Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Breaking the System: Shaahin Cheyene's Journey from Teenage Hustler to E-Commerce Innovator

Starting point is 00:00:00 I went from herbal ecstasy, which created over a billion dollars in revenue, to creating all the technology for digital vaporization. All the vapes that you see now derived from technology that I built and patented. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along. Escape the drift. And it's time to start right now.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Back again, back again for another episode of Escaping the Drift. The show that gets you from where you are, man, to where you want to be. And I got a dude today that's been a lot of places, man. This guy's been at it since he was young. It's funny because the whole concept of our show is, is taking that time of your life when you're drifting along with the currents and showing you how to get out of that. And I got to tell you, I don't know that this dude has ever done this because he's been at it, man, since he was like 15 years old. I mean, when he was 15, he created something that might be a little

Starting point is 00:01:05 controversial. They called him the Willy Wonka of Generation X. He's the number one bestselling author of The Billion, How I Became the King of the Thrill Pill Cult. He is the CEO and founder of Podcast Cola. He has done all kinds. This guy has just been, you know, forget escaping the drift. He's been rolling with the trends, man. He's been just riding the wave of the trends as they go off. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Shaheen Cheyenne. Shaheen, how are you, buddy? Yeah, dude. Great, John. Thanks for the amazing intro. That's super fun. I pride myself on the best intros in the podcast business. That is what I pride myself on. Because I got to pump you up, dude. I got to get the energy high, got to get the level. It's late in the day for me here. Where are you?

Starting point is 00:01:48 Where are you right now? I am pumped. I'm in sunny California, Los Angeles, Venice Beach. Okay. Venice Beach. So you're Pacific time too. So it's wide. You're in California though. You probably quit working like three hours ago, but I'm just saying for the rest of us, it is a long day here as we, as we get to the end of us. And. But it doesn't matter, man, because the listener don't care. They don't care what time we do this. They got to feel it when we come. We got to come strong with it. So let's get started with you, dude, because you started at an incredibly young age.

Starting point is 00:02:16 I mean, obviously, you know, normally I ask this question, like, what was the first hustle to high level entrepreneurs? And it's like, you know, Bradley talking about selling chocolate bars door to door when he was seven saying, you know, they're going to bounce shop the ceiling to people, you know, hustling. I had somebody here said that they were so at four years old, they were selling their own drawings, which I thought was really genius. Cause he was going to say no to a four-year-old's drawing on a door, selling those door to door. But you're at 15 built a really substantial business. So before that, what was the first hustle, man?

Starting point is 00:02:47 Were you like coming out of the womb, trying to sling shit? What was going on? Yeah, man. We came here as refugees, immigrants. We immigrated to this country from Iran. I was born in Iran and my family left Iran to come to the United States. We came here. I didn't speak a word of English. We were poor.

Starting point is 00:03:06 We didn't have any money. Somehow my parents managed to gather up enough money after a couple years to buy a house in an area that became up and coming. And they bought the cheapest house on the best block they could afford. And the area just blew up. And I was going to public school, barely spoke English, trying to figure out what to do with myself during Iran-Contra where they hated Iranians. And what happened was I started realizing that I was very good at making money. So I did all kinds of little clandestine things as a kid. We would go into the liquor store and I had this little Greek kid that would come out with me and he was cute and so I would talk to the people at the front

Starting point is 00:03:49 nobody expected anything he would take the little bottles of liquor and the nudie magazines back when people had nudie magazines and then we would sell them at school fact was really good at making money really bad at crime like really bad like i kept telling myself like dude we should not be doing crime because we are always getting caught fast forward i'm 15. i've seen all this wealth come up around me but we're still poor you know my dad's working at a dry cleaners mom stay at home mom we never had new clothes All the clothes we got were clothes that people left behind last year at the cleaners. And they went around the thing and after a year they would donate them. So we would get them and that's what I would wear. Never ate at restaurants,

Starting point is 00:04:33 none of that stuff. But the kids around me were doing that. And they're turning 16 and daddy's buying them a brand new Mustang. Remember those 5.0s? Yeah, dude. and vanilla ice car, vanilla ice car, right? And later on, I went on to make a movie with vanilla ice, which is really funny. Well, five, that's another story. But so I'm 15. I'm like, man, you know, I'm hanging out on the beach. I'm looking around. I'm like, wow, look at that guy. He's got this beautiful car. He's got this beautiful girl. Man, look at all this wealth I I want that how do I get that so I go home ask my parents I'm like mom dad you know look like this

Starting point is 00:05:11 life sucks like that guy he he's figured it out how do I get that and they're like well you know shiny go go be a doctor you have to be a doctor it is the only way to get wealth and I was like oh okay and then somehow in their you know in their middle class minds they were like well the only way up for us is to become doctors because doctors seem to have money so they're like go talk to the guy next door i go next door to talk to the iranian dude next door who seems to have money and i'm like holy fucking shit dude is bald dude is fat he looks miserable he's smoking a cigarette out of each ear the wife comes out she's bald she's fat the kids come out they're bald they're fat everybody's fucking miserable and I'm like bro like if this is what that it

Starting point is 00:05:53 takes to get to that I'm out so I bailed I bailed I left everything I knew with nothing but a backpack and went out in the world to find my fame and fortune. So you split on the family. I got to tell you something, man. I'm going to throw this out there. You probably heard this before. I got a reoccurring theme on this show. I've had Ari Rastegar, who's the Oracle of Austin. I've had a bunch of dudes that have the same story as you from Iran, the same story, right? It's the same thing over and over and over this story. And it makes me wonder something that I got to kind of say aloud. How in the fuck did they take over that country from all you hardworking people? How does that even happen? Because dude, everybody I know that came out of that situation,

