DESCRIPTION:

Shaahin Cheyene tells about his fascinating story starting with the beginnings of raves in the 90’s, and progressing to an Amazon Master today.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

book, amazon, sell, great, fucking, called, buy, kid, day, people, pill, ecstasy, business, teach, started, world, wrote, money, talk, product

SPEAKERS

Shaahin Cheyene, Scott Groves

Scott Groves  00:00

This is the first guest that has ever sent me out a press package. And we got an early release copy of Shane's book billion, which is super cool a story we're going to talk about, about how I'll give you the subtitle here, how I became the king of the thrill pill cult. And as I was reading through this book, about three fourths two thirds of the way down with it, I got very much like a Wolf of Wall Street slash Catch me if you can type, type vibe. And then you told me it's going to likely be made into a movie here at some point in the future. So thanks a lot. Thanks, first of all for being on the show. And and let's just start there. Like where's the book come from? What's the story of billions? And what do we need to know about you?

Shaahin Cheyene  00:38

Yeah, I love that. Okay. Thanks for having me on. Scott, super, super happy to be on your show, man. I've watched a lot of your stuff. So I'm excited. I started off as a teenager, I came here as an immigrant from Iran, my family fled Iran. Literally, I literally remember running to the plane. And we ended up here in the States. And that was great for a number of years. And then sometime in the early 90s, I decided Dude, this isn't going to be working for me like school, socked my folks wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer. All Persian parents want their kids to be like a doctor. That's like,

Scott Groves  01:21

yeah, this is like the model minority immigrant, you hide, show the family that you made it your doctor,

Shaahin Cheyene  01:27

that's the fucking Pinnacle. Right? My dad would look at people and he'd be like, look at Mr. Rafsanjani. He has Mercedes and big house, that fuckers worked for 20 years, like cutting people balls open, and he doesn't sleep, and the bank owns the fucking house, dad. But to him, that was the pinnacle of success. So I left trying to find my fame and fortune. And I was 15 years old, and just bailed, quit school, didn't have any friends didn't have any money. And basically figured out how to survive. I slept in abandoned buildings. I slept in condos that they were building la was in a building phase. So I figured out how to get into the lock boxes. And by the way, kids don't try this at home. There's like early 90s, right? There's a big early 90s big building, boom, yeah, building boom. And I realized that, you know, if you could get the lockbox key, that or code that I could sneak into these buildings late when there was nobody there, I could put a sleeping bag down crash in this like luxury apartment, and then wake up and be gone before they find out. And it worked wonderfully until one morning I woke up and there was a dude like staring at me some like broker and like a three piece suit, like a and I had to, you know, make a beeline through that through the window. But I started in the rave scene, the electronic music scene, the EDM scene at that time, which was booming. And the interesting part about that, was that I started going to these raves because I couldn't sleep in the abandoned buildings anymore. So I thought, fuck, man, I gotta find somewhere to sleep. And these parties would start at 2am, which was great. I love that droning of that music, the techno music, and I would just go behind the speakers find a spot and crash for a few hours, that's all I would need. And then I would wake up, you know, be the morning the party still be gone, you know, hang out a little bit, and then you know, head out. And that would be you know, I'd start my day like that.

Scott Groves  03:28

You're the only guy I've ever met, by the way that sneaks into a rave to catch a nap. Yeah, like, like, What gave you the balls at 15? Or what was what's in your DNA? Where 15 you're like, yeah, I think I'll just try to go live in some abandoned condos maybe crashing out behind the speakers at a rave like, I've got to get out there on my own to find my path opposed to living in a comfy life with your parents and trying to become a doctor or lawyer like what was it in your mind? Like what was right wired well, or wired wrong? That gave you the idea that like that was the plan?

Shaahin Cheyene  03:56

Yeah, I write about this in my book. And I think it's it's a really important distinction. And it's, I think, part of having a certain level of grit, and stick to itiveness. But also, the quality of being relentless since I was a kid. I was always picked on when we came to this country. It was during the Iran Contra scandal. Iran was not in favor. People did not like Iranian people. We called all kinds of names. I had my ass handed to me every day at school every day. It was like going for a beating. And it wasn't like now like now my my kid goes. Johnny said the S word. And I'm like, What happened? All the teachers are there and we're having a parent teacher meeting and all this back then you just go on you get the shit kicked out of Yeah, tell the teachers, right. I tell the teacher I'd be like, I got the shit kicked out. What did you do? Yeah, remember? So it was like that. And what year did your family come here? We came here in 7979. Okay,

Scott Groves  04:48

so you're a couple years old to me. I was born in 79. But I distinctly remember my like between third and fourth grade john Muir High School in Glendale. It was literally overnight, half of the populace And Glendale was Armenian, I, Iranian and Lebanese and, and you know, part of it was the Shah and the ongoing the ongoing drama there and people finally being an immigrant and then everything that was going on in Lebanon and the bombing of the Marine barracks. And I just remember in the 80s, this was in the late 80s. almost overnight, it was like 50%, Middle Eastern in Glendale. And I was like, Oh, this is weird. I'm going to fourth grade with a bunch of dudes that have like beards and mustaches and body hair. And I'm like, this is this is unique. But yeah, it was the same thing. Like you just didn't know you didn't know the culture of these people. And so like there was constantly fights on the playground for reasons that completely escaped me now as an adult.

Shaahin Cheyene  05:37

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look in Iran until I was like five years old. I was king of the heat. Yeah, I was it was great. I was we would run out into Iran, by the way, one of the safest countries in the world as far as crime goes super safe. Like we would just leave and come back as you know, as a five year old like your kids age, right. Just bail and come back when we felt like it. Right. It was fine. There was no like it there. It's not like now where you got like weird pedos running around the street and like, right, I won't let my kid two feet in front of me without like me, you know, looking out for him or having an adult there. Yeah, I've

06:07

got like Eric tags and my kids shoes and everything. Oh, you're not getting my kid? No,

Shaahin Cheyene  06:11

no, I'm microchip mine in a second. Just kidding. I probably would. So anyway, you know, I started you know, throwing these raves. And I was like, Fuck, man, I'm not making any money. So I started looking at the raves. And I was like, well, who is making money from the raves? What's got to be the promoters. So I started looking at other promoters. The promoters were all broke ass motherfuckers every time they'd be there going, like, Oh, we didn't make any money. We lost money. They always lose my answer. I was like, I got it. It's got to be the DJs. And then I look and the DJs would always be standing outside the raves with their hands out. Like nobody paid us. You know, classic story of the DJ never gets paid. So I thought, okay, it's got to be the property owners. Nope. Most of those were break ins. Most of the people who did raves in the 90s. Those warehouses, the people who owned the warehouses, probably never knew that there was a rave thrown there. If they did, they only found out after. So who do you think was making the money? There was somebody making the money keeping those raves going? I only know because I read your book. It was the drug dealer. It was the drug dealers. Okay. Yeah. So, I looked at that, and I thought, Hey, man, you know what, that's a brilliant idea. And then I thought, Fuck, I'm a neurotic Iranian Jewish kid. I'm going to be really fucking bad at crime. Like I knew that early on. I was like, crime is not for me. Like, hypothetically, it sounds really good. I'd love to be Scarface with a big gun and the powder on my face and the but it's just that's not happening. For me. I had a moment reality check, advance intervention with myself.

07:48

Yeah, and no offense, you're not exactly you know, 642 150 pounds. So you're not like a real intimidating criminal to go sell drugs at the rave. Although I don't know maybe the rate maybe the rave drug dealers are much tinier than I'm used to in the in the 90s. We'll just leave it at that on who I bought drugs from, but allegedly, allegedly allegedly bought drugs from the 90s. So So I remember when the EDC which is now in Vegas was at the Coliseum. Sure. And it was like everybody was going there in the 90s. And same thing you'd have these break ins in a warehouse in Culver City or Palmdale or whatever. And by the time you got there half the time it was broke up by the cops. So these are like the original raves glow sticks, you know frickin candy color necklaces and shit. This is this is like straight out of the movies is the stuff that you were involved in?

Shaahin Cheyene  08:32

Yeah, so EDC was started by a guy named Pasquale retail, who was my neighbor, a little bit younger than me. And he started off going to my raves. And we were buddies. He'd be in my house all the time. And when I looked at the rave scene, and I was like, fuck this man, no one's really making money except the drug dealers. I got to figure out a way to get into that. And then Pasquale continued doing it and he created his big Electric Daisy Carnival Empire and married a Playboy Bunny and living a fabulous life. And I went on well before his huge success to create herbal ecstasy. So I figured out a way to create a legal version of MDMA, Molly ecstasy, methyl doxy. methamphetamine, the one that I created was an all natural version using an herb at the time that was legal is no longer legal. And what had happened was that I walked into the club. And this is a great example of being at the right place. At the right time. The supply of MDMA of real ecstasy had been shrunk dramatically. There was no real drugs circulating through a rave scene that was booming, and the demand was huge. But this stuff was difficult to synthesize people didn't really know how to synthesize it at that time. So there was a lot of speed and junk being passed along as real ecstasy, but real ecstasy was really hard to get and they cut the supply which was coming Coming from England and from Europe, mostly Holland, and they just couldn't get it in. So the drug dealers were desperate. And I was there. And I walked into one club when the supply ran out, the supply would usually run out around 11 o'clock, and you'd see all these grumpy ass people walking around looking for anything to buy. And I walked up to a drug dealer and you know, like, reach down in my pants, grab my balls made sure they were still there. And I was like, dude, sell this. And he said, fuck, you go away. What is that shit. And finally, I was like, you know, I talked him into it. I was like, Look, you got nothing to lose. I'll Frenchie all the product. If you don't sell it, I'll take it back, throw it away. Whatever he did. Within an hour, everybody in the club was jumping up and down, pointing at me, pointing at him. He came back, he said, How much more can you get, bro? How quickly can you get it? And so, so wait, let's,

10:47

that's a pretty big, Grand Canyon chasm to jump over between sleeping behind the speakers. And now having the legal version of ecstasy, which you called herbal ecstasy, different spelling, probably for trademark reasons. But like, how does a 15 year old high school dropout design a legal ecstasy? supplement alternative? You know, I in my mind, it's like, oh, this took you know, $100,000 and a bunch of scientists and like a bunch of resources you didn't have? So how did how did this even come to be that you knew how to synthesize this herbal ecstasy? Or did you just buy it off the shelf from somebody else? Or what was the what was the deal? Not at all.

Shaahin Cheyene  11:25

So at that time, I was still sleeping behind the speakers. I had managed to get myself a girlfriend who was nutty as the day is long. Absolutely not. So, you know, I don't know if she'll ever hear this. But she was a knock case.

11:39

Every one of those had one of those. Every one of us had one of those in our you know, teens. 20s.

Shaahin Cheyene  11:43

Yeah, oh my god, this girl was on every drug in the world. And I didn't do any drugs until well into my 30s allegedly. So you know, we were basically making it in her kitchen at the time she was staying with her dad and I occasionally stayed with her. And I would literally cook it up and you know, between our kitchen and our garage. And what happened was that I would not take no for an answer. So I picked up the Yellow Pages. At the time we had these books with people's phone numbers in it and crazy died at crazy times. And I realized that authors people that write books are really just a phone call away. And they're lonely as motherfuckers. And I think that's still the case to this day. Just because you write a book, you know, somebody writes a book, you read that book, you feel like you know that person, you feel like that person is famous. You feel like that person has a whole world. But most people who spend their time glued to their fucking seat writing books, really, their lives are not that full of people. Right? Most academics are not like that. So I started looking up people who've written books, I looked up the great naturopath, Andrew Weil, who's a famous herbal doctor, he wrote all the books for the textbooks in the 1960s and 70s, I think 60s and 70s, for on psychedelic drugs and all this stuff. And he was an expert on herbal medicine. And I picked up the phone, I called the Yellow Pages. And I said, Hey, I'm inventing a new drug, I need your help. And he talked, he talked to me for a bunch of hours. And he said, Call me anytime and again, your resources is that call this guy call that guy use my name. So I started doing that. And I went from one guy to another guy. one guy's like, Hey, I got a bag full herbs here might do what you want to do come and grab it. And so I came and grabbed it. And I went to another guy and I said, Look, I went to a guy in Chinatown. I said, Look, I have no money. But I'm going to be a millionaire. And if you make this stuff for me, I'll pay you. I just can't pay you right now. And people did it. People people believe me. They're like, he's a kid. But you know, they look if he doesn't, if he doesn't do it, we won't sell it to him anymore.

