Shaahin Cheyene: How I Made Billions Through Pills

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Full Transcription Of Shaahin Cheyene Interview

Intro [0:00]
Life shouldn’t be hard life should be a fun filled adventure every day. So now start joining up dots tap into your talents, your skills, your God given gifts and tell your boss, you don’t deserve me. I’m out of here. It’s time for you to smash that alarm clock. And start getting the dream business and life you will, of course, are dreaming of. Let’s join your host, David Ralph from the back of his garden in the UK, or wherever he might be today with another JAM PACKED episode of the number one hit podcast. Join Up Dots.

David Ralph [0:40]
Yeah, good morning to you. Good morning to welcome to another episode of Join Up Dots. Thank you very much for anyone who connects with us across the world and feels inspired, motivated and just driven to start their own thing. Well, you’re gonna feel that way today. Because today’s guest isn’t somebody who’s just doing his own thing. He’s doing his own thing and his own thing and his own thing. Time and time again, he’s known as the number one Amazon accelerator where he helps you to crush it on Amazon, and with over 350 million in sales. But he obviously knows a thing or two about what makes this platform an amazing platform to build, scale and earn big bucks online. As he says I’ve been called many things in my life, including the Willy Wonka of Generation X. But my favourite one is simple. The world’s leading Amazon industry expert. I’m the founder of the brain nutrition startup accelerated intelligence AI. I’m also an award winning business mogul, author, filmmaker and inventor of herbal ecstasy the no tropic that sparked by 100% legal smart drug movement. My serial entrepreneur career has spanned more than 30 years and my Amazon products about PACE, fortune 500 companies sales on the platform, setting millions of units worldwide, many of these multimillion dollar companies noticed, which led me to become one of the world’s most sought after Amazon experts. So where did the dots first thought to join up for him as he moved into the entrepreneurial world? And a big question is when did it all make sense? And things really started to escalate at a rapid speed? Well, let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Shahin Cheyenne. Good morning, sir. How are you?

Shaahin Cheyene [2:27]
Good morning, David. I’m doing excellent. How about yourself?

David Ralph [2:31]
I’m always doing excellent. I have very I pondered this because a lot of people had sort of big ups and downs. And I’m very much a sort of a plateau. The bad things don’t really apply to me in a good things are not that great. And I kind of wonder if that’s the wrong way of doing it? Should I be experiencing the highs of life and really embracing them? What what do you reckon? Is it better to be on a plateau or really riding the roller coaster?

Shaahin Cheyene [3:00]
Here’s the thing. And I’ve thought about this a lot. And I’m glad you’re getting into philosophy, actually, I’m a huge fan of Alan Watts, who’s yours? British philosopher. Maybe not a lot of people know him. More people are getting to know him these days. But I’ll tell you, I’ve put a lot of thought into this. And this is what I’ve come up with. Happiness is a myth. chasing happiness is like chasing anything else. But the more you chase it, the further away it gets from you. Now, you would ask Well, if that’s the case, what what’s the point of everything? The point is this, you can be happy in this moment. And that’s all we have is this moment. So you can make this moment. Excellent. And if you think about it, in that way, you’re not chasing happiness anymore. You’re just enjoying this beautiful meal that’s out there in front of you this amazing conversation that you and me are having right now, all of this comes down to this moment, this beautiful, pristine moment in time. And if you can do that, that’s happiness.

David Ralph [4:09]
Now, I agree with this. And we touch on Alan Watts, because he’s a fascinating gentleman. And he has a law called the backwards law, where basically it’s exactly as you say, if you’re chasing after happiness, it makes you realise that you’re not happy. And that’s why you’re chasing it. So you actually become unhappy, you get more of what you don’t want by going after what you do want. And it’s better to just like a twig on the mighty stream of life. let things flow to you.

Shaahin Cheyene [4:38]
That’s right, that’s part of the Taoist principle of what they call Wu Wei. It’s moving forward by moving backwards. And it’s amazing because look, as entrepreneurs I’ve spent my whole life being an entrepreneur from when I was a little kid up until now, and I can tell you chasing after money chasing after things going out. there and being like, Man, I’m gonna make 100 million 200 billion, whatever, it doesn’t work. Why? Because the more you chase it, the further away from you get same same with dating, when guys go out there and they’re like, they see this girl and she’s beautiful and perfect and everything is amazing on her. And like, I gotta have this girl and then they, you know, they they get so desperate and needy because they’ve built up that that need for it that she’s like, Oh, wow, this guy’s a little creepy. Let me move away from this guy, right, but it’s the guy that doesn’t care. And it’s that attitude is the same attitude with money with lifestyle design, with business, where you go out there, just to be excellent to bring a value to the world. But you don’t chase it. And if you do that it’s a difference between push marketing and Pull Marketing. The world comes to you. And that’s how it’s worked all my life.

