Sleeping on the Beach to $350,000,000 per year with Ken Rutkowski

Description:

Ken Rutkowski talks to Shaahin Cheyenne - inventor of the vaporizer, pioneer of the smart drug industry. Ingenious systems hacker.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

amazon, products, started, reviews, drug, companies, herbal, hacker, disrupted, learn, reviewers, people, real, business, rave scene, multiple, industry, reads, mentor, today

SPEAKERS

Shaahin Cheyene, Intro, Ken Rutkowski

Intro  00:00

You're now listening to hack and 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

Ken Rutkowski  00:26

Welcome back to the voice of disruption. I'm Ken Rutkowski. We're here to help you, of course, find ways to disrupt yourself and meet people that have done it over and over again. I'm honored to be joined by Shaahin Cheyene, who's joining us who is a originally from where were you from originally?

Shaahin Cheyene  00:39

I'm Iranian. We born in Persian born in Iran. Yeah, really? I

Ken Rutkowski  00:43

didn't even know that. I've known you for like 25 years. Also. You came here at what age? Kim? You're

Shaahin Cheyene  00:49

probably around five. Five years old. Yeah. I

Ken Rutkowski  00:52

came here in Los Angeles. We went to Germany first and then came to LA. Yeah. Okay. Here in LA is your home? At least my home? Yeah, la Asian home love LA. But what you have done is affected the entire planet multiple times.

Shaahin Cheyene  01:05

I hope so. You know,

Ken Rutkowski  01:06

you know it did okay. When I met you. Now you're in the HAIR CLUB. Hair Club for Men? Yeah, without a doubt. Your hair was long. You were sandals or moccasins. You're kind of a hippie as what my dad or mother would call you. Your life was totally different today. You're a father, your husband, you have multiple businesses. When I met you, you were a change maker in the herbal. Herbal industry. I don't know what the word I should ask for drugs. Back then. Yeah. Wait a second. You're saying in the 90s? You were part of the smart drug industry? Yeah, we

Shaahin Cheyene  01:41

started the smart drug movement.

Ken Rutkowski  01:43

What was the smart drug movement,

Shaahin Cheyene  01:44

smart drug movement happened in the, you know, early 90s. And basically, it was started by, you know, by a few of us who started taking supplements in order to enhance our state

Ken Rutkowski  01:59

to achieve a level that generally would be through illegal drugs. Yeah. And that's what our Black Sea was all about. And if you created herbal ecstasy, yeah. What was the reason behind that herbal ecstasy?

Shaahin Cheyene  02:11

Well, you know, at the time, there were a lot of people experimenting with designer drugs. I was involved in the rave scene at the time, I was a rave promoter throwing raves. And as it turns out, the supply of good quality, smart drugs, good, good quality, you know, drugs had dried out? Yeah, it's about it dried out. And there was a lot of, you know, bad drugs on the market. And so my thought was, hey, has anybody ever done something that's legal using legal ingredients? And nobody had. And so we just came in, and we disrupted, you know, we didn't know this was what we were doing. But we disrupted you know, three or four different markets. The pharmaceutical industry was mad at us, the supplement industry was mad at us to drug dealers were mad at us, because it was this crazy disruptive force, you know, and I was, I was a 15 year old kid.

Ken Rutkowski  03:05

So your life then once this came out, and you perfected the formula? How did your life change from that point, prior to when the business was really going?

Shaahin Cheyene  03:14

Yeah. So you know, I basically, you know, started out with literally nothing are less than nothing, sleeping on the beach, you know, no money to within a couple of years, having a company that was earning, you know, probably close to about $350 million a year. So a lot of hard, fast lessons to be learned, you know, when you're young people, people do take advantage of you. But, you know, I had a really fast and hard business philosophy. And that was, you know, if we make enough money, we can get around all of our problems. And if people are stealing from you, if you make mistakes, if you make enough money, that solves everything, but

Ken Rutkowski  03:52

a young 20 year old, yeah, I mean, worth millions and millions of dollars, don't you balance yourself?

