Taking the High Road: Seibo's Transcendent Cannabis Journey

Episode Transcript

Seibo Shen: [00:00:00] And I'll just share one more quick story, which is I coached a guy that got to an eight figure business in his first year. He was selling D eight vape pens back in 2020. He was a branding guy and he wanted to get into the cannabis space so he hired me as a coach and so Within like three months. He was already doing like six figures by the end of the year He was like doing a million and a half two million dollar months.

And so What ended up happening was, uh, he got disinterested in vape pens, uh, crypto and NFTs were gaining popularity. So he made his own coin. He got NFTs and, um, these businesses all failed and they failed because he believed that he was better at business than me because of how quickly his business grew.

And he didn't put any effort into supply chain into customer support because he was selling so much. He was hiring all his friends, which of course he did. They didn't work hard for him. [00:01:00] And so he didn't learn everything that you would need to learn to be good owner operator. His manifestation came. True too fast.

And so if you find yourself struggling, if you find yourself with a lot of challenges, understand that this is the path, this is what you needed to learn. And these are all the things that are going to make you better tomorrow. So be grateful for all these challenges.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the KayaKast, the podcast for cannabis businesses looking to launch, grow, and scale their operations.

Tommy Truong: Thank you so much for joining us today.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. Thank you so much, Tommy. I appreciate being able to spend some time with you and co create this podcast with you.

Tommy Truong: We just in the short conversation, I've learned so much about your journey and how unique, you know, the, the uniqueness of, of the path of, of how you got there. did you, let's take a step back and what was your first kind of foray into the [00:02:00] cannabis industry?

Seibo Shen: Yeah. So, um, yeah, we didn't even get into this. So, um, I graduated college in 2000. So, um, you could probably guess my age and I paid my way through college by designing vaporizers. And so the first vaporizer I designed utilized the heat gun and a shot glass that would funnel the hot air to push it towards some shredded up herb and create vapor that you would connect to a water pipe.

So, you know, it's, it's been a long time since I've been a vaporizer. In the, in the cannabis industry, whether it was in the regulated market or unregulated market, but what I recognized right away was I had not consumed any cannabis or any alcohol until I got to college and in college, I was always very health oriented.

I wanted to, I'm only 130 pounds, but I thought I could make the football team. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to eat a lot of food, work out, and then I'm going to try to be a walk on for the UCLA football team. That never [00:03:00] happened. So my roommate was like, Hey Seibo, why don't you try to loosen up, consume some cannabis?

I consume cannabis through a bong and it was awesome. Like it really like opened me up. Like I saw a whole bunch of different new perspectives of reality and the only thing that I Didn't like about it was smoking it So I immediately just started researching healthier ways to consume cannabis and I saw that if you heat molecules to a certain temperature you can get it to go from a solid liquid to a gas and if there was no combustion then a lot of the The things that you don't want, the carcinogens, would not be released.

And so, that's how I got into designing vaporizers. So I just, since 1997, that's been kind of like the focal point of my life, was to create healthier ways to deliver plant medicines into the body.

Tommy Truong: Wow, so this started off, I love, I love hearing the journey of entrepreneurship, how it starts off through one kind of problem [00:04:00] that you've identified. So your journey, you started creating vaporizers for yourself to be healthy. And how did that translate to commercially, um, your career?

Seibo Shen: Yeah. So, um, and so after college I was, I was really focused on becoming an immigration attorney. I was an Asian American studies major. So I really wanted to help as many Asians, uh, immigrate into America as possible. And in law school, I, I just realized that wasn't my calling, uh, within like the first week of law school.

So I ended up. Dropping out of law school and one of my friends was in tech and he told me Seibo like you're good at speaking you might not know a lot about technology but if you could sell technology you'll make six figures in your first year and so I got a tech job and he was right you know within the first year making six figures and I was like wow this is amazing amazing and my first sales [00:05:00] manager he He took me to Oracle, which was in San Francisco at the time, and we closed the deal at Oracle, the biggest deal for our startup at the time.