13:49

I just think of this like Chinese guy in an herbal shop downtown. 15 year old version of you like you look pretty young right now. So 15 you muscle look really young, just walks in with a bag of herbs. You're like, I'm going to need your expertise, your pill press, and I'm going to pay you on consignment when I finally sell this stuff legally to a bunch of ravers. I mean, I can only imagine this guy looking at you like Who the fuck is this nutcase? Like he's either going to get me sent to jail, or he's going to make me $100 million.

Shaahin Cheyene  14:16

So I learned early on I had a mentor, a guy named Ed and he was one of the leaders. In a part very important part of the Civil Rights Movement actually is the guy

14:26

who talked about in the book that you read in the library. That's right. Yeah, super fascinating character. I looked him up on Wikipedia and looked up his Supreme Court case, this is the guy that just like took his own case all the way to the Supreme Court, like fascinating human being the civil rights movement.

Shaahin Cheyene  14:39

Yeah, amazing guy. He was on Oprah, I think like four or five times and this was a guy who was a black man in America and walking around places like San Diego La Jolla, well known areas and he we get stopped by the police and police would ask him for ID and he would give him the middle finger. This is before any of the social stuff that we have these days and he would say fuck you take me to jail and they would take him to jail. he sued them in proper, which means on his own without an attorney all the way to the Supreme Court. And he want. And this guy was like, he was he, he wasn't like he was an urban shaman. And he had had some transformative experiences. I think he had done some LSD in the 1960s. He had studied all types of different philosophies. So he was really a deep motherfucker. He was a realized human being. And he would his, he's one of these guys whose presence would really impact you just being in the room with him. Like I watched those like crazy. I love watching those cop movies. You know, he ever watched the OSHA one, what's it called the wild, wild country? It was a big one about that. Check this out. Oh, yeah, it's a great, great documentary about this guy named Osho, who started the Select cult in the 19. It was in the 1980s. And he was, you know, a brilliant philosopher. But you know, he gathered people, that whole thing went sideways. But you know, it's these people that have this cult of personality, this, this kind of charisma. And he was one of those guys, and why I'm going there is because he taught me the power of influence. If you're able to influence somebody, money is just one way to influence people. It's the easiest way, if I want something that you have, I give you money, you give me nothing great. But he would point point around wherever we were at meeting he says everything around you has been sold, transferred from one person to the next, and not always with money in hand. So there's lots of different ways to be able to influence people. So I learned at a very early age through his mentorship, the art of influence and now you know, like the stuff I do on Amazon is all based on Cal Dinis work and the stuff I learned from Ed the Skype Professor Cal Dini wrote this book called influence, great book, great book, and a follow up book called pre suasion, where he talks about these five elements, social proof, reciprocity, sincerity, likability scarcity, all these elements that create this architecture of influence where you can get people to do things without necessarily having to give them money. So at that time, I was already beginning to master the art of influence. And I was able to talk to people I was able to be relatable. When you're that young people kind of want you to succeed. Yeah, you ever see those kids who come up to you with the candy? A buddy, you want to buy a kid? Oh, yeah,

17:36

you know, right. I'm like, dude, I'm a sucker for all that stuff. I sold so much shit When I was a boy scout or, you know, for school fundraisers, that it doesn't matter what the product is, if you catch me in a parking lot, and you put a kid in front of me with a uniform, I will buy anything. It's like cuz you just want him to succeed. Like you want the little guy to win.

Shaahin Cheyene  17:52

That's right. That's right. So so there is a conspiracy out there for your success when you are that young. And that night. So you have that going for you. There's an advantage to naivety in that way. The second element is that I didn't know I could fail. All the signs that really were pointing to me becoming a terrible failure, dying in some kind of like drug transaction something or other. But that wasn't my reality. The reality I had created for myself, like what Steve Jobs called his reality distortion field, or what I should say, Walter Isaacson, when he wrote the book about Steve Jobs, talked about his reality distortion field, when people walked around Steve Jobs, they were like, Fuck, you'd be like, I want a phone with no buttons. They'd be like, great, we can have that for you in like, two, three years, he'd be like, Wednesday, five o'clock, and all of a sudden, they'd all be agreeing to having that fucking phone with no buttons, even though the technology wasn't wasn't there yet. It's that real reality distortion field and I talked about that in my book, how you can create your own reality distortion field and, and use it to your advantage. But I had that I was going to succeed there was no question. It was like, you know, there was a nail in a piece of wood and I was going to get that through. It didn't matter if I was gonna do with a hammer with a rock with a sledge hammer, use my fist, you know, use a drill. It didn't matter. I was gonna get that thing through. And, and I did, and I succeeded.

19:10

So So how long be between, you're having a personal conversation with yourself that I'd like to be illegal drug dealer. And like the first batch of stuff is ready for a bunch of ravers to try. Was it years, months, days? days? days?

Shaahin Cheyene  19:25

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I made the decision. I picked up the phone, I went to the library. And it was a crazy time, I actually didn't have enough money to make the phone calls I needed to make because back then we had these things called pay phones and you have to drop quarters in. So I had a guy I knew who was a hacker type who loaned me one of these crazy boxes. And you would put the box up to the phone and it would make some sounds and then you'd be able to make a phone call was a total hack. I'm sure it was very illegal. I'm not sure like what was what was. I'm not sure what was involved in all that but that's how we would make some phone calls in those days, and I just just got on the phone, I wouldn't take notes. Sure people would hang up on me. And sure, people would be like, You're out of your fucking mind. And there was many times where I would just show up at people's offices, people's place of business. And I would just sit there until they saw me and told me to get the fuck out, never come in again. And there was a lot of that, that didn't, that didn't affect me that you got nothing to lose at that point, right? got nothing to lose, you know. And it's actually funny, you know, I oftentimes tell the story. And you know, one of the guys, I've got a young guy who I mentor, he just raised 5 million bucks for a startup. And he's doing phenomenally well. One of the young people that I mentor now, because I mentor a lot of people, I always tell him the story, and he's blown away by it, you know, when I made my first something like 100,000 bucks, something like that. I had a backpack and I went out and I bought a pair of shoes. I never wore it, but I got a new pair of shoes, because I was like, you know, what, if everything fucking goes to shit, if I lose everything, because none of this feels real, right now, I was sleeping in a band building now I've got an apartment. And you know, I got 100 grand in cash, like all at least have an a new pair of shoes that I can wear anywhere I want. So I've got that. And until recently, I still had that backpack, which held all of my belongings, and the pair of new shoes. And I had that exact same backpack until you know, a few years ago. But it was a reminder to me, you know, when I was making millions of dollars when, you know, one morning, so I wake up. And so let me tell the story this way. So it went from that one drug dealer, to 10, to 1000, to 10,000, to all over the world.

21:37

And what's amazing is the drug you're selling is 100%. Legal, it's made from all legal herbs, like you can make, you know, maybe you can get busted for not paying your taxes or not having the right licensing or something. But it's not like you're going to get busted with 10,000 of these pills and go to federal prison for the rest of your life. You're right. Amazing.

Shaahin Cheyene  21:54

Yeah, it was all natural, all legal. And that was one of the reasons why, you know, at the end of the day, the government was so frustrated with me. I mean, the President took actions against me at the time. He put a head of the FDA at the time it was a guy named David Kessler, who went on national TV. He refused to be on TV with me in the same room. So we had to do a satellite broadcast on sam donaldson show nightline. Great reporter, sam donaldson, who, ironically also covered iran contra, but sam donaldson came to my office, and I did the interview with Sam and David Kessler did the interview by satellite in some other office. And he was really I mean, you know, the directive was to take me down, but the government didn't understand because they were like, well, if it's fucking drugs, we'll get the DEA on them. And they call the DEA and the DEA investigate, and they're like, it's not drugs. They're like, well, then we'll get the FDA on him. And the FDA was like, Yeah, it's a supplement, sort of, it's not a vitamin. It's not not a vitamin, and they didn't know what to do. I didn't fit into any mold. We had created an entire new niche. Not only that, we were selling in the most unconventional of places. Sure. We got into GNC and 711. And I was in 30,000 doors. By the time I was 18 years old 30,000 stores were selling our stuff not including the franchise's that each had 510 1000 stores, those kinds of things. But we were also selling through unconventional places we were selling through adult stores. Larry Flynt called me to his office many times he was telling us that his hustler stores we were sold in all the places that sold playboy and hustler and penthouse all those places. Not only that, we were sold in record stores. When the CD business started go down because of Napster and iPods coming out and all that stuff. These stores were dying Tower Records was dying, and we kept them afloat. People were coming into the store to buy herbal ecstasy. We were keeping the New Age bookstores afloat. They were all selling herbal ecstasy. Everybody was fucking selling herbal ecstasy, all the stores on Melrose Haight Ashbury, you know, we had I had my own stores that we franchise so you would see these neon ecstasy signs all over the place. We had a flagship store on Melrose, that was a store that just sold Beagle, psychedelics and legal drugs and books on psychedelics, and we have lectures and it was it was, it was an insane time. And then what and how

24:29

long is this, by the way from like, when you first get your first drug dealer at that rave to be like, Alright, you're out of illegal drugs, try this legal stuff. How long does it take to grow from that first 100,000 to like, holy shit, man, we're franchised in in Larry Flynn's place, you know, like, like, how long did it take you to ramp that up? And what does that even look like to fulfill that much herbal product? Because I imagine now you start having supply chain issues and all these Big Boi business issues which obviously you eventually became a master of that and that's why you're able to do that now on Amazon. But, I mean, what does that journey look like as a 17 year old kid to be like, Oh, now I gotta have like, a big boy supply chain and pay taxes and all this crazy shit. Like, what does that even look like? I can't even fathom trying to deal with that as a teenager.

Shaahin Cheyene  25:13

Yeah, so that was a couple years, between, you know, somewhere between 1992 and 1994. And around 9495 would probably be the height of it. And then, so this is an interesting story, Scott. So, one morning, you know, sometime there in the 90s, I woke up, and I stumbled into my office, right, I got into my Ferrari, I drove down there, I had 200 people working for me, I owned Venice Beach, like, everybody in Venice Beach was working for me. I mean, I literally, if I saw your face on the street, you were employed, I couldn't hire enough people. There was no workforce. It was pre internet. We didn't have any of the recruiting sites, and I just needed warm bodies in seats taking orders. We were selling it as quickly as we can make it. Everybody wanted me on their talk show. I did Montel Williams. I did. sam donaldson. I did all the all the big talk shows. And so I come into the office and the news breaks that we've broken a billion dollars in revenue. That's a billion dollars before internet pre internet. That's a billion dollars with no cell phone, no social media, there was no Facebook, there was no MySpace, none of that stuff. And two, three years before I was sleeping in the backseat of a Lincoln Continental and the back of an abandoned building, like just trying to figure out like, I was eating tortillas with relish from hotdog stands because I realized that shit was free. And I was I was dumb enough to be vegan in those days in the early days. So some girl must talk to you and do it. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, I started to panic in my office, thinking Fuck, man, they're gonna ask me how much a billion dollars? I don't know how much a billion is? Is it? 1000 million? Is it 100 million. There's no internet. I was like fucking grabbing encyclopedias. And then somebody had to sit me down and say, Look, I'm gonna sit down and be quiet. No one's gonna ask you that they want to know about this drug you've invented and this that the other thing? And I was like, okay, okay.

