Biggest Leadership Lessons
w/ Jeff Nischwitz and Craig Matthews

Description:

Jeff Nischwitz and Craig Matthews, hosts of Leadership Junkies interviews Shaahin Cheyene where they explore leadership, business and personal growth.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, product, amazon, companies, sell, Shaahin, money, big, create, book, business, called, soap, opportunities, stores, buy, story, started, hear, changed

SPEAKERS

Craig Mathews, Shaahin Cheyene, Jeff Nischwitz

Craig Mathews  00:00

All right. Okay. Yeah, good to go.

Jeff Nischwitz  00:07

We are excited to be back here today for what is truly going to be unique conversation, especially for us because we have a very unique guest today we have Shaahin Cheyene in with us. And he I love this thing. He's been called many things in his life, including the Willy Wonka of Generation X. As a guy that loves Willy Wonka, I want to find out more about that. It's right. But his favorite one is this. He's the world's leading Amazon industry expert. Now you've probably heard and read a lot of people claiming that in fact, in the last week, you probably got 35 people on LinkedIn telling you that that is who they are. But do they have the credit to bring to the table? I'm going to tell you no, because she because she Nene is the guy. In fact, his his serial entrepreneur career has spanned over 30 years, earning over $350 million annually. In fact, here's what we're gonna ask about later, that one point in his career, he generated a billion dollars in revenue before it was the age of 18. Now, I know a bunch of you did that as well. So you probably want notes here. But we've got somebody who not only knows about entrepreneurship, but knows about growth and acceleration. And I'm going to guess based upon his bio, thinking differently. So welcome Shaahin to a conversation about

Shaahin Cheyene  01:25

growth. Thanks, Jeff. And Craig, honored to be on guys. Love the show.

Jeff Nischwitz  01:30

Thanks. Glad to have you back. Give everybody a little bit of the backstory, Shane's

Shaahin Cheyene  01:35

started in Iran where I was born. And we moved to the United States as immigrants. And I quickly learned, whereas in Iran, we were solid middle class, we were poor. When we arrived in the United States and my folks had to work pretty hard jobs my mom was was a housewife, but my father would work at a pizza store. And then he'd work at a dry cleaners just trying to make ends meet. We managed to buy a home in an area that was up and coming but not affluent, they managed to beg, borrow and do whatever they needed to do to get some cash together. And that neighborhood came up. And as it came up, I saw that there was wealth all around me. And I started to think, man, I would like to capture some of this wealth, how do I do it? My folks, being a typical immigrant family had no path to that, you know, it's outside of go become a doctor, that is the best way a good Jewish doctor, you can do anything. That was their big line. And I very quickly learned that that was not a path for me, which led me to leaving home at 15. And getting into the electronic music scene. Now, this was a burgeoning scene in the 1990s, with 10s of 1000s of people going to these parties, and partaking in all kinds of substances, particularly one drug called ecstasy. Now, in that time, there was an issue, we were also kind of at the tail end of the Reaganomics, the trickle down economics, that just say no culture was, was in full effect. And the government actually was putting a pretty big effort to stop the flow of drugs. I was in the right place at the right time, as the supply had completely dried out, the demand had only increased. And I noticed that vulnerability in the marketplace. As a young teenager, I never did drugs, I didn't understand drugs. I didn't have time for drugs. But I decided that I was going to create a legal alternative, which I did successfully, somehow some way. And I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have. I know there's there's a lot I'm giving you the abbreviated story. For anyone who's interested. My book just dropped called billion how I became king of the throw pill cult, if you guys want to hear the full story, it's on Audible and Amazon and all those places. But what happened after that was one of the largest movements to natural alternatives. I think that has ever been in history. I don't think anybody had ever done that. So I invented this supplement that took the place of this illegal drug and I started enlisting the drug dealers at the clubs to become my distribution. I saw it as where most people saw them as criminals that were good for nothing. And soon to be in jail. I saw them as a valid distribution channel for something else. And I managed to convince them that hey, you guys are going to go to jail. You don't have any supply. Nothing good is going to come out of this sell my stuff. And it went from one guy to 10 guys to 10,000 Guys, and we were all over the world until one day. Now remember, I was at this time I had left home I had no money. Before I started my company. I did this all from nothing. I was sleeping in the backseat of an abandoned Lincoln Continental I was sleeping in abandoned buildings. Anywhere I could lay my head was where I was where I was sleeping. I was eating relish and ketchup from hotdog stands and hanging out at the community college because that's, that's where I would get free food. And fast forward six months later, you know, a little bit older. But I've got millions of dollars in revenue collection of exotic cars, duffel bags just piled up with cash. And the news breaks that we had surpassed a billion dollars in revenue. Now, at this time, I recall very clearly the day where I went into my office, I have been sleeping maybe one two hours a day, I'd sleep on the factory floor in the office floor, I'd employed about 200 employees. I woke up with a stiff neck because I had fallen asleep. Sort of on the edge of the passenger side of a new Lamborghini. Not a good look to draw on Lamborghinis, particularly of that era. I don't I don't even think I would take the key out of the car. That's how little I cared. I would just park the car in the in the little courtyard of the Venice office building that we had. And I'd go upstairs and I remember going upstairs, everybody was Ghostface Sam Donaldson, the great Nightline newscaster was there waiting to interview me, a Newsweek London observer. Everybody was there we were the thing. And from there went to 30,000 stores. Larry Flynt was distributing it through all the sex stores. We were selling to Playboy, penthouse, all those different channels were selling our product. And we were also in the electronic music scene, we went on tour with Lollapalooza, we were on tour with the Beastie Boys and prodigy, and it became a mega phenomenon. And I learned an important lesson I think, you guys leadership junkies. And this is a really good lesson for everybody out there. And I can end the story here is that I remember I had two thoughts. Number one is Fuck, man, I don't know how much a billion dollars is I literally didn't know what the word billion meant, when we surpass that, so it's a good thing to know. And my second thought was, fuck, I guess this means I have to hire an accountant. And I learned very quickly, this is very good for you. If you guys want to take notes, you can very good to note that accountants are not the guys that count the cash in the duffel bags that are piled up to the ceiling in your office. That is not what they do. And that's how the journey started.

