Shaahin Cheyene: From Herbal Ecstasy to Amazon Mastery

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All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
we have a tremendous conversation for you today, an interview with Shaheen Sean, a generational

entrepreneur who invented the smart drug industry with his herbal ecstasy. After exiting that business at the age of 20, he went on to start multi eight figure brands on Amazon.
Now does coaching in that arena has started podcast Cola, which is the premier podcast PR company in that space. And to top it all off, his life is now being turned into a movie.
This is an incredible conversation. You're going to learn so much from someone who has done it over and over again.
You will not be disappointed in this show. I promise you.
I highly encourage you to connect with Shaheen, connect with his resources. We'll have them all linked up in the show notes below.
And if you love this show, if you enjoy these conversations, make sure that you are subscribed to this podcast, to this show, wherever you are listening or watching. I love you for being here.
Let's get on to Sheen Sean. You know, it's funny.
You know, before we hit record, we're talking about exiting and all this stuff. I think, I think the point that you just made that I'd love for you to expand upon is like the business.
I feel like, unfortunately, entrepreneur porn has crafted this image of tech or some sort of like YouTube or social media growth hack or something. And not that you can't make money those ways.
And I'm not belittling those businesses at all. But it's been like, if it's not that, then it's not like a real startup or you didn't, you know, really grow something, you know, and there's so many entrepreneurs in the small business space.
And even look at like what Cody Sanchez is doing and kind of pushing people back into, you know, quote unquote, boring businesses. Um, you know, we talk about, I talk about on the show all the time, just cause that's what I exited from was a, was a insurance agency, which not some people usually don't brag about their insurance agency businesses.
So it's kind of like, I hope people start to look for new opportunities in some of these main street, local franchising out models, different things like that,

because there's so much opportunity there because a lot of the attention is on

these flashy things. And, you know,

I think you've done some of this and you've done the flashy game too.

And I think,

I think what's really cool and why I was so excited to chat with you was like

the diverse nature of your experience and, and, and how these different,

how all these things intertwine in your life and in your experience. Sure.
Look, I think we live in a world of smoke and mirrors. And the stuff that you see on the internet is not real.
Most of the stuff that you see, I would say the majority of stuff that we see as entrepreneurs is entrepreneurial porn. It's very ambitious.
It's forward looking, but it's being on private jets and jacuzzis with millions of bikini models and driving Lamborghinis. And if you talk to the guys that really are the billionaires, they are much more Warren Buffett than they are Jeff Bezos.
Yeah. Jeff Bezos is a rarity.
He made his money. He's doing some philanthropy, but he's not shy of the yachts and that kind of thing.
That's one dude. That's one fucking dude.
The rest of us are out there grinding. And like you said, you're like, you told me just before we hit record, Ryan, you said, look, I could buy most of that stuff.
I could probably afford it, but I don't want it. And that's really how most of us operate.
I started my first company when I was 15, created a billion dollars in revenue, well documented, before I was 20, 21, something like that.

And I lived that life that you see on TikTok.

Unfortunately, it was before the internet, so I didn't have a smartphone to hold up and, you know, shine, like look at me, but I was actually living it. And in fact, it was very stressful.
And after that company and anybody that's interested, I wrote a book on it. It's called billion, how he became king of the Thrillpill cult.
It's being made into a movie by believe entertainment and Paris Hilton's company, 1110. And hopefully that'll be coming out in the next year or two.
They're going to be starting production soon. And I write about that journey.
But after that journey, I was like, okay, what am I going to do now? And I was constantly looking for that shiny thing. I was, all right, when's my next big fucking hit? When's the next thing I'm going to do that's going to blow up? And I was like, well, I've got a bunch of other things going on and they're all making good money, but they're a little bit more boring.
Does that make me more boring? I'm like, you know, I have dinner or, you know, lunches with guys and I'm like, fuck man, that guy is like an attorney. I'm like, oh cool cool and he's got the car or whatever i'm like wait a second that car is leased i'm like like like you said i'm like i could probably buy five of those cars i'm like he's got all the trappings of wealth but he's got to go back to the fucking office yeah and i get to come home and do whatever the fuck i want so i think my life is pretty fucking good, albeit not all fireworks anymore.
And I think it's really the illusion that's being sold. And most of that stuff is being sold by people who want to sell you something, which is incredible to me.
Yeah, yeah. That's the part that I feel like people miss.
And so I, uh, I love, um, I have this like dirty little pleasure of a lot of like these little bullshit courses where someone's like, they have 2000 followers on Instagram, but they're going to sell you a $99 course on how to grow your Instagram. I buy all those things because I love them because they're because it's like

