Episode 105: Amazon Account Suspensions, Fast Reinstatement and How To Build A Resilience Mindset.

Shaahin Cheyene 

All right, welcome to another episode yet another episode of ¨Hacking Grow Rich¨. This is Shaahin Cheyene with my co-host, Bart Baggett, the success and Wealth Secrets coach, which is Bart ark. My name is Shaahin Cheyenne. I am an experienced Amazon seller, Amazon consultant, and author of the upcoming book Billions bar. Welcome, buddy. How's it going? 

Bart Baggett 

Thank you so much. It's been so much fun co-hosting this with you. We've got many emails, many Instagram, people tend to be responding to this whole hacking. And I just love what you even said last month or last week about you taking a coupon to your first date with your wife. Like it is mind-boggling. It's not Dan Bilzerian. Like that's not real. Wealthy people do things differently. And I love the fact that we're getting to pick your brain, I'm getting to shine some light on some things I've done.  And today we're going to talk about resilience. And what happens when they cancel what happens when the rug gets pulled out from underneath you? How do you manage that emotionally? So that one issue, whether it's divorce or bankruptcy doesn't make you know, start over ago, like in a Monopoly board. 

Shaahin Cheyene 

Now, I love that. And if you are playing in the Amazon seller game, if you are an e-commerce seller, if you are selling something or conducting business on one of these top five platforms, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, if you're marketing on those platforms, what happens when you expect one thing, and then the next day you will be getting something else? What life does not always meet your expectations? And sometimes it's quite the opposite. 

So Bart, you know, in the Amazon business, we talk a lot about what you do when your Amazon account gets suspended? And how do you deal with that? Because there are millions of people all over the world who put so much love and so much work and so much effort into building Amazon businesses. And then one day, all of a sudden, it's gone. And their account is suspended. So let's back up a little bit. And I actually wanted to talk to you about something today, Bart, and I don't think you're going to like this, but yeah, you know, unfortunately, account? Yeah, unfortunately, Bart, I can't be your friend anymore. And, you know, I have to tell you, you violated our terms of friendship. And unfortunately, we can't be friends anymore. 

Bart Baggett

I didn't even know we had terms of friendship. Was that like on a secret page somewhere? I don't remember that handshake.

Shaahin Cheyene   

So that's a really good question. Unfortunately, because you violated our terms of friendship, I can no longer talk to you. And if you continue to talk to me, I will have to cancel this call. 

Bart Baggett

But I need to talk to you about why as canceled, there must have been some mistake like can I just call you and talk about diva customer service? 

Shaahin Cheyene  

I am sorry, sir, please refer to our terms of friendship. And if you continue this conversation, I will have to cancel the call and cancel the conversation. And 

Bart Baggett

I put seven years into this friendship. You can't just like not tell me why you're breaking up.

Shaahin Cheyene  

 I am sorry. our terms of service are very clear. And unfortunately, all our findings are final. So of course, Bart, I am joking. But that is exactly how it works in web 3.0. So at the beginning of the internet, these things wouldn't happen much. It was the Wild West. And then we had web 2.0, where the platform started to realize that they need some form of regulation. Otherwise, they're going to be liable for all their patrons, consumers, whatever you call it, subscribers, evil deeds, so they started to clamp down. Now, web 3.0 is something that we discovered sometimes I think around 2010, which was shocking, particularly on the Amazon platform. Now, as we're sitting here, I have a LinkedIn account that's been banned, and it was the most hilarious message that they sent us. Dear Sir, your account has been canceled. For violation of Terms of Service and mind you the LinkedIn Terms of Service, I don't know if anybody reads the terms of service. But there are hundreds of pages long and illegal leads. I don't think you know, when you open up a Facebook account, LinkedIn, who reads the terms of service. So somewhere in those hundreds of pages, there's something that you have violated. Now it's exactly like the conversation that we just had. Where they will send you a message saying, you know, they have soft suspension. So Amazon does the same thing. They're soft suspensions where they say your account has been canceled. If you feel this was an error, please reach out to customer service, they don't give you a phone number, there's nobody to call, there is no email, and you have to figure out how to get a hold of them.

Right. Now, after you find out how to get a hold of them, you will likely get a similar response. Dear sir, thank you for reaching out, we realize that your account has been canceled, it was because of violations of the Terms of Service, please don't contact us again. And so people are in this loop. Now, if you have a day job, and these things aren't that important to you, I suspect that a great majority of people will just give up or they'll open up another account, right, they won't care about their you know, stuff if they can open up another account. But for the people who have to deal with these things as being part of their livelihood, their Amazon business being a part of their livelihood, their Facebook account, being part of their livelihood, their LinkedIn accounts, being a part of how they feed their families, they now have to go back and figure out why they have an Amazon account suspension, Facebook account suspension, LinkedIn account suspension, and then try to get into a mini lawsuit with the quasi-governmental agency, I don't even want to call it a governmental agency. But let's just say quasi-agency, that's these big companies. And so for years, we tried to figure out, you know, accounts get closed down. And then you know, we follow a very specific procedure. And we've kind of figured out how to get them back up. But it's down for a while they slap you on the wrist and you know, especially if you haven't done anything. And a lot of this stuff could be competitors. So if you're a competitor of someone, you report them, right? It's very Gestapo ish, right? Like kids reporting their parents and like friends, reporting their friends, it's very much like that, that is very much encouraged in these big companies 

Bart Baggett

Reminds me in the early days of email, your competitors would spam your email address on purpose, or they would send the bot and then all of a sudden your email service that confuses I would say, No, we can we're no longer sending any or emails 200,000% less because you're a spammer. And all of a sudden, you didn't do anything. But now you're being punished because something bad happened. And all of a sudden, you can't send an email for four weeks. And guess what, for some people, that was their only marketing Avenue in 2003. Like that was it and there was no Facebook, there was no MySpace. So I get it, even if it's not your fault. So you kind of like rebuilding your credit, you create a system to go back and reactivate these Amazon stores. That's fascinating, right?

