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Shaheen, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having me on Kwame.
It is a pleasure to have you my friend and listeners.
I'm excited. I mean, Shaheen and I have been vibing for the last half an hour.
So I'm just glad we're able to get to this podcast interview.
So Shaheen, how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Shaheen Shayan.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, started when I was in my teens, created a company that grew to over a billion dollars in revenue before I reached the age of 20.
I've since invented pretty much all the technology that now you see is digital vaporization and vapes.
I was early on in the Amazon stage and being an Amazon FBA seller in roughly started around 2008 -2009 doing Amazon FBA.
I now teach people how to create predictable recurring revenue streams on the Amazon platform.
Shout out to that. So if you want to reach out to me, I'll share my email with everybody.
Additionally, I now run a podcasting agency called Podcast Cola where we get people booked on great shows just like this one.
Fantastic. And Shaheen, one thing I really admire about you is as an entrepreneur, you have had success in so many different industries.
And in this episode, what I want to do is essentially do an exploration of your biography and how negotiation and difficult conversations played a role in that.
So for the listeners who have been here for a while, they know we define negotiation as anytime you're having a conversation and somebody in the conversation wants something.
So every element of life, every relationship, every interaction could be viewed through the lens of negotiation.
And I think one thing that would be helpful is not just understanding the business side of your background, but also the personal side, because I think that gives us a lot more of a deeper understanding of who you are as a person, too.
Yeah, it's interesting.
You know, it makes me think about Bruce Lee.
So moved to the United States in the early 1980s, right?
Just at the tail end of the 1970s, early 1980s came here as a kid.
And very quickly, I realized that I was getting my butt beat every single day at school.
So I had to become really scrappy and learn a fight because it was survival in Los Angeles.
And I learned very quickly that I needed to gain some skill sets.
So I got a book called Dow of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee, who was put together by this guy, Dan and Asanto, who was his partner at the time.
Now, in the book, Bruce Lee, this book was put together after Bruce Lee's death.
And it's all his notes, right, that they gathered, they put together in a book, and they put it out.
It was never intended to be a book, but they made it into a book.
And in there, Bruce talks about when I didn't know how to fight, a punch was just a punch, and a kick was just a kick.
And then I learned how to fight.
A punch was no longer a punch and a kick was no longer a kick.
And I'm probably butchering the exact quote, but you get the spirit of it.
And then when I achieved mastery, a punch was just a punch, and a kick was just a kick.
And I thought to myself, wow, that's really the key to what negotiating is.
When we don't know, like, I have a 10 year old boy.
And believe me, I fear for you, if I put him in the room with you to negotiate anything, because he is a master and attend, he's already started watching videos and reading on negotiation.
And he is a master manipulator of humans.
But he doesn't really know what he's doing.
But he knows exactly what he's doing.
And I feel like that was my process in learning negotiation.
One of my first mentors told me said, look, take a look around you.
And this was at a time when I was broke and sleeping on the beach, he said, every single thing you see around you was sold from one person to another person.
And if you want to learn to be successful, you got to understand how to negotiate.
And you got to understand how to sell very similar concepts selling is negotiating and negotiating is selling in my opinion.
So I feel that ultimately, we learn and you should do that.
I think everyone should do right, you got to learn all the tactics and everything you need to do to become a good negotiator.
But at the end of the day, it comes back to kind of forgetting all of that.
And just being a person and being able to have genuine communication with another human being.
But you approach that from a place of mastery and influence rather than from a beginner's mindset, which ultimately is a beginner's mindset.
Right? Absolutely. I started to smile immediately, Shaheen, once you started quoting the master Bruce Lee, because I quote him in my presentations all the time.
So many great quotes.
And I love this mindset that we're bringing to this, because really what we're recognizing is that yes, of course we want to achieve mastery in the skill of negotiation and sales, there are skills attached to that.
But then there's also a powerful mindset that goes along with it.
