Discover Your Purpose & Build A Business Empire | Ryan Daniel Moran #CapCon2019 Keynote

The one and only Ryan Daniel Moran.

Thank you, buddy. That's a role reversal.

Hey.

This is the fourth time that we've done this event. The fourth time that we've done this. And I started this event. I started doing this because I felt like a lost student. I felt like I had done something, like there was a calling in me, and I had no idea how to bring this out.

And I had hit about 2 million in revenue not knowing what I was going to do next.

And so I decided at the time, this is back in 2013, 2014, that I decided to do the event. I had about half a million dollars in retained earnings from businesses, and so I just decided to put it all on the line. And I decided I had no idea how I was going to get to where I wanted to go. I was.

My upbringing, I feel like, is as humble as it gets. We were.

Never in a lot of debt, but we never had anything extra. We were on reduced lunch programs at school when my parents split. My mom was a single mom. I watched that challenge for many years. I'm sure it had a lot of impact on me that I don't even recognize. And so when you hit a certain level of success, and I think those of us who are in this room know that there's like, at some point in your life, there's some sort of calling for something different.

And for me, that finally started to catch fire when my businesses crossed the seven figure mark, having no idea where I was going to take it from there. And so over the last four and five years, I've been rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. As a student.

And after interviewing hundreds of people on the podcast or personally or here on the stage.

It has.

Held a few consistent themes. And they weren't the themes that I thought they were going to be because I started out on this journey as a kid. I wanted to own a major league baseball team. I wanted to by the Cleveland Indians. And so my life became obsessed with trying to reverse engineer the greatness of others that I sought that were ahead, that I thought were ahead of me. I kept trying to find the formula. I kept trying to find the system. I kept trying to find the pathway.

And I dug.

Very deep down this rabbit hole to try and reverse engineer how other people had achieved what they had achieved.

And.

As a people, we're the only thing on the planet that has the ability to envision something in the future. We're the only species that can do that. Plants can't see the future.

My Cat doesn't know the Internet exists.

No other species can envision a future that's different than what is. And so what entrepreneurship is, is the process of building.

And so there's this point, at least for me anyway, where there's this experience of trying to figure out in our heads how we go about doing that, trying to pull that into the present. Now, for some of us, that's just. I see a different life than what I have right now.

And for others, that is, I have this grand vision for something else. I have this grand vision. I have this thing that I want to solve. I have this passion that I want to amplify. And it's a process of creating that type of a change. So most of us enter into this because we have some life that we want to experience. We have something that we want to bring about in our own lives or in other people's lives. And at some point in our entrepreneurial journey. And I've seen this 100% of the time, at some point, what we thought was gonna make us free actually makes us feel enslaved. There's this point at which we reach a certain level of success, or we have something that's working. At first, we were driven by creating some sort of a change in our own lives. And then we. We start juggling multiple balls. We start taking on different projects. We become workaholics.

We don't know how to disconnect. The thing that was supposed to give us freedom actually becomes the enslavement.

Now I know what it feels like to wake up every day and to feel like something is wrong, even though there's success.

To feel like.

God, I got into this because I wanted to work less so that I could actually. I don't know what.

And then I feel trapped by the very thing that I thought was going to make us free. And so the only way, at least for me, that I knew the way through that was to work more, was to work harder, was to dive deeper into the how to. Was to dive deeper into the process. Well, something must be wrong. So let's figure out a new way to do this. And there's a continual drive deeper into figuring out how we're going to do this. And at some point, the thing that drove us to get us free traps us.

I think my buddy Hooty said it well on a recent podcast episode that we did together. The episode was called Creating versus Working. And he said, we start this entrepreneurial path. Thinking those guys are working so much will only get enjoyment at the end of Their lives when there's retirement, how stupid are they? But we are trapped on the same path, working on the next goal and the next goal and the next goal, just like those who are employed. Can anybody relate to this?

Can anybody relate to this feeling of, well, now I'm trapped in my source of freedom. What the hell went wrong.