Shaahin Cheyene  

So true. So this is, you know, how we get you to know, I mean, big fortune 50, fortune 500 companies have hired us to reinstate their Amazon accounts after they've thrown their hands up there. You know, big boardrooms filled with attorneys couldn't get it up, you know, my company accelerated intelligence, that part of the service that we provide, in our as well as accelerating Amazon companies, and doing Amazon SEO, and that kind of stuff is getting these companies reinstated and back in the good graces of these companies. Now, here's the interesting part about so now let's get into the nitty-gritty of what you do if let's say your Amazon account, for example, is canceled. So now, assuming there are two different tactics One is if it's a hard rejection, which means they literally will write you never talk to us again, they will say, this case is closed, this decision is final, do not contact us, and then they'll give you some ultimatum, like, if you try to contact us, we will never contact you again. But the letter says, The letter says, Don't ever contact us again, this decision is final. And then if you try to contact me, 

Bart Baggett

I'm with you. And I've already married somebody else.

Shaahin Cheyene  

 Yes, yeah, no, I'm breaking up with you. I already married someone else. And if you contact me, again, I'm gonna not talk to you. Oh, that's a hard suspension. A soft suspension is if you feel they give you space to break out. So let's talk about the soft suspension first. 

So, if you get an Amazon account suspended, and it's a soft suspension, they will allow you to appeal. Now you have to do your research, the address for email appeals, you have to find an address. And you have to go out there and we teach part of my Amazon course, by the way, how to do this in great detail. And there are several hacks that you can do that can accelerate the process and get these accounts back up a lot quicker. But I'm going to tell you the basics, the basics of the process of how it works. So you write them a letter, and you say, dear Amazon, I am so sorry. Now what you have to do is copy and paste from their letter. Now that might sound crazy because they send you a one-page letter.  With weird language like your account has been suspended for violation of Terms of Service on this day. So you copy and paste exactly what they say, dear Amazon, I understand that my account has been suspended for violation of Terms of Service, right. And you're just copying and pasting from their letter. Why? Because it's bots that are reading these letters. At first, it is a combination of artificial intelligence. And bots, and I have this on good authority. I can't say from who, but let's just say it's from inside the machine, that there are, it's a combination of bots and foreign employees that go in and deal with this stuff. And most of the stuff is done using accelerated, sorry, using artificial intelligence, because if you imagine they're canceling 1000s of accounts every day, and those accounts are appealing, and so now they have to have a system. So the first line of defense, which is brilliant, we are always wondering why they do it this way, is sending you a bulk rejection letter, it is a stock rejection letter Bart, similar to my unfriending of you. 

Bart Baggett

It sounds like insurance, like the insurance companies, the last 50 years just generally reject everybody. Let the poor people disappear. And the ones with attorneys come back and we pay the few exact similar business models. 

Shaahin Cheyene

Exactly right. Because it doesn't matter to them.  They're getting new sellers every day if you go away as you stop part of, you know, the long tail business of Amazon sellers. What this, you know, is the Amazon FBA selling platform. So if you go away, that's fine. .There is some possibility that Amazon might be selling whatever product you were selling themselves. And if you think no, I'm too small, there's no way they can be selling my private label product. Think, again, Amazon is a long tail business, there's a fantastic book called the long tail that talks about this, how they built it on selling little bits of millions and millions of things. Amazon didn't make their fortune selling one or two things in large volume. So it's the whole game for that. 

Bart Baggett

Now, let me go on, this is a big deal for you to understand because I've sold on Amazon a little bit compared to your master. But I'm so small, I think they don't touch me. Some of your clients are so big, they think they're so big, they can't fire them. But Amazon doesn't care about either one of those, that's the message you're saying. 

