Building Amazon Brands Around Audiences: What's Working Today #TheOnePercent

No one cares about your losses except for you. It takes one win to shut everybody up.

It takes one free person to create change. This is the show for them. We are the creators of the free world. This is capitalism.com and we are the 1%.

Here's a secret for you Amazon sellers. I make millions of dollars on Amazon.com alone, but it's not from knowing a whole bunch of tricks and tactics. It's actually by deploying a few little things that I do over and over again because they work so well. In fact, I've said I didn't even consider myself an Amazon person or an Amazon expert by any means. I know the 80% that has to be done in order to outrank my competitors and take businesses to the seven figure mark. If you already sell on Amazon and you've got your basics under your belt, like you know about getting reviews and rankings and stuff like that, then I would recommend that you go sign up for the advanced class over@capitalism.com Amazon class and inside. My buddy Jeff, who is my resident Amazon guy here@capitalism.com is going to walk you through some of the advanced strategies that we use in order to scale something past seven figures. And a lot of times the things that will scale past seven figures will also get you to seven figures faster. So if you're selling on Amazon and you're confused by all the noise or you're not getting the results that you want, then go sign up or@capitalism.com amazonclass and when you do, I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to the Playbook for Amazon podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Lieber, and the goal of this podcast is to share what's working today that's helping my company, Turnkey Product Management, sell over eight figures per year on Amazon for our clients. We will share with you the actionable steps, systems and playbook that you can plug into your business to boost your sales on Amazon. Let's go.

On today's episode, I'm sitting down with one of my most influential mentors, Ryan Moran. If you don't know Ryan, he's a very successful 31 year old who wants to buy the Cleveland Indians. He's an influencer, business owner, investor, and much more. In this episode, I pick his brain and I'm very excited to share with you more about his backstory and the wisdom he's gained from years of running businesses and helping others to grow theirs. We talk about how Amazon has changed over the years and what to do to make sure that you're thriving as a business Five to ten years from now. We talk about how to build an audience off of Amazon and connect with your customers. We talk about his secrets to getting so much done at such a young age and much, much more. So get out a note taking device because you're going to get a lot out of this episode. Let's get to it with Ryan Moran.

Today we welcome Ryan Moran to the show. We have been friends for a couple of years now and I've learned probably more from you than anyone else on the entire planet. And honored to be on this side of the table and get to interview you for once. And thanks for coming on. Ryan, how are you doing?

Of course, ma'. Am.

That is quite a compliment. Wow, you're making me blush. So thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Jeff.

No, I've seriously meant it. I mean, both personally and professionally. You know, with everything that you teach, I feel like my journey has always tracked yours in some way. No matter where you're at in your career path or what you're going through, something seems to always resonate of something that you got going on. And even though if it feels like I'm always like a couple years behind you, but I'm like trying to catch up or keep up with how it feels. Thank you.

I appreciate it, man.

Cool. Well, for those that don't know your full story, why don't you give us a little bit of background on your business history and yourself in general.

Yeah, I've been an entrepreneur since. You know, it's funny is when I was in high school, I worked at Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins is a duo. And when I quit Dunkin donuts at like 16, my mom threw me a mini retirement party. She made me a cake and had balloons because she was like, he's never gonna have a real job and I haven't. So I mean, I was an affiliate marketer and in the summer between high school and college and learned about email marketing and search engine optimization in college while I was starting to first be a pastor and then graduated with a business economics degree. So I've been in the Internet game for a long time, since I was fresh out of high school. Some people used their graduation money to buy guitar amps and books. I started a website, you know, and learned search engine optimization. So my background is like almost coming out of the womb an entrepreneur. Sometimes it's just in your blood and it's in my blood and my background, specifically in kind of the brand building side of things is I cut my teeth Learning about channel marketing. Google is a channel and you get traffic on Google by doing search engine optimization. I sold information products and the channels were other people's email lists and clickbank. It was going to where the attention was and putting your, what you had to sell in front of that channel. And so with physical products is Amazon. And I saw the wide open west period and pounced on it and did very well and built a couple companies and sold a couple companies, advised quite a few companies and I've invested in quite a few companies. And now my focus, since my last acquisition, my focus has been honestly going really deep under the hood, doing a lot of personal work and looking for the next thing. My focus has been building my audience@capitalism.com where I train entrepreneurs and I invest in entrepreneurs. And.

