--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you today, an interview with Shaahin Cheyene, 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 Shaahin, 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 Shaahin Cheyene. Let's go.
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--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, make it look easy. Hey, stand up, guy, boom, 10 toes. Big body pull up in a range roll. I can chase the whole game when I say so. I pull up, shut it down. You know, it's funny. Before we hit record, we were talking about exiting and all this stuff. 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 YouTube or social media growth hack. 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 a real startup or you didn't really grow something.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There are so many entrepreneurs in the small business space. Look at what Cody Sanchez is doing, pushing people back into boring businesses. I talk about it on the show all the time because what I exited from was an insurance agency. People usually don't brag about their insurance agency businesses. I hope people start to look for new opportunities in some of these Main Street, local, franchising models, different things like that. There's so much opportunity there because a lot of the attention is on these flashy things. I think you've done some of this and you've done the flashy game too. I think what's really cool and why I was so excited to chat with you was the diverse nature of your experience and how all these things intertwine in your life and in your experience.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Sure. Look, I think we live in a world of smoke and mirrors. 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. If you talk to the guys that really are the billionaires, they are much more Warren Buffett than they are Jeff Bezos.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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. 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." That's really how most of us operate.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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. 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 shine and say, "Look at me." But I was actually living it. In fact, it was very stressful. After that company — and anybody that's interested, I wrote a book on it. It's called *Billion: How He Became King of the Thrillphole Cult*. It's being made into a movie by Believe Entertainment and Paris Hilton's company, 1110. Hopefully that'll be coming out in the next year or two. They're going to be starting production soon. I write about that journey.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: After that journey, I was like, "Okay, what am I going to do now?" I was constantly looking for that shiny thing. I was like, "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?" I had 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 have dinners or lunches with guys and I'm like, "Fuck, man, that guy is an attorney." I'm like, "Oh, cool." And he's got the car or whatever. I'm like, "Wait a second. That car is leased." Like you said, I could probably buy five of those cars. He's got all the trappings of wealth, but he's got to go back to the fucking office. And I get to come home and do whatever the fuck I want. I think my life is pretty fucking good, albeit not all fireworks anymore. I think it's really the illusion that's being sold. Most of that stuff is being sold by people who want to sell you something, which is incredible to me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that's the part that I feel like people miss. I have this dirty little pleasure of a lot of these little bullshit courses where someone has 2,000 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. It's like watching a car accident — you're like, "I shouldn't look. This is a negative thing. I feel bad for the people involved." But you still look. You look at what they create and it's some bullshit PDF that they made somewhere with a link to a Facebook community that you have to get.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm not doing it for the knowledge because the knowledge is never valuable. It's all regurgitated stuff. Nowadays, once you have made anything with AI, you can kind of tell when something is made 100% by AI. I'm looking at these things and I'm just going, "Why do people buy this?" I am obsessed with the psychology behind why someone would buy that and believe they're going to get something out of it. Did you not see that this guy had 7,000 Instagram followers, but he's going to teach you how to do a million? That doesn't make any sense. There are all these triggers as to why this isn't legit. Yet people are still buying it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I try to get into the community because I want to see how many people bought into this. It'll be 500, 600 people. I'm like, "Oh my God. What are these people doing? I don't understand." I'm just obsessed with it. 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 — says they have no idea what they're talking about? Yet people buy into it.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: I can answer that for you very clearly as somebody who actually has a high ticket course, believe it or not. This is the answer. This is what we discovered from years of doing a high ticket course for millions of dollars. After my big venture, I got into a couple of different ventures, also had exits. I invented modern digital vaporization. All the vapes that you see arose out of technology that I built. Exited that company, went public. 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." 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."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So I got into Amazon very early stage before Bezos even opened up the platform to third party sellers. I was looking at it, got involved in it in the early stage, and grew eight figure Amazon companies. Then people started coming to me saying, "Hey, can you teach us how to do this?" I was like, "Cool. I started coaching them." Then I was like, "Fuck, I don't have time. Let me build it into an online course and group coaching." So I did that.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Here's the shocking thing that most people who sell these high ticket courses won't tell you. People pay for the thousands of dollars, right? If someone's selling a $99 course, that's really top of funnel lead gen. No one's making money from that. They're selling a $99 course so that they can get you in and sell you the $1,995 thing, so they can get you in and then sell you the $3,000 thing, the $5,000 thing, the $30,000 thing, and the $60,000 thing. Because you've already been invested.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Now, the thing that they don't tell you with the higher ticket process — and this is a shocking statistic, it shocked me — I would say 70 to 90% of people never open the product. They might watch the first video, but they never get into it. We did deep research. I researched all the Amazon gurus out there and I thought, "All right, fuck, let me see what everybody's got." I did like you, I bought all their courses. When we started doing our coaching, 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 he's handing it back to the rental company. Everybody has those stories.