Shaahin Cheyene

They don't care about it. So the first thing you have to realize is look, Bart me and you go on the corner, and we're selling whatever we want. We have our shop or website, whatever. We're playing in our sandbox, we're playing in our own rules, you're going to sell on Amazon, you're going to sell on Facebook, you're going to sell on Walmart, eBay, Etsy, any of these stores, if you become a seller, you got to learn, it's no longer your sandbox, you're playing in a big bully with a black eye, bloody knuckles, and he's sitting there in the center, right, eating everybody's candy. And if you're lucky, you can get some of his scraps. That's the picture I want to paint. Now some of those scraps might be plenty for you. Right? It might be good. A lot of people get rich selling on Amazon, my students do very well. We do incredibly well selling on this platform, boy, you have to realize that is that bully boy's sandbox. And if he doesn't like you, you are inches away from him, picking you up like this giant that he is and just dropping you outside of the sandbox and you no longer exist. So you This is the mentality. And all these companies, these top five companies that we talked about, I didn't go into Apple, but all these companies play that same way. So, now you get this bulk letter bar, and the bulk letter comes back. Dear sir, thank you for your appeal. Unfortunately, we don't feel it is sufficient. Bulk rejection again. At this stage, most students start crying, because they don't know what they did wrong. Right. You don't know what you did wrong. It's hundreds of pages of the legalese of Terms of Service. Right. And maybe you did something wrong. Maybe you didn't, maybe grandma bought your product and left a review. And this is very common and you are grandma's house at some point with your phone, they trace IPS. So when you use your phone to buy something on Amazon at your mother's house or your grandma's house, and then your grandma leaves a review that's linked to your buyer-seller account, whatever, Amazon knows that you have defrauded them of one review, and they can close your account on that.

If a competitor launches a complaint against you saying hey, this guy solicited me for fake reviews. Black-hat amazon seller tactics like this happen all the time. Amazon will look at it and close your account if they feel like it. Some guy in India or Bangladesh or Pakistan or Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, wherever they're hiring people looks at it and he has the final approval to push a button and your account goes away.

They don't care now, what are they thinking? Okay, well, we don't want to piss everybody off. And we don't want to close the doors on accounts that are making us money. And sometimes we just want to slap people on the wrist. So we're gonna make you work for it. We don't want to work because we're inundated, and it costs us money to respond to appeals and deal with the stuff. So now, you write them another letter saying, Please reconsider. You know, and normally, it's the same letter that you sent the first time you just rearranged what you put, you got to be ready for five to six letters before any movement even happens, okay? By the fifth letter, they are, you're, you're asking them, hey, what exactly did I do wrong, right? Officer? Why did you pull me over? And to which they're gonna say, again, you have violated Terms of Service, they may or may not give you a clue that it's review related, that it's related to your selling tactics, that it's related to a third-party software using, or that you, in general, have sold a counterfeit product, something like that. Right. And most sellers are, you know, trying their best to abide by all the terms of service. But you know, you can't, it's like every day walking the earth, you're breaking laws, and whatever country you're in, right? It's like that, and it's even more so on Amazon, right? There's no way to win that game, you can't win the game of selling on Amazon, without violating their terms of service, to some extent, every single person doesn't, including Amazon as a seller on their platform, if that's possible. 

What Amazon now wants you to do, if you've, if they've communicated with you four or five times sending you the same letters, people are pulling their hairs outgoing, Oh, my God, they asked me for invoices. I sent them the invoices. And they're now asking me again, for invoices, if they want you to fall on your sword. So I cannot tell you how many times we have done nothing wrong zero, to violate their terms of service, not that we never have. But in the cases where accounts have been canceled. And what we have to do is make up a crime. We have to explain to them a crime that never happened. And then provide the proof of that crime, not a crime against the laws of the country, but a crime against their terms of service. And when you do that, you will get back a letter of one of two things. Letter number one might be please provide more evidence of it and plan of action what's known as a P of A which we can very easily obtain, which is just a plan saying, look, we didn't know that having grandma leave reviews was wrong. My grandma loves me. And so she left four reviews on our products. I've talked to my grandma and handcuffed her so she can never do it again.

And you have to make up I mean, even more, ridiculous than that. A fake Amazon crime or a fake Facebook crime or for any of these websites, and then a plan of action about how you will prevent that crime from happening. And you will submit it to them and what will happen invariably, if it's done right, and we've got a whole formula and templates on the course website is that they will reject it again.  To which they will ask you the same questions. Now it's a good sign. If they say thank you very much we've received your thing. Thank you for providing that we accept your apology. But please provide us more evidence. And again, what you have to do is rearrange the letter, which sounds like I'm sure later Bart reading the transcript of this, it's going to sound like I'm giving crazy advice. But truly like this is how that works. I'd like to say Voodoo e-commerce. Selling only Voodoo is a legitimate religion with legitimate strategy and tactics and things behind it. This is completely mind-blowing how this works. And so around somewhere between the seventh to 10th time of sending the same stuff rearranged, using their language, creating a fake thing that you didn't do, and explaining how you're going to fix it in a plan of action. They accept that your account somehow is reactivated and that's how these companies work. How mind-blowing is that and all of this is your effort and you can be out. I don't know. You can be out months before all this process happens to depend on their workload. And this has gotten so bad that they're companies carrying Are you seated, Bart? 

Bart Baggett

I'm sitting down. 

Shaahin Cheyene  

Some companies now offer amazon seller insurance if you can purchase an insurance policy for your Amazon seller account. So should Amazon suspend your account should one of these platforms suspend your account, this company will use their attorneys and they'll usually hire a company like ours to utilize our system to get the account back up. And in the meanwhile, they will reimburse you for lost revenue.