Because we want to practice, we want to prepare, we want to develop our skills, we want to be ready for the conversation.
But then it's almost like we have to have the approach of Taoism, where we're saying, okay, we're going to get to that point of trying not to try, where we achieve way and we can flow in the moment.
And it's hard to do that.
But you can only do that through mastery.
And for you, I think one of the things that's most interesting to me is because we've seen you achieve at the highest levels of business.
And from your beginnings, I think when if people are going to look at you at the time, let's say, when you were sleeping on the beach, they wouldn't say, you know, Shaheen, I bet he's going to make a company that's a billion dollars in revenue.
But what are some of those through lines from your time before you came to the States to your time building the company to now as a very successful entrepreneur, what are some of those through lines in your approach to human interaction that you've carried throughout your life and career?
Yeah, okay. So let's talk about that.
I'm fascinated by that topic.
And I'll tell you, I actually learned this through the lens of martial arts.
So I train Brazilian jujitsu, I try to get better at it every day.
I'm still very much so a beginner, even though I've been doing it for eight years now, roughly.
And I realize that every move really is a negotiation.
And when you sit there, it's like surfing by reading, right?
You can read all the great techniques in martial arts, like jujitsu, you can read about them, you can watch the YouTube videos, even somebody could explain it to you.
But here's the thing, there's another human against you on the mat, and you can find a million probabilities of what that person may or may not do.
A million probabilities of if you're tired, if they're tired, if it's hot, if it's cool, if the conditions are different, if you've got less space to move more space to move, if the guy's moto is too tight, if yours is too loose, like there's so many different factors, those are probably bad examples,
but so many different factors that there's no accounting for what the other guy is going to do.
So while we can be prepared, and we can have our tools, which you have to have, you need to have all the tools, if you're going into a negotiation to be able to discuss them, part of the game is showing up with presence.
And it's from the get go in a negotiation.
And I think martial arts are very, very much the same.
Where are you coming from, before anybody opens them out, before anybody sends an email before anybody talks, it's probably more powerful than any tactic, then you can implement and execute on.
Because if you're coming from a place of high value and high status is very different.
So I'll give you an example in your world of business and conflict resolution and those types of things.
So if you're like, hey, you know, I'm gonna put a junior intern on the call to try to see if they can solve this before I come on, how are the people in that negotiation going to react to the junior intern?
Now assume the junior intern has learned from you, and they have all of your tactics, they have every tool you have in your toolbox, then you come on.
Now you're Kwame the man, you're the CEO, people are going to be acting differently.
And it's going to be more predictable and easier to resolve.
Another example would be in a sales situation.
Oftentimes, now, when I sell, whatever it is a high ticket product, or service or anything else that I'm doing, by the time people have been qualified, and they come to me, I'm at a position of status, because they're like, oh, I had to go through two or three people to get to this guy, he must be important.
So my role is just to re qualify them, and allow them to sell me on having them as part of my service or my product.
And that's really the most powerful way to sell.
Now, I don't need any of the tactics.
In fact, I could use reverse tactics.
When I'm doing that, I can say Kwame, I'm delighted to have you on this call.
I hope I can provide some value to you.
If I can't, I'm happy to send you off to somebody else who can.
I actually have a list of five other agencies that I think would be great for you if we don't work out.
What are you thinking Kwame when I tell you that?
I'm going to tell you, Kwame, thank you for taking this call with me.
I know it looks like you qualified.
I'd love to talk to you about this.
And if this doesn't work out, I've already got a list established of five other agencies and consultancies that I think may be a better fit for you if we don't work out.
Let me go ahead and ask you a few questions to see if you might be a fit, but if you're not, I'm happy to send you to those other agencies.
How are you feeling right now?
I just think I lost leverage because this man has options and he doesn't need me.
Yes, true. But also, now you're in a position where you're selling me on you.
You're like, you know, Shaheen, I think I'd be perfect for your agency and this is why I think it's good.