27:16

And at this point, I picture this scene, like, straight out of the movies, where it's like, there's cash everywhere. There's checks everywhere, like that movie blow where they're just stacking cash, and people are stealing from you. And you don't know how to pay your quarterly taxes because you've never had this much money in your life? Am I kind of along the right lines? Or did you have this shit figured out? Or? Or were you getting robbed blind by your employees? And what was what was going on in the company? At this time? Like, did you have your shit dialed in? And you hired some adults? Or was this just like the wild west of herbal ecstasy?

Shaahin Cheyene  27:45

Yeah, the other thing that you said, yeah, it was that it was the Wild West. And all the stuff that you said is true. Everybody was stealing from me. Excuse me. But moreover, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. But what I knew was that we were almost literally printing money. So any mistake that I made could be fixed by just printing more money. So we would make these pills for 25 cents, we had a pretty good supply chain setup, I had multiple manufacturing plants all over the world, producing pills around the clock, it cost me 25 cents for a unit. We sold that unit for $20. Most of the business was cash. And we did that all day long.

28:34

So I don't know why you're talking to me and not flying around on supply of private jet with with your family or a harem of women, you know, whatever your flavor is. This is this is just going to have an amazing ending. I can already feel it coming. So yeah, you're printing money. And every time you make a mistake, you just print more money and throw more money at the problem.

Shaahin Cheyene  28:50

I'll tell you how crazy it was. So I had a dog a beautiful albino Pitbull and loved those dogs. And this guy was like, the only guy I trusted was my dog. You know, that was my only friend in those days because you never knew who was stealing and who wasn't I we catch people stealing all the time. And I write about in the book, The crazy ways that people steal. And I remember one day the dog came into the room and you know, there's pills everywhere I had crashed out the night before in my office, like you know, it just like the place smelled like incense and like there's like crap everywhere. And the dog knocks down this pile of papers. And I reached down to pick them up. And I noticed and there's like a bunch of checks, 10,000 $20,000 whatever, throw them in the pub. There's a check from a Japanese vendor for a million bucks. That probably over a month old. And I just look at it and I throw it back on the pile and like I go back to doing whatever the fuck I was doing before we had laptops because that was just the way things roll. I mean, people were bringing duffel bags full of cash into the office. And it was it was a it was an insane time. It was an insane time we did Lollapalooza at that time with I think it was the Beastie Boys and I think Perry for our With porno for pirates, I think he was the one who did I know Red Hot Chili Peppers had some involvement in it. But we did Lollapalooza with them. I remember being in the in the room with Beastie Boys and giving everybody urmul ecstasy. And we would do about a million dollars per show. So per location that Lollapalooza was that we would make a million dollars in cash. And I remember I had to figure out I was like, Fuck, man, how, like, how are we going to get a million dollars in like, 20s, and hundreds and stuff back to Venice. So I sent people out with the cash and I was like, just go buy these fucking RVs. I was like, they were like, well, how much is an RV, I was like, I don't fucking know, just go buy like three of them. And we'll just do like a little train of like, rotating RVs. And so of course, the people who I had in the RVs, picking up the cash and bringing it back, manage to keep a little bit for themselves. And that has happened more often than not, but gradually, about a million bucks would come in each rotation. And we did that for the entire Lollapalooza tour. And it was glorious. I mean, everybody hated us, the beer vendors, all the other vendors, I mean, some of the musicians because there was lines around the bend, for people to come by our pills, and everything else wasn't getting the attention that it was getting at that time. We were the big event, people would come to the show to buy the pills, and you know, and have the party and do all the stuff that they wanted to do. So it was an absolute insane time. And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was flying by the seat of my pants. And yeah, I had a wacky lawyer that I write about in the book and the guy

31:39

that was part of the best story, by the way, like, like the Malibu story of you with the supermodel and lawyer. I mean, this is he seems like straight out of Central Casting. Like I don't know who's gonna play him in the movie, but it's gonna be pretty hilarious.

Shaahin Cheyene  31:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this guy, he he lived with a crazy vegan I was in with a lot of vegan people in the vegan people, then were a lot crazier than the vegan people now. And, you know, they, he lived with this lady that would go to conservative Jewish houses in the middle of the night, and he would steal their chickens, because they would apparently sacrifice them allegedly. I don't know. But she would go and take the chickens and they couldn't really say anything because they didn't want to attend. So good that they were that they were doing these kinds of like animal sectors, I guess. Allegedly. It's something that happens. I don't know. I mean, they definitely doesn't happen in or maybe they just cook them and eat them. But she had to save the chickens. She had to save the chickens. So she had this house in Santa Monica. That was filled with dozens and dozens of chickens. And this dude, I think it was his house. He would sleep in the attic because he didn't want anything to fucking do with the chickens. But I mean, I remember the girl you know, the girl was pretty hot. So he was like, and she was like, easy about him like living an open lifestyle.

32:51

Yeah, so say How good was this girl in bed that he allowed his house to be taken over by chickens? Like I'm talking about world class three, some Something must have been going on. Because I I freak out when there's shit on our floor, much less than my wife came home is like, Hey, you know I'm Mexican. We want to have a cow and a pig and about three dozen chickens living in the house. I'd be like no fucking way. That's like just no clue. So anyway, this guy's this guy got conned by an amazing hot vegan who was okay with an open relationship. So they had chickens all over their house.

Shaahin Cheyene  33:20

They had chickens all over him. He was a good looking guy. He got lots of girls anyway. But you know, he always had a roaming eye and a roaming hand. But you know, there was something about me in those days where I would look at a guy like that. And he would just be so wacky, right that dude, like, you know, he'd show up in court with like, his shirt tucked out in like, just he looked, he looked far more like Hunter S Thompson. Then he did like a corporate FDA attorney. And I just looked at him and I was like, You're hired how much you want to get paid. I'll double it. You'll be my in house attorney. And there was a component to that was basically like, I like to fuck with people in those days. And I knew that if they saw that we were not like the usual people that we were like, really fucking we that a lot of people would back off just for that. They'd be like, these guys are too fucking strange. So we actually did get out of a lot of trouble like that. And he did have moments of competence, where he wasn't stoned or chasing ass or you know, some of that stuff where he did manage to get us out of some level of trouble.

34:23

So at this point, like who's coming for you, right? Because obviously, the FDA wants to find a way to screw over your pills, but it's all made with legal ingredients. And I'm sure you've got a bunch of counterfeiters and you got people to try to rob you blind. So who ended up coming for you that that made the business no longer, you know, sustainable, or what happened? How does it How does it all come to an end?

Shaahin Cheyene  34:44

Right? So we had a great run, we branched out I invented the first herbal cigarette, which to this day is the standard for Hollywood Studios. When you see stars, smoking cigarettes, they're not smoking cigarettes, they're too harsh. They can't continue to do scene. Smoking. Hundreds of cigarettes, they smoked ecstasy cigarettes, which was what I meant. And so we had a number of products, and I ended up selling them off. And the company was kind of pieced out at the end of the day. But what happened was really I realized that you can fight an adversary to some extent, but you can't fight an adversary that has an unlimited budget, and the government has an unlimited budget, and they will always when it is it is not possible to win no matter how much money that you have, if they want you bad enough. And that's been proven throughout history. They and they wanted us bad. So in the 1980s, and

35:38

what why did they want you so bad? Was it because they felt you were skirting the law with what was in the drug or they just wanted? They just wanted to have some trophy on their wall from the rave scene? Because they didn't like the rave scene? Or why why did you become a public enemy number one of the rave scene?

Shaahin Cheyene  35:53

That's a great question. So you remember the 1980s, the 1980s, brought about a company called the Pfizer, which was a great company. And they introduced a drug, what I believe is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor called Prozac. Now what and I'm terrible, I'm a my science is at the level of the chimpanzee. So if I mess up the science, please forgive me. But they came out with Prozac. And Prozac was their answer to the baby boomers depression. All these baby boomers who started getting depressed for whatever reason, started taking this Prozac stuff. And it worked great, right? It was a happy pill. Everybody's happy taking Prozac? Well, allegedly, Prozac had one big side effect. Can you guess what it is? depression? erectile dysfunction, correct. So for both men and females, it led to some form allegedly of sexual dysfunction. It was one of the known side effects. Well, Scott in the 1990s. Guess who had the answer? With a magic blue pill? I'm not gonna say it. But you can probably Viagra. That's right. by the same company. Incredible, right? I mean, allegedly, this was something that was thought up, but I don't know. So now, this pill is out. And they have spent billions with a B dollars, doing clinical trials doing all kinds of studies proving safety and efficacy coming out with this drug. And their master plan is great. It's the first time in history, that there has been an FDA approved drug it's about to get approved. To treat erectile dysfunction in males and females alike. And it's it this is going to be huge. It's going to be massive. No one's ever made a boner pill that the FDA said you could your doctor could prescribe, they've spent billions of dollars on advertising lined up the biggest ad agency in the country, this is going to send their stock soaring. But wait, there's a long haired Iranian kid, unregulated, one man show with absolutely no sense of you know, any of that stuff that they had at that time, you know, breaks on that train. And he is selling a billion plus dollars of a pill that a lot of people are using for erectile dysfunction, and you know, to have the ambition to be happy and all that stuff. They really didn't like that. So allegedly indirectly, lobbyists went out to the government and pushed really hard. Now at that time, there was a lot of conservatives that were also looking for something to rail against. So we're still

38:46

coming out of the 80s dare to say no to drugs, and probably doesn't help you that the whole iran contra thing is only about 10 years in everybody's mind like you're the problem child immigrant that's spoiling the youth of America. That's why it was the perfect storm. So

Shaahin Cheyene  39:00

they would call me into these talk shows. And it would obviously be set up. And I would go on. And you know, I usually be blinded as far as what the other side would be saying or doing. And then all of a sudden, they bring five angry parents that died from their kids taking real drugs and like, you know, the head of the FDA in New Jersey, and they would all be sitting there like railing at me and I'd be like, Holy Holy shit, like what the fuck? Like, I wasn't expecting this. And then quickly, I learned that Wait a second. What people are hearing isn't that my product is dangerous. What they're hearing is that this shit might actually work. Right? Right. And we made billions I tell the story of when I went on Montel Williams and Montel invited me I remember back when Montel before cannabis Montel we had one conservative military Montel

39:52

Yeah, an ex Navy SEAL Montel ex navy seal. Yes he Navy SEAL? No, I think he actually got busted for pretending he was a navy seal. Like some Stolen Valor stuff, if I if I remember correctly, Montel Williams got his ass beat at like a military bar for claiming he was something he wasn't Oh. And then, of course, the whole story got revised. And luckily, this is pre internet. So a lot of people couldn't call him out on that. But if I, maybe I'm making this up on my head, Chris can fact check me on this. But if I remember correctly, Montel was one of those like Stolen Valor guys that kind of inflated his military record to look better in certain talk show situations. So yeah, but anyway, so you're on Montel. So I'm

Shaahin Cheyene  40:30

on Montel. And it turns out that it's, it's a ambush. And I didn't realize this, but somebody had tipped me off ahead of time. And I went on the show. Anyway, I flew out to New York. But what he didn't know is that I had t shirts made up back in those days pre internet, with our 800 number all across them. And I gave it to several people in strategic places where the cameras were in the audience. And we didn't pay them, we gave them pills. We gave everybody in the line pills. We give people in the studio audience pills. So when I get on stage, and they start the ambush, and this video is online, you can watch it on YouTube, I take my sweater off, there's my 800 number and they're reeling. This stuff will kill you. This is the worst thing ever. And I'm saying, look, our product has never heard anybody, these people that their kids were taking real drugs and real drugs can kill you. Our stuff has never killed you. But then there's the doubt that they're casting by showing you know, these parents, and you know that the scene is something different than what's being said. But at the same time, it's that message, people are thinking, this ship might really work, I can go to the store and buy drugs. This is fucking awesome. And we made a million dollars every airing. And Montel you see him on the show, you can watch it on YouTube, he's like, you said that we have to read your 800 number, we're not going to read your eight people pay a lot of money on the show. And he was he was screaming at me on the show, not realizing that all the time, the 800 number was on my shirt. And every time the camera turned so good. Every time the camera turned to the audience, there'd be somebody there wearing an Xs t shirt with the 800 number. And they didn't realize this until years after in reruns where they finally blurred out the 800 number. But we made a lot of money on that show. And we made a lot of money on all these shows. And it was just this process of you know, it was still that attitude of being that 15 year old kid from Iran who got his ass kicked every day, thinking you know what, I'm not gonna fucking let these bastards grind me down, there is nothing that they can do. That's going to make me not succeed to the level that I want to not to them. And I fought them to the very fucking end.