Bart Baggett

That's amazing. I heard Warren Buffett talk about whether they would ensure Elon Musk on a rocket today, annual meeting. And he's like, hey, that's a pretty bad bet. And he said I would only insure it if Elan Musk was on board. Because you know, if he's onboard, they probably won't let that rocket blow up. He didn't say that. But that was an insurance business. But that's amazing that it happened so much. It's now a sub-market because people are getting penalized so often. And this isn't just in Amazon, it has happened in Google AdWords happens in Facebook, it happens in all of the platforms because they own the market. They own the rodeo, they own everything. And once you get in that door, it's not like to turn to sell soda at the NFL game, you're going to sit and drink Pepsi if you're at Cowboys Stadium. Right? Because Jerry Jones sold Pepsi, you can have a coke in their lease, that's their ballpark. Now, I told the credit industry the same way, there is no incentive for the credit card reporting to talk to you because you're just an expense to them, the customer for the credit cards or to sell your information. So when you have a 590 credit score, and all of a sudden someone's sold your identity, it takes seven, eighth, twelve letters to get your identity back because they don't serve you. You're not their customer, Amazon, you're not their customer Shaahin the customers are their customers. You're their vendor. I know it sounds harsh, and I'm not criticizing Bezos but like their philosophies making the customer the primary effort. And the vendor seems like they're kind of interchangeable. Is that unfair to say that about them? Because he loves that company. 

Shaahin Cheyene  

Fair, totally fair. You know, they don't care as much about us as being Amazon FBA sellers. As they do their customers, they might pretend they might say the corporate line of we do whatever they don't care. it's a business based on customer-centricity and being the world's biggest customer-centric marketplace. And that's all. It's all about the customer experience. And honestly, you know, look, their algorithms all make sense. It's like, why should we utilize Amazon resources for misbehaving children or children that may be misbehaving in our sandbox? Do you fall on your own? Sorry, you tell me why put you out of the sandbox? Same with LinkedIn. Right? They make you go through these ridiculous hoops of like, upload your ID sorry, that ID is poor resolution. Sorry, it's a driver's license, we only take passports, send us the back of the passport, why do you need the back of my passport? To validate my LinkedIn account? Why would Facebook need to send you a text to your phone and you confirm three of your friends like all these things make you run through hoops? And the more work you do, the higher the likelihood of you falling out if you did something bad, right? And then they collect all this evidence on you, which I don't know goes into some master file, like, Who is it the German Eastern German secret police, the Stasi had these, you know, when they separated Germany and then Germany was put back together again, they went in there and they have like files on every man woman and child in like, between Germany, Austria, I mean, they kept they knew when you farted they knew like everything. So you know what? 

Bart Baggett

Franz Kafka, the trial, like they knew everything and just ask you, you're guilty of something you want to admit now? 

Shaahin Cheyene 

Exactly. And that's the case and you know, forward-facing, they're like, no, we're equitable. We're about equity. Look, at the diversity that we're hiring, look at, you know, our beautiful, you know, company that we built. And, and look, I make my living selling on e-commerce, I make my living on all of these platforms, as I'm sure you do, too, to a certain extent as well. And so, you know, it's, you know, the playground that we're all playing in. And so, you know, it's interesting, and I am a big proponent. I usually am not a proponent of government, control over private industry. But in this specific case, I am. I think when you get to a certain point where you're one of these top 10 media companies, you become a utility.  I think Facebook is a utility. Amazon is a utility, LinkedIn, utility, Twitter a utility, and I think they should be governed by the laws of the country that they're in. And they should no longer be able to cancel your Facebook account, any more so than the phone company can cancel your phone account for you making phone calls to your friends saying things that they don't agree with. 

Shaahin Cheyene 

There's a court case that just is passing the supreme court where a cheerleader didn't make the cheerleading squad. And that court case was taken up by the ACLU, ACLU  . And they are now ruling whether she when she's off school property is allowed to talk bad about the school, but she's using Snapchat, she's using social media. So what's pulling in, it's pulling in all this freedom of speech, freedom, a platform, the rights of somebody within a school without, it's very similar, what you're saying is that it's a utility because it's all it's almost a monopoly, essentially, I know that there, they haven't identified these as monopolies, but they sure have won, they've won the space and an Amazon. It's not even the book space. It's everything from a space grocery store. And they are winning. And so it's interesting, you say that because, for so many people, their entire social life is tied into these platforms.  So if you say something that you don't like black, white, Asian, whatever you get kicked off, but also your livelihood can be tied, especially as a seller, in my case we run 1000s and 1000s of dollars a day on Facebook and AdWords. And we're constantly having to manage at least I will tell you this, from my experience with AdWords in the last couple of years, they will get on the phone with you, and they will work with you. And they'll say here's what the computer said of your error, right? Like we advertise in one of our businesses, a lot of handwriting and forgery. And so sometimes it gets flagged as if we're advertising for fraud. Hey, if you want to do a forgery come over here. That's not the language but the computer picks up these words and says, Oh, these are bad words. It's a fraudulent company. And so we're constantly up to going there. But I will tell you, at least with ad words, there has been some level of customer service. And they don't know a bit about advertising 20 years, like almost Hey, guys, I've been on 20. So we didn't know that. Like they don't care. They just want to make sure that their computer no longer has a red flag. And if there is a red flag, it's your fault, and you got to go fix it. We've dug around websites for 20 hours to find a pixel that they thought was bad. It's malware, it was a pixel and we just re-compressed the GIF into a different title. And everything was fine because their computer was identified as malware. And that's the kind of struggle you have to go through. And if you don't have the manpower, or the patience, or the team to hire to do that, you just give up and walk away.