And on the way home, he was like, Seibo, I, I, I hope you don't take any offense to this, but I'd like to stop off at a dispensary and, and buy a joint so that we could celebrate. And I was like, I was like, you guys smoke weed too? And he's like, yeah, and tech everyone does, you know? And so this kind of gave me this idea that like, oh, wait, like.

It's not just me that consumes a lot of cannabis, like the senior executives did. And so, I worked for five different companies in my tech career. I was super lucky, all five of them had successful exits. The smallest for 161 million, the largest for 3. 4 billion. And As I moved up, um, my position in the tech companies, you know, I started realizing like our CMO smokes all the time, our, [00:06:00] our head of product smokes all the time, the hackathons, all the engineers are leaving, you know, to take their little smoke breaks and coming back.

So I just got this idea that like, if I created like a really high end vaporizer. The clientele would be just my coworkers, you know, so one of my bosses funded, um, the first prototype, uh, we also did crowdfunding and then in 2012, uh, we entered that into the Seattle Cannabis Cup and this thing looked like a garage science experiment because it was, but the functionality of it was really high level to this day.

I don't believe that someone, anyone has eclipsed that 2012 model. It had a all glass air path. Everything was glass. So, um, that's why it ended up costing 700 because it was extremely fragile. But, uh, by winning the Seattle Cannabis Cup, you know, we got a lot of notoriety. Um, I got a half million dollars worth of pre orders even before we ever launched.

The company, but you know, we were talking about the [00:07:00] journey. Like there's so much details to this journey because our manufacturer, once he saw that we were able to get a half million dollars in pre orders, he actually Seibotaged our machines and created a competing machine. So right out the gates, I had to refund everybody.

I was in the hole. Like a half million dollars because I had to refund everyone that had malfunctioning machines and then he sued me for not Paying him like his orders and luckily we had emails He accidentally copied me on an email to his brother basically saying that he was gonna f us over but yeah, that was the beginning of like my My, um, regulated cannabis career and it was such a really, you know, starting like a half million in the whole, you know, like my wife was like, are you sure this is how we're going to be able to support our family?

But, you know, that was in 2000 and 13, so about 11 years ago, but, you know, obviously, uh, you know, my fortune started [00:08:00] changing and, you know, it really made me starting to understand that, like, The journey is really important, but the journey will challenge you many times, but these challenges aren't there to make your life worse.

It's actually to make you a better owner, a better operator, a better person, and to prove to you that you have like these deep, deep reserves of, of emotional resilience. And if you can come back from each of these challenges, you just become like a leveled up version of yourself.

Tommy Truong: I, I can't agree with you more. And I feel like the challenges also test whether or not. You deserve it.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. Yeah.

Tommy Truong: do you deserve this? Do you deserve success? Because, um, you don't, if you quit.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. Yeah. And you know what's interesting about that is what I learned from that experience was that well, number one, we're all deserving of the success that we want, but when, when you are doing something that is [00:09:00] really in alignment with you, then being 500, 000 in the hole is not going to deter you. If you are one of the newer people that just.

I saw like, Hey, there's this new space. There's a lot of white space here in cannabis. You know, right now, obviously AI is the hot thing, but if you're not into cannabis and you're not into AI and you're jumping into these spaces, cause you think that there's a lot of upside, you know, once you start experiencing resistance, you're going to see that you have far less stamina than those that are really in alignment with their purpose and their path.

Tommy Truong: Uh, that's so true. So after, so what happened? You you're 500 in the hole. You have to start new again. What, what was the next in your journey?

Seibo Shen: You know, I was, you know, what I like about kind of being. In that age bracket is I feel like, you know, I felt like if I knew what I knew now, I probably would have quit, you know, but since I was young and just, just [00:10:00] so full of like self belief, you know, like that didn't faze me. I was just like, okay, we, we need to raise money.

So I just started raising money from, um, or I started going to pitch events and you know, what I learned about pitch events is that, yeah. If you're a really polished speaker, like your ability to pitch events is way better than if you have a great quality product. So, I knew that we had a good quality product, so I really focused on just being able to story tell.