If I was being really honest, since my last acquisition I have been looking and waiting hungrily looking for the next big opportunity. And.

I think right now that it is around building brands, around audiences. That is like the biggest white space that I see right now. But I am chomping at the bit, looking at where the next big opportunities are. And thankfully I'm 31 and feel like I have just completed chapter one of my career post a couple acquisitions and I'm just starting to begin chapter two.

Nice. Well, that's a long chapter one. If you could think you only have written one chapter because looking from the outside and I bet a lot of listeners can resonate if they follow you, you seem to do so much so you are an influencer, you put out so much great content. You're on capitalism.com, you've sold multiple businesses. You run the backroom Mastermind, which I'm in and is awesome. You invest and help other people's businesses. You also invest in stocks and real estate, which most entrepreneurs don't find time.

You mentor people, you're super active on social media and actually respond to people's comments. It's like, you know, on top of that, you're also a busy and great dad. So I don't know how the heck you get all that done. Robot.

You know, let's, let's see if we can break this down. I've been, you know, I've been in this game for 14 years, so sometimes I forget how much of a, of a Runway I've got in terms of timing, in terms of audience building, in terms of some credibility, in terms of relationships, for goodness sake. And the other piece is I am always playing for the long term. And I mean long term, like a year is barely long term for me. And I am looking at, I've always been looking at where and how can I position myself to pounce when it's time to pounce. And when I break that rule, I make stupid decisions. And when I follow those rules, I make really good decisions. So my focus has been on doing the things that no one else is willing to do for long enough. So when it comes to content, one of the reasons you see me put out so much content is because done well over a very long period of time, that reaps a lot of rewards.

I am active as a father because over the long term, that reaps a lot of rewards. Um, so those are the things I focus on. And so I think sometimes it looks like I am doing a lot of things, which I am. I have realized I do the work of five people, but. But the truth is that the reason I'm able to do that is because I am thinking about the very long term. Things that knock over the right dominoes, that open up new opportunities.

But I do outwork most people. That's true.

Sort of the 14 year overnight success. I guess when you look at it from the outside, you can lose track. Like, wow, you've actually been doing it for 14 years of grinding ups and downs. And so it's hard for other people, including myself, to see that, you know.

I mean, I appreciate that, Jeff, but I think more of it, as in four years, I will be the 18 year overnight success.

I don't think I've had my big win yet. Like, yes, I've sold a couple companies, but I have not had my. Like, I feel like everything I have done up to this point has been me learning, you know, and I got paid to learn. And I feel like I just got my doctorate and now I'm starting to practice. I know, it's funny that you have that perspective of being the 14 year overnight success story. I do not view myself as having the big success yet. Part of that is because I don't have what your observation of me doing all of these different things is a fair observation. And it's also a bit of a criticism or a sign of some of the chaos in my life because I couldn't confidently look at you in the eye and say what my singular focus is.

I am still on a journey, still on a hunt for the right thing or the next thing or my next opportunity. So I taste a lot, I try a lot of different things and there is some joy in that. And there's some probably not so Healthy things in that too. But I am still on the hunt on the look, on the search and I get a little bit closer, little bit closer about every three months. But I suspect that all of the data I've gathered up into this point will play into that one opportunity and that fire will lit and it might be another four or five years and that would be okay.

Thinking about how much you get done, what does your standard typical workday look like? Are you working 16 hours a day? Is it just start to finish? Or what do you build in that helps you to sustain that year after year to work, get so much done?

It seems I am pretty good about waking up and not starting work immediately. I find that my happiness is about 30 to 40% higher if I don't go right to the computer. And so that looks like doing something active in the morning and a meditation and I have a stretching routine that I do pretty religiously. And I have my supplement stack that I take every morning. And then beginning work, which usually looks like writing, which is one of my favorite things to do. So writing or creating something which gives me energy, gives me that momentum to keep going throughout the day. And then it's usually checking with my team and identifying what that one thing is for myself or for my company. I have a nicely broken up weekly schedule. Some people are really good about scheduling their days. I'm better about scheduling my weeks. So Tuesday or when I'm checking in with my brand managers on the different things that I invest in or advise. Wednesday are when I block off for the really important work that I need to do that week. Mondays are when I do my podcast recordings. So I'm better week to week than I am day to day and that has been helpful for me.

