0323 | Shaahin Cheyene

Hi, this is Shaheen Shan and you're listening to EA interviews, EA interviews, episode.

323, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. Have you ever wanted to sell on Amazon? I know, I've thought about it, but what does it all take? You know, there's all these moving parts, what products, this, that, the other thing, what are the price points, what should the images look like, what should the description look like? These are all things I can't wait to get answered because I have none other than author, author, Amazon expert filmmaker Shaheen Shan. On today's episodes, we're going to be talking about all this and more. Also how to get to your first million and what it's like to surpass a billion. Right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think you your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Shaheen Shahn. Shaheen, how are you feeling today?

I am doing great, Mario. Amazing to be on.

I am so excited to have you here because you have done so much and can even see with your shirt Amazon mastery there. You know, how did you even choose Amazon and what is it like to take a business to over a billion dollars?

It's a good question. So we like to say that nobody chooses Amazon, Amazon chooses you. I'm a big fan of Star wars and Yoda, so I think that's going to be a good answer to that one. So I started off back in the early 1990s as a teen and I had no idea what I was doing. But I managed to develop a supplement which launched the smart drug movement of the 1990s, a pill called Herbal Ecstasy, which basically propelled me from literally sleeping on the beach with $0 eating ketchup from hot dog stands to creating over a billion dollars in revenue before my 21st birthday. And from there I moved on to building out a lot of the technology that's now digital vaporization. If anybody's heard of vaporization, I'm sure a lot of your audience has. And after that I've had a few successful exits. I started looking and thinking about what it was that led to that incredible meteoric success that happened in the 1990s with me and creating a billion dollars in revenue when I didn't even know what a billion dollars was. And the answer came back as distribution. And that if you start with distribution first, the world is your oyster. And shortly after that time I was looking around, I developed another supplement. I had a couple dozen companies that I was growing at various stages of growth. And I realized that Jeff Bezos had opened up the Amazon platform to third party sellers, meaning anyone like me and you and everyone else had the ability to sell whatever they wanted within their terms of service on the Amazon platform. So I thought, hey, let me give this new supplement. I'm trying. It was a nootropic called Accelerol. We still sell it. And I thought, you know, why don't I try to sell this on Amazon? No one's really selling supplements on there. And I put it on. There was a high ticket item, it was like $100, $120, something like that for a month supply. And I didn't think much of it. I went to sleep, woke up the next morning and we had thousands of orders. And I looked at it and I said, this is it. This is the next big distribution channel and I want to learn how to master and perfect it. Because what we learned particularly through Herbaloxy and throughout the 90s, is that if you get the product right, you necessarily, not necessarily are going to succeed, but if you get the distribution right, you will have nine lives and can continue to succeed. So it's always distribution first is the first lesson that we teach and that I teach my, my Amazon students.

Is there anyone better than Amazon with distribution or do you use anyone in conjunction with Amazon to strengthen the distribution or is there no need?

Yeah, so I also have an agency where we do Amazon acceleration for all kinds of products. And it's exactly what it sounds like. People bring us products anywhere from I've got Fortune 50, Fortune 500 companies to startups, the VCs bring me to a guy that's just got a product and a little bit of money, who wants to sell it and what we tell them. One of the most important things that you can do is have that message. I heard you talking about the language of Amazon and how to, how to make things sell on that platform. Well, there is a very specific language, but once you decide to sell on that platform, you can sell anywhere because the language of E commerce is very similar across platforms. The key element of influence that people want to have, the thing that influences People the most through conversion on E commerce is this consistency. So you want to make sure that your message is consistent cross platform. You cannot be one thing on your website and be a different thing on Amazon, be a different thing on Walmart and be a different thing on Etsy. It doesn't work that way. People will stop believing you. So consistency is most important. And once you are consistent, then you can sell on all those platforms and they each become a distribution channel. Now, we don't believe that anything is more powerful than Amazon right now. For most products, however, there is never anything more powerful than your own sandbox. If you can get people into your funnel, top down, and you can get them in at some stage where you own that relationship, that's where you will find the most power. And then down the line, you know, Amazon, ebay, Etsy, the thing you have to realize is when you sell on those platforms, that you are working for those platforms. Those platforms are not working for you. Therefore those customers are not your customers. Those customers are Amazon's customers. There's ebay's customers and they will let you know that.

How do you bridge that gap, turning them into your customers and having it work for you?