they're like you know how

it's like watching driving

by a car accident you're like I shouldn't look

like this is not like

this is a negative thing I feel bad for people involved

but you're like you still look like

it's like that because then it's like you

look at the you look at what they

create and it's some bullshit PDF

that they made somewhere with like a link to a Facebook community that you have to get in. And I'm like, I, and again, I'm not doing it for the knowledge because the knowledge is never valuable.
It's, it's all regurgitated stuff. And it's usually, nowadays it comes out.
You can literally, you know, if you, once you have made anything with AI, you can kind of tell when something is made a hundred percent by AI. And I'm looking at these things and I'm just going, I, why do people buy, like I am obsessed with the psychology behind why someone would buy that and believe they're going to get something out of it, right? Like, did you not see that this guy had 7,000 Instagram followers, but he's going to teach you how to, how to do a million? Like that doesn't make any sense.
Like, like there's all these triggers as to why this isn't legit. Yeah.
People are still buying it because, and what I, what I try to get into is the community. Cause I want to see how many people bought into this, right? And it'll be like 500, 600 people are like, Oh my God.
Like, what are these people are these people doing like i don't understand i'm just obsessed with it so i like to me it's like um i don't know i just like how did this guy create this thing or this woman whatever and get people to actually buy it when every other piece of data you take two minutes of research every other piece of data says they have no idea what they're talking about. If people buy into it.
I can answer that for you very clearly as somebody who I actually have a high ticket course, believe it or not. Yeah.
So this is the answer. And this is what we discovered from years of doing a high ticket course for millions of dollars.
So after my big venture, I got into a couple of different ventures also had exits. I invented modern digital vaporization.
So all the vapes that you see arose out of technology that I built, exited that company, went public. And then I noticed this little guy, Jeff Bezos.
I was like, hmm, this guy's interesting. He's a nerd.
Let me see what he's doing. And I was like, holy shit, this guy is not a nerd.
This guy is the smartest guy in the room and he's going to do better than all of us. So I got into Amazon very early stage before Bezos even opened up the platform to third party sellers.
I was looking at it and then I got involved in it in the early stage and grew eight figure Amazon companies. And then people start coming to me saying, Hey, can you teach us how to do this? I was like, cool.
I started coaching them. And then I was like, fuck, I don't have time.
So let me build it to an online course and group coaching. So I did that.
Now, here's the shocking thing that most people who sell these high ticket courses won't tell you what people pay for the thousands of dollars, right? If someone's selling a $99 course, that's really top of funnel legion. No one's making money from that.
They're selling a $99 course so that they can get you in and sell you the 1995 thing so they can get you in and then sell you the 3000 thing, the 5000 thing, the 30,000 thing and the 60,000, right? Cause you've already been invested. Now, the thing that they don't tell

you with the higher ticket process, and this is a shocking statistic, it shocked me, is that I would say 70 to 90% of people never open the product, right? They might watch the first video, but they never get into it. And we did a deep research.
I researched all the Amazon gurus out there and I thought, all right, fuck, let me see what everybody's got. And I did like you.
I bought all their courses. What are you selling? Yes, I will buy.
And when we started doing our coach, I realized that the selling process was very in-depth. People come in and everybody's been burned before.
Everybody's tried something and it hasn't worked. Everybody's dealt with these shysters, these fake gurus, the guys that show you the Lamborghini and then it pans over and it's fucking he's handing it back to the rental company, right? So everybody has those stories.
So people come very reluctant, right? Like arms crossed, you know, but during the process, they ask questions that leads you to believe that they really want to buy the dream and that's what's important to them. So you talk to them.
So two things that we learned during this, this process of selling millions of dollars of online courses, and a lot of my students have become very successful at Amazon, and several of them have done absolutely nothing because they never opened it up. Yeah.
A, when they paid these thousands of dollars for the course, a big chunk of that, they are paying for the sales process. They're paying for that introductory call that you have with them, qualifying them, talking to them, answering their objections.
And when they finish that process, it's so labor intensive and energy consuming on the end of the consumer, of the person buying it, that once they say yes, what do you think think happens ryan they're exhausted they're done all that pressure is released right it's build up build up am i gonna make a wrong decision am i gonna lose this money am i gonna buy this fucking thing and you know my my my family's gonna be out on the street am i gonna be driving uber forever and then you break those down they want them broken down yeah they want to buy into the dream and for them for a lot of them a lot of people it's buying into the dream without doing the work yeah here's the other part of it most of these things will work most things will work if you work them so i never think somebody oh you wasted money on a course or you wasted money on a coaching program. You waste money when you don't fucking take action on it.
And the majority of people, we've sold hundreds of courses at thousands of dollars and we can go in the back and Kajabi and see what percentage people watch. And there's two kinds of people.
There's a kind of person that never opens it up, right? After that sales process, that pressure is released. It's like buying a Tony Robbins book.
You're like, you go to the store. He's got all these books, man.
He is the best coach. He's online.
He's, he's doing the hand thing. He's a fucking giant.
I want fucking Tony Robbins to be Michael. How can I go wrong? And you buy that, you know, set of whatever it is that Tony Robbins has.
And you come home in a nice plastic wrap, and you put it on your shelf, and you forget about it. You feel good.
Maybe you make a change in your life, but that's it.

And the second is the person that does it, the person that goes through and actually goes, you know what, I'm going to do it.