You know, tell the best story. You know, I was working on like IOT type devices back in 2013, 2014, you know, this really got like the investors excited, like, Oh wow, you know, something that could track your consumption, the cannabinoids, you know, how the terpenes affect your body, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so, um, we raised money and, uh, Uh, that company actually never hit like a super high level of financial success, but it did introduce me to, um, folks [00:11:00] that were starting other really great companies like ABD slash active. So we were selling a 600 device while competing with, you know, 20 of eight pens.

And so my investors were like, Hey, Seibo, you know, I think the industry is changing. I think people value discretion and stealth and ease of use much more than the actual user experience. So started really focusing on selling five, 10 cartridges. But for me, you know, I never use them. They were not like my.

I think of them as like fast food, you know, they're convenient, they're easy, but it's kind of like empty calories and it's not, it's just not the same experience. And for me, my wife and I, we cook almost all of our meals. We'll sous vide, we'll do all, we're willing to put in the work to give ourselves that experience of eating.

And so, um, yeah, you know, like we recovered the best that we could. We saw that the market was shifting. We shifted with the market and, you know, while there was a lot of. monetary and financial [00:12:00] success. You know, that's where I started really feeling, you know, spiritually empty. You know, I had been an atheist for the vast majority of my life, but I think when you are desperate and going, wow, you know, I've achieved everything that I wanted to achieve.

How come I'm not happy? You know, like when you're desperate like that, you'll start doing things that you're not used to doing. And so this was about the time that COVID started. My family's from Taiwan. My father was. Ironically, never smoked a cigarette in his life, but was suffering from lung cancer. He ended up passing away in Taiwan.

Taiwan had like a three week quarantine, so I couldn't go out there. And so part of not being able to be with my father when he really needed me kind of like made me a little bit more open to like, okay, maybe if I pray or if I meditate, I can somehow connect with. My father, and so this was, I remember very distinctly June 16th of [00:13:00] 2020, my wife sat me down for this 90 minute meditation.

We did the meditation together and my wife said, Hey, I don't know if you're going to like what I'm about to say, but in my meditation, it showed me that you were going to step down as a CEO and work on something different. And I said, that's so weird. I got the exact same thing as you and I was like, well, It was telling me to become a coach, but the only coach I had a frame of reference to was Tony Robbins and I was like, I'm not, or I've never been trained to do that type of coaching.

Long story short is that was June 16th of 2020. By August 1st, I had my first coaching client by February 16th of 2021. I had built up a book of business big enough that I could walk away from the company that I was running and not, you know, suffer anything financially from it. And so that's what I ended up doing.

I taught other [00:14:00] executives how to meditate, how to really align themselves with what their spirit wants. And, and so that's what I've been doing from February of 2021 till November of 2023, where when I was in another deep meditation, it told me just go buy a plane ticket, go to MJBizCon. And when I went to MJ BizCon, I got hired on the spot for the job that I'm working now.

Tommy Truong: You felt, and this is. This is, it's, it's really counterintuitive too, because you think about people work for money and you made the height. I'm guessing you made the height of your money at that time, more money than you've ever made. Right. And do you think it was because you were selling something that you didn't believe in? Like what's the, what, what was the difference between the vapes that you created initially versus the vapes that you were selling? Yeah.

Seibo Shen: say it was necessarily, I didn't believe in it, but, you know, as a [00:15:00] coach, I would say I'm a meditation coach, but I would say I was more like a executive coach. Most of my clients were, were senior level executives that were, were looking for more purpose and fulfillment in what they were doing.

And so you're right, you know, higher titles, acquisition of money, um, bigger portfolio or asset portfolio are all of these external things that we think would make us happy. And so I know that I was under like that same Kind of framework of like, okay, if I have more money, if I can create generational wealth, if I could do better than my parents, you know, that is showing that I'm, I have optimized this immigration or immigrant experience for my family, you know, like they sacrifice so much to get here.