David Ralph [5:57]
Well, once again, we’re we’re singing from the same sheet here. Every day, I read a chapter of the Dao De Jing from there. But so a Dao is in principles. And one of the things they talk about, and I struggled with this for a long time was effortless action, where basically you do limited hustle and grind. And you almost wait until that moment that comes along that wave that comes along, that gives you the momentum, and then you’re naturally in the flow. Now, when you get to a certain point shine, you can go Yes, I believe in his totally. But when you’re in that beginning stage, and you’re desperate to pay the bills, and you’re trying to do everything, it’s very difficult to take on board the advice that you’re giving, and I’m agreeing with, isn’t it?

Shaahin Cheyene [6:46]
Look, the guy that wrote The Four Hour Workweek. It’s awesome. He works 80 hours a week that there’s no easy way to do it. It takes hustle, there’s no hack to excellence. The only hack that I know of around it, is if you just start doing shit that you love, and you focus on the things that you love within that, then it stops seeming like so much work. But regardless, you got to do just a tonne of shit that you fucking hate to get to the point where you can have the fu money to start doing the things that you love. And if somebody tells you, you got to do it this way, or that way, you tell him the fuck off. You can’t do that initially, when you’re going from zero to a million you can’t. You got to get out there and hustle, you got to be a yes, man, you got to work hard, you got to sleep. Excuse me, you got to sleep on the factory floor like Elon Musk does. And I did that for years. For years, I would fall asleep wherever my you know, I would work there would be no end to work. But it didn’t feel like work. Because I was in the flow. I was in synchronicity I had everything that I needed there in that moment. And that’s exactly leading us full circle back to our initial conversation about about happiness is that it only happens in the moment, just like flow, you never know when it’s going to come. There’s things we can do to get ourselves in a flow state. But you never know when it’s going to come. And when it comes, you have to be able to take advantage of it because that is when you are at your highest level of production. Now,

David Ralph [8:32]
a lot of people, not just a lot of people, I would say the majority of people out there listening, going through life, certainly going through the education system coming out of the upper end. They don’t know what they like, they certainly don’t know what they love. I was having a conversation with my son who’s got one year left of university, saying to him, you know, what are you going to do when you come out at the end? It hasn’t got a clue. He doesn’t know. And I said to him learn the way that life operates is pretty much like you just said is you do a load of stuff. And you realise I don’t like this, which gets you closer and closer to what you actually do love. But why don’t we understand right from the very beginning? Why don’t we understand what we do love because it’s what we love? We should it should squeeze out of every pore of us, shouldn’t it?

Shaahin Cheyene [9:21]
David, Ralph, you know better than that. It’s the journey, not the destination. Why would you want to take all the fun out of that entire process of discovery? The answers are inlaid to us we’re plopped into a wet diaper. We poop in our pants, we can eat our own food. Right? We’re pretty much disabled for the first however many years of life and then you know we’ve got to be spoon fed. It’s not perfect. It’s a process of discovery. And business is a process of discovery. Of course you don’t know what you want to do. Of course Horse, you don’t know where you’re gonna go. But that’s what makes it fun. And I’ll tell you this, the entrepreneurs that thrive like all my students, this is what we teach the entrepreneurs that thrive, get very comfortable with uncertainty.

David Ralph [10:20]
Let’s take you back in time, then Cheyenne, let’s take you back, you’ve come out the education system, imagine you’re my son, you could be you could be, and you’re sitting opposite there. And we’re having dinner together. And I say to you Shahin, what do you want to do? When you grow up? What do you want to do? Was it clear to you? Or, you know, did you have a glimpse? Was it you know, was there some kind of direction? Because I never trust those people that say, Yes, from the age of three. And I wanted to be so and so I think, really? Did you? Did you? What about yourself?

Shaahin Cheyene [10:55]
You’re right. So first and foremost, I would strongly recommend against growing up, it’s far overrated. And I’ve told this to my kid as well. Secondly, what I would say is that things change. And it’s great to have an idea about what your fascination is things that you’re interested in, and to follow those to see where it will take you. But secondly, the most important thing, I think, is that you have to realise that the thing that makes you money does not have to be the thing that fascinates you, the thing that is like all your interest, and you’re all about it. For example, I’m very much about martial arts. I’ve been a fan of martial arts since I was a little kid and watch Bruce Lee movies, and I was like, Oh my God, I want to frickin be that guy. He’s amazing. He’s a minority. And like me, he stands up against the system against oppression. He’s like, he’s not a big muscle guy. He’s like a thin little guy like me, and he can just beat the shit out of anybody. He’s amazing. I want to be him. And I grew up and had a life where I was very involved in martial arts. But I never thought about getting into martial arts. It’s a terrible business to get in probably one of the worst. You’re selling your hours for money. You’re selling your health and well being because you got to take impact. It’s a very difficult business to be in. So I still to this day, train, mixed martial arts. I trained Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but that’s my fascination. So I follow that fascination. I’m fascinated in ancient history. I’ve got all these fascinations that I follow. And when people ask me, What are you doing, I say I’m working. Why? Because doing that stuff, following my fascination, gives me the space. So I can be free when I’m doing the work that I do. selling on Amazon, booking people on podcast, the two businesses that I have gone right now that are absolutely booming, because it helps me come up with fresh ideas, because it opens up a part of the brain that otherwise wouldn’t be you see people who are working like dead end jobs, when they just come home, they don’t fucking want to talk about their jobs, they it’s all they want to do is you know, drink a beer and turn on the telly and just, you know, just melt away. Well, I don’t have that. But if they followed their fascination, in addition to whatever job that they’re doing, things would be very different.

