Path of an Entrepreneur is not the Path of Certainty w/ Elena Paweta

In this episode, Shaahin shares many tips on how he started his company, which has surpassed the billion-dollar mark in revenue. He also emphasizes that if you are willing to go to any length to build your company, anything is possible. Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, whose businesses began in garages but grew to become multibillionaires. Dr Elena Paweta has been coaching top speakers who achieved over 1 million views of their talks. Now, she is lecturing at leading business schools and working with managers and CEOs on their business presentations.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, world, shaahin, amazon, elena, pill, skydiving, book, sell, business, money, entrepreneur, managed, path, knowledge, jeff bezos, illegal drug, create, left, criminal activity

SPEAKERS

Shaahin Cheyene, Intro, Elena Paweta

Intro  00:00

You're now listening to Hack & Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene, and his co-host Bart Baggett, where we discuss hacking your way to success and the unconventional paths to unreasonable success with the people who've been there. And now the author of Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult. Shaahin Cheyene.

Elena Paweta  00:26

Welcome, everyone to the next episode of Ideas And Leaders Podcast. Today, I have a great guest. It is Shaahin Cheyene is He's the world's leading Amazon industry expert. He's the creator of herbal ecstasy. They're not tropic pill that sparked the 100% legal smart drug movement. He was also an early innovator in the vaping world. And I'm so excited to speak with this inspiring serial entrepreneur today. Hi, Shaahin, great to have you on the podcast. Hi, Elena.

Shaahin Cheyene  01:03

How are you?

Elena Paweta  01:06

Great. Great. So I, it is so great to have you here because a lot of Intrapreneurs and people who want to become intrapreneurs are listening to us. And it would be so inspiring to hear a couple of words from you. So can you tell us about your story? How did you start in the first place? And when did you start as an intrapreneur?

Shaahin Cheyene  01:28

Great question. So I started actually, in the early 80s, the 1980s, we left Iran, me my family left Iran in the 1970s. And we came to the United States with basically just the clothes on our backs. And we came to the United States as refugees, political refugees. And my folks were pretty poor. They worked in very simple types of jobs. My dad worked at a pizza store, he worked at a dry cleaners, nothing fancy there. And eventually, I realized that I wanted more in life. So I left home when I was 15. And went out into the world to seek my fame and fortune. And I came across a mentor, somebody who showed me the ways of the world a little bit. And I got involved in the electronic music scene at the time, the rave scene, which was really going nuts in the 1990s. And I started looking around now mind you at this time I left home, I did not have anywhere to sleep, I did not have any money. I had no friends, no family, nothing. I left everything behind, and went out into the world to really seek my fame and fortune. By a certain point, I started hanging around these clubs, these underground parties, and I realized that the only people who were making the money war, the people who are dealing the drugs, but I remembered from when I was a kid, that it was not a good idea for me to be getting involved in any type of criminal activity, not for any specific moral reason. But more so just because I was really bad at it. I was very good at making money. But anytime I engaged in any kind of criminal enterprise as a child, I would get busted every time every time so I would spend a lot of the time in the principal's office. Now, I don't know how that goes in. In Russia. You're originally from Russia, right, Elena?

Elena Paweta  03:41

Yes, yes. Originally from Russia. Yeah, we go to Panama, he barosky When you mio Kenya, or Russia or so.

Shaahin Cheyene  03:49

So I love the Russian language. By the way, it's a fascinating language and a very difficult one to learn by watching YouTube videos.