And and they go through maybe some of the material and they take action. And a subset of that is people who maybe don't even go through a good chunk of the material, but they take action anyway.
And they just needed that reassurance, which is the other thing that they're paying for, right? Like, I don't want to do this alone. As entrepreneurs, we make the biggest mistake of working in a vacuum.
But when it comes to important decisions, we work in a fucking vacuum without getting outside feedback. And we just go it alone without having that data where all it could have taken is a phone call to somebody.
Hey, Ryan, buddy, I want to run this by you. I know you had this agency.
I know you sold it. I'm about to sell my whatever.
What do you think of this? Just that's all it takes. We have a tendency to work in a vacuum.
So people will do this with big decisions and then they'll bombard people with smaller, irrelevant decisions. And it's one of the biggest failures in entrepreneurship that I talk to people about.
Yeah. You'll you'll, you'll teach them all the steps necessary to run a sales funnel process for their tool.
And then they'll get caught on what camera I should buy to film the video on the landing page. And you're like, I, what are you even asking me? Like, that's like, you know what I mean? You know, it's funny.
You're talking and, uh, there's this quote that Bruce Lee has, which, which I absolutely love. Um, knowing is not enough.
We must apply. Willing is not enough.
We must do right. Like this is the whole context to me of what, you know, the difference between the entrepreneurs that we read about and the entrepreneurs that we don't read about is this idea of, you know, I have friends who, you know, and again, I buy a lot of these small courses mostly as a, as like a, like a joke to myself.
But, but like you said, the information inside though generic, and you could probably find for free or just figure out if you spent 15 minutes, it isn't like wrong oftentimes. Yet there's people who will just read and read and read and watch YouTube videos and read and watch and never, ever put into practice.
And then when people ask me like, well, how did you figure out to do XYZ in your business? I'll be like, uh, F-A-F-O, bro. Like I just did shit.
The stuff that worked, I kept doing the stuff that didn't work. I stopped doing.
And then I just got better and better and better at figuring out quicker and quicker and quicker, which stuff were good bets and which weren't. And that's how you get there.
But like, if you, if you're not in the batter's box and taking the at-bats, you could read all the books you want. It still doesn't matter.
You're not going to know how to apply the knowledge when you're in this situation anyways. And it's difficult.
And I found myself, and this is something I've had to work on with the individuals that I coach, is like those unwilling to take an at-bat without full knowledge that it's going to be successful people, I struggled really difficult to connect with them. So, you know, from your standpoint and all the individuals you've talked to and coaching and you speak and you're all over the place, you've like, how do you start to break down that mentality for someone who, who has great intentions and really does honestly want to be successful, but maybe they're, they're stuck in that like over researching or perfectionist mentality.
And they're just, they're, they're struggling to get in there and actually engage. Yeah.
Nice. Nice.
I write about this in my book too. Um, again, called billion, how I became king of the throw book cult and it's on Amazon.
There's audio book and all that. So, okay.
I've narrowed it all down to one thing at the end of the day. And I'm a guy,

you know, look, I created over a billion dollars in revenue, multiple eight figure companies,

sold them. And I'm at a place in my life where I don't really need to work, but I do because I love what I do.
I wouldn't know how to do it any other way. And I also similar to you you, coach a lot of people, train a lot of people.
And it comes down to one thing, and that thing is risk. And it's your relationship with risk.
When you look at people who are just constant failures, like do you have any friends who you just look at them and that you might love them and that you might be like, man, I love this guy, but he's just never made it financially.

He's just, just always fail. You can trace that person's failure back to risk and the decisions

that they made. So what does that mean? Risk is not a zero sum game.
Risk is not binary. It's not

all like ones or zeros. A lot of people, perfection paralysis that you were talking about

Thank you. not a zero-sum game.
Risk is not binary. It's not all like ones or zeros.
A lot of people, perfection paralysis that you were talking about, which really equates to insecurity, take risk incorrectly. People like that who are perfection paralysis will delay, delay, delay, and then bet it all on one thing.
And then when it fails, go, oh shit, see, I shouldn't have done this. I'm going back to my fucking nine to five.
The people who do risk correctly understand that if you take a risk, you don't want to bet the bank on that risk. That's just in the fucking movies, man.
People see that in the movies. They're like, oh, he, Facebook, billion dollars.
He said no, all this, all this stuff. It's like, no, man, you don't know all the little decisions that lead up to that one.
That's just in the movies. In the real world, it doesn't work like that.
I take risks every day. So when you're younger, you're in your twenties, that's the best time because you have a lot of opportunities to mess up.
You probably don't have a family of your own. You probably don't have a mortgage.
You probably don't have any of that stuff. So you

can take more risks. Worst case scenario, you come back to zero.
You're good. When you're older,

we have less appetite for risk because we're kind of comfortable now, right? You've had your exit. You got the money in the bag.
You probably take great vacations. You probably got a family, and mortgage that stuff stuff.
So the risk you take is less. And it's why you see young people getting ahead is because they take these big risks.

But you have to moderate risk with intelligence, with decision-making, being able to ask yourself, am I falling prey to the common logical fallacies, right?

Confirmation bias, a million logical fallacies

that we could fall prey to.

You gotta know what those are

so that you don't fall prey to them.

Secondly, what I said, don't work in a vacuum.

And that's where these programs come in.

I tell people, look, success leaves clues.

If you can't find information about that guru that you're buying that course from, dude's probably broke and he probably needs your money to pay his rent.

But if you look that guy up and you see that he's successful and you want to emulate his success and that course or whatever it is gives you some kind of access into his world, that might be the best fucking five grand, ten grand, whatever it is that you've ever spent.

Only if you work it.

