3 Investments To Grow Past $1 Million

You're listening to Freedom Fast Lane, presented by capitalism dot com. This is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

Yo, what's up, fastlaners? Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome to the show. Hey. We are gearing up for the Capitalism Conference which is going on here in Austin, Texas, December 7th, 8th and 9th. And I have had several great conversations with both our backroom members and some of our tribe members who have that million dollars in sight or have it in the rearview mirror, who have hit a certain point and they're not quite sure how they're gonna grow their business from where it is to really what they want it to be. And they want it to be as big as possible. They want as big an empire as possible. They want something that maybe they can build and sell someday. So I wanted to put together an episode for you that went over the three areas where you need to be investing if you want to grow beyond that million dollar mark. These are the three areas that once you have a product up and selling in the world, are really going to exponentially grow the company. When we had Russell Brunson on the show a few weeks back, by the way, Russell has just confirmed to speak on day two at the capital conference, speaking about building funnels and being independent of your primary sales channels. That is going to be really fun. But when we had Russell on the show a few weeks back, he said that once you've got your product in the world and you know how you're going to sell it, once you know what you're selling and how you're going to sell it, getting to the million dollar mark is at least predictable. Like you know how you're going to get there, you know what steps you need to take. And in the past, I have shared my three stages for getting to that million dollar point. And it has everything to do with getting good products up in the world, getting reviews and building your audience and repeating that process over a 6 to 12 month period to get to that million dollar mark. Well, what about once you're there? Where are the areas that you need to be investing in in order to grow past that. And I have three areas that I am going to share with you that I think ultimately determine your success beyond the point of the million dollar point or even beyond that point of just having something and having something, knowing what your product is and knowing how you're going to sell it. So the first area is people. When I was on stage with gary vaynerchuk in 2015 at our event, I was talking with Gary about what makes a company grow from 1 million to 100 million. And he said, there's no app, there's no algorithm. It's about people. It was all about people. And his greatest skill, and at that point, VaynerMedia had just passed the hundred million dollar point in revenue. His skill set was people was HR. And that was his actual role at VaynerMedia is either head of HR or VP of HR or something to do with human resources. So his view is that people were ultimately what are the game changers? What are the things that take something from $1 million to $100 million? And this, by the way, does not necessarily mean employees. It is people. It is relationships that open up doors, that open up promotion opportunities. Every business that I have built, I have had the biggest upswings in my career or in the growth of the business as the result of meeting a promotional partner or an affiliate or a connection into retail. Those are all people. They're not necessarily strategies. A lot of the times we spend so much energy trying to discover the secrets or the strategies and that can be really fun and it can be exceptionally helpful. But at the end of the day, if you are not, well, networked, if you don't know who can open doors, if you don't know who to call, the strategy is only as good as you are available, is you are free, right? You have diminishing returns on your time. But if you know the right people, those people are almost infinitely scalable. Whether it is hiring them or it is connecting with them to open up opportunities, or it is promotion partners or it's mastermind partners, it is the people that you meet that ultimately determine how successful you are. Because it is very difficult to succeed in a vacuum. It doesn't mean that there aren't mad geniuses behind computers who run $10 million empires. That happens. But the most successful people I know and the happiest people that I know are the most networked people and know who to call. Ghostbusters. See what I did there? Anyway, when I am hiring for a position, looking for a couple things, I'm looking for somebody who has done what I want them, what I want out of this role for someone else. They've done it before, they're really passionate about what we're up to and they come with a Rolodex. So I like to ask the question, who do you know? Who would you call Ghostbusters who would you call in order to get through this challenge or in order to make what we want to do happen faster? Who's in your Rolodex that is going to support you on the goals that we have set out together for this role? Because they could have the best strategy in the world, but if they don't have the connections to make that happen, that is going to severely hold them back. So people are the first multiplier that will take you past $1 million.

Hey fastlaners. You all know that I made the majority of my wealth by building, scaling and selling physical products companies, and now I run a fund and a firm that purchases them. And when we want to grow our businesses, we heavily rely on the services of Viral Launch. You've heard them on the show before. I'd highly recommend that you go and listen to the episodes with Casey Gossip because they have more data about what's working on Amazon.com, what products you should sell, how you should optimize your listings, what keywords you should go after. They have more data on that stuff than pretty much anybody else on the planet. So we rely on them to look at markets we should go into, what products we should release, and I would recommend that you at least check them out. And when you do, use the coupon code Capitalism to get a fat hefty discount. We use them pretty heavily as a tool in our tool belt alongside just about everything else that we talk about here on the podcast. So head over to viral-launch.com to check them out and when you decide to test them, use the coupon code Capitalism at checkout to get a big fat hefty freedom fast lane discount.

The second multiplier, the second area of investment that will ultimately help you grow is in innovation. And I don't mean other people's innovation, I mean your own innovation, your innovation that allows you to bring products to market or preferably the innovation of the product itself. What is actually different about your business or actually different about your product to where it's easy to be able to identify what area you carve out in the marketplace. So we like to talk in marketing a lot about differentiating your product via copy or images or video or marketing. Well, what if your product was actually just different? If you are at the million dollar mark or near the million dollar mark in your business, that is the time when you have the capital to actually be able to invest into changing up your product or modifying your product or releasing a brand new product that actually is innovative in the industry. And if it's actually different, it makes it a lot easier to market. Now, when you're starting out, it can be really helpful to look at what other people are doing and try to model that thing. But once you've passed the million dollar mark, once you have capital and retained earnings, to invest back in the business makes way more.