Shaahin Cheyene  

Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, you don't have to so you can research and figure out how to do it. But that actually, brings me to a very good point. And I just got some great news for you Bart. Are you ready? 

Bart Baggett

I need some good news that that was exhausting, 30 minutes of paperwork. Okay, good news.

Shaahin Cheyene  

 Your friendship has been reinstated. Congratulations. 

Bart Baggett

That is great news. I've been waiting for months. 

Shaahin Cheyene 

And I will email you again now. And we can continue our friendship, 

Bart Baggett

As if nothing happened. 

Shaahin Cheyene 

As I'm nothing in terms of friendship

Bart Baggett

I won't do it again. I'm not sure what I did. But I feel pretty sure it was me. And I'm sorry. And I'm punishing my grandmother immediately.

Shaahin Cheyene 

We accept what we accept as the shaahen Corporation. Okay. So which, interestingly enough leads me to a question for you, Bart. So when life happens, and you expect one thing you expect to be an Amazon seller to sell on Amazon, to sell through Google AdWords, to sell through Facebook, to sell on LinkedIn to do any of these things. And then something happens and you get slapped. Your Account gets canceled, life turns out, not the way that you expect. What do you do?

Bart Baggett

Well, this has happened to you. I'm going to tell you when it happened. I mean, yeah, for those of you that are in their 30s, you may remember this, but there was a time when there was no internet, or at least no internet marketing. And there was no, there were no social media. So when I published my first book in 1993, man that ages me, doesn't it but I was young. I was in my 20s. I went to our morning radio shows, I toured Barnes and Nobles. And I would sell 100 books. And over a week or two, I'd go to seven cities, and I will do seven radio shows. And I would, that's how you promoted books back then. Right? You couldn't buy ads on Facebook that didn't exist. And then at some point around 90 between 1983 to 2000 you know, we would have like a full-time book or I do five or six radio shows a week, we'd make eight to $30,000 on one interview and that phone, oh 800 numbers would ring like we just did it. I was like, man, I can't believe I'm 25. I figured this out. We're making so much money. It's amazing. We're selling courses we're building. We're building a list and within about 12 months, they're all the radio host started giving the website out and they refuse to give the 800 number out and me and all the other people that were making a living doing guest hosting, you know, being the guest expert. We went from, you know, $300,000 a year down to like, you know, nothing. And, within about a year, it just stopped working, Shahine. People just stopped dialing 800 numbers, they stopped with that whole business model. The Booker's disappeared, and we could still get on radio shows. But no one would buy because they had the single internet. So within just 12 months, the entire business our whole I know it now because I understand funnels now. I didn't get them. But my lead generation was all about one thing. radio shows publicity 800 numbers. That was it, right? We didn't stand on a home shopping network, right? But it all disappeared. And what did I do? I said, Well, I got to learn marketing. And so she and I spent the next three or four years figuring out how to do email, how to write copy, how to run ads, and I had to go back to school, or I could have quit, those are my options. Where's the other sandbox? How do I make friends with the bully? I better go learn. That's how I did it.

Shaahin Cheyene  

Hmm. So how do you know, it's okay. So I think that's awesome. Because you are one of the more resilient people that I know. 

Bart Baggett

I mean, I've done it if I wasn't in my 20s, early 30s, right, because I mean, I'm older now. So I mean, I have the energy. But yeah, I just did failure wasn't an option. But it sure was disappointing to have this gravy train just disappear. And it happens in all industries. I know a lot of people that have always been in the network marketing business, and after knowing them for years, like what he's on now, dude. Oh, yeah, that company went under, like they have the same skill set. But they kept hitching their wagon to the wrong train. And they hit the wrong horse like they kept hitching their wagon. And all of a sudden, every couple of years, they get to start over. So how do you mitigate against that? It's diversification. But in business, I mean, putting all your marbles in that one basket is dangerous. And so many people are doing it today, with Bitcoin and with the stock market and with certain real estate, like they're all in it is one thing that they know and love. And all of a sudden you have a pandemic, or you have a crash in 2008. And man, there are no more boring Mortgage Bankers in 2008. I mean, they were, everyone's making money more than baking. And then 2009. They're waiting tables, boom. So the answer is prevention. And then resilience. What's your best answer? And I'm sure that's happened too many times in different industries?

Shaahin Cheyene  

Look, I think you have to always think upstream. There's a great book, I taught it a lot. I think it's Dan and Chip Heath, the heath brothers, they wrote a lot of the great books that I love. But the book talks about how successful people solve future problems now. And I think that's, that's part of what we're talking about. So, you know, when it comes back to what we talked about on every podcast, something that my friend Wayne's Boss shared with me when the boss, the CEO, mergers and acquisition king of Australia. He talks about knowledge, courage, action, and objectives, strategy, and tactics. So what's our objective? Our objective is to be successful in selling on Amazon, to be successful in whatever the businesses that we're in, okay, what strategy that we're going to use to achieve that one strategy could be thinking upstream, that we are not bulletproof. We are playing in this bully's sandbox. And we need to be mindful of them. And we need to have multiple plan B's, and plans, like you said, you like Plan C, plan D, plan II, Plan F having multiple plans upstream, that's what happens if there's a problem. Here's what happens if we can't solve a problem, right? You're thinking, five moves ahead and chess. Okay. So first off, you have to have that mindset. You have to be unexpected, have everything going smoothly because you know, things never go perfectly as you plan. It's like Mike Tyson said once and I think one of the greatest quotes of all time, and it's everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face by me.