Now, the truth is, and you know this as well as I do, Ryan, most people are going to fail. Most people do fail.
They're not going to tell you this when they're selling their course. They don't want to tell you this.
Even in my world, the first thing I tell people when I get on a call with them for my Amazon mastery course is I tell them, look, most people fail at this. Your chances aren't good.
But if you're willing to take calculated risk and you're able to do it intelligently, meaning you calculate all the possibilities, you even look to failing, you go, you know what? I'm going to do this. I'm probably going to fail.
This is what's going to happen if I fail. Number one, it's not going to ruin me if I fail.
I'm just going to take that lesson and move on. Number two, I've intelligently already planned out a plan B.
Three, I've vetted it, not in a vacuum, but with other people, peers and mentors, the two types of people that you should be looking at. So coaches, you know, again, you know, I do it with my Amazon course, people vet it in a group.
We've got a community built around the Amazon stuff that we do. Then if you do that, it's very different because you go out there and you might win and you might lose, you might succeed and you might fail.
But if you fail, we've already got that plan B ready to go. Oh, we tried this product.
It didn't work, but now we know why. And you adjust.
It's a matter of adjustment. In the real world, very few things work right the first time.
And very few things are binary choices of like, hey, man, you just hit the lottery. You made a billion overnight.
It's usually like you do something right a little. You might get a little bit of success.
You might not. But then something changes.
The marketplace changes. The product changes.
Competitors come in and you have to pivot. And it's those pivots that are the work.
And it's not glamorous. You know that in your business, the insurance business.
Change changed every two minutes. So it's those pivots that you have to make that are the work you have to do to succeed.
And the people I see, especially in my courses and the stuff that I teach, the people that are doing that are the people that get ahead. The people that have the roulette table mentality, perfection paralysis, those are the people who don't make it unless they get lucky.
And you can get lucky. I'm a big fan of luck, and I'm a big fan of doing as little fucking work as possible.
I am allergic to work. Yeah.
One of the things – so a lot of my work is – so my philosophy is that – well, I absolutely agree with the peers and mentors, but outside of that, um, my philosophy and a, and a keynote that I get, I do a lot, it's called the finished formula. I built this framework, um, to help people get shit done.
And, you know, what I try to teach them is that we have so many misguided beliefs and biases in our brain that we simply just cannot trust. And literally, I start, a lot of times I'll start the keynote out with like these really commonly understood facts that aren't actually true.
And the audience is yelling out the answer and they're all wrong unless they've heard it before, et cetera. And the whole idea is that we like so many people I see approaching life and they're just like, well, I heard this one time and isn't this the way it's always done? And I'm like, guys, you are, what is your core philosophy and where are you trying to go? Right? Cause, cause one of the things I talk about a lot is, is we pivot just to outlast.
Everyone thinks you pivot into some big, huge success. That's not, that's often not the truth.
You pivot to survive and you watch everyone who doesn't fall off. And then all of a sudden you look around and you're the only one left and people are like, you're the big success.
It's not because you hit some elevator to the top floor. It's because you just were incrementally smart enough to outlast all your competition over time.
And they all fell away because they didn't understand the risk or they didn't have a consistent framework for making good decisions or, you know, insert whatever the reason. So I completely agree with you.
And I love that you're making this point. I honestly, I couldn't agree more with what you're saying.
And it has been my life experience as well as what I coach is that we are, we are trying to stay in the game, right? Like that's what you want to do. The longer you stay in the game, you start to see the big opportunities as well, but you're not just going to come in, follow some formula, have automatic success.
And that's how it's done. It just, it doesn't operate that way.
And we're, that is not discussed enough, which is why I'm so glad that you're here and you're talking about it. Like, this is not a topic that is discussed enough in the ecosystem.
Everyone is looking for the home run and it's like, no, you know how you get to the hall of fame, a shit ton of singles. That's how you get to the hall of fame, right? It's, it's not that home run that gets you there.
It's, it's a shit ton of singles over time and a 15 year career. And you're in the frigging hall of fame.
That's how you get there. That's right.
And the strikeouts help you get to that home run just as much as the singles. A hundred percent.
Sorry. I played baseball in college.
So a lot of my references fall back on baseball, but, uh, so, uh, you know, one of the things that I would love for you to address, and you know, I have a lot of, a lot of our listenership is say 30, 35 and above. Right.
And, And we're growing in the younger market. But a lot of people listen are executives, small business owners.
They're in maybe the second season of their career, maybe the third season. And I get a lot of people who have been doing something for a long time, being that I came out of the insurance industry, a large part of the audience is insurance people.
Uh, and they'll, they'll enjoy what they've done. They've been successful, but they've gotten to a place in their life where they're like, man, but I've always wanted to, right.
But I've always wanted to do this or, or maybe it's start their own agency or start a completely different business, et cetera. And I'd love for you to talk because you've been able to maintain your success out of, you know, your 15 to 20 range into the second and third season of your life.
And, you know, when you get individuals who come to you in late thirties, early forties, they're looking to make a move or looking to, to really kind of, well, let's call it take their shot. How do you coach them to do that? Cause, cause you are talking about their association to risk and having different responsibilities, et cetera.
What is your advice for them if someone's listening to this going, man, I'm 41 years old. I've always wanted to start this business, but man, I'm stuck in whether I should or how I should, et cetera.
Yeah. So it does come back to risk that we talked about.
But ultimately, I think people need to look at who they are. I'm a big fan of self-reflection.
I every day listen to Alan Watts. I don't know if you've ever heard Alan Watts before.
Yeah. Anybody who's listening, if you guys haven't heard Alan Watts, go on Spotify.
There's lots of great mixes and music to his words. But Alan Watts was a philosopher and he really talks about self reflection and knowing yourself.
So I think it starts with knowing yourself and knowing who you are. And that's important.
Some of us aren't cut out for the world of entrepreneurship and you got to have a come to Jesus moment with yourself and sit down and go, am I okay with risk? Am I okay with losing it all? Not okay, but willing to risk that to get to where I want to get to. And you look at those things, you reflect and you say, yes, it's for me or it's not.
I presumably the people listening to your show are of that elk. They are entrepreneurial.
And if you are entrepreneurial, then you have to figure out how you're going to get your message out and then to do it. I've done this over the course of the last many years, and I kind of figured it out.
When I was a kid, I left home at 15, slept on the beach, tried to figure out, fuck, man, what am I going to do with my life? And I looked back and I was like, well, wait a second. I don't have that much money, but I've always been good at making money.
and I've just been playing a small game. So let me get into a bigger game.
And I got into the electronic music scene and I was like, oh, so I can make $10,000 a night at a rave. That's amazing.
And then I invented this pill, this, this magic pill in the 1990s. And I was like, oh, it's easy to make a million dollars in a weekend.

