Creativity vs. Scarcity: Why Some People Succeed While Others Stay Stuck #WednesdayWithWyan

So there's a big cavernous divide.

Between extraction and creation.

They're opposites.

When you're playing scared, you create scarcity. When you play with abundance, you get abundance.

Hey capitalists, it's time to crack open your favorite beverage. I like Zevia.

This is Wednesday with Wyan on capitalism dot com.

Oh, well, hello ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls of all ages, come on in here, grab a seat, gather round, have a beverage if you will. Today I am drinking a black cherry Zevia. You know, someone recently said, ryan, do you make most of your money from Zevia endorsements? And I said, yes, yes, that's where.

I make my money.

I talk about soda on my podcast. That's where. That's where the money is. Ladies and gents.

Since I'm not sponsored by Xevia and would like to be, call me Patty Spence. I've tried to find you owner of Zevia and you don't return my emails. I'm also really hot on Virgil's soda right now and I've also recently tried the. Oh shoot, what's it called? There's another new one that does not taste as good. Anyway. Hey guys. So I don't have a normal mic set up today. I hope you still like me and we'll stick around. I wanted to get a podcast out for you and I met my lake house and forgot, forgot my fancy mic setup. While I'm spending a few days out here recharging and there's a lot going on and a lot on my mind today. I want to chat with you about some acquisitions that are going on in the.

World that I think will affect you and give you some really cool ideas. I want to talk about some predictions for the next election and the next next election and I want to give you an update on some personal development work and some new insights that I have had recently. So we're just covering all kinds of topics across the board today. So let's start with the business news of the week. A couple of weeks ago, within a few days of one another, it was announced that Quest Nutrition was acquired by the same private equity company that owns the Atkins brand and they bought Quest Nutrition for a billion dollars. This is interesting for a couple reasons. Number one, it's interesting because any.

Company like Quest that gets acquired for a billion dollars is interesting because they sell items for $3 a piece. Quest bars are three bucks. A bag of chips is two bucks and they sell for a billion dollars. But it's also interesting because rumor has it that they were valued for more a couple of years ago and they declined. I don't know if that is true or not. I also know that valuations mean nothing. So they could have just done a round of fundraising that gave them a billion dollar value raise. Billion dollar valuation, who knows? Or maybe Tom Bilyeu, when he exited a few years ago, just sold his stock and it was valued at a billion dollars.

Who knows?

Nobody knows. What we do know is, is that Atkins, or the company that owns Atkins, bought Quest Nutrition for a billion dollars just this past month. Now, what's interesting about this, the most fascinating part of this is in the same week the company won bars, they sell a competitor to Quest Bars. They're a direct competitor. They're a knockoff of Quest. Bars sold for $397 million. Or for those of us who like rounding $400 million to Hershey's, Hershey's bought a protein bar line for $400 million. They're not near the size of Quest and they still sold for $400 million. Now this is evidence of the fact that, that big brands buy up small brands in order to keep a competitive edge. It's how they grow. It's how they stay ahead. Your job as an entrepreneur is to build for those people, build the company that Hershey's wants to buy. What company does Hershey wants to want to buy? They want to buy the high protein chocolate. They want to buy the new cool brand that all the young kids are talking about. They want to buy the new thing in the marketplace. They want to buy the protein business that is killing it on Amazon. They want to buy a business that has a strategic advantage that when they plug into their line of expertise, everything else grows. That's what you're building for. So a lot of times small entrepreneurs will look at the marketplace and say this is too competitive. Or they will. They'll say, well, somebody has done this before. Or they'll say, no one has done this before. None of that matters. What matters is that you have some sort of a strategic foothold in the marketplace that gives you the ability to grow on your own volition for you to be able to grow and succeed on your own merit. And that another brand, another big company out there is going to end up buying you or not. I'm sure the owners of Quest were perfectly happy keeping the business too. If they didn't get a billion dollar check, they were up to some cool things. But it also explains some of their behaviors over the last few years because they eliminated some product lines. It looked like they were optimizing for some profit margin, which makes sense when.

You are preparing for an acquisition.

