Are You Thinking Too Small?

Foreign.

Yo, fastlaners. Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. Today I want to have a candid conversation with you to simply ask you if you may be thinking too small. And I'd be willing to wager that you are. I was called out this week by a buddy of mine who even challenged that I was thinking too small. And basically the conversation highlighted the fact that where I am going may not lead me to where I ultimately want to go. That's not necessarily a fun conversation to have, but it's an important one. As we look at our lives, we look at our careers as entrepreneurs and we ask ourselves, is what I'm doing leading me to the place that I ultimately want? We, as entrepreneurs are really, really good at delaying gratification. In fact, studies have shown that the number one indicator of success is one's ability to delay gratification, which is great. It means that we are better investors. It means that we make better hires, we tend to make better long term decisions, but we kick happiness way, way down the line. And as a result, we suffer and we sabotage and ultimately we don't create the results that we want. So I want to have a candid conversation about that today in order to hopefully stop you in your tracks if you're on a path that isn't going to lead you to where you want. And also encourage you to think about much bigger possibilities that exist. You know, I like to say that happiness and money are just like the sun. If you go outside, there's enough for everybody. You can enjoy it just as much as the next guy. And you going out and sunbathing doesn't prevent anybody else from sunbathing as well. In fact, it might encourage somebody else to sunbathe because you're like, dude, this is awesome. You gotta come get this tan. Look how amazing my abs look. That's how success and that is how happiness are. They're just like the sun. Everybody can go out and enjoy as much as they want. And sometimes the clouds come out and hide the sun from our view. But it doesn't mean the sun isn't there. It doesn't mean that there's a lack of vitamin D in the world. It just means that we need to peel back the clouds and enjoy what is behind it. Now, of course, that's an imperfect example because there's very little we can do to make the clouds go away. But there are things that we can do to make happiness or poverty go away. And we can enjoy them just as much as we enjoy the sun. But yet we tend to think kind of small in our community as entrepreneurs. And by that I mean we tend to think very selfishly.

There's a part of the brain called. I like to call the croc brain. And I've talked about this probably way too much on podcasts and videos before, but basically, the first thing that enters our brain, the first thing that we think about is our own survival, is our own security. And that plays a great role. You know, if we have an outside threat, if we hear a rustling in the bushes, if we hear a loud noise, that part of our brain needs to kick in in order to keep us alive. But very few people ever work past that part of their brain when it comes to money. And I've experienced this myself when I have just worried and worried and worried about money without ever setting the rules for what it is that I need to feel safe. And it wasn't until I did that. It wasn't until I said, okay, this is what I need to have in the bank. This is what I want to have as far as cash flow. The rest I am comfortable losing. Not I like losing it, but that I am okay losing this. I'm okay putting this at risk for other investments. I'm okay risking this in business. I'm okay making some strategic investments into my companies in order to grow, and I don't have to be attached to this money for survival anymore. That is a big evolution as an entrepreneur, when you can move past that piece of survival of this is what I need in order to survive, because that never really goes away. You were never really fully safe. That's an illusion. There is no such thing as security, because hyperinflation or a man with a gun or a meteorite can eliminate our security in about, oh, half a second. So there are rules that we can put around security in order to prevent security from running our lives. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. We'll cover this a little bit more in a bit. So I want to start by talking about the thoughts that you have on a regular basis are really the thoughts that we have in our communities. And by communities, I mean the people that we listen to and the people that we hang around with on a regular basis, whether that is Internet communities, which most communities tend to be now, or it's church communities, or it's school communities, or whoever it is that influences you. There is a Bible verse in the New Testament from the Apostle Paul where he. He commands people to take every thought captive. And I interpret that as meaning being conscious of every thought, of observing every thought, of being in control of every thought, or at least not allowing our thoughts to control us, to disassociate from the thoughts that we have. And the reason why I bring this up is because we are constantly having thoughts thrown at us the time about money, success, sex, family, religion, whatever you want, be it good, be it bad. We are constantly being influenced by the thoughts of other people. And if we don't consciously take time to take those thoughts captive to say, do I really want to have this thought? Do I really care to allow this to influence my behavior, then we become merciless. We become, we're at the mercy of other people's thoughts and other people's ideas. The truth of the matter is that we, we can support any belief that we want. We really can't. We can find evidence for any belief that we care to have. So we might as well foster and feed the ones that serve us on a goal that we are moving towards. The reason I bring this up is because you are listening to a podcast right now, which probably means that you listen to other podcasts, which means that you probably read other books about business and money or success. It probably means that you read blogs. It probably means that you see a lot of people on Facebook talking about their businesses or how they're crushing it or how they're hustling or what the heck they're doing. When you listen to all those things, read all of those things, see all of those things, you are digesting someone else's thoughts. The very nature of me talking about the nature of thoughts is me influencing your thought. You are digesting one of my thoughts. And one of the traps that we fall into is, is hearing all of these thoughts but never really aligning them towards where it is that we want to go or getting to the level that we want to be. If you listen to a lot of marketing podcasts, you're likely to become a pretty good marketer. If you listen to a lot of big thinking podcasts, you're likely to become a pretty big thinker. What you listen to and who you hang out with and what you read all influence the thoughts that you have. But.

