SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, Bart, Shaahin, life, book, amazon, nominated, money, talk, alan watts, experience, smoke, selling, world, put, travel, big, changed, nice, herbal

SPEAKERS

Shaahin Cheyene, Bart Baggett

Shaahin Cheyene  00:04

And we are live! . So welcome to ¨Hack and Grow Rich¨. This will be our second episode in this co-hosted series with Bart Baggett, who's one of my favorite people. He is a transformational coach, an expert in a lot of areas. And Bart is, in general, one of the most interesting people I met because he has such a wide depth of interests and curiosities and so many fields from personal development, on through even more technical stuff. And Bart and I have been talking for a long time and we always have conversations that go on for hours, that are always fascinating. So we decided what happens if we bring that on Hacker and Grow Rich and do a series where we communicate on there, and my name is Shaahin Cheyene, I am an Amazon expert and Amazon seller. In addition, I am a serial entrepreneur, inventor of herbal ecstasy. And on this podcast, we're going to talk about what comes top of mind to us. And today, we had a couple of different topics to choose from, but I think we have agreed to go with transformational experiences. Welcome aboard, Bart.

Bart Baggett  01:27

Thanks. And you said such nice things about me and for those of you that don't follow Shaahin, I think he's the most interesting man in the world as well. A funny story comes to mind: Shaahin, you and I were on a bus in a foreign country. And I believe it was Kuala Lumpur, I forget where they were in this country, Indonesia, Indonesia. And literally, we kept a vape. We passed a vape store. And I go, hey, look, there's a vape store. You know, I've tried that once. And you go, you know, I invented the vape, right? And I'm like, what, who are you? How is this possible? I thought you were the Amazon guy. And I love that story. Because it's just so odd to hear you if you've played such an interesting path. And so those of you that can do this podcast, you have two guys here that can hack anything, from radio and media to TV to herbal ecstasy to even patents and what you did. And I just want to shout out that I think you're interesting stuff you come up with, it's great.

Shaahin Cheyene

Well, I appreciate you. Yeah, we started vapers in the early 2000s, late 90s. And, you know, we developed the core of what was to become vaporization technology, and the fundamentals that e-cigs vape, all that stuff is built on, I'm no longer in that business. And the funny thing was, you know, in those days, I had a girlfriend that loved to smoke, and I think smoking was disgusting, I still feel that way. I'm not a big smoke person. It's kind of an odious habit to have. And I remember thinking, Man, you know, like, we've got how many 1000 years of human history and we are still burning plant matter, in order to get just the active elements, but as a byproduct, creating smoke tar, carbon monoxide, all this crazy stuff, dude, there has to be a better way. And what I did was, what we now teach in Amazon mastery and all these courses are that I said, Well, let me not start with the product. I did that before with herbal ecstasy. So let's not start with the product. What I'm going to do is start with the distribution. So I started looking around and smoke shops existed head shops, was a thing back then, before legalization, you know, where they sold all kinds of, you know, pipes and things like that. And I thought, huh, and I walked in and I said, Hey, do you guys have any options, and they did not have very many options. So I started experimenting and came up with the concept of is it possible to heat up plant matter to where you can get the nicotine? That's, you know, that now the cannabinoids, all that stuff without getting that smoke? And the answer was, yeah, burning it 1200 degrees, right? You, you ignite something, you burn it 1200 degrees, great, you'll be getting some of that stuff. But you're gonna get stuff that's not good for your lungs. When you can just heat it just enough I forget what the numbers were, but it was somewhere around 300 degrees. And if you kept that temperature constant, then you would be able to enjoy all the benefits without any smoke tar or carbon monoxide. And so that's what we created. And it was amazing because it was really, you know, it was well when you and I talk about the blue ocean and blue ocean businesses. You know, this was the ultimate blue ocean. I was building these things in China for about 20 bucks to 40 bucks. We were the only people making them. And you know, some of the others came after us of true digital vaporization. And we were reselling them for $400. And we were selling them as soon as we could get them in. So the second these things came in, they were gone, which was absolutely unbelievable. 

Bart Baggett  05:22

You had like movie stars and very famous people just begging you for one of these fancy machines to smoke either pot or, or cigarettes. I'm not sure they could be the one right?