Awesome. So next question is entrepreneurs like ourselves, and we've talked about this a little bit before, we often fall in the trap of being in work mode all the time. Never turning off the monkey brain and always focusing on the next thing. We never pause, like enjoy the journey or the progress that we've made to date. So have you struggled with this and what helps you to overcome that?

Yes, I have struggled with this and I know the answer and the solution. And just because I know what it is does not mean I am a master at it. There's my asterisks and my disclaimer. The reason why we're getting to the monkey mode or in that response is because we have some sort of pain we're avoiding. Now, I don't mean that necessarily in like a therapy Sense and like it is, there's something we're avoiding and we're searching for the answer. So we're searching for the solution to something, which is why the monkey mind is going all the time. It is looking for the solution. It's going.

Like processing, data processing, looking for the solution. The fix for it is to do less. Now, I wish there was. I wish there was a different answer. Like I wish it was. What you can do to shut off the brain is X. But when you're looking for a problem, there is nothing. So the way you do that is you have to allow the brain to stop looking for problems, which requires you to do less work for periods of time, which means shutting off when you're going to shut off. That does not mean that I or anyone I know is necessarily good at this, but it is the only way that I have that I have found up until this point.

So what helps you to stay focused on getting the big things done? Like, it sounds like you're maybe do you do like a weekly planning session like Jeff woods talks about doing, like a weekly 411 or how do you sort of make sure you plan out those big things in a week?

Or mine is right here, this big old journal right here that is all kinds of marked up. I mean, I'm a voracious journaler, and so I'm getting the monkey brain out on paper as often as I can, as often as possible, and then identifying what are the major things that I need to move in order to be closer to where I want to be. And so that, that is when my monkey brain is going. I'm in my notebook. So it looks like a pretty chaotic journal if you were to read that.

So other entrepreneurs might look at you and think that you've had it easier than them. Or for some reason, Ryan Moran is just able to achieve that success. But I know you've had some challenges and some tough times, so can you share any experiences that maybe some others could relate to and any challenges that you've had and maybe a lesson learned from that?

I mean, the easiest way to begin this is there are more challenges than there are wins.

There's kind of a perception that.

Once you start winning, you just keep winning forever. But the truth is, like in this, in the entrepreneurial game, there's. You go like, I would consider myself on a losing streak right now. You know, I've invested in a few things, tried a few things, haven't found my thing yet, and no one cares but me. No one cares about your Losses, except for you. It takes one win to shut everybody up. So it's like the losses happen, and they're an inevitable part of the process. If you are taking risks, sometimes you're going to lose, and you will probably lose more than you win, but you ride your winners and you cut your losses. So if we were to do an entire podcast series about failure, we could fill them up. There was the tech company I tried to start in my mid-20s called mytimeline.com we spent 50 to $100,000 building it out. And then we launched it. A week later, Facebook released the new feature called Timeline. And the language was post on my Timeline. I mean, it was exactly what we had been building until Facebook built.

Was like, they caught us. It was like, what in the world? I mean, I've bought companies that lost money. Just recently, one of the companies that I sold and still had equity in, and they still owed me money, filed bankruptcy, and I tried to buy it back and I didn't win the bid, even though I was an owner in the company. I've had partnerships go south. Yeah, but. But people pay attention to the wins. They pay attention to the things that they want to be like. And so everybody gets. I think we. We all tend to glorify other people's wins and see our own losses. And I just try to publish everything, you know, the ups, the downs, the lefts, the rights, the BA's, select starts, all of them. I hope that we can kind of humanize the process a little bit better as a result, you know? You know, Jeff, I think the biggest is this idea that we're supposed to be good at everything. We're supposed to figure out every piece of the business process, every piece of the life process, and we have to, you know, and have abs all at the same time. Like, we're supposed to be good at everything. It's this BS lie. We are made to depend on one another, to rely on one another, to serve one another, to organize with one another, to work together.

That is how we're wired. We are wired to need and support one another. And we believe this stupid idea that we're supposed to be good at everything on our own, and it's just. It's just not true.

All right, let's switch gears. Talk a little bit of Amazon. So Amazon has been very good to you, at least from my perspective. Right. It's been one of your biggest channels, and especially in the businesses that you've sold and started and invested in. So how has Amazon changed today versus when you got into the game in the wild, wild west.