So you have to have a system and you have to have a funnel. We talk about that a lot. And for, I think any of your listeners who might not know what a funnel is or understand funnel dynamics, it's basically, you know, you need to have a coffee before you can have dinner, you need to have dinner before you can date. And you know, you need to date a little bit before you get married. So it's similar with customer interaction. So if you want to bring customers over from one channel to another, preferably a channel that you have ownership of. What we teach is take ownership of the channel, take ownership of the medium and build that authority, and you bring those customers into your own ecosphere, then you're doing pull marketing. You can sell them whatever you want. As opposed to the old school of marketing, which doesn't work anymore. Which a guy who I've learned a lot from reading his books, I should say Seth Godin talks about is you don't wanna be part of the disruption marketing mindset. That's the old marketing, right? You and me are watching the Super Bowl. Hey, buddy. Mario, you need ketchup. You're like, no, no, I'm good. Okay, great. You need beer. You need beer. You're like, dude, I just wanna watch the game. No, no, you need beer, you need Budweiser. Doesn't work that way. Anymore. Right. The new channel is building relationships with, with those consumers. So now the way to do it is you feed them content, you give them value before you even ask for anything. And the Internet killed disruption marketing. You no longer are going on there banging on people's TV sets saying, hey, buy a beer, buy our beer, buy some ketchup. Now what you're doing is you're building a relationship and you are pulling them to you and they will come to you because they are loyal and they love having that cold beer, that cold Budweiser, that cold whatever it is with, with their buddies because that has been built, it's been decision architected, design architected. So that decision has been made for them rather than disrupting what they're doing and forcing it down their throats.

I love that you're mentioning that. And as far as bringing them to your own platform, obviously the website, but would you also advise, like building up your own email list, maybe putting them in a private group? And would that private group be on a name social media platform or would you say keep it internal so that way you truly own it.

So yes. So of course, the closer you get to having ownership of any of these platforms, the closer you are to owning the relationship, the closer you are to owning that customer. So if you are bringing them onto a platform, let's say for example, Facebook, you know, you can do that. But what if Facebook cuts your account? What if Facebook thinks something you did is outside of terms of service? You realize very quickly that on any of these big platforms there is a heavy price to be paid for the convenience of using them. So of course, email marketing, of course, direct connection through your website with customers ranks highest. That's the highest good for us as Amazon sellers, what we want to do is we want to have that direct connection, that direct relationship with our customers. But short of that, yeah, of course you can bring them into a Facebook group, you can bring them into other channels. And really now, you know, there's really no way around that. So you need to have all of those options because again, it's not about disruption and forcing people to come over to you. It's about gently creating that concept where they think it's their own idea to come to you. They love you so much. They want to be part of your mailing list. And you know, if they're on Facebook and they see you on there, great. They like your posts if they're on Insta, cool. But it's wherever they are, you have to come to them.

What would you say you have to do that is absolutely required for your first million on Amazon, in addition to what you've already been sharing.

That's a great question. So I don't believe in setting goals, rather than that I like systems. So if we were to ask, well, I've got a goal of a million dollars, or take it even higher, $100 million. I've had the good fortune of being able to see what a hundred million dollars looks like. I've had the good fortune of seeing what $500 million looks like in my career. And I'll tell you one thing, Mario, and this is like a pretty interesting fact, and I've had this confirmed from a bunch of friends of mine. When I sit down and I start to think, hey, I'd like to make $100 million. And I go out there and try to do it. Never works. Never been able to do it. Never, ever, ever, ever have I been able to do it. But when I go out there with the concept of, I've got a really cool idea, cool, crazy idea, and I want to bring value.