Shaahin Cheyene  05:32

Yeah, I mean, well, at the time, you know, we were unable to sell anything for use with anything but aromatherapy herbs. So what we did was we called it an aromatherapy device, once again, hacking the system. And we said the lawyers went crazy. And they were like, Oh, my God, you can't do this, you know, they're going to get you there, there are all these different kinds of paraphernalia laws and you can't sell it's, you know, you know, the word bond, you couldn't say the word bond. And so we said, well, you know, what, it's an aromatherapist, well, no one's gonna believe it. And I said, Well, here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna include with every package a beautiful, so I developed this disk drive system, where you could take the discs, and you can put the herbs in the disc, and the disc goes into the device. And so we created this disk drive system with all these nice aromatherapies, herbal concoctions, that you would get on a disc, and you can just put in there, and it ended up being cool. But you know, people, you know, some people, some of these dubious people would just pop the cap off and put their herbs in there. Shocking, right? That's weird. I wouldn't expect that. Yeah. And then, you know, the lawyers freaked out more. So I wrote a book. And in the book, we talked about everything that you could use in a vaporizer, except there was one herb missing strange, that we figured people would just kind of, you know, people thought, you know, we knew what people were ultimately using it for. But we stayed on the right side of the law with our product. And it was incredibly successful. You know, I exited that in 2006. But it was like, it was again, you know, like, I talked about herbal ecstasy, Bart, and how that was like printing money, the cost of a box of a pyramid of herbal ecstasy was 25 cents. All in that was our cogs cost of goods sold for you guys that aren't in the product business. And we retailed it for $19.99. And we wholesaled it for between $10 to $15. So just do the math, we were selling hundreds of millions of units. And then with a vaporizer, I wanted to sell something more expensive. So it was $399- $400. For a device that costs us between $20 to $40. And we were selling them all day long with no competition. Would you like to smoke? Sir? Would you like to purchase a pipe or a bomb? Or would you like to purchase our device, there's nothing in between. and then the competitors came in. And that's when we have to step up our game. And the company became even more exciting. But this was at a time when you know, legalization was nowhere to be seen. But we made a decision, we went out and we acquired patents, we did a couple of rounds of financing, there were all kinds of people in Silicon Valley that we're excited about that company at that time. And we had some amazing people, people from huge Silicon Valley companies investing in the company and we grew it to be the, you know, the dominant brand, in an industry that, you know, once again, you know, I talked about this, create a niche and dominate it. That's one way to wealth very quickly. And you can follow that trajectory with a lot of wealthy people that they've done that part.

Bart Baggett  08:42

They create a niche or find a niche?, because creating sounds really hard, or you're way in front of the curve. 

Shaahin Cheyene  08:52

So yeah, that's a really good point. So there's different levels of, I think what you do is you create a niche, but that niche may be a niche within a niche. So I always talk about kind of a top down funnel, right, you start at the top, and that's your niche. And then you work your way down, right. So you go down, down, down down into that niche until you've got something that's as blue ocean as you can get. But the market is still big enough. So you can go in there and make a nice cut of money. There aren't too many competitors, the waters blue, right? It's nice. Come on in, have a swim. And you are doing all right. And that's that's really the formula that's like the honeypot formula, the secret formula

Bart Baggett  09:31

Just to clarify for those that haven't haven't read the book, “The red ocean, blue ocean”, if it's a red ocean, it's full of sharks and blood. And there's too many competitors there. And so, now you're going to get hammered which I think a lot of times happens on Amazon that you will. You're the one sharking the other people because you're so smart. You know they're getting into these niches. So the blue ocean is is really the word used in businesses thanks to that book that would indicate you don't have a lot of competition or you found a niche where it's big enough to survive and there's not a lot of people playing And that's been really good for my industries as well positioning myself as a particular expert. You know, if you take for example, we talked about transparent experiences, you know, it's very difficult to jump in and be Tony Robbins, for all you coaches and authors. I mean, that's just, he's, he's been there for 30 years, he's had a TV, he literally has a TV commercial on for 30 years, he works 24 hours a day in the US, like that kind of fame is really hard to catch up with. And he's great, right? So we got to say, you got to say, What specifically can I do, you know, to get that transfer experience if you're going to be a coach. And that's one reason I started doing the handwriting analysis that was unique, it was different. If they come to my seminars, they get a lot of the same transformational stuff, right belief systems and habits and all that kind of stuff. But the handling was the hook that really no one else was doing. And no one had ever done it on TV. You know, I transracial experiences I remember going into kiss FM when I was 19 years old, and doing a radio show and analyzing patterning on the radio with this amazing host and he was if you remember that the Cheers, do you remember Cheers that the TV show, so he was the he this actor was was on that TV show his name a company a minute, but I was 19 and I was like holy shit. People are sending me money that they had to desist the mail members remember that mail is a thing called a postage stamp. They would literally mail checks to my little p o box. P model P.O Box in Malibu from a radio show. So transferring experience, if I hadn't had a friend, say, hey, let me get you on the show, I wouldn't have known that that was even a way to make money. Like it never occurred to me that people can make money being a guest. And you did the same trick when you went to Montel Williams, just a little more zeros at the end.

Shaahin Cheyene  11:43

Yeah. So I think, I think it's interesting. You know, we were talking about Richard Koch, his book, “Unreasonable success, and how to achieve it”,  that really fantastic book if you guys haven't gotten it. And what Richard does, if you guys are familiar with Richard, he's the guy who wrote the 80/20 principle, which is one of the best business books ever talks about the Pareto Principle, how 20% of our efforts bring about 80% of our results. And the rest of it is about sort of being able to whittle down the things that are important and the things that are not and then focusing more on that 20%, in a nutshell. And he talks about in his new book, about these landmarks that lead to successful people being successful, what he calls “unreasonably successful”. And one of those, interestingly enough, is transformational experiences. And that's more so what I'm talking about. So, you know, party like we may talk a lot about growers, right. I think we're both fans of Alan Watts, right? You, You're Alan Watts fan, right.

Bart Baggett  12:48

Sure. And Osho and some other really interesting people that I've had the unique experience to study or be around or go to their washrooms and it's, I find it fascinating.