So really interesting to see competing businesses get sold to different companies in the same week at similar valuations. It's kind of crazy. What an interesting time in the economy. What an interesting time to be an entrepreneur. Building. Building a business. I am trying to find new language for the term physical products business. Because a physical products business doesn't mean jack nothing. So it just means stuff. And I'm thinking about calling it more product creators or just creators or you're a business creator. And the reason I'm thinking about this language is I made kind of a list of people that I've worked with in the past that I really enjoyed working with and people that I've worked with closely in the past that I did not enjoy working with. And there was a very stark contrast between entrepreneurs who were up to no good and making trouble in my neighborhood, and then people who were doing really cool things and who were exciting to work with and ended up making a lot, lot of money. The people who ended up making a lot of money were creators. By creators, I mean they were infusing some sort of newness into the world and into their business. That didn't mean that they weren't building systems. It didn't mean that they were inventing something new. It just meant that they were. That they were infusing ideas, they were infusing creativity into their business, into their processes. And the people who were up to no good and making trouble in my neighborhood were pursuing a result. I want to build a company to sell it. I want to build a company and get to eight figures. I'm doing seven figures. I want to get to eight figures. Those people screw up and sabotage and don't make money. The people who are creating something new end up making a lot of money. Why is that? It's because value is valuable, because it's unique. Value is there because there is something scarce to it. Newness is scarce. Trying to do what everybody else is doing does not give you strategic advantage. Now, in the case of something like one bars, who was a direct competitor to Quest, a knockoff to Quest.

They still sold for $400 million. Why? They still had some newness. They innovated on flavor and they innovated on texture. And they stuck to one category. No, I lied. They had two categories. They had protein bars and cake bites. Cake bites gave them some new strategic opportunities too. So they had their audience, Quest had their audience, and they both were acquired. There has to be some sort of new creation that you are doing that is bringing value to the world that other people are willing to pay for. That's the difference. I have made all of my mistakes by pursuing a result rather than creating something new. And my clients and backroom members and people that I work with closely who make the most profit are doing something new. New can look like a lot of different things. New can be going on Amazon before anybody else is on Amazon. New can be running Facebook ads before people are running Facebook ads. New can look like running a comedy video before anybody else is running comedy video. New could mean doing podcasts industry in industries that don't have podcasts. New can be doing search engine optimization right now because everybody else is running for quick stuff. New can look like working with influencers or influencers that your industry hasn't worked with before. New can mean new products in your marketplace that other people aren't releasing. New can look like a whole lot of different things. New does not look like reverse engineering what your competitors did and doing exactly that so that you can get a similar result. F that there is no fun or creativity or newness to that. That is just straight up copying somebody else and hoping that you can beat them at their game. Some people do that. Very few people win at that game.

So the real value, the real fun, the real excitement in your business will come from doing something new. And new comes from creat creativity and creativity usually comes from inspiration and or fun and or play.

Creativity usually comes from a spark of innovation and idea that comes intrinsic to you and the people that you hang out with, from you and your team and your mastermind and the company that you keep. That's where the group think create something new that is valuable to other people that goes into the marketplace that other people value with their dollars, that grow to the point that somebody else says, look at all of this value that's being created. I'm going to buy this business. That is value.

Now people who are scared, people who are optimizing for a result end up looking at, oh, looks like a lot of people are running comedy Facebook ads. Let's manufacture a viral campaign for our Facebook ads. And then they sit there and they.

Think and they think and they think.

And they think their selves to death and go, I really want to have a viral video. How do I make a viral video? Well, guess what? It's really hard to manufacture a viral video when you are thinking about it. Because those kinds of things come when they are new and they are novel. And that comes from inspiration. And you never think your way to inspiration, so you never think yourself into creating new value. New value comes when you are usually at your best, which very rarely happens when you are trying to force it.

Now, I only know this because I.

Have done this a thousand times.

I have only tried to think my way to success and think my way to happiness and think my way to breakthroughs. About a thousand times I know that I have spent many, many times, many, many years sitting in front of a journal with a pen or thinking or brainstorming, trying to think of the thing that will work.

Trying to force myself into creating something that will definitely work. Well, guess what? Force and creativity are opposites.

Force and creativity look a lot like enemies rather than friends.

Force and creativity don't play in the same room. The more you try to force something, the less you are creating something.

Even if you are looking at creating systems, and that is your specialty, it's usually the people who are behind the.

Scenes creating those systems. Really love creating systems.

Really love finding the order and the chaos. Really love cleaning up messes. Really love creating long term systems that they can optimize. That's their unique value.

There is this big cavernous divide between when you are operating from a place of creativity and when you are operating from a place of scarcity. Scarcity. Doesn't that word sound like scared.

When.

You'Re playing scared.

You'Re creating scarcity.

They're related.

We're scared because there is scarcity and there's scarcity because we're scared.

When you optimize for.

Funny, that was a Freudian slip right there. When you play scared, you optimize for scarcity.

Write that down. Whoever does my quote cards on Instagram.

When you play scared, you end up optimizing for scarcity.

This is why a lot of you who listen to me and have listened to me for many years, who run either small businesses or have been thinking about business for a very long time.

Are not getting the results that you want because you are optimizing.

By copying what you think works for other people. Now, there are plenty of systems out there, there are plenty of different tricks and tactics and Amazon.