Shaahin Cheyene  03:59

You know, I think you kind of learn, right, so I had lots of mentors. And you know, I think that's something that's, that's really essential, especially to people starting out, I think, you know, understanding that there's no way that you can learn and everything by yourself, right. And that there's people who have skill sets and wisdom that's far beyond yours. And to be able to benefit from that. All you really have to do is is ask, you know, the worst they can do is say no,

Ken Rutkowski  04:30

and today you mentor tons of people. Yeah, this is something you've been doing. Often. Yeah, give back.

Shaahin Cheyene  04:37

Yeah, I do. I mentor a lot of people, a lot of lot of my, you know, mentors. How do you say versus protegees? Yeah. protegees. I like that. A lot of my protegees have, you know, started companies. I've got a couple that just raised a couple million for a startup Silicon Valley startup they're doing really well. You know, so yeah, I think it's I think it's it's really important. You know, it's somebody told me the other day, you know, the best way to learn something is to teach it always. Yeah. And so I that really the reason

Ken Rutkowski  05:08

why is because you have to relearn it to make sure you communicate it the right way. So it's absorbed by somebody else. Hmm. It's one of my favorite things to do. And you know, I do this all the time is yeah, how do you teach the learn? It's not a selfish thing either. But I want to go back to this idea. You're a young 20 year old, you've done some pretty disruptive stuff back then to how to market yourself. You use shows like Montel Williams, make sure you are in front of the audience back then. When did you get out of the industry? Or do you stay in the industry the whole time?

Shaahin Cheyene  05:35

It will. So I've always been in supplements. I mean, you know, I've consulted with, you know, some of the biggest pharma companies, as far as you know, how they can incorporate natural products into their product lines. And, you know, then I did the vaporisation thing where, you know, invented digital vaporisation,

Ken Rutkowski  05:52

to understand that you are the person that made what we see today with vaping. You're the guy that started this.

Shaahin Cheyene  05:58

Yep. Yep. It's, you know, I mean, it's a public company. Now, I'm no longer involved in it. But you know, vape here, which, you know, I started still very successful to this day, it was, you know, at the forefront of the vaporization. There were no real vaporizers. Before,

Ken Rutkowski  06:13

yours was pretty big. I remember the size of Yeah, it was a large device initially. Yeah, sure.

Shaahin Cheyene  06:17

I mean, you remember the first you know, iPad, or iPod or you know, any

Ken Rutkowski  06:21

big and then you got it down to a small level. Shan Shan is joining us. Now, what I see today is a very serious business guy, you walk into a room, you command authority, people know who you are, you have found a way to use different tools that are out there, like Amazon to not just sell your own your own products, but to help big box brands and sell their products on Amazon also. Yeah, how did you learn to gamify? Amazon? So,

Shaahin Cheyene  06:47

you know, one of the things that we discovered sort of in, in the process of, you know, all this business is that, you know, if you if you want to succeed, you have to have an unfair advantage. And a lot of times these bigger companies and even even startups have the problem of bureaucracy, right? They don't have what we call a hacker mindset. True, right? And these companies that are growing these these quick growth companies like Amazon, you know, the the secret to how you win on there is really to have a hacker mindset because these are companies started by hackers by disruptors, this, if you want to win on those platforms, you need to be a disrupter.

Ken Rutkowski  07:25

Do they these platforms, see you as an ally or as an enemy?

Shaahin Cheyene  07:29

I think we're a little bit of both, right? We do. You know, whatever it takes to make sure that our clients are successful, of course, within the realms of their terms of service and the law. But, you know, we keep a very close eye of what's happening in the marketplace, and we use everything we possibly can to gain that competitive advantage. It's interesting,

Ken Rutkowski  07:53

if you go back to what you said, when you started the herbal industry. You had multiple, let's call them fiefdoms that were angry at you. Yeah. He said, Yeah, the pharma companies, you had the distribution companies, even the drug dealers were upset with you. Yeah. As you now see yourself today, who are your enemies? Who are the ones that see you as a an issue?

