Hack and Grow Rich

[hackandgrow]

Silver Spooning Your Child? Watch This...

I have two boys. Brian is 33 and I have a 24 year old. So I make them work. I make them work hard. I make them start at the bottom. When Brian started with me years ago, when he graduated from Penn State, I actually wouldn't bring him into the family business. I said, you need to go out in the world because you come into the family business. You're going to be thinking, you come in, put your feet up on the table and hey, my dad's the owner and you know, I get to hang out here. It's like no, you go out. 

Learn how the world works. Spend a year at least doing that. And he went to work for Sprint and was in corporate sales and I said, so what do you know after he went to a training program. I said, what are you doing today? Oh well, they came, they brought out the yellow pages and said, okay. Brian, today you call on car dealers, tomorrow you're going to call on beauty salons. It's like cold calling, right? So he got his ass handed to him for a year in a corporate environment and realized life's tough. It's not easy you get up every single day and they are on you for eight hours a day. 

How many contacts, how many sales, how many this and so finally he said, can I interview in the family business and he came in and he did and he started at the very bottom. He started in the grunt positions. And you know, in product development, finding products going to trade shows, searching through catalogs etc. you know, watching the shopping channels and then as we moved him along, he got involved in all aspects of the business. He had a stint in the production side, helping produce the infomercials. And the writing side, and the operation side and product development. But at the end of all of that, after a few years, he was running As Seen On TV.com, which was one of our assets. The website As Seen On TV and so make a long story short, I have you know, the kids I haven't shared the wealth with them.

 I'm making them work for it. But what I am doing is this, I end up part of my business model is working with public companies and all of that. So I'm involved with about 35 companies that I've invested in or I sit on the board and some of you know, a nice piece of those are public. So when I get stock in a public company, I now am allocating shares to certainly Brian, who's involved in these relationships and then my other son also, and now I'm letting them get in on the ground floor of some of these opportunities. I am letting them invest in some of these opportunities, if they want. And I'll help them in in some of these cases, but it's they really have to be they're self-starters and they're out there doing it. Every step of the way, the same way I did. There's no big heap of money at the end of the rainbow sitting there for them now. That's when I die, but let's not talk about that.

[hackandgrow]

How To Stop Letting The Little Things Break You?

I think look from martial arts we can learn a lot of things. The first thing I think we can learn is how to be anti fragile as Nassim Taleb talks about in his book Antifragile. So many people in life are so worried. They're so concerned that every little thing is going to disrupt their perfect ecosphere. So many people are really set back by the slightest things in life. Anything can throw you off balance. Try to be on the mats for two hours straight with people that are trying to choke you out and take the air out of your trachea and you will quickly realize that the things in life, all those things that are happening in life, really matter this much in comparison to the big picture. So the first thing is it teaches you how to be anti fragile. You realize that you're tougher than you think.

[hackandgrow]

Top 3 Qualities Needed To Accomplish Anything

The reason why I wrote the book is to help inspire people to know that you can do anything. Even if you don't have money, even if you don't have resources, there're really just three things that you need to have knowledge, courage, action. And I credit my friend Wayne. Wayne Boss, who shared that philosophy with me early on one of my mentors. And it's really about having those three qualities that anybody can capture and with having knowledge, courage, and action, you can accomplish anything. And I talk about that more in my book.

[hackandgrow]

How Do Successful People Think Differently?

I teach people stop selling your hours. I teach people learn how to learn better, right? Have you heard, you know, if I had 10 hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend one hour cutting down the tree and 10 hours sharpening my axe. Maybe the other way around. Right, 10 hours. I'd sharpen my axe for nine hours and I'd spend one hour cutting down the tree, right? And that's really what I feel life boils down to is that you have to really spend more time thinking, doing the heavy lifting, sharpening those tools. 

How do I accelerate? How do I accelerate my learning? How do I accelerate the process where I can take information in and work with efficiency to maximize the things that I can be great at and not worry about all that other stuff. And when you do that, people don't even notice. People don't even notice that you have a learning disability, people don't even notice your shortcomings because they're like holy men. Look at this guy. 