If you are listening to people who are at a level that is operating from a place of scarcity or low level thinking, you are very likely to become one of them. I'll give you an example from my own personal life. I have said fairly publicly that I'm kind of comfortable operating in about the 5 to 10 million dollar year business range. I'm Fairly. I'm fairly comfortable there. I don't do income reports so much anymore, but the last time I did, you know, the total revenues of my business were about half a million dollars a month. And that puts me at six or seven million dollars a year in total business revenue or whatever it is. And when I look at that, I'm fairly comfortable with that. And I tend to have peers who operate at the same level. That amount of thinking or that level is not going to get me ownership of the Cleveland Indians, which is my ultimate dream. And to some, that is a big dream. To some, that's not thinking big enough. Who's right? Neither one is right. They're just different people's thoughts based on different people's opinions and experiences. So I have had to consciously cut out the noise and the thoughts of people who think at the 1 to 5 million dollar or even the 1 to 10 million dollar range in order to free up my mind to think at the 25 to 100 million dollar range. And I'm not there yet. But I've realized that I'm thinking too small. I'm thinking too small in the way that I operate my businesses because how I've been operating them is not going to get me to the level that I ultimately want. Now, what I want is different than what you want, and neither one is right. They're just different desires. I have a great desire to sit in the dugout at Progressive Field at the corner of Ontario and Carnegie in downtown Cleveland with eye black on my eyes, you know, chanting, here we go, Indians, here we go. Clap, clap. I'm. That's, that's my happy place. So that's the reason I have that goal, is because that's how I ultimately want to spend my time. In a way, it's also how I intend to give back. So I've got to align my thoughts and my intentions with a goal like that. And that requires me to change a certain direction. The whole point behind me doing Freedom Fastlane Live, the conference that is going on in almost exactly one month from the time of posting this podcast, is because I needed to force myself around those who were at a level far beyond me. I invited Grant Cardone, for example, who owns about $350 million in real estate. And the reason I invited him to speak was because when I heard the $350 million in real estate, I said to myself, well, that's a great down payment on the Cleveland Indians. I've got to find out how this guy does it. And I invited Jeff Hoffman, who was one of the founders of Priceline.com, a billionaire, partly because he pulled me aside once, and I hope not jokingly said, I'm going to be your first investor in the Cleveland Indians, because he's based in Cleveland, Ohio, and the fact that he's a billionaire means he's at the level that I want to be. Order to achieve a dream like that, I invited Gary Vaynerchuk, who has the network and the capabilities to probably fulfill his dream of owning the New York jets right now. And he's on that path of owning a major franchise. And I want to be aligned with people who are on that same path. So I have begun to align myself and strategically align my businesses and the place, the direction I'm going in order to achieve a certain goal. And I'm inviting you to consider if the path that you're on is leading you towards the ultimate dream that I have now. I want to call out something that is very dangerous. Because if your dream is to just be financially free and you haven't filled in the gap of what that looks like or defined, what does it mean for you to be free, then you are probably spinning your wheels. You are probably on an endless path. For example, several years ago, I only had the dream of being rich. I told you the story in a previous podcast where I got very vulnerable. That freedom and defining how I want my life to be didn't get important to me until I completely burned out. I completely lost my sense of self. Part of the reason I burnt out and lost my sense of self was because I was on this selfish path to just accumulate as much as possible. I bought into a lie that in order to be financially free or secure, that I had to just take and take and take as much as possible. That business and capitalism and entrepreneurship were all about me fulfilling a need for me. It had nothing to do with providing. It had nothing to do with disrupting