David Ralph [13:33]
Let’s hear from Jim Carrey. We’ll be back we shine,

Jim Carrey [13:37]
my father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

David Ralph [14:04]
Now, how different are you to your father, there, this is a thing that interests me a lot, because a certain generation were ingrained in going to work. They weren’t entrepreneurial. They in many ways. They were anti entrepreneurial, because it was just never taught to them, that they could be that way. Then the next generation and then the next generation are only seeing opportunities everywhere. So how different are you actually from your father?

Shaahin Cheyene [14:34]
Look, we were immigrants. We came to the United States having to leave everything behind as refugees. My dad and my family were solid middle class and Iran. During the Iranian Revolution, they moved to the United States. Were Iranian Jews, they fearing persecution, the generation before had to suffer through the Holocaust. So they’re like, hey, this could happen again. Let’s Let’s get the fuck out of here. I came to the United States. Now my dad lived a very normal life back in Iran. It was a life of accounting and pensions and that kind of thing. He thought his life would never be disrupted, moves to the United States. He’s never had that kind of money in his life. He was always accompany man, paycheck by paycheck, man. So he moves here, and he’s got to work odd jobs. He’s got to work at a pizza shop and a dry cleaners and he always kept food on the table, he always made sure that we were fed and clothed and taken care of, however, he had zero ambition, or zero even vision of anything better in the horizon. His only hope was that perhaps me and my brother would become doctors or lawyers. And that’s, you know, for Iranians or for most immigrant families. That’s all they know. That’s the pinnacle of success. Oh, my God, my shocking view, become a doctor. It is the best. And I remember as a child walking, we were living in an area of Los Angeles called Pacific Palisades and area, David that became gentrified fairly quickly, my parents managed to beg and borrow to buy, buy a home there, and they put all their money together and were able to buy this complete really should have been a teardown house. And the neighbourhood sprung up very quickly around us. And people were moving in with fancy cars, and I looked around and I was like, fuck, man, I don’t want to be driving in an eight year old Toyota, like my dad is I want the Porsche. I want the beautiful brunette in in the Porsche next to me, and I want to be driving down with my Rolex and looking, you know, great and having more money and eating at fancy restaurants. I didn’t eat at a restaurant until I was 15. I didn’t even know what that was really. So looking at all this wealth, I was aspirational. Being being first generation here. I was like, Man, I want all that. But I went to my dad and I said, Hey, man, how do we get that? I want that. And he laughed, and I said, No, seriously, dude, how do I get that and he goes, then, go down the street, talk to Mr. Tehrani his doctor, you have to become doctor only way. So I went down down the street, this guy had this really gaudy house, you know, with these, like I can Roman pillars on the two lions outside. And I looked at the guy and he was grumpy, and he was fat. And he was fucking bald. I looked at his wife, she was fat and bald, the kids were fat, bald, everybody’s fucking fat and bald and miserable, yelling at each other. And he just looks at me. And he goes, I said, Well, I’m asking about the house and his bends. And he’s like, I don’t own any of this shit. He’s like, I’m a fucking slave. I sell my hours. He’s like, Yeah, I’m a doctor. But he’s like, none of this is mine. I wake up at 5am I get home at 8pm My kids hate me. My wife hates me. My life is hell. And I was like, Whoa, is that’s how it is. I don’t think I want to do do this get and go to school for eight years plus 10 years plus, to get to that to be in debt. No, thank you. And that’s when I made the decision you had asked earlier when when the decision was that I was going to go and seek my fame and fortune outside of all of that, and if it didn’t work out fine, but I’d be in a better place than that fucking guy.

David Ralph [18:24]
And so what was the first dot Ben? Yeah, because what interests me about that story is you weren’t happy with what your dad had. You wanted something different, but it didn’t seem to be an awful lot of clarity about what you were going to do to get VAT. It was just the end goal. You know, there was a name goal you wanted the potion, the brunette and the money and whatever. So what was the first doctor that led you to going yeah, actually, this could work.