Starting point is 00:06:45 right. That just told the same story you had that said it's, it's always like this. It just, it lit this unbelievable fire of desire to be successful inside themselves, man. Bro. Look, I got a friend who's got a kid and this kid is good looking kids, smart kid, nothing bad to say about this kid, but you know what he is? He's comfortable, John. He's not rich. He's not poor. He's comfortable. He knows that at any time he can walk out that door and go to Chipotle and get one of those burritos and sit there and just watch people go by unambitious but comfortable that is a luxury that I did not have the pleasure of having and so in lieu of that I had hunger a lot of did. If you look at people coming out of Southeast Asia, Vietnamese people, Pakistani people, Indian people, Persians like me,

Starting point is 00:07:50 a lot of us came from nothing. And we came from a place where whatever we achieve, we were going to have to do on our own. Nobody fucking handed it to us. Nobody handed me shit. Nobody ever gave me anything. If anything, it was the opposite. They told me I couldn't do it, and I used that as fuel to make it. So when it came time to seize those opportunities, that's where we are, right? Your question about the country is a much more complicated question having to do with geopolitics. And in general, you can think of it like this. No matter how ambitious you are, a syndicate of criminals like this, no matter how ambitious you are, a syndicate of criminals is always going to be more ambitious than you.

Starting point is 00:08:30 And sometimes you have to ask yourself if by means of violence and doing unfair things, if you want to be taking control, or if you want to go around and this is a very interesting concept so i really enjoyed learning about you and your show and the stuff that you talk about and i was thinking about this and i was thinking about leprechauns right and this is kind of this new concept that i'm playing with here right all right what what's a leprechaun guy gold pot of gold it's got a pot of gold right and how do you find the pot of gold where's the pot of gold in the rainbow the rainbow what's that mean okay i thought about this for a while right and i looked at irish mythology and the whole story of of the leprechauns right they're hard working they're obsessed but this rainbow is what people follow the story of the leprechaun nobody gets to the

Starting point is 00:09:33 gold the rainbow isn't what you think the rainbow is the story that they tell you that you have to believe the things they tell you you have to do to get to that pot of gold, but you never get to it. It's the, you have to go to school. You have to become a doctor. You have to play by the rules, but you and me both know that nobody who plays by the rules ever makes it. The big companies, the biggest companies that we know in America don't make it by playing by the rules. They make it by playing by the rules they make it by breaking the rules they make it by apologizing rather than asking for permission and so in that analogy right the pot of gold is there it's there but the leprechaun is guarding it with the rainbow the rainbow is like hey look at all these colors it's amazing

Starting point is 00:10:22 you do these things and you'll get to that but you never get it he always tricks you right the people who make it the successful people like me like you like brad like a lot of the people that we know just walk around you can walk around dude and if you know how to do that if you know how to break the pattern how to walk around you can get to that pot of gold and i teach people how to do it every day on Amazon, my Amazon course, which I'm happy to drop a link for. I'll give it to everybody who's watching for free. But in general, that's the concept. So I feel like that's what I did. So I'm going to take that one step further because you say you can't get there without breaking the rules. And i'm gonna lean to the other side of that pendulum i think the people that excel become experts at the rules not not

Starting point is 00:11:12 breaking them for example for example one of my favorite things to do and my kids will not play with me anymore because i'm an ace i can tell you right now and i win every game of monopoly you ever play i'm gonna tell you i put this in my book and it's secret will be out. This is how you win every game of Monopoly ever. It's not cheating, right? Here's what you do. You do whatever you can to beg, borrow, steal to get the first three-piece set. And then you put four houses on every single space.

Starting point is 00:11:38 Beg, borrow, steal to get the second set. Put four houses on every single space. You never, ever upgrade to hotels because here's the deal. In the rules of Monopoly, it says you can put a house on a space and you can trade four houses in for a hotel. Game of Monopoly comes with exactly 32 houses. It does not state that anything can ever be substituted by a house. So if you never upgrade to hotels, you create a housing shortage, you fuck everybody else up, and then you just sit there and collect rent. And it takes a long time, but it's impossible to beat somebody that just sits on all these houses.

Starting point is 00:12:14 There you go, buddy. You're going around the rainbow. I'm just saying, but that's manipulating the rules. That's utilizing, just like Tim, okay, just like Tim Ferriss in his book, For Our Work Week, which is the Bible for most entrepreneurs, or at least at one point in your life it was, Tim Ferriss talks about winning the Thailand kickboxing match. Not because he knew how to kickbox, but because he read the rules and saw that if you push the other guy out of the ring three times, you automatically win. And he's like, I don't know how to fight, but I know how to cut weight.

Starting point is 00:12:42 He's like, cut weight like a mother trucker, weighed in, rehydrated, and just pushed the other dude out of fight, but I don't cut weight. It's like cut weight, like a mother trucker weighed in rehydrated and just push the other dude out of the ring, much to the chagrin of all of the people in the audience. But Hey man, that's the rules. That's it. So yes, circumventing the rules can be advantageous, but I think the way sometimes can be through the rules. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're talking about the same thing using different words. We are. We are. We are. We're not debating that fact. I think we're just adding a little bit more on top of it. But let's talk about, so at 15, you founded this smart drug thing. What year was this? Yeah. So I was hanging around the rave scene, the electronic music scene. What year is this? What year is this? This would be the 90s, early 90s. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Because I remember this.

Starting point is 00:13:24 Yeah. I remember it. You remember it. Okay. yeah yeah so i was hanging around the rave scene the electronic music scene and i was looking around going man who's who's making money here at these clubs not the people who do the clubs they're broke-ass motherfuckers not the djs also broke-ass motherfuckers back then now they're rich and. And who's making the money? Oh, it's the drug dealers. Fantastic. Okay. Well, there's my answer. That's all I got to do. They've got the money. They got the cars. They got the girls. They got all the things. And it's fast. Perfect. And then I looked back and remembered that I was really bad at crime. You're the worst criminal ever. I should not be doing crime so i

Starting point is 00:14:06 decided that's not going to work and it was in that moment when it hit me if i could come up with a legal version the big party drug at the time was ecstasy if i could come up with a legal version of it made with herbs because i knew there were herbs that could replicate some of the effects i could get rich so i went off somehow beg borrowed steel i had that drive that determination because i was sleeping on the beach on couches you know i i was the definition of hungry both literally and figuratively and i just wouldn't take no and i managed to create a formula and get it out there through the club scene, distribute it through the clandestine drug dealers at the time that were out of inventory.