It's just money. It's just a shift in mindset and perception.
And I know it's so hard for people to

understand that if they're not there. It's like I'm trying to describe to you what I'm seeing on

the other end of the mountain. I've climbed the peak.
I'm on top of Everest. I'm on the other side side and I'm trying to explain to you, but you're on that side.
You're just looking up at the peak and you don't see what I see. It's very difficult, but for people that have gone, we're on the peak, we've gone to the other side.
They're like, oh shit. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So there's gotta be a shift in mindset and all of it comes down to, I feel like, knowing who you are, what you're capable of, and then again, having that relationship with risk, making intelligent choices, but taking big risks because the amount of reward that we get is all on the other end of risk. And again, not working in a vacuum.
Now, when you figured out what you want to do and how you're going to do it, you got to figure out a way, especially now, so that we don't get so general in what we're talking about because I can give you motivational quotes all day. But you got to figure out a way to get that message out.
And this is something that I stumbled upon when, and I was like, man, I've made lots of millions and making money is something that's come easy for me. I'm very fortunate in that way.
Not to brag, but it's just something that I'm very good at and a lot of things that I'm very bad at. I'm so bad at so many things, but the making money thing, fortunate for me,

I figured out early and I just keep doing the same thing. What I realized is that, hey,

I wrote a book during COVID and I was like, you know what, man, I want to get a film deal.

How do I do that? But I haven't been out for a while. I mean, you know, my entire teens, I was, you know, up until I was in my early twenties, I was flown out everywhere in the world to do every interview you could imagine.
I've had multiple Newsweek covers, LA Times, New York Times, cover of the London Observer, all those magazines I was in. I was in Details Magazine.
So my point was that I've done, yeah, yeah, it's perfect. It's perfect.
So my point is that I did a lot of the stuff. And then I thought to myself, okay, now I got to get my message out.
I'd like to get a film based on this bestselling book that I wrote, Billion, How I Became King of the Thriftful Cult. I was like, I want to make this into a movie, but how do I get it into a movie? So I was like, you know what, man, I got to get on podcasts.
I was looking at podcasting, same reason you're on podcasts and you've been doing your podcast for, you know, uh, 263 episodes and you're killing it. I thought, man, I really want to start getting on podcasts.
So I was like, let me get on podcasts. And I tried to figure out a way to do it.
And I thought, man, these things are amazing because they live forever. They're evergreen.
It's information on demand, which is where media is going. Nobody's going to be watching cable in a minute right now.
People are killing their cable and podcasts are becoming the new cable. And I thought this would be a great way for me to talk about my book and maybe generate some interest.
I want to get a film made on my life. So I started doing it and I got a few hits and then I realized, oh shit, you know what? Like, it's a bad idea for me to represent myself.
It's a bad look. People are like, oh, this is a guy made a billion bucks.
Why is he pitching himself? Yes. So I was like, well, let me, I hired a firm.
They started doing okay for me. And then I was like, you know what? I could do better than these guys.
I'm sure you've had that feeling as an entrepreneur.

You sign up for a business and you're like, fuck, man.

If I was doing this, I would do so better.

So I hired a couple of publicists.

I trained them myself.

My wife's a publicist.

And we said, okay, we're going to start our own firm.

People started coming to us left and right.

And shows started coming one after another.

And I started doing big, big shows and started getting on all these shows, hundreds and hundreds of shows. I got a call from some producers.
He said, man, we heard you on the show. We bought your book.
We'd like to make it into a movie. I said, what? And that came very early.
So that happened. Very exciting.
Academy Award winning studio. They've got a couple of great big films out right now.
One's the run DMC, the Kings from Queens. It's out on Peacock.
It's great. It's that same company that'll be making my film.
Great people. And so I started doing this.
So the point I'm getting to is that you got to have a way to get your message out. And one of the things that I really have been promoting to people all the time now is that you should have your own podcast.
The cost of doing your own podcast can be as little as zero. And the impact that you have if you do it right is incredible.
Not only that. So one of the problems that people have when they do their own podcast, and I don't know if you experienced this or not, I know you're very connected and you've got a great audience, but people will do it and then it's crickets, tumbleweed city, right? They'll put their podcast out and they're like, oh, well, I had a great idea.
I think I look like Joe Rogan. I shaved my head and I got behind the purple curtains and nobody's watching my stuff.
Well, there's a trick to that. And the trick is you got to get involved in the podcasting community and borrow other people's audience and bring them to your show.
People like you, people like us, we've got our own show called Business Story of the Week. We've got 100,000 downloads, over 65,000 active subscribers.
We've been doing it for, I think we're on episode 400, 500 right now. And we had that same problem when we started our show.
And when we started doing other people's show, people were like, oh, Shaheen, where can we hear more of you? I said, hey, check out Business Story of the Week. And people went on Business Story of the Week and they started signing up.
And it all came from us doing other people's shows. So what I do right now over at Podcast Cola, which is my, uh, current, uh, startup that we doing is we get people, entrepreneurs booked on shows to be able to tell their story.
And anyone that's interested, check us out. It's Podcast Cola and we do that.
But, um, yeah, you gotta have a way of getting your message out there. And I honestly, I think I think there's no more powerful way to do that than telling your story on podcasts.