As a result of feeling that way? There was a period in my life for years, for years where I woke up every day with a pit in my stomach knowing something was wrong. And there was this idea of when you get what you want.

And it doesn't satisfy you, it's like the worst failure ever.

And so the natural reaction, especially for those of us who are entrepreneurs, who work in silos, who have small teams.

We think that there's some other way of doing it that's gonna fix it. And so we shoulder even more of the burden. We work even more. We take on an even bigger and bigger load until it breaks us. Something's fundamentally wrong with this. Like, something is not fundamentally wrong with the how we're doing it. There's something very wrong with this process, the way that we're approaching it. I mean, if, and I know this is the case universally, if freedom is a primary driver of our lives, why does the thing that gives us freedom in the first place.

Make us feel worse at times? You know, there was a period where I would say, man, I work so hard for, like, these few moments that I feel like I get a few times a year. So I'm just gonna try and cherish those moments just a little bit, a little bit more.

I'm just gonna try and savor those moments that I actually enjoy, because that's what I got into this for. There were times I wondered maybe it would just be better. I remember at one point, actually, Josh, I said to Josh, we were on a bus in a Mastermind together. I said, man, sometimes I think I'm just gonna throw in the towel and get a job.

I think they work a lot less, and sometimes I think they're a lot happier and have way less headaches than we do as entrepreneurs.

That's when you realize that it can be a really lonely journey, that it can be a really frustrating journey. And you wonder when the payoff is going to be. And of course, in today's social media world, everybody else is crushing it, Everybody else is killing it. Everybody else is happy as hell.

And so that little dopamine kick becomes an addiction all by itself. And so we continue to work harder. And so this idea of freedom Eludes us. And at least for me, we end up wondering, was this even worth it in the first place?

Now, I. I've been fascinated by my own experience in this, and I can tell you, the way I learn is I make mistakes. Like, I intentionally make mistakes. When c money and I go to do a video and we don't know what we're gonna do in the video, I go, ah, let's make some mistakes. We'll figure it out. That is me. I run fast into a wall, and then I go other way until I hit another wall and I turn and I go, let's go into that. That is how I learn. And I am always willing to just take all the chips and put them to the middle of the table and say, let's see how this goes. I'm not recommending that for most people. It's how I learn. So my attempt today is to try and let you avoid them. Because there were many, many years of unhappiness in my entrepreneurial journey. For me to come out on the other side with even a sense of, oh, there it is.

That's what it was all about. I found it.

And so I'm going to show you that path.

And use my journey as the case study to try and shorten that curve for you. Because I believe, and I say this, and I'm sorry it's become cliche. I'm sorry, but I believe that entrepreneurs are the source of change in the world. And every year that we spend out of alignment with what you are able to bring to the world, you is a disservice to yourself and a disservice to your family and a disservice to the people around you and to the thing that you want to make happen in the world or that you just want to experience. Look, let's cut the bullshit. We are all in this because we want to be happy. We are all in this because even if we're pursuing the meaning more than the fun, we want to be happy. And we moved away from something that wasn't making us happy to pursue something that would. And then entrepreneurs, at least in my experience, hit this wall where they no longer are happy. So we can cut all of the fluff, we can cut all the change the world fru ru bullshit out of the case. If you just want to be happy.

If you just want to amplify the feelings that you want to have the experience of life, when do you get yours?

When's the payoff?

That's what we're going to address.

And I think we can boil it down to three keys. Three things of actually uncovering your purpose, not in a, like, airy fairy way, but what actually lights you up and to build an empire around it that makes you happy and leaves a legacy, one that you're proud of, not one that we just brag about on social media, but one that was actually the thing that you were made to do. Number one, knowing what you want, which seems so overly simple that I'm embarrassed to put it on a slide. But the fact of the matter is, most of us are pursuing things that we don't actually want. Most of us. When we go out to set our goals at the beginning of the year, the beginning of the quarter, it's hit certain revenue mark, it's grow by certain percentage, it's hit certain benchmark.

