Unlocking Success: Mentorship, Amazon, and Blue Ocean with Shaahin Cheyene

Shaahin Cheyene shares his journey of starting and selling successful businesses, including a billion-dollar supplement company. He discusses the power of Amazon as a platform for launching and growing businesses, highlighting the low barriers to entry and the ability to reach millions of buyers. Shaahin emphasizes the importance of leveraging tools like Helium 10 for product research, but also the value of experienced mentors who can provide insights and guidance. He encourages entrepreneurs to focus on the subtle details that can make a difference in their success. In this conversation, Shaahin Cheyene and Dustin McMillan discuss the importance of mentorship and learning from others’ experiences. They emphasize the value of seeking guidance and coaching to avoid costly mistakes. They also highlight the potential for success in unsexy businesses and niche markets. They discuss the concept of blue ocean products and the need to find a market where there is less competition. They debunk the myth of passion and emphasize the importance of hard work and intelligence in achieving success. They also touch on the power of podcasts for marketing and the value of teaching to enhance learning.

Shaheen, welcome. Thank you for joining me today.

Thanks for having me on, Dustin. It’s going to be fun.

Yeah, absolutely. We had a couple of technical difficulties in the beginning, but here we are finally.

We are man, life is unpredictable.

Yeah. I really enjoyed your story as I read all of your stuff and there’s a lot of stuff out there. So, tell the audience a little bit in your own words, how you got started and we’ll roll from there.

So, I created a designer supplement in the early 1990s during the ecstasy days and during the electronic music days and the electronic music scene. It became a global phenomenon. We did over a billion dollars in revenue while I was still in my teens. Blew up to be one of the biggest supplements of all time. We were featured in all types of news.

I exited that company, and moved into manufacturing of digital vaporization devices as the first vape company to go public was my company built and designed, developed all the technology for digital vaporization. They’ve moved on to Amazon and looking at the Amazon platform as a way to get products out there into the marketplace and developed and designed these algorithms for Amazon and just hit it out of the park there. Currently, I am in the Amazon space. We’ve got a lot of physical products. I teach people how to sell on Amazon and also have a company called Podcast Cola where we get people on great podcasts just like this.

Yeah, that’s great. I think we move on and talk about a little bit more in-depth how you got started. For somebody to do a billion dollars in revenue. You know, I’m very fortunate that I know some very affluent folks and successful folks, but I don’t know one of my buddies or anyone even close to me who’s made a billion dollars in revenue in a single year. That’s pretty amazing.

Yeah, where are you out of? Where are you located?

Right now, I’m at my lake house up on Lake Erie and my company is outside of Columbus, Ohio. So, we’re in West Liberty, Ohio, kind of out in the sticks. Have 90,000 square feet out there and lived in Dublin for the better part of 20 years outside of Columbus, Ohio. Yeah.

Wow, okay. Yeah, so it was, you know, look, I’m in Los Angeles. I have been in Los Angeles since the early 80s, we say, and my family was from Iran, and we left Iran during the revolution. They came here hoping for a better life, and better opportunities. And the path to it wasn’t as clear-cut as one would have hoped.

Sure.

So, I decided to go off on my own and start finding something where I could create wealth. And what I did was I stumbled into the electronic music scene through the electronic music scene. I noticed that people were doing all kinds of drugs, particularly one called ecstasy which was very popular at that time, but there was no supply of it. I decided to produce an alternative version of that back in those days that was legal, that was safe, and it was easy. It was like printing money. And I started, you know, talking about manufacturing, making it in a kitchen, like literally, and I got a girlfriend making it in her kitchen while her dad was out. We were testing it out on people. And we had just started in the United States, and the growth of contract manufacturing, that wasn’t such a thing. I think back in the 80s. In the ’90s, there was a whole wave of people who were buying these facilities and a way of subsidizing their production was allowing contract manufacturing.

Sure.

So, I talk about this all the time with people. I really feel like I was at the right place at the right time because right when I was like man how many of these things can I cook up in a kitchen, maybe I can get somebody who’s got a production facility that’s already making supplements to roll my products off the side when off times when they’re not making their own products.

Right.

Yeah. Well, today it’s very prevalent. Yeah.