You know what's funny is I don't perceive it as have changing very much. The thing that has changed is the entrepreneurs who are on the platform. And just like any platform or any marketplace, there's a period in which there are loopholes that marketers and entrepreneurs game and then they become commoditized and people complain about them getting commoditized and then a new loophole opens up. And the thing that ends up standing the test of time are the companies that have real businesses and they layer in those loopholes as temporary strategies rather than depending on them. That's the difference. I don't view Amazon as having changed all that much. The design is still the same, the algorithm is still run mostly the same. Reviews are just as important. There's new opportunities with things like giveaways and headline ads and there's new opportunities and there's also more competition. But the reality is the platform is still the platform. There's just a maturation of entrepreneurs who are willing to lose money longer, who are willing to give away more product, to have longer track records. There's more reviews on the platform. So the fundamentals are still there. It is a matter of the people who played this game short term a few years ago, who won in the short term are now being eliminated. And the brands that have long term staying power are the ones who are winning, the products that are superior, the ones who are winning, the people who come in with a long view versus a how fast can we roi they're winning. That's the case with every marketplace. So I am 0% surprised at the platform, but I am surprised at how resistant to the change a lot of the entrepreneurs are.

You talked with a lot of product owners, brand owners, that maybe they've been in it for a couple of years. So what would you say is the one or two things that if they wanted to be around and thriving five to 10 years from now with their brand, what's like one or two things that they should make sure that they're focusing on to set them up for long term success?

Yeah, we can narrow it down to one. And you need to communicate and think about the customer more than you need to think about the platform. Now most people will think that they make the mistake of thinking Amazon is the customer. Now Amazon is a reflection of the customer. So Amazon is the proxy for the customer, but your job is to communicate to the customer, communicate with the customer, serve the customer. And this would be well reflected in the olden days when people would just give away tons and tons and tons of product to gain the algorithm without ever building up their own customer lists. Had you just taken that same energy and budget and gone and built your own audience.

Been good to that audience, that would still be relevant today. That would still be part of the launch plan today. That's building up a customer base versus trying to game with the short term. Now again, you can layer in the short term wins as part of the overall brand strategy. But if you're dependent on that, then you're, you are always going to be at the mercy of if the platform changes, you're toast. And that's what you see a lot of people doing when they complain about anything changing on Amazon or Facebook or Google or whatever platform they're playing on. So it is always, always about the person behind the activity more than it is about the platform.

So that leads you to my next question. What would be the best way for a brand owner to build the audience off of Amazon if they're not super experienced with that?

Yeah. So the way we can start is by looking at who's already showing up, who's already buying our product and getting in front of that person. That could look like inserts in packaging. It could look like developing content for that demographic. It could.

Look like emailing those customers and asking them what they're into and then speaking to them. It could look like a phenomenal customer service experience. But it is at first saying, okay, we're getting all these buyers. How do we serve the person that is behind these purchases and how do we really go above and beyond to make them happy and to get them to refer other people like them to us. And then we start to build out the marketing machine to contact that type of person before they become a customer. I still like running content to email lists, running content amplified through paid media, getting them onto an email list and then building follow up sequences to promote them on Amazon. I still like that model 10 years later and it's still probably the most underutilized strategy for building audience and building attention and getting sales. So that is a good starting point for a lot of Internet entrepreneurs. But first you have to know who that person is. And that looks a lot like stopping being romantic about who you think the product is for and being really humble and asking who is behind it and what they want.

Yeah, I agree. We see that all the time that we ask like who's your ideal customer, you know, who they have no idea.

And now Amazon, someone with money.

Yeah, yeah. And On Amazon they have with Amazon brand analytics now you can get a lot of that demographic and data, you know, age, income, a lot of really valuable data just on Amazon. So that's a good place to start if you weren't aware that you can access some of that data on Amazon now.

Yeah, and I like just going to your existing customer base and asking them and not necessarily like how old are you? But like why'd you buy this? What's the story behind this? Like what, what is the real value that you're after here? Not, not just I bought it because it was cheap. Like what's the story behind the reason why you chose us over everybody else? And if you can find that piece that, that's like the pivot point for you to start building some, some traction off Amazon, love it.

So the majority of companies that approach turnkey typically most common is they're one or two person show and they feel drowned in the day to day of Amazon and they're struggling to find that time to learn about their customers or do things build an audience off of Amazon. So for someone that's stuck in Amazon or is in that one to two person show, what advice can you give them to get out of that partnerships?

So partnership, you don't have to go spend the time to build an audience. You can go partner with the person who already has the audience. You don't have to be the ninja at Amazon, but you need to go.