Shaahin Cheyene  12:58

Yeah. So have you been to the OSHA washroom? Yeah, no way. Okay. Well, that's okay. We're not gonna go into that. That's fascinating. That's really interesting. Especially, you know, after the documentaries that are kept got questions on that, but we'll do that off there. So all right, so you look at these guys, right? And you look at, okay, let's say the generation of Alan Watts 1960s, he was coming to prominence, right. And then you look at like, 1950s, picket, white fence, the guy was like a British guy. But you could take 10,000 guys like that. And 9999 are going to be unsuccessful and moderately successful, right? They're not going to be Alan Watts. Not just talking about financial success, but also, importance and impact in the world, is much more successful. And I think Alan Watts has had a massive impact, specifically, by bringing Eastern philosophy to the west. Actually, I don't know anybody who's done more for bringing Eastern philosophy to the west than Alan Watts, I'm going to go that far. But so you look at these guys, right? British guy, white guy, you know, normal education was going to go into seminary, you know, middle class family, right? Fairly educated. And then you're like, Oh, well, what happened when you became this amazing orator, this unbelievable translator of difficult to understand concepts and make them digestible to an entire generation that is just waiting for the stuff but couldn't understand it, right. If they read the Bhagavad Gita or any of those books, their brain would go to mush or the Buddhists books or any of those, the brains would go to mush. Nobody understands that stuff. That stuff is like thick volumes written in code. But this guy came out and he explained it in a way where we ever Every single one of us, every single person I've ever listened to Alan Watts has gone Wow!, that impacted my state and changed my life. Now, the question is, in the example of Alan Watts, what happened? So, a lot of those guys were just normal dude's leading this normal trajectory of life. But, sometime in that era, psychedelics came around, and I am No, I do not espouse the use of psychedelics at all, I am not for them, I'm not against them. For me, personally, I've had my experiences. And you know, I don't feel that they made me a better person, I don't feel that they were necessary experiences. For me personally, in my life, I think there are other ways to achieve those states. But in those cases of those people, even Timothy Leary, people, in those cases, it was that experience that just pulled them up out of their roots, and changed the very fabric of their reality. 

For some people, it could be getting into, you know, some type of trauma, and a car accident, something happens to them. And that causes them to change, and they're no longer the person that they were. Now I feel that that transformative experience has to be followed and cautious and talk too much about this. But by a period of self reflection, a period of retrospective reflection, that then will lead, it will lead to an epiphany and a change. So for me, the first experience that I had was with meeting my first mentor, and before that was deciding to leave home and getting thrown, you know, into the world with little or no experience about how the world works. That was my first one where I was like, holy, you know what, like, my life has just changed. I've got no stability, right? So the trauma of that. The fact that that shook me up Bart, really was like, incredibly impactful. And then the second step was meeting the sky, I met a mentor and I talked about this in my book billion, how I became the king of the thrill podcast that comes up. And this guy had had a transformative experience several in the 60s, and had become a leader in the civil rights movements. He had, you know, sued the government, you know, by himself and won. He was an incredible human being. And just being under his influence, for a period of time, was the second transformative experience for me, that changed the trajectory of my life. You know, you look at kids growing up in LA. Ronnie and kids growing up in LA, right, what do they do? Right? They went to school, you know, they got married, you know, they became a dentist, they became a doctor, you know what I mean? It's that beat, it's that beat. And if something doesn't happen, some transformation happens. something super impactful. Then, you follow that trajectory. We are not unique, like snowflakes, we are pretty freakin much the same. And every single one follows that trajectory, Bart, unless something happens now you can seek out transformative experiences, which is what Koch talks about, as one of his landmarks. You know, he talks about a number of landmarks. One is having unreasonable self confidence, right, just this self belief that's unshakable, which I believe I had, you know, rightfully or wrongfully. So I just knew that I couldn't fail, mainly because I didn't know that I could fail. But in addition to that, it was this transformation, this experience. Now that happens with a lot of people with travel, like, I'm sure the first time you went to India, that must just in and of itself, the first time seeing India must have been a transformational experience for you.

Bart Baggett  19:06

Yeah, 1998. This guy read my book, sent me a fax, remembered the fax machines and paid for me and my girlfriend to go. And we didn't have cell phones. There were cows in the road. They still had the old taxis like in Cuba, and you know, go back now and it feels like a normal city. But you're right. That was, I literally Shaahin had to get a globe and look up where India was because I'm an American. And none of us know where anything is on the map. So it was so embarrassing, right? So yeah, that was transformative. And not only that, I became kind of a mini celebrity in a foreign land. And that was transformative. 25-26 having somebody respect you and kiss your feet. You're like, Whoa, this is so I can't even guess I can't get a phone call returned and in America, and and they're, they're kissing my toes. Oh my god. This is so weird. So yeah.

Shaahin Cheyene  19:53

Literally, they're cute. They kiss your feet. Literally. They kiss your feet.