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So people come very reluctant, arms crossed. 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. Two things that we learned during 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: A: When they paid these thousands of dollars for the course, a big chunk of that is they're 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. When they finish that process, it's so labor intensive and energy consuming on the end of the consumer, the person buying it, that once they say yes, what do you think happens, Ryan? They're exhausted. They're done. All that pressure is released. 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? My family's gonna be out on the street? Am I gonna be driving Uber forever?" Then you break those down. They want them broken down. They want to buy into the dream. For a lot of them, it's buying into the dream without doing the work.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Here's the other part of it. Most of these things will work if you work them. I never think somebody wasted money on a course or a coaching program. You waste money when you don't fucking take action on it. The majority of people — we've sold hundreds of courses at thousands of dollars — we can go in the back in Kajabi and see what percentage people watch. There are two kinds of people. There's the kind of person that never opens it up. After that sales process, that pressure is released. It's like buying a Tony Robbins book. You go to the store. He's got all these books. "Man, he is the best coach. He's online. He's doing the hand thing. He's a fucking giant. I want fucking Tony Robbins to be my coach. How can I go wrong?" You buy that set of whatever it is that Tony Robbins has. 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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." They go through maybe some of the material and they take action. A subset of that is people who maybe don't even go through a good chunk of the material, but they take action anyway. They just needed that reassurance, which is the other thing that they're paying for. "I don't want to do this alone." As entrepreneurs, we make the biggest mistake of working in a vacuum. When it comes to important decisions, we work in a fucking vacuum without getting outside feedback. 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?" That's all it takes.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: We have a tendency to work in a vacuum. People will do this with big decisions and then they'll bombard people with smaller, irrelevant decisions. It's one of the biggest failures in entrepreneurship that I talk to people about. You'll teach them all the steps necessary to run a sales funnel process for their tool, and then they get caught on what camera I should buy to film the video on the landing page. You're like, "What are you even asking me?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's funny you talking. There's this quote that Bruce Lee has which I absolutely love. "Knowing is not enough. We must apply. Willing is not enough. We must do." This is the whole context to me of what the difference is between the entrepreneurs that we read about and the entrepreneurs that we don't read about. I have friends who — and again, I buy a lot of these small courses mostly as a joke to myself — but the information inside, though generic and you could probably find for free or just figure out if you spent 15 minutes, it isn't wrong oftentimes. Yet there are people who will just read and read and read and watch YouTube videos and read and watch and never, ever put into practice.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When people ask me, "How did you figure out to do X, Y, Z in your business?" I'll be like, "FAFO, bro. I just did shit. The stuff that worked, I kept doing. The stuff that didn't work, I stopped doing. I just got better and better and better at figuring out quicker and quicker which stuff were good bets and which weren't." That's how you get there. 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 the situation anyways.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's difficult. I found myself — and this is something I've had to work on with the individuals that I coach — those unwilling to take an at-bat without full knowledge that it's going to be successful, I struggle really difficult to connect with them. From your standpoint, all the individuals you've talked to and coached, you speak and you're all over the place. How do you start to break down that mentality for someone who has great intentions and really does honestly want to be successful, but maybe they're stuck in that over-researching or perfectionist mentality? They're struggling to get in there and actually engage.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Nice. I write about this in my book too, again called *Billion: How I Became King of the Thrillphole Cult*. It's on Amazon. There's an audiobook and all that. I've narrowed it all down to one thing at the end of the day. I'm a guy — look, I created over a billion dollars in revenue, multiple eight figure companies, sold them. 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. I also, similar to you, coach a lot of people, train a lot of people. It comes down to one thing: risk. It's your relationship with risk.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: When you look at people who are constant failures — do you have any friends who you just look at and you might love them, but you're like, "Man, I love this guy, but he's just never made it financially. He's just always failed." You can trace that person's failure back to risk and the decisions that they made. Risk is not a zero-sum game. Risk is not binary. It's not all ones or zeros. A lot of people with perfection paralysis, 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. When it fails, they go, "Oh shit, see? I shouldn't have done this. I'm going back to my fucking nine to five."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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. People see that in the movies. They're like, "Oh, he, Facebook, billion dollars. He said no, all this stuff." 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: When you're younger, in your 20s, 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 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. You've had your exit, you got the money in the bag, you probably take great vacations, you probably got a family, a mortgage. The risk you take is less. It's why you see young people getting ahead — because they take these big risks.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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?" Confirmation bias, a million logical fallacies that we could fall prey to. You got to know what those are so that you don't fall prey to them. Secondly, what I said, don't work in a vacuum. 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."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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 vetted it, not in a vacuum, but with other people, peers and mentors, the two types of people that you should be looking at.'"