And it's just so brilliant. Coming from somebody who was pure boxing at a time where he was the best in the world at what he did. And there's just a purity there's a flow to that statement. That's it's just really, it's raw. It's  true. And it's something that resonated with me when I heard it when he first said it and when I heard it again, with him saying it. 

Bart Baggett

And you don't know this about Mike Tyson. My dad has several children with people other than my mother and one of my quote step brothers was in juvenile hall with Mike Tyson. 

In the 80s, up in upstate New York, and even when that kid was 12, he knew nothing but fighting. He was such a badass and he grew up in the juvenile hall the streets like all I mean, that's just his skill set. That guy knows how to win. And he's been doing it since he was 12 is great a bunch of women faces. And I love that quote, I'd never heard the quote with the phrase by me on it. Is that weird what he said because I love him better now? 

Shaahin Cheyene  

I think so I remember that's what it was. I mean, that's certainly what he meant, as, like guidance, and it's true. Bruce Lee used to say the truth is found in combat, which means it doesn't matter how many uniforms you learn, and how many movements you learn, and how you know how to kick high and kick low and this and that. And the other thing, it's when it's you against the other guy in the street, face to face, who walks out and who's laying on the floor. That's the truth in combat. That's who the better fighter is. And it's just its truth. So, at the end of the day, you have to plan upstream and understand that you will get knocked out every once in a while. And you need to just know, first you have to know yourself. Right? There's a great saying. And in Latin, I used to have it over the doors and all my offices, and I'm not sure how you pronounce it. I think it's good to do something to that extent. And it was something that was in the walls of some of the great temples and whatnot and the olden days. And it just means Know Myself. And it's again, another such a poignant thing, like, if you know your own, not just your strengths, but also your weakness, like to have that self-knowledge, that self-realization that, hey, you know, I might be able to take one punch, but I can't take two, right and just put your ego aside and understand that you can plan for that eventuality, you can plan for if that happened. And when it happens, the sting isn't as bad because you have planned for it. If you have a plan, you know, a strategy in place for when something happens, your strategy might not work, but you will have control and you will have perspective. So the strategy may work, the strategy may not work, but you will be coming at it from a place of strength, which is so much more powerful than coming at it from a place of weakness.

I think, ultimately, you know, for example, in the example that we use Bart with Amazon suspensions, is that you have to plan for that happening. And when that happens with your Amazon account, what are you going to do? 

So one thing you might do is have an insurance policy, buy one of these insurance policies, they're not very expensive. And if they're going to pay for your, you know, pay for your lost revenue, it probably makes sense to have one, maybe have a contact there at Amazon and establish relationships, right? There are people in departments that you may be able to get a hold of and have them push your case along to a human being if necessary. 

Another thing is having your plan of action ready, we have multiple plans ready at the go anytime. And one hack that I will teach you guys is when any of these companies send you a letter, they're not going to tell you this. And I don't know how they feel about me disclosing this information. But I have this on good authority, that the amount of time it takes for you to respond to them is a metric they use to determine how qualified you are to have your account reinstated. Let me better the faster the better. Yeah. So we have responses ready for tomorrow's violations that we don't know what they're about ready to go. And we just fill in a couple of blanks and send it in. Because we know when those letters come in, when those suspensions come in, or you know we do for clients, too. So we've got multiple templates that are part of the Amazon mastery course, if that happens, multiple proven templates. And, you know, we're ready to go, we've thought upstream about this problem. And then at the end of the day, there's got to be something about you that says, dude,  like my self-worth, my value as a person, my livelihood, although my source of making money at the moment is tied to this one current stream of revenue, I guess you could say that it is not my self-worth. I don't have to accept their opinion of me. 

And I think you as a success coach, I'm sure you espouse that to your clients as well, that other people's opinions of you don't matter all that much.

Bart Baggett

That's one of my dad's favorite quotes. Your opinion of me is not my concern. I really liked that quote, and yeah, I guess that you could call me a motivational speaker or a coach, I mostly do group training and make videos but he goes back to how do you then sell them? We used to sell videotapes Shaahin like I'm old enough to sell VHS or with my face on it you know, I remember the world's fastest reader Howard Berg and I sat in my garage we both had this new thing called video cameras true story and we were filming each other's introductory videos to then Hawk on the radio or home shopping network and, and that entire first video I think was on autofocus, and it was in and out of focus. It was so funny. Then he got fired from the school system in New York for teaching people how to read quickly because it wasn't in their procedure manual. So he got fired, had to go out and make it on his own. 

Shaahin Cheyene  

What was his name? Again, Bert.

Bart Baggett

Howard Berg

Shaahin Cheyene

I think I've read some of his stuff. World's Fastest Reader.