42:45

You know, it's interesting, because we talked about this right before the show started, I wanted to ask and get your take on this is, you know, having grown up in Glendale, I have a lot of Iranian friends, a lot of Lebanese friends, a lot of our medium friends. There is definitely that cross section of like, Dad told me, I was going to be a doctor, I'm going to be a doctor. But there is also this cross section, like maybe an overwhelming percentage of like first generation Middle Eastern immigrants, that like they just have this energy or this fight in them or this desire to be entrepreneurial, fully commission, take the risk, try to start their own thing. When is that? Do you think about that, like immigrant flavor or mentality where it's like, there's so many people like you that have the story of like, I took my shot on my wall, and I won, or I took my shot on my last or I was just willing to take the shot where I feel like, you know, maybe if we're stereotyping, that same type of entrepreneurial spirit isn't naturally occurring and a lot of other maybe like, third, fourth, fifth 10th generation Americans like what is it about you and people like you that are willing to kind of take that risk? Is it because you got your ass beat in third grade? Or what?

Shaahin Cheyene  43:49

Yeah, so I'll take a couple shots at that. So again, remember, I have the scientific sophistication of a chimpanzee. So please, if I mess up science don't quote me on it.

43:59

Yeah, I just made sweeping generalizations and probably prejudicial statements. So I'm sorry, to whoever I just offended. But I mean, you can just feel it when you talk to certain cultures.

Shaahin Cheyene  44:07

There's something called epigenetics, which is, you know, again, sophistication of a chimpanzee, but from what I understand of it, it is the representation that our genetics, and you know, we're not talking about like long term evolutionary genetics of like 1000s or millions of years ago, we're talking about genetics of just one generation or two generation is somehow carried in our DNA. If there was some type of trauma in one generation ago, there is some part of us that may or may not hold that hold some fragment of that memory. Right. And I really believe that there's something if you come from these other parts of the world, from the Middle East, from Asia, from these places, where, you know, two generations ago, I might My family, you know, was basically living in in pretty, you know, desperate situations that that does carry over to the offspring even though, you know, I never wanted for much in my life I was always fed, you know, up until the time I left home, you know, I had, I had close my parents were working class, you know, we were poor, but we had enough we got by. And I still think that there is some trauma from the past, that somehow there's a memory that carries over. I don't know how, but there's something about that. Also, I remember, you know, coming from Iran, it's not like here, like, we ate all the food that was in our fucking plate we just did. Nothing was handed to us from the standpoint of entitlement. I never remember being in Iran, having my parents feel like we're entitled to anything. We worked for everything that we had my dad worked and struggled, you know, we came to this country with basically nothing but the clothes on our back, he worked at a shitty pizza restaurant at shitty Dry Cleaners for for 30 years. And they hustled and they struggle. And as a kid, I saw that. But we moved to an affluent part of the United States in affluent part of California called the Pacific Palisades, that wasn't affluent at the time, but it was up and coming. We managed to get a house there. And I just remember, you know, my parents, you know, calling the broker and, you know, getting all the money they had together to buy this house, and they got lucky. And the broker called them and said, Look, guys, you can have this house. But there's a problem. And that's why they're going to sell to this cheap. And I remember my dad saying, Well, what is it? This is great, we can afford this house what like, how, like, what's the deal? And they said, well, there's some people live in there. And so okay, well, no problem. Wait for them to move. Isaac, you don't understand. They're they're camped in the backyard. And there's tents. And they're fucking Hari Krishna. And the previous owner has been trying to get them out for like, 10 years, and he can't get them out. And my dad said, we'll take it. And they put all their money and they bought this fucking house. And now there's the Hari Krishna that they've been trying to get out. They just couldn't get him out. Right. Like, I don't know, there was some story and one of the guys had a cousin It was a cop or something. So they couldn't read. They just would they just couldn't get these fucking professional squatters, professional squatters and like they would leave and other ones would show up. Now this is one of the you know, larger lots in the area was three lots of huge house was torn, you know, terrible tear down double. And I just remember my my parents, I was like, What the fuck are they going to do? I was a kid. I was like four or five years old. And my mom just kept bringing him food and tea. And my dad kept bringing him food and tea. And they were just being kind to them. And we moved into this house in total disrepair, and these people were living in the yard. And I remember just my parents being kind and I remember one day after, you know, a couple months or several weeks, one of the guys came and said, Hey, you guys are soaked. No one's ever been kind to us before you guys aren't from here. And my dad said, No, we are not we are from Iran. You know, your accent is spot on, by the way, when you when you turn it on. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. I could do the whole interview like that if you want so. So you know, so they just started bringing them food. And the guy said, Look, you guys are you guys are too conscious. We're gonna leave. And they left. They kill them with kindness. They left and we moved to this to this house. And so now we're here, the neighborhood's up and coming wealthy people are moving in after after a few years, and real estate prices are shooting up right ronald reagan trickle down economics, all that all that shit. And I'm living there, you know, with like, friends that are like, you know, they've got their choice of like, eating out and doing this. I didn't eat at a restaurant until I was like 14 years old. I didn't know I was like, that's a fucking great concept. Like, they'll bring you What do we hold on? Explain this to me again, you sit down, and they bring you anything you want. And like that, that's that's how that's how it was. But I watched that stuff. And nobody had ever given me anything nobody had ever been like, you know, here, buddy, you're entitled to this trust fund. And here's, you know, free food. We didn't get shit. We fucking work for everything, man. So seeing that built this grid, and it built this. You know, through adversity, I think you can build a character in a way that's very difficult to build any other way. Like, I'm not sure my kids, a little rich kid, he goes to a private school and lives in an affluent area. And he's a great fucking kid. And I love him. And he's way smarter than I am. And I'm sure he's gonna do great things. But I don't think he's gonna have that. So he's got to figure out another way to have a transformative life experience that's going to build that grit in a different way for him

49:35

to this is so funny because you and I have kids about the same age. And I was talking to a friend of mine who has three kids also around the same age as ours. And he always jokes. He's a great guy. I got to have him on the podcast because I think he'll speak openly about this. He had a really rough childhood, all kinds of abuse, physical, emotional, whatnot, had a really, really rough decade in his 20s and now it's come out of it and he's a pastor and he's a great guy. He's so wonderful. You mean but he always makes the joke He's like, I think I just love my kids too much. Like, I'm just not making it hard enough for them because he's like, you know, I don't wish anybody to have the life that I had growing up, but there's a certain amount of grit and resilience. And there's just there's a certain amount of like entrepreneur spirit that he has, where he's just not going to lose. And he's like, my kids aren't gonna have that they're spoiled to your point, you know, they go to private school, their rich kids, they're like, they're never gonna want for anything he's like, and so his ongoing joke is I can't dammit, I just love my kids too much. He's like, I think I need to start punching little Jimmy once in a while, just to just to give him some grit. So, yeah, that's interesting, because I feel the same concerns about my kids, you know, growing up in a gated community not having like a little bit of like a rough and tumble childhood, like, Am I am i doing them a disservice by treating them better than we were as kids? I don't know. Because I'm the same thing I didn't I didn't want for anything. I did get to go to McDonald's once in a while as a kid growing up, so it wasn't as as quite rough off as you are. But there is there is something about that, like, are we are we negating our kids ability to have some of that grit and determination? Because their life's too easy?

Shaahin Cheyene  51:01

Yeah, I think look, you can't give them a huge, big fat Trust Fund, and just assume that they're going to be okay. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you've got to build discipline, you got to build character. And you do that through things like martial arts. I know you practice jujitsu, Brazilian jujitsu, I do as well. Things like that build character right on the mat. There's no bullshit. You can't fucking fake your jujitsu skills. Once you get on the mat. All truth Bruce Lee used to say truth is found in combat. That's why Bruce Lee didn't like belts, he didn't believe in belts. I trained under a guy for a number of years called Dan inosanto. And he was one of Bruce Lee's prodigies. And I went to his Academy. And, you know, I studied they're very at a very low level, I should mention. And, you know, Bruce Lee always said that truth is found in combat. And, and inosanto always teaches that look, you know, the belt covers, just, you know, one inch around your waist. And the rest of rest of that is your skill. And I think that's something that's, that's really important to be found in martial arts, is the fact that there really is a truth to combat and I think that children in generals, particularly boys have really have become soft by the culture that has been presented to them these days. And I think it's fucking great to get into some fights, right? If somebody kicks you in the nuts fucking, you know, go go go at it, right. I tell my kid, you know, like, Look, don't don't ever assault anybody. But if you are assaulted, you have every right to defend yourself. Totally

52:30

same conversation with my son. And I don't actually I don't know if you've made this mistake, yet. I have a son and a daughter. And I told my son, I'm like, Hey, you don't ever get to punch anybody proactively. You don't ever get to start a fight. But if somebody messes with your little sister, you have to step in and defender. So now he's just itching for somebody to hit his sister. He's like, Hey, you wanna start to shoot my sister so I can fuck you up? Like, I can see the look in his eyes. He's kind of processing. He's like, Alright, who's gonna mess with my sister so I can start a fight? And I'm like, Oh, God, totally, totally misread the situation, buddy. Like, I did not explain that well, to your five year old brain. Yeah. But yeah, that's funny. Sorry, I just had to tell that story. Because it's so funny. He's just waiting for somebody to mess with his sister. gave him a hammer. Everything looks like a man. Totally, totally. So how long does the herbal ecstasy you know, run? How long does that last? And, and and what's kind of leftover for you? You know, you mentioned that you parsed off some of the company like, did you keep the Ferrari? Or did you keep one of the supermodels or anything like that? Or like, how long does this journey kind of last before it's time for phase two of your life?