Starting point is 00:14:51 I was at the right place at the right time. And that's another thing that I believe that if you put your mind to it, you can put yourself at the right place at the right time and create your own luck, which is what I did. And again, walked around the fucking rainbow nobody knew that you could utilize a clandestine operation of drug dealers across the country as distribution for a legal pill and we created over a billion dollars in revenue well documented it's funny i've been doing a lot of podcasts lately and it's interesting in the comments because i i would think that people would be real righteous and they'd be like man it's terrible that you're having people take pills and da da da.

Starting point is 00:15:30 The number one comment on the shows that I've done, I've done some of the biggest ones out there, is this guy's full of shit and he's lying. He's making this up. Well documented. This was pre-internet. I was on the news and the clips are online. So you can see it. It was published. I could.

Starting point is 00:15:47 Okay. So I can remember back in like, I went to the, I was in the rave days back in, in call it 90, call it 93. You know, we would go to the edge in Orlando and, you know, all night raves there, whatever, blah, blah. But I do, I remember, I remember the, oh, it's a smart drug, bro. It's a smart drug bro it's a smart drug this market and you would take like a pill and it'd be like niacin and turn you like beat red

Starting point is 00:16:10 in two seconds you're like well this is super fun i don't know that i ever experienced what you were making and selling um but it was definitely i mean i i remember the time when this shit was everywhere i remember this so yeah you know I have no reason not to doubt that you were doing that. But I mean, so at some point though, I mean, like, look, you generate that kind of revenue with something that people are ingesting. You piss somebody off at some point. Who'd you piss off? We pissed off every three-letter agency known, man. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole three-letter community came after us, mainly FDA, FTC, all the different agencies. The fact was they couldn't get us. I was a teenage kid.

Starting point is 00:16:51 I had created a billion dollars in revenue and they really wanted to go after us. In fact, the president at that time appointed a head of the FDA, a new head of the FDA, with part directive to take me down. He went on national TV back to back with me and Sam Donaldson. I was on the show. He was there telling America, you know, look, the horse is out of the cart. Nothing we can do about this now. And it was amazing because they were trying to make it illegal at that time, but it was legal. Nobody had precedence for what we were doing. And we were making money, you know, day after day, the economics of it were ridiculous. It was like printing money. A pill would cost me 25 cents to produce in bulk. I have

Starting point is 00:17:32 multiple manufacturers making it. We were selling it for 20 to $25 cash every single day. So back up. I have a question about that. So you're 15 years old. You had to have gotten a partner or some partners of some sort of age that were helping you source manufacturing, figure this out. You're not a 15 year old kid going to China and going to a manufacturing plant and getting those done. This was back when things were made here in the US in the 90s, if you remember. And supplements are made here in the US. Wait, we made stuff here? When did that happen? Yes, sir. We did. We did make stuff here. And it's coming back. I'm pretty excited about seeing that.

Starting point is 00:18:08 But yeah, things that are equipment intensive, not labor intensive, can still be made in this country better and cheaper than China, I would argue. So the answer to your question is no. That's what employees are for. Was it a nutraceutical place? Was it a... No, but who was making this? I mean, was it a nutraceutical place

Starting point is 00:18:25 was it a supplement supplement manufacturers supplement manufacturers yeah supplement manufacturers i had the formula i figured out the formula we'd order the they would order the ingredients i would tell them what's in it and they would put it in pills and the pills were beautiful they were little blue pills they had a butterfly and an e on the back we had a blister pack they went in these beautiful little pyramids and they would be sold all over the world. It was probably one of the biggest supplements of the time and one of the most profitable, I think, of all time. The precursor to the truck stop stamina pill. That's what you're telling me. Yeah. For some reason in my memory, I think those always existed. I think those always existed.

Starting point is 00:19:04 Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? But did you find a partner that was helping with this? I mean, how- No. No partners. I just had employees, man. What's that? How'd you find it? Well, look, I started grassroots, but remember the economics of this, John. I was making this for 25 cents. I was selling it for $25 cash. If I sold a thousand units, that's $25,000 with what? Maybe a thousand dollars in expenses. It's extremely profitable, like printing money, all cash business. It was spectacular. I didn't need any investment. So how old were you when that fell apart?

Starting point is 00:19:49 It fell apart very gradually. It depends what you mean by fell apart. It went on through most of the 90s. The fact was that eventually I sold the assets of it and walked out just because it was getting too much for me. Different agencies were after me. We had a couple people from the Japanese mob try to get their hands on the company because we were big in Japan. And eventually I was just like, dude, you know what, I'm going on to the next thing. And I got rid of the assets and then moved back to what I was really good at, which was developing products and getting them out there. Yeah. Obviously with that experience, I mean, when you see that you've done that and then you see the rise of Amazon. So you obviously saw an opportunity there to kind of

Starting point is 00:20:36 make a pivot in a way that made sense, I guess is a good way to put it. Yeah. I went from herbal ecstasy, which created over a billion dollars in revenue, to creating all the technology for digital vaporization. All the vapes that you see now derived from technology that I built and patented. That company went public, was one of the first vape companies to ever go public before Juul, before any of that other stuff. And I exited that company around 2006 and roughly... What's that? Which company was that? Because I thought the... I watched a Netflix deal on the Juul guys. I saw that too. Dude, they totally ripped off my whole thing. It was amazing. I was watching that going, oh shit, that's my pitch.