Algorithm optimizers and all kinds of things that you can do and Facebook ad formulas and stuff like that. All of that stuff is great when it is plugged into something that is creating real value.

When you have new value.

That you are producing because you want to, because it's fun, because you can, and you plug that into a system that amplifies that Work like Facebook ads or Amazon or shop to hire influencers.

That is when real magic happens. You see, most of you are going at, let's see, how do I get.

Influencers to shout out my stuff? How do I get influence? How much should I pay influencers?

Hmm. How can I incentivize influencers with big followings on Instagram to talk about my product? I did it and it didn't work.

It didn't work because you are optimizing.

For the result.

Rather than amplifying good work.

Amplifying good work looks like creating something that you love and other people love.

And then finding the other people that.

Love it and creating a system to automate that.

Pursuing a result looks like forcing something into enough attention that you hope that you get more than you paid for.

That's short term.

Long term is creation.

I'm working with a new mentor who's out in la and one of the things I like about him is.

He doesn't add anything to my to do list.

He takes things away from my to do list and he gets me to.

Optimize for the core of what I want, not for the result. And he finds that the result happens a lot faster when you optimize for.

What the core is of why you.

Started this business in the first place.

And I kept coming back to this word, which was creation. I just kept coming back to this idea of it's fun to create, it's creativity. Creation only happens when you don't have to do it.

Creation comes from pure love, it comes from pure abundance, it comes from pure giving, it comes from overflowing. That's when creation happens. All other things that you do in business to get result happen from. From trying to extract as much as possible from trying to get something, from trying to force something, because you don't even want what you're optimizing for. You want the result so that you can have what's on the other end of it. And so you put all blockages in your way that prevent you from getting what you want. Because you won't simply go after what it is that you do want, which is things like freedom, which is things like fun, which is things like service, which is things like connection, which is things like defining things on your own terms, which is things like doing the things in your business that get you excited about business, not the things that you think will work in your business. In fact, it is by doing the things that you think will will work in your business that are keeping you from getting the results that you want in your business, because no customer wants to give you results. They want results themselves. And by doing so, they're buying value that you create in the marketplace, not falling into the tricky systems that you think that you have built to serve you.

So there's a big cavernous dividend between extraction and creation.

They're opposites.

It's funny, when you create from abundance, which looks a lot like building something, creating something, giving something.

You end up getting abundance.

You end up getting what you put in.

But if you're playing scared.

If you're pursuing the result.

If you're putting into the marketplace a fishing pole with bait on it, hoping to catch a bunch of fish, tricking them with worms so that you can pull them into your boat and eat them.

Guess what you're extracting from the pond? Guess what you're gonna get?

You're going to get scarcity.

When you're playing scared, you create scarcity. When you play with abundance, you get abundance.

You see, I just.

I've just.

I've decided, I have discovered when arguing with socialists, that I can change their mind. If we can just have a discussion about abundance and scarcity. Is there a fixed pie?

If you getting rich means that I can't get rich, then of course I'm going to want to socialize what you get and get a little bit some of that, of course. But if there's abundance, if you getting more doesn't threaten me at all. In fact, if you getting more helps me get what I want, then I.

Want you to get as much as.

Possible.

By giving to you, by you doing good, by you getting rich, I actually benefit. If that's the case, then we're all just creating. We're all just playing.

You realize money is an idea, guys.

Money is just a way that we allocate resources. It's just a way for us to decide where we're going to put our attention. Think about that for a second. Money is actually a reflection of attention.

Money is how we allocate all of our attention.

So if there's a big problem in the world.

And we can calculate in some arbitrary way that we think there might be billions of dollars, by solving this problem, a lot of people are going to put attention on that to solve the problem. And by solving the problem for enough people, we end up getting a byproduct which looks like dollars, which is just how other people express their attention for that service.

So if we solve some big problem and other people want it, and they end up paying attention to it in the form of dollars, the people who created it or invested in it end up getting paid.

It's how we determine whether something is.

Worth paying attention to.

It's how you determine.

What is worth paying attention to.

You bought your house, you bought your car, you bought your clothes because they.

Were worth paying attention to.

You calculated somewhere in your brain.

That.

It was worth your attention.

And so you put dollars behind it when you could have put those dollars behind a variety of other things.

So the way to make money is to create something that other people deem worth paying attention to.

Not by pursuing.

The system that puts money in your pocket.

As soon as you get that, the.

Second you get that, you are unstoppable in your business, because you are no.

You no longer care what your competitors do. You no longer care what all of your peers do. You no longer care what anybody else does. You care what you and your team members and your employees do and what your customers are paying attention to.

And now it is simply a relationship.