Partner with the team that is ninja, the best in the world at Facebook ads. You need to go find the person who is and bring them in. So it is, it is, it's that mistake we talked about earlier that you have to be good at everything. You don't. Partnerships are.

The way that I communicate this. I sometimes do workshops at my home and the way that I show this is I draw pie and I show. There's this illustration I do. The point is most people are trying to protect the majority of the pie rather than trying to bake as big a pie as possible. And so that's why most people are stuck, because they're romantic about the idea that it has to be within the locus of my control rather than bringing the other assets together that creates a more valuable company. That's your purpose as an entrepreneur. Bake a bigger pie rather than trying to protect every little piece of the process. So if you're a one or two person show, fine, identify where you're bringing a lot of value to the plate, to the table, focus on that and then go make partnerships with Other people who specialize in other areas, who already control the audience, who already control Amazon, who already control whatever area you're wanting to go in next. It's a mistake to take your focus from something that's making a million dollars and putting it into something that's making zero. But it's a really good idea to go bring in the asset that adds another million dollars to the table. That's a lot smarter.

What exactly do you mean by partnerships? You mean you got to bring someone in as an official partner, like talking equity or what exactly do you mean by that?

Sometimes, yeah. So sometimes we create equity relationships with influencers who already have the audience because we don't want to build an audience in every business that we're in. But going and creating the partnership with the person who already has it is a real fast way to have the audience that is loyal to us, that we don't have to manage, build, or control, but somebody else is incentivized to communicate with their audience regularly about our product. And yeah, I've created equity with those types of relationships. And that's a much faster way than just trying to build an audience around a brand. It's easier to build business or to build audiences around individuals than brands anyway. So going out and partnering with that person who represents your ideal customer is a faster way to have all the benefits of building an audience without building an audience.

That makes perfect sense. Okay, so what's one actionable thing that could be like a really easy action step for someone that if they have a physical products brand, like here's something that you're probably not doing. Go try this.

You know, I am amazed at how few product brands focus on back end. There's this belief that the only way to raise profits is to sell more front end product. But all of the money is made in the back end. And back end can be affiliate promotions. Backend can be selling data. Backend could mean crossover promotions between two different brands where you put inserts in each other's packaging.

Backend can be upsells.

All of the money is made after the first purchase. There's a great AskGaryVee episode where they were talking about getting customers for restaurants and the person on the show was talking about how every time they had a new customer at their restaurant, they'd give them a red napkin and the red napkin would signal to all the other team members that this is a first time customer. And so all the other team members just poured into that person and then they would comp the meal It'd be a free meal and then they'd give them another, like a gift, like come in and try the chicken. And the idea was that they were losing money on the front end, knowing that person would have such an experience that they would come back and man, brand owners are so bad at this, Jeff. Like there's, there's. So they're like, okay, I got my widget for 8 bucks. I sell it for 19 bucks. That's great. I got 12 bucks to acquire the customer. Like, screw that. Like, like you make your money when they come back and they're delighted and they buy more. That. Do you, you think, you think Coke has to only spend 50 cents a can to get a customer? No, no. They're building brand loyalty.

And that mindset shift really changes the game when you're operating a small business.

I like that. I like that a lot. What about business owners where they think, because currently they're the most Amazon expert person in their company, maybe they even manage their own ppc and they're like, well, I know everything about Amazon and they're trying to keep. Well, sometimes I don't, they don't understand, like, they can't get out of Amazon and like grow a multi, multi million dollar business if they're, if they're always that bottleneck. So, yeah, what would be some advice for that sort of situation?

I mean, my advice is look at all the opportunity that you're not pursuing. Look at, look at all of the products you're not launching. Look at all of the brand loyalty you're not building with all the employees that you're not hiring. Look at all the customers you're not serving when you're doing the work of what somebody else can do better than you. We're so romantic about what we think we can do better than everybody else. We're all stupid, all of us. So the pivot you make, especially once you're over about a million dollars a year, is you have to make the pivot to succeeding through other people versus succeeding on your own merit. That's the thing that changes the game. And if you don't do that, you're always going to be a small.

Tiny enterprise. You are never going to be a scalable, sellable business, which is, a lot of people say that's what they want. They operate as if it's the last thing they want to do. And so you have to be willing to suck at it for a while until you don't suck anymore.