Yeah. What do you do in your factory?

Contract manufacturing, warehousing fulfillment. So, we make a product for people that need products made.

What kind of product?

So, we’re doing blending and fulfillment. One of our main products right now is a sodium mixture for the grinding industry that gets put into a machining center where the product deburrs scalpels and different medical devices.

So, we’ve got a very, very cool product. We’re doing, you know, taking a formula and mixing it for our customers and then fulfilling it all around the world for them.

So, it’s like a B2B product, right?

Yeah.

So, you’re really selling it to businesses who need to use that in their process.

Yeah, that’s mainly everything that we do. We just set up an Amazon store for a customer that we’re kind of dabbling in that. Right. 15 years ago, I sold a product on Amazon, and it fizzled out and we never really messed with it ever again. And then I literally just submitted hopefully the final photos today that will be accepted by my Amazon. So yeah.

Yeah, look, it’s really interesting. I talk to people about this all the time because I teach people how to launch companies on Amazon. How to launch products and do it successfully. I’ve done it, seven-figure products, eight-figure products, sold those companies to big venture-backed companies. That kind of stuff happens all the time in the Amazon sphere. And the benefit, unlike the business that you’re in with Amazon, is for a very small amount of money, somewhere between 10 to $50,000. You can launch a business that in a couple of years could be worth multiple millions of dollars.

Sure.

Now people say, well, there’s lots of businesses I could do that with. I’m like, really? Like what’s the cost of opening up a manufacturing facility?

Yeah, absolutely.

Millions, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, what’s the cost of opening up a coffee house?

Sure.

Most people don’t know this is some right is somewhere between 50K and half a million and up. So, what are the chances that you’re going to become rich from a coffee house from a coin laundry from a little restaurant in a couple of years?

Yeah.

Right. Yeah, and the fact that you can get in front of millions and millions of buyers without very little effort. I mean, that’s where the key is right? I mean, half your struggle with owning a small company is just putting yourself in front of the people that want your product or want your service. And, hearing your story when you launched it, how you got your product onto the market was ingenious. You know, as you were talking about as a kid and going to one guy and you’re hoping that guy liked your product and then it kind of snowballed from there. And back in the 80s and 90s or contract manufacturing, as you’re talking about it today is not as prevalent now, I mean, how many supplement people do you have out there that don’t make their own product? They don’t warehouse it. They don’t fulfill it on their own. They’re using contract manufacturing.

Yeah, for most people, it’s really interesting. So, a couple of things. So, thing number one, point number one to touch on is most people love to hate Bezos. I love Jeff Bezos.

Me too.

I think he’s one of the most amazing people in the last hundred years to hit the planet Earth.

Yep.

And people wonder, well, he’s rich for taking advantage of people. No, he’s not rich for taking advantage of people. He is rich because he’s helping other people get rich. One of the quickest paths to getting wealthy is helping other people get wealthy.

Yeah.

And that’s exactly what Bezos has done. Not only that,

Has anyone made more millionaires than Bezos? Has anyone on earth?

Right? I don’t know. I don’t know, but believe me. I mean, we have meetings every year where we meet up in different countries with Amazon sellers and everybody’s doing well. Everybody’s doing great. There’s nobody at these meetings that I go to that’s like, man, things are bad. Some people have complaints on any platform, in any market, in any business you have problems.

Sure, yeah.

And it doesn’t matter. What I realized, Dustin, is it doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Everybody else’s business always looks easier than yours.

Absolutely.

You’re like, man, I’m a manufacturer, but dude, if I just didn’t have forklifts, that would make things easier. And then the guy sitting next to you is like, you know, he’s got some other kind of business. He’s like, man, if only I had some equipment, my business is terrible. You know, if I had some employees and equipment, that’s what I need. The fact is every business has its challenges. Amazon got rid of friction in the buying process and the returning process. That was his genius formula. He figured out how to do that. And then he got rid of friction for us producers, for us manufacturers of things. He said, hey, you guys don’t worry about pick packing, shipping. Don’t worry about fulfilling your stuff. By the way, you’re not good at it. Let me do it.

Right.