Bart Baggett  19:55

Yeah, not even kidding. But you were mentioning Transfer, I think the thing that I have also come to the conclusion like Richard Kock is as I always wanted to choose when those channel experiences are, because if you don't choose it, trauma chooses you, you know, if you don't make an effort to go get those experiences, you get a heart attack, you get diabetes, all of a sudden you get in a car, and then you have to face your demons or whatever that is, I've been very blessed not to have any tragic events that way. But I've also put myself in situations to stretch myself, I've walked on fire, I've scuba dived, I've jumped out of planes, I've done all the things to scare the “Pi” out of me and I have to ask the hard questions. You know, what are we on the earth for etc. So I and I've even created experiences for my students, because I think, you know, the guy like Tony Robbins, you put them in a safe environment, and you can walk across coal, but you know what, you're just not going to come across that in the real world, you're gonna come across a bunch of coals and have to run and save a baby, you know, in Costa Rica, how to trigger an event where I was the host, it was a beautiful, we'll talk more about how we set that up. But one of my students almost drowned. And, it was my event. And there was a big sign that said, Do not go past this. And I realized at that moment that it was me, or she's gonna die in that moment, and I'm not a super strong swimmer. But I realized it was up to me, I had no choice. And I saved her. And it was such an awesome and bizarre experience to actually see somebody you know, could have died. And then you did this act of bravery, or heroism. In my case, maybe selfishness is my trip. What if she dies on my trip? There goes my career, right? Can't go on a Vegas trip. So it was just one of those odd situations where at the moment you make that decision, but normally, you're not going to get that chance. So you got to set that up in a room, set that up in a retreat, set that up and you know, make a decision to put yourself in just challenging situations so that you can transform.

Shaahin Cheyene  21:50

Hmm, yeah, I mean, look, I think certainly it depends on what stage in your life you're talking about. Certainly the potential reality is there, right. Like, I think what you're hearing you say is that if you don't decide, the deciding could be done for you. So just in life in general, that makes sense. Right? Like, if you don't make it,

Bart Baggett  22:13

I think whether you believe in God or not, I think that's correct. You know, they said destiny and stuff. But yeah, whether there's some universal force trying to teach you a lesson or not, you might as well learn it earlier than later. 

Shaahin Cheyene  22:24

No, dude, there's a there's an ample number of assholes looking to make decisions for people who do not take an active role in their lives, God or not

Bart Baggett  22:33

God, government, teachers, parents, somebody is going to somebody is going to control you, if you don't take control, take the bait,

Shaahin Cheyene  22:38

the world is full of tyrants. We all know that right? dictators waiting to put their imprint on your life pattern. And there's, it's no secret, right? There's people who thrive on that energy vampires. And you know, I think, look, that's that's a different topic. But I agree with you. Now, it could happen that you could have a transformative experience without seeking now, if you are the type of person that's self reflective, if you are the type of person that looks back in their life and reflects on things. Is it possible? I think this is an interesting question for you to architect your own transformative experience, which is what I'm where I think you're going with this. And I think I agree with you. Yes. And and moreover, I think travel is one of the most impactful ways to do that. I always think to myself, like, what if you went into the hood, like, you went into content, and you took seven of the hardest gangsters out there? And you flew them over to India? And you just put them on the streets? How would they do it? Would they come back? The same people who went to the streets of Delhi or Mumbai?

Bart Baggett  24:02

I think if you put someone out of their comfort zone and drop them if they kind of have to change or adapt, they just don't have the same anchors or triggers or Mojo or clothes or colors. I mean, it just would be absolutely really transformative. I think that the shortcut is travel. But the bigger picture is, do you really want to put yourself in a situation to stretch your boundaries? challenge your beliefs and realize that what you did before may not be correct. And then meet all kinds of people? Like I just think having gone to India 1998 like I just I just see beautiful people, brown people, black people, I just see beautiful people like I don't even think about the nationality. And I come back and travel through parts of Texas or Arkansas and I'm shocked that races a conversation. Like people have all these judgments around the color and your brown skin too as I'm looking right now at your pretty face.

24:54

Oh, there you go.

Bart Baggett  24:56

So it's just like it but if I hadn't ever had all those dear friends With all these different color skins, maybe I wouldn't have this perspective, but it would make me sad if I didn't. And some people don't. So yeah, people that don't have a passport, they're going to be a step behind the rest of us.

Shaahin Cheyene  25:11

Yeah. Well, you know, what's really funny is that most people don't know this. So, you know, I come from a Jewish Iranian family. And what most people don't know is that the Aaron's come from the arion Mountains. And Hitler during World War Two came out and said, Hey, you know, he had done all this research and all the studying on the cult, and, you know, what he believed was the Aryan race. And I talked to scholars about this, which is super interesting. And the chavi, Ron, at the time, the king of Iran, decided that, you know, he felt that Hitler was going to win from a bad move. And he decided to become chummy with Hitler. So what he did was he said, Whoa, Whoa, what's all this talk about? This area of business where the areas, this is the area mountains, we are the most area people out there. So we are changing the name of the country to Iran, which means Land of the areas from Persia. Interestingly enough, most people don't know this. So technically, you know, the Iranians are the, you know, that they're closer to that to that region. But, you know, it was a period in history where, you know, these these, you know, dictators really, we're making bets and what was it like Japan and Iran, and like, a couple of those other countries sided with the wrong side, right?

Bart Baggett  26:38

Yeah. And they topple their whole economies and their whole world. I'm a little confused about the area in his area and the translation of the name of the mountains. And where does Why does, why did those people think that is that like, where humanity began? And why were they also white and blue-eyed? In Germany? But in Iran, they weren't? Is that kind of like our version of a white Jesus with blue eyes and blonde hair? just rewriting history?