It'S to achieve certain goals that we can check off, which, by the way, can pave the way for some really good decisions in the macro, but they're not that thing that we actually want. Most of us are completely out of tune with what it is that we want. And we know this because they don't even excite us anymore. We know this because there's no feeling or emotion attached to them in the first place. We know this because we set them, because we think that we have to, because we got to a certain point and the growth becomes out of obligation rather than anything else.

We have this business. It's growing. What do I do now? I guess I'll grow more.

I should probably do that because it's killing it for this person over here. And it becomes this comparison game. Not even a comparison game to other people, although that's very true. There's a comparison to even where we are right now.

And so there's.

A constant battle.

Between where we set our priorities and what we actually want, because they're very rarely in alignment.

There's a quote from a book that I read recently that is one of the best business books I've read in a long time. It's called Clockwork.

The quote is this. Traditional teachings tell us to first determine who we are serving and to meet their need. You need to sell what the customer wants. Otherwise you won't have anything to sell. On the surface, this theory seems to make sense. Most of us have followed this theory. But it ignores the most important element of a successful business.

You.

I have seen wonderful businesses pivot into disdain and failure. The owners keep shifting their offering to match what the customer wants until the customer starts buying. But in the process, they neglect to consider what they, the owner themselves, want. They ignore what their heart calls out to do. And while the business may be winning customers, it is losing the heart and the soul of the business. Sure, it may make money, but at what cost?

No, I like money a lot.

Because it amplifies whatever you want to amplify.

It allows you to make decisions and to create realities that wouldn't exist without it. But when the customer, or when the demands of the marketplace become the goal in and of itself, we often trade.

Our own desire to live the lives that we want. And that's why we started in the first place.

So how do you discover it?

One of my favorite philosophers who is no longer with us is Alan Watts. And I'd like to play what he had to say on the matter.

St. Paul said that the laborer is worthy of his hire.

And I, as a philosopher, mere philosopher.

You know, dealing in higher things, always insist that I be paid for my work.

And I get the highest fee I can get.

And people say, well, you're just out for money. I say, that's none of your business.

Because I give most of it away.

My own needs being extremely simple.

Although I enjoy good food, I don't even own a television set.

And, you know, it's a very simple life, but I've got enough, and enough is as good as a feast.

You see, a lot of people don't feel happy unless they have another thing beyond money, which is called status.

And status to a very large extent in our economy consists in conspicuous consumption.

In having this thing and that thing and the other thing, in having a swimming pool, a Ferrari, a certain kind of clothes and certain kind of house with an enormous round style picture window, and so on and so on and so on. And we think we need all that because we've been persuaded by a certain kind of propaganda that that's how we ought to live.

Because we haven't asked ourselves whether that was what we really wanted.

Because we haven't asked ourselves if that was what we really wanted. Because we haven't asked ourselves if that was what we really wanted.

That's the line that I go, oh, because we haven't asked ourselves if that was what we really wanted.

I really appreciate the fact that a philosopher from the 1970s was worried about maximizing his value in the marketplace and negotiated the highest fees that he could get. I rather appreciate that.

While also recognizing at the same time what he really wanted so he could spend the money to amplify exactly that.

This reminded me of most of you know, I went to college thinking I was going to be a pastor. I was raised in the Baptist church, was a born again Christian for most of my life. Walked away from the church shortly after college. I no longer consider myself religious.

But I find some of the teachings of Jesus very interesting and I'm paraphrasing Matthew 19 on this slide. Forgive those of you who like to proof text and will accuse me of removing a few verses I did. But to paraphrase Matthew 19, this is one of the passages that we used to debate in pastoral school or even in church because it had one of the naughty lines we used to call them. One of the lines that we used to fight over.