Elena Paweta  04:00

Absolutely. So

Shaahin Cheyene  04:03

if I ended up spending a lot of time in the principal's office and what we call detention and after school, and we would just do more criminal activities there and then get more trouble. So it was a constant cycle. So by the time I was 15, I was like, Man, I don't know much. I'm not that smart. But what I do know is that I'm not good at criminal activity. So I know you're an economics professor as well. So just the economics of it didn't make sense to me. And I decided, hey, what's the biggest drug that they're selling now was ecstasy. There was no supply in the marketplace. And there was great demand. There was very little supply, I should say. So I thought to myself, Man, if I could come up with a formula that was legal, and that was safe, that replicated the effects of it, that I can make a lot of money. And that's what I did. I managed to get myself a girlfriend at that. A time I was broke, her dad was a superintendent of some school district. So he would leave early in the morning. And I managed to convince her to when he would leave through the front door to take me in through the back door or a back window. And I would be in her kitchen, making prototypes of my pills. And then we would give it to all the all the teenagers in the in the neighborhood to test. And I tested and tested and tested until one day, I got a formula that worked. It felt great, it was safe. It did what it was supposed to do. And what happened was, was that I went to the clubs, and I walked up to one of the scariest drug dealers at the time, and I said, Hey, you're going to sell this and he said, Hey, man, I'm gonna kill you. Are you? Are you a policeman? Are you a cop? What are you and I said, Hey, I'm not I'm not looking at me. I'm just a kid. And he took the pills. And he said, Look, if you're messing with me, I'm going to kill you. And I believed every word that came out of that man's mouth. And I remember it being the longest two hours of my life just waiting there. Like sweat pouring off my head like bullets just standing there going, oh my god, this guy is gonna 100% Kill me if anything goes wrong. And it turns out he two hours later he calls me motions me forward. Now this is a big scary guy tattoos on his face. Not the friendliest looking character in his body guards motion me, He motions I come. And he looks at me and he's kind of feeling me out. And I don't know if this guy's gonna kill me if he's gonna pay me what's going to happen? And he pays me and he says, kid, when can you get me more. And that was the big breakthrough moment. So it went from that one guy to 10 guys to 1000 guys to 10,000 Guys, and pretty soon all the illegal drug dealers in the United States, Europe, Asia, are selling my pills instead of illegal drugs. And a lot of them are becoming legitimate sized. I know that you are a economics, PhD. So a very interesting book on this topic. The guy didn't mention me he should have in the book. But he did not call Narco economics, where they talk about the economies and the economy scales of drug trafficking. And it's fascinating he, he equates the the people who are at the top to like the CEOs of big companies, and the people who are at the bottom, the street dealers of drugs as being like the workers at McDonald's, you know, so they get very low pay very high risk. But of course, the person at the top has moderate risk, but very high pay. So I managed to legitimize a lot of these guys. And then we went legitimate, we went brick and mortar, we went to all the big stores, record stores, bookstores all over the world. And lunch, I was a teenager, I'll show you that. There's a covered in my book. This my book that just came out called billion how I became king of the thrill pal cult. And it's available on Amazon, audible wherever books are found. But I was a long haired teenager, who was running a company that was now making millions of dollars, I had a collection of exotic cars, I had the boats, I had the you know, flying on private planes everywhere. Fancy vacations, trips all over the world. I had 200 employees. And I remember coming into my office one day, and getting the news that we had broken a billion dollars in revenue. Atlanta, this is pre internet, pre Facebook, pre

Elena Paweta  08:45

all of those things. Wow, that's amazing.

Shaahin Cheyene  08:48

I had broken a billion dollars. And I remember my first thought is Oh shit, does this mean I have to get an accountant. And my second thought was, I don't know how much a billion dollars is I literally did not know that 1000 million 100 million I did not know. So it was a funny time. But I managed to get a lot of press and publicity and the product kept making millions of dollars. And I learned very quickly I did manage to hire an accountant. And I learned very quickly that accountants and this might be interesting for you if you want to take a note of this. They're not the guys who count the money in duffel bags that are piled in your in your office. accountants don't do that. So I learned that the hard way. Apparently they liked crunching numbers. And that was basically the start of a crazy time. From there. I went on to inventing digital vaporization the vapor which is the forerunner of all of today's vaporizer technology. And from there I started looking at this little guy who's a little strange, little nerdy, bald guy. His name is Jeff Bezos and I looked at this platform that he was building. And it occurred to me that this is an interesting guy. Now this is back in the time where you could get Jeff Bezos on the phone. You could get Jeff Bezos to return an email. And he was very accessible back in those days. And so we heard through the grapevine that Jeff was opening up the Amazon platform to third party sellers. What that means is people like yourself and me, could sell anything we wanted to, on their platform, similar to eBay, not just books, not CDs, not DVDs. But anything we wanted to. So what happened was, I had a nootropic Brain Pill called the accelerometer, which is still available on Amazon great pill, it was very expensive, it was about $120. In those days, now, it's a lot less. And I thought, Man, I'd love to sell this, let me put it up, and I put it up, I went to sleep took me 15 minutes back in those days didn't think much. Woke up to 1000s of orders at $120 apiece, it was incredible. So I remember thinking to myself, Wow, man, this is really something insane. And I'm going to have to really make something of this. And so I started looking more at Bezos, I started seeing that this was a smart guy. This was not just a Silicon Valley nerd, this guy was a genius. And what he was doing is taking money from Wall Street cheap money, and putting it into Silicon Valley to build this ecommerce business. And what the narrow, short term people would believe, is that he's losing money. But the fact is, he's gaining customers. And he's gaining them faster than any other company. I saw that and I decided, hey, I'm putting all my eggs in the Amazon basket. And I decided to become one of the world's leading Amazon experts. And that's what I've done for the last 12 years, is create great products. And now I have a program where we coach people, and we train people how to sell on the Amazon platform. For anybody listening to your podcast, if they use the code leaders. It's normally 200 bucks, I'll give it to them absolutely. For free, no credit card, no obligation. My goal now in life is to inspire people to start these businesses and create this predictable recurring revenue stream that you can do anybody can do from anywhere in the world on Amazon.