And these are the things I wanted to achieve, but better yet, these are the systems that I'm going to implement, it becomes a lot more real and a lot faster. And so I'll give you an example, as opposed to saying, okay, my goal is to make a million dollars on Amazon. Okay, great, maybe you make it, maybe you won't. You know, nowadays, you know people who, you know, take Amazon courses or learn how to sell on Amazon, or, you know, our sellers on Amazon do anywhere from, you know, $5,000 to $5,000,000 a month. It's. It's very common. And there's a lot of products out there that are doing seven figures a month just for one product. Some of them do more. Okay. The fact is that you need to have a trusted, reliable system that you can execute on to work for you to get to that million dollar, to get to that $5 million point, to get to that hundred million dollars. And the way that you do that is either you go to somebody who you trust, who has done it before, or you figure out a system and then you execute on that system. And then it's a process of tweaking and adjusting until you get exactly that output that you want. And when you get that output, you scale. So on Amazon, what that might look like is looking at a category. You launch, a product. You might succeed, you might not. But if you are resilient and you have the discipline to continue at it, to look at it at different Angles. Hey, maybe this review system didn't work. Let me try this other one. Maybe the product isn't right. Let me adjust it, let me change it. And you're continually changing. What you'll find out is before you even know it, you've gotten to 10 grand and then you got to 100 grand. And then now that you're at 100 grand, you're now at a different level, so you can use a different set of tactics. We talk about the three things in my book that my friend Wayne very eloquently put together, which is objectives, strategy, and tactics. So what's our objective? What do we want to achieve? What's the strategy that we're going to implement to get to that objective? And the third thing is, what are the tactics, the tools that we're going to use to get there? And if you follow that type of methodology, the achievement becomes a lot simpler, it becomes a lot clearer. And so now our goal, what you'll find is your objective isn't to make $100,000 in paper or a million dollars in paper. Your objective is to launch the number one so and so product in the world. Now we need a strategy for it. Okay, so our strategy is going to be we're going to get reviews, we're going to build the product up on Amazon, we're going to cross sell using Influencer marketing and doing podcasts like the show, and we're going to. Do you know what those are? Okay, what are the tools we're going to use? Okay, so the tools are we're going to use Shaheen's Amazon Mastery course. We are going to use different algorithms, different softwares. So now we have it. And what that gives you is another three step program that we talk about in my book, which by the way, hasn't launched, it'll probably launch in July.

Is.

Knowledge, Courage, action. You need the knowledge, right? You can buy knowledge, you can borrow knowledge. Some people steal knowledge. It's everywhere. But if you know how to do it, that's the know how, the knowledge that you need to gain. You can rent knowledge, right? We need to know how to do this. Let's, let's bring somebody in who's done it before, right? That knowledge gives you courage, the courage to act, right? I use the example of jumping out of a plane, Mario. If I was like, hey, Mario, come on board. We're going to jump out of the plane this afternoon. Unless you're an experienced skydiver, you'd be like, shaheen, I'm not going to do that. That's crazy. But if me and you had just taken a six month long skydiving course and learned all the aspects of it, you felt comfortable that it was safe and we get on that plane, you'd be like, let's do it, buddy. Wingsuit. Wingsuit, right. You be in the wingsuit. So that knowledge gives you the courage to act and that courage gives you the ability to execute, to take action. Knowledge, courage, action. And then when we take that action, that leads us to our objectives, which is what we're doing. So I don't care what your objective is. If Your objective is 10 million, 100 million, a billion like we created with herbal ecstasy. And you know, I talk about on my billion podcast, how I became king of the thrill pill cult, if anyone's interested in that story. You know, it's more important to have trusted systems, systems that don't fail, that never fail, that are reliable and replicatable and then scalable.

I love everything you were saying right there. It was so powerful. And I want to ask you about Amazon some more and how important is the SEO aspect of it?

Everything's SEO, everything's optimization. You optimize your life, you optimize your hair. But by the way, you have really good hair, buddy. Thank you. I at one point had very long hair and now I'm bald. But I will tell you this, that in the olden days, it used to be at Google SEO. And I've got friends who've written books on SEO who are experts at SEO. And SEO is still relevant, but the game changed and it's constantly changing. And SEO, which is search engine optimization, and you very astutely observed that Amazon is just another search engine. But they're a little bit more than that because they know that if you're doing your searches, your research initially on the Amazon platform, what you will find is that the buyers on Amazon are just that, buyers. And they're looking to purchase, whereas people on Google are just looking to search. So the Amazon story is one of search, but it all of discovery and search, but it is also one of storytelling. And when you launch a product on the Amazon platform, you have to think about it. No matter how mundane, no matter how commoditized, you have to think about it as being a storytelling journey. And you have to take yourself. And this is what we teach on Amazon mastery and fbasellercourse.com where you know, my students who come to us, who learn. And by the way, at the end of this, with your permission, I'm happy to share a free one hour course with any of your listeners. We charge nothing for that. And it's everything you need to know to sell on Amazon from A to Z. If anybody's interested in getting started on Amazon and I'm sure you can share a link with your listeners, listeners and.

Viewers, I'd be happy to share it with them. I have no doubt it'll be beneficial to them. And we can make sure the links in the show notes when I ask you at the end.

Love it, Mario. Love that. So what I was saying is that it's a storytelling journey. We humans evolved from our ancestors to understand story. We don't understand numbers. There's a great book by a guy named Poundstone called Priceless and he talks about pricing, psychology, how our brains don't understand money, understand numbers because it wasn't needed for thousands of years for evolution. But what we understand is story. It doesn't matter who you are, who your ancestors are. Somewhere along the way there was somebody sitting in a fire lit cave with stick drawings on a wall telling a story. And that's how we learned and how we evolved. And now where we're at with Amazon, with E Commerce, with selling on E commerce, it's still about that. The storytelling hasn't changed and you can win. Product is not. One of the unfortunate side effects of Amazon is the product is no longer the most important thing. Having a great product doesn't matter as much as having the right story. And on the Amazon platform, being able to tell that story in a way that leads to conversions.

