Building a Company with Over 1 Billion in Revenue Before Your 21st Birthday with Shaahin Cheyene

0:02Who's ready to rock today Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like No Straight Path. Today, we'll be breaking down building a company with over$1 billion in revenue before your 21st birthday. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Shaheen Shayann and to EO Fire Studios. Shaheen is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker who has founded several successful companies. He is known for his expertise in digital marketing and disruptive business strategy. And today, Fire Nation will hear the story of building a billion-dollar revenue company before 21 years old.

0:44We'll talk about the power of Amazon, podcast, guesting, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Shaheen and our sponsors. One of my favorite conferences to attend each year is HubSpot's annual inbound conference and is coming up fast. Join us in Boston from September 5th to the 8th, 2023 for an event like no other. Inbound brings together leaders across the business space, including sales, marketing, customer success, and operations teams. The goal at Inbound to help you discover all the latest trends and tactics you can implement in your business right now.

1:23Learn, be inspired, and walk away with practical tips to help you tackle your next challenge, supercharge your sales and marketing, and ignite your customer service. Inbound is featuring many must-see speakers this year, including Reese Witherspoon, Guy Raz, and Neil Patel, just to name a few. Whether you choose a general admission ticket or go the VIP route, you're sure to leave Boston feeling on fire. Visit inbound.com to get your tickets today. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food, and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities.

2:00The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at franbridgeconsulting.com. Shaheen, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? John's so excited to be on. And the one thing that I believe about success that I think most people would push back on, and this particularly falls into the space that we're in, in the Amazon space and the product space, is that people care less about your product than they do about your story.

2:45and if you want to become a successful marketer, I learned this early on when I was 16 and started my first company, reached over a billion dollars in revenue before I was in my 20s, is that you have to become the best storyteller. Like we both know, tons of amazing products out there, particularly on the Amazon platform, but the ones that get the traction aren't necessarily the best products. It's the ones that know how to tell the best story, particularly for that niche. Now, I'm going to have you tell a story because the title of this episode is building a company with over a billion dollars in revenue before your 21st birthday.

3:29What is that story? So I started when I was 16. We were immigrants, came here from Iran. We were Iranian Jews. My parents were fleeing persecution as they thought. And we came to the United States, I saw, I'll give you the short of it. There's a feature, a motion picture being made on my story right now by Academy Award winning studio. And I'll share links to that later. But when we came to the United States, I saw all this wealth growing up around me, but I was solidly poor. We had no money, right? We were just scraping by. And my folks managed like a lot of immigrants in those days to put together every cent they had to buy a house.

4:06And the neighborhood blew up. And I saw people in fancy cars, you know, driving down Pacific Coast Highway with the blonde and the Porsches and the Ferraris and the big houses, but there was no path to it for me. So what I did was I left home right around 15 years old and had to burn my ships because that's just how we do it and didn't have any friends, family, nothing. Started to try to figure out how I would find my way. I came across a mentor. I got involved in the electronic music scene, the rave scene, the EDM scene at that time. And I started throwing raves and I started realizing through these raves that there were a lot of broke ass mofos out there.

4:49The DJs who I thought for sure must be making money were broke. I looked around at the promoters. I was a promoter for a minute and I realized that's a quick way of being broke. But there was one person, one type of person at these parties that was flourishing and keeping them alive. Do you have an idea who that might be, John. I don't. It was the drug dealers. Now, looking back at my history of being an immigrant in this country, I realized very quickly something that I knew about myself, which was I was very bad at crime. I should not be involved in crime. But it seemed like such a great path to making money.

5:26But then it occurred to me, the biggest party drug at that time was ecstasy. I thought to myself, man, if I could come up with a legal, natural version of this, I could sell it through the drug dealers who at the time, by the way, because of the Just Say No campaign and all the stuff that was going on, had been running dry. The supply of ecstasy, which came from Europe, was dry. I thought if I could make a natural version of this, it could be huge. And that's what I did. I created a natural version of this. I basically did it out out of the kitchen of a girlfriend that I had at that time. And I went into the clubs and I utilized a distribution that nobody had ever used before for anything but drugs.

6:07I went up to the drug dealers and I said, hey, how would you like to become legitimized? How would you like to not have criminal penalties for what you do and something that's safe and will do the same thing? And they did. And one thing left to another, and this is all very well documented. I wrote a book about it called Billion, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult, which, again, is going to be made into a motion picture. The Audible book is on Audible if anybody's interested in checking that out. But I've had multiple Newsweek covers. And by the time I was very close to my 20th birthday, we got the news that the company had broke a billion dollars in revenue, one of the most successful supplement products of all time.