Shaahin Cheyene [18:54]
Yeah, I was 1514 and a half 15 When this happened? So I was just a kid. I had no idea of what was possible. All I knew is I wanted more and knowing myself having self knowledge and by the way, I’ve I’ve written about this in my book billion how I became king of the throw pillow called so anybody that’s interested in check out my book billion, I’m sure you’ll include a link billion how I became king of the throw pillow call to that kind of tells the whole story of all this. And there’s a there’s a feature film being made on it right now. So I’m pretty psyched about that. But I knew myself as far as personality goes, that if I had something to fall back on, David, that I would fall back on it. I knew that if there were fucking cookies in the jar, I’d be eaten cookies. So the only way for me not to eat cookies is to toss the fucking jar. And that’s what I did. I burned all my bridges. I left home at 15 I had nothing nowhere to go no friends. No family, all gone. And I had to figure out my way to how I was going to make my millions on my own. If you could imagine that,

David Ralph [20:12]
I cannot imagine that. But I’m also thinking about all the people out there listening, but attracting back loop of listening motivational podcasts of self development books, and never actually taking such dramatic action. So you must have had some kind of other than seeing that it’s possible you must have had somebody as a mentor or somebody that guided you in the early days, you surely?

Shaahin Cheyene [20:43]
Yeah, absolutely. So when I had left home, I met somebody at the community college, who was incredibly impactful on my life. And this man took it upon himself to mentor me, to coach me to make sure that I did not get into trouble. And he impacted my life, I think forever, one of the most impactful people in my life, you know, God knows the direction that my life would have taken if it had not been for him.

David Ralph [21:14]
Everybody needs somebody like that. But a lot of people are frightened of actually asking or reaching out, they feel like they’ve really got to provide something of worth. But the truth is it Shahin as you probably know, is people are willing to help. They want to help. But we hold ourselves back, we don’t reach out. Why do you think we do that?

Shaahin Cheyene [21:37]
Sometimes, and sometimes people are assholes, you’ll get more nose than you will yeses

David Ralph [21:43]
to blow your mind. Do you really believe

Shaahin Cheyene [21:46]
you? Absolutely. Absolutely. I got 50 noes before I got a single Yes, when I started my first business, and you have to be okay with rejection. You have to be okay with discomfort, it all comes back to that all the source of every problem, every difficulty is that we have the wrong mindset. And that is that we have expectations and when the world doesn’t meet our expectations, we get angry. We think things should be this way things turn up to be that way. And we’re upset. It’s the source of all all of our suffering. So if you can reduce your expectations, say, Hey, I am okay with uncertainty. It makes things more exciting. And you’re okay with rejection. And you go out there seeking rejection. And most people actually will say no to you, really, they will is the truth. Most people in general are assholes, especially from time to time. The fact is, there are amazing people out there, but you have to find them. And again, it’s the journey of discovery. It’s, it’s so much so that I think this last couple generations, which are cut from a different cloth than the generations of the 80s. In the 70s in the 60s, and before them feel an entitlement. They feel Hey, people should should people I’m entitled, somebody should mentor me, somebody should help me. What do what are you bringing to the table? What are you offering that person? What What exactly is it that you’re offering to the world? You’re just bringing entitlement nobody’s gonna I mean, I tell you to fuck off if you came to me like that, right? It’s it’s that old adage, that old Dallas adage where the student comes to the master and and they’re having a cup of tea and the master is pouring the tea, and the tea pours into the cup. And that pours all over the table and just point you say, hey, Master, Master, what are you doing? What are you doing? And he says, Look, you come to me with a cup that’s already full. So this is what’s going to happen. It gets messy, come back to me with an empty cup. So for me, it was not knowing, being comfortable with discomfort seeking discomfort seeking discipline. And for me what it was, was being able to be at the right place at the right time, synchronicity being in the flow. And the right person came to me. And when the connection was made, my cup was empty. I had zero expectations.

David Ralph [24:30]
I had a guy on the show recently who was telling me and I totally believe this but at it’s 85% more likely for an immigrant to become successful than a native born and bred in that city or that town or, or whatever. Due to that, almost they’ve got nothing to lose. They always got to try to make opportunities for themselves. Now, is it nature or nurture? Because it seems to me that you feel But entrepreneurship is almost dropping away again, due to the entitlement that people seem to have nowadays.

Shaahin Cheyene [25:10]
I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it depends on your personality. Here’s here’s the second problem with our modern society in modern lives, is that everybody has the attention span of a fucking goldfish. Nobody is out there going, You know what, I’m going to have discipline. I’m going to be stoic about stuff. I’m going to just take my time, and I’m going to find the right thing. Everybody wants the answers. Now. Nobody wants to go through that process of discovery. Like your first question was like, Hey, why don’t we just know you don’t know, because it’s the process. You look at people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk Steve Jobs. My friend Nolan Bushnell, who started Atari. They didn’t come up with that shit overnight. These guys had a struggle. They had the hero’s journey. They had the time where they tried something. And it was such a fuckup that they thought they were never going to come back again. But it built grit. It built a thick skin. It built the ability to say, hey, I have confidence in myself. So I’m going to go into this situation, knowing that I probably am going to fail. And that’s okay. That’s the problem that people no longer have that attitude. It’s just an entitlement. Everybody has to be nice to meet. No, they fucking don’t. They have to give me a fair wage. No, they fucking don’t. They have to give me my entitlement. I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve made tic tock videos, I made Instagram videos. I should be famous. No, you shouldn’t.