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Coaches — again, 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. 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. 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. Those pivots are the work. It's not glamorous. You know that in your business, the insurance business — changes every two minutes. Those pivots that you have to make are the work you have to do to succeed.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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. You can get lucky. I'm a big fan of luck. I'm a big fan of doing as little fucking work as possible. I am allergic to work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things — so a lot of my work, my philosophy — we'll absolutely agree with the peers and mentors, but outside of that, my philosophy in a keynote that I do a lot is called The Finished Formula. I built this framework to help people get shit done. What I try to teach them is that we have so many misguided beliefs and biases in our brain that we simply cannot trust. A lot of times I'll start the keynote out with these really common, commonly understood facts that aren't actually true. The audience is yelling out the answer and they're all wrong unless they've heard it before. The whole idea is that so many people approach life and they're just like, "Well, I heard this one time. Isn't this the way it's always done?" I'm like, "Guys, what is your core philosophy and where are you trying to go?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things I talk about a lot is we pivot just to outlast. Everyone thinks you pivot into some big, huge success. That's often not the truth. You pivot to survive. You watch everyone who doesn't fall off. Then all of a sudden you look around, you're the only one left. People are like, "You're the big success." It's not because you hit some elevator to the top floor. It's because you were just incrementally smart enough to outlast all your competition over time. They all fell away because they didn't understand the risk or they didn't have a consistent framework for making good decisions or insert whatever the reason. I completely agree with you. I love that you're making this point. Honestly, I couldn't agree more. It has been my life experience as well as what I coach — we are trying to stay in the game. 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. It doesn't operate that way. That is not discussed enough, which is why I'm so glad that you're here and you're talking about it. This is not a topic that is discussed enough in the ecosystem.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Everyone is looking for the home run. 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. It's not that home run that gets you there. It's a shit ton of singles over time and a 15 year career. You're in the frigging hall of fame. That's how you get there.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: That's right.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And the strikeouts help you get to that home run just as much as the singles.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: A hundred percent.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sorry, I played baseball and coached, so a lot of my references fall back on baseball. One of the things that I would love for you to address — I have a lot of our listenership that is say 30, 35 and above. We're growing in the younger market, but a lot of people who listen are executives, small business owners. They're in maybe the second season of their career, or maybe third season. 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. They've enjoyed what they've done. They've been successful, but they've gotten to a place in their life where they're like, "Man, I've always wanted to..." Maybe it's start their own agency or start a completely different business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'd love for you to talk because you've been able to maintain your success out of your 15 to 20 range into the second and third season of your life. When you get individuals who come to you in late 30s, early 40s, they're looking to make a move or looking to really take their shot. How do you coach them to do that? You are talking about their association to risk and having different responsibilities. 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 I'm stuck in whether I should or how I should?"
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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. 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. Alan Watts was a philosopher and he really talks about self-reflection and knowing yourself. I think it starts with knowing yourself and knowing who you are. That's important. Some of us aren't cut out for the world of entrepreneurship. 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. You look at those things, you reflect and you say, "Yes, it's for me or it's not."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: I presume the people listening to your show are of that ilk. They are entrepreneurial. If you are entrepreneurial, then you have to figure out how you are going to get your message out and then to do it. I've done this over the course of the last many years. 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?"
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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 magic pill in the 1990s. And I was like, oh, it's easy to make a million dollars in a weekend. Like, it's just money. It's just a shift in mindset and perception.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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. Right? I climbed the peak. I'm on top of Everest. I'm on the other 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, who are on the peak, who've gone to the other side, they're like, "Oh shit, yeah, that makes perfect sense."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Now, when you've figured out what you want to do and how you're going to do it, you've 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've got to figure out a way to get that message out. And this is something that I stumbled upon. 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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, 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 Details magazine. So my point is that I've done a lot of this stuff. And then I thought to myself, okay, now I've got to get my message out. I'd like to get a film based on this bestselling book that I wrote, *Billion: How He Became King of the Thrillbook Cult*. I was like, I want to make this into a movie, but how do I get it into a movie?