so couldn't agree more interesting fact i started my very first podcast in 2011 uh in 2014 i got offered uh the opportunity to be a CMO for a national technology company inside the insurance industry. At the time, it was more money than I had ever made in my life.
And I took that opportunity and they made me shut my podcast down. At that moment, 2014, I was doing 57,000 downloads a month.
I was the number seven podcast, number 11 podcast in all of iTunes. And I have a screenshot.
Ed Milet is one ahead of me. Gary Vaynerchuk is two behind me, right? 2014.
And my stupid ass listened to them and shut the podcast down. And yeah, so I then had a podcast inside the insurance industry that I built up to 20,000 downloads a month.
Um, and then, uh, when I kind of left that, I, I restarted with the Ryan Hanley show, which is more about entrepreneurship, growth, business, et cetera, and all, and what we're doing today. And, um, the broader vision is, is, is, is, uh, is growing as well.
But, um, I could not agree with you. I mean, I've been doing this for 13 years.
I mean, the truth is if I had kept that show, I'm probably like a podcast godfather because I mean, literally the top, I was number 11 in all of iTunes, like not just like one of the categories, all of iTunes, but back then it wasn't as big, right? 57,000 monthly downloads at that time was like millions today. I mean, it just, you know, the audience has grown so much.
But this is the single greatest way to consistently tell your story. There's no better way to craft not only what talking one, what talking to challenging guests allows you to do is one, it's a free education to constantly forces you to become a better listener, a better questioner.
It allows you, it forces you to learn how to engage with someone who, uh, is potentially coming from a position of power in a certain space or a certain idea that that's beyond where you're at, which I think only pushes us to be better. And it helps you craft not only your narrative, but who you are as a person, because you have to continually share your value structure, continually share your viewpoints on things.
And I found that over the course of this 13 year journey with three different podcasts, I am so clear on who I am as a person today, what my values are, what I believe in. And also my ability to listen to people who I disagree with and not get mad, angry, have very constructive conversations because I've been forced to do it in a quasi public manner for so long, I can walk onto stages today, have the lights go out and could do the, do my keynote in the dark in, because I just own what I believe.
Right. And it's from doing this over and over and over again with interesting and dynamic people who come from all these different vantage points.
Um, and the last thing I'll say on this particular on this particular topic is that one of our most successful episodes that we've had so far on the show in 260 or however many episodes we have is an episode that I did, how to have a political conversation with someone you disagree with and still like them at the end. So I have a very good buddy who is, we'll say he's a left leaning.
I tend to be more right leaning in general. And, you know, we just had this very open, candid, honest conversation about viewpoints that we disagreed with.
And this is someone who I love. And at the end, we were like, you know, talking about all this stuff.
And that was it. Dude, that episode went freaking crazy.
And my point in saying this is that also informed me on how to have that conversation with other people as well. And if you're not out here doing this work, you just don't get that.
You literally don't develop these skills. You almost can't develop these skills in your day-to-day life if you're not having these conversations.
So I couldn't agree with you more. I think what you're doing with podcast Cola is phenomenal because even as a host, I'll tell you the way in which you guys pitch the guests, the way you give your press kit, the way you present somebody, it makes, I mean, it makes my job and, you know, I usually do try to do a decent amount of research and understand the person and watch them and dynamics of it.
And, uh, you know, obviously this isn't a paid pitch or whatever, just having experienced the service on the other side. Um, I found it to be incredibly valuable for me to feel comfortable with you coming on and how we would have this conversation because I'd seen you do it and seen all your work.
So I think it's wonderful. I appreciate that, man.
Thanks. You know, we, we, we try to be

excellent. And I think I, I tell people this all the time, you know, it doesn't matter what you're

doing. Just be great at it.
Just, just always come with an attitude of excellence. And I think

I, I try to impress that on people that work for me. So thank you for, thank you for mentioning.

So as someone who creates a lot of content and obviously believes in the audio format

of podcasting, where are you on video, the usage of video?

Uh, I know a lot of people are not doing video yet because they're uncomfortable with it.

Do you see it as part of the future of podcasting now that you have this startup and you're in

the space?

Like how does, how is that framing your own work and, and maybe what, how you're positioning