Elena Paweta  12:32

Oh, yeah, her story is so inspiring. And I think that we can learn a lot from you. So I think that a lot of young entrepreneurs who just start their businesses, inspired by people like you, or Jeff Bezos, and they think they are hoping for this rags to riches path, that okay, I need to start something and then tomorrow, I will be a billionaire. But do you think that it is possible? Or do you think that we can do anything to? To go at least a bit closer to this path? Right now?

Shaahin Cheyene  13:15

Yeah. So you have possible Yeah, plausible, and you have likely three different levels, anything is possible, lesser people, then you or I have made more money than you and I and the world always surprises me with what's possible. Now, with that said, this is what I'm going to say. It's unlikely that you're going to work four hours a week and become wealthy, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to go out there and to create an impact in the world and create a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say, in the Walter Isaacson biography, to create a dent in the universe. If you are not hustling, if you do not have grip, if you're not willing to sleep on the factory floor like I did, like Elon Musk does, if you're not willing to do whatever it takes in order to take that company, that product, that vision that you have, and turn it into something impactful. That's really what the truth is. And but we live in a world of distraction. We live in a world where internet gurus and meme makers hang shiny things in front of our faces, to try to grab five seconds of our attention. And in that effort, they rob us. They robbed us of the discomfort of trying something and failing by selling us the false vision that hey, All we got to do is to take this course or to buy whatever it is this guy selling and we'll be okay. And what happens is that people are just as culpable as all the fake gurus and all the people out there selling all that bullshit, because they don't necessarily want to do that work. So it's easier for them more convenient for them to be naive. And they can say, well, I bought this guy's program, I bought these guys programs. And you know what? It didn't work for me. So I guess all that's bullshit. And this doesn't really work, and you just have to get lucky. Well, it's bullshit. People ask me all the time, I have an Amazon program and people ask me does it work? And my answer is always it works. If you work it, you have to go out there and put in the time, the energy, the hours, no matter what you do, you've got to put that effort. And it's not going to come super easy. When you're just starting up, you have to build the foundation. And then as you get going, you can build up to be a lifestyle business. So Amazon ecommerce platforms like Amazon, and eBay and Etsy, all these new generation of E commerce giants are paving the way for entrepreneurs and leaders to have these businesses that can create these streams of recurring revenue.

Elena Paweta  16:29

Yes, yes, I really love that. You say that we have to work actually, we have to do the work. Very often, when, as I mentioned, I have this TEDx coaching program that I help people to become TEDx speakers. And they very often they asked me, so can you guarantee that I become a TEDx speaker. And I say that if you don't do the work, if you don't prepare, if you don't have your speech, if you don't work on your ideas, don't come to Kochi goals, then I cannot guarantee 100%. Right. So we I think that people are looking for those done for you solutions, and think that this path is so easy only if we enroll in some program, if we start. Or for example, if we start intrapreneurial path, then we'll become millionaires. So what would you recommend to new entrepreneurs, beginners, who are just in the beginning of their path? And if we don't want to scare them, you know, that they need to sleep on the floor and hassle so much, but what, what are the main things that we need to focus on? What are the main things that need to be done, in your opinion, after many years of being an entrepreneur that we need to take care of, so that it is somehow easier for them this way is easier?

Shaahin Cheyene  18:03

Sure. So I'll give you a plan. You know, again, based on my book, if you guys want to follow up, there's more of that information in my book, and I'll share that with you, I've got a three point plan that I'll share with you as we close out. But I think you have to get uncomfortable, I think you have to get a little bit scared. Because the path of an entrepreneur is not the path of certainty. Everybody wants comfort and guarantees and certainty. That doesn't work. Not in the life of an entrepreneur. With that said, I'll give you my three step formula for my book billion. And you can use this framework. It's a framework that was taught to me by a friend of mine, Wayne boss, who's a genius businessman who buys troubled companies and turns them for many times what they they sell for, and he's made millions doing that process. And it's this knowledge, courage, and action. Why is that important? Knowledge. If we want to do something, we want to get involved in a business, a new venture, a new product or a service gotta sell a product or service. There's really no other option unless you get into academia. You need knowledge. Now, you can buy knowledge. You can borrow knowledge, you can rent knowledge, you can steal knowledge, but you need the knowledge. If we knew how to do something, and we had that information. We would have no problem doing it. So what does knowledge give us knowledge gives us courage. If you know if I say hey, Elena, I'm coming out to Poland right now mean you were going to go skydiving. You say Shaahin when I say Elena, we're going to war going out, you wouldn't be very happy you'd say what I you know, you know, maybe you maybe you do skydive, but