Jeff Nischwitz  07:25

Wow. Well, so there's a lot to unpack there. Because I'm guessing that anybody listening already, if they're like a lot of people are going up. So here's one of these guys who got lucky. Because I think when people hear about something, a success story like that, just an overnight rapid growth, all this money. They go, well, they stumbled upon this one idea, and they got lucky. That doesn't happen to everybody. And I'm guessing that's not your mindset or belief about what you achieved.

Shaahin Cheyene  07:57

I got a great answer to that. Yeah, I got really lucky I slept in the backseat of an abandoned car that did not run nearly six months, I slept on the floor, I did not eat, I would go out there and make door to door sales. And I would not eat I would not get I would sometimes I would go to three days without eating until I made a sale. And then I would use the money from the sale to eat. I worked every single day. Until I reached that point. Endlessly. There was nothing I could do. I left home at 15. I burned all my ships, and literally started from next night and I write about it in my book. I was indebted to the mob. I was I had all kinds of people coming after me. So when you look at it, and people say oh, it was an overnight success. Look at that. You got lucky. I'm like, Yeah, I got real lucky I hard

Craig Mathews  08:47

work. So with your with what you're doing you you decided that you're going to create this product. How did you get it formulated? Where did you Where did you do that if you didn't have money to start with?

Shaahin Cheyene  09:00

So that part of it is easy. Believe it or not? That's the number one question that people ask me as a how, as a 15 year old kid, did you figure out how to make an alternative to the biggest party drug of that time? And the answer is, I was relentless. I was not willing to take no for an answer. And yeah, I knocked on 1000 doors. I asked 1000 people to help me. I never heard the nose. All I heard was the one or two yeses that I got. And there were people who helped me the great naturopath Andrew Weil, he wrote the book on drugs for the textbook on drugs for an entire generation. And I called him up I managed to look into we used to have for any younger people listening to the show, we had these books called Yellow Pages. And they had the phone number of every person out there and you could open these books and call these people I recall from payphones. I would call and call and call him Yeah, 99% of people would say fuck off, but 1% were intrigued. And then sometimes I would show up at people's doors and I wouldn't leave until I go What they knew I wanted. And and when people see that on you, they people can smell the hunger, not the desperation, but the hunger, they smell the ambition. And they look at you and they're like, Man, this kid, you know, I wore clothes that were two sizes too big for me, because the only clothes we could afford, were the ones that would be left behind at my dad's dry cleaners. You know, I never ate at a restaurant until I was 15. You know, that just wasn't a thing. People would tell me hey, man, you know, come some some of my friends were rich kids Trust Fund kids. And they'd be like, hey, my dad gave me a card, come here. And I remember sitting at one of these play, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So that guy is gonna let me pick anything I want from this thing. And then I can have the guy just order whatever you want. I'm like, I can have a burger and the fries, and he's gonna bring it to me. This is glorious. That's how that's how I came up. So when I'm standing there, in a club, in front of a drug dealer who doesn't know me, a guy who's probably killed people, a guy who's probably been in jail, and I need to convince him to sell my little goof filled herbal pills. Instead of whatever lucrative illicit thing that he selling. My feet are glued to the ground. I had that I have the tiger, you know, I got that song playing in my head. And it was the same when I was looking for people to help me make the stuff to front me the ingredients I needed to make it, I managed to get myself a girlfriend. And her dad was some stuffy superintendent, accountant, something or other. And I remember that dude would leave through the front door, she would sneak me in through the back door, and I'd be making prototypes in her kitchen, I'd have books, I'd be going to the library. I'd be calling dudes and Chinatown. It didn't matter. Whatever I needed to do to get it done. When you approach life with that attitude. With that mindset, it's really fucking hard for people to keep you down.

Craig Mathews  11:53

Unstoppable. Now, yeah.

Jeff Nischwitz  11:55

So you know, I want to talk about the dealer network. It's fascinating to me, because you're 15 at the time 15 or 16, you come up with this idea to talk to them. And as I hear that, I immediately think, Well, that just makes business sense. Because so many businesses are always trying to go find customers one at a time, as opposed to saying, who's got the customers? I need a distribution network. Is there one in place already? And that's what you did? I'm curious, was it that thoughtful? Or did you sort of stumble in it into it. So now I know how to do this.

Shaahin Cheyene  12:31

So a lot of that came through, I managed to get myself a mentor earlier on, in this process. And I tell that story, I met the guy through the community college, and he mentored me and taught me the ways of influence. And I think influence is probably one of the most important things that any starting entrepreneur or even even a seasoned entrepreneur has to have your ability to get people to do something, using your ability of influence is essential, in my opinion. So I thought, Well, how would I be able to distribute something that I had, and I looked at traditional channels, and everybody laughed at me, I went into stores, I walked into, you know, big offices, and they just laughed at me, they were like, Hey, kid, you know, like, Who's this like, fucking kid, he doesn't even have a company, anyone have a corporation. I mean, I was just literally making these things and my girlfriend's kitchen and selling them until I got a factory and production lines and all that stuff. And it just occurred to me that this was an opportunity that other people because of their righteousness, because of whatever the, the their thoughts and feelings and beliefs of these people were prevented them from conducting business with them. And it prevented those people from conducting business with them. So I saw it as an opportunity. And probably one that had a barrier to entry in the marketplace. Because there is a barrier to entry to deal with those kinds of people. And it was also on tap. So it had all the markers of what I needed to do. I didn't have enough money to do the traditional disruption, marketing to advertise to put it in stores and all that that was, you remember, this is pre internet. So that was the strict domain of these mega corporate shows. Now, with Amazon, I teach people how to sell products on Amazon, and build out through the Amazon platform. anybody that's interested, I'll give you guys my email, you can email me about that. I've got a course. It's normally 200 bucks. We'll give it to everybody on the show for free. So you guys can reach out to me, I'll give that email in a minute. But the fact is that when you don't have the resources that the competitors have, you got to get creative. You got to figure something out. And for me, this was low hanging fruit.