Yep. No, I completely agree. We see it all the Time. And these companies come along and we know that help them, and they're like, but they just want to own it. They want to stay in that. That's like their comfort zone. Yeah. And they can't. We're like, well, why can't you find time to go launch more products or build that shopify store you're talking about? If you're so good at Amazon and nailing it, why don't you, you know, find the time to do that? And they're just, you know, they don't even have to, like, hire anyone. Right. Hire an Amazon brand manager, hire an employee to train. You know, you don't have to hire a big agency, you know, like us, or, you know, just start somewhere. Start where you can and see. Just, you know, and it might, you know, take a month or a couple months to figure out, but you just need to take that step and build that muscle. And then, you know, two years from now, you might be in a multimillion dollar business.

Yeah. I mean, most people are trying to protect every. Every piece of the business rather than trying to build the machine. And you can do that when you're starting out, but if you want to grow.

That has diminishing returns, you're a.

Highly paid, overworked employee.

Amen. Yes.

All right, let's change topics a little bit. I'm curious right now. Where are you focused on investing right now? What kind of opportunities are you looking at?

I always am looking at the team.

I think it's dangerous to say that you're an investor in brands on the Internet because you get a lot of really bad ideas pitched to you. And bad ideas look a lot like people with ideas who haven't done anything with them. But when you have someone who has got infrastructure and is going in that direction and needs capital and advice, that's an easy investment to make.

I'm also looking at.

I don't know how to put this, except you'd be surprised at how unpersuasive numbers are. Like, numbers and ROI opportunity are not very persuasive because anybody can make projections. It's about, does the product in the business mean something that determines whether something is exciting to an investor or not. So I like audiences. I like businesses that have audiences already established. I like food brands. Food brands have really great valuations and they're just fun to do. So Food and beverage company that I really enjoy. I'm an investor in Onnit. I'm an investor in Outstanding foods. I'm an investor in a company called Flex. Which is flexible dieting. So I'm excited by those. I'm excited by audiences. And on other more traditional investments like real estate, I'm in sell mode, so I'm selling as many things as possible. I'm selling my real estate portfolio. I'm exiting as much as possible because I think we're at the top of the cycle. So.

When it comes to entrepreneurs, I'm looking at audience, I'm looking at track record, and I'm looking at team. And those are the things that determine whether or not I participate.

And what is one book that you can pinpoint has probably made the largest impact in your life that you recommend to people?

I will go with the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, and I can summarize it in 30 seconds. Olson argues that extraordinary results come from doing the right things over a very long period of time, rather than big exponential curves up. And those curves do happen, but they're rare, and they usually happen after a long period of doing the right things for long enough.

Very nice. All right. I don't have to read it. That's great.

No, I'll check it out. I wanted to talk about the backroom a little bit. I've been in the mastermind for maybe over a year and a half now, and I've gotten a ton out of it personally, professionally. Obviously, getting to know you on a personal level has been awesome, but the group as well is a really strong group of people. And last week on our Backroom call, you talked about some kind of major changes that you're making to it and where it's headed. And I really liked where it was headed and wanted to have you expand on where is the backroom Mastermind headed?

Yeah. Thanks for asking. So the reason for the change, first of all, is a lot of us got together.

And we were kind of like a ragtag team of misfits who were killing it on Amazon, and that has kind of run its course.

And anymore, I find that the real growth happens when you address the person behind a business. And if you're already at a million dollars, the transition that you need to make is becoming a leader of yourself and a leader of other people. Casting a vision for a business and building a real company, building a real business and a brand. It is not about the next hack. It's not about the next strategy. It's about you. And there is a multifaceted approach to that. So we're bringing in my biohacking doctor to do everybody's blood panels. We're bringing in some, like, a psychological element to it. We're bringing in some things I'm not sure I can talk about just yet. So we're bringing in some experiences made to develop the person. And you do that through your relationships, you do that through your health, you do that through your vision. You do that through the people you hire. And so we're becoming much more focused on turning hustlers into owners.

A lot of entrepreneurs are really just hustlers. They'll do whatever it takes to not work a real job, which is also the mentality of homeless people.