Bart Baggett

 I took his course and I got it. But if you don't keep you keep rehearsing it and memorizing it, how to do it. The point was when I'm still selling the same thing I did 20 years ago, as an information entrepreneur, I've got wisdom, you want it you want to pay me It can be in a book, it can be video could be a CD, it could be a teachable course, or it could be coaching program, we're still selling the same, you want my wisdom, it has a price to it, right? You could do it one on one, or in a book that hasn't changed in 100 years since Napoleon Hill. But what has changed is all the mechanisms of delivery. And now that we have this great metagenome's delivery, whether it be audible or who owns the river, and if I can't get my boat down the river because some jackass turned it sideways in the Panama Canal. Is it the Panama Canal or Suez Canal? 

Shaahin Cheyene

Suez Canal

Bart Baggett

Now my business is up in the air. And I don't know how you protect against a black swan event like the pandemic. But there are some businesses and we're the lucky ones that are our business increasing the pandemic. Yeah, I did have restaurants and yoga studios that went, you know, nine, eight months without revenue. I'm not, we're not saying that you have to predict the pandemic. But guess what, if you had four revenue streams, you had a real estate business, a stock business, you know, a retail business or coaching business, probably not all forms are going to go tits up in one month.

Shaahin Cheyene

Okay, you got to explain to me what that term is. Maybe I'm not American enough and heard it before, but I'm with you on it. 

Bart Baggett

I think it's, I think it's like if you die and you go on your back like a pig, it hits her up, I will have to research that because...

Shaahin Cheyene

 it just sounded so relaxing. I was like...

Bart Baggett

You hit right write us a letter and tell me if I'm wrong about where that came from. My friend used to say it. I'm like, that is hilarious. I'll steal it. But now that you asked me I may have it wrong.

Shaahin Cheyene

 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're right, you're right. You know, at the end of the day, you got I think what you're heading towards is diversification. And you know, when things like COVID happened, none of us knew what was gonna happen during COVID. Like, what was COVID for Amazon sellers? Guys, if you were an Amazon seller during COVID, during the height of COVID, we're still in COVID. As we record this, you could not believe the sales numbers, because people were not going out. And Amazon couldn't handle the sales, Amazon was delivering everything. So whatever you were selling, I mean, I know people who were selling knitting supplies, and we're making millions of dollars on Amazon. So it's, it was very real. But you know, let's say you were in a different business, hey, I think Bart, what you're saying is very important teaching is that you have to be able to pivot, you have to be able to pivot on a dime break on a dime, and pivot if you have to. Secondly, you have to have the mindset to be able to do that you can't, you know, once you get hit, and you're on the floor, you might not be knocked out, you got to be able to get up and go. Okay, so that didn't work. What else can I do? Right?

And, you know, that's what we're talking about. I think that's the point that you were making, as far as resilience goes, in that you got to be resilient, no matter what. And you got to have this attitude that you're going to make it no matter what and this is, you know, back again, to what we talked about, you know, people People call me all the time. They're like, Shane, I want to take your course, how do I succeed? You know, I, you know, we've got a small course now, you know, it's not one of these mass Amazon courses, we've got, you know, just around 100 people in the course, every single one is vetted by me, I talked to every single one, you know, nearly every week, and every single person is a coach to perfection in my program. It's not one of these, you know,

Bart Baggett

Buy it and 1000 people in a seminar later and their names are of course you have of course 

Shaahin Cheyene

No we don't. I don't do that, you know, I'm interested in seeing people succeed. And you know, again, today people always ask me, like, what can I do? What can I do and if you know, who are the successful people? So, the first thing you need to know is we have a 100% success record. 100% of the people who do my program who follow the instructions who launch an Amazon business and a product will succeed using my methods.  And I want to keep that I don't want to mess that up. So I don't want to bring on people who don't, you know, don't want to do it who don't have the resilience to do that. Now with that said, the people I know are not going to work out are the people who take kind of like a roulette wheel approach to it, right, they want to throw the little ball, have a bounce, and Okay, landed on black, great, I'm gonna make money. Oh, it landed on the green, sorry, landed on red, sorry, I guess I'm a failure. It's not how it works, guys, the way that it works in any of these things in your business and my business, in any business, you open up a pizza shop, it's going to work like this is our coin laundry, it doesn't matter is that you will start and you may succeed. But more likely than not, you will fail a little bit or you will fail at a bunch of things. And you will have to go in and fix those things. And when you fix those things, something else will break. And it's the resilience that you build the ability to go in and constantly fix, constantly tweak your mistakes, and come back stronger. The ability to have that space, not have to worry about your meal, not have to worry about you knowing if something goes wrong with your Amazon seller business, that your whole life falls apart, is the ability to say, Hey, I'm good. I've got this foundational thinking, I've got my four pillars, my real estate, my stock investment, it's my job. And this is one other thing that I'm working on, and I'm going to make it successful. And if you hit the nail on the head enough times, it will go down, maybe not the first time, maybe not the 10th time, but it will go down and then you figure it out. And then you get to scaling and acceleration, which is what it's all about. But to get to that stage to succeed. And this is what we teach in Amazon mastery is that you have to have that mindset of going into something and being there to tweak it. people fail all the time, trying to sell on Amazon, people fail all the time in all kinds of businesses, you have more opportunity now than ever to succeed. But you also have more opportunities now than ever to fail. So the people that I have seen succeed over and over and over again, don't come at it with an attitude of Oh, look at that, I guess there goes my money, I guess that's this is done. They come at it with the attitude of I'm gonna hit that nail until it succeeds. Oh, I tried selling lemon juicers that didn't sell well. Okay, great. Now I'm going to sell lemon juicers instead of garlic presses instead of lemon juicers, oh, okay, I made a little bit of money. But then I lost on this other thing, no problem, I'm gonna sell dog treats. Now. It doesn't matter, they're going to make it succeed, they're going to take that thing and bring it to fruition. And if you have that attitude, and carry that attitude with you through life, through business, through whatever you do, you're going to succeed, because there's no other alternative. There's nothing else that could happen. And that's where I want every single person who's listening to this podcast to be and I'm going to close out with that, Bart, if you have anything to contribute