Jeff Nischwitz  14:52

Yeah. So you get the I'm gonna just try and set the same timeline here. Really want to shift over then to, you know, you work with. In fact I fascinating something in your bio, you said your Amazon sales approach is the same for startups and fortune 500. So there's a process in here somewhere. There's some core elements. But you're talking about creativity. You're talking about relentlessness. You're certainly talking to be referenced the phrase burning your boats. Talk about how those, those foundations still drive you as an entrepreneur today.

Shaahin Cheyene  15:33

Yeah, look, Amazon is the great equalizer. I've said this often times when I'm giving talks to corporations and individuals the same why is it the great equalizer? The reason is this. In the past, we had what Seth Godin calls disruption marketing. And if you had money, you would be able to build a monopoly, which is what it is, we can call it by its name, and keep all the small players at bay. And then you could do things like say, We're the best we are the most delicious cola in the world because we say so. And we bought that. People bought into that for years. But then this little bald guy, like me and you came by and changed things. He was a disrupter, much like Piggly Wiggly back in the day that completely changed commerce, by building shelves and allowing consumers to pick out products, building competition in the marketplace. Yeah, the shopping cart. Piggly Wiggly was a mega disrupter. The same way he did that this guy, Jeff Bezos comes along. And He's disrupting e commerce. And we saw this coming early on one of my few superpowers that I have is being able to predict trends. And I saw this trend coming. It's something that I'm good at. I don't know why. But there's a whole lot of stuff that I'm really fucking bad at. But predicting trends I tend to be fairly good at. And I saw this coming. So at the end of the day, what Bezos has allowed small brands people like me and you to do is to compete with these big companies. Why because of the elements of influence. The big companies with their disruption, marketing, no longer controlled the narratives. They cannot say, Hey, man, we this is what it is, because this is what we say it is. Now people have the ability to look at reviews, they can look at what you and me and Uncle Joe and Susan across the street, say about that cola. Now the power is in the hands of smaller companies to say, hey, we don't need millions of dollars to compete with these guys, we can just tell a better story, we can make a better product. And all these companies, these these mega giants are left with their feet dangling in the air trying to run because they don't understand that landscape. So what we do a lot of the times both with my agency, accelerated intelligence, and with my Amazon course, Amazon mastery is we teach people how do you speak that language of conversion? How do you get people to become decision architects rather than disruption? Marketers? How do you make it so you create an Amazon product, you create an Amazon listing, and the sale is made before that person ever finds your listing or your product. And and by the way, for the for the two hour course normally 200 bucks. Anybody wants to email me I respond to all emails directly. I'll give that to you for free. If you just mentioned leadership junkies in the subject heading, my direct email is dark possess@gmail.com. That's d a r k ZS s@gmail.com. Please.

Jeff Nischwitz  18:58

So I'm curious Shaahin. Just for background for everybody listening. You've built numerous businesses created multiple invented many products. And you also go out and speak you speak regularly. I've seen it all the posts. And I'm guessing sometimes you're speaking to audiences about how to build businesses on the bat on the foundation of Amazon. Yeah, literally expert, Matt. Right. Yeah. But you're also speaking to companies. What are you talking to the companies about? Is that the same or a different message as to the folks who want to start an Amazon business?

Shaahin Cheyene  19:35

Well, companies are going to be different. Because it's a lot more about the core structure of the company, a company we treat like a person, you have to look at their culture, but you also have to look at the messaging that they're putting out and what their goals are. Companies obviously are going to be better funded. So they're going to have more resources than an individual who's starting up Hey, man, you know, I've got my job, but I've got a few 1000 bucks, I want to invest and let my money work for me and grow, I don't want to sell my hours anymore. That's a different thing. Those people we bring on to our Amazon Mastery Course we teach them how to start these Amazon businesses so they can create recurring revenue streams. As for companies, they usually have goals. So the larger companies usually come to us, and they're like, Hey, we don't understand why we're the dominant brand for years. And now this Joe Schmo unknown guy is beating us in the marketplace. And so we implement systems, we some at times, embed employees in there. And we help them understand how the landscape has changed, and how they can tell their story in a way that makes sense in a way that converts customers at the end of the day. And it just depends on on, you know, what we need to what we need to do for them. Sometimes it involves a rebranding, sometimes it just involves a rebranding cross platform. So when they start selling on Amazon, that they're doing it the right way that they don't seem like the soulless Corporation, but rather one that's engaged with their customers, we bring in influencers, we bring in authority of the element of trust, these are all elements of influence, that a lot of these companies have forgotten, because they're just so big. Now, would

Craig Mathews  21:19

you say that the understanding your audience haven't crafting that good message and telling that story? How important is that relative to the product?

Shaahin Cheyene  21:31

That that's one of the unfortunate side effects of Amazon? That's a really good question, Craig, because one of the things that Amazon did, is that it commoditized a lot of products, that, whereas before it mattered more, that you had a little bit of soul, the product was a little bit better. Right? It's created a hyper competitive environment, which is good in some respects, right? Because, you know, in capitalism, we like competitiveness, you know, it helps us it helps our, our mission and our industry in trying to build, but at the same time, the way that it's done on Amazon and products have become commoditized. It's no longer the best product gets all the money. In fact, it's the best story and clarity and influence that does it No. So people come to me all the time. And this is one of the most common mistakes that beginning entrepreneurs make. When they're like, Hey, man, I really, you know, I've got this thing, I want to sell it on Amazon, it's a better mousetrap, and they're waiting for the world to beat their way to their door. And I'm like, Dude, we've looked at that, and you just need to make one five cents cheaper. Nobody cares that yours has LED lights, and you can see the mouse inside being electrocuted. And you know, it's got a little camera inside. And you know, like, people go way over and nobody cares. Dudes want it for 497 instead of 499. That that's, that's, that's become the innovation. They want eight bars of soap instead of seven and a half. Like that becomes the innovation. And and it's what the market wants. So will we teach people to do it, as opposed to creating a product, and then going out there and struggling to educate and find the distribution? We say, Hey, look at let's buy the market. Let's find what the market is looking for. And then feed it what it wants, and become better storytellers. Become decision architects become masters of influence. That's how you make money on Amazon and E commerce. And again, I teach this dark possess@gmail.com dar KZ ss@gmail.com. I'll give everybody listening to leadership junkies, the course for free today, if you're interested.