Shaahin Cheyene  08:14

It's funny, you know, I don't keep track of my enemies, really. And it's funny, because I was looking at, I'm a big fan of Seth Godin, you're the marketing guru. And I read his blog, and he said, you know, he reads every single one of his Amazon reviews for every single one of his books, a lot of reviews, a lot of reviews. And then, you know, he reads them. And, you know, he used to get bummed out. And I totally resonated with that, because I was like, man, you know, it's like, I'll go and chat room, there's a community of people against something that I like, you know, feel passionate about, or something that I've done, but they're against me, and they've, you know, I think it goes back to you know, what, what my wife is a publicist always tells me, you know, it's like, as long as they're talking about you, you're still doing well,

Ken Rutkowski  08:52

that's the old Bill Gates, you know, any press is good press. any press is good press. But I think about that, wait a second. It's all negative, I think people will push away, you've actually learned to find the best aspects of certain products that you're dealing with, in making that rise to the surface. Yes. I mean, that's one of the keys. Can we get about a couple of minutes left? Yep. Can you give us some hacker tips for Amazon?

Shaahin Cheyene  09:15

Yeah. So I think, you know, we base most of the work that we do around, you know, several really important points. You know, the first and foremost is high quality, social proof. So we live in a social proof economy. And Amazon really, the first most important thing that you you need to do if you're if you're selling on Amazon is is have great social proof. And that means high quality, true social proof, real evangelists for your product. Yeah, real. Reviews. Yeah,

Ken Rutkowski  09:44

these are people that are recognized as good reviewers. It doesn't

Shaahin Cheyene  09:49

matter if they're recognized as real reviewers, they just have to have authenticity. And they also need to have any likability they need authenticity, if they have some level of authority. That's great. They have to resonate with the audience that you're going for. So Amazon

Ken Rutkowski  10:03

needs these reviewers to allow our product to rise to the surface. Yeah, I

Shaahin Cheyene  10:06

mean, I think Amazon is one of the largest blog networks in the world. True, right? It's their content. Everyone's building content from looks like Facebook for free. When you leave a review, you're building content that they own.

Ken Rutkowski  10:16

It's interesting, cuz you need the community to make we need the content for the community to move the product to create commerce. Yeah. So Amazon needs that population to constantly always be in there writing and reviewing stuff. Is there a certain tip you could give us on what to pay attention to to know not to buy a certain thing?

Shaahin Cheyene  10:36

Yeah, so Okay, so on Amazon, if you look at a product that has an unusually high number of reviews, and you look at the reviews, and they're very short, like great, awesome, fun products, and there's a lot of those a lot of unverified reviews, there's also a big towel. And a

Ken Rutkowski  10:53

couple of camera tripods that have that, by the way, yeah, but I ended up buying those tripods. And I understand what you're saying.

Shaahin Cheyene  10:59

Yeah, I mean, I've heard gamed, I think smart buyers will actually look around and see other places besides Amazon for the reviews, because oftentimes, brands will control their reviews very heavily on Amazon, but outside of Amazon, you know, they don't and you can get some more truth on there. And you know, the great thing about Amazon really is that they have a great return policy. So

Ken Rutkowski  11:21

do Nordstrom so I love it.

Shaahin Cheyene  11:23

If you buy it, you can send it back.

Ken Rutkowski  11:25

I don't like you mentioned a website for you. Because I know you have multiple businesses and we touch on the brain stuff that's sure but if people want to hunt you down, find you. Where do they go?

Shaahin Cheyene  11:33

You can go to XL RL dotnet.

Ken Rutkowski  11:37

Yeah. acceleron is actually one of the products which is kind of like the limitless drug. It's a brain enhancement that could take you to a whole new level, which I take and I love sharing I really appreciate you sharing time with us. Thanks. Again the website is

Shaahin Cheyene  11:48

X L R L dot NET. This guy's disrupted

Ken Rutkowski  11:52

industries often, just like you can

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Host:

Ken Rutkowski

Producer/Director: Chris Hayman

CFO: Maya Ross Camera: Sam Cahill

Editor: Serge Martinenko Audio: Brad Urba

Assistant/Camera: Austin Hutchison

SONIC GODS PRODUCTIONS www.sonicgods.net

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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

https://www.shaahincheyenne.com/

https://www.facebook.com/S.Cheyene

https://twitter.com/shaahincheyene

https://www.instagram.com/shaahincheyene

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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