6:50Now, mind you, this was pre-internet, pre-social media. We had none of that stuff. Fire Nation, this is one of those stories that you know you're waiting for the major motion picture of. And guess what? Sounds like you're going to get it, which is super cool stuff. And what I love, Shaheen, is you're still putting in the work, brother. You're still putting in the grind. You're still giving back to the world. You're still delivering inspiration, motivation, strategy to people. You're not just sitting back on your massive success and just saying, hey, I'm just going coast for the rest of the journey I have on this life, but you're still here doing the thing.

7:27And specifically, what are you doing right now? You're podcast guesting. You're talking on Entrepreneurs on Fire right now to Fire Nation. A massive audience is eating this up because they admire what you've done. So I want to talk to you about the power of marketing that comes by being a guest on podcasts. Yeah, let's do that. So much like you, I've got multiple seven-figure, eight-figure Amazon companies that I grew from day one because not only was it easy, it was super fun to do that. And then recently, I've shifted into a new startup that we have. We're in startup mode, but we're a couple-year-old company called Podcast Cola.

8:06And anybody who wants to can look that up. And what I learned is so my book came out, and I had a lot of interest, but I was like, man, how do I get the most traction for my book? Well, the answer was podcasts, but there was no real connection. There was no real connecting point. I mean, like, how do I get on great podcasts? How do I meet JLD? How do I get on Bradley? How do I get on Adam Carolla's show? How do I get on all these amazing podcasts, right? Because my fame came in the 90s. I've been on Newsweek and interviewed by Sam Donaldson. I've been on all the talk shows, but that was a while ago.

8:38So I needed a refreshing, I needed a fresh set of press hits for my book. And now the hottest thing, as you know, I mean, you've been doing it for episode three billion now, I would guess. But, you know, it's absolutely the hottest thing. You know, Joe Rogan broke the mold for it. Adam Carolla has been a big player in that area. And I thought, man, I got to get on these podcasts. Well, the thing that I learned early on is, dude, you ever see those guys who like you go into and you roll into a nice neighborhood and everybody's got Remax, you know. Berkshire Hathaway, they've got all the signs up selling their houses.

9:17And there's the one dude, the one schmuck who's got his like for sale by owner sign. Oh, yeah. And what do people think when they see the for sale by owner sign? They think either the dude is nutty, the house is nutty. There's something wrong with the deal, right? Because why wouldn't he hire a professional to represent him? I realized it's the same thing with podcasts. When I go out to people and I'm like, hey, dude, I'm amazing. I've done all this stuff. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Why are you representing yourself to me? But when somebody else provides that social proof, one of the elements of Caldini's influence, Professor Caldini.

9:50If anyone hasn't read it, read Influence. It's amazing. But he talks about social proof. So Podcast Cola, what we do is we've got a team of girls from all over the world. We're based here in Venice Beach. and we craft a story and we represent you and we get that story heard on other people's shows. And this is what I've learned over time is that, look, what you did, you were early on to the game and you did it brilliantly. You were ceaseless. I don't think you gave an F if one person was listening or a million people were listening. You're like, episode 236, episode 343. I was like, man, this dude does not stop.

10:32And I'm not just blowing smoke. I'm like, you legit hustle for this stuff. And I really respect you for that. But not everybody has the wherewithal to do that. Not everybody was early on. And now we're not in blue ocean territory with podcasts anymore. We're getting towards red ocean, right? So what's happening is that we've realized the highest ROI eye on any marketing, advertising investment you can make right now is to be a guest on other people's podcasts. Why? Number one, because of social proof. And number two, because you can borrow their audience and bring them over to whatever you're doing to get them involved in the ecosystem that's you.

11:18It's so powerful, Fire Nation. For 10 and a half years, I've been doing just that. I mean, of course, we're talking about hosting entrepreneurs on fire, but guess what? and I know a lot of you know this, I'm a guest on an average of 15 podcasts every single month. I set aside one day in completion to do interviews on other people's shows for that exact reason that Shaheen just shared because I get to borrow that audience and hopefully deliver them value, deliver them amazing content that they're like, you know what? I think I'm going to go check out JLD's website, his book, his courses, his podcast.