Jeff Nischwitz  23:51

So so good. I want to follow up on that. I think I know the answer, but I'll let you answer it. Typically, people in my experience are creating products. We'll call it put everything in the bucket of product, then figure out how to sell it who to sell it to. So it's kind of a chicken in the egg question. I'm hearing you say, No, don't create a product and figure out the market. Check out the market and create a product that's in demand. Is that what I'm hearing?

Shaahin Cheyene  24:25

Yeah. What's your industry?

Jeff Nischwitz  24:31

My industry? Yeah.

Shaahin Cheyene  24:32

You said people in your industry? Oh, no, I'm

Jeff Nischwitz  24:34

sorry. People in general. Oh, people in general. Oh,

Shaahin Cheyene  24:37

gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. That's right. Because what happens when you when you start to innovate so So I tell this to people all the time, and I hate hearing it. Innovation is the kiss of death. Innovation is how you lose money. You don't want to be in it, right? Yeah, you got to educate and that's expensive. Leave that for the big corporations leave that for you. You know, the Uber geniuses that have the billions and billions of dollars, there's no money that night to innovate, I invented vaporization at all the vape that you see digital vaporization came from technology that I built, I wrote the book on I patented it, I did that for years, there's no money in innovation or little money in innovation, it's the guy that comes second. That makes money, Steve Jobs didn't invent the smartphone, that was around a long time before he told a better story. And that's what people have to realize that innovation is the kiss of death. Because what happens when you innovate is you have to teach people why they need what it is that you're selling. And that my friend is a long road. If you want to make money fast and fast as my favorite way to make money. You need to find what the market needs. And then shift, adjust, make little micro adjustments and tell a better story. There are a lot of people who make a lot of money doing just that. And it's the fastest path. Now, if you if you're an innovator, and you like to innovate, and it's your path and your life mission, and blah, blah, blah, then you can do that. But just remember that that's separate from making money. Don't Don't quit your day job, kids.

Craig Mathews  26:18

Now, when you're talking about that, it's it. It makes me wonder when you talk about tell a different story. Can you give an example of like a before and after story of how that shift in how somebody talks about their product or business will make the difference in the sale?

Shaahin Cheyene  26:37

Totally? Yeah, let's let's break it down in a couple different ways. I'll give you one, which is a very technical example. And I'll start with a second one that's a little bit more of a fluffy example. So people can can sink their teeth into it. So the second one would be, there was a big soap brand fortune 50 company, one of the mega ones, we're not going to name them, but they had a little bird on it. And it's a white piece of soap. And it's been selling millions gajillions of dollars. We took them out on Amazon off the first page to the second page with a product that we created a brand of delightful French soap, beautiful French, so French Castiel soap handmade in China. We created a brand that was a French name. And unfortunately, I learned well after the product was out and trademarked and all that that it didn't really make sense. In French, it was like barely legible. It was kind of like when you see Chinese products like translated into English using software, it was like that, but in French, but but I don't know any better. Americans don't know any better. And that was buying the product. And what we did was we told a better story, we never claimed that it was made in France, we always disclosed where it was made and all that French soap is actually a category of soap. So you can say that it's it's French style soap or whatever. But we told a beautiful story by showing beautiful pictures, we learned that a lot of people were buying these soaps as as gifts soaps, that they I guess people put in the bathrooms with the little towels. I don't know my wife does that stuff. I don't understand what you do with the little towels or the little soaps. But I'm sure there's somebody out there who understands because there's a lot of people buying it. So we created a story of the experience of unboxing the soap and the way they smell and the way they look. And so when you went on to that listing, you saw this beautiful French brand and all this beautiful soap and the flowers. And the the traditional one. The old brand was still there we are Corporation z and this is our corporate offering. And you know, we are global green, so we beat them. Second example of telling a better story a little more technical. I'm a big fan of gadgets and electronic stuff. So we were selling an electronic thing, I'm not going to mention what it is. And we bought the exact same product that 50 other sellers bought. But here's the thing when people went to the listing, you couldn't see the power adapter for this thing. Nobody had a picture of the power adapter. So if you're buying this thing, most people if you looked at commonly bought with it's something that Amazon does it there's a picture of a power adapter on there. So these all come from China with a power adapter, but nobody showed this. So we showed a picture of the power adapter with the exact same product. They were all going for 1299 we charge 1999 We outsold every single person. Now what else did we learn? These power adapters were UL and CE listed. So we put big trust badges on there. UL certified CE certified. Then we looked at the product itself. Well, you know, for example, with the headphones, they're noise cancelling nobody there was advertising that it's noise canceling. Well, what kind of plastics are they using? Oh, they're using silicone covers for these things. Silicone is BPA free. We could now advertise that this product is BPA free, it's got a silicone, do you see what I'm doing? I'm building the story of this product. It's the same fucking product that every other company is selling. If you look deeply enough in Amazon, you'd be able to buy the exact same thing for 699. We were charging 1999 We even increase the price, as we added story to 2999 became the number one selling gadget in this of this time on the Amazon platform. That's what we teach people to do. Gotcha,

Jeff Nischwitz  30:32

Shahid, how does this because you talk to people who are starting Amazon businesses, also companies who may be a little larger who want to do business on Amazon. And you're also talking to larger company, how much of this about the better story? Have you found translates across company size? So someone sitting here saying, I have no desire to do Amazon business? Fine, they may not see the opportunity. But they stopped listening. Or if they say, here's what's the nuggets for them,