And then I ask you questions where I allow you to qualify yourself.
And at the end, I say, cool, man.
So how do you want to proceed?
And you're like, well, I, you know, I think I'm ready, right?
If you don't come to that conclusion, then I've been a poor decision architect, right?
My job is to become an architect of decisions so that when you walk into the path, it's very clear for you which direction to go and where you end up.
And sales is like that and negotiation is like that.
And in fact, interpersonal relationships are very similar.
Even dating for the guys.
I mean, I'm happily married for a number of years, but you know, in the dating days, that's exactly what you want to do.
You don't want to, the hard way is to go out there and to bring people to what it is that you're doing.
The easy way is to set yourself up where they come to you.
And when they come to you, that decision process is already laid out for them and they believe that it's their idea.
That's masterful negotiation.
When the customer thinks it's their idea to buy, when the other side thinks it's their idea to settle, that's how you win.
Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question.
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Elevate, negotiate and succeed.
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Zohin, there's so much brilliance in what you said and let me go ahead and first of all give a shout out to I know you're good friends with Chris Voss.
That sounded like a very Vossian maneuver.
Getting the other side to essentially qualify themselves.
Just say, hey, why did I choose you?
That's powerful because then they start selling you to themselves, which is incredibly powerful.
And I love the fact that we brought up status and being high value in this too.
That's something that I think has been one of the biggest areas of malpractice in the negotiation industry, not bringing in the psychology of status into these discussions and strategic approaches soon enough because you're absolutely right.
You can have the same exact situation, swap the person and a lower status person would have a less of an impact compared to a higher status person in the exact same situation, even if they go about it the exact same way.
And I remember one time and I know this is a controversial figure given the time, but I think it stands to reason on this point.
People sometimes ask me to analyze Art of the Deal with Donald Trump's book and they say, okay, well it wasn't very heavy on strategy.
What do you think about it?
And I said, for him, it works because he's Donald Trump.
He doesn't need to be as technical as somebody else in that situation.
So they're like, look at this, this would never work.
It does work for him.
And so that's why it's so important for us to analyze this in a more psychologically sound type of way.
When you incorporate being somebody of high value and you incorporate the status in the calculation of the preparation and the strategy that you use, you recognize that it's not necessarily that there is a specific way to negotiate.
It's about recognizing that you need to have the appropriate skills.
Yes, for sure. But you also have the ability to discern which skills are required for which situation and that might be different for different people in the same communication too.
Yeah, it's true. Look, I tell people this all the time.
You start with competency.
There's a whole lot of people hanging around that don't have competency.
Competency leads to confidence.
So in the example of Brazilian jujitsu, which is the grappling art, you need to know the tools.
You need to know your basics.
You need to know your fundamentals.
So when you get on the mat, you know what to do from that point on.
Let's wait and see what the other guy is bringing.
What's he doing? Is he super aggressive and we need to calm him down.
Is he super calm and we need to just be faster and move around him or is he a cooperative type player where he's going to feed into us and we're going to feed into him.
And it's more like a win -win play.
So you won't know until you get on the mat.
But if you get on the mat and you don't have competency, then you're not going to have confidence and that's going to be a disaster.
So I teach people this in my Amazon course all the time.
I tell people, hey, you want to sell on Amazon.
You want to create these recurring revenue streams.
No problem, but you need to have the basics, the fundamentals down.
And then we go in there.
Let's see what Amazon's going to throw at us.
There's no calculation for what one of these big platforms will throw at you.
But if you're prepared, you will have the confidence to know that there is a process that you can follow.
Now you might have to in the moment be able to make moves and make quick decisions.
And that's the other part is how quickly can you make decisions and what is your decision making process.
Jeff Bezos, for example, now that we're talking about Amazon, has an amazing decision making process.
And there's a couple podcast interviews with him where he talks about his decision making process.
And it's fascinating coming from the richest man on earth or the richest known man on earth.