And he brought in the top guy from Walmart, poached some guy allegedly, I don’t know if it’s true, but you know, got some guy from Walmart who was responsible for all the infrastructure. I said, hey, open checkbook, startup fulfillment house for me. And we’re going to do this all over the world. And they did it. And he did it better than anybody else. And he took that friction point away from us. Cause if you’re a manufacturer, if you’re a producer of things, if you’re a marketer, shouldn’t have to mess with pickpockets. You should leave that to the professionals. I had to leave it to a professional 3PL or better yet, what better thing than to have a platform where you’re selling all your stuff handle the shipping? And this is the crazy thing. I was talking to eBay about this back in the day. I was on with a whole bunch of eBay people, and I said, guys, you’re going to drop the ball here.

Right.

Just open up some warehouses. And they kind of tried to do it rinky-dink and then it didn’t work out. And Amazon took over, mean, like a wave.

Yeah.

At a certain point actually, most people don’t notice, that eBay was trying to buy out Amazon. They said, hey man, we love what you’re doing. Let us handle it with eBay technology. Amazon was like, I think we’re good. I think we’re good.

Yeah.

And he got the Walmart guy, he started his fulfillment, and he blew it up. And that’s why still to this day, I think Amazon is the quickest path to wealth, but also using leverage, right? Folks come, there goes my voice. Using the leverage, you can apply a small amount of pressure and have a huge result on the other side and that’s just not possible in many other businesses.

Absolutely. I think that was one of the things that intrigued me about talking to you even more is how many times you’ve reinvented yourself just to keep ahead of you know, you built this sold it, built that sold it, and then now you do a lot with Amazon, you’re doing a podcast, you know, hosting firm and what was the third thing that you were saying that you were doing?

So, Amazon is our primary service.

Right.

We do offer, I have a consultancy. It’s one of the lead consultancies in the country called AI. And what we do is we take brands, and we accelerate them. But I also have a course where we teach people how to do it. And by the way, anybody who’s listening to your show, who’s interested can email me directly and I’ll give them the course for free. It’s a two-hour course that teaches you everything from A to Z. How to launch a product on Amazon all the tricks to get started and I’ll just give that to him for free because there’s nothing I love more than watching people succeed on Amazon so if it’s okay I’ll give out my email my direct email is darkzess@gmail.com or you can find me at podcastcola.com that’s p o d c a s t c o l a dot com.

Yeah, that’s fantastic. Thank you.

You can always book a time with me there. That’s my podcast booking agency where we get people booked on great shows like this.

And if you’re listening to this, we’ll put all this information in the description, and we do a blog post with it and transcribe it all and all that fun stuff too. So, if you’re driving and you didn’t memorize all that, you’d know where to go get it.

Yeah. And look, I think things have changed since then, right? It’s interesting that you’re making me think about this because when I started, there was no internet. So, I had to physically go out and find companies. And again, in the eighties contract manufacturing wasn’t really a thing.

Sure.

So, I had to convince these producers. I mean, it was you could get people to do this but in the 90s it was just starting and that’s when it was doing it, I had to go to people and be like dude you’re making vitamin C, right? Yeah, yeah, we’re making vitamin C. Okay, cool. Have you ever made anything else? No, no. Can you do anything else? Well, we have the stuff. Okay, so here’s what I want you to do. I got this stuff you run the pills. Here are the ingredients. This is how you do it and that’s how we did it.

Right.

But now those barriers to entry are gone. Any human being from a cubicle, from their car, can have anything produced. Even crazier than that, this is a little dirty secret about Amazon that most people don’t know. I teach it to my students all the time that are overseas, is a lot of the products you see on Amazon, the people who are selling the product oftentimes have never held or seen the actual product.

Yeah. Absolutely.

That’s how nuts it is.

Yeah. We’re releasing too much on the podcast here. So, we’ve used Helium 10 to evaluate products and, look at how much they’re sold, how much is in inventory, and the different price points and, all those fun things. Is there another platform or is there a platform that you guys use to find the product that you’re going to sell?