Starting point is 00:21:26 I was like, oh my God, that's all shit that I built. So, and I patented it and the company went public. It was in 2006, 2007, it went public. The company was called Vapier. What company was that? V-A-P-I-R, Vapier. Yeah, we made the best fricking vaporizers on earth. The first one was like size of a ketchup bottle. And then it came to the size of a cigar. Then we got it down to like- See, here made the best freaking vaporizers on earth. The first one was like size of a ketchup bottle.

Starting point is 00:21:45 And then it came to the size of a cigar. Then we got it. Here's the deal. Just if you're listening, I keep getting, I'm going to get the, because some of the stuff is wild, man, I'm getting the name. So if you don't believe it, I can Google it. That's all I'm going to say is if you don't believe what's coming out, this, I know it's a lot and it sounds like a lot.

Starting point is 00:22:01 It was a lot on paper. And I was like, man, everything he says, I'm going to make sure it's Googleable. So look, we have, we have a high level of integrity here at the old escaping the drift podcast. And, uh, and yeah, so it's Google it, Google it. If you don't believe it, keep going. I'm sorry. Keep going.

Starting point is 00:22:17 Yeah, no. So I wrote a book on vaporization, you know, built that technology for digital vaporization. And then from there, I moved on to doing Amazon. And I was watching this little guy who had his office on some cinder blocks and a wood wood desk from Home Depot, this guy, Jeff Bezos. And I thought to myself, man, something something to this. And then I looked at it. And I was like, man, this guy is not a nerd. This guy is one of the smartest guys in the room. And he's using Wall Street money, big Wall Street money to do something that's never been done before, to remove all the friction points for both buyers and sellers. basically grabbed Walmart's head of logistics and fulfillment and said, here's a blank check, build me the best fulfillment logistics company in the world. And that guy did it.

Starting point is 00:23:15 Amazon's not an e-commerce site. It's a logistics company. Amazon's a lot of things. Yeah. So once they built that, all of us sellers, I was early on eBay as well. So all of us sellers, the big bottleneck was, I mean, dude, I had to have big, big warehouses and offices and people to pack and ship and insurance and, you know, warehouse management, safety program, like all that stuff. Once they did that, all you had to do is order the product from China. You ship it to Amazon and the world is yours man they'll pick pack and ship it they'll advertise it they'll drop you know traffic to you and i was like holy smokes there's really something to this so i started doing amazon very early in the game

Starting point is 00:23:56 learning how to do it people started coming to me asking me to teach them how to do it so i launched my amazon course what year was that i launched my amazon course i think it must have been 2010 and we started our amazon agency where we do this for brands we get them to number one get them selling on amazon and i think i started the agency in 2010 2011. yeah and then we've we had a bunch of amazon brands and amazon companies that we've sold over the years uh very successfully um because you know amazon really has the other thing that they did was you know look if you go john you want to go out there and start a business okay cool what do you want to do buddy you want an ugly business you want a coin laundry you want a freaking uh restaurant

Starting point is 00:24:42 what do you need you need 100 grand hundred grand, 200 grand, 500 grand. How long will it take you to become a millionaire from a UPS store, from a freaking pizza restaurant? It's going to be very difficult. More likely you'll make a good mid, you know, mid-level, you know, pay from it. It might be a good investment, but you'll need 10 or a hundred of them to really reach the level of success that you want yeah the amazing thing about amazon is that anybody can open up an amazon store for very little money yeah 10 grand you can you can you can create your own private label product and and mind you what i talk about is private label not arbitrage not buying

Starting point is 00:25:20 somebody else's product and selling it yeah Yeah. And what's the limit on how much that can do? What's the limit on where you can go? Well, I'm really glad you just said that you teach white label. And the reason that I say that is if there was like a scam awards, like the welcome to the international scam awards for 2023, the nominations for this year's online are amazon dropship stores for 30 000 a pop right i mean that's that was that was scam of the year and not probably 2022 i guess is what it was and a lot of dudes got smoked for that and they should yeah don't get me started on that right it's look i think it's all part of the kind of like Andrew Tate philosophy of, you know, going to younger guys that are aspirational entrepreneurs and going to them and being

Starting point is 00:26:12 like, dude, look at that jacuzzi filled with chicks in the back of my Lambo. You can have that. All you got to do is drop ship these five products. It's bullshit, right? Because yeah, okay. Somebody could make money doing that. But eventually, everybody's going to be doing that. So then you're going to have to shift and then it's going to be race to bottom and

Starting point is 00:26:30 you're going to lose the way to make money on platforms like Amazon is by bringing value and telling a better story. So we build out entire lines of product, I built out the first guy to sell matcha on Amazon, the matcha tea category, which blew up. I don't know if you ever go to coffee shops now, you always see matcha in there. That didn't exist. Now they're making more profit from matcha than they are from coffee. And most of it is matcha that I brought into the country and branded and put out there. We do so many different products, but what we focus on is value. How do you bring value and then tell a

Starting point is 00:27:08 better story because that lives forever. And when you own the brand, you're fucking Louis Vuitton, right? Like we went to, I took my wife out for dinner and my kid was with me and we walk into one of these stores, right? And my kids walking around, and he picks up this little wallet, he wants to buy it for mommy's like, how much is that? And the guy goes, Oh, you know, that one's like 20 bucks. And then he looks behind the glass, and it's a very similar

Starting point is 00:27:31 one, right? And he goes, Oh, how much is that one? And the guy goes, Oh, well, sir, that one's, you know, 1789 dollars. And your mommy has to ask, you know, for you to see it. What's the difference? And the guy's thinking long and hard and he goes well you know then the name they're both leather wallets and he goes well dad i got it he's thinking the whole way the whole way he goes dad i got it and i said what he's like we just need to have the name and i was like it was so simplistic from the mind of a 10 year old right but really he nailed it that's all it is you have to bring value and you build value

Starting point is 00:28:11 and trust through that name those guys aren't the wealthiest guys in the world for no reason yeah so you know much for the same reason i try to leave parties first because i believe scarcity builds brand value what are some ways that you think builds brand value in a brand like that? How do you create a valuable brand? How do you create the perception that this brand is valuable? Yeah. So I believe in pull marketing as Seth Godin has taught in a lot of his books. I'm a big fan of Seth. He talks about that in a few of his books. And I believe that you shouldn't have to go out there and push stuff down people's throats. That if you build a product and are able to tell a better story and can do it in the right way, people will come to you. And all my life, it's been like that.