Shaahin Cheyene  27:04

Um, so. Okay, so I believe, um, you know, you know, I am not an expert about any of this stuff. But I knew that the area that, you know, was Persia, back in the day included the Caucasus Mountains, right, which I believe might be where the word Caucasian comes from. So the Caucasus Mountains, the people that live there were known to have been called the areas which would be like India, Pakistan, that entire area that that entire subcontinent at that time. So, you know, I don't know the details, but it would be really interesting. I mean, we could talk to somebody who's an expert at that I am by far, not an expert at that outside of being Iranian.

Bart Baggett  27:53

And that's true. Most Americans don't know anything about Persia. And they don't know that Iran and Iraq, we're all part of Persia. And so unless you've got friends, like yourself that have a backstory that way, but no, you're not my first Iranian friend in college, okay, I just come back. And I'm Ali, my “shocky”, great guy, great guy played lacrosse with him. And it was like, his family just showed up with nothing on their back. And they're like, you know, we had to get the hell out of there.

Shaahin Cheyene  28:18

They changed the name. And now we're here, transformative experience, buddy, my parents too, you know, they have their life set in Iran. And, you know, my mom was working for Boeing, my dad was working for Coopers and Lybrand, a big accounting firm, they had their lifeset, you know, they were, you know, they were, my mom was a secretary, my dad was an accounting guy. And you know, there was very much set and then the revolution happened. 

 So I think, regardless of if you make the choice or not, there is that possibility, you're in the ocean, and a wave might come. And that wave, maybe a tsunami, and your ability to ride it out, can mean everything, or at least to survive. It could mean everything. So this is a good conversation to have Bart because, when I look in retrospect, at all the transformative events that I've had, and there's, you know, I the truly transformative experiences, I can say, probably were under a does, like the big things that happened, right, leaving the calm meeting, my first mentor, starting herbal X to see subsequent mentors. I think it's probably a dozen, right, and I think included in that I'm gonna say having a kid, having a kid is a transformative experience. I think when I look back at those, some were good, good things that happened. Some were traumatic events that happened. At the end of the day, I feel like I'm thankful for all of them in retrospect, like reflecting on that stuff. I feel like it's made me into who I am. And, you know, there's a certain toughness and a certain grit That I don't know how else I would have acquired that. Rather than having those kinds of experiences. I do agree with that.

Bart Baggett  30:09

Well, you've probably been to the gym once in your life or two. And if you know anything about bodybuilding, you have to tear the muscle down, if it's going to grow back stronger. So, if you go to the gym and you never tear a muscle, you really will never achieve growth in that area. And so by stretching and tearing down and putting in situations that actually hurt, you actually come back stronger. So I think what you're saying is exactly true. Now, you don't want to end up dying during these transplants experiences, but you have to continue to stretch yourselves and break down the muscles. So the amino acids can make you stronger. And so if you don't you can't choose things like a worldwide pandemic, right? Obviously, none of us chose that. And that was very traumatic for hundreds of 1000 people who died over that. And yet some of us including myself, business blew up. Because I was already so much online, you're in the Amazon space, guess what, guess what company doubled in value during that time? Like, you know, were we lucky? Or? I sure didn't see it come like I had any secret plan. But I happen to be in businesses that would benefit from more online technology. And as a curve was traumatized? Not really, but will I remember it? Yeah, I think we all remember this is last year with Craig, we're not gonna Yeah, but then your response is what matters. Some people shut themselves in became alcoholics and didn't write a book and didn't produce an album and didn't do all the things you could have done. And granted, economics had something to do with our ability to bounce back on that. But I do think that we've all had, I think 20 probably if you talk about the big ones, maybe the heartbreaks, the divorces, the breaking of your leg, you know, crash on your motorcycle, those for sure. But then the ones you chose. I mean, you chose to travel. I want to hear you started a story last episode about getting shot off the coast of Cambodia in a boat. Was that an intentional adventure? Or were you running for your life?

Shaahin Cheyene  32:06

Well, being shot out was not intentional. It's not intentional, but going to Cambodia was and it was an amazing experience. It was a time in my life where I was looking for adventure. And I was working. Believe it or not, I was done with Herbalife to see. And shockingly working for some pharma companies who had hired me big, big-name pharma companies who had hired me to discover new medicines in different natural settings. So I had gone on expeditions, I was like, This is awesome. I could be like Indiana Jones. And I was doing a lot of traveling. And so when you go to Cambodia, this is one of the amazing things, you go there. And they're the nicest people in the world again, you know, much like India, they're just sweet people coming from a war-torn country that was destroyed by the work of, you know, a severe dictator and a lot of war. And so, you know, going there, you know, it's amazing, because you land and it's this, like, totally chaotic country. You know, when you get there, everything is somewhat chaotic. And the people want to show you the history of their country. So the tour guide isn't going to just take you to the nice beaches and show you those umbrellas, they want to show you the killing fields. They want to show you all the crazy stuff. And so we're traveling, you know, I took a riverboat down the Mekong, they call it a banana boat. And you know, they showed us you know what happened during the Vietnam era. And then you get in a car and they take you to kill fields and their skulls everywhere. And then I was traveling alone. And a couple of the military guys, you know, the guy said, Hey, you want to talk to these guys? I said, Okay, yeah, what do you guys want to do? They're like, Hey, you know, you want to come on? You know, the military base, you know, we'll let you shoot guns. And I said, Oh, wow. Okay. Sounds fun. Is that what people do here though? Yeah, yeah. So we get in this like a “Rinky Jeep”, and we go down there, and we're in the military, and they tell us to get down, the dude throws a blanket on top of us. And I was like, you know, at the checkpoint, that thing that goes up and down. And I was like, This can't be good. This cannot be part of the usual tourist experience.