Shaahin Cheyene  31:02

said no big corporation ever. Everybody is looking at Amazon now. So that's that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's interesting, but I hear what you're saying. So yes, you are right, Jeff, this goes cross platform. This goes across all areas. The way that we communicate has changed not just on Amazon, but because of Amazon the same way Piggly Wiggly changed retail, the dude comes in. He's like, Guys, I'm going to innovate retail. What are you going to do? Are you gonna build mega stores? Are you gonna, you know, have have Whoa, how's this gonna work? He goes, I'm going to build these things. They say what the fuck? That is like, it's a shelf? Why? Yeah, we're gonna have aisles. I'm going to do something else that's going to change your life forever. What are you going to do? What's What's he going to do now? Shopping carts. People are going to be able to go through these aisles, pick products off the shelf, and buy them. Mind blown. Changed commerce forever. That's what Amazon did. Now Piggly Wiggly didn't just change it for himself. Pretty soon. You know, Bob, the Bob, the general store guy is looking out his window wondering why everybody's in Piggly Wiggly in his stores. Tumbleweed city, well, what's that guy gonna do? That guy's gonna go to get me shells. You know, let's build some of these shopping carts. And that's what happened. So now, if you want to sell if you want to be a convincing storyteller, you need to follow these elements of influence that we've learned on Amazon is what consumers are looking for. And these big companies all tell here's the crazy thing. So I do a show called Hack and Grow Rich, where we teach people hacks to traditional ways to doing things. And that's, that's on YouTube, Stitcher, Apple, podcasts, Google podcasts, wherever podcasts are found Spotify, all those places. So check us out, hack and Grow Rich. And we teach through our course, all types of systems, hacks, short ways to get around, you know, the traditional long haul ways of making money online. Well, when my agency that we charge an arm and a leg, and I'm shocked to this day that people still pay us as much money as they do, we just have limited bandwidth. So we've got tons of these companies, you know, fortune 50, fortune 500, and, you know, high level large companies. Those companies, believe it or not, are way more interested in the hacks than the little companies. It's always the corporate CEO or CEOs or the, you know, those guys that come with the attitude, especially if they're good, have like, what's the shortest path for us to get this done?

Craig Mathews  33:41

But what the what the interesting thing is, though, those little tweaks and hacks in a multi billion dollar company can make a huge amount of money, versus the person who's making 10 $10. You know, $10,000? Yeah, I mean, it's just a percentage basis.

Shaahin Cheyene  34:00

Yeah, I mean, the guys that are CEOs of these big companies are not dummies, I have never met one where I haven't been like, holy shit, this guy is like, I see why he's in the position that is in. The problem is that the corporate structure sometimes gets gets. I don't know how you would say but it gets diluted. Because you got too many chefs with their hands in the in the soup. And it creates a structure where nobody can get anything done, which is great for the small guy in the little company, but for these big companies. That's why leadership is so important. Because you need a guy with boots on the ground that's going to come and say, Hey, we're going to bring in a consultant like Shaahin, and we're gonna give him carte blanche let him do what he does, because we know that we're too clunky as an organization to be able to do that kind of mantra or we'll have his team trained people on our side that are dedicated to doing that, they learn how to do that. And we've, you know, I've increased revenue three to five times for some of these companies on their ecommerce sales, just by making tiny tweaks to the way that we're doing things.

Craig Mathews  35:14

Now, you've had a pretty incredible journey. What were some of the biggest leadership lessons you learned along the way?

Shaahin Cheyene  35:21

So leadership in the way of being an employer? The first thing is, it's funny, I guess it's like from the sopranos, there's a, there's a great line where the guys, he's asking his dad is as the big mob boss, and he's asking him, like, Would you rather be, would you rather be feared or loved, and he's like, you know, son, I'd rather be feared. And it's not quite like that. But one of the biggest mistakes that, you know, I especially made as a teenager, is I wanted everybody to like me, and I wanted everybody to be my friend. And I realized later that it's okay, if you're not their friend, it's okay. If they don't like you, we want people to like us, but it's okay, if they don't like you, but they have to respect you. And you can't let that respect be eroded. And generally speaking, that comes with can't be their friend, I know. And, you know, kind of the 3.0 culture, you know, tech or whatever, that there's, there's a different kind of ethos and culture going up in these companies. That's not the way I came up. And what I learned very quickly, is that you cannot make your employees, your friends, it has to be a separation of church and state. And they have to, at the very least have a respect for you, they might not like you. And that's okay, I kept people on board all the time, I had over 200 employees. In my first company, I get people on board all the time that didn't like me, but I knew respected me. So I think that's one of the fatal mistakes that beginning entrepreneurs make. The second thing is that in in leadership, is that I think there's an element to fairness that has to be there, every good leader has to be able to demonstrate that they are fair, you can be strict. You can be harsh, at times, I'm oftentimes harsh, you know, it's one of my my things is I just tell people how it is. But at the end of the day, the people that work for me understand that I'm fair. The third thing is that you have to incentivize people to do the the right thing. But at the same time, allow people who work for you to make mistakes I teach this to my students, oftentimes, is that there is perfection by paralysis. And you don't want to get to the point where you're just spending all your time trying to make something perfect. Similarly, you know, in a company structure, you want your employees to execute. And if it's the kind of thing where they can move in and execute on something that you want to that you delegate to them. And if they make a mistake, that they can shift gears and fix it, then it's okay, give them permission to fail. Because what you'll realize is that people really want to do good, they want to succeed, they want to impress you. So give them that ability, and let them know. And I tell people this all the time, I just had this conversation with a new team that we brought on, what I what I mind is, if you don't even try it, or if you don't communicate, what I don't mind is if you fuck up, everyone fucks up, don't do it all the time, because that shows a pattern. But if you go out there and try something and you fail, I'm okay with that. I'm okay losing a little bit of money to make money later.

Jeff Nischwitz  38:50

So she's I want to talk about failure a little more, we have so many guests come on and talk about how important it is for people to fail. They talked about how they learned so much from failures and mistakes and just try and things. And I saw, I know in your bio, you talked about your big fan of Seth Godin, who always talks about just ship it, ship it and figure it out. Yeah. And at the same time, some of those same people are running organizations where you talk to the team, that team says it's not safe to fail here. So there's this disconnect of leaders saying it's vital to fail, but they don't create cultures. for that. Have you seen that? And what do you think's going on there?