Starting point is 00:29:00 That's been my path around the rainbow, is being able to craft a story that's authentic that's true around something that brings value thinking distribution first which is another mistake that people make people always go man i'm gonna build a better mousetrap and the world's gonna come this happens in my current world right now over at my current company podcast cola people are like bro i'm I'm just like Joe Rogan you know me and my buddies we get we get on we have a cigar we'll drink some something and we'll talk about aliens so I'm gonna do a podcast and they go out they built out a big fat studio and they get all their buddies sitting around and then they make the podcast it's

Starting point is 00:29:39 tumbleweed City nobody's there right and then they reach out to me and they go hey nobody listen to this this is gold how's it happen it's gold how's it not happening and and i have to explain to them how it works i say you know joe rogan who has the number one podcast on the planet who basically single-handedly saved and rose podcasting you know how he did it oh well yeah you know he got around with his buddies and he's like one of us i'm like no not at all he didn't sleep how he did it? Oh, well, yeah, you know, he got around with his buddies. And he's like one of us. I'm like, No, not at all. He didn't sleep. What he did was he did his own show. He built it up when nobody was listening to it. But he also went on other people's shows, borrowed their audience went on

Starting point is 00:30:20 network TV borrowed their audience and brought it over to him. And that's what we do now over at podcast cola which is our podcast booking agencies we get people booked on shows like this and what we do is we help them borrow those audiences to whatever high ticket product or service that that they're selling so the key is you got to become a good storyteller, but more importantly, you got to be able to borrow other people's audience. Otherwise it's a long road pushing, unless you got a lot of money. If you got a million, you can do it. People look at this guy, Alex Hormozy. You know Alex Hormozy, another Persian dude? Yeah, I love Alex. Alex is great.

Starting point is 00:31:00 Yeah, he's great. Another Persian guy who hustled a lot. I love Alex. I love his content. And people look at him and they see his rise because it was very fast. Alex is a Vegas guy. He's here. Yeah. He was very fast. Yeah. But what they don't realize is they think, hey man, this guy just went on and he said, hey, I got nothing to sell you. Look, I'm so jacked. Whatever. People watched him, the you know, the wife beater shirts. He's great. Yeah. That's how he did it. No bullshit. Do you know how many hundreds of thousands, how many millions of dollars this man has spent on getting his message out on getting that marketing out? And if you look at Alex Hormozy, and I'll tell you this from somebody who's an expert in the field of podcasting, as we've been doing it for a lot of years and now have the largest podcast booking agency in the country is that alex does other people's shows and borrows their audience that's his whole mo right now if

Starting point is 00:31:56 you look at his podcast called the gamer whatever whatever it's called i'm not sure he's doing very many episodes himself right now almost every single episode is him doing somebody else's show, and that's aggregated on his own feed. So that's the key. And the key, I think, today is getting on podcasts and being able to tell your story. Because this is why you're doing it. This is why I'm doing it.

Starting point is 00:32:24 Traditional media is dead. Nobody wants the shove- nobody wants to shove it down your throat interruption economy where they're interrupting your super bowl with a commercial of like hey john you want beer you want beer now how about now you want beer now i i think i think when it comes to podcasting right like i just randomly the other day i was on the treadmill and i was like flipping through all my episodes i was like fuck let's episode two back when this was called the power move. And I did it with a couple of my buddies and it was literally, we started doing this just because we were at a bar one night, shoot the shit. And the waitress thought we were funny and said, man, you guys should have a show. All right, let's do a show. I don't care. Let's do it. And that's how it started. And I listened back to

Starting point is 00:32:59 that and oh my God, it was terrible. I mean, it was just, we're talking over each other the whole time. Just, you know, there's just, there's a mess. And I'm like, I put this out and, and over the two and a half, three years now I've been doing this a lot of work. I mean, we were doing this for eight people for a long time. You know what I mean? And it takes a long time to build that audience. And I completely agree with you on using, leveraging other people's audiences to grow yours. I mean, when we look for guests here, you know, some people monetize their shows and they monetize appearances. I don't do that. I know it says so on my website that we charge to be on here. And I do that just really just

Starting point is 00:33:35 to filter people out, but just to try to keep the request down. But for me, like if I like, like just for those of you listening here right now, Sean did not pay to be on my show today. I genuinely thought he was interesting enough to somebody that I would want to have a conversation with the meat. Cause I just, I did one pod paid podcast once where dude came on and it was trying to like sell water softeners or some shit in Florida or some technology developed. And it was the most boring thing.