Bart Baggett  34:15

Right. From the guards.

Shaahin Cheyene  34:18

The vibe I got from them was great. You know, so I was like, Alright, I'll go with my gut feeling what's the worst that could happen? And we showed up there and Dude, it's amazing. They built a cafe in the middle of the military barracks with a menu and everything. This is a legit military barracks. You know, a lot of these guys were former like, Khmer Rouge guys did terrible things. You know, during that time, I don't know if these guys were but so they have a cafe and you sit down in the cafe they bring you you know, tea, a food that is before the menu and then there's a menu of like weapons that you can fire. So they have, you know, handguns Of course machine guns, it goes up to the Rambo thing, whatever that is. And then they have bazookas. Then if you know, you throw in an extra 100 bucks, they'll put a cow out there. 

Bart Baggett  35:05

I did not do that and didn't kill the cow that would have me and all her Indian friends.

Shaahin Cheyene  35:10

Yeah, it wasn't good. So I walked in there. And, you know, the first thing I see is the cutest little Japanese tourists that were very short, which are little girls. And they were like, you know, typical, you know, back then, you know, the Japanese traveled everywhere with cameras, it's a nation of photographers. And all the girls are like, into it 16 blasting in some field, right? And, you know, that would just giggle like this. And they would, you know, like, that was the thing that they did. And, you know, then it was my turn. And they, you know, gave me the menu. And, you know, I did a few of the things and, you know, I thought it was great. And, you know, we paid them. And I think, you know, if there was a discussion at the end, I think they knew I was alone. And the discussion was that it was in the local currency, which was I don't know how much it was at the time, but it was like 100 to one of the US dollars. And they were like, No, no, these prices are US dollar two, which I pointed to the menu and said, No, this, the prices in the menu are in your local currency, with the, you know, symbol of the local currency. And so a little bit of negotiation ensued, I didn't think much of it. And then it became clear to the guide who was with me that we needed to leave, so I paid in the local currency, I left a little extra for these guys. And we left in a different car at a very fast clip. And notice that these guys were chasing us actually out of where we were going, which I don't know what happened, but we were being chased. And we somehow managed to make it somewhere in a high-speed chase and got onto a boat. And you know, as we got onto the boat, and the boat was taken off, these guys were trying to get us in. 

Bart Baggett  37:03

So there were some shots fired that wouldn't have bankrupt you to pay in dollars, or you just couldn't do it. 

Shaahin Cheyene  37:07

But in principle, oh, it was like, it was like, you know, you know why it was like 1000 local currency or $1,000?

Bart Baggett  37:12

So it was like, 100 Oh, it was the money? I think it was big. 

Shaahin Cheyene  37:16

Yeah, I think it was, I think it was very clearly a shakedown. Right? Because I noticed they, you know, at some point, they changed the menu, and they didn't seem aggressive. So at a certain point, you're like, cool, you know, like, we're cool. I'll just give you a little extra money, right? Like, it's supposed to be $20. But I'll give you $100. We should be good. But I think that opportunity was open for them. And they realized that I was a single guy traveling. But you know, that's one of many adventures where I got away like, barely, but they didn't have Google back in. So they couldn't have possibly known that you had sold a billion dollars with verbal ecstasy a few years before like Google didn't happen. So. So you know you have a target on your back because they can find out who you are, you're important. Back then you just had that look in your eye broken. 

Shaahin Cheyene  38:01

Oh, so this is interesting. So you know, part of what we do, I have a firm now where we do reputation management, where we manage online reputations, and it is so easy for Bart to hack reputations to manage your reputation and clean it up, we do clean up for a lot of people. If anybody needs reputation management to reach out to me, we do that we're a private company. So we don't have a website. We don't do any of that stuff. But we do it under accelerated intelligence for multiple people. And it's amazing how you can protect yourself actually, by putting out the right information on the internet and making sure that your profiles are clean. So I think it's, it's a good point. And that's super important. I actually, one of the interesting things that I noticed is I had a guy who wanted to be a client. And this guy was interesting because he really had a hacker mentality. And on every single thing that he wrote, or did, he managed to put on their board that he was a Nobel laureate. Okay. And then it was later changed to the fact that he was a Nobel. What do you call it when they get nominated Nobel nominees, right. So that's very impressive. If I introduced you I said, ladies and gentlemen, this is Bart Baggett. He's been nominated for a Nobel Prize. People would look right, that's a serious thing.

Bart Baggett  39:24

I'm gonna write them and start using that immediately. Even though it's not totally true.