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So I was like, you know what, man, I've got to get on podcasts. I was looking at podcasting, same reason you're on podcasts. You've been doing your podcast for 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So I started doing it and I got a few hits. And then I realized, oh shit, you know what? It's a bad idea for me to represent myself. It's a bad look. People are like, "Oh, this is a guy who made a billion bucks. Why is he pitching himself?" So 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 always sign up for a business and you're like, "Fuck, man, if I was doing this, I would do so much 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. I started doing big, big shows and started getting on all these shows, hundreds and hundreds of shows.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: I got a call from some producers. They 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So the point I'm getting to is that you've 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've 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 podcasts 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."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Well, there's a trick to that. And the trick is you've 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 shows, 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So what I do right now over at Podcast Cola, which is my current startup that we're doing, is we get 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 yeah, you've got to have a way of getting your message out there. And honestly, I think there's no more powerful way to do that than telling your story on podcasts.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So couldn't agree more. Interesting fact: I started my very first podcast in 2011. In 2014, I got offered 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So yeah, I then had a podcast inside the insurance industry that I built up to 20,000 downloads a month. And then when I kind of left that, I restarted with the Ryan Hanley Show, which is more about entrepreneurship, growth, business, et cetera, and what we're doing today. And the broader vision is growing as well. But I could not agree with you more. I mean, I've been doing this for 13 years. 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, 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. The audience has grown so much, but this is the single greatest way to consistently tell your story.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's no better way to craft not only what you're talking about. What talking to challenging guests allows you to do is one, it's a free education. Two, it constantly forces you to become a better listener, a better questioner. It forces you to learn how to engage with someone who is potentially coming from a position of power in a certain space or a certain idea 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 or angry, have very constructive conversations because I've been forced to do it in a quasi-public manner for so long that I can walk onto stages today, have the lights go out, and can do my keynote in the dark because I just own what I believe. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And the last thing I'll say 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 called "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 left-leaning. I am tend to be more right-leaning in general. And 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And my point in saying this is that it 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 my job easier. I usually do try to do a decent amount of research and understand the person and watch them and the dynamics. And obviously this isn't a paid pitch or whatever, but just having experienced the service on the other side, 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: I appreciate that, man. Thanks. You know, we try to be excellent. And I think I tell people this all the time: it doesn't matter what you're doing. Just be great at it. Just always come with an attitude of excellence. And I think I try to impress that on people that work for me. So thank you for mentioning.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. 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? 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? How is that framing your own work and maybe how you're positioning Podcast Cola potentially for all? You have someone like Chris Williamson who is redefining what it means to do a podcast. It's essentially better television than the networks can create at this point.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: That's right. Yeah. Look, I think currently from what I see, 99% of shows now have a video component to it. Everyone's on YouTube now. You can't really be a player without doing that. As far as video on Spotify goes, that I don't know. I mean, I'll watch Joe Rogan on Spotify, but other than that, I'm like... and now Joe Rogan's on YouTube. So Spotify's video platform is a little janky. Sorry, Spotify. It's just not as smooth as YouTube. So from a consumer standpoint, video is everything.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: And now with GPT 4.0, it's mind-blown. Have you seen this?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, a little bit. I haven't played around with it too much, but I've seen some of the stuff. I've seen some of the demos and stuff on Twitter, people using it.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Yeah, I think they just announced video recognition. So you load it up on your phone, you hold it around the room, and the thing's 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 are very few people that are audio or that are written. For people like me, I'm video.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So I'm a big fan of Joe Rogan. I don't agree with everything all his guests say, but I am a big fan of his. So when I watch him and I watched him from the beginning blow up and basically single-handedly save this platform of podcasting that we're on, I get just that little bit of information when I'm seeing him have a little micro expression. Or when I look at his guests and I see the guests getting uncomfortable 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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, was this guy Stuart Wilde. He is this kind of 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."