David Ralph [26:45]
You sound quite angry about this. And I understand I understand your point of view with this. Because I see all the time as well. But what is it that really sort of riles you? In this regard? What what sort of like, it gives you the b&e Abani, as we call it every

Shaahin Cheyene [27:05]
day in my bonnet, I love it. First of all, I am not angry. But I do believe in what I speak of, and I have the conviction. And I don’t need to be likeable. It’s not a requirement for me. So if I come off as angry I, I take that with a grain of salt. But look, the thing that gets me again, is entitlement. And I really feel that you need to do what you have to be willing to do whatever it takes in order to get what you want. And in business, sure, if you’ve got rich parents, you’ll never fall because they’ll take care of you. If you’ve got a trust fund, great. If you’ve got a rich husband or wife or whatever it is, and someone’s giving you the money. That’s a different story. But if you’re like the rest of us, if you’re an immigrant, if you’re a person who’s starting from zero, if you’re a person who’s starting from less than zero, and going out there, the only way through the chasm is through discipline. Right? And I see so many times people failing, either because they don’t have the discipline, or they’re afraid of the unknown, or they’re not willing to fail. And that’s the thing that gets me going look right now, David, I coach through my Amazon mastery programme for anybody that’s interested is FBA seller. course.com. Check us out. Through my course, I teach people how to get over that fear, and how to start a business. And to continue through that business. Even when it seems like you’re going to fail. It’s not like a roulette wheel, where you throw it on, you throw the whatever the ball on the little thing that spins. And if it falls on your collar, you win. And if it’s not on your colour, you’re off to doing something else. It’s a process of discovery. It’s figuring out why things don’t work and tweaking it. That’s the work. It’s the solving the problems. It’s the dealing with the unfair comp competitors, it Oh, your competitor left you a bad review. So what go out there and figure out how to solve that problem, you be better. That’s that’s the way that you win. That’s the way that you get through and look, my first business, we created a billion dollars in revenue. A billion dollars before the internet before social media before any of that stuff. And I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have a high school education. I didn’t have any money to start the business. I didn’t have any real friends at that time. But I did have discipline. And that’s what I’m excited about. I’m passionate about that.

David Ralph [29:47]
So what was that first business failure and why did it do so? unbelievably well, because in the intro, the last question I asked was, you know, when did it all make sense? And things really started to Escalade, because there is a time isn’t there when you’re trying everything. And it’s almost like you’ve got all the pieces of an engine in front of you. But you’re not just you’re not quite putting them in the right order to make it work. And then once it does, you think, ah, that’s it. And it’s almost, it’s almost too simple when it suddenly starts working. So when did it start working for you?

Shaahin Cheyene [30:23]
I started working for me when money started coming in, I think that the world validates you, with your bank account what’s in your bank account. So I teach this to my students to you, you should always when starting a business, especially in Amazon business, always go for the easy win first, why? Because our minds work through a feedback loop. And if you have to constantly be putting output and not getting any input, you’re going to quit. It’s just human nature. But if you do something where you get a quick win, then that increases the dopamine in your brain and reinforces that behaviour. So you do more of it. So for me, that company was a company called herbal ecstasy. And we launched the first alternative to ecstasy, if you remember in the 90s, ecstasy was the biggest party drug out there. Not

David Ralph [31:11]
personally, but I’ve heard it Yeah.

Shaahin Cheyene [31:15]
Right. It was the biggest party drug out there. And I thought, Hey, man, if I came up with a legal version of this, that was safe and fun, and people could take it, I can make a lot of money. And that’s what I did. I had no idea how to do any of the things leading to that business. But that was my conviction. And Fucking hell, man. Nothing was going to stop me. And I had the discipline. And I was willing to burn my ships to sink or swim, whatever it took, I was going to make it. And that’s, that’s in variably. What happened with me?

David Ralph [31:50]
So so how do you do that? And how do you make a legal tablet, you’re standing there, you’re not a chemist. And there must be a load of dodgy people out there that say, Oh, I could make something out of rat powder and talcum powder. And God knows what. And how do you actually, you know, test that and get it to market? No, it’s safe.