Shaahin Cheyene  39:27

I decided to see how easy it might be to hack the Nobel Prize. not winning it, but just being nominated for it. So what does it take to be nominated for a Nobel prize? It'll shock you how easy it is. So to be nominated, you need to have a former Nobel laureate, nominate you. I believe you could have a formal former person who was nominated, nominate you. It could be a person of note on the nose. Nobel Committee, or any professor at any accredited university, anywhere in the world, when it's not, and it's or, or now, for the UN, and you have to fill out some forms. There's some fee, I believe, if I remember correctly, it was very little, it was like a couple $100. So I don't know if you're familiar with a freelancing platform Upwork or

Bart Baggett  40:29

I use it all the time. But there were changed names several times, you literally hired a freelancer to get yourself a Nobel Peace Prize. Is that where this was going?

Shaahin Cheyene  40:36

Awesome. I did not, it was. I'm not going to say if we did it or not, this guy already was nominated. But I'm not gonna say if we did it for another client or not, I would never stoop to such tomfoolery, such brilliance. But, you know, you could go on those, you know, on those Freelancer websites, Upwork Freelancer Guru. And you might not find somebody at Stanford or Yale or Harvard, who might nominate you. But University of East-West, Bujumbura, maybe, one of those places, as long as it's an accredited university, which just means it's not an independent University. But you know, one of these accredited universities in one of these countries, and you get a professor who, you know what salaries are like in third world countries. And, you know, you get him to maybe write a white paper on why handwriting forensic handwriting analysis has changed the world as we know it. And he puts in the fee puts in the application, they don't have to accept it. You have been nominated for a Nobel Prize

Bart Baggett  41:52

Wow. Does that mean that I can use a Nobel laureate? Is that what that word means? Lower yet? No, I think the laureate must mean you won the prize, right? I'm not sure what's like to win the prize next time. Barack Obama has one, I want one. I mean, what has he done that? I haven't? 

Shaahin Cheyene  42:15

That is true. Oh, and then maybe we'll have to find out what laureate means. I'm not sure I think it must mean that you've won, here we go. Someone who has won an important prize, or on our achievement in science, so in art or science, so I think, Laura, you have to win. But we could figure that out, too. I'm sure there are ways around it. And then, you know, this is the point of like, what you and I talked about what we talked about on hacking Grow Rich, which brings us to our chosen areas of work, which right now, you know, coaching people to win on the Amazon platform, Jen, you know, you coaching people to just win in business and life is that you know, you cannot think the way we have thought and still win anymore. People always come to me, and they're like, Oh, yeah, I see what you're doing. You're teaching. Think outside the box, I say, No, let's crush the FN box, you got to crush the box, it is no longer good enough to think outside the box, you know, that challenge that they give with the candle and the thumbtacks. And they say, you know, us use this box of thumbtacks to, you know, mount this candle to the wall? Have you ever heard of that? So it's a common cognitive experience that they experiment that they do to see how it's done. And you know, well, we'll, you know, maybe we'll include it in the show notes. It's a very common one

Bart Baggett  43:46

 If you look at candle thumbtack experiment, if you look that up, you'll seem like the nine dots telling you to draw one line connecting them that kind of thing, where if you, if you don't, if you don't get way outside the lines, you can't make it work.

Shaahin Cheyene  43:54

Yeah. So what it is, is that they give you a box, and it's got a bunch of thumbtacks and a candle and they say, okay, you have five minutes, connect the candle to the wall, attach the candle to the wall, mount the candle to the wall. And so people are looking at the thumbtacks they can't kind of like figure it out. And there are some rules like none of them, nothing can touch the table or it's something like that. And people just have such a hard time thinking about this and people that are like super-geniuses or kids that don't have all that baggage of bad thinking and bad process or old thinking and old process, figure it out. What you have to do is, you have to use the box that the tax comes in, you tax the box to the wall with the tax and you put the candle and you use the box that they come in as a shelf. That's a simple nice thing. Wow. It sounds super simple but people do all kinds of things. They try to punch a hole through the candle, they try to make the tax somehow stand up and they just don't know, people don't get it. This drives people nuts, this experiment. So, you know, I use that as an analogy as we approach Our final five minutes of the podcast, you know for life in general Bart, you know, and I think you agree with me you know, it is we are moving so fast and Coronavirus.

COVID has just COVID-19 has put us at like the next level in the advancement of the humanity of society, things are moving so rapidly e-commerce selling on Amazon, being an Amazon seller selling online having your business having your career, all that stuff is accelerated to the, to the maximum degree I think right now at this point in history. And you can no longer count on having a nine to five job, you can no longer count on your career and your credentials carrying you through, you got to have multiple side hustles, you've got to have MSI is multiple streams of income, like you're doing with real estate, you've got to take that box and crush it and come up with something completely fresh. 

Otherwise, and I'm going to use one of my favorite quotes, and I'm going to turn it over to you for the last five minutes for whatever you want to discuss, is that when you are sleeping, and I talked about this in my book when you are sleeping, your enemies are planning your demise. So it's a very important thing to let sink in and the internet makes that even closer you remember in the 80s, Bart when we would come up with an idea and think we're so brilliant. And now like you come up with an idea and you Google it and you'll find out that like 300 million people have thought of that before you

Bart Baggett  46:35

Yeah. Is it the seventh monkey? Or what is the idea, the concept about the monkeys using tools, but they weren't on the same Island. But all of a sudden they had the same idea at the same time. There's something along that line? But yeah, it's disappointing when you realize someone bought your domain five years ago and was that far ahead of you?