Shaahin Cheyene  39:29

So you got to be very specific. You got to set up your cams, your key metrics, you got to set up your KPIs, your key performance indicators, and people have to know what is expected of them. Secondly, people need to report daily why The reason people need to report daily and this is a little secret. I hope my staff isn't looking at this, but is that I oftentimes don't even look at it. I'm joking. They know that I don't oftentimes look at it, but it's to give them retrospective on their Days, their weeks, their months, their years. And in the process of them putting that report together, they realize that it doesn't have to be a big ordeal, it can be a five minute thing. But most people get into something. And they'll step and repeat the next day and the next day, the next day, and they wonder why things aren't working. And then you look at an organization level there. Oh, yeah, I've just been doing what I've been doing for the last two years, you know, and you're looking at why things aren't working. So the first step in that is to taking some perspective and seeing what's worked, what hasn't, and what you actually did in that day. Because without knowing what we did, and what worked and what didn't, we don't know what to change.

Jeff Nischwitz  40:43

Well, I love that. And I think that also speaks to you didn't use a language, how vital it is, to have processes and systems in your organization that are looking at leading indicators. Because that daily check in is not about results. Typically, I'm guessing it's about what are those activities, and achievements that move the needle to those trailing indicators. And a lot of organizations are so focused on trailing indicators, that all they get to do is they report out and said, Did you Did we? were we successful or not? Nope, well, now it's too late. So it sounds like you have a real focus on leading indicators. And those daily check ins are on those activities that are those leading indicators.

Shaahin Cheyene  41:22

Totally. And you got to simplify, I'm a big fan of simplification, when you get into these organizations, and especially the bigger that organization structure gets, you oftentimes can bring in maximum efficiency to them by just doing an 8020 analysis, you know, Richard cautious book, The 8020 principle based on the Pareto principle, that 20% of our efforts bring 80% of our results, you look at most companies, you've got 80% of the the products that aren't really doing for them what the other 20% are doing so just by eliminating the the process of eliminating stuff, eliminating processes and eliminating products that are just a dead weight, eliminating staff that's dead weight, really, and and reducing and simplifying you can you can really, really go a long way.

Jeff Nischwitz  42:14

I gotta I gotta ask you this question. I don't get to ask a lot of people, because you've clearly taken a close look at this concept of the Pareto Principle 8020. I look at that, and say, If, and it just keeps making sense. I mean, it's true, because it's true. That would tell me that the best course of action is to figure out my 20%. And probably the best decision is to only do that 20%. Now, some people say, Well, that doesn't make sense. You just have to do it all knowing that the result will be that 20% of your effort would create 80% of the results. I said that what's the point of knowing that? We can use that to fundamentally change what we do every day?

Shaahin Cheyene  42:56

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think here's the thing, we're talking in very general terms. So we're talking in very broad strokes at the moment, when you break these things down, there is nuance. So there is nuance in a lot of things. So it could be that you have in the example of products, you could have some products that you have to sell, because their loss leaders, but they bring in the money for the other 80%, for example, and that and that those are necessary. So the point is that you do that 8020 analysis, and you get as close to it as possible. But it's not a hard and fast type thing. It's it's it's more of an art than a science. But I think you're you're you're correct in your assumption, but at the end of the day, you got to have the balls to start making changes. And you do have to have the balls to do this kind of stuff. Otherwise, you know, and a lot of it is aggressive. A lot of companies go oh my god, we've been doing this for 20 years, and we've got 1000 products you're like, Yeah, but only 20 of them are making any money. Like, what, why? Because we've been doing it for all this time. Well, okay. Do you want to continue doing it? Or do you want to grow? Right, let's let's build out those 20 and then start building out verticals that add to the to the 20% rather than the 80%?

Craig Mathews  44:17

Yeah, people get stuck in sunk costs. Well, isn't isn't Six Sigma? Really? Six iterations of 8020? Yeah, I mean, that's what gets you to that six sigma. And why do people drive to six sigma? Because it works because they're, they're pushing out all the things that don't work for the most part, so. Yeah, good point.

Jeff Nischwitz  44:41

So shaking something that I'm, I'm gonna ask you this question about yourself, but really, for everyone's benefit. You certainly have demonstrated a gift for seeing opportunities. Your first business, this billion dollar revenue, you saw an opportunity, and you jumped into that space, relentless bolt on those things, it wasn't luck. It was all those things. I'm not sure. My personal experience is that not everybody has that innate ability, or impart even if they have it, they've been trained not to see opportunity. Our culture, especially our business culture is not really it doesn't help people grow in spotting opportunities. Yeah, so first question is, can people learn to spot opportunities? And if so, what are some of the ways to get there?