And he talks about decisions that have low stakes can be made quickly.
Decisions that are high stakes and unchangeable he makes slowly.
And that's his framework.
That's his entire framework for stuff.
And, you know, he might not make a decision if he knows it's going to change the entire trajectory of his life or the life of his company or his employees for a very long time until he's sure he's looked at all the angles.
But a decision that easily revertable, a decision that may have a good upside, may not have much downside, he makes those quickly.
So one of the common factors that I've seen in successful negotiators and successful people in business in general is their ability to make decisions quickly when it's low stakes.
And you'll notice this, I'm sure you got buddies like this, I got buddies like that too, where we go out to eat, what do you have in chicken or steak?
Done. Like that decision is made before they step into the restaurant.
And then you've got other people like, oh, I don't know, like, oh, what should I get you get him first and then come back to me.
And they look at these.
So those are likely the people that are less successful.
Oh, there's so much to explore here.
But let me tell you a story.
I want to go back to BJJ because I love this as a conduit for conveying this message too.
So I'm a proud white belt BJJ.
I've been to a few classes.
It's so much fun. And so I do powerlifting, but I also love watching the UFC.
I was at Francis' last title defense, Satan ringside, Anaheim.
So I love the UFC, always been watching.
So I can talk like I know about it, but I have not personally done it very often.
So I remember I went into a class, I was feeling good, I was feeling strong Shaheen, and I looked at the everybody else in the class.
I was like, I'm bigger than everybody.
I can I don't know what I'm doing, but I could at least my physicality could hang right.
And I went in there and it was just a mixtape of me being tapped out by smaller men.
Shaheen. It was the most humbling experience of my life.
I'm sitting here on the mat feeling like I'm drowning in open air.
And as this soccer dad from the suburbs is mauling me, he's like, calm down, calm your body.
I'm like, sir, you're murdering me.
Can I talk down here?
Right. And I think it's so important to tie this to the confidence piece because I think a lot of times people don't fully understand what competence means in these tough conversations because they think, oh, I'm intelligent.
I'm book smart. I understand the industry and everything like that.
And that matters. But do you have competence in the skill set of negotiation sales and communication?
Those are two different things.
So for me coming in, yes, I was physically strong and that it wasn't a detriment.
It could help, but I didn't have the skill set necessary to actually be confident on the mat.
And so I think people need to really understand what that is.
Yes, it's important to understand the topic of conversation and the industry that you're in, but understanding the mechanics of communication and negotiation, that's a different thing.
Totally, totally. It's very true.
And I don't think there's ever been a time where people have been less competent.
I have to say that and I'm not a hater.
Like I'm very optimistic as a human being.
And I look at the world and I'm very optimistic and I think we've got fewer people with higher levels of competency.
But when you travel, it's hard to see the people actually give a, you know, what about stuff.
Like you go to Europe and you go to a restaurant and like the guy is a waiter there.
That's what the guy does.
He's not a waiter slash this slash that there's no slashers.
That's what he does.
And he loves it. He loves that parmesan, nori, giano.
And he's going to tell you all about it and he's going to make sure he brings it to you with the correct sauce and the correct thing.
And at the end of that, that gives him a feeling of accomplishment because he is hyper confident at the thing that he does.
And that's really lacking now.
And I tell people this all the time, I think 98 % of the game now for anything is showing up, even in your example of Brazilian jujitsu, you did more than 98 % of the people, dude, you showed up.
Imagine how many guys never hit the mat in the first place.
Those are the ones that are not winning.
It's the guys that come out and try it.
I tell young people this all the time, right?
You have a hundred percent chance of failure.
If you don't try, I tell people this on Amazon all the time, right?
Like the majority of people are going to fail.
I tell people this who are interested in my online course all the time in my coaching all the time, I say higher likelihood that you're going to fail.
Then you're going to succeed.
But one thing I can tell you, you have a hundred percent chance of failure if you never try.