Shaahin Cheyene [32:10]
It’s funny, because my nine year old, I bought a bunch of lights for the garden the other day on Amazon. And I told him, he comes home. He’s like, what’s in the box that I said, I’m so glad you asked. That’s your job. And he was What do you mean? I said, Yeah, you got to put all this stuff together. Because you know, it’s from China. So it’s like a million different parts he’s got so assemble it and put it up. I’m like, it’s your job to assemble it and put it out. And he’s like, but Dad, you’re always so hard on me. You always say, I know what you’re gonna say, you’re gonna say figure it out. But how do I do it? And I said, you know what’s on you, right? Figure it out. And you’ll figure it out. He’s smart. So that’s exactly what I did. I figured it out. And I had no idea how to do this. So I went out there. And I started making phone calls. I picked up what we had in those days was this book called The Yellow Pages. It was pre internet. I had everybody’s phone number in the world in it. And I started calling people I started calling herbalists I started calling people that make pills, people that sell ingredients, and I said, Hey, will you help me? And like we discussed earlier? 99% of them said, Fuck off kid. But 1% said yes. And even the ones that said no, I would show up at their door knocking the next day. I wouldn’t take one. No, you’d have to give me 10 100 knows for me to accept it. And people could see it. People could smell it. People sense the hunger. People sense the motivation. People know, when you are determined. And people sense that in men, they did help me out. But it’s not that nobody said no, it’s not that nobody was an asshole. The majority of people were, but it was the few that agreed to help me that agreed to coach me that agreed to give me ingredients or let me pay them later for something now. And I tried a lot of different formulas. And remember, I didn’t have anywhere to live, I was basically sleeping in my car on the beach, you know, on the occasional couch if I could find it. And I got myself a girlfriend. And when her dad left through the front door, she would sneak me in through the back just like the movies. That was hilarious. And I would be cooking up prototypes in her kitchen. And then we would call up all the teenagers in the neighbourhood. And we would get them to try it until we got a formula that really worked well

David Ralph [34:28]
up to two best and he it’s like Breaking Bad in their kitchen.

Shaahin Cheyene [34:35]
Exactly. But he never saw me I’d sneak in through the back. I’d be gone before he came home. It was awesome.

David Ralph [34:43]
Now, you’re saying that and it makes it makes 100% perfect sense is once again, you look for something that was needed, but wasn’t on offer. And we’ve all got that opportunity. We all have ideas over time when we think oh wouldn’t you Be good at this oh, this is dreadful or whatever. But people don’t genuinely take action. Is it because of lack of experience? Is it lack of doubts? I tell you what we see shine a lot. We have people that go, this is brilliant. This is fantastic. I’ve had a great idea. By go to bed thinking is the world’s greatest idea. And I wake up thinking is the most stupid idea.

Shaahin Cheyene [35:25]
Two things fear of failure, fear of success, and this is going to shock you more often than not fear of success. People like their stories, it makes them different. You ever know somebody who’s got some like weird disease or something wrong with and then nothing, nothing big, but they’ve got something going on. And they make that their whole fucking identity. And then something comes along and you’re like, Hey, man, you could cure that. No, no, I’m good. I’m good. Hey, you know, you just got to eat this fucking green slime and you know, you know, have some of this tea or whatever, and you’ll be fine. No, no, no, I think I’m okay. Why? Because it builds their identity. And for a lot of people, they’re uncomfortable with being successful. And that comes back to what we talked about earlier. And it’s stoicism. And actually, the inscriptions at the temple of Delphi. The first thing that’s inscribed on this amazing Temple is Know thyself. And what that means to me is not only know your strengths, but know your weaknesses. And that’s important for you to know, it’s important to know if you’re an asshole, it’s important to know if you fear success. If you fear failure, if you think, oh, man, if I made it, my friends, were still all the way down here. And I get up here, what will they think of me? I better stay down here. Once you come to terms with that, and you realise that things change.

David Ralph [36:51]
When, once again, did it really change for you because it is a journey, as we say, where we go on a journey, and we get some success, and then success disappears and stuff. But when did it become almost a lifestyle choice. So it wasn’t like a business you’re aiming for. But it was the lifestyle but the businesses were giving you a

Shaahin Cheyene [37:13]
few million bucks, right when I had cash sitting in my office, literally in duffel bags. And I had to learn some hard lessons. But when I knew that I’d never have to work again if I didn’t want to. And you learned some hard lessons, for example, and accountant is not the guy who counts the money in the duffel bag stacked up in your office that came as a shocker to me, David, I was like your if I can account Isn’t that what you do? No, that is not what an accountant does. And secondly, not a good idea to have cash stuffed in in duffel bags all the way up to the ceiling in your office. Second thing you learn.

David Ralph [37:49]
And so what was the first one I lost the first one. I was roasting the money in the bag. So what was the first one?

Shaahin Cheyene [37:57]
The first one was accountants are not the ones that count the money in the duffel bags. Okay, it’s

David Ralph [38:03]
not their job and money and it’s Apple bikes. Yeah,

Shaahin Cheyene [38:07]
I you know, look, I didn’t know somebody told me they’re like, Hey, you should probably get an account and I was like, Cool accountant. That’s like a bean counter. Okay, great. That’s somebody who’s gonna count the money. And I was like, perfect. Bring somebody and we brought some guy in isn’t the stuffy suit. You know, it came from some big agency, some firm or something. And it took one look at these bags. And it just took off.