So, here’s the thing, those software are great. I love Helium 10 and that was a brilliant company. That guy made millions just with his analytic software, right? And for people who don’t know, Helium 10 is one of several software probably one of the better ones. What it does is it spies on sales of other companies on Amazon, tells you what they’re doing in sales, and what their products are selling, and gives you other analytics so that you can judge if it’s good for you to launch a product or not. And it can also be a tool for product discovery. So that’s awesome. Now here’s the thing. To evaluate products and markets takes a little bit more finesse. Why? Because the things that the software knows, the things that the AI knows, there are certain subtleties that make all the difference. And it’s those subtleties oftentimes that are the difference between success and failure. And those only come by trial and error or by dealing with experienced people. So, I mentor people all the time where they bring products to me and they’re like, dude, what about this case? I looked at it on the software. The software shows that it’s selling a ton, right? So, we look for high volume. Looks like the competition is high and that’s sometimes okay, but also that there’s a good markup and I’ll look at it and go immediately like yeah, man that was like three months ago. The software hasn’t been updated yet. No one’s selling those anymore. So if you had launched that you would have lost all your money and it’s interesting because I think in life in general a lot of the formula for succeeding is found in the subtle detail. So, I trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I’m a student of it and you can read all the books about jiu-jitsu, and you can watch the videos by these masters on YouTube. And I don’t know if you ever watch that stuff. It’s amazing. Like a guy whose whole life has been dedicated to jiu-jitsu. And I’m a beginner, right? I’m in the learning process of it. These guys are masters and you can watch the video. And then when you get on the mat to try the technique, it’s night and day. There are so many details. Those little details that are missing and you begin to realize that the success is in those little details that you just have to learn by doing it, by practicing it, or by having that person there over your shoulder going, hey, Shaahin, the elbow goes up, not down. So, it’s a lot like that with Amazon and in a long way, I’m answering you about that software.

Sure.

They’re all great. They’re amazing tools to have in your toolkit. A better tool is having somebody who is a professional seller, either us or somebody else who’s done it, who’s created these multi-million-dollar products, Dustin, to coach you and to be able to tell you, hey man, these are the things you need to do. You will save a lot of money that way.

Right? Yeah. And I love the analogy. And you know, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is awesome. And like any other sport, right? You play your entire life, you don’t have to think about raising your elbow, your brain just does it. And you only learn that from a guy or girl who has been training their whole life and can coach you through it. And then you have enough reps where you finally are raising that elbow. And now you’re off and running, you’re consciously competent. And at some point, you become unconsciously competent.

Yeah, you’re right, you’re right. And I think about this a lot. When I was younger, I was fortunate enough to have mentors who helped me get to the point where I am in life now. And I always think the cheapest thing that you can get is education, whatever it costs. And it’s like that saying, if I had a hundred hours to chop down a tree, it’s the guy that spends 99 sharpening his ax.

Right. Yeah.

And one hour chopping down the tree that gets it the best. I kind of feel like there’s really something to that.

Yeah, I can’t agree more. And I have been fortunate enough to have some amazing mentors in my life as well. And you just learn so much from those people just doing things like this. And I think that’s what inspired me is just because of the conversation and listening to people that have done things that you either want to do or whatever you’re learning away more than in my estimate and going out and banging your head against rocks trying to figure it out.

It’s true. It’s really true. And you know, you could hire us you can pay for it. You know, we do courses for which we charge tuition we’re not getting rich from the course.

Sure.

And we’ve got the one-hour or two-hour course that we’ll give for free if people just reach out to me and email me, you’ll give me information on the show notes.

Yeah.

But you can talk to anybody if you know people who are professional Amazon sellers. And you can talk them into coaching you into mentoring you. Man, I wish I did that. I mean, we lost so much money before we started making so much money. And a lot of it were mistakes that were preventable had we had known. And I’m sure it’s the same with you in the business that you’re in.

Yeah. I’ve made a pile of mistakes that have cost me a pile of money and you just try not to make those mistakes again, right?

Yeah. The other thing that I really like is, I have a lot of buds too. And whenever they talk about products, everybody always goes to like the sexy thing, right? Everyone’s like, man, I’m going to make the new like smartphone, the sexy thing, the car thing that like everybody comes up with like what they think is like the sexy thing that like makes all this buzz.

Sure.

But you’re like, no. I’m going to make salt that cleans and sterilizes surgical equipment. And they’re probably all going, well, why? Where did that come from? And you’re going around, meanwhile, you’re hanging out at your lake house, talking to interesting people, and living a great life without all the noise.