Yep. And most people don't, it's one of those things that's easy to understand, but very difficult to put into practice.
And to your point about low competence, I realize when we come into this time where we have so much access to the internet, so much access to information, we recognize, yes, we are in the information age, but nobody calls it the wisdom age.
We might have smartphones, but we don't call them wise phones.
And the thing is we, that competence takes time to develop.
It takes time and dedicated practice and focus.
And like you said, there are no, in other parts of the world, there are no slashers.
This is what I do. And I go deep on that.
And I think there are so many people who have become generalists in a sense where, not in an intentional sense, because sometimes people are intentional generalists as part of a cohesive strategy.
That's a different thing.
That's a very good thing.
But I think there are a lot of people who think that they have deep knowledge in a lot of things, but what they really do, what they really have is shallow knowledge on a lot of different things.
They read an article, they saw a tweet or a post or something like that, and now they think they're informed, but they're not.
And then they overestimate what they can do.
And then they're surprised by the amount of difficulty they run into.
So even if they do take that step and try, which most of them don't, then they feel that resistance and they say, you know what, this isn't for me.
Negotiation isn't for me.
I tried, I tried to negotiate, it didn't work out well for me, that resilience to the depth of knowledge, but also the resilience to stick to it.
It's lost. Yeah, that's a little bit done in Kruger, right?
You know, the Dunning -Kruger effect where people know just enough about a topic to feel like they're experts until they realize that they really know little about it and then it's too late.
So that sounds like exactly what you're describing, but it's the same on Amazon, right?
People go, Oh, I'm going to try to sell on Amazon.
I'm going to start an Amazon company and then they go, Oh yeah, that didn't work for me.
And I go, dude, I'm starting seven, eight figure companies all the time, selling them for seven, eight figures, exits.
I've got friends that have done that.
I've got students that are doing that stuff, making millions of dollars, selling on Amazon.
What separates them from you?
And it's exactly what you're saying.
Also, what's an epidemic now, and it really is an epidemic, is that people just don't give a, you know what, I'm trying not to curse on this podcast.
I told my wife I wouldn't curse, so I'm not going to curse, but people just don't care in general.
And it's, it's shocking to me how little people actually care.
You have a whole generation, the last generation that has kind of been disenfranchised, right?
They can't buy a house, there's no hope of them ever buying a house, moving up the social ladder, the socioeconomic ladder is even further out of their reach.
You know, uh, male, female dynamics have changed dramatically.
So they're kind of like looking at their parents' generation and going, man, you know what, like, why even try?
So they get, you know, I think the term is apathetic, maybe I'm wrong, but they kind of get that way.
And then you have a whole population of people that just don't care.
I think the difference with people like you and, and myself, and I can tell this from you is that we actually care about stuff.
And I've never been one to chase money.
I've made hundreds of millions of dollars in my life, never been one to chase money.
I get involved in things because I actually care about that stuff.
And I'm interested.
And I did that when I was dead broke, sleeping on the beach.
And I do that to this very day.
I do things because I'm fascinated by those things.
Cause I actually care.
And that's one of the amazing things, Kwame, when you go around life and you find somebody that actually cares about something, like I don't care about passion.
That's just something that people tell people because they don't want to tell them that they're smarter than they are.
So they say, Oh, you know, how did you become rich?
Like, Oh, well, I'm very passionate.
Oh, cool. They don't want to tell them, Hey, I got rich because I'm smarter than you.
Right? Not that I'm smarter than anybody, but most of the guys out there, if you ask like a Mark Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk, you go, Hey, how did you do it?
They're not going to be like, well, dude, I am considerably smarter than you, you and you right.
Cause they'll look like, you know what?
So they say, Oh, you know what?
Like, yeah, it's passion.
It's passion. And people will buy that.
I don't think it's that, but I think you actually have to care.
Like, what do you care about?
Like, what do you stand for?