David Ralph [38:28]
I was speaking to a friend who used to date the daughter of Betty Jo’s, I don’t know, lawyer or something. However, there was a there was a connection to Billy Joe. And he went out for dinner with Billy Joel one night and he said, you know, what’s the best bit of business advice that you could give? He said, get a really good accountant, and then get another one to account that accountant. And he said, That’s my thing. He said, get to have everything so that you can make sure it’s all sort of going in the right direction, which seems sort of like it seems that amazingly, I don’t know, belts and braces really, to sort of tie everything up in that regard. He do see his point of view on that.

Shaahin Cheyene [39:13]
Yeah, I think it’s kind of like what what was it Reagan said that trust but verify. And I think it’s just again, this isn’t a black or white thing? I think it kind of depends. I mean, surely if you’re a musician or an artist, and they historically have had a history of being mistreated by the professionals who represent them, that’s unfortunately, the rule not the exception, then in that case, that certainly makes sense. But as a business person, you know, you got a bookkeeper, you get an account and you’re good, I think,

David Ralph [39:43]
well, let’s hear from somebody that’s really had some knocks Steve Jobs. Of

Unknown Speaker [39:47]
course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards. 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect I’m looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.

David Ralph [40:21]
So what was your big dot? What was the dot? When you look back on it? You go Yeah, that’s really where everything I knew who I was. Because about dot?

Shaahin Cheyene [40:31]
Well, so I think there’s lots of dots, right? We’re not looking at a tree with one branch that’s connected to another branch. And your theory of dots is very interesting. But it’s kind of like a mind map. Right? Multiple, there could be multiple branches to that. And that’s really the best way visually to, to think my my answer to that, for me would be there was a lot of different ones. One for me was that nobody trusts the government. And that all publicity is good publicity. What happened with us was that we had when I started doing it, okay, here’s a teenage long haired kid that has a real bug against authority. And he started a company where he’s selling illegal drugs and nobody understands. The government can’t do anything against him. This is me, because his products are legal. But people are now taking them recreational. Surely, there’s something illegal about what he’s doing. But there wasn’t. So if you if you look at if you look at that, the government took a keen interest on trying to figure out if there was something that I was doing that was wrong. What that spawned was they went on a press offensive. And so they started going out to the media saying, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that we’re going to investigate this guy. Well, what did that do that made the press take a look at us. And we got so much publicity. And at first, I was scared. I was like, Oh, my God, this is terrible. I’m going to be everywhere. This is going to be me on those terrible shows. And then something extraordinary happen.

David Ralph [42:07]
I love those technical shows. It would be good.

Shaahin Cheyene [42:11]
Right where the guy brings out the kid, you know, the wife is standing there. He’s like, it’s your kid, Johnny. I know, I know. But what happened was the news was running stories about me all day and all night, I became the focus of interest, this long haired kid who’s invented a drug that’s found a way to get around the system. Well, I was worried that people would watch this. And they’d go, oh, yeah, this stuff’s dangerous. We’re not going to take it. People were watching the shows hearing. It’s dangerous thinking, man, if it’s dangerous, and must really work, where can I get it? And that catapulted our sales in a way that nothing else could do? A because they don’t believe the government because the government had lied to them about drugs you had coming out of the 1980s just saying no smoke, a little bit of weed and you’ll die. You know, those were the kind of messages that they were sending to people and people knew that wasn’t true. People knew that drugs are different for different people. And there’s different varying levels of drugs. And yes, cannabis is very different from crack cocaine, those things are very different. And for the majority of people, ecstasy was just fine. There were some people who had problems with it. But for the majority of people, it was a fairly benign drug for in relation to other drugs that were out there. So me coming up with a natural form of ecstasy and selling it in the market, when people hearing the government say, hey, this stuff could be dangerous, be aware, was the best advertising anybody could ever do. That’s what propelled us from making a few 100 million dollars to a billion dollars in revenue. And again, anybody that’s interested in the story, I’ve got the audio book up on Audible, it’s billion how I became king of the throw pill called,

David Ralph [44:00]
is that what I call you, the king of the thrill pill?

Shaahin Cheyene [44:04]
The king of the thrill pill,

David Ralph [44:06]
that’s not a bad thing to be known as is it? Fun, I’d like a cool name. I don’t think I’ve ever had a call name. One of these days, one of these days, I’m gonna have a call name.

Shaahin Cheyene [44:18]
You got to first name? What are you gonna do with that?

David Ralph [44:21]
Yeah, but it’s not quite the name as a king of the thrill pill, is it? Anyway, this is the part of the show that we’ve been building up to. And this is the part that we called a sermon on the mic when we send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could go back in time and speak to that chat. What advice would you give him? Well, we’re going to find out because I’m going to play the theme and when it fades is your time to talk.