Shaahin Cheyene  45:31

Look, I think I look at it a little bit differently. The answer is, I think, yes, of course, there's algorithms, like we teach algorithms on the Amazon platform all the time, and that I actually teach people just follow the algorithm, we know how to do it, we know how to find products that make you money. We know how you can build those products into a company. It's all algorithmic, that stuff's easy. If we're talking about broader opportunities, this is what I think, kind of like, you can look at the guy who, you know, maybe he's got a couple kids, he's married, he's struggling to make ends meet, you know, maybe the guy's driving Uber, and he's working 60 hours a week, and he's still not making ends meet, and he comes home. And then that guy wants to break out. And that guy thinks to himself, man, if I if I just knew what like this next thing is that I want to do but he can't get free. He can't do it. Because every day is fucking Groundhog's Day for this guy. Every single day, he steps and repeats, he steps and repeats, he doesn't have the leeway, he doesn't have the freedom. This is what I'm getting to. Good design is found in the whitespace. It's the stuff you don't see through that makes design good. And similarly, with life design. If we want to find better opportunities, we have to find out whitespace we have to be in a place where we are not stressed because we know that when we're not stressed, we get into that theta state that flow state where we're, we're able to function at an optimal level. It's like what these extreme athletes do when they're, you know, skydiving or bungee jumping or doing any of these crazy things that they do they get into this flow state. And I'm a firm believer, I talk a lot about this in my book, and I talk a lot about this on my podcast, a firm believer that once you can get yourself into this optimal state into this flow state, that opportunities will start coming to you. Because now you've become a decision architect. But also, you've had a chance to kind of just relax, and let the world come to you, you're not stressed about where your next meal is going to come from or how the baby's going to get diapers on him. So the first step for anybody or even a company, you can look at it in a company structure is to gain stability. And once you have that financial stability, meaning that you have some amount of disposable income, you're not stressed. Then the next step is legacy building. How are we going to build how are we going to create foundations? And, you know, look, I'm a guy who made a lot of money when I was very young, and I burned a lot of money when I was very young, and I spent a good portion of my career kind of looking for the next big thing. I kept thinking to myself, Man, when's the next for blacks to see coming? When's the next and I I kept looking? And what I didn't realize is that I was stacking up all these successes, one after another, making millions of dollars making more and more money every year, but I was still chasing that one big thing. And I realized one morning when I woke up, I was like, man, you know, I I'm a father now I'm married. I'm kinda you know, all that, that lifestyle of the ecstasy days is behind me. And like I'm doing pretty well. I've got real estate, I've got cars, I got all the stuff I want. I don't really have to work anymore. I do because I, I love what I do. But the fact is that the landscape changed. And what it changed from is that everybody needs to have multiple streams of income now. That's how things have changed. Everybody has to have multiple hustles that they're doing. And if you have many things going on, you can't have a bad day. If you're invested in cashflow, positive real estate, which I teach my students to do. And you've got some money in things that are compounding interest. And then you've got your career that's bringing in a paycheck if you need to. I'm against selling your hours, but you may need to for some period of time. And then you have an E commerce business, taking part in this great boom that we're day one of this gold rush where you can come in and capitalize on the beautiful platform that Jeff Bezos has built. If you're doing that, it's hard to have a bad day because there's always something there that's doing well even when the other things aren't

Jeff Nischwitz  50:04

So you've used this phrase a number of times and may have defined at the beginning, I really want to make sure I'm hearing it. You keep referring to people being a design decision architect. Can you share for everybody very specifically? What is that for you?

Shaahin Cheyene  50:20

Yes, super easy, instead of the old way of knocking on doors and being, you know, spilling some dirt on a dude's floor and vacuuming and then trying to sell them the vacuum. And that still is a thing, believe it or not, I used to know a guy who did that.

Craig Mathews  50:34

My roommate in college. Yeah, it happens. People

Shaahin Cheyene  50:37

are still buying vacuum cleaners, door to door, you become the guy that builds a path for them to come to your door. And then when they get there and buy your product, they believe it's their idea. Again, I say this often, the sale is made before the customer ever knows about your product before they even get to your door, your listing, or any of that stuff. And that's what it's like to become a decision architect. That's what Robert Cal Dini in his book Influence, and his follow up book, pre suasion, great books for you guys to check out if anybody hasn't checked that out. Because stuff is what it's about. You want to be a pre sweater, you want to be somebody who lays out that landscape for people to come to you. And then when they do and they buy your product. They think it's their idea.

Craig Mathews  51:32

Sounds like the the movie focus. Focus, Will Will Smith.

Shaahin Cheyene  51:38

I heard of it as a good,

Craig Mathews  51:40

fantastic. He's a persuader. So I won't give it away. But there's a situation where, you know, he's running a long con, and it's exactly that the person thinks it's his idea and very interesting movie. I'm a fan. I love this book. I'm really curious, when you first got going in you, you approached the drug dealers about promoting the herbal ecstasy. Did they see it as an opportunity to go clean? And shift so that they didn't have the risk? Or did they see that as a this is really weird.

Shaahin Cheyene  52:21

Initially, the ladder, they thought I was weird, but they didn't have a choice. They had nothing else to sell. They didn't have any real choices. And then as time went on, a lot of them came to me and they were like, hey, you know, can we get a territory? I'm gonna move to Miami, can I get territory? Can I get Miami? Can I do? You know, we had franchise stores? So I said, Sure. You know, can we can I start a store? Absolutely. And so we opened up these ecstasy stores all over the world. And there's pictures of them in my book billion how I became king and through a post called and, and that's really how it worked in those days. But a lot of them became legitimized. It's funny one of my favorite scenes from The Godfather movies, which by the way, I see as a body of work, I think all three of them were fantastic. People will argue with that. But if you look at the third one, where the the mob is trying to get out of, you know, get out of the mob business and legitimize everything, and they're building this big company in partnership with the Pope, I kind of feel it was like that, like a lot of these guys who were doing real illicit stuff, decided, hey, this is an easier way to make money, and we can become legitimized. And they did that. And it was a path to much greater wealth. I mean, I think we made more money for people through the electronic music scene than anybody in the 1990s created more millionaires than anybody in that era.

Jeff Nischwitz  53:41

So one question I need to ask before we get to wrap here. So he, you keep using the word products, and most of the conversations about products? I'm curious, to what degree do you work with and talk to organizations that are primarily services businesses? That is the conversation? How much is the same? And what are some of the differences?

Shaahin Cheyene  54:02

Yeah, we do all of that. So I deal with companies that are making music, I deal with companies that are making videos and video content we deal with authors, part of our agency work is reputation management, we deal with authors. So it's just another form of product doesn't matter if it's digital, or if it's a physical Good.