Elena Paweta  20:06

maybe you'd say I definitely would not be happy now you wouldn't

Shaahin Cheyene  20:09

be happy about doing that. Now, if I said Alana me and you, we're gonna take a month off and learn everything about skydiving and I've got the best skydiving instructors in the world, their Navy SEALs, they're going to teach us how to skydive. And so I get the Navy SEAL instructors, they're teaching us we become pros, we do the practice, we know the equipment, we know all that. And then I call you up and say Atlanta, let's go skydiving. You say great, what time let's go. Because you have the knowledge, the knowledge gives you the courage. And the action is the execution. Nothing is possible without execution. That's the jumping out of the plane. That's the taking the first step on your leadership on your entrepreneurial journey is action. Nothing happens without action. I tell my students people on my Amazon FBA mastery course. I tell them go out there and fail. And they say what what do you what do you mean, we're not here to fail? I said, yeah, go out there and try to fail, be smart about it. Use all the knowledge you have in your grasp. But go out there and try to fail. Because if you try to fail, if you fail, you succeed. And if you succeed, you succeed. And he gives you the freedom to get past perfection paralysis, because you no longer are. He's starting entrepreneur, going out there trying to make everything so perfect. And making sure that the stickers just right and that the thing is just this way to learn. months later that nobody gave a shit. Nobody cared about any of that stuff. All people cared about was that you were $1 cheaper, or all people cared about was that you made it in green, or all people cared about was that it was for women when everybody else's was for men. We don't know what we don't know. So it's important to remember, knowledge, courage, action. And again, I have those lessons in my book billion how I became king of the throat pal called, we also host a podcast, which we're going to be sharing this video on as well, Elena, that's going to be the hack and Grow Rich podcast people can like and subscribe to the podcast below. If you guys are listening to this on hack and Grow Rich, make sure to like and subscribe. Let us know what you think. And we'll include links to Elena's podcast as well. Elena, where can people find you if they want to learn more about you in the work that you're doing?

Elena Paweta  22:45

Yeah, so you can go and listen to ideas and leaders podcast and also you can go to my website and then a polka.com and to my social media, so of course your listeners are invited as well.

Shaahin Cheyene  23:01

Great, I love it. I love it. And for anybody who's interested, I'm going to give out my email. If you guys want to check out my Amazon mastery course where we teach you how to make predictable recurring revenue on the Amazon platform. Day after day start an Amazon business it will cost us zero. Reach out to me directly by email, my email is darkzess@gmail.com Or go to FBASeller. Whoops FBAsellercourse.com So just go to FBAsellercourse.com. And reach out to me there you can get me on ShaahinCheyene.com And I'll look forward to to hearing from you guys if I can help support you in any way.

Elena Paweta  23:51

Perfect, perfect. I will put all the links to your to your contact information under the episode as well so that our listeners can contact you. Thank you so much again, for the inspiration for for inspiring young intrapreneurs. In listening to us, we will remember this knowledge, courage and action. This is so important to not be scared to have this courage not being afraid to fail again and again and to start all over again. Thank you. Thank you Shaahin. Do you have any final words that you want to share with our listeners?

Shaahin Cheyene  24:34

No, not at all. It just I think in general, you made a good point about not scaring people and I sometimes tend to do that. Just because I want people to understand that. Business is war. Businesses battle you are not going into a friendly environment with all friendly adversaries that love you and will give you a second place trophy if you don't make it into first place. It's, it's the savanna in Africa, there are predators and there's prey. And I teach my students that you have to be alert, and you have to be sharp, and you have to be ready to pounce when an opportunity presents itself. So with that said, I just want to make clear that I think one of the most important things that you could do as an entrepreneur is understand that it's all a big game and to have fun.

Elena Paweta  25:27

Have fun. Yes, this is a great point to finish our interview. Thank you so much again for being on ideas and leaders podcast

Shaahin Cheyene  25:35

spicy about that soon. You

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Dr Elena Paweta Links:

https://elenapaweta.com

https://www.facebook.com/DrElenaPaweta

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Grab a copy if both of Bart’s latest books, a totally free gift to listeners.

Success Secrets of the Rich and Happy

https://getbartsbook.com/free

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Social Media Links

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Audio Podcast, and More...

https://www.shaahincheyenne.com/hack-and-grow-rich-podcast

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About - Shaahin Cheyene -

Hi, my name is Shaahin Cheyene and I help individuals and owners transform average sales into extraordinary income using my predictable sales system that never fails. Whether you have zero online sales, want to start on Amazon, or have products that just need a push, I can show you how to do it. If you're interested in getting more sales with predictability, watch my FREE CASE STUDY Now!

https://freecasestudy.fbasellercourse.com/home-amazon-mastery

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