He's incredible at this thing. And really you might not be incredible at that thing, but you might have just worked a little harder than the last guy, who they think is incredible. You might have thought a little differently about things and when we look at people, you look at people like Elon Musk, he's got a learning disability allegedly. One of the smartest guys, richest man in the world right now as we record this. How is that possible? 

The guy sleeps on the floor of the factory, he does not give a you know what? Look at Jeff Bezos. He had bricks set up in his office and a piece of wood and a spray painted sign behind him that said Amazon. And he worked ceaselessly, endlessly and getting to where he was. Look at Steve Jobs. The same thing Steve Jobs, you know, people will disagree with this wasn't the nicest of people from all counts, especially from Walter Isaacson's biography of him, but what they did do is they learned how to think differently and how to learn differently.

[hackandgrow]

There Are No Secrets To Success

I am not very good at a lot of things. Probably most things, I'm not very good at. I'm top level, mastery level at just a couple things. A very narrow band. But what I am good at is learning and so I spend a lot of my time learning how to learn. I read books. I listen to podcasts. I watch videos. I approach people and I'm like, hey man, that thing that you did there, that was really cool. 

Can you show me how you did it? And they're like, yeah, it's just this and I'm like, whoa, wait a second, and I have to break it down. I have a slight learning disability. So it takes me a minute to learn things, but what I've discovered in life is that even if you are not as good as somebody else at something, if you work harder than them you can seem like you're better and you can achieve better results just by working harder. 

Now if you're naturally good, if you naturally have a genetic, where you're you've got some what they call God-given talent at something and there are people like that. that's  awesome. The majority of us for the majority of things we need to succeed in business to succeed in life to succeed in all those things that we want to succeed at are not going to have those innate abilities. So what do we need to do? We need to learn and is it possible to accelerate the process of learning? Absolutely! If you're not as good at something as somebody else what can you do? Work harder.

[hackandgrow]

Using Stories To Influence People

I found a mentor, a man named Ed Lawson. I write about him in my book. He was known as the California Walkman. He was a great civil rights leader of his time and Ed was a black man coming up in the 60s and 70s and he would constantly get harassed by the police. This is before Black Lives Matters. This is before all that kind of stuff and he took the police department to the supreme court by himself. He's not an attorney. 

He was just a guy who believed in justice and fairness and when I met him, he had gone through all that. He had won a supreme court case and he had decided that he was going to mentor some young people and there I was. And I was mentored by him for a period of time and he really shifted my view on the world and taught me a lot about how the world works, how business works, how deals are conducted. 

But most importantly how to influence people and he was more than anybody I've ever met to this date. A master of influence. He was a master storyteller and if you can master those two qualities, it doesn't really matter where you are, what you have, what resources are available to you because everything in life involves one person giving something to another person. So if you hold the tool of influence and if you can do that through storytelling, the most impactful form of influence, there's nothing that can stop you.

[hackandgrow]

Developing Self-Discipline And Self-Control Through Martial Arts

The second thing which I think is probably the single most important thing in business and life and in any of that is mastery of discipline. Discipline is so critical. Discipline over what you eat, discipline over how you act, discipline over what you think and being able to delay gratification. So important. And martial arts one of the most important things, why I have my kid do it is because it teaches you discipline. 

It allows you to have the discipline of not striking somebody because you don't like what they said at an Oscar party or at the Oscars. It gives you it gives you the discipline to have the security to know that you're okay. That's another thing. And calmness. Knowing that you can defend yourself physically, emotionally and always gives you a sense of not only self-worth but of calmness where you can go through the world being calm knowing look, if I had to handle myself I could but I'm not going to unless I have to. 

The most chillest dudes you will ever meet are going to be bad ass martial artists because when a dude is on the mats, when a dude is in the ring, when a dude is doing that several times a week, he doesn't want to fight. Somebody could say something about his mama and he could be like, all right, well, that's messed up. You don't talk about someone's mama but you know what? It's cool, it's not worth it for me to hurt you and you walk away calm. The guys that the guys that throw punches and slaps and and hit people are the guys that are insecure. Those are not the martial artists. 

So it's a calm that you get going into life. And it's true you do get injured. There are lots of injuries in martial arts. There's injuries in grappling. But I know people who do ballet who get more injured in ballet. I know people who do soccer, who get more injured in soccer. So at the end of the day whatever you do, there's going to be injuries. I feel like you should do something, whatever it is that gives you a discipline. A discipline of spirit and allows you to go through life with a calm and assuredness of knowing who you are.