Starting point is 00:33:59 I had zero interest at the end of it. We cut it up and I watched it back and I just, I have a lot of ability and a lot of things, but feigning interest, not end of it. We cut it up and I watched it back and I just, I have a lot of ability and a lot of things, but feigning interest, not one of them. Like if I'm bored with you, it's, I just, I can't fake it. I'm like, dude, I'm bored. Right. And you could just see me just like melting it behind the microphone. And this guy was talking, I'm like, Oh my God. And when it was done, like I sent the guy's money back and then we sent him all the footage

Starting point is 00:34:27 and I said, dude, I'm not gonna post this. Like we're not putting it up. I just, I didn't feel good about it. But I do it for several reasons. Number one, because it's great exposure for us. Number two, it's good exposure for the guests. Number three, I can grow my network like you just said. If somebody wants to come on,

Starting point is 00:34:44 very rarely will I have somebody, like when I look at you and I look at somebody who's come on, I look at all their social media handles. And, you know, it's easy to see the ones that are bullshit. Like, oh, I have 500,000 followers. And then you look at their videos and all of like, this content makes me happy. Oh, great content. Good video. It's like, dude, this is all bullshit, right? Like I can see that. So I'm looking for people that have a genuine following because I look, I made the mistake years

Starting point is 00:35:10 ago of buying an audience. Cause that's what somebody told me I needed to do. And you know, I fought that battle for years trying to sift those people out. And I think we finally done that. So now I'm down to a very, a real audience, which is nice. But for me, like I've kind of laid this plan out. Maybe you tell me if it's right or wrong. I think it's right. I think what I'm doing is right because I've got a book that is now with the beta readers, with the publisher. So the 20 people are now reading my book as we sit here, hopefully they're liking it, or at least telling us what needs to be fixed before it comes back. But it's with a focus group right now through my publisher. And when it's done, so my thing is like when that book gets ready to roll, I will be going on like hell bent, like full on six podcasts a day

Starting point is 00:35:57 every day. But I've been saying no to everything for like the last year and a half. I haven't done, I've not been on stage stage speaking in probably a year and a half. I've not been on another podcast. I just, I just say no to literally everything. Um, just because I'm like, I don't want to do that. Shoot your trajectory and then you're gone. And then I don't have it, you know, cause I'm obviously when you do this stuff, you really should have something to sell. You should have an angle to it. There should be an objective to everything you do. So is that right of me to hold that back? Is that right of me to be saying no? I think it depends. So I tell people all the time, the way that we work, a good friend of mine, Wayne, came up with a framework for strategy. We always talk about this. So

Starting point is 00:36:42 objectives, strategy, tactics, we work top down. So objectives, what are you trying to achieve? So you're very right in that your consideration is, hey, man, I've got no objective. So I don't need a strategy or tactics to implement. But however, let's say if your strategy was to build content, gain authority, and to become an expert in whatever niches that you want to be in? Well, if that was the case, then we would build a strategy around that. So I would look at, hey, why do you not want to do these shows? Is it a time thing? Right? Is your time more valuable spent somewhere else?

Starting point is 00:37:19 Or is it just because you want to hold back because you feel there won't be shows if you do them all the time? For that reason, for you in particular, I would think, and this is just my gut, is that relevancy is more important. And you are doing something that you want to promote, which is your show. So I would recommend doing it. I would recommend building that content now you do so many shows that you are getting content out there already that's unique that's produced well that's your own so you probably are different from the majority of people out there who are producing nothing most people put nothing out into the world as far as content goes you're producing great content you have interesting

Starting point is 00:38:01 people on your shows killing it on apple and Spotify. You've got tons of downloads, so you're doing very well. To your point about monetization, there's other ways to monetize around brands that you believe in, but I agree with you. In the industry that we're in, podcast booking, people come to us, we get them booked on shows. I tell 100% of my clients, it is against my religion to pay to be on a show. There's agencies that do that. If you want to do it, you got a specific show and you want to do that as my client, I discourage you from doing that because it sets a bad precedence. Exactly like you said, like with the water softener guy.

Starting point is 00:38:42 The guy's not going to be interested in what you're selling, what you're doing. He just wants your, whatever it is, five grand, 10 grand. It no longer becomes an organic conversation and, and it stops being that. And like one of the reasons I do that, I don't have anybody on here that I wouldn't want to have a beer with. Right. That's my, you know, my Steve, my Steve Sims-ism. My Steve Sims-ism is when I see everybody in my circle, if I was to be walking down the street and they were across the street and I saw them, would I walk across the street and say, let's grab a beer, or would I put my head down and go the other way?

Starting point is 00:39:16 And if I put my head down and go the other way, I don't need to be around that person at all. And I love that. That's his little ethos. And it's kind of the same way when we hear, right? Because dude, you spend an hour talking about somebody's favorite subject, which is them. They're going to have some sort of affinity towards you at the end of it because it's hard not to. I'm really not this likable. It's just, we're talking about you. That's why it's, it's,

Starting point is 00:39:37 it's, it's like a master trick we do here on the old podcast. It has nothing to do with anything else, but that's all it is. You're pretty likable, buddy. I do. You know what? It's a facade. I'm not that likable. I'm just kidding. It's a facade. But no, but I like that philosophy of not paying for stuff. So how does someone become podcastable? That's a word. Yeah. Look, I tell people this. And I'm going to say, I will say this. All right. I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you a stroke real quick.

Starting point is 00:40:07 As you answer this question, your, your package is better than anything. Anybody has ever seen me send me this, all, all of this, whatnot, that I got your tear sheets and your one pagers. This is, yeah, this is better than anything I've ever, than I've ever gotten. And normally when I get something even remotely this thorough, we go to immediately start Googling it to see if it's bullshit. And if it wasn't, um, which is nice. So I was confident telling people earlier to Google the shit out of you. Cause it's fine. Um, yeah, but, but this was really well done. So how do you, what are your, what are your advice for how do you become podcastable?