So a man comes to Jesus and says, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And Jesus says to him, keep the commandments and if you would be perfect, go and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven and come follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Jesus said to his disciples, truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, here's the naughty verse that people fight over. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. I got into a debate actually with one of my business partners when we started our business, because we both had Christian backgrounds and we had to actually talk about undoing some of the guilt that existed around having money because of this verse. Now what I love about this passage, and I promise not to get into a full sermon on this topic, but what I love about this passage, first of all, is the man says to Jesus, what thing will I do? What thing can I do? What? What can I do to get the thing? It reminds me so much of the experience that I have working when I'm feeling like I've got 18 hours of work that I'm doing every day. And then I go, what do I need to do on top of what I'm already doing to get the result that I want? What's the thing that I have to keep doing? Will you please give me the thing that I can add to my existing to do list, which is already way too frickin long in order to feel like I'm now on track?

And what's interesting, I just love how people miss this. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to Enter the kingdom of heaven. First of all, side rant. Jesus rarely talked about heaven being a place in the sky. That was when you died, man. We would fight so many fewer wars and have way fewer debates if we recognize that he wasn't talking about that. But most importantly, this is so interesting. There was a place in Damascus. It was a very narrow road. It was this very narrow passageway, and it was referred to as the Eye of the Needle.

And camels couldn't pass through.

Was too narrow. Camels couldn't go through the wide area unless they did one thing.

You see, camels couldn't pass through, not because they were too big, but because they were one of the main forms of transportation at the time. And so what happened was they would carry these bags on the side of them, and so their own bodies combined with what they were carrying, could not pass through this narrow way unless they did one thing. They had to drop their possessions.

And Jesus is here talking to a rich man saying, sell your possessions if you want to be perfect. And he goes away. Sad. Why? Because he had many.

And the way that I interpret this, what this means to me now, is that so many of us work so damn hard to get anywhere and reward ourselves with possessions or reward ourselves with more egoic pursuits, with more things that we think are going to prove our value, make the business what we think is going to be the key to our success, while ignoring our own soul's calling, while ignoring the thing that we wanted to do in the first place. Mostly because we're comparing ourselves to other people. Mostly because we perceive other people as having found the thing that we think we are pursuing.

I did a podcast.

On my realization of this when I really got away from a lot of the noise. And this is an Instagram post of what I journaled about. Of me realizing that I had done most of my work, most of my pursuits, feeling like those things were going to be the pathway to being really happy. I said in this, if I make a few million more, then I'll be able to do what I want. Which seemed to be even more pursuits of ego. What if I didn't need any of that? What would I want then? What would I want then? What would I want then?

I said, I know this much. It wouldn't be based on numbers.

Gary Vee was the first person that I booked ever to speak at one of our live events because I thought he was 10 years ahead of me and I wanted to find out what he knew that I didn't. It's really interesting if You've never watched the recordings of the capitalism conference that we publish on YouTube. It's amazing how things connect with you differently as you grow in your journey. And Gary's was my favorite because as I mature, as I learn more of what he says impacts me. And there's certain things that I realized that he had figured out ahead of me, and this is one of them.

I, very early in my age, I would tell you one of the pillars that I think will bring you value. And I have not figured out in the last 20 years how to help this. But I will tell you, this is the dis. I can tell you right now, there's no secret, there's no model, there's no system. But there is something that completely maps to success through and through. I just don't know how to teach it and I actually don't know if it's teachable. But I'd like to say it right now because I was deploying it as a 15 year old, which is if you were fortunate enough to be sitting in this room right now and you think that you have self awareness, then you are very gifted and you have a real shot of winning. The single biggest reason most people don't win or build bigger businesses or are successful or whatever they want is cause they lack self awareness. They hope and dream to be something and they've tricked themselves to what they're actually about. The second that you're willing to accept who you actually are and then put yourself in a position to win around that skill, the second you start seeing upside. And that's what happened with me. I ate shit. Entrepreneurship was not sexy. When I was 15, 16, 17. The way to make it was through education, so getting D's and F's. My friend's parents thought I was a loser. Right? You know, if I was a kid now and acted the way I did, then in today's school system they'd be like, oh, there's the next Mark Zuckerberg, right?

It's cool.

Back then it wasn't viewed that way. And I had to basically live four to five years of my life where literally outside of probably my mom and dad and me, everybody in the outside didn't think that I would be successful. And it was really interesting. What helped me through that was I just knew who I was. I didn't care. I just knew.