[hackandgrow]

Rising Up After Life Knocks You Down

Yeah, one of my first martial arts teachers one of the things they taught me is that you're not going to die from a punch. Very unlikely. So one of the exercises that we did many years ago when I was a kid was actually we tied our hands behind our back and then the other our partner you know, because you pair up in martial arts our partner just got to punch us and we could not punch back. 

We could only bob and weave and duck and go back and you'd get hit you'd get hit and then it would be that person's turn and then they would get wearing gloves of course, but you learned that hey a punch is going to hurt, but it's not going to kill me. And so then when your hands are free you're like, oh man this is great and I'm not afraid of a punch when a punch is coming and life is like that too. You got to know that in business, in whatever you do, whatever endeavor you undertake you're going to get punched. It's going to happen. 

Life has a way I don't know anybody, who's lived life who hasn't been punched. It happens. Look at all the great people throughout history. Everybody gets punched. Everybody gets knocked down. It's how you get up, how you react to those situations and so what's that mean? It's about your internal state. It's about who you are inside and how you react to the stimulus being given to you. It's not about the stimulus that's bs. all the stuff is on the periphery. It's about how you interpret it and that's really what it's all about at the end of the day.

[hackandgrow]

Stop Taking Everything Too Seriously

I think for so many people that's going to get you so far in life because people tend to be wound up so tight and they walk around life holding their sphincters like this and everything is so tight waiting waiting to cancel somebody. Waiting for somebody to say something to offend their sensibilities. And the fact is that you don't have to be wound up so tight. You can pretty much laugh anything off and eventually the other person will start laughing too. 

Life is just not that serious. Business is just not that serious. And if you realize it's like what what ancient culture is called maya it's it's all an illusion. If you realize that, you know, getting a little philosophical here, but if you realize that none of it is real. And at the end of the day, the way that you interpret that stimulus coming in is more important than that stimulus. 

Because the way you interpret it creates your internal state and how you interpret everything around you, the way the world works, the way the universe functions, the way people interact with you, you enter into a place of such power and strength that nobody can tear you down. And that's where I want people to come from. You want to come from a place where you have that discipline, you have that ability to acquire knowledge, that ability to build that inner strength. And then you become invincible and you can laugh it off.

[hackandgrow]

Embrace Failure - It is The Road To Success!

Yeah, I've had a lot of failures in life. And the fact is, when you look at people that are successful, look, I've made hundreds of millions of dollars in my life. And when you look at people like that, you look at people who made that kind of wealth, created that kind of money, you only see their successes. How many videos are there online of shots that Michael Jordan has missed? Not a lot. People don't create highlight reels of Michael Jordan missing shots. You see the ones that he's made. 

You see the two seconds in the game and he makes the shot and everybody screams that was impossible and it happens. Those are the things that you see. So we tend to remember the wins, the successes of the people who we admire. But what we don't see is their losses. And one of the reasons is that there's probably a whole lot of them and I've had a whole lot of losses and I write about them again in my book Billion How I Became King of The Throw Pill Cult again you know. You guys check it out if you can get it at the library, if it's available get it on amazon. But in order to succeed, you have to fail.

[hackandgrow]

How To Overcome Fear of Taking A Risk?

My first business I started when I was 15. And I had actually left home we came from Iran as immigrants into the United States was a very tough transition. I didn't speak any English when I moved to this country. And my folks were middle class in Iran. When we moved to the United States, we were solid poor, we left everything behind literally ran to the plane, I remember with just the clothes on our backs. And when we got here, life was difficult. And by the time I was 15, I thought to myself, Man, you know, I'm tired of being second class, third class citizen. 

How do I get past that? And it was through wealth. Well, how do you get wealth? My folks only knew one thing. They said, you know, become a doctor.  You know, you become a doctor, you will be successful. And I thought, if that's the pinnacle of success, I'm out. So I packed my bags and I left. I didn't want to become a doctor, didn't want to go to school for endless years. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to survive. 