Shaahin Cheyene  46:53

Yeah, yeah. What are you talking about as an experiment and critical mass, but it's, it's poignant for what we're talking about now, as well, for sure.

Bart Baggett  47:03

For sure, I love the idea. I see the thing is, I don't perceive my careers as having massive competition. But I love it when you point that out. Because I know I'm paying $10 a click on Google AdWords and 10 years ago, I wasn't. So I kind of know it. But they're not like in my face, where you're looking at these Amazon rankings. And all of a sudden, this candle versus other candles, it's very obvious that you have competitors. But I didn't think about that. That's startling and disturbing, I like my sleep Shaahin You've ruined it for me. Now I have to sleep less to worry about people trying to beat me on Google and Facebook and podcasts and all the other stuff we're doing.

Shaahin Cheyene  47:41

Yeah, well, I mean, of course, I'm talking you know, symbolically about sleep. Like in general, you don't need to sleep, as our good friend, Michael Bruce to sleep doctor would say, is probably one of the most important things for entrepreneurs, you know, like, you get that really good night's sleep, and you just wake up and you feel like a million dollars, like, everything is reset is, is super important. But just don't, you know, have a good night's sleep Bart, but don't fall asleep at the wheel at your business, which I know you don't do, which is why you're the best in the world, in several areas that you've achieved mastery.

Bart Baggett  48:18

Thank you, I want to mention the transformational experiences. You have to sort of choose your mentors wisely like you and I have, choose the books you read wisely. That's one way to get a little transfer experience as an author of books, I don't expect the book to necessarily wildly transforming their lives, what normally happens is the book opens their mind, grant them to come to a seminar, I'm going to come to a webinar, like eventually, like, wow, I'm gonna get certified in this thing. And they move toward a longer relationship with me. In that vein, if you're interested, the best product that I currently have is called prism life design, PRISM prison life design. And they've got like a little three-year-old version, and then like the more expensive version, but it takes you through like self-coaching. And mainly, if you're having money blocks, it's the one program I have that can help people sort of shatter their blocks with money. You are the few people I know that seem to come out of the gate, just understanding money. Like it took me years to really mean, I had fame and I had a lot of success, but like, how do you have four or five income streams live beneath? You've really to be me? I don't think it's fair to say that you can't, you're gifted that way. But I was a little more retarded with money when I was 19, then do you seem to have just figured it out. But if you have to if you don't have those transmission experiences, you have to go get them. And you can get through courses and materials and seminars from people you trust, or you can just hope the world gives them to you. And so that's I think why you created the Amazon mastery program to create a shorter learning curve for people. And the same thing as I created the life design programs as people get a shorter learning curve. So you could break those belief systems without having to, you know, get shot off a boat in Cambodia.

Shaahin Cheyene  49:57

Good point. How do we find out more? How can we learn more about the life prism program? 

Bart Baggett  50:04

Yeah, I think the best website is prism life design comm or you can always just hit me up on Instagram at BART Baggett. I'm putting I was talking to my dad about you today he was telling me how much money you make on Amazon. He goes, Hey, why don't you do that, he's your friend. I know, I pay him, I'll pay him the grid. I go, I go, I really want to, I said, I can only have so much bandwidth. Like, I've got seven companies now. And I really want to have an Amazon product. Leave me with that. What if you're really busy? Like I am Shaahin? How much time would it really take to get another product? Because I've already done real estate and you know all the stuff I'm into? Was that an objection you heard? And how do you help people overcome that?

Shaahin Cheyene  50:42

Sure. So yeah, let's end on that. So you know, it's either time or money, guys. So you can do either if you're the kind of person who has a lot of time, but not a lot of money. Of course, you can, you know, join our program, or course we have a mastermind and a group. And for anybody listening to this podcast, we have a free one-hour course that I encourage everybody to take so use Walmart anytime you reach out, I'm happy to give you access to that. So, just reach out to us it's FBA seller courses like Frank, Bart, Apple seller course.com or go to chicane Chayene comm under the link course. And just reach out there, I'm happy to have a 15 minutes discovery call with anybody who wants to see if selling on Amazon is right for you. My goal is really to empower people to succeed in all areas of life, but primarily financially and on the Amazon platform by creating predictable recurring revenue, year after year. And you know, by now we've figured out a nice system for that. It's not perfect for everybody, but for the right people, it could be life-changing. So, if you guys are interested in that reach out also check out my other podcast “Billion how I became king of the thrill kill Kult”. We've got one episode up as of today, and more coming. And if you want to, you could just reach out to me. My email is public, I respond to every single email personally, you can reach out to me through my website, Shaahin Cheyene, and we'll include that in the show notes. And Bart, thank you so much for closing the show and being on here with me.

Bart Baggett  52:28

And it's my pleasure. It's always fun talking to you guys. And thanks for listening, everybody. You've been listening to the hack and Grow Rich podcast with my man Shaahin Cheyenne.

Shaahin Cheyene  52:37

Awesome. Thank you, Bart.