Shaahin Cheyene  53:28

Yeah. So well, now I'm, I'm happily married with a beautiful wife and a beautiful son, and my life is spectacular, you know, I want for nothing. And, you know, my life is good. And I did, you know, get to keep a considerable amount of my wealth. I mean, certainly not the billions of, you know, dollars that were created in those days, or the, you know, hundreds of millions or however much it was. But, you know, I exited verbal ecstasy, I should say, like, in the late 90s. And I went on to inventing all the forerunners to what you see now in vapes. So vaporization technology was in its infancy, I patented a lot of the technology for vaporization. That company went public in 2007. I exited just a little before that, and I had a really nice exit with that. And it's funny, you know, people are calling me all the time going, dude, I'm vaping I'm like, I have nothing to do with that business nor endorse it for you, sir. It is bad for your health, please do not do it. But you know, so I exited that and then, you know, some day after that, I was like, You know what, I want to do another stuff and I got really big into this biohacking stuff. And I met Dave Asprey and a bunch of these other guys along the way, and I got really into biohacking and even before that, I decided, Hey, I'm gonna, you know, make this limitless pill and Funny enough, you know, Bradley Cooper was at my house, and we were talking about nootropics and all this stuff A while back, and I was like, You know what, I'm gonna do this. And, you know, he, of course went on to make that awesome film limitless, which is such a cool film. Such a fucking cool film, right? We all want that pill. And I was like, I want to make that fucking pill, independent of that. And he just happened to be at my party. We were not close friends at that time. And so I decided to make this pill. And then I was thinking to myself, fuck man, like, I got to figure out a way to sell this because one of the things that I learned over the course of the history of selling things, and I teach this now to my students in my Amazon course, my Amazon mastery course, where I teach people how to make money on Amazon, is that you have to always think distribution first, distribution is the single most important component of selling anything. How many shitty movies have you seen in a movie theater? Probably a few. Absolutely, yeah. Where you sitting going? Holy fuck, I want my two hours back. Right? Right. Give me my How did this fucking thing get made distribution. Equally. Imagine how many amazing movies there are great directors, fantastic writers. It's like godfather five. It's like the fucking greatest films ever. That never got made, or never, we've never seen they might be out there somewhere floating around in the ether distribution. So the number one mistake that most people make is that they come up with a better mousetrap. And then they think the world is going to beat its way to their door. That was the old way of doing things. That doesn't work anymore. The way things work now. And the easier path, the low hanging fruit is to find the distribution and to feed it what it needs. And there's certain algorithms that you know that we teach or that other people teach that you can find out that teach you how to do that. So I was thinking, well, how am I going to sell this? So I learned through the grapevine through people that we knew that Jeff Bezos guy who had started this bookstore online, Amazon was going to open up their platform to third party sellers. That means the guys like me, and you could sell anything on there. And it was the Wild West, there was no restrictions to becoming an Amazon seller. And it was super easy. So you could open an account in 20 minutes that made it really easy, and Bezos style and you could sell anything. So I thought, okay, I had this smart pill called acceleron, which I was really excited. We still sell it to this day. It's a fantastic nootropic brain supplement. And I thought, you know, and by the way, I was making it in conjunction with a big pharma company, so it was like totally legit stuff. That was really fucking you're like, I'm not fucking with the FDA again. Yeah, no, this stuff was was was was super, or is super legit. You know, we still sell we sell to acceleron. And another one called focus plus, which are fantastic. So I was like, Alright, let me just put it up on the site. Let me see what happens. We'll maybe we'll sell a couple I'm not you know, and what

57:41

What year is this? Like? Because you are really early Amazon adopter?

Shaahin Cheyene  57:45

Yeah, the very one of the very first so this was probably around 2010 2009. somewhere around there.

57:50

Yeah, this is just this is just when ecommerce is a thing. Like I remember reading articles back then of like, e commerce isn't fair, because you don't even have to pay state taxes. And there was like a big fight between Bezos and the different states on whether or not he should have to pay state taxes. Because, you know, there was no sales tax in Washington or wherever he started writing. Yeah, I mean, this is really early adopter shit. It's, it's crazy to think and this is to your point of how powerful distribution is the number one company in the world, only about 10 years into their adulthood, only about 20 years into their existence, because their distribution, Amazon just the most valuable company in the world. And they really don't do shit except for distribution.

Shaahin Cheyene  58:27

Well, they do a lot more now. But yeah, yeah. So you know, we talked about this earlier is that, you know, so what Bezos did, which was fascinating is that he went to Walmart, you know, Bezos was people think he's like this, like startup guy, whatever. No, he worked for one of the biggest, you know, like, most aggressive venture capital firms in the world, I think it was called th hyten. And Bezos Is he really is one of the smartest guys in the room when people look at him and go, how did that dude, like become the richest guy in the world? It's because he's probably one of the smartest guys in the world for what he does. So he went out there and he said, You know what, we know nothing about warehousing and distribution. Who does? Well, it's Walmart. So he went out there. And literally, I mean, you know, allegedly poached one of the top Walmart guys. And Walmart knows about distribution, Walmart knows about warehousing, and got that guy and gave him an open checkbook and said, create a system where we can ship anything to anywhere. And we could do it for these third party sellers, which means now, Scott, you and me don't have to pack and ship packages in our garage and get them out and worry about a warehouse or whatever, we ship it to Amazon, they'll worry about selling it and they'll sell it on their platform. Fan fucking tastic so I go to sleep. I list the product at night I woke up in the morning, we had 1000s of orders of $120 a month supplement. And I was like, holy shit. That's it. That's the provisioner this is edger dropped everything else and started perfecting selling on Amazon and I learned over the course of all these years, that there's a language There needs to be spoke on Amazon, that there's a language in order to convert, like, anywhere you go. Everyone has its own language like real estate brokers, they know their own language. If you've ever bought or sold a house, you know that they talk about escrow and you know all these different languages about, you know, contingency and all this stuff. It's just the language of that business. Well, selling any Commerce has a language to and if you could learn that language, if you can apply those algorithms you're not trying to invent Amazon is against invention. I know there's somebody there cringing right now. But Amazon makes being a low price leader, they're customer centric, but they're not for innovation. So if you want to succeed on Amazon, please don't innovate, what they want you to do, is to feed the machine that they built, what it wants, maybe for a couple cents cheaper, maybe tell a better story, maybe add some extra value. That's low hanging fruit. And there's millions being made every day while people sleep because of this platform.

1:00:57

And I know you have this really cool, mastery course that we're going to link to in the in the YouTube and anywhere we put this because you offer it for free. So thank you, and how do you how do you decide that? Like, Hey, I really want to teach this stuff or I don't know, maybe you you you hit a spot financially, where it's more interesting to teach than receive yourself, you know, but why why teaching this stuff, right? Like if you can, if you can create a better spatula sales process through Amazon and keep the money for yourself, why not just do it yourself on this product, and that product and that product, like why teach?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:01:27

So we do so we right now have over 300 products that we sell, okay, so

1:01:31

you're still doing this real time yourself

Shaahin Cheyene  1:01:33

all the time, I love Amazon. So we've got about 300 different products that we sell that are just our own my company's products that we sell on the Amazon platform. And we have over 5000 products under management from other companies. I've got an agency where people bring us products, and we get them to the top of the Amazon page. And we discovered that people really love us doing that for them. So we do it. But then I also have this course. And in order to get to the course you got to do the one hour course and I you know, we talked about it for anybody who's watching this podcast or listening to this podcast, you know, who's a listener of on the edge is that way your brand, so you guys can use the code on the edge, and it's normally 200 bucks. But we'll give you the one hour course absolutely for free, there's absolutely no charge. And the main reason is, I want people to know that you can start these streams of recurring revenue. We talked about this in the course. But I teach this as far as, and I'll explain what my my reason is shortly. But I believe in foundational thinking. And I think that especially now in a post COVID world, if you want to succeed, you got to have not just multiple hustles, but you have to have various foundations, so you never have a bad day. And this is how this works. You should have one foundation one pillar that I believe is cashflow, positive real estate. And we do that and I teach that to my students all the time. The second area should be some area of your money should be invested in the market, whatever it is, you should learn a little bit about the markets and you should invest compound interest. Right? Another pillar should be ecommerce, ecommerce is the cheapest real estate that you will ever buy. You can start an e commerce business on Amazon for little or no money for a few 1000 bucks. And really, I mean, you know, it's free to start these businesses. But you've got to put some money into product and merchandising and blah, blah, blah. So that's, that's another pillar because you can grow that for a few 1000 bucks, it's the cheapest thing. And you can have it be worth seven, eight figures in a year or two part time. And the final thing is going to be the pillar that brings you your day to day cash. It could be your job, it could be whatever you have, if you have a trust fund, then that's a pillar for you. But like most of us, if you don't, then whatever your work is that you do that gives you the stability the feed your family keeps the kids in diapers puts gas in the truck, whatever it is, that becomes a pillar. And so when you think like that, you never can really have a bad day you wake up all the markets drop 20% Oh, well, that's okay. You got your real estate. You got your ecommerce business, you have your job. Oh, man, you know, real estate's dropped 5% today, okay, well, no problem. The stock markets here, you got your e commerce business. So no matter what happens, you generally speaking to have at least three pillars that cause great stability in your life. And that's what I want to see people built. So I'm at a place in my life where I don't really have to work. I travel with my family most of the time, you know, I collect cars with my kid, you know, we've got a nice collection of Porsches and exotic cars. And so we collect cars and you know, we hang out, we own a bunch of real estate, and we travel most of the time before COVID. We did at least it's gotten harder in the last couple years, but we're getting back on track. And we travel and when we're traveling, we're making money and we do it. You know, thanks to Amazon. And my goal now in this next phase of my life one is to tell my story with this book, tell the story of this wild ride with ecstasy and that's through billion how I became king of the thrill poke called. And there's a podcast, the first chapter of the audio book is on the podcast. So anybody that wants to listen, we do a podcast called hacking grow rich, rich, I've got to have you on too, because you're, you'd be a great guest as well. So we do a podcast called hack and Grow Rich. But my goal really is one of the things that I find the greatest fulfillment in is empowering other people. And I've realized that I'm pretty good at this, to make money, and to create these recurring life changing streams of income. And that's where I came up with my Amazon mastery course. And so far, we've launched over 55 different companies, we've got 55 more that are going to launch in the next couple months. And they've all created great businesses on Amazon, not everybody is going to make earth shattering money, some of those people still keep their jobs, but it's just another pillar for them to do it. And there's people, you know, every day are creating businesses that earn an extra 10 $15,000 a month, and that's enough for them. But then there's other guys who, you know, really put the time and energy into it. And they've got companies that are earning two $300,000 a month. Yeah, these are not unheard of numbers in the world of becoming an Amazon seller. But you do need to have a certain level of know how and understanding of how that works. And that's what we teach. But most importantly, what I want people to realize is that you don't need any money to get started, you really don't need much. And that's why I came up with the one hour course where we teach you everything of like how to incorporate for cheap and the lowest tax state and how to start the Amazon business and get everything going while you're making that next plan.

1:06:38

So this is this is so brilliant, I don't want to talk a little bit about the economics about it. Because just from the job that I do in the mortgage business, I'm fascinated on how people make their money and the interplay of all this. But my whole knowledge of the Amazon resale space is we got a call one time from this guy, my old partner, Justin I, and the guy's like, Hey, man, I just struggled with this new Amazon reselling business I'm doing, what I'm basically doing is buying shipping, shipping containers full of cheap makeup from China. I'm you know, rebranding and taking really great pictures getting really great reviews. And, you know, I get the makeup from China for a buck and I sell it on, you know, Amazon as a designer brand for 20 bucks. And what happened was the reason he was calling us is because he found out through a realtor that we could do bank statement loans based on cash flow instead of using tax returns. And he just didn't have two years of corporate taxes. And we're like, Well, you know, you're looking to buy this, you know, million and a half dollar condo, like, you've only had the business for about seven months, like, is this really, I mean, just financially safe for you? And he's like, bro, he's like, I'm making $500,000 a month selling this fucking makeup. And my mind was blown. I was like, why am I working 40 hours a week in the mortgage business. And then it's kind of a fleeting thought. And I hadn't really thought about it until right now we're interviewing you. But I know his results will not be the norm. But But what is the economics look like? Like, are people you know, I use the special example. Are people buying a 57 cent spatula from China, and then reselling on Amazon for five bucks or what kind of margins are available in the Amazon reseller space?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:08:11

Yeah. So there's great margins if you pick the right product. So a lot of people are like, oh, is the Amazon game over? Can you still make money on Amazon? Absolutely. I think it's just starting. But the fact is that a lot of these ultra competitive categories, the stuff that all these like, mass market courses and stuff teach, those are really oversaturated. So there's so many people in those products that you can't really like see it. And you know, like the guy who's buying the 25 cent spatula and selling it for 20 bucks, that that's done. But there are other businesses. So there's other niche products where you can take, you know, a small piece of a medium sized pie and still do pretty well. Right? The stuff where you're taking a big piece of a big pie, that stuff is gone. But there's lots of great niches and we teach this in the course, that I tell people, the riches are in the niches. So the way to think about it, think about the stuff that you're into, and then narrow it down. So maybe you're into fishing. Okay, cool. Well, everyone's buying the cheap rods from China. But what about the little, you know, hooks that people are buying? Okay, well, now there's a certain type of fishing for swordfish that a lot of people are into in certain part of the country, and they use a platinum, you know, hook, okay, let's look into that. And then you look into that, and you're like, oh, there's people making $20,000 a month selling those things, and there's only three sellers. And there you go. So you got to break it down into these tiny micro niches. And you got to know how to do that. And we teach an algorithm for that. It's in the one hour course it's super easy, and you got to break it down into those niches. And you got to find things that fall into those categories is one way. I mean, another way is if you've got money, you can still go in and bully in these commoditized products, right so you can go sell toilet paper, for 50 cents less than the next guy who's willing to sell it and still make a pretty good living. I know people who do that who make, I know, one company that guy's making $48 million a year in gross revenue. But you know his margins so tight that you know, they take maybe two $3 million in profit or $48 million, right. But that's not what we teach, what we teach is creating these products that tell a better story, in niches that are meaningful. And by doing that, by telling that story better than other people, you don't really even have to have a better product, you just can speak that language of e commerce that we're talking about.