I slept in these abandoned buildings and these buildings that were under construction. I managed to get the codes to get in and I would go in before the builders or the realtors were in. I would sleep in these like luxury buildings and then I would be gone clean up and leave before the people would come in the morning I would be fine. I managed to get myself a mentor.

[hackandgrow]

Customer Reviews - The Thing That Moves The Needle The Most

And we are live. Welcome to Hack and Grow Rich. My name is Bart Baggett. I am the co-host of this ride and with me is Shaahin Cheyenne, my buddy, my pal, my internet marketing guru. Today is one of my favorite topics of all time. It's persuasion. It's marketing. It's sales. If you've ever tried to convince anything of anybody of anything, you need to listen to this. Why do they need to listen to this, Shaahin? Well, today we are going to take a peek behind the curtain of Amazon reviews, social proof and reciprocity. 

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background with that, Bart? Well, I've been doing, you know, sales training when I was 15 years old and I went to a Tom Hopkins seminar and I told my Dad, I said this guy does this for a living. You can sit in front of a thousand people and talk. This is awesome. He goes, shut up and listen because you're going to learn how to sell multi-level marketing later and I said, I don't want to sell multiple marketing but every time I went to these meetings with my Dad, who's a great salesman, very much 70s ish salesman, still great today, I saw people tell stories. 

I saw testimonials. I was seized testimony and I said, I don't get this. Why does why do I have to sit through an hour an hour of testimonials and what I then started to realize is that testimonials are really today's reviews and that version of social proof is what Robert Cialdini called. It was one of the critical elements, especially in old school sales but it is translated perfectly 25 years later into what we call social proof or reviews now. Robert Cialdini wrote the book on it. He defined it and codified it but I promise you in 1956, they were using the idea of social proof to get you to buy Tupperware. So I'm not old enough to know what a Tupperware party is, Shaahin. 

Did you ever know what a Tupperware party was when you were a kid? Well, I heard about it because I was a big fan of happy days and all those 1950s films showing the idyllic white picket fence and you know, the perfect lifestyle where the dad would come and sit you down and say, son we going to have a talk, that kind of lifestyle. So I loved watching that stuff because you know I came from Iran and we didn't have any of that kind of thing. So it was like, it was basically like instead of selling it through Safeway or Tom Thumb or some supermarket, this company called Tupperware says, you know what, let's get all these housewives in the 50s, which you know, 

"I'm not really allowed to work", they got together and they threw Tupperware parties. They do the same thing for x-rated toys now because they're not something you can talk about it and it gives women social something to do, not now, time in the 50s. But it was literally one of the most powerful sales tools because your friend is selling you something and your friend is saying, she loves it. Now obviously none of us care about plastic tubs right now on this show, but the process of someone you trust, telling you to go to your favorite doctor, your favorite your favorite medicine, your favorite movie, that is the critical piece that we have now translated online.

[hackandgrow]

Amazon Expert Who Generated Billions in Revenue

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. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another exciting episode of the results podcast. This is your host Michael Altshuler and as always we bring you the top thought leaders, the innovators, the disruptors, those that are making a real difference in the world, those are moving the needle, the trendsetters. 

Well, you're in for a real treat today. Wait to hear about our guest. He is an award-winning entrepreneur, writer and filmmaker currently based in where else, but LA California in the past 30 years. He has generated get this, turn your volume up, a billion dollars in revenue. I know I got your attention now but wait there's more. He is the CEO and chairman of Accelerated Intelligence. 

Through Accelerated Intelligence in Amazon marketing and advertising agency, he manages the selling of his products and helps other brand owners to scale their online sales not just on amazon but other marketplaces like Ebay, Shopify and Walmart. Our guest shares his passion for Amazon through his Amazon's course Amazon mastery. Oh, and interesting side note, years ago perhaps many years ago, we'll let him tell us how long ago he created an herbal ecstasy pill starting the smart drug movement making millions as with an m millions of dollars at the tender age. This must be a typo. 

Is it true 15 years old? That's right. That's when I started. That's crazy. Well, there's a lot that we're going to hear, that I'm sure is going to be eye-opening and some great takeaways. Please help me welcome our guest Shaahin Cheyene, welcome. Thanks so much for having me on Michael. I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Listen, I couldn't wait. There's nothing like hearing new and exciting and innovative ways that people have found you know, what I've learned over the years is you know, there's common denominators of success but then everyone has a unique path also that they kind of elevate it to the top and and achieve success and I can't wait myself and for those listening to hear what your path was. 