Yeah.

And that’s, I think, what a lot of people miss. Like, my life was unusual because I did do the sexy thing and came out with the pill and sold it at the clubs and I was that kid, right? I had long hair. Wrote a book about it. By the way, if anyone wants to know, the book’s called Billion, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult. It’s on Amazon.

Yep.

You can get the audiobook. It’s actually pretty good. They’re making a film about it if anybody’s interested in seeing that. Or I’d recommend the audiobook or the paper book. But after that, I started to think to myself, I’m always looking for that sexy product, that thing that everybody wants. There are so many millions, there are billions, trillions waiting to be made quietly in products like what you make. I know guys that make like pool cleaning chemicals, crushing it. I know guys that are making millions with like really random pet products, like really random, like nothing, I mean I’m not going to mention them here because I don’t want anyone going into their market, but the most random pet products that you never heard of that people buy.

Yeah.

There’s something to that. There’s something to being like, what unsexy business can I do to make money?

Yeah.

I think there are people around, we are victims of social media right now. Me and you and everybody in the ongoing generations, right? They’re all watching TikTok. They’re all watching the girls in the Jacuzzi and the Lamborghini and all the crazy loudness.

Yeah.

But then you have this nice series of dudes and girls that have quietly made millions and billions of dollars doing things that we have never heard of, and I know a lot of them, that’s at toner supplies. I know a dude who made his fortune selling toner supplies.

Sure. Yeah.

He makes millions of dollars a year selling toner supplies to businesses.

Yeah. And I do love it. I think you’re absolutely right. Once people get over the fact that they want to do something fun, cool, and sexy, and they’re focused on fulfilling a need, then the sky is the limit. And just thinking about some of my neighbors here, right across the street, pulling supplies. Another one of my buddies has become one of my very best friends. They do temporary heating and cooling. And there, and I don’t know how many different markets and they fulfill a need. And it is so much fun. I never really thought about that. And I always joke with people I’m like, I don’t care if I sell pink flamingos as long as I sell.

Right.

And yeah, I mean, once you get past what you’re selling, and you just find a market that you can fulfill a need, then you’re off and running.

Yeah, it’s true, but you’re smart like that, right? You see that. Young people, especially young dudes, full of testosterone, they come to me with these ideas and I’m like, all right, man, that’s really cool that you want to do that, but there’s a billion other people doing that. It doesn’t meet any of the metrics. Yeah, if you hit it, it’s going to be very successful, right?

Right.

But really, is there something else that you can do? Without all the noise around you. Like we talk about blue ocean, red ocean. Did you ever read that book?

I have not but I have heard it. It’s in my it’s actually on my phone right now.

Yeah, spectacular book, spectacular book.

Yep.

Yeah, I think it’s like probably over 20 years old now, maybe more, maybe 30 years old, where the dude talks about how you get into a market and it’s all blue ocean, right? So, you can like swim around then slowly the water starts getting a little murky, starts getting red, because more and more people are coming into that market. So, they’re always looking for blue ocean products and blue ocean stuff to do. And I think there’s really something to that, right? How many people do you think you’re going to start a green supplement, how many people do you think are making these green supplements?

Yeah.

But how many people do you think are making the salt solution to sterilize surgical equipment? Are there dudes just hanging around waiting to conquer your market? Probably a couple, but it’s not going to be a boatload of people.

Yeah. I mean, it’s a very niche market. And it’s yeah, totally agree. So, my mind is spinning a million miles an hour now. Thanks. What do you think that you could tell somebody right now to get over their blindness of wanting to go after something cool and sexy that you already have?

I think you have to evaluate. There’s a great book by a guy named Rolf Dobelli. It’s actually one of my favorite books. It’s called Thinking Clearly.

Okay.

In that book, he talks about the nine logical fallacies, survivorship bias, and all the different biases that we can have. Once you know what those logical fallacies are, confirmation bias, and survivorship bias, your mind will be blown. At how many of them were susceptible to. Now, it doesn’t mean that you become a robot, and you go, okay, I’m only going to do things that meet the metrics, right? You’re not Mr. Spot.

Right.