It makes way more sense to actually do something different. And if you actually do something different, you carve out that area of the marketplace that most resounds and most responds to the areas that you control or the difference that you bring in the marketplace. Now this doesn't have to be you, by the way, doing this. If we're going to combine section one and section two, and we bring on people that are innovative who are in charge of developing new products, then it's their job to be innovative. But that's an area of investment that ultimately will grow your company a lot faster than just about anything else. And the third area of investment that will take you past $1 million is in new marketing channels. Now I think there is something to be said to go all in on one channel, to go all in on two channels in order to get to $1 million, sometimes even $10 million. But it is new areas of advertising and new areas of promotion that will give you that hockey stick growth. Now here is what I mean by this from a practical setting. Once again, once you are at that stage, when you have retained earnings, you have predictable sales, you have profit and cash flow coming in regularly. That's where it makes sense for you to experiment in some other forms of advertising in order to dial them in. There are plenty of individuals who most individuals will go into a new area of advertising expecting it to be profitable from day one. One of the beauties of Amazon is that you can kind of do that. You can go onto Amazon, list your product for sale and people will find it and you will make money. That's not how the traditional business model has worked. Most of the time the companies that get really big do so by proving out their advertising channels by losing a lot of money, or at least some money in order to get data, finding what works and scaling those pieces that work. And if you do that, then you beat everybody else who tries to compete without you or compete without being able to put in that work. I have said in the past that one of my superpowers has been just being willing to suck at things until I don't suck anymore. And going into new areas of advertising is kind of the same thing. The way that you get good at advertising on Facebook or on Instagram or with influencers or wherever it is that you're advertising is being willing for it not to work, being willing for things to not pan out how you thought until they start to adjusting as necessary. That is ultimately what will take you to be able to scale growth predictably. That's why it's an area of multiplication. I did a podcast, I keep using this word multiplication or multipliers. I did a podcast called Only Invest in Multipliers. It's one of my favorite ones that I've ever done. And I make the argument that if you want to consistently grow, then you should automate, borrow.

Even take out debt to finance areas that are predictably expensive, like inventory, for example. And you should only take your savings, should only take your money and put it in areas that have really high growth potential, something that I call a multiplier. So when you take a little bit of a risk, but it has a 50x potential return, you roll that dice. And that's something that you are, is okay to spend your dry powder on. You would never borrow to be able to make that bet, but you would take your retained earnings and make that bet. New advertising channels are exactly that. People are exactly that. So these three areas, investing in people, investing in innovative product, and investing in new forms of advertising, will all give you that hockey stick growth. If you stick it out, it doesn't mean that every single one will always pan out. It just means that you're putting yourself in the position to grow your company from seven to eight figures or eight to nine figures, or to just double over the next 12 months. That's where you will grow the fastest.

So let's talk about this practically. How would you actually go about discovering how you would deploy that? Well, when it comes to people, I invest in masterminds in order to build my Rolodex because Cameron Herald once told me that his network was his net worth. And I figured if it was good enough for the $100 million man, it was good enough for me. So I would invest in my Rolodex, I would invest in masterminds. I also take my retained earnings and I invest in hiring people. I invest in bringing on people that will grow the company bigger than myself. I go to events and conferences to meet the best people in my space and the best people in my industry. That's where I'm investing practically in people. Product innovation is either hiring someone to make changes to your product so that it is different than everything else, or it is looking at the thing that would actually be cool in the marketplace, even if there wasn't demand for it, but the thing that would give your ideal customer the shift that he or she wants in order to reach their goals, or that would be, dare I say, disruptive in the marketplace. I'll just say cool in the marketplace and being willing to know that maybe only one of three of those products is going to pan out, but the one that pans out is going to absolutely change your business. And the third, the way that you would experiment or invest in a multiplier is in the advertising section, then the new channels. And that would be either hiring someone who is going to develop your systems and processes for buying traffic. It might be bringing on that Facebook guy. It might be paying the retail broker who opens up channels for you, opens up opportunities for you. It would be going to strategize with other people in your space in order to find out what strategies are most fit for your business right now, and then turning it over to your team and saying, here's my budget for going in this area and this is how I want to run this. Now, of course, in order for any of these to apply to you, you need to be in front of these strategies, you need to be in front of the right people, and you need to be thinking about how you are going to grow your business. You can get that in masterminds, you can get that by reading books, you can get that in a myriad of ways if you happen to be in the position where you want to grow your business. But you can't yet see the vision of where you want to go or how you're going to build it. I'd like to invite you to book your spot at the capitalism conference this December 7th, 8th and 9th. We have recently announced Daymond John, we've announced Russell Brunson, the founder of the Honest Company, Elon Musk's brother and closest advisor, a panel of e commerce experts, our investment panel, and a whole bunch of advisors who are going to help you do three things. And those three things are going to build out your entrepreneurial empire to 7 and 8 figures to dial in your marketing and sales. Because no business has ever grown without getting good at marketing and sales. And they're going to teach you how to invest both for long term wealth and in your people and also for passive cash flow so that you can enjoy the lifestyle that, that you want and that you deserve. So I'm inviting you to join us this December 7th, 8th and 9th. Tickets are going up in price here shortly. So you can go over to TheCapitalismConference.com to reserve your seat and come down to join myself and several hundred other entrepreneurial empire builders here in Austin, Texas. It's the thing I am most proud of that we do here@capitalism.com and I would love to include you as part of it. Hey, I appreciate you both being an entrepreneur and listening to Freedom Fast Lane. I only do this because people listen, so I appreciate you listening and supporting the show and I will see you guys on the next show as well as in Austin, Texas this December. Talk to you soon.

Sat.