Let's go back to the beginning. Tell me kind of what your upbringing was, like where was it at and tell me what that looked like? Lower class, middle class, upper class, silver spoon in your mouth? What'd you start with? I wish, I always wanted a try trust fund and a rich daddy. That would be amazing, no kidding, could have fun with that one. Yeah, came here as immigrants during the very tail end of the 1970s and we came to the United States you know, through Germany as most Iranians did. We were Iranian Jews. So we fled Iran in fear of persecution and came to the United States eventually. Landed in the US. I was about five and king of the heap in Iran like, you know, had my little gang. Very safe place, you know, I would leave during the days. I would come back as a five-year-old, no problem. Dinner was when I came home. It was great.

[hackandgrow]

Is Minimalism For The Rich?

No, people look at me all the time and they're like, man, you're a millionaire. You got all this stuff, house, cars, all this stuff. They're like what about that you know, are you going to upgrade that thing? I'm like, no. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm like, I'm going to take it and I'm going to fix it. I've I replaced batteries and things that you shouldn't replace batteries. And I've got a soldering kit. I fix just because I believe that objects have a spirit to them, not in a woo-woo sense but I believe everything has a utility and I think there's they're like to your point, there's great value in being able to fix something and to reuse it. 

The fact is that we're constantly accustomed to dopamine release now with social media with tick-tock with Instagram with all the stuff we're constantly getting dopamine hits. What's that do to our brain? It changes the way that our neurons are firing in our brain. So if you have a book that you haven't read and it's hanging around and every day you're looking at that book cover, you're doing yourself a disservice. Cover any books until you're ready to read them. I'll tell you this now with a white cover or a blank cover. Why? 

Because your brain every day that's looking at that cover is becoming less and less interested in it. Why? Because novelty. Our brains adapted through evolution to seek novelty. And when we don't have that novelty, it's no longer interesting to us. So what do I do? Rather than upgrading my cell phone, my mobile phone, I upgrade my mobile phone case as much as possible. I've got five or six different colors of mobile phone cases. 

Every time I flip them out and I don't give a about that kind of stuff. I'm not a teenager who's like, oh look at this fashionable case. But the fact is that every time I swap the case out, I look at this object that I'm looking at every day and I'm like oh man, it feels like a new thing. Yeah. And you can do that similarly with other things in your life. So sometimes you don't need to throw things away. so I would agree with you wholly there. Okay, that was fun. If you liked what you saw, make sure to subscribe and like below. Make sure to leave us a comment and join the community.

[hackandgrow]

Remind yourself of Your Roots To Help Keep Your Feet On The Ground

First and foremost I was never a materialistic person. I'll tell you, when I left home I packed a bag, single backpack with everything I had in it and when I made my first million bucks, I went out there and I bought a new pair of shoes because I knew that if I lost everything I would at least have a new pair of shoes that I could walk wherever I wanted to with. So I bought the biggest baddest sneakers I could. That was the first thing I bought and I had them tied to that backpack. 

I didn't wear them. I had them tied to that backpack and through the years making millions and millions of dollars I always had that backpack under my desk to remind me that it was all from nothing that I started from less than nothing and I could always go back to that. So I needed to keep my game together. Now I'm older. I'm 46 now as we're doing this recording in 2021 in October of 2021 and my values remain mostly the same except for the fact that now I'm a father, I'm a family man. 

My thoughts are always family first and what motivates me now is inspiring others to reach those levels of success. I've had my levels of success and sure we're still making millions of dollars now, we do it on Amazon selling different products, we're one of the biggest manufacturers of this product called Matcha Tea. We make this product called Matcha DNA that we sell on amazon. We sell this great brain supplement called Accelerol Focus Plus that we sell on there and we sell over 300 different brands and products on Amazon. 

So we do really well with that and I travel the world with my family and from wherever we're at, we're making money because while we sleep someone's buying our products on Amazon so we're happy in that way. Okay, that was fun. If you liked what you saw, make sure to subscribe and like below. Make sure to leave us a comment and join the community.

[hackandgrow]

What is The True Meaning of Freedom?