11:59If I like him as a guest on this podcast, maybe I'll like Entrepreneurs on Fire. And then over the years, we built our show to where we have now over 145 million listens, over 2 million listens every month of our podcast, because I've been able to be ceaseless, just like Shaheen shared. And we have some really important things to talk about around this topic. When we get back from thinking our sponsors. The Product Boss, hosted by Jacqueline Snyder and Mina Kunlo-Sitep, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Take your physical product sales and strategy to the next level to create your dream life with hosts Jacqueline and Mina as they deliver a workshop-style, hour-long episode filled with social media and marketing strategies so you can up-level as the boss of your business.

12:47A recent episode covered the ins and outs of whether you can have a successful product business as a side hustle. Listen to The Product Boss wherever you get your podcasts. More and more entrepreneurs and investors are discovering the awesome franchise opportunities that exist outside of food. Franchising can simply be the better path. An interest in franchising is at an all-time high. Lucky for you, John Ostinson, founder of Franbridge Consulting and a frequent EO Fire guest, is here to help you explore the premier franchise opportunities today. John and his Fran Bridge consulting team are part of the largest brokerage in the U.S.

13:21and have vetted the market thoroughly. Fran Bridge is hands down the premier source for the best opportunities in the non-food franchise world. They represent every type of non-food franchise from healthcare to dumpsters, youth soccer to oil changes, specialized senior care to dog training, to insulation and floor coatings. John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com.

13:58Shaheen, we're back and you have obviously mastered the game of being a guest on podcasts. I mean, you've created a company around this. So let's talk about the top tips of being a great podcast guest. Look, if you don't have the dough, of course you can represent yourself, right? You can go out, but don't expect to get the big shows. Don't expect to get John Lee Dumas calling you unless you've been living an extraordinary life. And you got to be honest with yourself about that, right? Most people think they've lived an extraordinary life, but really like there's billion other people out there like them.

14:36Okay. So unless you're famous or you've got something of note, um, don't do that. So don't represent yourself if you can help it. But if you get, if you have to, you can, the next thing is that you really have to speak in a way where you're delivering your message, uh, in a way that's congruent and consistent with your CTA, your call to action. Okay. So before you even get on the show, what's your agenda? What are you trying to accomplish? Right. And if you get an awesome host like, like John, and you know exactly how to ask the right questions to achieve that, you want to have a talk with your host and be like, Hey bud, you know, um, let's talk about this, bring this up and let's talk about this.

15:21Right. The next point, which I really encourage people to do is stop trying to sell. This is not an opportunity for you to sell something. You are not getting on somebody's show to sell something. People hate that. And all people really have to do is push one button. They don't even have to push one button. I think now with the Amazon device, they can clap their hands and you're gone. So don't sell. Try to offer value and build relationship. The power of podcasting, as we tell all our clients at Podcast Cola, you know, the power of podcasting comes from the fact that you sell through story. You sell through who you are.

16:04People will listen to your story and connect with it, and they'll naturally gravitate to what it is that you're offering. So don't be a used carpet salesman when you get on these shows. Have very specific talking points that you are sure will bring value. The other thing, you would be shocked, and this goes for hosts and for guests the same. And especially, I know there's a lot of people who are thinking of starting their own podcast too. And I can share a hack with you of a great way to do that without ever having to produce a single episode, which a lot of people are doing now. But when you get on a show, research the host a little bit.

16:43If you're a host, of course, research the guest, but find out everything you can about them. Like with you, I had a whole tour of your house today, John. It's badass. I can't believe you put a TRX up in that room. I mean, that's wicked that you can train there. And your pool, by the way, is bonkers. Epic. I love it. I'm there every day, just enjoying the Puerto Rico life. And then every now and then I get to come up to my office and have great conversations with great people like Shaheen. And that's the life that I created, Fire Nation, and that's the power of creating something special in the form of a podcast.

17:19Now, your book, Shaheen, is called Podcast Famous. I mean, let's be honest. You understand branding. You understand marketing. This is a fantastic name. Podcast Famous. Tell us more about this book and why Fire Nation needs to put it in their hands. Yeah. So for anybody that's interested, by the way, I think we'll give out the information if you allow it, John, at the end. And I'll send a free copy to anybody that's interested. You know, again, my goal here is to offer value to your listeners. But my upcoming book, Podcast Famous, is coming up and it's basically exactly that. How do you become famous by just doing podcasts?