Bart Baggett

I do, I just want to say that the metaphor that comes to mind is that you've never heard of a baby, giving up trying to walk. He just doesn't go, you know what, I don't think I'm using my legs his whole lifetime, in their mind, everyone's walking around them. There's all this evidence that walking can happen. So babies just keep falling until they don't fall anymore. And I think what you're saying is get back to that mentality, when there's only one option, we're gonna figure this out. I don't think there's a lot of debate that the strategy and vehicle of selling an Amazon are proven. Just like selling on Facebook and selling on YouTube, there's a lot of strategies that can sell your stuff. What I like about what you've done for your students because I know a lot of them is that you don't have to be the star. You don't have to be charismatic, you don't have a YouTube channel, you can pick a garlic press. And all of a sudden, you know, if you do things right and keep failing and getting up and failing, getting up, maybe you're selling carrot juice at the end of the day, but guess what, you got 1012 $13,000 a day in revenue, and you quit your day job. Like there are not many opportunities that do that. And of course, mitigating what we're talking about risk with insurance policies is not getting canceled. You can't be a jerk, but it's one of those interesting business opportunities that even as your main deal, should be your side hustle. Speaking of ammonia, on the website for the Amazon course you talk a little about that. And then last week, you talked about some of my books and how they get them. I created a page called get Bart's book calm, and it's free. So if you want to download my magic question book, there's an audiobook there. You can buy them on Amazon or audible be great, but go to www.getBartsbook.com, jump in the join mailing list and learn what the magic question is Shaahin. How do we get a hold of the Amazon seller program? I know that you're selective, but if they do, fill out the application and get a chat with you, how do they start that process?

Shaahin Cheyene

Guys just reach out to me. My email is publicly available. I respond to every single message it might take me a minute to get a hold of you. But I respond to every single message, eery single email I respond to personally if you love the show if you hate the show if there's a guest that you would like to see, we're going to start having guests as we get warmed up and we've got some great people lined up. We're gonna get Chris Voss author to never split the difference. The FBI negotiator, we're gonna get Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, Keith Ferrazzi, who wrote the book, never eats alone. And just some amazing guests that both you and I have had the great pleasure of being friends with and some pretty surprise big-name guests have agreed to be on our show. So I'm super excited about you and me getting them on. And so the way you get a hold of me is through Shaahincheyene.com, the link will be on the show notes. It's S H A A H I N C H E Y E N E.com or fbasellercourse.com make sure you catch my other podcast billion how I became king of throw cult, and you've been listening to hacking grow rich. Now, just really briefly, before we go out Bart, I want to ask your opinion on air. How you feel about this, at least for a partial topic for our next call. And this is going to be seen as blasphemy in the self-development business world and a lot of people are going to be grinding their teeth and squirming about this.

Bart Baggett

 I like it. I like blasphemy. Like I like stirring stuff up a little bit. What do you get?

Shaahin Cheyene 

 You did because you made a short film that I loved. That was about gurus. 

Bart Baggett

You know what we're having now that the next film festival will come out of the red carpet. Yeah, I like stirring up trouble. And I like attacking people's core beliefs and making them think is that true? Or did I just believe my parents? What is your topic? 

Shaahin Cheyene  

So Napoleon Hill you mentioned the author of the book, Think and Grow Rich. And a lot of this stuff is coming out now. It used to be like sacristan, nobody would say anything. Tony Robbins says read it. I read it. I love that book. But do you know that it may be likely that he was a fraud? 

Bart Baggett

No. And one of my friends runs his nonprofit, we may get her on the show. Let's talk about Napoleon Hill. That'd be fun.

Shaahin Cheyene 

 I would love to and there's been a few YouTube videos out about it. It turns out that Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, and a lot of the other people that he claimed that he knew and he wrote that book never had any records of him, nor did the presidents who he claimed that he had worked with and for and all the stuff at that time.

Bart Baggett

 It's a great story. I'm not saying he's the next Jesus Christ, but it's a damn good story. And it's been published for 100 years. So who knows what happens before video cameras? I love that topic. So tune in next week for sure. 

Shaahin Cheyene 

Yeah, and guys, if you want to hear that you want to see that reach out to us and let us know what you think. Is it okay to talk about Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich in success circles? Can we talk about him if potentially it might expose something in his past? Let us know he also had a follow-up book called Outwitting the devil which is even better than thinking Grow Rich to some extent but also even got crazier. So Alright guys, Bart, thank you so much for being on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Bart Baggett. I am Shaahin Cheyene and  this has been another episode of hack and Grow Rich. See you next week.