My definition of freedom hasn't changed since I was 15. Right. And that's to be able to do what I want, when I want, with who I want, how I want. That's freedom. Money is great like, money's fantastic. I love mining, I love getting it, I love spending it. Anybody who says money's the root of all evil, never had any. Anybody that says money can't buy you happiness, doesn't know where to shop. Money is fantastic but for me, success is something greater than that. And I tell this to people oftentimes that time is the new luxury. That's why when people look at a man like Jeff Bezos, you look at a guy, the founder of Amazon, now one of the richest men in the world. 

People think oh man, he's got millions of dollars. He's going to be a trillionaire soon. That's crazy. I'm like, you're missing the point. This guy, forget about his personal wealth, he's made billions and billions more for other people. He's created more millionaires and billionaires than anybody else in the last 50 years by allowing people to sell products on the Amazon platform by creating the world's biggest e-commerce platform. 

So that's what people are that's what people are missing about people like that and I just am grateful if I can have a certain amount of impact that put a dent in the universe and get people out of the doldrum day-to-day tick-tock existences that people feel like they're stuck in. Most people feel like they're on a hamster wheel. They feel like, you know, they wake up, they go to work, they come home, the wife's there the kids are there, the maybe they have a little bit of time with the family, then they sleep. 

They wake up and they repeat it again. You ask them what's it all for man? What are you doing all this? For what's the point of it? And they ask people that, ask people about that and you'll see I mean I'm sure in your profession, you know, you're a coach. You must have this conversation a lot but when you talk to people about that kind of thing, you realize that people have never thought about it. They're just doing it because it's the thing to do. 

Somebody told them that's what you do and they do it and one day they wake up, they're 65, they're fat, the wife's fat, the kids are fat. They're living a miserable life and they're thinking to themselves how did I get here but then it's too late. Okay, that was fun. If you liked what you saw, make sure to subscribe and like below. Make sure to leave us a comment and join the community.

[hackandgrow]

Shift Your Spending From Things To Experiences

Stop chasing money. Stop chasing ghosts. I tell people. These shiny things we're inundated with them now. You look on social media, you look on tick tock, there's a guy with a Ferrari and a plane and all these shiny things and if you just give them a couple hundred dollars you can have all that and you know it's but you buy that ticket. You buy that ticket because you can say, oh well, I tried. I signed up for it and I guess it just wasn't in the cards for me and I'm going to go back to living my shitty existence that I'm totally unhappy with and I love this quote that you use. 

Choice is a superpower. Absolutely! Choice is a superpower but moreover you have to go out there and chase your fascination. You have to go out there and chase excellence. You have to be interested in people. You have to be interested in things. You have to go out there and wonder, what's inside. You have to be able to get people to give you what you want and in order to do that, you have to exercise influence. Robert Caldini wrote in his book Influence that there's five elements and we focus on a lot of them. 

On Amazon we teach people how to use social proof, how to use authority, how to use likability, consistency, scarcity, reciprocity. These elements that you can master and then weave through the world and you become the master of your time and ultimately that's what it's about. It doesn't matter how many boats you have, cars you have, all these expensive things you have like, you said some people are going to be very happy chilling out on that fjord and you chill out on that fjord and you know you're relaxed. You got control over your time. 

If that's good enough for you, then you do that. A lot of people don't want more. They want to have more experiences and that's really what money's for. That's what we use it for is to buy experiences. I don't care so much about things. I never did it, doesn't matter to me. I mean you know, yeah, I like my car collections and the houses and all that stuff. It's fun, but at the end of the day what's really meaningful to me is me and my family traveling somewhere and having an experience of another culture and other people, you know. I've spent my life chasing experiences. 

I've been in the jungle and I've slept in the same huts with cannibals and taken ayahuasca and the jungles of amazon before people knew what ayahuasca was, before it became popularized. I've traveled to insane places in southeast Asia. I've been to these places and had these experiences and I'll tell you, those are the things that enriched my life. It's not things. Things get old, like you said, it's that piece of technology, where today you have it, tomorrow the battery dies. You got to toss it out. It's meaningless. Okay, that was fun. If you liked what you saw, make sure to subscribe and like below. Make sure to leave us a comment and join the community.