So I need to acquire this to show them that like their sacrifices were not for anything. And what I realized through my meditation and what I would teach my clients is. Nothing, nothing from the outside will ever change the [00:16:00] way you feel in the inside. You may get dopamine and serotonin hits here and there.

You know, we hit our Q1 numbers, Q2 numbers, Q3 numbers, but then what happens? And you know, like I had the fortunate. experience of exiting five companies. And, you know, I would see that, you know, people would be happy for a week, maybe two weeks, and then it was back to business as usual. And so, it wasn't so much like I didn't believe in the product, it was more that I believed something from the outside could fundamentally change the way that I feel in the inside.

And what I've come to realize through my deep meditations and connection with source energy is that it's actually when you said counterintuitive, I like to use the word counter logical. I believe that our intuition, if we would trust our intuition, we would see that it is actually guiding us, but we let our logic get in the way like we may get an intuition to.

Quit the cannabis industry at the height of the company and everyone around me would logically be like that makes absolutely [00:17:00] no sense. So I like to use the word counter logical instead of counterintuitive because I believe that we are all blessed with this infinite intelligence. I'll get into chat GPT and AI later, how we invented chat GPT and AI to help quell this insane desire and curiosity for knowledge.

And now that we can offload all of that to like just a prompt, you know, we could start working on. The right hemisphere of the brain, which is more intuitive, more creative, more insightful, and allow that part of us to to manifest a little bit more so that we could be holistic human beings, left brain and right brain, masculine and feminine.

And so to me, it wasn't necessarily like. I didn't believe in the product, even though that's kind of true. Um, but it was more about really thinking and expecting that outside things would change the way that I feel internally when it's actually the inverse, which is if you change the way you feel internally.

Tommy Truong: on the outside changes. And so it goes back to what I like to say, belief [00:18:00] systems, you know, your belief systems affect the way that you interpret information or data coming in.

I was, I was listening to Andrew Huberman, um, just last week and they talked about stress and there are two different types of people. There's people that like embrace stress and there's people that, um, I guess it would be the opposite of embracing stress.

Tommy Truong: It would be avoiding stress or, you know, when things stress you, well, how do you react? And he was saying that the mindset of how you approach stress really dictates how product. Productive you are, and that it's just, it's just a shift in mindset, and that's, that correlates exactly kind of what, with what you said is, what is your position and how do you see a certain problem?

Is it an opportunity or is it really a problem?

Seibo Shen: Yeah, and I'll I'll go kind of like a little bit out there right now because I do really love Andrew Huberman and how he breaks things down. And so, you know, what he talked about, I feel like on a metaphysical level makes sense. And then on a practical [00:19:00] tactical level makes sense, right? Because if you're just kind of optimistic, and you see things half full, you know, you're going to have a better experience of life.

Allows us to put a more practical, logical language around these metaphysical concepts of like spirit energy is that I do believe that a Huberman is absolutely right from a mindset perspective, it helps deal with challenges much easier. I'm saying something even more radical, which is when you are positive, when you are in a high energetic frequency and you are taking inspired action to make your dreams come true, that you take the waveform and then you collapse it into a experiential particle or a physical experience that is in alignment with what you have been envisioning in your mind.

Tommy Truong: What did you learn when you were away in your sabbatical for three or four years and you were deeply [00:20:00] meditating every day? What did you learn about yourself and the nature of reality?

Seibo Shen: I learned that we are all one. What triggers you and other people? That person's annoying. That person steals money. These are all parts of yourself that you haven't accepted and reconciled. And I think, you know, I could say this.

We're both founders here. Is that 100 percent of the founders believe like they are Motivated, inspired people that want to maximize their time on this earth and optimize what they are, um, going to contribute. But I've coached 188 people over the last three years. All of them. There has not been an exception.

The higher the ambition, the deeper or the more unhealed trauma within that person, myself included. So, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. All these guys that I used to look up [00:21:00] to, I don't look up to them anymore. I just see them as deeply hurt human beings that are trying to fill this empty hole within them with more money, with more acquisitions, and it will never fill that hole.