Unknown Speaker [44:49]
Here we go. With the best bit of the show. The Sermon on the mind, the Sermon on the Mount

Shaahin Cheyene [45:07]
All right. So if I was talking to my younger self, and giving my younger self advice, and this is a really interesting exercise that I think anybody can do, it kind of gives you a little bit of perspective into hindsight, in hindsight of your life, and gives you a little reflection. So I actually like this exercise. First and foremost, I would say, seek counsel, get a mentor, get several mentors that have been where you want to be, I teach this again, and my Amazon course, FBA seller, course.com, for anybody that’s interested, reach out to us there book a time, and I’ll talk to you, but I recommend getting multiple mentors in multiple areas. And there’s, there’s really a fine art to doing that. So I would coach myself and teach myself how to do that. Because had I had mentors and a lot of those areas, I would have held on to a lot more of that billion dollars than I actually ended up doing. Second thing I would say is Know thyself, know yourself. Be aware of your strengths and your weaknesses. And finally, the thing that I would say is, don’t fucking listen to anybody, man, if you don’t have to, you know what’s right and what’s wrong, and you can take advice, but people will always want to bring you down to their level. And I shouldn’t say always, I’ll say in most cases, people want to be bringing you down to their level. So if you start calling people and going over your ideas, seeking validation, you’re going to hear a bunch of yeses, a bunch of maybes, a bunch of noes. And oftentimes, we tend to go with those knows. So unless you have an unshakable belief in self, it’s what Richard Koch talks about, in his book, unreasonable success and how to achieve a great book, by the way to get it. And he talks about the common denominator behind people like Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos is they they had an unshakable belief in yourself until you have that. Don’t fucking listen to anybody about if you should or shouldn’t do something, go out there and fucking do it. And don’t let anybody shake your bow.

David Ralph [47:23]
Yeah, I think that’s the key thing. Just go out and do it. Because today is the right time to start anything.

Shaahin Cheyene [47:32]
Yeah, people are assholes. Seriously, there’s a lot of them out there. So if you go out there, there are amazing people that will change your life. But there are a lot of assholes out there too. And sometimes it’s hard to discern, especially when you’re in a vulnerable situation, when you start now from zero, who’s who. So if you’ve made up your mind to do something, and you are willing to do whatever it takes doesn’t mean you have to do whatever it takes, but that you are willing to do whatever it takes in order to get that thing. Fucking helmet, go out there and do it. Go out there and do it. And remember, it’s about the journey. The business of business is about solving the tricky problems that others have not. It’s not about the doing the thing that makes the business and the paperwork and all that other stuff. It’s about solving those difficult problems. And when you find yourself solving those difficult problems, know that that’s the business that you’re

David Ralph [48:34]
in. Great advice. Great advice. So Cheyenne, what is the number one best way that our audience can connect with you?

Shaahin Cheyene [48:41]
Yeah, so there’s a couple of different ways. So if you’re interested in becoming an Amazon seller, creating an online business, creating recurring revenue streams, you can go to FBA seller course.com, or reach out to me directly my email is dar kzss@gmail.com. So you can reach out to me there. If you’re interested in being featured on lots of great podcasts like this. Check us out on podcast cola.com I, we didn’t talk much about it, but I’m a huge fan of podcasts, especially yours. And these types of podcasts have become the new medium and are taking over the marketing and advertising landscape. So anybody that’s interested in building authority, and becoming a guest on great shows just like David Ralph, joining up the dots making online business fun, reach out to us at podcast cola.com exactly like it sounds pod CAS T co l a.com. and book a time I’d love to talk to you to see if being a guest on podcast is right for you. And for anybody who’s more interested in my crazy ride and story check out billion how I became king of the throat Paul cult, and you can get that on Amazon. It’s on Audible or the books available on Amazon as well.

David Ralph [49:56]
Well, we will have all the links on the show notes and make it as easy as possible share hain. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, joining up those dots. And please come back again, when you’ve got more dots to join up, because I do believe that by joining those dots and connecting our paths is always always the best way to build our futures. Shaheen. Thank you so much.

Shaahin Cheyene [50:17]
You’re a star David, Ralph. I appreciate you, buddy.

David Ralph [50:22]
So, interesting story, he found something that was already popular, but he just changed it. And that’s how a lot of businesses are made. It’s not like the new thing that you’ve got to come up with. It’s just finding something and then pivoting it slightly, solving a problem adding more value and making it up as you go along. That’s the key to being an entrepreneur, you haven’t got a Bible, you haven’t got a manual to follow. You just have to trust that it will work. Reach out, get a mentor, ask for coaching, whatever to get you going. And then just keep moving forward. And I guarantee 95% of you will make something happen. Promise you. Until next time, thank you so much as always, and I’ll see you again. Cheers. See ya. Bye bye.

Outro [51:09]
That’s the end of China. You heard the conversation. Now it’s time for you to start taking massive action. Create your future create your life. Izzy only you live God. We’ll be back again real soon. Join us dots during the gods Join Up Dots. John.

Unknown Speaker [51:35]
John, Join Up Dots.