Right? What's, what's important to you.
And it's like that.
You, you smelled that on people that comes back to our whole talk full circle to what we're talking about in negotiation.
Does this person actually care or are they just like following the rule?
Are they painting by colors?
Right? They're just thinking about something else while they're talking to you.
And that's the difference.
That's the difference between a master negotiator or someone who's a master at martial arts, who's there on the map, who's fully engaged.
There's nothing else going on, but you and the other person, that's it.
Nothing else going on.
Are they thinking about their texts or where they're going to go for lunch or like all those things matter.
And that's why, yeah.
It's powerful. And it's funny, I was laughing as you were talking because I was like, it seems like this man has been reading my journal because you're saying the things that I've been ranting about silently to myself in my journal for the longest time.
And when I think about the apathy that a lot of people are facing, a lot of times I think it comes down to belief.
They just do not believe that even if they tried, they could succeed.
And when I think about what it takes to overcome that, I look at that through the lens of internal negotiation.
So what is it that somebody can do as they're having that conversation with themselves to overcome that apathy?
And I think you're a perfect person to answer that question because of where you came from to where you are now.
And so when you were fighting those potential internal demons about whether or not you could do, was it you wanted to do?
Could you achieve that dream?
What did that internal dialogue sound like for you?
Oh, I have plenty of external dialogue from other people telling me that I couldn't do it, which drove me very strong.
So look, I came to this country, like I said, in the early 80s, late 70s.
And I come from an Iranian background, Iranian Jewish background.
And we were exposed to a lot of hate in this country.
And there was a lot of racism.
There was a lot of, like I said, had my bumpy every single day in school.
And then when I left, I left home at 15 and went out, like dropped out of school, went out there to, you know, find my fame and fortune.
You can only imagine what people would tell me.
And I had ideas, I read books, I think I had pretty good ideas.
And most people would tell me, like, you're out of your mind.
I had people literally have me escorted out of places and every single one of those drove me to greater success.
And I'm so grateful to those people.
I'm grateful to the bosses that abused me and the little crummy jobs that I had.
I'm grateful to every person who told me that I'm never going to make it.
Because when I'm sitting in that Ferrari driving down Pacific Coast Highway with the wind blowing through my hair, I had hair back then.
I just thinking to myself, man, I did it.
I've proven them wrong.
I got nothing else to do, right?
I got nothing else to prove.
Like, this is one of the most incredible things about the country that we live in.
I don't think you have opportunities like that in a lot of other countries.
But that is what America was built on.
And ultimately, that's why my parents brought me to America, to be able to have that opportunity.
Incredible. And I love this for so many reasons.
But it's a true American story.
And then I share a similar story.
My family, I'm a child of immigrant stew, first generation Caribbean American.
There are so many opportunities.
If you're willing to kind of step up and try, that's the key.
And there will be failures.
There will be hardship.
You just have to keep on pushing.
And when you think about, for you, in sales, in negotiation, in all of the different industries you've been in, from car sales to podcasting to health and wellness, everything, what would you say are some of the core skills that you've been able to utilize consistently throughout each of those elements of your
life? Yeah, I think it's like Professor Cialdini writes in his book Influence.
Great book. If you guys haven't read it, I'd recommend it.
I know you've read it.
But the most important one, I think, ultimately is authority.
And that goes back to what we're talking about, right?
Authority, social proof, likeability, all these things are important.
And at the end of the day, what it comes down to is being an authentic human being that can relate to other people.
The details you can learn, right?
Technical details, you can learn chat.
GPT now is getting pretty good at technical details.
So technical details, we can hammer out math, we can hammer out figuring out what's between 5 million and 10 million.
Like, it's not difficult for us to figure out what what's there.
And like, what's technically fair, the thing that people get paid for, particularly in the negotiation space, are you an authentic human?
Can you bring two or more people together and have them come to terms?
And that comes down to likeability, it comes down to authority, it comes down to trust.