Thank you. see it as part of the future of podcasting now that you have this startup and you're in the space like how does how is that framing your own work and and maybe what how you're positioning podcast cola potentially for all you know you've you've like chris williamson who is like redefining what it means to do a podcast it's essentially yeah better television than the networks can create at this point that's right yeah look i think currently from what i 99% of shows now have a video component to it.
People, everyone's on YouTube now. You can't really be a player without doing that.
As far as like video on Spotify goes, that, I don't know. I mean, you know, I'll watch Joe Rogan on Spotify, but like other than that, I'm like, and now Joe Rogan's on YouTube.
So like, I really like Spotify is the video platforms a little janky. Sorry, Spotify.
It's just not, you know, you got to watch the ads and it's just not as, not as, not as smooth as YouTube. So from a, from a consumer standpoint, uh, videos, everything.
And now with GPT four zero mind blown, have you seen this GPT? I haven't played around with it too much, but I've seen some of the stuff like I've seen some of the demos and stuff on Twitter, people using it. Yeah.
Yeah, I think they just announced video recognition. So you load it up on your phone, you hold it around the room and the things talking to you about what it's seeing and you can ask it questions about what it's seeing.
It's mind blowing. So i think all that's a game changer but i think there's so much more information that you get visually and there's you know there's very few people that are audio or that are written for people like me i'm video so i love like you know i'm a big fan of joe rogan i don't agree with everything all his all his guests say, but I am a big fan of his.
So when I watch him and I watched him from the beginning, you know, blow up and basically single handedly save this platform podcasting that we're on. like I get just that little bit of information when I'm seeing him you know have a little micro expression or when I look at his guests and I see the guests getting uncomfortable or he shows something on the screen or they're talking about something and they're actually handling it.
I'm a sucker for that. I feel like there's so much more information in that.
To go back to something that you were saying, which I think is very interesting, where you were like, hey, your biggest show was talking with your friend about politics and then not hating each other at the end. I think that's very astute.
And I'll tell you, one of my mentors, a good friend of mine, I mentor, was this guy Stuart Wild. He is this kind of like wacky new age guy.
He basically built up the whole new age movement. He was one of the first guys to write a self-help money book back in the 80s when nobody knew that it was called The Trick to Money.
It's a very new age, but very helpful book back in those days. And he taught me this concept called Tea with Mussolini.
And he would tell us all the time. He'd be like, look, can you put who you are aside long enough to have a conversation with somebody who you absolutely deplore? Like, could you just have tea with Mussolini? Could you have tea with Hitler? Could you have tea with somebody that stands for the opposite of what you stand? And don't even talk about the politics.
Don't even talk about differences. Just sit and have a tea with the guy and put who you are aside for a second.
And the reason why that's important, as I'm sure you can imagine, is that it helps us build a little bit of distance from this image that we built of ourselves in our own mind of who we think we are, which a lot of times is not only irrelevant, it's wrong. So look, I mean, of course, you don't have to sit down with a terrible dictator or murderer of people or any of those things.
But the point is, could you? Could you put aside who you think you are, your opinion of yourself long enough to get a different perspective? And I think that's the mark of a powerful person, right? Could you have tea with Mussolini? Could you have a coffee with Hitler? And sure, here's a guy that's done terrible, horrible things, murdered people, a terrible human being. But for that moment, could you put aside who you are? And if you can, there's great power in that.
So I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee's philosophy. He has this story that he talks through around the value.
And the quote essentially comes about the value of the cup is in his emptiness right there's a there's a a chinese monk and he's sitting down with a student and the student comes in and starts telling him all the things that he knows and the and the and the monk is listening and listening and and the students talking and talking and talking and finally the monk picks up the teapot and starts pouring tea to refill his cup and he pours and pours and pours in the valve the the cup overflows and it's in the students like what that what the hell are you doing uh you know you you that's too much tea and he said the you know he comes back and he says if the cup's overflowing then there's not there's no more to put in right so this idea of approaching every situation with emptiness right like i i don't i'm not in any of the businesses that you're in. I mean, other than the podcast business, but, but let's say I was a Amazon seller and you're coming in and I'm going to tell you how to, how to do Amazon.
You have your own, even if I knew what I was doing, you have a wholly unique experience to how you did your thing. And, you know, and I think too many people approach with, uh, I'm going to let you let your words blast off my face until I can respond.
And then I'm going to tell you how to be instead of listening. And I'll tell you a great example in the, in the recent, recent past was Tucker Carlson going over and interviewing Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson.
I don't think there is a more American believer in the, in the core value and intent and ideals of what America was founded on than Tucker Carlson. And he went and talked to someone who believes in identically opposite ideals of authoritarianism, et cetera, you know, and he sat down and interviewed him and take away whether you, how you grade his performance or whatever, but like, you know, the things that this guy stands for and the things he's done aren't what his values are, but, but hearing them, I think gave us, it gives you insights.
You don't have to believe. I think people get caught up in the factual things of what he said, but that wasn't the value of that interaction.
If you approached it from a point of emptiness, right?

And I think it's a good example of exactly what you're saying.

And I couldn't agree more.

It's just, you know, remove your ego for a second and allow yourself to see if you can find something that you can learn from this person, even if you intrinsically disagree with everything that they stand for.

There's a decent chance that there's something in there that you can learn from. And it feels like a wasted opportunity if you don't.
Yeah, we tend to get in our own way as entrepreneurs. We feel like we know everything and then we get into a situation and we're like, OK, well, I know.
Rather than saying, you know, one of the most powerful things I've learned, like I just turned 49 and I'm like, fuck man, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm looking at 50, like staring down at me around the corner. And I'm like, fuck, that went fast.
It went fast. I've lived a great life so far, but that went fast to 50.
I'm really feel 50, but fine. And I think, man, you look, you look back and you go, the greatest thing that I've learned is that I don't know what I don't know.
And it's so powerful that like, I think I might know what's around the corner, but I don't, I don't know. I can't know what I don't know.
And when you know that and you're comfortable with not knowing, but it opens up the ability to gain that information that you need to be able to look around the corner. But if you think you already know it, you think, oh, I already know what the story is like.
I already know how this is going to end, which we all have the tendency to go to that, right? Pattern recognition. That's how we survived in caveman days.
We know that if you hear the growl, you're probably what's on the menu for lunch. So you better run.
And that's how our brains work with pattern recognition. So we have a tendency to do that, but it gets in our way when we live in a much safer environment than our ancestors.
Agreed. All right.
I want to be respectful of your time and that of the audiences. I have two questions to ask you.
One is slightly off topic, but just something I'm incredibly interested in right now. I'm advising an AI company inside the insurance industry.
And I'm not an AI guru or native in any way. I've been diving deep into this topic for, let's see, I've been working with them for five months now.
So as much as a neophyte could know in five months of research working with a company who is non-technical, from your vantage point, the different businesses you have your hands in, what I've been, my pitch, and then this is where I want you to put your color in, has been to people that unlike other technological advances and without a strong technical understanding of how to create these things, my vantage point is that this technology is different in so much as we cannot be late majority laggards on AI. It doesn't mean we need to move our entire business there, but I'm advocating for people to start getting their toes in, start playing around and understanding because I believe that those who gain the ability to leverage AI early will create such a margin between those who wait that it will be very difficult to catch up.
That's my argument as it currently stands today. What's your take on that from all the different businesses that you're part of? So you know the gold rush in california back in the gold day you know who made money in the gold rush picks and shovels right the people who sold the picks and shovels and i see ai a lot like that there's a couple big companies they're selling you know they've got the algorithm on the big servers and the nlp and the natural learning models.
And you've got ChatGPT and what is it, Anthropomorphic and Microsofts of the world. We're not going to be able to compete there.
The people that are going to make the real money in this industry are the people that are selling the picks and shovels to all those AI companies that are coming out there. And they're