marketplaces. It had everything to do with me getting rich so that my ego could be happy. And really what that meant was that it meant me taking so that I could feel safe. I had to take from other people in order for me to feel safe. And after a while, I realized that all of this taking was taking me. I had completely lost my happiness and my sense of self because I was so obsessed with my own security. One time, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but here I go. I remember sitting in my living room, actually my mom's living room. I was living in a downtown apartment and I was at her house on a Sunday. And I had $250,000 in the bank and my mom said, what are you doing this week? And I said trying to pay rent, which is so ridiculous. What that really meant was I've got to go get more money, I've got to go take more so that I can feel safe this month. Because if I don't make a few grand, I gotta dip into the savings, which were sizable, in order to pay off my expenses. And it seems so silly now, but I didn't have the rules for my own security defined, so I couldn't think bigger. I had to think at a very small level of just security and safety. If you are operating at that place, meaning I have to do this to make money, I have to do this to feel safe, I have to do this to make payroll or pay rent. You don't, you don't have the mental fund freedom to think bigger, to think at the level that you want to think. If you are always operating from that place of security, if you're operating from that place of I've got to take or I've got to get, then you are not operating from a place of making a difference and you're not operating at a place for you to really think at the level that you probably want to be. If you are an entrepreneur now, I get it. If you are just starting out, making 100 grand or a million dollars is a dream to you in order for you to invest it and to be safe forever, or for you to have a business that makes 10 or $20,000 a month so that you can quit your job. I get it, I get it. If that's the case, if that's the case, here's the fix. You just start a cash flow business, a four hour work week type of a business that you treat like a cash flow business, meaning you build it and then you stop, you maintain it, you automate it so that you can then think bigger, or then you can give back, or then you can operate from a place of total abundance where a lot of pain and problems arise. Is, is when people are building a cash flow business, but they think they're building something different. They think they're building a business that's going to change the world when really they're just trying to make their $10,000 a month or so. And what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is they build a cash flow business, they become what is actually financially free, but they don't feel financially free, so they feel like they have to build it and build it and build it and build it and build it until they die. And that's where burnout and unhappiness really peak. Because you got what you thought you wanted, but now you're just working to work. You're just trying to grow to grow. My suggestion for those of you who are just getting started, build your cash flow business, automate it and walk away. Put your emphasis and your energy into something else. Once you have that, it can be another business, it can be a way to give back, it can be the passion that you love. Build the cash flow business, which have two to three year, two to four year lifespans. Automate it, walk away, do your thing. And if it ever goes away, build a new cash flow business. Invest the profits wisely so you're building up wealth and cash flow. But walk away from the business once it's automated. Work on it a few hours a week. Then if you're like me, if you can't not be an entrepreneur, then what I've done and what I'm recommending to you, build your cash flow business so that you've got your cash flow coming in. And then I'm putting all of my energy and time into what I call disruption companies, companies that are making a difference, companies that are scalable, companies that have the potential to change the world. That's where my energy is going next. As an investor, as an advisor, as the founder himself. I'm working on some companies that are riskier, also more fun, I think. And that's where my energy is going next. You see, it's not the money, but it's what you do with your time, what you do to make a difference and what you are giving that ultimately give you fulfillment and give you happiness. And the reason that's important is because.