Jeff Nischwitz  54:26

Well, I'm curious. My follow up is all the things you mentioned to me are products. I mean, I have books. So my primary business I would call services, coaching and speaking our services training, and I create content in the form of books, which I sell as a product. And I know we can productize everything. But I'm curious, is there a different conversation here for talking about what we consider as services on the topics you've shared around how do you not innovate but find the opportunities with products and go to market? It the problem

Shaahin Cheyene  54:58

with services Businesses unfortunately that you got to sell your hours, unless you set it up and you're one of the few that's that's intelligent enough to set it up where you're using somebody else's hours to do that stuff that the big problem of it becomes that and then you also, you know, we look, before we start a business, we look to the exit. And service businesses oftentimes are tied to the founder, people are like, well, this is great, you got all these coaching clients, but what happens when you leave. So it becomes more of a job than a business a lot of the time, now I've got a friend who's got a big agency, it's gonna sell for multiple millions of dollars. And he's done it the right way. But that's, that's the exception to the rule. So so as far as selling a service, as opposed to a product, people don't change. So that influence is the same. It's the same thing, you need social proof. In fact, you need social proof more with a service than you would with a product because there's no tangible physical thing that they're getting at the end. Like I sell a course, where we teach people how to sell on Amazon. And that's a really a service, digital product type thing, more service than anything else. And we do a service where companies come in and we accelerate and optimize their products on the Amazon platform, we get them to the top of the page, we get proper reviews, we do all that stuff. And we do crisis management and our reputation management agency. So we do all that stuff. But at the end of the day, influence doesn't change. If you have that tool of influence. You got to you got to do the exact same things for service for coaching business as you would for a product business. The only thing that changes is a tangible, good changing hands. Is that is that answer your question? I feel like I might No,

Jeff Nischwitz  56:49

no, no, you do. Yep, you do. So Shahina. As always, we run out we run out of time. So we're coming up against time here, as I said at the beginning, certainly a unique conversation, and one that certainly fits our time and the platform, the opportunities out there with the platforms that exist. Today that didn't exist. 2030 years ago, when you were creating from scratch. There's platforms out there. There's resources, clearly shaking, there's one of them. So Shaahin, so many things. You've talked about several. But is there anything in particular you want to highlight or promote today? Yeah, sure.

Shaahin Cheyene  57:23

So again, anybody that's interested, I've got this one hour course. Normally 200 bucks mentioned leadership junkies, because we're at the beginning of the year right now. mentioned it in your subject heading. And we will give you the one hour course that's $200 course which teaches you how to find a product on Amazon how to start an Amazon business where to incorporate all those things. You'll get that for free. No Obligation you'll never hear from us again. Email me darkzess@gmail.com That's d a a r k z e s s @ gmail.com. Make sure to check out my book billion how I became king of the thrill pill cult, just bought it. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, make sure to leave me a review on Amazon, audible wherever books are found, which I think is Amazon and audible. And also our podcast hack and Grow Rich. Check that out wherever you listen to podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, Apple podcasts. And if you're more interested in Amazon creating recurring revenue, you can check out my course is FBA seller course comm or go to Shaahin Shan comm and click on the course link. And if I can support you in any way, just reach out by email, I'm always happy to talk to people and meet new people and, and try to help you on your journey to success.

Jeff Nischwitz  58:37

So Shaahin, you mentioned several ways to connect with you. Is there any particular best way to connect with you?

Shaahin Cheyene  58:43

Just email me, I think that's probably the easiest way I'm easygoing guy, get back to everybody. Thanks to the teachings of David Allen, getting things done. I

Jeff Nischwitz  58:52

really think that what's the next step in? Yeah, what's the next action? What's the next action?

Shaahin Cheyene  58:57

The next action is going to be to do another show after this, but this is super fun. You guys are awesome. And I just want to mention to everybody that you guys are both badass us for having COVID and still doing the show. And I really respect and appreciate you guys for doing that. Thank you for having me on.

Jeff Nischwitz  59:17

Well, it's not quite the back of the car for six months, but it's one of relentlessness. So we always wrap up with a question or two with interest of time, I'm just gonna do one question. Clearly, you're a movie guy. So what's the movie that people need to see? Or the scene or the character that's going to show get them the message they need to hear today? What's Oh, that's,

Shaahin Cheyene  59:38

that's easy. You know, we just got a film deal 4 billion. So I don't know when the film is gonna be out. But in a couple years, hopefully, it'll hit the big screen or they're gonna do a series on it. So that's the thing to watch. Now, that aside, that aside, who's playing me I don't know. Because it's got to be young me because the stories young me, and that's the problem that they're having right now is finding someone growing So if you're a young actor and you're listening to this reach out to us besides my film that will be coming out. I truly think billion with Daniel Lewis, one of the absolute best shows I think it's on. Is it on Showtime?

Jeff Nischwitz  1:00:18

I believe it's on Showtime because

Shaahin Cheyene  1:00:21

it's on Showtime. None better, none better. And I'll give you a little hack to that a little trick. If you look at Wendy Rhoades for the VA life coach we all need. Yeah, except Well, we're not going to

Craig Mathews  1:00:36

give any spoilers but things got a little Jeff. Jeff would totally agree with you on that one.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:00:39

Yeah, things got a little weird at the end, but that she is the life coach we all need. If you look on her desk and on her bookshelves, they put a lot of time into the books that they place their interest and there is always an amazing read. You see what she's reading? I found some of the best books of the year on there. So I'm not gonna tell you what they are. I'll let you I'll let you guys watch that. So I think billion is amazing. Boiler Room One of my favorite movies. The Wolf of Wall Street just because I love Leo. I think it's it's it's awesome. But he really did great in that in that movie. So I think we'll I think we'll go to Oh, darkest hour. best movie of the year. Unbelievable. It's

Jeff Nischwitz  1:01:23

a great movie. Yeah.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:01:24

Winston Churchill Gary Oldman. Really just next level actor. I think there's like maybe

Jeff Nischwitz  1:01:30

it'll be called Leadership. That look. Yeah.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:01:33

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you've got you know, I mean, I think of those movies. You've got darkest hour, there will be blood. American Psycho Christian Bale. And those are those are those are some of the greats. We could go on this. This could be a whole nother podcast.

Jeff Nischwitz  1:01:51

Well, thank you Shaahin for being here and bringing your wisdom and bring you that message to everybody that needs to hear it. Whether ready or not.

Shaahin Cheyene  1:02:00

Yeah. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you. All right..

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