So go deep within, and that's where you will find all the answers.

Tommy Truong: Wow. When it's so, I, I, I, I'll share something that I found about myself on, on the realization of why I'm so ambitious. And I don't know how deep this onion, how deep I really understand myself really. Right. Is I realized that, uh, all of the nightmares that I've had as an adult is in the home that I grew up in.

We grew up very poor, right? We grew up very poor, um, lower middle class. My dad came around on a boat with 20, right? And uh, growing up, I was just ashamed of being [00:22:00] poor. Right? I was ashamed of that situation that I was in. I was helpless. So, that, there's this burning desire that I've realized to not ever be in that house ever again. So the nightmares that I have is me in that house, but not me in this house as a kid. It's me in this house as an adult.

Seibo Shen: Wow.

Tommy Truong: And it wasn't until I realized that, that I was like, Oh my God, is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? But this is a thing that drives my subconscious, you know, being, and it's driving my, my behavior to pursue, uh, ambition.

Right?

Seibo Shen: Yeah.

Tommy Truong: it's not even, and yeah, so it's interesting. It's when you say that, you know, people that are ambitious, they have, um, trauma. I, I believe that.

Seibo Shen: Yeah, you know, and when I said that, that, that's not a knock against ambitious people because we've all had [00:23:00] trauma, you know, and as I said, I mean, growing up poor, we grew up poor. We were immigrants too. So that also fueled a lot of my desire to be successful. You know to never have to put my children in that same situation where they had to be embarrassed to let friends come over or You know I'm sure you've you've had like the homemade lunch that you had to bring to school that you might have been Embarrassed to eat in front of everyone and so, you know to me You know, there's nothing wrong with being fueled by trauma now As you get older You know, that's where Something can be It's like an adaptive trait, right?

Like a pro, like it's a positive adaptive trait to say, Hey, I experienced this. I don't ever want to experience it again. Now, when you kind of get to my age in my forties and you're still being fueled by that. You know, like I think in your twenties and thirties, when your testosterone and energy levels are higher, it's okay to run on that fuel, you know, but [00:24:00] as you get older, like I am, it's like, wait, can I keep using this fuel source?

No, this fuel source is actually quite exhausting. And so I had to switch my fuel source from like, I'm going to prove these people wrong that said Asians can't be founders. I'm going to prove these people wrong that said Asian men are not desirable. And, and really funnel my energy into, okay, how can I approach this where it's not about proving other people wrong or this fear based thing of not wanting to be poor, but coming from a place of abundance and coming from a place of wanting to serve and improve other people.

And so, so to me, Tommy, I really respect and admire that you could say that out loud. A lot of my clients, it would be so hard for them to admit. Like the story that they've been telling themselves was not the actual story of why they're doing the things that they're doing, but the truth will set you free.

And if you deny the truth, then you will never be free. So I wanted to just reflect back to you that [00:25:00] to me, that was such a. A very courageous thing to do a very vulnerable thing to do. And when I look at vulnerability, you know, like I used to look at like. Athletes like Conor McGregor be like, wow, he's so confident.

Like, wow, he's so brave. He'll get into a cage and fight. But what I really see now is the bravest, most courageous people are the people willing to be vulnerable because when you're vulnerable, you don't know what's going to happen when you share that, but you share it anyways, because the people that need to hear that message, the young entrepreneurs that are listening to this, that want to get into this, it's going to help them really.

Align their mind, body, and spirit so that instead of wasting time doing something that doesn't really satisfy them, they could focus their energy on things that will really give them, um, like chicken soup for the soul and be really nourishing for them.

Tommy Truong: Thank you. I, I have so many questions for you because I know [00:26:00] how my dad meditates a lot and he's been meditating since I can remember, right? And he's, he really introduced me to meditation, but it wasn't until, uh, my first business venture that I started meditating, right? It was chaos. My first, I don't want to get into it, but chaos.

