Ryan Daniel Moran shows two paths to a million dollars: invest $541 monthly in index funds for 30 years, or grow a business slowly over time. He argues the real obstacle isn't the math, it's staying consistent instead of chasing shortcuts.
$541 per month.
30 years.
About 9.4%.
About $40,000 to $50,000 per year.
About 35 years.
When I say a million dollars, what comes to mind for you? Does that feel hard? Does that sound scary? Does that sound exciting? Does it feel like the end or the beginning? For me, a million dollars is the starting point. The reason why a million dollars matters is not because you'll finally have made it or that you'll be respected by your peers, or you finally can see yourself as successful. A million dollars matters because it is the starting point to financial freedom. If you have a million dollars and it's invested in a way that is going to bring mind, you start having the COVID to take strategic risks and you stop acting from scarcity mode and you start creating really good stuff. So a million dollars, how do we actually get there? Let's break it down. It's just money. It's made up. The thing that got me curious about this started when I was about 11 years old. My father was a teacher. But my dad said to me once, he said if I worked for my entire career, meaning he as a school teacher, if he worked for his entire career and he spent a dime, he would be worth about a million dollars. Now I didn't understand that at time. I didn't know how those numbers broke down. But now as an adult, it makes sense. At the time, he made an average of 40 to $50,000 a year and he worked for almost 35 years. And then when you subtract taxes, his take home earnings would be about a million dollars over the course of his career. You guys are getting paid now. Of course he didn't do that because he had two kids and he had a family to support and he living expenses. So it's not like he was keeping all of that money. But it made me wonder, what would you need to do in order to build up a net worth of a million dollars over the course of your life? It's a lot of money. I get it. I can feel you judging me. Now. The answer is probably going to surprise you because when I first did this experiment, I expected it to be thousands of dollars per month. And the answer, I'll just give it to you right away, is $541 per month. If you kept $541 per month for 30 years, that's the course you would build up a nest egg of $1 million. Now if you're running the numbers in your head right now, you're probably thinking there's no way those numbers shake out. But if we assume that the average return of the stock market continues over the next 30 years and you were to put $541 per month into broad based index funds which have an average return of about 9.4%. You would become a millionaire over 30 years. I need more money. All right, so pause here. Action stat. What is it down. What can you commit to saving every single month? I don't care if it's 50 or $100. We got to start somewhere. If your number is at least $541, then you're on the road to 1 million. It'll take you 30 years, but we'll get you there. But there's a much faster way. And it's the way that I followed and that most of my successful peers have followed. Just like investing for a very long time has compounding returns, treating our business like it's something very long term also has compounding returns. Can you imagine the ease that you would feel about your business if you didn't need it to crush this year? You needed it to compound for a very long time. What would happen to the value of your business or to the cash flow that it creates if you were treating it as something that was going to mature over 30 years? I've noticed for myself that when I treat something like that, it grows faster than if I'm trying to make it win right now. I tell our students and my followers who read my book that for about six months of building your first business, it feels like nothing is happening. You're getting a few followers, you might be getting a few sales, and it's easy to doubt yourself when you're not seeing huge results after about six months. Six months is a long time to be doing the little things. But if you continue for about a year, those results compound and you pass everybody else who got frustrated and started taking shortcuts. When I have Talked about investing $541 per month, some people have said you're not counting inflation or what if the market goes down? These are all reasons why you might not invest. You might decide to just spend that money or to keep it in cash. Well, after about 12 months, if you were to invest $500 per month, have about $6,500 in a broad based index fund, it's a great start. Meanwhile, the person who said inflation's going to eat that away anyway, why would I do that? They invested zero. Now, the difference between zero and about $7,000 isn't a life changing amount of money. But this goes on for two years, five years, 10 years. Over the course of a few years, their lives look completely different. The person who invested consistently now has the COVID to say, I'm going to start that business, I'm going to take that risk. I have enough cash flow now where I can bet on Bitcoin or that NFT project or whatever it is that you want to speculate in. I know from personal experience and from mentoring thousands of entrepreneurs that the people who win have big visions, but they're willing to do the small, insignificant things that no one else sees they're compounding their results with rather than swinging for the fences. I mean, if all that happened was that you have one product that does modestly well over a period of three to four years, if you were to continue to invest in that product to make it better, to be good to those customers, is it reasonable to think that one product could be doing 50 sales a day at a $50 price point? If so, you've got a business that's doing hundreds of thousands of dollars with really strong cash flows. It's a small business, but it would be enough for you to be full time and it would be enough for you to invest thousands of dollars per month and build a nest egg of millions of dollars over the course of your life. That's if you don't have a big win. That's if you don't swing for the fences. That's if you just do the little things that compound over a very long period of time. So I hope this gives you some perspective and a goal to hit. Because once you're on the road to a million dollars, you can get there within a couple of years. And my job on this channel is is to show you the different ways to get there and to make that road 1 million as short and as smooth as possible. If you want to find out how I built and sold my business for millions of dollars, check out the free resources in the description below. I just released a free course called the road to 1 million. I condensed 18 years of entrepreneurship and investing into a 30 day course so that you can avoid the mistakes and make your road to 1 million as fast and smooth as possible. I'm Rya Daniel Moran. I help entrepreneurs build compelling brands, get to 100 sales a day and have a multimillion dollar exit. And I'm on a mission to help 1 million people become millionaires. Hey, if you liked this video, you should watch this one right here because it sucks and it'll balance your opinion of me and give you a more healthy view of who I am as a person.
