. I said Global something or other and loved it. I got an appointment and I walked into this big Beverly Hills office. And it was a fancy office in those days and beginning of the 90s and it was, you know, the attorney that was representing this state of so-and-so. And the receptionist was this cute little Japanese girl in her cute little outfit. She brought me this little espresso with a little twist of something. Never had those before and put them on and I was like, this is amazing. And then the guy makes me wait about an hour right he calls me in and he's you know, the old school like, you know the agent guy. Yeah. Tell him it's what I could do for less than entire thousands.

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.

The greatest human disease, the greatest thing I think that can hold you back not only in life but particularly in business is seriousness. Seriousness is a disease. You gotta relax. You got to be able to enjoy things and not take things so seriously, not lean into things so much. Let things come to you. It's what professor Caldini talks about in his book Persuasion. Caldini being the great professor that wrote the Canon on Influence also talks about pre-suede, talks about the greatest sales are made before the guy before the prospect ever comes to you and it's all part of this process.

And I am a huge fan of the law. I love law um and all things related to it and when I had started my first company and we can go into the story. You know, I created a billion dollars worth of revenue in my teens, creating this legal version of an illegal drug. And I remember there was a time when lawsuits were just flying and I didn't realize I thought you would have to wrong somebody to get a lawsuit. I was wrong because there were all these vulture lawyers. And this was at a time when the employment practices laws were coming into place. So there were all these people who I never met, who I had never had any transacting with, who were suing me. And I remember. And this kind of goes into my whole philosophy about hacking life.

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.

Life is about luck but it's not what you think. Luck can be created and it's about being in the flow. Uh, a great author uh Chikset Mihai who recently passed away just a few days ago wrote the great book Flow and he talks about the amazing synchronicities that could potentially happen when you're in the flow. I've been lucky my whole life, but I believe that I have created my luck.

The only hack that works is hard work. The only hack that works is getting out there and failing. Seeking failure and getting out there and making a mess of things so that you learn and then slowly picking yourself up dusting yourself off and doing it a little better each time until you no longer fail and then what you have to do is you have to perfect it. You have to make sure that the total size of your successes outweighs the size of your failures and then you're okay and then you're winning in life.

The problem is a lot of the stuff has become highly marketed by a lot of the self-help gurus that are out now. So they want you to think that having a passion drive and mindset is what you need. No, that's not what you need. You need to do the work, you need to roll up your sleeves, and do the work. That's what you do. That's what works, what works is doing the work getting out there. And you know, if you're a real estate agent, knocking on doors, and you know, meeting people in your neighborhood, and building your network, and calling the banks and doing whatever those things are that agents and brokers do, but it's just doing the work. There's nothing more effective than doing that.

So now you're going to go buy $1,000 worth of product from distributor A This MLM. And for those of you guys who don't know, it's multi-level marketing effectively. And I hope I'm not offending anybody involved in multi-level marketing, but many people do believe that it is very similar to a Ponzi scheme. Because the people at the top of the pyramid, make money, every time product is sold down the line.

They could fail because they get pulled off the platform for violating service. There's a lot of great stories of 10-20000 a day and they just get canceled, just like what happened 15 years ago with the search engines. I knew people getting checks for five and ten thousand dollars from AdSense and all of a sudden they changed the algorithms panda slap in SEO terms and those checks stopped. So so I mean one small change or one small violation could end the business. That's probably how most of them lose because it doesn't cost anything to stay there. You just may not be number one and your sales will decrease.

Like there is a risk. There's risk involved in each person has a different scale of the risk that they're willing to take and whether it's fighting, whether it's Covid, whether it's business, life, whatever risk is inherent and as a former fighter I went into it knowing I'm risking my health. Okay, I could have brain damage, I could get knocked out, could break a limb, could get stitches, could fracture my eye socket.

But as a personality type, wealth comes in all ways. Um, there's a great great guy named Roger Hamilton. We need to have him on the show. He has a wealth dynamics test and he uses some of these archetypes to explain the wealth and what's interesting about studying Edison or Oprah or Branson is they have different personality types and me being an expert on personality mostly through handwriting and NLP is that you know I originally thought oh personality type is how I get wealthy but when you meet people that are complete introverts and they're still wealthy it makes you think oh maybe it's the strategy, not another personality type.

You have to be willing to go the road alone if you have to. The first thing I learned is that people are very quick to tell you that things are impossible and when I started herbal ecstasy back in the early 90s, I remember all I heard was that it was impossible but I had a flaw and that was I didn't listen to anybody and not only that I didn't know that it was impossible. Just because they're saying it's impossible, I didn't want it to be impossible.

It's I know exactly that burn the ship's mentality, the focus, the clarity and the like you said purity you know what I mean. It creates like there's like um I think I think what it is is you know when you have that there's no safety net, there's no plan B and it just becomes like right.