plentiful and a lot. It's a very, very red ocean marketplace, even now in its infancy, right? It's the new internet or the internet.
We were all like, Oh, what's going to happen? So it is, it is that I think as far as just like from a user perspective, from a consumer perspective, of course, Like you got to know how to use the internet.

You got to know how to use AI.

And the great thing with AI now is that you can use the AI to teach you how to use the AI, which is incredible. but I think that's fairly simple.
I think most people, you got to get to competency.

And if you're in that industry, you got to get a little bit above competency.

But I think us as entrepreneurs, we got to think, Hey,

what, what are the picks and what are the shovels here? And that's what I want to do. And I felt that way a little bit about crypto too.
So I think it's a very similar thing. I'm a big I mean just I'm a huge believer in blockchain technology and its impact that it's going to have on our computing in the future.
I think that, unfortunately, this first wave of coins has, it's just tarnished what the technology actually does and can do into this tokenization piece that I think people get caught up in the value of these coins. And I think they're missing the kind of the forest to the trees and that the underlying technology of blockchain is so interesting to me.
But it's just I felt like it was way too early and, you know, Bitcoin hit and all this stuff. But there'll be a day where I feel like we'll just we'll use, you know, blockchain databases will essentially be the they'll be the standard.
I mean, it just the but we're, it kind of got bastardized a little bit. All right.
Very, very interesting. Last question for you.
And then I'll let you go. Um, uh, uh, you, you have kids.
I didn't, I didn't ask you that. I do.
I've got a 10 year old boy. Oh, nice.
I have a 10 year old boy too. A little bastard.
Um, so, uh, no, I love him to death. He's the best.
Um, so your, your, your,

your 10 year old son, you have, you can only give them one, one piece of information, one, one idea, one thought to hold in his head to help him grow into the best man he can possibly, the best version of himself, that one core idea that he could build upon. What would that be? So it's just like one core idea, one concept only? Yeah, to grow.
What I'm trying to get to with this question that I finished with my guess is, what's that foundational concept for you that working with that will give you the other concepts, right? So what is that idea that if we hold this in our head, for some people it's hard work, for some people it's value, whatever. I've gotten a bunch of different answers, which I think is the most interesting part about the question, but what is the foundational concept upon which he can build the best version of his life? What comes to mind to me, especially for kids, is approach risk intelligently.
And that comes to everything from like the playground, right? You see a kid, you know, it takes your cookie. Do you want to knock him the fuck out, right? And what are the consequences of that? Or do you want to let him have your cookie, have your cookie, and then you get another one, right? What are the pros and cons? What's the risk? You knock the kid out.
You know, he might have to go to the hospital. You might get kicked out of school.
Your parents might be mad at you. Although if he took his cookie, I don't know how mad I'd be, but, um, you know, still right.
And life is just like that. I think, I think you measure risk, you make intelligent decisions, you decide for yourself and you move forward with the correct information, the best information that you have, and you don't know what you don't know.
So, so it all comes down to what we were talking about full circle to what we were talking about at the beginning is risk, risk management, being able to, uh, and, and, uh, it's funny that I'm saying it that way because that's exactly the industry that you were in. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, everything comes back to insurance.
No, I have anyone who's listening, stay as far away from insurance as you can. Cause the moment you dip your toe in, you get sucked into this arcane world that I, I warned you if you do it, but a great way to make money, incredible business model.
Um, Shane, it has been, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate the hell out of you.
So much great conversation, so much insight. Um, we're going to have everything that you discussed in the show notes.
Um, is there any other particular place that you want people to send people to connect with you, your YouTube channel, et cetera, where's the best place to, to get just more of what you're doing? Thanks. Yeah.
So look, we've got this Amazon course for anybody who, uh, is a, is a guest, uh, or a listener of the Ryan Hanley show, send me an email. I'm going to do, people think I'm crazy for this, but it's, uh, it's what I've been doing for years.
I'm going to give you my direct email on this show right now. It's D A R K Z E S S at gmail.com.
Again, D A R K Z E S S at gmail.com. Put-a-r-k-z-e-s-s at gmail.com put the ryan hanley show in the subject heading and i'll just give you guys the uh the course for free it's a crash course it's a one hour my goal is to empower as many people as i can to create recurring revenue streams you don't have to buy anything um reach out to me again if i can help you or get on a conversation with that.
If anybody's interested in being on great shows like this one, reach out to us at Podcast Cola. You can just go up there and book a time, podcastcola.com, and we'll have a free strategy call and see if being on podcasts is right for you.
I have a book out called Podcast Famous. It's on Amazon.
You can check that out as well. And we do have our weekly podcast called business story of the week.
You can check that out on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever podcasts are found. Dude, appreciate the hell out of you, man.
Wish you nothing but the best. Yeah.
Thanks, man. That's been great.
Let's go. Yeah.
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