Where you're deciding where you as a team are putting your attention and where you want to. Do you realize the freedom and the creativity that comes from that? When you can simply operate from the place of what do I want to give to the world? What do I want to create to the world? And you don't need to know that now. You need to get quiet enough to. You need to listen enough. You need to chill long enough to get the inspiration that says, I want to bring that to the world. That's when you are really powerful.

If you can't tell. This has been my personal development work over the last six months or so as I.

Come back to that place for myself and ask that question for myself. And I realized that every time I don't care about the result, I just do something because I want to do it, really cool things happen because it turns out I have a unique perspective on the world. I have a unique flair to what I do. I have a different kind of boldness than someone else. I see things from a different point of view. I have a different talent stack than somebody else. I write in a different way. I speak in a different way. I create in a different way than everybody else. And the minute I try to sound like somebody else, I really suck.

I'm really good at being me.

We all are.

We're all really good at being ourselves.

In fact, I believe that biologically.

We.

Find out who we are in the context of other people. You see.

We'Re all molded by our environment.

We become who our surroundings need us to be.

If we're alone or believe that we are alone, we become wired to survive.

And we get hard and we close out other people.

If our surroundings need a provider, if the tribe needs a provider, we tend.

To become the provider.

In fact, epigenetics even suggests that that information gets encoded into the womb, that when the tribe needs something.

Mother and father produce different proteins to make that child.

You are wired for the context of your tribe. You're wired for the context of who you were born into. You are then wired to become who you surround yourself with in service to the people that you surround yourself with. We are wired to create from that unique place that those around us need us to be.

So when we start copying people from other tribes, it doesn't go so well for us.

When we start copying the people within our tribe, it doesn't go so well for us. Value gets created when we are unique.

To ourselves, because that's what we are literally wired to be.

You know, I was going to talk about the election and Trump and what's going to happen in 2020 and 2024, but I think we'll leave that for another day.

I need you to get that your unique value in this world is how you will get rich, but more importantly, it's how you will be happy and how you will express freedom. Freedom is an empty concept. Those of you who say, I just want financial freedom don't realize that what you really want is just freedom.

Money and freedom are not correlated.

Freedom is the practice of you being fully expressed.

Freedom is you being uniquely you.

Money is the byproduct of you expressing that uniqueness, creating that value.

You think that by getting the money, you will have the ability to be you, but it's the opposite. You can be free. Now.

You don't feel free because you're not operating like you at your job. You don't feel free because you're not.

Acting like you in your business.

You don't feel free because you're not operating like you at home. And you think that more money will allow you to undo those things.

You can quit the job, you can leave the marriage, you can get rid of the business and do the thing that you want to do. But you can do that now. The reason that you aren't is because you are scared, which is making you do scarce things.

You can flip it. You could be you now.

You can be honest at work.

You can pause and say, what do.

I want to create in my business?

You can look at your partner and.

Say, what I really want is.

You can get quiet and ask yourself, what do I want?

You can get quiet and think to yourself.

What would feel good?

And you can start to play from there.

That, my friend, is freedom.

I root for you because I need you to produce from that place.

And so does the world. Thank you for listening to my unique spin on the world. It means the world to me. It makes me feel important. If you found value in this, let me know. It would mean the world to me. You can me on Twitter Ryan Moran or Instagram Ryan Daniel Moran and I'll see you on the next episode.

Hey team, real quick, Shameless plug here. If you've ever seen my company logo for capitalism.com, it's a red sea with a flame at the end. And the reason why that's the company logo is because I believe that our purpose as a company and my purpose as a leader is to light other fires. And that means creating content for entrepreneurs who go on to build great companies, working with entrepreneurs to help them break through their plateaus and to invest in companies that really have a shot at breaking out, teaching this stuff so that more success stories get created. I like to light fires. That's what I'm here to do. One of the ways that that I do that is inside of our monthly membership, which is called the 1%. And inside there we send out a monthly newsletter which features case studies of success stories, what's working right now from some of the best people in the world who are doing this stuff or building businesses and investing the profits. And we feature business ideas that you can literally rip off and steal. We often even just throw keyword lists at you and say go for it. Hey, we might even invest in this post. In the community, you'll probably find an investor too. And the idea is to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, influencers in one place where we can light fires really, really quickly. We also have a year long curriculum that is made to help you build businesses, invest the profits, increase your profits, create the change you want to see in the world. You can't not change as a result of going through this. So you can find out more@capitalism.com 1. If you've been listening to the podcast and you're missing community, you're missing opportunity, you're missing connection, you're missing being a part of a movement that is going to make you a better entrepreneur. This is going to fix that for you. It also gives you discounts on our events and our other products and it's more than worth $10 for every dollar we charge. That's my rule as an entrepreneur. I don't collect a dollar unless I know I can provide 10. And this absolutely meets that. So that's@capitalism.com the number one. Hope to see you inside.