Starting point is 00:40:43 All right. Let me give you the first piece of advice, right? So I know you're in real estate as well. You ever go to like a really affluent area. There's a bunch of houses for sale. Market's hot. Every day. And there's some dude on the corner. You see this sign that says for sale by owner and the house isn't selling. And that dude thinks he's got the most golden best house in the world. Why does he need a professional? He could sell it himself, but he's not getting any action. And while all the houses around him are selling, while everybody's climbing the real estate ladder, he's still sitting there with that sign, getting musty in his hands, let's say for sale by owner. The fact is, there's a reason for professionals. And people who know, people who you

Starting point is 00:41:33 and I both know who are multimillionaires, maybe billionaires in the real estate business never represent themselves. They hired the best professionals because they know a good professional will bring the value. My friend always says always says a professional is expensive but an amateur costs a fortune fortune yeah same in podcasting the biggest mistake that I made when I started was representing myself by now I've done hundreds of podcasts I've been on massive shows like Adam Carolla which is the top downloaded podcast in the country. Crazy fact. He's actually over Rogan. He's got more downloads than Rogan. But I've done all the big shows. I, you know, I continue to do podcasts all the time. But when I started, I started representing myself

Starting point is 00:42:15 going out to people saying, Hey, dude, we have me on your show. I like your style. And some people would say yes. But a few of them came to me and they said, Dude, your story's fucking awesome. Why are you representing yourself? So I hired a publicist, and the publicist did okay. But she wasn't doing what I needed to do, because she was all over the place didn't really understand how podcasts work. They didn't understand podcast community. So I started my own company. And that's podcast Cola, we started podcast Cola, as a way that everyday people and celebrities and people that

Starting point is 00:42:48 are author speakers, people that sell high ticket products and services could get featured on these shows. And what we do is we structure an entire podcasting strategy, it's cheaper than you would think we're a rounding error for most of our clients for the value that we provide. And we get people booked on unlimited podcasts. So you can keep every day busy doing shows if that's what you want to do. And never one time will you ever have to pay for being on any of the shows that we book you on. I'm going to use that. Well, how much do you charge? Dude, I'm a rounding air for

Starting point is 00:43:25 you. What are you talking about? Oh, that's good. But are you telling me that everybody has something that is it, is it just a matter of packaging from your end or do you, or, or is there something that in particular you would want to do? No, some people are fucking boring and we don't take them as clients. However, however, yeah. And we turn, people laugh at me. My wife laughs at me. She's my partner in, in this company. She's, she's a big time real world publicist. Used to work for Kofi Anand, United Nations. She's done mega, mega things. And she laughs at me because I oftentimes tell people, dude, I don't think we're going to be a fit. The reason for that is I really believe that if you want to serve people, you got to take people who you know that you can under-promise, over-deliver for.

Starting point is 00:44:18 You got to come to everything you do with excellence. That's how we approach every business that we do. If I don't think I can serve you, I won't. The fact is with podcasts, people are interested in interesting stories. People don't give a shit about your water softener business, right? And I get company, the ones that we turned down oftentimes are like, this is XYZ corporation. Can we get our senior VP and then maybe our publicist and then the third person? I'm like, no, nobody cares about your company. What they care about is the CEO. That dude's got an interesting story. He

Starting point is 00:44:45 built this thing from nothing. That's what we want. We want that story. Because at the end of every deal, and you know this too, from the businesses that you're in, there's a human at the end of every sale, there's a human at the end of every action at the end of every, everything that we do person to person, there's a person and people care about other people and interesting stories that move them. So if you have an interesting story, we can sell it. We can get you on podcast to put your message out. Now, what you do with that is up to you.

Starting point is 00:45:19 You know what I find, man? I find that everybody has some interesting story. And I feel like sometimes you just got to extrapolate it at them. I feel like some people have a not interesting story that they think is the greatest thing ever. And you've got to sit through it ad nauseum. But I think if you really think about it, man, if you're of a certain age, everybody's had something happen. Like you've had something interesting that you can talk about. Yeah. I'll put it to you this way. Let me rephrase that for you a little bit. A mentor of mine, one of my greatest teachers told me something and I sat down with him because he had really a quality where we would go somewhere, we would go to a bar, we would go to somewhere to hang out.

Starting point is 00:46:00 And 100% of the time, he would start talking to somebody next to him and it would turn into a lesson. And he told me, everybody you meet will have something to teach you. And I really liked that. And I think from your words, that's what I'm capturing. Yeah. Well, there's a quote somewhere. I don't know what it is. Everybody's a teacher. Everybody you meet is a teacher. There's actually a famous, I don't know what it is. There's a famous quote. I don't know what it is, but we'll go from there. So let's shift gears a little bit, dude. Cause I want to ask you this because as the father of two kids and much like you said, my kids do not want for a lot. We try to create as much manufactured adversity as we can into them. You know, as manufactured adversity, it's always my biggest

Starting point is 00:46:44 fear to raise worthless kids. That's always my biggest fear to raise worthless kids. That is always my biggest fear. You just mentioned you have a kid. Obviously, you're not hurting for much. So what are you doing to not make your kid, you know, Veruca Salt in the freaking Willy Wonka? You know, what are you doing? Very common conversation. And I have this all the time. And I love your concept of manufactured adversity. So I think those are the things that we have to do, right? Because now we're rich people. And coming up, I wasn't rich. So my kid is going to be a rich kid. He will have access to money. He will have access to wealth. And that's good. He can use that to his advantage to propel himself in the world. How does he not become an asshole?

Starting point is 00:47:30 He becomes not an asshole by doing difficult things, things that challenge him, things that push him. So we're big on martial arts. One of our deals are when I was a kid, I was a big fan of Bruce Lee, right? And I got Dao Ji Kundo, which was Bruce Lee's book. And I decided that I was going to become just like Bruce Lee, a martial artist, because I watched his movies and I was like, man, he got beat up just the same way I did at school. He was discriminated against and he really made it up despite all the facts.