Could be the single most important thing that you do. And as you and I were discussing earlier, being able to have that story go cross platform, having that consistency, a pillar of influence, having authority. I follow a professor named Professor Cialdini and Cialdini wrote the book Influence and his follow up book Pre Suasion. Have you heard of Professor Cialdini before?

I have.

Okay, amazing. And Cialdini talks about these pillars of influence and what we do through Amazon Mastery and through my clients that we service regularly is that we take those five pillars and a sixth which is reciprocity, giving back and we apply those to selling on Amazon. And it creates one of the most powerful tornadoes of sales through the Amazon platform that never fails.

When someone is doing this for the first time with all the good stuff you've said and I appreciate it because I can tell you have your passion for it, you know what you're talking about. Is there any products or is there any products that lend themselves better to Amazon than others or can you really sell anything on there?

You can sell anything that's within their terms of service. There's prohibited and restrictive items that they don't let you sell. So that aside, you know, it's more about finding the niches. I like to say the riches are in the niches. So it's not really about product categories. Right. Like so like health and wellness do really well on their. Beauty is a huge category. You can look at automotive, you can look at pet. All these categories are.

Charcuterie boards. There you go. My wife loves those kinds of things. I don't know, I eat anything, I just stick my hand in there and I eat it. But she loves having those kinds of, you know, whatever accoutrements to eating. But all those things can sell and sell well. What's more important is to look at niches, find areas where the competition is weak and where you can come in and bring some value and dominate.

How do you find them? What are you looking forward to determine? Is this competitor weak or non existent and is this somewhere I should invest my time, energy and money?

Yeah. So we teach initially and you'll see, you know, if anybody wants to, you know, take the free one hour course, we share the tools in there, there's software and we share three software tools that are really useful for looking in and spying on the competition and seeing what sales are in the marketplace. But ultimately, you know, it's about following an algorithm. Much more so than finding a product. It's about using a trusted system and we have systems that we've built over the course of the last, you know, 12 plus years selling on the Amazon platform that work every single time. So we teach our students that, hey, what you need to do is to put your likes aside, don't play your lunch or it'll, you know, don't, don't play your hunch, it'll have your lunch. We like to say instead of that, just follow the system, follow the program, don't go too far away from home. Follow the program. And when you do, you can succeed. And it's, it's fairly simple. You know, what it comes down to is finding niches that are lucrative but underserved. And you just go in and you use one of many algorithms and systems that we teach and you just dominate.

What's been your favorite niche you found so far?

Tea. We're one of the largest sellers of tea on the Amazon platform and we do incredibly well there. We also do incredibly well in supplements, neither of which are great for first time sellers. So both are highly competitive and you got to have some experience in it. You know, it's like being a master tennis player or a mixed martial artist or anything like that. You can say, okay, well who's the best? Let me go in and fight him. You don't want to fight the best when you start him. You want to fight somebody that's a little bit lower than you, so you can dominate. And the way that works on the Amazon platform is we break it out into first base product, second base, third base, and home run. A first base product being something that you can do that earns between 2,000 to $5,000 a month in recurring revenue, easy. And then we've got home run products, and those are products that can earn you 150,000 plus month. So it just depends where you're coming in at. And it's always better to cut your teeth on the basic products because the risk is lower. And you learn, you learn from your mistakes and then once you perfect it, once you make the changes, you tweak your business model, you gather your resources, you learn about that, then you scale. And look, Amazon E Commerce is just one pillar of a good financial plan. You should be thinking about investing in real estate. You should be thinking of having some money in the stock market, right? So you need to have multiple streams of revenue. And one of those can be your job or your career, you know, whatever it is that you do on a daily basis. But what we learned is that if you have multiple streams of income and, and they're all going, and they're diversified and diverse enough, you will never wake up to a bad day. If all your eggs are in one basket and you wake up in the morning and you know the real estate market is down or the stock market is down, all your eggs are in that basket. You can have lots of bad days, Mario, but if you are diversified and you do what we call foundational thinking, you build out those pillars, which is what we teach our students. You know, how do you get cash flow, positive real estate? And I know there's a lot in Detroit, where you're at right now, one of the few places in the country where there's still great cash flow with real estate, you can create a lifestyle for you that's really comfortable. You know, I travel the world with my family. We collect exotic cars, you know, we buy real estate all over the place. And while we are sleeping and enjoying our vacations, we make money. There's money being earned every second of every day for us. And we can afford to have this lifestyle because of that. It didn't happen overnight, didn't get rich quick. This was part of a foundation and foundational thinking that we built over time. My wife also has an Amazon business selling beautiful flowery things and jewelry and she does all types of things on the Amazon platform. And I am sure my 7 year old, when he's old enough, will also have an Amazon business. And so you build out these pillars and your life just starts to flow. And that's what we like to teach.