1:10:37

Nice and speaking that calmer language like I know, you're a big fan of Bezos, Amazon, like like you're a fanboy of Amazon kind of like I am. But I just know from I sell one product on Amazon, I sell my book, and the amount of fuckery on just selling the book where they're like, Well, yeah, there's the printing fee and the shipping fee, and that comes off the top for No, no, first the royalty comes off the top of you know, 40%, then there's the printing fee, the shipping fee this. So if I sell a book on Amazon for, you know, 1516 bucks, maybe I get $3.40. You know, it cost Amazon $8 to ship and print and they take their 40% off the top? What type of web because obviously Amazon most valuable company in the world? What type of margins are they taking from most of their sellers? As far as like, hey, do they? Do they just take a shipping and handling fee? Do they take 30% of the revenue off the top? Like what does Amazon usually charge? The the personal fulfiller?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:11:30

Yeah, so interestingly enough, they're probably making little or nothing from you, if not a lot, I think their print on demand business is probably running at a little bit of a loss, and they make it up somewhere else interest, it's not profitable to print one book, every time somebody wants one of yours. And to ship it out. It's just not Well, the good news is that only sold like seven. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, if you were to print them all in China, and buy 10s of 1000s and sell through their platform, you'd probably make 14 to 16 bucks. Now, interestingly enough, in contrast, if you were with a publisher, you would probably make $1 or less. Now we're talking about them paying you 300% more

1:12:09

right on your book, right? And there's no way I could ever find a publisher to print my book, which is all joking aside, you probably sold 10,000 copies, which is awesome. But for a real publisher, that's that's a joke. You know, so yes, Amazon is probably doing better for the self publishing world than any any other publisher out there could

Shaahin Cheyene  1:12:27

as a seller. So Amazon has. So this is the interesting for any of you guys who want to become Amazon sellers. So I get a lot of people I had one guy in my course great guy, he's a retired firefighter. Fantastic human being. And he wanted to you know, he retired after I don't know how many years on the on the force, you know, risked his life many times super brave guy. And he was like the chief chief firefighter in LA. And he decided, you know, he was going to retire and started an Amazon business. Well, turns out that he was packing and shipping things himself. And I looked at him and I said, buddy, why are you doing this? Why are you like, you know, Amazon does this for us? Yeah, I know. But you know, it might save some money doing it myself. And we looked at the cost of him, just sticking a label on something, taking it over to the post office and shipping it, and what Amazon would charge. And he would save 30 or 40%. If Amazon picked and packed it, put it in a box, shipped it because Amazon gets such large volume discounts. They've broken it down to the point of the post office works for them, they get a special discounted rate ups might deliver a certain portion of that route of the product, the post office will deliver another portion of the route, and then they have their drivers delivering it to your door. So they've broken it down into so many different steps that they're saving money every step of the way. And like we discussed with Amazon, you might be ordering Hey, that USB cable, but you know, all the kid needs diapers, they need detergent, all that stuff goes into a prime box and somebody delivers it to your door. So there's an economy of scale when it comes to using Amazon. So now you're selling something on Amazon, what's going to be way cheaper for you to use them to fulfill it, than to fulfill it yourself. In fact, we sell on Shopify at eBay, Etsy, Walmart, these other platforms, when permitted, because a lot of these platforms don't like Amazon shipping stuff. We use Amazon to ship to our customers when they're not even buying it on Amazon, because it is so cheap, and so efficient. These people are masters of efficiency. Bezos is a master of efficiency, the people he has working under him are masters of efficiency. And yeah, if you pick the wrong product, you're not going to have enough profit and enough margin because they take a commission and they take this fee and that fee, but the trick is to finding the right product in those niches that has the right margin. So one of the things we recommend to beginning sellers is try to find a product that's $20 or more and then one of the one of the rules Hand is you want to make sure you have at least a four to five time margin from what it sells for. So if you're buying it for if you're selling it for $20, you should be able to get that thing for $4 or less. And that's a good, basic blueprint to go by.

1:15:14

Got it. So going back to that USB example, if I'm selling some specialty dongle, and you know, setting up a podcast studio, I can tell you, I've spent hundreds of dollars in dongles and weird connections and this is going to connect to that shit, we need another dongle, I mean, between Guitar Center and Amazon, we've probably spent $5,000 in cords and dongles and all kinds of shit. But if I'm thinking this through, and I want to sell some specialty dongle for 20 bucks on Amazon, I need to be able to buy it presumably from China for three to four bucks each. And then I just shipped pallets or crates of this dongle to Amazon and they take care of everything. I just got the listing and sell it.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:15:50

Yeah, we teach you how to do that. So we teach you how to start what's called an Amazon FBA account. What is FBA? FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon, okay, and they will do that a nice man at the Amazon warehouse will take all your stuff, they'll inventories it using robots and technology and drones and AI and whatever it is that they use, and your stuff will go into inventory. When somebody buys it. It'll pick pack and ship. And we can be in Santa rini on a on a nice boat with the kids, you know, grilling shrimp, and people are buying our stuff and we don't have to think about shipping it it's the most glorious thing ever.

1:16:26

Right? Right. And you know, if you think back your journey from 15 to now I'm guessing you're in your 40s like 4746 Yeah, so so you've got now you know, 30 years of entrepreneurship under your belt? What what's been some of the biggest surprises

Shaahin Cheyene  1:16:42

biggest surprises in the world, big surprises for me either

1:16:45

way you want to go, but I'm just thinking your business, like you've seen a lot, you've processed a whole lot of money and a whole lot of transactions. you've dealt with all kinds of personalities. I mean, your book, we kind of just scratched the surface of it. But what's what's some of the stuff that's been surprising to you in this entrepreneurial journey?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:17:01

Yeah, I think you know, the thing that's, that's surprising to me is I think how little most people understand business, and how long how. So that that is what I would say is the first thing I think most people don't put the time most people get kind of swept into a business. And then somehow they're operating business, they've made a little bit of money. And maybe things are running, okay, but they're, they're kind of flying by the seat of their pants, like like I did when I started. And they just don't have the time to come up for air to learn how to operate the business the best. And so that oftentimes becomes a roadblock for them. The other thing that I learned is, you know, the the importance of distribution, we talked about that, how important it is to find the distribution and feed it what it needs, rather than finding the product. And, you know, hoping that people buy the product. And, or, importantly, I think I'm always pressed by the fact that I think the majority of people been well in want to do well. But they don't put enough time and energy into education and becoming updated. I talked to so many old balls, people who just don't like continually put the energy into updating themselves and what's going on. And the problem is if you don't do that, if you don't take the courses, watch the videos, read the books, and stay up to date, how quickly things are changing specially now, in this particular point in history, you will lose. So it is essential that you stay on top of specifically your area and understand that it's that it's always changing. I know now in Amazon that I know, you know, I'm considered one of the experts in the Amazon space and people come to us, they passed, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars a month to manage their Amazon businesses. And to do that for him. I still know just the tip of the iceberg as far as what these these guys are doing in these massive companies. And what I know today on Amazon doesn't hold true tomorrow. So I have a whole team we go to every conference there is we watch every video we buy every course. And we incorporate that into our business regularly. And that's why people you know, look at us and say, Wow, these guys are the best. Well, the fact is we just stay on top of our ship, and we show up. Yeah,

1:19:29

yeah, there's this interesting thing, like when you start out as an entrepreneur, you really don't know what you don't know. And then you become a victim of your own success where to your point, you're growing, you're growing, you don't have time to come up for air to find out what you don't know. So if you could go back and talk to yourself at you know 1525 35 and realizing back then you know now knowing what you didn't know what are some of the books you would recommend some of the courses maybe some of the questions you would ask yourself, like if you could go back in time 10 2030 years and give yourself advice be like man, man He's got to read this book. You've got it. You've got to know this piece of business. What are what are some of your big takeaways? And like your kind of Bibles in business?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:20:08

Sure. Yeah. I mean, my three favorite books of all time, I'd say Richard Koch is at 20. He just wrote a new book called unreasonable success. If you haven't read it, read it. It's phenomenal. And it talks about how people like Steve Jobs reached this unreasonable levels of success and had these transformative experiences a spectacular. I like David Allen getting things done. Yeah, story book, Canada productivity. spectacular. You can't really do better than that. And I like Cal Dinis work, which I think is amazing. As far as reading people I love the work of Paul Ekman emotions revealed his classic book on micro expressions and meeting people spectacular. And I think you know, Chris Voss is one of my heroes. He's a friend of mine and a hero who wrote you know, Chris Voss is the FBI negotiator he wrote the book never split the difference. And he's also written the introduction to billion how I became king of that through a book called mica,

1:21:05

I was gonna ask you about that because in my coaching program, and with any realtors I work with, I've probably sold 1000 copies of Chris Voss, his book for him, as I think never split. The difference is like the seminal work in sales and negotiations. I just think it's an amazing book. I've had the opportunity to meet him and be on stage with him once or twice. And yeah, tell us that story about getting to know him and having him write the foreword for your book, because that's a that's a big, that's a big win. That's a really great character to endorse your kind of your story.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:21:36

Yeah, Chris is a good friend. And I've known him for a while now we're part of a group here in LA called metal International. Metal is a networking group, it's and most of the time, and then there is a once a month co Ed that they do. And the concept is just men bringing other men up in fitness, and our wives love it because it helps men have a time to get together and gather as you know, they call it a heart center group for men, where we get together and we're all alphas high achievers, and we make each other better by connecting on a very deep level with business. So we've got a lot of great members like Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, who wrote a blurb for my book, Jay Samet, who wrote future proof view Keith barozzi, who had never eat alone. All these guys are friends and battle members. And that's how I met Chris.