And I found, I found peace. Uh, uh, meditating, um, if you actually take a step back and, and I think this, I think I, I actually want to talk about this a little bit more, and you mentioned it earlier of how important it is to be happy with the journey. can you talk a little bit more about that?

Seibo Shen: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. You know, so I love to use the video game analogy. Um, so. You know, we often talk about, or I've heard people debate, is it the destination, what's more important, the journey or the destination? And what I've learned is that. Destinations are just illusions. You [00:27:00] know, KPIs, metrics, quarterly goals, they're just there.

Once you hit the quarterly goal, there's something else. You know, they're just these illusionary markers to let you know, Did I do good or did I not do good? And who even set up these goals, you know? What is like the right number or the wrong number, right? They're, they're all kind of arbitrary and illusion.

So, um, one of my favorite books is this book called Infinite and Finite Games. Not by Simon Sinek. But by author James P. Kars, and he talks about like, there's two types of games and two types of players in life, finite games and infinite games and finite players and infinite players. And so finite games have a beginning and end.

They have rules and boundaries and they have winners and losers. So finite games could be sports games. It could be getting your, your law degree. It could be. Getting your first exit. It could be getting your first tranche of investment, right? There's beginnings and ends and things of that nature. And typically if you're a finite player playing finite games, your [00:28:00] state of being or your mood is contingent on winning or losing these finite games.

Now, the other approach is the infinite game and the infinite player. And so infinite games are like the opposite. There's no. There's no time limit, there's no rules and boundaries, and there's no winners and losers. So, what's the point of like an infinite game? Well, it's to have fun. And so, the infinite player, the infinite player looks at life horizontally.

And what I mean by that is, depending if you're at sea level or up on a mountain, the horizon is anywhere from 12 to 32 miles away. So let's just say it's 12 miles away. If you walk 12 miles towards the horizon, The horizon is still 12 miles away. So when you look at things horizontally, you realize like you'll never get to the horizon.

So what's the point of this? Well, it's to have fun. And so when we play video games, you know, some people play video games with the goal to beat the video game as quickly as possible or as efficiently as possible. [00:29:00] And when you are winning great, when you're losing, you might be throwing the controller or.

whatever you do. I mean, I definitely have done my fair share of that when I was growing up. And then there's the other type of player, which he just plays the game, plays the game for fun. When you play the game for fun enough, you naturally pick up on the pattern recognition. You start realizing, Oh, all of these kind of like lesser foes teach you how to beat the end boss.

And when you play for fun, you just naturally get. Better. Right. So, so when it comes to business or when it comes to life, I'm a big believer in just looking at everything as an infinite game. Every challenge is just there to help you level up. Uh, when you do get something that. Is in alignment with what you want to experience, definitely celebrate it, enjoy it, but understand that like, you know, even when you travel to a destination, you're always coming back home at some point, right?

So there is no destination. There is. Only [00:30:00] the journey and if you can learn to have fun and to enjoy the journey you will learn naturally You know, like it doesn't have to be this intentional thing. Like I need to go To alex hermosi's class. I need to build this funnel. I need to go to mj bizcon I need to be at benzinga like yeah, you Can't do all those things and they will benefit your company.

But if you're constantly stressing, worrying about it, like your actual experience of entrepreneurship is not going to be enjoyable. And at the end of the day, it's like, well, why do we do anything? Like, why do we believe that when this is successful, like we'll be happy? Well, it's because we believe we'll be happy.

So. Well, why don't you just shortcut it and be happy today and win in the infinite game of life and stop playing finite games with life?

Tommy Truong: I love that so much. I love that so much because I, um, well, we, what I started doing [00:31:00] and when we started our business, uh, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, actually.

Seibo Shen: Congrats.

Tommy Truong: Right. And. You know, startup, startup life, when you, when you start your, um, eating 99 cent pizza

Seibo Shen: Yes, I know that.

Tommy Truong: know, and, um, as we, I remember talking to myself, Hey, Tommy, when you hit 500k MRR, you're going to be happy, you're going to be happy, all, all the, the issues will go away and you're going to have a, like a, like a real business we hit 500, 000, uh, 500k.