I love that you're talking about the different aspects of it in the diversification because one of the questions I was going to ask you is what's your backup plan to Amazon? If you know, like we were talking about with all the social medias, they can on a whim just be like, okay, you're done for whatever reason, you know, you have a purple background, you know, you got a black shirt, I got a blue tie. Whatever the case is, it seems, or you know, here's another one. How often do you think they change the algorithm.

Daily? I mean, the algorithm is changing all the time. You cannot rely on one source of revenue, but the more that you have, the better off that you are. You know, it's funny, I had a guy come to me and you know, we, we are very selective with who we pick for our Mastermind and Platinum course. So we have the free one hour course that people can take. And you know, it's free. It's everything you need to start an Amazon business. Please don't spend money on an Amazon course until you've seen this one hour course because it's 99% of what others charge thousands for. We just get for free because we want to empower people. I do what I do. You know, I've made, like I said, over a billion dollars over the course of my career. Very well documented on major news channels. So you can Google and search me. I'm not a, you know, Lamborghini in my garage, Instagram millionaire. I've actually done this since the 90s and actually done it very successfully. I don't need to be doing this further for money. Amazon provides more than sufficient income, millions of dollars a year to me for what I do. But I like to teach people because it's this next level of my life is being able to empower others to achieve similar success to what I've achieved on Amazon. Which is why we teach the Amazon systems and the Amazon keys. Now the thing you need to know is that the algorithm is Constantly changing. Today we try something and it works great, and tomorrow it changes. Which is why our program in particular is a live course where we are constantly creating new content. We go to all the events, we buy all the other courses, we read all the books and talk to all the other gurus and Amazon teachers and everybody like that out there, and we're constantly on top of it. And similarly, for whatever business, whatever niche you choose to start on Amazon, you have to be one step ahead. I use this analogy often. I say, you know, don't think outside the box. A lot of people are like, oh, you need to think outside the box. I'm like, no, you need to crush the box. You need to absolutely crush the box. You need to go above and beyond what anybody else is doing in every aspect of your business to win.

I. So.

It'S so powerful. I love your mindset on this, and.

It'S just amazing because a lot of people talk about Amazon, and even in the intro, I alluded to the descriptions and the pictures and all that's important, but I hope that.

The listeners that you're listening right now and you're catching the mindset and the passion behind all this, because so many stuff out there is just, well, did you optimize the characters? Do you have 2000 words? Did you bold the headline and all this stuff? And I'm not saying it's not important. I'm sure it is, actually. I know, I know it is, because. Especially with my books. But listen to his mindset. Listen to his attitude and the passion behind it. So one last question about this. How important would you say the mindset and attitude is.

For someone who go. Who's more focused on the description and that other stuff?

Yeah. So mindset, attitude, very important. Passion. I would say irrelevant. So I. Yeah, I don't care if you're passionate about something. Right. I mean, I'm passionate about all kinds of stuff. Doesn't make me money. You know, there's. There's tons of stuff I'm passionate about. I love reading about weird topics. Right. I do Brazilian Jiu jitsu. Super passionate about that. It's got nothing to do with making money. Right. So the things that you are passionate about are great. What's better is follow a proven system. I tell this all the time to people. You know, the fact is you do better building network and with luck than you do being passionate about anything. I mean, sure, it's great, you know, in general to be a passionate person to. To have an opinion which is lacking in so many Younger people these days, I can't tell you how many millennials I walk up to, or whatever is after millennials. And they just don't have an opinion about things or they're scared to voice their opinion. So in that way, I think it's good to come up with an opinion, believe in something that's awesome. But the way that Internet gurus sell you to buy whatever it is, it's really easy because they shine a shiny. You know, they hang a shiny thing in front of you and they're like, bud, if you're just passionate enough, you're gonna make it. But the fact is, the world is full of passionate failures. Nothing more common than a passionate failure.

Right? But there are very few people that have followed a trusted, proven, reliable system and have been willing to do whatever it takes to succeed that are failures. You don't see that often. In fact, I don't know anybody who has followed a proven, trusted, reliable system, whatever that is. And you can apply this to any area of your life.