1:22:33

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm very interested in having him in the podcast one day cuz I it's interesting that he's got this totally different life experiences and FBI hostage negotiator. And then he's like, it's just people, it's just negotiation, so very easy to transfer this over to business? And how would knowing some of his concepts earlier in your life, either accelerated your business or changed your business? Like, if you could go back, you know, not that we any of us really have any big regrets? because like you said, You got a beautiful wife, kids great life, what are some things that you might change about the last, you know, 30 years of doing business?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:23:07

Yeah, so we talked about that in the book. And Chris, who actually wrote the foreword in the book talks about how that applies to the book. But in general, I think, you know, his application of what he calls tactical empathy is pretty essential. I love you know, some of the hacks and tactics that he teaches and he uses like mirroring is a great one. where, you know, you say I couldn't possibly pay $50,000 and instead of arguing with the person you you look at them and go you couldn't possibly pay $50,000 to you know, they feel heard. You know, he actually has an awesome masterclass for anybody who wants to have you ever gotten through it? Yeah, it's like the best 100 bucks I've spent. It's the best masterclass out there. I think it's the number one masterclass. And he's just, you know, a spectacular human. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think, you know, it just comes down to, dude, you got to just fucking be a human being, it's so hard. There's so many times I want to take people and shake them, you know, we were in Arizona, not too long ago in Sedona, and I don't know how I got suckered into going one of these presentations. So like, look at one of these houses. And the salesperson was just reading a script. And I just wanted to shake the person I was like, dude, like, just chill out. Like, like, just be a person, like, just hang out with me build rapport, you build rapport by being a person, there's no book, I mean, all clearly they had read a book on building rapport, and they were like, how's the weather out where you're at? And your kids like to vacation a lot, don't they? And I was just like, I was just, you can smell it. Yeah, you can smell it. But the fact is, the people that are really good at fucking selling, they don't do any of that shit. totally true. You know, it's just about being a person. You're just a human, but the greatest sales happen when you ask questions. And I teach this to people all the time. You just ask questions and you become a decision architect. Another great book called nudge, which talks about this about how we can become architects of decisions. Like one of my favorite guys, this guy Darren Brown. Do you know this guy Darren Brown? No, I know the book nudge. Was he the author? Terrible? No. So Darren Brown is a mentalist. He's a British mentalist. Absolutely brilliant guy. If you ever watch his videos, he's the guy that goes out into Time Square with a bunch of cut up pieces of paper that look like money. And he ends up buying jewelry. He buys flat screen TVs, just by using persuasion, just by using percent he gives it all back. It's just a show. It's a show. It's a show. It's a tactic. But Darren Brown is amazing. He wrote a book too called Happy buy. It's not about this stuff. But so Darren's amazing, because he can kind of you know, nippy, late These aren't but when you see him, but the thing that makes them so relatable is one of County's principles. It's just likeability. He's like, just one of us. He's a bro. And when you sit with him, you know, he makes you feel like, you know, you become disarmed by the fact that you're just a normal person, and he's relatable. So if you want to sell shit, become relatable. I can just relate to me, like if the salesperson I mean, I don't know, if I would have bought whatever the fuck they were selling, but they would have been way closer to selling me whatever it was that they were selling, if they're just a human being like, just sit down, you know, like here, have a cigar, have a drink, like, let's just let's just talk, let's just be P, let's start with that. Yeah, and I talked about that in, you know, there's a great story. In my book, I talked about how I got flown out on a private jet to Tokyo. And it turns out that it was the Yakuza that was flying us out trying to try to get a hold of my company. And it's a crazy story. But you know, in those days, when I would travel to Asia, in Asian culture, you sit and you talk, maybe for two, maybe for three meetings, before the topic of business even comes up. They just want to get to know you. They want to just like what kind of person are you? What kind of human are you? Do you eat? Like I do? Do you break bread with us? Let's just relate as people. And that's something that's so missing today, that I think middle millennials really don't get right. Cuz they're swiping when they're dating, right? They're not approaching other human beings. They're just swiping everything is a fucking, you know, swipe, everything is a is a click. And so that concept of like, relating humanity is, is is a lost art. And you know, what Chris teaches in tactical empathy is really that, realizing that everything around you has been conveyed from one person to the next from another human to another human. And it goes full circle to what we were talking about in the beginning of this interview, there's lots of different ways to do it. Money is just the easiest way. There's other ways. And if you can learn how to do that you can hack life fairly easily.

1:27:45

This is this is so great. And any of my coaching clients that are listening to this are probably giggling right now, because I have this thing that I say all the time, I coach loan officers as well. And I can always tell when our coaching clients are, are getting ready to take the coaching seriously. And maybe that's a day and maybe that's a year in because they'll email me or they'll call me on the back. All right. I'm ready to make my calls. What's the script? And this is straight out of Chris's boss's book, Chris Voss his book, and I just say, hey, okay, here's the script. You just call the realtor. And you say, hey, Bill, this is Scott groves. Did I catch you at a bad time? And when their brain kind of short circuits, and then they're like, No, no, no, you caught me at a fine time what's going on? The script is you be a fucking human. And you just talk to them about what's going on in their life and their business and you try to make friends because people want to work with people they want to work with, right? They don't want some bullshit script. They don't want a sales pitch. They don't want your boiler room Filofax. They just want you to talk to him about a human being and if they like you enough to send you a lead, and then when you fuck up and they don't like you anymore, they won't send you a lead and then you go do the accusation audit, which is also in Chris's book, and then you try to repair the relationship and and I think the the $99 Instagram course or the you know, the masterclass that isn't Chris's class tries to teach everybody these pre packaged like sales things that just to your point, man, they feel gross, you can smell them coming a mile away. And I don't know why those continue to sell.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:29:07

Yeah, it's true. You know, interesting thing is, I was always a student, you know, of these guys. And you know, there was this book that came out, I think it was 90s, or in the early 2000s called the game this guy Neil Strauss. Totally remember. Yeah. Right. And it was all about, like, how to pick up girls and stuff. And I'm sure all that's been canceled out by canceled culture. But one of the, you know, kind of interesting things was a lot of these guys were teaching like, hey, so this is what you say. And this is the script, you say, to walk up to a girl and this and that. And that's sold, those kinds of things sold. Because people want to have that scripted solution. They want to have the Hey, do a B and C and you'll get but the fact is that it's it's not that it's the guy that just sits back and creates that environment and the women come To him, that guy is the guy making the killing. It's not the guy that's just reading off the scripts of like, you know, whatever those lines are however they're supposed to be said. Right? It's funny because, you know, oftentimes when I we traveled to Asia, one of the things I learned was that Asian women, particularly Japanese women, love to dance flamenco. Now flamenco is a type of Spanish dancing that involves clapping, and it's a very passionate style of dance. And I would watch these women and beautiful women, and they were meticulous in their movements. But when I would go to Spain to watch flamenco shows, and by the way, couldn't dance to save my life. I just enjoy watching the dance and you would drink the wine and you know, watch what then you can Think You Can Dance after about two bottles of wine after two bottles. Yeah, but I would never be so foolish. I know, there's a few skills that I should never have. So I realized that the Japanese women, I was like to something that's it's just not as enjoyable to watch in Japan, flamenco even though you know, yeah, it's not from here, whatever. But I would watch them doing hip hop dance or whatever. And that was fine. But the flamenco I just didn't get, and I was in Spain. And I walked up to, you know, one of the masters who was there doing the, you know, singing, dancing, and I explained to them, and I said, What is it that you guys are doing differently? You know, these guys are doing all the moves perfectly. And I've watched these Japanese women do perfectly when I was in Japan. And he said, buddy, it's not the perfection that makes us great. It's the imperfection. It's the mistakes. And I realized in that moment, that it was exactly what you and I are talking about. It's the humanity that we're seeing is the fact that they're fallible people. And even though this is their hometown, they're in Seville in Spain doing this dance. It's it's the fact that the guy's voice breaks in the middle of the song. It's the fact that the dancer does the move with passion and skips a step. Like, it's all that stuff that makes it great. But when it gets translated into a culture, that's, that's, that's a beautiful culture on its own. I love Japanese culture. I think Japanese food is probably one of the greatest food in the world, and people will argue with that. But you know, who's so bent on perfection, that the perfection stops it from being perfect. It's, it's, it's, it's that adage of, of, of trying so hard, that you lose the point.

1:32:22

Yeah, it definitely takes away I mean, the word that's coming to my mind is sexiness, because I'm very attracted to Hispanic women, my wife's Hispanic, and there's something into your point that in in perfection, there's something lovable and sexy about it, where it's like, I don't want to see a robot do a flamenco dance, like, like, I can get that on AI or something. I want to see a human being and to your point and all their fallibility. That's kind of what's its alluring or attractive.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:32:46

Absolutely, yeah. So if that means why people buy Italian cars, I mean, I've had almost every Italian you know, sports car supercar in the world and you know, all due respect to the Italians, you know, the Germans make more reliable cars. But the Italians you know, like one of the greatest cars of all time is the Lamborghini Khun Tosh, an absolutely gorgeous car that every kid in the 80s had hanging on his wall he probably had a you know, like a poster Christie Brinkley on on one thing, and this this red Lamborghini kutak with this jet when

1:33:15

I know exactly I can picture the poster from like my sixth grade, you know, birthday party that I got from grandma or something like one day, you're gonna have this car,

Shaahin Cheyene  1:33:23

and it's a spectacular car, probably one of the most unreliable pieces of equipment in the world. And when you look at it, it was full of imperfections. But it's that imperfection. You look at the Ferrari Testarossa another beautifully designed car. Remarkable right? It was in Miami Vice and all these films, and you look at it and the fucking door. Yeah, it's nearly impossible to get your hand inside the thing of the Testarossa to open it up because it's got these slits that look really like beautiful, but the thing is imperfect but it's in those imperfections in those weird like design flaws, where you get a thing of absolute beauty and our minds work a lot in the same way that's what that's what makes us human man we're all fucked up. We're all have these these flaws that make us you know, amazing and the continual striving for this perfection it's it's it's an illusion. It's what Alan Watts calls Maya it's a it's it's completely what causes us to be lost. Whereas you know if we can come back to what you teach and what I teach, which is just be a fucking human relate to people even on Amazon when you're writing the descriptions for your product. Write it like you're describing the product to your best friend. This is the best fucking USB you can't say fucking but this is the best darn USB thing in the world because you don't won't get stuck in your computer's drive and mess your stuff up as quickly as the other one. Great people buy it.

1:34:43

The best dongle ever the best dongle ever. I'm gonna say Chris is gonna I can see Chris's wheels over there. Attorneys like to start selling dongles on Amazon. He's like, he's become an expert in dongles and connective equipment. So I think I think I'm going to lose my audio engineer here to sell it on Amazon. I've got to ask just because I'm part of a dad's group and you're a dad, and, you know, we joked about your father's greatest ambition was for a son to be a lawyer. 30 years later, your dad pretty proud of you and excited that you didn't become a lawyer or a doctor.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:35:12

I think so I think my dad still to this day, you know, he's an old Persian man. And I think he struggles with understanding what I do, he still doesn't understand. So you know, he's a little bit like, what do you do? Again? You selling the fields? Are you selling the pills? Again? I don't understand what is it that you do, but it looks like you have a lot of money so good. You know, my, my dad's like that, you know, he's, he's old, he's stubborn. You know, he's got his way that he feels, you know, life should be and he's living by his own reality distortion field. I mean, I love the guy. And, you know, we've got a good relationship. And you know, he's a good grandfather to my son. And, you know, but you know, my dad's my dad's who my dad is, you know, and he has his own limitations. And he, you know, he never got past that. Right. fortunate. Right? What, and

1:36:06

what are you most proud of over the last 30 years? I mean, you've accomplished a lot. You've seen a lot of highs and lows. And obviously, you know, it's it's easy to point to your lovely wife and your son, but what what are you most proud of, at this point in your life that you're either working on or a portion of your journey that you're like, Man, I'm really glad that happened?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:36:23