I wasn't happy. You know, cause I was chasing, now I'm chasing a million, right? When we hit a million, not happy, you're chasing this. And I realized to myself, when am I ever going to be happy? Right? What am I chasing? If I told myself that, Hey, Tommy, if I told myself 12 years ago, Tommy, you're going to be in this position.

You're going to have these problems, but you're going to have these successes. Would you be [00:32:00] happy? I'll be like, fuck, I'll take that any day. You know what I mean? Sign me up. But when you're in that position, uh, I started really into like realizing to myself that. I, um, the destination will never come. It's, so you, you just have to be really happy with the journey and you have to be grateful for the success, but also really grateful for the, uh, for the problems, for the, for the tests that come along the way. And, uh, it's just a part of life.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. You know,

Tommy Truong: really, I've realized that you can't really be happy with success if you didn't struggle for it. There's like, there's a, and there's a, I don't like, you know, there's, there's what you talk about an internal happiness, no matter what, but also it's kind of like my biggest worry is I, I didn't grow up with money and my kid, my kids will never have [00:33:00] to worry about money. But that, that comes with other problems too, because if you, if you know, there's nothing worse than, I tell my wife this, there's nothing cooler, a 16 year old, there's nothing cooler for a 16 year old than, uh, their parents buying them a car, but there's nothing more sad than a 30 year old when their parents buy them a car. So,

Seibo Shen: know, I mean, and you know that what you just said is one of the most interesting things because as a coach, I always wanted to help people get out of their situation as quickly as possible. And what I realized was. Helping them get out of their situation as quickly as possible is nice, but they really need to learn whatever lesson that they needed to learn.

And if they need to sit and suffer so that they could be grateful for what they have, then let them suffer. So, you know, it's kind of interesting, like one of the things that I was made very clear to me was that like, if you want to expand your, your consciousness, being [00:34:00] able to hold paradoxes in your mind is very important because it's not this or that.

It's this and that. And all truths are true. Some truths are more true than others, depending on the context of the situation. And so when I When I started really thinking about like wanting to serve people and really being empathetic, you know, part of like what was coming to me was like, no, this client needs to sit and really feel this pain longer, you know, and really like kind of sit and like he's, he's experiencing what he's made a lot of other people experience due to his leadership.

And he needs to stay here. Don't, don't. Don't emotionally bypass this with, with some mental model that will help him get out of this. Allow him to feel this. And so, a lot of You know, like my approach is, you know, I see so many people suffering in the cannabis industry and there's a part of me with the information and knowledge that I have wants to save people.

But I also realize, no, this is part of their journey [00:35:00] and their path. Part of them figuring out how to deal with this is what is going to unlock kind of the next power up that they experience if you save them. Yeah, they'll be in a better situation today, but they're not going to build the skills just like if you buy your kid a car at 16, you might be buying them another car at 30 because that's just their expectation and allowing them to be mad at you for not being that parent that buys it for them so that they can save up for their own car and kind of feel like what it might feel like to have to sacrifice to get something.

You know, these are like these deeper lessons that we just can't buy. Right. With money that requires experiential, um, tangible, um, experiences in order to be able to not just take it from intellectual understanding, but to, you know, somatic, uh, wisdom in the body.

Tommy Truong: It's so, it's so funny that I've started embracing boredom and I feel like that's a form of meditation because I've become so [00:36:00] much more creative. Now than ever before, because, um, there's not, there's just before, um, I used to think every single waking hour, I need to learn podcasts, talks, everything, constant barrage of information coming in. And it wasn't until I just stopped all of that and, um, you know, reduce the amount of noise that came in and just be with my thoughts or just be present that, uh, things really helped from a creative perspective.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. I love that.

Tommy Truong: No, I was going to ask, you know, we have a lot of listeners today. Um, they're trying to solve the problem that's in their business.

Most likely, if you're listening to this and you run, you run a dispensary or you have a business, you probably have a problem that you were thinking about. What would be your approach to the rigor, the day to day, [00:37:00] the, you know, the grind of trying to grow and scale your business?