Where they succeeded.

Also, I heard you say you like food earlier, and I can relate to that. And what's coming to mind is franchising. You know, everyone had a mom and pop place, and then franchising came out. And you know what's dominating now everywhere you go.

Yeah, yeah. I mean.

First off, I think there's very few things better than food. I can only think of three from the top of my head.

And I'm also not saying that franchise food is like top of top echelon, where we should be eating all the time. It was the more the example of the business model.

Yeah, no, I get, I get where you're, where you're coming from, you know, and that kind of goes to consistency, the second influence element. You know, people like those kinds of things because they like consistency. People go to Starbucks, and I, you know, I'm a fan of the Starbucks business model, not a huge fan of their coffee, except for their one store in Seattle, which is insane, by the way. If you ever go to Seattle, go to the, like the main Starbucks, it's called the Roastery. And then they have. They give you the good stuff. Although their coffee has improved over the years. But the reason why you see people standing in front of Starbucks and standing in front of these coffee places day after day, morning after morning, you know, drop in 4, 5, $6 on a cappuccino, frappuccino, whatever it is that they're having, is because of consistency. They need to have that consistent thing in their lives. I Doubt that it's about the coffee, although I know a lot of their coffee is tasty and people like that kind of stuff. But, you know, if they took that same money, compounded interest on it, invested it in things and just made their coffee at home, the experience of drinking coffee would probably be pretty similar and pretty good, and they would save a ton of money. But they do that because they need that routine, that consistency. And you know, when you go to Starbucks, this is the thing that they mastered. And you order coffee, be it in Jakarta or Seattle, that coffee is going to be pretty close, almost identical. Same with McDonald's, same with any of these other franchises, because they've hit on that area of influence. They've hit on the fact that people need consistency, and that's what they deliver. So you want to learn from that. You can take the example of consistency as a pillar of influence. Say, hey, we are going to be consistent. Not only are we going to do what we say, but the experience when you buy Mario's brand of whatever it is that Mario is going to be selling is always going to be the same. Yeah. And it takes time. Mario, you know, it doesn't come day after day. You're going to have somebody coming out with whatever it is that you're selling that's going to be cheap, cheaper than you. They're going to offer two instead of one. They're going to have better packaging, better serve. But you know what? Every time I've bought Mario's product, it's been the same. And I like consistency, so I'm just going to go with that.

I'm so glad you're touching on that, especially the compounding interest. And it sounds like you're not a fan of $6 coffees every morning.

No, you know, I struggle with. I'm a little bit of a coffee snob. So I bought one of the best coffee machines in the world. And, you know, it arrived here. You know, the thing costs, you know, thousands of dollars. And, you know, a, you know, we use it in the office, so it's a business piece of equipment that depreciates, that's fully usable. But B, it makes better coffee than anything I could get anywhere outside. And C, it saves me a ton of money. I can have coffee whenever I want. Staff, friends, family, we all make coffee on this machine. And it's the absolute, you know, the best thing. And I'm not dropping, look, I'm a millionaire. I don't drop $6 a day on coffee. Just don't do it. I'D rather go buy Tesla stock. I'd rather go buy ExxonMobil. I'd rather take that money and invest it in my Amazon businesses, invest it in my students.

I love that you're sharing the truth, and I'm in full agreement. And I just have to ask, did you buy the coffee machine on Amazon?

Did not.

The Italian coffee machines? I'll tell you, my friend, the brand of coffee machine that I have, and I have no affiliation with them, is La Marzocco. And they make. I'm gonna make a video about this and put it on the Hack and Grow Rich podcast. They make the Ferrari of coffee machines. And these things come from Italy. I think the Pope blesses every single machine. I mean, this thing is the sexiest coffee machine ever delivered to humanity, and they don't sell on Amazon. And this thing is beautiful, and it's sexy and it's shiny, and you got to order it and you got to wait months, and it comes in a crate, and two little guys come out with white gloves, and they deliver it and unbox it for you. And it is a thing of beauty and a beautiful experience. The price point, however, I think is probably too high for Amazon at the moment.

But things are changing, and I love that you're sharing. You know, even with this product, you're sharing the story, and, you know, look how important that is.

There you go. Are you Italian by background?

And I was just gonna say, you can't go wrong with Italian either.

There you go. There you go. They make beautiful cars, beautiful coffee machines. There's a lot of beauty there. That's a beautiful country. Beautiful food, too. Oh, my God, the Italian food.