But you do have a better understanding of your own weaknesses. And I think at the end of the day, knowing your weakness, knowing your strength, knowing your ethos, and knowing what your story is, what your saga is, which you’re all about, makes a lot of sense. I tell people this all the time. I teach it in my Amazon course. If you are doing something, you don’t have to be passionate about it. You don’t even have to like it. But it does have to meet the ethos of who you are. Like I know a guy right now who is an awesome dude, a brilliant business operator, and has had a lot of success. And he’s telling me, man, he’s now going to get into TikTok. This dude doesn’t have his phone on for most of the day. This dude doesn’t go out on social media.

Right.

This dude wouldn’t know any of the influencers if they walked down the street and hit him in the head. He wouldn’t know them.

Right.

So, can he do it? Yeah. Should he do it? No, it’s not part of his ethos. It is not built into the fabric of who he is. And that’s a very specific difference. He doesn’t have to be passionate about it. That’s something they tell people who, when they go, man, why are you rich? And the guy doesn’t want to tell you that, dude, I’m just smart. I’m smarter than you. Like, not me.

Right. Right.

But like, you look at a guy like Elon, or you look at like Mark Zuckerberg, and they go, hey man, like, how come you’ve made millions, and I haven’t made millions? And he goes, well, it’s passion, right? Because it’s rude for him to say, dude, I’m just a genius, those guys are all geniuses. They’re all brilliant.

Right. Yeah.

You look at Elon and your mind is blown like him or hate him politics aside all whatever he does aside. There’s no one in the last hundred years who has done what this man, the volume of stuff this guy has done.

Yeah.

Zuckerberg genius you look at these guys and they’re the next level and it’s funny because I thought about this like in the 80s, right? Do you remember we had break dancing?

Yeah.

And I’m 49. How old are you, Dustin?

Yeah. 44.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, I used to have a cardboard box, and I used to spin around a little bit as a kid.

Did you really? Yeah, we did that, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And you watch those ’80s ones, right? You watch them break, pop, block, whatever it was that they did. Obviously, I am not a hip-hop break dancer. So, I will watch what they did, and I’ll go, wow, man, that’s amazing. And then you looked at it in the 90s, right? And you were like, these guys have done, there’s a whole new level of it.

Right.

We look at it now, if you want to watch any of the videos and again, I am not like a breakdance expert, but when I watch the videos of what these kids are doing now, the evolution of that, it’s night and day, they’re doing stuff that doesn’t look like it’s real and they didn’t have that in, yeah, how is that possible?

Right. Yeah, it doesn’t even look possible. Yeah.

And also, our entrepreneurs with the advent of the internet, of AI, of social media, of the world getting smaller, of all these things have gotten smarter. So, these guys are the next level of genius to who we were back in the 80s, right?

Right.

I mean, we might’ve had some of those old-school sensibilities as far as who our best entrepreneurs are, and who our best capitalists are, but now these guys are at the next level.

Right.

So, when you talk to one of these guys, and I’ve talked to a lot of them, I’ve talked to Bezos in the past, I’ve talked to a lot of these guys who are now some of the wealthiest people of all time in the world, and your young kid and you ask them, hey man, how do you do it? They’re going to be like, I’m being recorded, it’s passion. But that’s not true.

Yeah. Right.

It’s got nothing to do with passion. They’re just smarter than you. They’ve worked harder and they’re smarter. You can compensate for not being as smart. I’m not as smart as a lot of the people I hang out with. But I do know that I work harder, and I have the capacity to work harder. So, you can compensate for that gap by working harder, which is what I did because I know I’m not as smart as them, but.

Yeah. It’s so true. And in sports, we’re talking about that all the time, you could be an average athlete, but work harder than everyone else. And you’re going to accomplish more people want you on your team, you could be the best whatever player in the world. And if you’re lazy, nobody wants to be around you.

That’s right. And it’s the same thing with Amazon.

Yeah.

If you don’t have to be 10 times better than the other brand, you just have to have a hair edge from the other people. It’s like running the race, watching the Olympics. Man, the guy that gets first place and the other six guys, they’re not like 100 feet behind each other.

Right. Yep.