Starting point is 00:47:52 There was never an Asian star that made it into the mainstream until Bruce Lee did. Bruce Lee was the one who broke the mold. And so I went out and I sought out Bruce Lee's partner and teacher, this guy, Dan Inosanto, at a studio here next to me, and my kid still trains there. So my kid trains Brazilian jujitsu. My kid trains mixed martial arts. And our deal is he can do whatever he wants, but every week we go to that class. If he's feeling crappy, if he's feeling good, we go because it's difficult and it's what he does and so these are the types of things the second part of that is we travel so we take a few months off every summer we go

Starting point is 00:48:33 to europe and we sail the greek isles we go to italy we go to france and we work from wherever we're at but he gets to travel and he gets to see other cultures. He gets to see how life is in other places and nothing can replace travel for children. One of my favorite quotes from one of my good friends, Chris Connell, that was used to host on this show when it was the power move. He said one day, and here he goes, I've never met a well-traveled racist. I thought that was a well-traveled racist. I've never met a well-traveled racist. When you see how the other world, the other parts of the world live. And I totally agree. Our kids were going to Europe for two weeks and a couple of weeks. We'll be a travel JJ Todd, who was also a friend of the show had travel hacked me some unbelievable seats on Emirates

Starting point is 00:49:21 for like very low miles. So yeah, super happy. Thank you, JJ, for listening to this again. But yeah, I agree with that. And for me, you know, right now I told my, literally, because you know, my daughter, it's so funny because you think nature versus nurture, right? And you think two exact, you know, kids coming up in the same exact scenario, but couldn't be more polar opposite, right? My son is very affable, very laid back. My daughter is like the most tenacious person you'll ever meet. Like she just decides, like I'm going to accomplish this. And then just does just tunnel vision, bam, just runs to it, which creates, when she doesn't get there, it creates a hard fall for her, which is probably good for her anyway. But my son, you know,

Starting point is 00:50:05 has fallen into the, the, the, I'm gonna, it's like, there's easy and there's hard, right? Yeah. And this is true all through life. There's easy and there's hard. If you do the hard first, then, then life is easy. Or you can do the easy first, or you can go easy. And then the life is easy or you can do the easy first or you can go easy and then the hard is way harder than it would have been if you just did the hard up front right and so i told him the other day like we're not doing 90 hard we're not andy for selling it but we're doing the summer of hard and we're gonna this instead we ain't sleep until noon this summer i said like look you're 16 i gotta tell you 18 to like really man you up and get you ready for the world so we're gonna do the hard first every day gonna get up and get in the gym every day and be and do the hard first we're gonna every day it's like well he's like well i want to go do this okay

Starting point is 00:50:55 cool what are you gonna do to earn that everything is hard and it's been kind of eye it's been kind of eye opening for him but it's so funny You can see even in the smallest things, man, when you do it that way, I can see the self-esteem just growing in him daily. Yesterday, dumbest thing in the world, right? Okay. Today, because I was furious with him on Monday because we were going to a dinner to celebrate his sister's graduation from middle school. Yeah. It's a thing, I guess, not when I was a kid, but now it's a thing. And we're getting ready to walk out the door to a nice dinner. He goes, I don't have anything to wear. What do you mean? Nothing fits me anymore. This is not when you tell me that you should have already known this, right? So the hard yesterday was, and you're talking about,

Starting point is 00:51:39 he hasn't done this in years, clean out all of your drawers, all of your closet, get rid of, get rid of all of it. And then be part of the solution, not the problem. Make a list of what you need to buy. I want how many pairs of pants you need, how many pairs of jeans you need, shorts. I want a list that we can just check off the list because that's how adults work, right? Kids go, I don't have any clothes. Will you buy me some clothes? We're not doing that anymore. You're picking this shit up. And it's stupid, but like when I got home yesterday, he was like, dad, come look at my closet. Come look at my closet. And you're like, yes, because you're just doing something that's inconvenient, hard first, you know? So I'm

Starting point is 00:52:13 going to flip that mentality. I had two years left with him. I'm going to flip that thing as hard as I can. But it takes every day, dude. It takes every day. It's true. Do the hard first, man. Do the hard first. Oh man. Well, Shane, if they want to find more of you, man, if they want to connect with you, how are they find you? How do they, how do they locate you? Yeah. So people think I'm crazy. I'm going to give you my email. People can reach out to me by email. My email is dark Zess at gmail.com D A R K Z E S S at gmail.com. I personally respond to every single email. It might take me a minute, but I do do it. I pride myself on that. If you're interested in being featured on great podcasts, like this one, check out podcast Cola. That's podcast Cola.com. Just the way it sounds.

Starting point is 00:52:57 If you're interested in my Amazon mastery, learning how to create value in your own products, I'm just going to give that to everybody who listens to your show for free. It's a one hour course, teaches you everything from A to Z. Just mentioned the drift in the subject heading. Email me at D-A-R-K-Z-E-S-S at gmail.com. Mention the drift in the subject heading and that you want the one hour Amazon course. I'll give that to you. And you guys can check me out on social. We've got a show called Business Story of the Week. And you can Google me, Shah on social. We've got a show called Business Story of the Week. And you can Google me, Shaheen Chan, if you don't believe my crazy story. Google it.

Starting point is 00:53:30 Oh, my book. I forgot my book. There's a film that's going to be made on my book called Billion, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult. The book's on Amazon. You can get the audio book on Audible. That tells the whole crazy story of this. But there will be a film made in the next couple of years, major studio. And we're very excited about that. Love that. Love that. Well, dude, thanks for stopping by. It was awesome to spend an hour with you here on the show and come back

Starting point is 00:53:54 anytime you want. All right. Likewise, man. We'll have to do it in person for sure. Okay, guys. And remember, man, if you're drifting along with the currents of life, man, you're either somebody that's happening to life or life has happened to you. So you might as well're drifting along with the currents of life, man, you're either somebody that's happening to life or life is happening to you. So you might as well start drifting along and stand up and start walking. See you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it.

Starting point is 00:54:22 Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Breaking the System: Shaahin Cheyene's Journey from Teenage Hustler to E-Commerce Innovator

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