Seibo Shen: Yeah.

Tommy Truong: people really think about problems and.

And, uh, be excited about what they're doing.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. Yeah. I love this question. And you know, like, uh, I love that we're kind of ending on this because a lot of the stuff that we're talking about was kind of like this metaphysical, like head up in the clouds type of things, but we live here in the 3d physical spacetime reality. So we got to make sure that what we're doing here is something that we enjoy.

Right. Right. So this kind of goes back to what I was talking about, how consciousness. Affects the collapsing the waveform into a certain reality that we want. And so what I found is that most people, myself included, tend to focus on what we don't want to happen. We don't want to be able to, Oh, we don't want like our business to do badly, or we don't want to, we don't want this other guy to win this license, or we don't want our investors to be angry at us [00:38:00] for missing our quarterly numbers.

And so. I used to really believe that like if I focused on all the negative things, I would never be surprised. I'd have a plan a, a plan B, a plan C, a plan D. And what I ended up realizing was usually my plan a worked and there was a lot of like stress and cortisol being released in my body by focusing on what I didn't want.

So what I ended up doing and what I recommend for everyone listening is focus on what you want to happen and Anytime you have any doubt, always focus on what you want. It's a completely different energy. It's like, I want, instead of saying, man, Life is going to be horrible if we don't raise this money is focus on how great life is going to be when you get the money and use that as a way you show up energetically, you know, the young Gen Zers have this great word, your vibe attracts your tribe.

So if you're miserable and you're talking crap about management, like you will find other employees that are also miserable [00:39:00] and talking crap. And if you kind of hang out with me and my friends, you'll see like. Dude, all of my friends are like me, they're like these optimistic, like, you know, it's like people that seem to get stuff done without like highly efforting.

And so I know that you're, it's not about taking action. All right. Everyone takes action. We all take action, but it's about taking inspired action and having a knowing that if you continue to take inspired action. what you want to manifest will come true. Maybe not next week, maybe not next month, but if you keep taking inspired action and you learn from your mistakes, you will be learning and growing in the way that you need to grow.

And I'll just share one more quick story, which is I coached a guy that got to an eight figure business in his first year. He was selling D eight vape pens back in 2020. He was a branding guy and he wanted to get into the cannabis space so he hired me as a coach and [00:40:00] so Within like three months. He was already doing like six figures by the end of the year He was like doing a million and a half two million dollar months.

And he didn't put any effort into supply chain into customer support because he was selling so much. He was hiring all his friends, which of course he did. They didn't work hard for him. And so he didn't learn everything that you would need to learn to be good owner operator. His manifestation came. True too fast.

And so if you find yourself struggling, if you find yourself with a lot of challenges, understand that this is the path, this is what you [00:41:00] needed to learn. And these are all the things that are going to make you better tomorrow. So be grateful for all these challenges.

Tommy Truong: Sebo, thank you so much for joining us today.

Seibo Shen: You are very welcome, Tommy. Thank you for having me on the show.

Tommy Truong: We, you know, you got to come back for sure. And we, we definitely should, I would love just to learn more about your journey and see it in practice too. Right.

Seibo Shen: Yeah.

Tommy Truong: it would be great for everybody to, uh, to follow what's happening.

Seibo Shen: Yeah. Let's stay connected.

Um,

and I really love your vibe, Tommy. Like I wish the best for KayaPush. And if there's any way that I could support, just let me know.

Tommy Truong: Thank you so much.

Speaker: Thanks for listening to the KayaKast podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to podcast and your favorite podcast app, or visit our website to access the full archive of episodes from the show.

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Taking the High Road: Seibo's Transcendent Cannabis Journey

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Taking the High Road: Seibo's Transcendent Cannabis Journey

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Episode Transcript

Latest episodes

The Politics of Cannabis: Robert Hoban on Power, Policy, and Progress

Transform Your Cannabis Business: Pearls from Jamie Pearson

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Subscribe Now