Sure. Yeah. Well, of course, you know, being a family guy, family first always, is, you know, My son, and my wife, you know, family always comes first. And, you know, it's amazing having a kid you know, especially having a boy, because I can teach him all the things that I wish I knew when I was a kid. So that's, that's awesome. And being a dad, and I've been in, you know, dad's groups as well, which are incredibly inspirational and therapeutic for dads. So anybody who hasn't been in those, definitely see if you could find one and do men's work. And being a dads group, which is a fantastic place to be. I think, you know, telling my story, through my book that's coming out has been something that I've really been focused on, and I'm super proud of, you know, just on myself that I managed to, you know, put this book together. And you know, you think about it, you know, when you have a crazy ride like mine, you think, you know, one day, man, I'm gonna write a book about this. And one day, they're gonna make a movie about it. And you think that and I just imagine how many guys think that and it just never gets done. And I feel, you know, pretty accomplished that I I finally got this book out that's been in my head for, you know, since the 90s. And I'm super psyched to see what's going to happen with it. And I think, you know, people are enjoying it. I'm getting great feedback. I've got great people who've endorsed the book, like, you know, like I said, like Nolan Bushnell and Keith ferrazzi and Jay Samet, my buddy who wrote future proof you and Chris Voss wrote the intro. So I, you know, I'm, I'm hopeful, you know, it's, as a writer, you don't really make that much money, write the book. But you know, good thing is I don't need the money for that. So I'm excited to just get out and try to impact people and tell my story and inspire people to make money. But also, you know, my course, every time I see one of my students, you know, being able to quit their job, and be like, dude, now I'm selling full time on Amazon. And this is fucking great. I work two hours a day. And I'm making more than I did before. Like my wife, for example, took my course. That's awesome. But yeah, after we were together, she was a well known publicist, she worked right under Kofi Annan for the United Nations. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the most respected publicists in New York, she still is she still has her agency. And we had our kid and she was like, you know, I can't work for you know, government or semi government work anymore. She's like, I just can't do it. You know, cuz she's, she's big into social justice. And, you know, you know, trying to make the world a fairer place. And, you know, she's still into doing that work. She produced stuff she was she was the last person to interview Anthony Bourdain on on TV as she did the whole thing on Tara Angeles. And in Westwood. She was one of the last interviews that I should say Anthony Bourdain interviewed her. And so she's like, oh, man, you know, like, she wants to be a mother. But, you know, she, she would like to also have some work. So she started an Amazon company. And throughout even, you know, throughout having our kid, she works one two hours a day and she's created a business that's worth several millions of dollars. And she's the number one seller of, you know, craft crafty type products, very flowery, very female products. But she does amazing on Amazon. And she's got a whole team and we teach this to virtual assistants all over the world in Nicaragua and Venezuela, who manage her entire business. So she's pretty hands off. She can be an awesome Mom, you know, every night she cooks dinner and, and does all those amazing things. And still, she's running a great business. So she has helps out her folks and her family and her sister. And, you know, she's able to do all that. And you know, and she's doing phenomenally well. So that that inspires me, if I'm able to pass on some of this, you know, fairy dust that's, you know, come to me from all these years of entrepreneurship, and I can share that with other people and inspire them to do well, then, I think that's a pretty good place for me to be at this point in my life. And I like doing cool shit. So cool. Cool. Cars always

1:40:31

important. Yeah. Two questions I always like to end with because I can't believe we're already coming up on two hours. The first question is, what's the question I forgot to ask you. Because you know, everybody has such a crazy story in their life and so much experience, there's always some question I forget to ask the people want to get out there and story form. And then my second question, if you want to ponder on that first one is, you know, we're filming this in July of 2021. And hopefully, there's not a Delta variant and Atlanta variant and whatnot. But what are some, what are some things you're either looking forward to personally or professionally to getting back to now that some of the mass mandates are going away, and it's a little bit easier to travel and whatnot. So first, what's the question I forgot to ask you that we should ask? And then what are you looking forward to getting back to right now? And 2021?

Shaahin Cheyene  1:41:14

Yeah, I think okay, so a lot of people like to ask me what it's like when you make your first million. And remember, I made $2 billion in revenue. So the first million is really interesting. And I'll tell you why. The reason why is because if you're doing it right, I won't even notice that it happened, the train is just going through another stop. And that's one of the craziest things. I didn't even notice when I had made my first million. It's not like I stopped and there was some ticker tape parade and like, yeah, we made a million bucks, it was just one stop through a lot of train stops a train station far away. So that's an amazing thing. You know, somebody said that, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And I think that's, that's really true. So if something doesn't feel right, don't do it. Look for something that does feel right to you. And there's a lot of amazing opportunities out there. But at the end of the day, I really feel that you got to follow your gut. But at the same time, gotta verify. So you got to make sure that you have checks and balances. So that way you're really trusting is your gut, and not your insecurity. And

1:42:29

break that down a little more, because I think that's really, I think that's really like some old Sage wise knowledge there, like trust your gut, but not your insecurity, because I've fallen that before where I'm like, Oh, this is the right thing to do. You know, I'm puffing myself up. But it was really my insecurities taking over. So maybe you can expand on that a little bit.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:42:46

Yeah, I had a good friend, a guy named stuart wilde. And he was an author in the 1980s. As one of the founders of the New Age movement, he taught people like Deepak Chopra, and Wayne Dyer, and all these guys, you know, he was, you know, he was oftentimes talking to Tony Robbins. And a lot of these guys, he was one of the early early guys and the human potential personal development move. And one of the things Stuart was he was definitely a degenerate Gambler, as well. So we would often go out and gamble in different places and like to drink and he like to do all the bad things that you're not supposed to do when you're self help guru. And I remember him telling me, you know, when we were a casino, so we would count cards, oftentimes playing blackjack, and we did incredibly well doing that back in the days when I was, I think, a lot easier to do that kind of thing. And he would always teach me, you know, play your hunch, it'll have your lunch. And that was kind of his motto. And this is coming from somebody who really was like, I mean, dude, I don't really believe so much in this stuff. But really verging on like somebody who was as close to psychic as I think anybody could get, like, a guy that had a real bulletproof fucking intuition. Like, I don't know how he did it, but he would just know shit. And I'd be like, yeah, you know, I'm a science based guy. And like, you know, I don't really fuck there's, there's an explanation for fucking everything. science can explain pretty much everything. And there's some things that we just don't fucking know. And outside of that, I don't think there's much, but there would be times where he would just like no shit, where I'd be like, How did he know that? And it was just, you know, I think over the years, he developed like this intuition, this gut sense that he had a way of checking it against his intuition. So I think oftentimes, you know, there's that inner voice that we have, and that inner voice will tell us something. We all have that inner voice, that inner voice tells us all kinds of shit. So how do you know when to believe that inner voice? It's that quality, that trait that you can develop? Like in jujitsu, for example. Sometimes you might not be at a mastery level. You might not be at a brown belt or a black belt level, but there's a guy on top of you and he's trying to strangle you Trying to fucking choke you out however he's doing. You might not know the counter to that, but you follow your gut and you get out of it. How did you know that? Maybe you saw it and you paid attention, you saw somebody else doing it. And there's something about you that remember that. And in that moment, in that moment of survival, where your conscious mind was quieted, and your true intuition came into play, and you were able to execute on that, so I can, I can leave you with that. So my friend Wayne boss, who's Australian businessman, he's a business mogul, I think he's a billionaire. He claims he's not he says, he's just a millionaire genius guy, he comes into troubled companies, buys them for, you know, song and dance, turns them around into mega companies, and then sells them for hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. He's a friend and a mentor of mine, he teaches us three things. He says that, if you want to win, you got to have three things, knowledge, courage, and action. And I have this outlined in my book. So knowledge is the information that you need. How do you get knowledge, you can buy knowledge, you can borrow knowledge, you can steal knowledge, you can rent knowledge, but you got to have the knowledge without it. It's difficult to take that first step. So if I said, Hey, Scott, mean, you go jump out of the plane tonight, and you know, the valley right there. You'd like what the fuck, I've got kids. I don't like bad idea. It's bad idea. We wouldn't do it. But if mean, you had practiced for six months in Study with the Best I was lucky as a navy seal the best of the best. Here's the best equipment. I mean, you've watched all the videos, we've taken the courses, we've done the practice things, right. And I was like, Scott, now's the time, let's go. But you'd be like, dude, I'm packed, ready to go. Let's fuckin hit it. Why? Because you have the knowledge. That's the only difference, the only different differentiator, the knowledge then gives you courage, which is what we need. Because we're all lacking courage, because we don't have the knowledge. Once you have the knowledge, it gives you the courage. And then the third element, which is what Nothing happens without, and I'm sure you teach this to your coaching clients as well, is action. Gotta take the action. Nothing in this world happens without action. So knowledge, courage, action. If you have those three things, there's no act that you can't conquer, there's no task that you can't do. There's no adversity that you can overcome. So good.

1:47:24

Yeah, I remember talking to a buddy of mine, who had all the knowledge in the world. And that should have led to courage. But there was some disconnect, where he could just never take the action. And he was a great human being. And luckily, he made a lot of money in another avenue. But as a loan officer, I was always thinking of them. I was like, hey, Tony, I'm like, you gotta be like 20%, dumber, or 20% smarter. And you would be like the number one loan guy in the world, because you've got all the knowledge, you've got all the chops, but there was some insecurity, right, instead of just trusting his gut and picking up the phone call or picking up the phone and making the calls and getting in touch with these realtors who would have won over instantly because of how smart he was and how talented he was as a loan officer. There was some insecurity there that stopped him from making the calls. And then he never took the action. And I'm so glad he made a ton of money in another realm. And he's retired now. But I just remember looking at him, like, there's something about you like you got to be 20% dumber, or smarter, because you're just not following through on the action part. Because if you did, you would crush me in production, like I wouldn't have a chance because he was such a bright guy. And so it's, it's interesting that if you're missing one of those three components, or you let the insecurity settle in, like you're, you're in a world of hurt.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:48:33

Yeah, that's, that's absolutely right. And your your, they said, that was your first question. And what was your last things you're looking forward to getting back to? Yeah, and so I, you know, like most people, I think, you know, COVID was great for business, you know, super unfortunate and sad that, you know, we lost a lot of lives and got hurt, and seems like, we might not even be fully out of it now. Right parts of the world are still going on, shut down. I think, you know, that there are a lot of lessons learned. So I think it's not without its advantages, even though you know, again, it was a great tragedy, and I don't want to put anything beyond that. I know, a lot of people lost people. And that's all, you know, sad and tragic. was good for a lot of businesses, though. You know, a lot of businesses thrived. There was some businesses that didn't make it. But, you know, in truth, a lot of those businesses weren't going to make it anyway, somewhere, but a lot weren't. A lot of them were on their way out anyway. And I think ko COVID definitely taught us a lot of lessons. And you know, I think, look, moving forward, I'm looking forward to traveling with my family again. That's one of the most important things in our lives, you know, and I agreed with my wife, you know, when my kid was born, we said, Hey, you know, no matter what, we're going to pack this kid up when he's a little baby in a backpack, and we're going to go we're going to go to the pyramids in Mexico. We're going to build a pyramids in Egypt. We're going to go to Santa rini. It doesn't matter where we're going to go. We're taking them with us and we're going traveling because back to where we We're talking about as far as great goes, I think, you know, martial arts, like we said is super important. As far as, you know, being able to build discipline, but travel also traveled does something where it just opens you up gives you transformative experience seeing how other people live, you know, going to India and you see a million rickshaws buzzing past and people crawling on the street and just the madness of those kinds of worlds or going to Thailand and watching elephants and monkeys. And you know, eating that amazing food and just being exposed to these different cultures. There's something in travel that opens something up in us where, you know, I know that you've done some traveling, and I've traveled all over the world, when you meet another traveler that's been to one of these places that you've been to, it's like you're kindred spirits, you can talk totally, you're completely connected with because they've had that same transformative experience that, Pat, so I think really, you know, these are some of the essential things but most most mostly for me, you know, one of the things I was really looking forward to getting back to is my workouts and getting back on the mats in the dojo, getting back to jujitsu, which has brought so much to my life, and also traveling with my family. But I think that's so important. That's awesome,

1:51:10

man. So I do, I feel like there's another two hours we could talk about in the book. So when somebody options, the right to the book into a movie, I want to have you back and really dive in even deeper into the book and hear more about the story because there's five stories come to the top of my head that I'm like, Oh, we should have got to that we should have got to that because there's there's just good stuff from your during the 90s. But, man Shaahin I really appreciate you being here being on the podcast. Hopefully we can have you back again soon. And when I write my next book, I'll have you do the foreword and Chris do the the what's the extra the foreword and the profess the preface? Yeah, so I'll have Chris read the preface, and you do the foreword. But hey, man, thanks for being on it means a lot to me.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:51:49

Yeah, thanks, man. I'm honored to be on.

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