I think the reason why we have such a hard time identifying what it is that we want outside of like external numbers is because we already have it. We're just not aware of it, we already have it. And I don't mean the thing we. We want, because most of us want to be something, not have or do something. We want to be happy, we want to be free, we want to be creative, we want to be in flow, we want to be connected, we want to be growing. These are the things that we want to be. And yet we get lost in the path in doing the thing that we think is going to allow us to do that. When money in the first place, when we started in this journey, was going to be the thing that amplified that, it was going to be the thing that liberated that. And instead we get attached to the result rather than in tune with what it is that we wanted in the first place. So I do think self awareness can be taught. I do think that there's a way to uncover what that is. And number one, it requires you to get real quiet. Because most of us distract ourselves in the art of learning, of putting on a podcast while we're in the shower of every free second checking the phone, of finding the next audio book, of finding the next thing to read, that there is never a moment in which we're quiet.

You know, I think there's a lot of talk about psychedelics and psychedelic research going on right now. It's like it's having its second heyday. And I think part of the reason why psychedelics are becoming kind of pop culture right now is because for the first time in our history as human beings, if you have an emotion, you don't have to deal with it. For the first time ever, the second. The half a second you're bored, the phone comes out. The half a second you feel any sort of loneliness. The quarter second you feel anything that you don't want to feel. We distract ourselves. And sometimes we call it learning, sometimes we call it checking. Sometimes we do it because we're afraid we're going to miss something. And we're never quiet, Ever. We don't even know what quiet is. We are constantly feeding the voice in our head that is constantly running around like a hamster.

And we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people.

When you're real quiet, it's real easy to identify what our best and worst experiences were.

By simply identifying what the best experiences were that we want to have more of. That's a clue to your purpose. That is a very clear sign of what lights you up. That is what the money's for. The best experiences that you've had. That's a sign.

That's a guidepost into what you got into this game for.

And what's interesting about that is that most of them came real natural, most of them came real easy. There's a couple tests that I like that help identify this because as entrepreneurs we want to have a test to tell us wanna verify what we already know. One of them is Wealth Dynamics. Wealth Dynamics appointed me. It's basically an entrepreneurial personality type. What kind of entrepreneur are you? And I was a star first, investor second. Took me about six and a half years to discover what that meant. But my happiest moment were when I had an audience and when I was doing something on the investment side. Like you realize I am shocked. I'm shocked that people don't like being on stage.

I'm shocked by this.

I just think everybody must love that. Doesn't everybody love to have an audience? Doesn't everybody like to record their thoughts in a podcast?

It's so obvious to me, I don't understand.

And what I realize now is the same thing that is natural and easy for you I would loathe and hate.

And we tend to pursue relationships or hire people that are just like us.

Rather than honoring where you're really unique and where other people are really unique. Which is why I really like Dan Sullivan's unique ability. And the Colby Index is another really good personality test. But all this ends up doing is uncovering what's really easy and natural for you.

Jesse Elder said once, I think here at our first ever event, he said the hardest part is figuring out how easy it is.

Of uncovering the things that we do in order to prevent us.

From getting quiet and identifying what we wanted in the first place. Anybody know this guy?

This handsome dude? This was JP's first ever, I believe his first ever funny video. It's fun if you go to his YouTube channel and you sort by oldest. A lot of his videos for years were teaching style, spiritually minded videos. And what I love about this is he actually had to put in parentheses funny.

In the title. And the reason as we talked about this and he shared this on the podcast episode that we did together, he did this because he was afraid that being funny was going to be bad for business, that highlighting his own uniqueness was going to be bad for business. It was going to sabotage the business, it was going to make things crash and burn. And then came JP Sears. Out of nowhere over the last couple years has had meteoric success and that has been the thing that I've unpacked as I've interviewed hundreds of people and rubbed shoulders with some of the world's successful people. It is always that. It is never that they found the strategy that they implemented. It was always that they went back to the thing that once they applied to a strategy, caught fire. That was the moment, that was the turning point. And our head does not want to hear that because it can't make sense of it, because there's no other comparison for it, because we each bring something different to the table.