They’re not 10 feet, they’re not five feet behind each other. They got to show that video and then they got to get AI to look at the hairline thing between him and the last guy.

Right.

So, the guy that won and the guy that lost is like a fraction of a second.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s absolutely incredible. And we just talked about this the other day. It’s an incremental difference. Like you’re saying, it’s just the tiniest minute, you’re just looking to move the needle just that much more than the other person.

Yeah.

So. You do have my mind spinning. I like it. So, do you have another book that you have? What are the two books? Tell me. I’m sorry. I forgot.

So, my first biography that came out was called Billion, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult. And again, that’s on Amazon, it’s on Audible.

Yep.

It’s a great audiobook if you guys want to hear it. Good production. And the latest book that I released about a year ago is called Podcast Famous.

Okay.

And that book teaches you how to harness the power of podcasts to sell your product or service by being a guest on podcasts like this, by perfecting your story.

Sure.

And most people are like, man, I listen to Joe Rogan, I listen to all these shows, I would love to be a guest, but I just don’t know how. And that’s what we do.

Okay, gotcha.

So, I will teach you how to do it yourself. But also, I have this agency that we started a few years back called Podcast Cola. And our clientele is some of the best of the best, the who’s who, and people just starting out, people that are like, hey man, I’ve got this amazing story, and I want to get it heard. How do I get on podcasts?

Sure.

And we do it for you. It’s a guaranteed service. We have a dedicated team of publicists that are mind-blowing for anybody who wants to check that out or check the book out. I’ll send you a free copy of the book if you get a hold of me.

Yeah.

It’s podcastcola.com. That’s P -O -D -C -A -S -T -C -O -L -A .com.

Perfect. And it is interesting because we’ve had more publicists contact us in the last, I don’t know 60 days than I ever have. And it’s pretty flattering. I mean your company contacted us tonight and I’m like awesome. You know, how do we end up at this point where every day we have people contacting us and wanting to be on the show? And it’s flattering. And it just started out as just a brain fart idea during COVID because I was bored and stuck at home and wanted to talk to cool people.

You’re doing something right when the world starts noticing, right?

Yeah. Well. I just love learning from people like you. And that’s like, it’s free education for me. And hopefully, you know, we have enough listeners. We have enough listeners that they want to, you know, they get something out of it as well. And the more that we can help other people move their needle, like you said, the more fulfilling it is for me. And I think every guest that we have on.

Yeah, one of the best ways to make money is to help other people make money. One of the best ways to learn is to help other people learn.

Yep.

One of my martial arts instructors has a big sign up and he always teaches us the best way to learn something is to teach it. And I tell that to people all the time. I teach that to my 10-year-old boy. I’m like, dude, you want to learn something. Go out there and teach it. And he does. He goes, he watches YouTube videos. He figures out how to do stuff. And then he’ll find one of his buddies, dude, come over. I got to teach you how to make Nikes this way or that way or I got to teach you how to fish, you know, and he does that and it’s fantastic.

Sure. Yeah, it absolutely is. Hey man I could probably talk for a long time. I know that we had an hour slotted for this and we burned a lot of it, just technical issues, but I would love it if there’s something else that you want to talk about here in the future that you know we really dig into the weeds maybe a little bit or something else, but I’ve had a lot of fun. I think your story is unbelievable and you know just for you know to figure out what you figured out before you know you had to physically knock on doors and call people and most kids today are afraid to even pick up the phone, alone call as many people as they possibly can to figure something out. They want to hide behind their computer and figure it out, which you can do also, but pick the phone up, and make a call.

Yeah, yeah, it’s true. There’s a lot to unpack there, but it is a swipe generation.

Yeah.

They want to be able to swipe right and swipe left and have their ideal product delivered to them and make it think that it’s their choice, but really it’s the algorithm choosing for them. And that’ll be a topic for us to have another conversation.

Absolutely. I love it.

And I’ll talk to you offline, but I think I’ve got some folks for you to talk to as well.

Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much. You know, absolutely just flattering having you on and I love it. So, I can’t wait to learn more.

Thanks for having me on. Yeah, great, great to meet you, Dustin.

You too, bud.

For more insightful conversations like this, visit MFGMonkey.com. Listen to this episode and many others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

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Ernesto Soralde