In our little circle, we tend to talk about money so much and we lose our sight on the prize. The prize being whatever we think of beyond that, whatever we think of beyond money.

Beyond the security and the safety. If you, when you get the money, then what? When you get enough to be satisfied and safe, then what? Get a bigger house? Get a nicer car, get another vacation home? There's nothing wrong with those things. But if the point is to just get more, then you're operating from a place of constant need for security rather than freedom and happiness or even provision or making a difference or being happy or enjoying your life. I like money. I think it's a wonderful tool and kind of like Gary Vaynerchuk says, the only reason I care about Money is because I want to own a major sports team. Mine is the Cleveland Indians, his is the New York Jets. And partly for that reason, and also because I just can't not be an entrepreneur. Now that I'm financially free in a cash flow way, my time and my energy is going towards other businesses or helping other entrepreneurs. Where's yours? Are you thinking big enough? You know, just like the sun, making a difference and having success, there's enough for everybody. You can have as much success as you want without hurting the next guy. So are you putting your energy towards feeling safe and secure when you could be putting it towards something much, much bigger, either for yourself and your family or for the world as a whole? The way that you invite other thoughts into your brain is by changing who you hang out with and the things you hear, either from podcasts, from books that you read, or from the ideas of the people that you hang out with. That's why I created Freedom Fastlane Live. I invited Mark, Jenny, who's my best friend but is also building a world changing disruption company called RVshare.com he's already changing the world. And Robert Herjavec, who, yes, he's famous from Shark Tank, but he's also very strategic at investing in disruption type companies that are making a difference in the world. And Jeff Hoffman, who has already built a lot of disruption companies that have changed the world, but also is at a financial level that I aspire to be. And Gary Vaynerchuk, who's on the same path as me and we're going in the same direction. If you heard anything I said today and you realize that you're thinking too small or you're operating from a place of security or even that you're not at the place yet where you feel like you're safe so that you can think, think beyond what happens when the money comes. I am very strongly encouraging you to join us at Freedom Fastlane Live here in a month. The website is freedomfastlanelive.com and I want you to come to this event because I think it's going to make, I know it's going to make a meaningful impact in your life. Yes, I want to fill up the room and yes, I'll find a way to do that come hell or high water. But I want you to be there because I believe that if we as a community align behind certain ideas, we can really change the conversation. And by you being around people who are in alignment with the idea of thinking bigger and achieving more and doing more, you'll start to build a success network of people who are on that same path. Yes, you're going to hear from some amazing speakers who have changed the world and are on a path that you can kind of hinge your coattails to and start to benefit from their thoughts and ideas. Yes, that is going to be life changing in and of itself. But you're also going to be surrounded by entrepreneurs for three days who are also in alignment with that for business deals, for jv, partnerships, for ideas, for mentors. Most of the speakers are going to be hanging out there all three days. The amount of.

Just unbelievable mind power in that room will probably be the highest per attendee of any conference in our industry's history. And that's why I want you to be there. Yes, I benefit because my ego gets happy that we have a full room, but I want you to be there because I know it will be worth your trip and your investment 10 times over and then some. We still have some tickets available. The website is freedomfastlanelive.com and I am strongly encouraging you to join us at that event December 11th, 12th and 13th in Austin. This time next month, you're either going to be cruising into the holidays, taking it easy, or you're going to be sprinting into the holidays with a very clear path of how 2016 is going to be the best and most abundant year of your life because you have a brand new success network, you have brand new ideas, you have a new path for your career and your success. And you'll know that those three days in Austin gave you the launching pad to create more abundance than you ever knew was possible before. That's why I want you to be there in Austin. Freedomfastlanelive.com it's in approximately one month and I hope to see you there. I would love to hear your thoughts on today's topic of questioning if you're thinking too small. I realized I was thinking too small when I started wrestling with what I was doing and will it get me to the level that I want? And as a result I've got to make some changes by aligning myself with different people and by changing where I spend my time. And really see saying is what I'm investing in right now, meaning with my time and my energy, is it going to create the results and the impact that I ultimately want? If it's not, it's time to cut that out and free that up so that we can invest it into something else when those opportunities come along. Thank you for listening to Freedom Fast Lane. Keep on changing the world, and I'll see you on the next episode.