Yeah. When you made the food comment, I'm like, I don't know. You know, I'm not talking about fast food is like the. Where you should be eating it. But, you know, great points that you made about the business models and, you know, time compounding, financial compounding, and all these things, because this, you know, if you really break it down, you could probably save that money on the coffee. And after so many years of the time compounding in the financial compounding, you could probably buy a Starbucks at some point.

You know, buddy, I had a mentor early on, and I write about this in my books when I was a teenager, and I remember I was 16, I wanted to get another car, and I just kept looking at all these shiny red cars, and I couldn't afford any of them, so I kept looking at these cars that kind of looked, like, fancy, but they were really pieces of Junk. And my mentor pulled me over. And in these days, in the olden days, I'm feeling old now. We used to look through these newspapers, and there was one called the, I don't know, Used Car Trader, Whatever, Recycling car or something or other. And he took it and he threw it in the trash. And I said, hey, what'd you do that for? And he said, with you, buddy, I want you to listen to what I'm saying. We are going to focus on things that actually make you rich rather than things that make you look rich.

And I thought about that for a minute, and it changed everything. And of course, you know, a couple years later, I had the latest Ferrari, and, you know, I was driving it down Pacific coast highway and a beautiful model by my side and just, you know, living the life, thinking that made sense, you know, but ultimately, so many people now, so many young people, you see the lifestyle online, you see the lifestyle on Instagram, you see the way people are living. And the fact is, social media has sold you a lie. It doesn't work that way. Look, yes, you can get rich fast, and I often say fast is my favorite way to get rich. But it doesn't usually work that way. You usually have to put some hustle into it. You usually do have to put some work into it. We see people oftentimes at the end of their trajectory, and you don't see what it took to bring them there. And then there's people online that just cut out the trajectory, and they're like, look at this Lambo. They don't tell you that it's rented, right? They should. Look at this beautiful house. They don't tell you that you could rent that house for $9,000 a month, write it off because you're creating content in there. Rent it out on Airbnb, so you're actually turning a profit from it. And it makes it look like you're living in this big house and you've got this expensive Lambo that, you know, maybe you bought and you're renting out on Turo and just using it for photo shoots. You don't see any of that stuff. So what you've been sold on Instagram, what you've been sold on all these, you know, social media channels is. Is a lie. The fact is that most people, they get wealthy slowly, and they get wealthy from creating networks, creating relationships, adding value, creating value, and then using trial and error. They failed a thousand times before they became successful, and they did not skip a step. You cannot skip a step. There is no course that you can buy that's going to make you rich tomorrow. It doesn't work that way. You can get lucky. You can inherit money, you can marry into wealth. These things are real and they do happen. But the likelihood of one of those things happening to you is similar to you winning the lottery. I like predictable recurring revenue streams based on foundational thinking. And if you can do that, if you can find a mentor, someone who can teach you and encourage you to do the right things, you might not get rich tomorrow, you might not get rich fast, but you will build a foundation and you will have everything that you want. Most important of which is time being able to do what you want, when you want, with who you want. And that's the thing I value more than anything.

I agree 100%. Time you can't ever get back. It's priceless. And get rich slow is a heck of a lot better than get rich never.

I like that. That's a good quote that.

I mean, time's going by either way, you know, oh, it didn't work out. So try something different. You tried it for six months.

You're right. You're right. The problem is that what's being sold is the shiny thing. It's not sexy to say, hey, we're gonna. It's gonna take you six months to a year to build up an Amazon business. You may fail. You're gonna have to put some more hard work into it. And, yeah, buddy, you're gonna probably still have to keep your job. And then, you know what you're gonna do is you're probably gonna invest a little bit in real estate, learning about that. In a couple years, you'll be able to buy a piece of real estate that'll bring you some revenue. And you know what? In five to ten years, you'll be in a pretty good place. Where's that? Course.

Those things, you can't sell that in a TikTok video. What they want to sell on a TikTok video is three things to drive the Lambo tomorrow in 13 seconds. So that's what's being sold. And so people who watch that want that. And, you know, for your viewers, you gotta be honest with yourself. You gotta really ask yourself, are you buying that? Are you buying that program, that course, whatever it is that they're selling, because it's easier for you to buy the shiny story and then fail and blame it on somebody else or something else. And, you know, oh, I just didn't have the time. Didn't work out. I tried it didn't work.

Or are you willing to do the ultimate secret to getting whatever you want? Want to know what the secret is?

Absolutely.