17:59Currently, I've done over 300 interviews. But for most people, that's impressive. John is like, that was Thursday for me. But in general, I've done a lot of great interviews and I've learned a lot about the industry of podcasts, tricks, tips, hacks, kind of like what we just discussed. Asking your podcast host, here's a great hack. Ask the podcast host if you can recirculate the interview that you did on your show or at least clips of it. Why do you do that? Well, you do that because now you're creating content that you're putting out. Why would they let you do that? because you're promoting their show.

18:36I've got 65, 70 ,000 downloads on my podcast. If I'm gonna take this episode of Entrepreneur on Fire and put it on mine and tell everybody, hey guys, hit up Entrepreneur on Fire, that could be another 65 ,000 viewers, subscribers, listeners that come on to John's podcast. And the majority of time, people are into that. So just by guesting on other podcasts, you can build out your own podcast in a way that's amazing. If you look at people like Alex Harmozy, who's doing an incredible job. He just blew up in recent days. Also Persian, by the way. And Hormuzzi's podcast now, if you listen to it, the game, it's amazing.

19:16It's just him guesting on other people's podcasts. That's all it is. The last however many episodes, that's all it is. You know, the dude, I'm sure he's multi-millionaire, super busy, but he keeps cranking out content because we can't all do what John Lee Dumas does. So for you guys who are thinking, hey, man, I'd love to get my podcast going, well, you can create episodes. But the quickest path to it is just start guesting on other people's episodes. And a lot of people think, man, I'm going to get out there and I'm going to get on Joe Rogan day one. It doesn't work that way. I'm sure you know that.

19:52But the way that it works is you have to build towards it. John's been building for – I can't believe it's been 10 years, but I think you're right, man. I think it's more than 10 years, right? 10 and a half, yeah, 2012. Dude, 10 and a half, yeah. You know what, the thing I remember about you that I thought was super cool was you were the first dude to be like, I'm just gonna tell everybody how much money I'm making. And all us Amazon sellers were listening to you going, how's he doing that? Oh man, those are the good old days. And guess what? I've published 114 months in a row of my income report.

20:29We have never stopped Fire Nation because we want to give you the transparency, the real deal of what's working and what's not working too. We make mistakes all the time and we've shared those as well. So Fire Nation wants a free copy of this book. How do we get our hands on it? Yeah, so just go to podcastcola.com and make an inquiry. It's podcast and then cola.com. You guys can also reach out to me. I give out my direct email on every show and I respond to every single email directly. People don't believe it. They think I have a VA doing it. I don't. I do every single email myself. So anybody that reaches out to me and if there's a way I can support you, it's really simple.

21:11It's Shaheen at podcastcola.com, S-H-A-H-I-N at podcastcola.com. Anybody that wants to, you can check out my website, ShaheenShan.com. and any other way that I can support or bring value to your listeners, that's what we're here to do. But anybody that wants my upcoming book, Podcast Cola, which should be out by the end of this month on Amazon and we'll be doing an audible version, I'll give everybody for free. Absolutely no obligation at all. Just reach out, fire off an email and I'll get that to you. Fire Nation, take advantage of these type of opportunities. Learn from those who have come before us and had success because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

21:50You've been hanging out with SC and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Shaheen, S-H-A-A-H-I-N, in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. Of course, send him an email. He just asked for it, Fire Nation. Shaheen at podcastcola.com. He will respond to you personally. Take advantage of these opportunities. And Shaheen, thank you for sharing your truth, your value, your knowledge with Fire Nation. Today for that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Boom. Honored to be on, John. Thank you for having me, buddy.

22:31Hey, Fire Nation. A huge thank you to our sponsors and Shaheen for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, what can 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle that you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs. You can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side.

23:10One of my favorite conferences to attend each year is HubSpot's annual Inbound Conference, and it's coming up fast. Join us in Boston from September 5th to the 8th, 2023, for an event like no other. Inbound brings together leaders across the business space, including sales, marketing, customer success, and operations teams. The goal at Inbound, to help you discover all the latest trends, and tactics you can implement in your business right now. Learn, be inspired, and walk away with practical tips to help you tackle your next challenge, supercharge your sales and marketing, and ignite your customer service.

23:48Inbound is featuring many must-see speakers this year, including Reese Witherspoon, Guy Raz, and Neil Patel, just to name a few. Whether you choose a general admission ticket or go the VIP route, you're sure to leave Boston feeling on Fire. Visit inbound.com to get your tickets today. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food, and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at franbridgeconsulting.com.

24:31Thank you.