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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? 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 for? 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've 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. 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 its emptiness. There's a Chinese monk and he's sitting down with a student. The student comes in and starts telling him all the things that he knows. And the monk is listening and listening and the student is talking and talking and talking. Finally, the monk picks up the teapot and starts pouring tea to refill his cup. And he pours and pours and pours until the cup overflows. And the student is like, "What the hell are you doing? That's too much tea." And he comes back and he says, "If the cup is overflowing, then there's no more to put in."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So this idea of approaching every situation with emptiness. I'm not in any of the businesses that you're in. I mean, other than the podcast business. But let's say I was an Amazon seller and you're coming in and I'm going to tell you 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 I think too many people approach with, "I'm going to 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I'll tell you a great example in the 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 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. And he sat down and interviewed him. And take away how you grade his performance or whatever. But the things that this guy stands for and the things he's done aren't what his values are. But hearing them, I think, gave us 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I think it's a good example of exactly what you're saying, and I couldn't agree more. It's just 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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, "Okay, well, I know." Rather than saying... One of the most powerful things I've learned, I just turned 49. I'm like, "Fuck, man. I'm looking at 50 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 really feel 50, but fine.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: And I think, man, 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. I think I might know what's around the corner, but I don't. I can't know what I don't know. And when you know that and you're comfortable with not knowing, 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. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sure. Agreed. All right. I want to be respectful of your time and that of the audience. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: From your vantage point, the different businesses you have your hands in, what I've been pitching, 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?
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So you know about the gold rush in California back in the day? You know who made money in the gold rush? Picks and shovels. The people who sold the picks and shovels. And I see AI a lot like that. There are a couple of big companies selling the algorithm on the big servers and the NLP and the natural learning models. You've got ChatGPT and Anthropic and Microsoft's 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. And they're plentiful. It's a very, very red ocean marketplace even now in its infancy, right? It's the new internet. Before the internet, we were all like, "Oh, what's going to happen?" So it is that.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: I think as far as just from a user perspective, from a consumer perspective, of course, you've got to know how to use the internet. You've 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've got to get to competency. And if you're in that industry, you've got to get a little bit above competency. But I think us as entrepreneurs, we've got to think, "Hey, 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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 tarnished what the technology actually does and can do into this tokenization piece. I think people get caught up in the value of these coins and I think they're missing the forest for the trees. The underlying technology of blockchain is so interesting to me, but I felt like it was way too early. Bitcoin hit and all this stuff, but there'll be a day where I feel like we'll just use blockchain domain databases. They will essentially be the standard. But it kind of got bastardized a little bit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. Very, very interesting. Last question for you. And then I'll let you go. You have kids? I didn't ask you that.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: I do. I've got a 10-year-old boy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, nice. I have a 10-year-old boy too. A little bastard. No, I love him to death. He's the best. So your 10-year-old son, you can only give them one piece of information, one idea, one thought to hold in his head to help him grow into the best man he can possibly be, the best version of himself. That one core idea that he could build upon. What would that be?
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: So it's just like one core idea, one concept only.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. To grow. What I'm trying to get to with this question that I finish with my guests is, what's that foundational concept for you that working with that will give you the other concepts? 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?
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: What comes to mind to me, especially for kids, is approach risk intelligently. And that comes to everything from the playground, right? You see a kid, he takes your cookie. Do you want to knock him the fuck out? And what are the consequences of that? Or do you want to let him have your cookie, and then you get another one? What are the pros and cons? What's the risk? You knock the kid out, 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 still, right?
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: And life is just like that. 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 it all comes down to what we were talking about full circle to what we were talking about at the beginning: risk, risk management, being able to... And it's funny that I'm saying it that way, because that's exactly the industry that you were in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. You know, everything comes back to insurance. No, I have anyone who's listening, stay as far away from insurance as you can. Because the moment you dip your toe in, you get sucked into this arcane world that I warned you about if you do it. But a great way to make money, incredible business model.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Shaahin, it has been awesome, man. I appreciate the hell out of you. So much great conversation, so much insight. We're going to have everything that you discussed in the show notes. 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 get just more of what you're doing?
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Thanks. Yeah. So look, we've got this Amazon course for anybody who is a guest or a listener of the Ryan Hanley Show. Send me an email. I'm going to do this. People think I'm crazy for this, but 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 "The Ryan Hanley Show" in the subject heading and I'll just give you guys the course for free. It's a crash course. It's 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. Reach out to me if I can help you or get on a conversation.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: 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.
--:-- Shaahin Cheyene: Dude, appreciate the hell out of you, man. Wish you nothing but the best.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, thanks, man. That's been great. Let's go.
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