They will do whatever it takes to not work a real job. But if you want to be an owner, you have to learn how to own, you have to learn how to delegate and hire and cast a vision and move from the operator's chair to the owner's seat. That's a completely different skill set. And you mentioned at the beginning of our discussion that you feel like you're always a few years behind. Where I am and where I have been in the last few years has been going real deep under the hood to see what drives us and what makes us who we are. And I've spent the last two years really creating a development plan for myself that has created radical changes in my life, and I'm now packaging that together for entrepreneurs who are already had some success and know that in order for them to grow, they have to change. And that's what we're going to do together. And over the next few years, inside the back room. Nice.

I love it. Yeah. I mean, just being in the group and in the room, I mean, it just almost makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes because of the whole group. You know, everyone is so good at certain things and someone's got a 10 million dollar business here. This person's doing this and this person knows this about that. And then you're in the group, obviously leading it, and it just kind of forces you to step up and sort of raise your standards and. And it's been nothing but good for me, so can't recommend it enough.

I appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff.

Only a couple more questions I wanted to ask you. So would you change anything about your entrepreneurial journey, looking back?

Oh, that's so mean.

That's such a mean question. Would I change anything?

I would be slower to hire.

And I learned by mistakes. So it's not quite fair for me to be able to say, like, I just had to go back and undo these mistakes because I wouldn't know what I know had I not made these mistakes. But one of the things That I wish I had done differently is just hire slower, is be very, very, very intentional about what the role is that I'm hiring for. And then wait for the right person and be willing to wait for the right person rather than seeing a need and just going after it. I have been asking this question of myself lately, Jeff, and I'm just going to pretend that we're not recording and we're just hanging out here for a second.

I've been playing with this question lately of what would I do if I didn't have to grow.

If I didn't have to go buy the Cleveland Indians, if I didn't have to go do the next big thing that my ego wants to do, what would I do? And when that's the case, like when that's the question, when that's the focus, like, what do I want to do anyway? It takes like the pressure off of it for me. And I realized for myself that I don't need as many people, I don't need as many processes. I need to do a few things well. So if I could change anything, I would actually go slower and I would focus much more on what gets me excited rather than what I think I need to do for growth. Because if you do what's exciting and then you grow, then you amplify happiness. And if you do what's going to grow and you amplify that, then you scale a broken ship. And that is a quick way to implode.

Yeah, I can relate to that. Anytime I've chased an opportunity just because, like, well, I know we can make some money off of that, but I'm like, I really have no business being that like once tried to launch like a right. It was a makeup related brand because an opportunity popped up and you know, you get those opportunities. You're like, that makes sense. Yeah, that could work. I could, I could do that. And then it just ends up one failing miserably and you're not excited about it at any point. And then why am I even wasting my time? So, yeah, so growth for the sake.

Of growth is the mentality of cancer. So like organic growth is a beautiful thing, but just growing for the sake of growth is how we implode. Cool.

Well, I think that's a great way to end it. And why don't you tell the people what you have going on and where they can follow you, whether it's podcasts or YouTube. Tell us what you got.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not hard to find. My website's capitalism.com I'm Ryan Daniel Moran on pretty much all social media and what I'm doing next is less, I hope, and focusing on who I want to spend my time with, both my team and other entrepreneurs that I work with intentionally inside the back room or as the small group of people that I advise. Personally.

I'm in the mode now of just focusing on creating the content that I want to and building the life that I want because I believe the really great opportunities come out of that. But my work is easy to find@capitalism.com awesome.

Thanks man. Well, again, like I said, you've really helped me so much, raise my life, my standards, personally, professionally over the last couple of years and looking forward to many more of those years. I know you do it for thousands of other people, so keep doing what you're doing, man. Thanks. Thanks Ryan.

Thanks so much, Jeff.

Thanks again to Ryan Moran for coming on today's show. There's links and more with all that we talked about over@TurnKeyProductManagement.com in the show notes. We are getting such great feedback about this show. Be sure that you are subscribed on your podcast app so you never miss an episode and I'd love to hear what you think by leaving us a review on itunes or whatever app that you use. It literally takes one minute and means a lot to us. Wanted to read one quick review from Larry, who left us a really nice review. He said, I've been following Jeff and his team at Turnkey for a while now and their online content has been very valuable. This podcast is an extension of even more valuable and actionable information in addition to case studies. I find very insightful. Thank you so much Larry. I really appreciate that. So if you want to find out more about how Turnkey can help your business scale on Amazon and save you time, or if you want some of our free trainings, you can head over to our website Turnkey Product Management.

Or follow us on social media at the same handle as that. And that'll do it for today. So thank you so much and we'll see you next time.

Foreign.

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