And those are the key factors.
And never underestimate likeability, right?
We like to buy from people who like us.
And how do you make somebody like you is by being like them, right?
Are you, how good are you at building rapport?
And that comes down to who you are.
And what are we talking about in the beginning?
I mean, I'm giving a really high level, right?
I can sit down and go over negotiating tactics.
And I teach people all the time, you got white hat tactics, gray hat tactics, and black hat tactics, depends what kind of war you're in, right?
Swansu are at war, right?
What's, what's the terrain?
And how do we win, right?
And you got to map the terrain, you got to know strategy, you got to know tactics, and you got to be able to execute on those tactics, right?
So what are we trying to achieve?
What's our strategy that we're going to achieve it with, right?
And then what are the tactics we're going to implement and execute to achieve our objective?
Well, ultimately, all of it comes down to interpersonal relationships.
Well, my first mentor taught me, look around you every single thing from the mic that you have to the nice pocket square that you have in your nice Italian tailored suit, somebody sold to you.
And I bet you didn't dislike that person.
Even if it's a platform, even if you buy, I know you didn't buy that on Amazon.
But even if we're buying stuff on Amazon, or if we're buying stuff online, you're gonna like that platform.
You got to like the people who you're dealing with, because we like to it's just biological, we like to buy from people who are like us and who we like, period.
And there is so much to explore.
Shaheen, I could talk to you forever on this.
And I love the fact that we are talking about like authority, social proof, likability, these are all things that we can do.
These are things that are accessible to everybody.
And what I really appreciate about this episode is that you could have like you said, you could have gone really deep into technical tactics and strategies and everything.
And what I take away from this and what I've experienced in my own life too is that in the vast majority of negotiations, it's not determined by the depth and complication of the tactics or strategies that you use.
If you can pay attention to social proof of authority, likability, building rapport, building trust, communicating authentically, that gets you through the majority of these negotiations.
And it goes all the way back to one of the things that you said at the beginning that is so powerful.
One of the things that holds people back is that they just don't try.
They just don't take that step and try.
So this is incredible Shaheen.
I really appreciate you joining us.
There's so many different things that you do, but before you go, I want to give you an opportunity to let the listeners know just how they can get in touch with you and what's the best way to work with you too.
Let's do it. I'm ready.
All right. So if you are interested, we'll start with this and being on great shows like this one to get your message out, to double or triple your income by using the power of podcasting, check out podcastcola .com, get on there, book a call with one of our strategists.
You might get me and happy to talk to you about how you guesting on podcasts can help double or triple your income by getting you out there and making you an authority in the marketplace.
The second thing that I have going, if you're interested in my business coaching program for Amazon and to become an Amazon seller, to create a company and to create predictable recurring revenue streams, go ahead and reach out to me directly.
I'm going to share my email with you.
It's going to be d -a -r -k -v -e -s -s at gmail .com.
That is my direct email.
Make sure to mention the show, negotiate anything or Kwame Christian in the subject headline.
So I know to thank Kwame for you, and I'm happy to get on a call with you if you go ahead and book through there.
And alternatively, my book, in addition to, is out now called Billion, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult on Amazon.
You can get it on Audible.
There's a great audiobook if you don't like reading, like many of us do or don't have time to read.
The Audible book is awesome.
And it goes through my entire journey.
There's a great forward by Chris Voss and the FBI negotiator.
And the entire book talks about my journey going from sleeping on the beach to creating a billion dollar company.
A lot of great tactics in there, like the ones we talked about.
And you can check me out, shahinshan .com.
And again, podcastcola .com.
My Amazon coaching program is a small dedicated program.
Reach out to me directly, d -a -r -k -z -e -s -s at gmail .com.
And the book, Billion, How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult.
Shaheen, thank you so much for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
Good to see you Kwame.
Thanks again. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before.
Just kidding. I've told you before, but you should listen to it again.
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I'll see you.