Okay, so this is based on a book called the Ultimate Secret to Getting Everything youg Want. And I love this book. I recommend everybody get it. It was WR, I think, in the 1970s. It's a short book. It's like 60 pages and it's phenomenal. I'm going to ruin it for you right now. The ultimate secret to getting whatever you want in life is this. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Doesn't mean you have to do whatever it takes to get it, but you have to have the willingness to do whatever it takes to get it. Which goes back full circle to when we started this conversation, is that you need to be able to hit that nail in the head as many times as it takes. You have to be willing to hit that nail on the head as many times as it takes for it to go through. Might happen on the first time, might happen on the hundredth time, but if you don't give up, that thing's going to go through.

Fantastic. This is incredible. I. I wish we could go all day with this. I have just one question before we thank our sponsor. Loving everything so far. This is the wheel of whatever I did. Get this on Amazon. And do you want yellow or black?

Black. Always been on black.

Nice, nice. There we go. Black. Wherever it's at. So I'm picking it. So my question for you is, with everything you've already accomplished, where do you see your business going over the next 10 years? And what are you going to do with your family once it's there?

Look, we're growing and expanding every day on Amazon and we're going to be making money on Amazon year after year. We've got 300 plus products over multiple categories that we saw on the Amazon platform, some of which are the best that makes money. It's predictable, it's recurring, you know, might not be super sexy, but it's good for us. What my goal next is to share my story. And I do it in my book, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult. I've got a podcast again, free. All your listeners can check it out. If you like it, maybe by the time they hear this podcast, the book will be out. It's going to be out in July of 2021, roughly about then. But my goal now is to empower others. I am on this mission to empower carefully selected people to do what I've done on the Amazon platform and beyond. Regardless of what your limitations or your perceived limitations are, I want to create as many Amazon millionaires as I possibly can in the next three years. So my goal is to empower people through my course. I would like to offer to your listeners absolutely free our one hour Amazon FBA course. It's everything you need to start an Amazon business to launch your product, how you get reviews, it's all in there from an industry insider who has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of product. So that's available on fbasellercourse.com or go to shaheenshan.com and click on the Amazon Course link and I'm happy to provide that for any of your listeners for absolutely free. We also do a podcast and I'd love to actually have you on at some point Mario called Hack and Grow Rich and we teach all kinds of hacks to life to creating predictable revenue. So check out Hack and grow rich on YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are heard.

I'd be happy to. And all those links, I'm for sure going to make sure they make it in the show notes.

Love it. Love it. And I'm happy to also share your podcast on our channel with our listeners as well and get our listeners to come on. It sounds like you're doing some good work and I'm sure we could bring some value to you as well.

Excellent. Well, we're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours, and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling authority.

Or Mary Alice what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.

Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me as a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficcini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the Imperfect Action round. Shaheen, how are you feeling and ready to take imperfect action?

Feeling imperfect, buddy.

All right, So I got three questions for you. Rapid fire, 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

Fastest path to the cash is through creating predictable recurring revenue streams on Amazon.

Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Not using influence. So the biggest problem my prospects would have would be not using influence to sell. And the best way to fix it would be using the elements of influence.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Relationship. Build relationships with your customers. It doesn't matter what you're selling, it matters how you sell it. And if you don't believe that's profitable, look at Jeff Bezos. Built a really nice company based on positive customer experience.

You mentioned a few already, but if there's any more or if you just want to repeat the first ones, what books would you recommend? Expert Authority World.

So Expert Authority, I would. Well, first and foremost I would recommend my book out in July. How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult really shows some real life examples of how you can produce influence on selling on Amazon and e commerce and beyond. But I like Cialdini's influence. Richard Koch Unreasonable Success and How to Achieve It Fantastic book. If you haven't read it, please do so. And I'm looking over at my book list, 8020 principle. Also really good. Strongly recommend that.

Very good, very good, very good. Well, I know you mentioned some sites. Where would you like people to learn more?

Yeah. So for me, check out our podcast Hack and Grow Rich wherever podcasts are available. You can check out my second podcast, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult, which tells you my story of creating this billion dollar company over time. And then also you can reach me directly on my website, shaheenshayan.com youm can check it out in the show notes. I know Mario is going to put that up in the show notes and you know FBA seller course fulfilled by Amazon fbasellercourse.com and reach out to Me guys. I love answering messages from students and fans and people who have followed my work and I respond to every single email personally. So you will be hearing from me if you reach out to me and if you feel that I can empower you. If you are interested in selling on E commerce on the Amazon platform, by all means reach out to me and we can have a conversation about it and see if you might be a fit for the Platinum group.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. I know I've got a lot out of this. I know Expert Authority World has you definitely delivered and I appreciate you for it.

Mario. I appreciate you having me on buddy.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24? 7 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethod book.com to get started. Now once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.