There's a formula that Greg Reed shared on this is like episode four of my podcast way back in 2013. He calls it his success formula. And it looks like this P for passion.

Plus talent.

Plus action and association plus faith equals success. Now, I did not like this when he shared it with me. And he shared this with me for the first time, actually, when I was going through one of those really dark years.

I felt like I was out of alignment, like I was never going to achieve what it is that I wanted to achieve. And he shared this with me and it frustrated me because I'm sitting here going, how does somebody who is passionate about baseball, religion, politics and business, who's good at coming up with ideas and talking.

I have no idea how that becomes success.

And this really frustrated me.

And so I ignored it for about five years and then came back to it and went, wow, whoa. I get it now, and I'll share about that with you as this goes on. But I want you to think about this for a second. The passion and the talent.

And then acting and surrounding yourself with people and working like hell is the foundation of the formula. And number two, the second step, when we've started to identify our best and worst experiences, we've gotten real quiet.

We started to identify what the heck it is that we actually want. Number two is knowing how to get there. Now, we love the how to in entrepreneurial Internet land. We love the how to. We love the process, we love the system. We love reverse engineering and then pulling it into ourselves so that we get the same result. But when the how to becomes the focus, we are obsessed over the distribution mechanism rather than the doing, which is why you have so many annoying Instagram experts, so many annoying Facebook ninjas.

Why? I finally realized why I really resisted the idea of being the Amazon guy, because the idea was the distribution comes later.

Freedom is the doing.

Freedom is the doing of the thing that you want.

Freedom is you acting out what it is that you want. I heard Eben Pagan say once, freedom is not the ability to do what you want. Freedom is doing what you want.

And we put so many barriers in between.

What it is that we want and the doing of what we want. And it's when we sell the company, when it gets to 2 million, when it gets to 10 million, then I will do what I want.

While we completely miss the fact that the doing of what we want, the thing that will make us free and the thing that will make us rich.

It'S a weird mind fuck.

It's a really, really weird thing that we have to undo.

You see, we're marketers, we're entrepreneurs. We can amplify anything. We've proven this right. Most of us have won at something, even if we don't give ourselves credit for it because we're comparing ourselves to other people, we've won at something.

We're winners.

We buck the trend, we change the system. We can amplify whatever we want. So be very careful of what you amplify. Be very careful of what you give that talent to. Be very careful of what you gift that energy to.

Russell Brunson was up here last year and he went through his whole funnel system. And it's been interesting to watch how many people think the funnel is the way. And so people look at the numbers of the funnel and build a funnel.

And they hate their lives.

Whereas his entire point in the first place was if you know what it is that you want to bring about, this is the way to amplify that. And that's when you see people explode. When you marry what it is that you want, what you and your company brings that is unique to the world, marketing becomes the amplification of that rather than the thing that allows you to do step one. I started to notice this when I was backstage with Jesse Itzler a couple years ago. And he's built and run a couple hundred million dollar companies. And I asked him, why do you come give keynotes? Why do you do this kind of stuff? And he was like, this is just what I like to do. This is me free, this is me doing my thing.

And he shared with me that every time he did that, every time he does that.

Really big businesses, really cool opportunities just kind of happen. They just kind of show up. Tom Bilyeu was exactly the same way. Because if you listen to his story, he did kind of the same thing that a lot of us do. He walked away from something that wasn't making him happy and he started doing this thing where he liked it so much that he was in the, he was in the kitchen cutting up Quest bars by hand. Six years later, It's a billion dollar company.

Interesting. Experienced this when I met Moise Ali. He spoke at our event earlier this year. Got to 100 million in two years.

And it was so interesting to hear him tell the story because he said everyone else was telling us exactly how we should do it. Was telling us all the distribution mechanisms that we should use to get our product to the world. But none of them felt like what we wanted to do. None of them felt like they were our unique thing in the world. They took us out of alignment of who we wanted to be. So we just didn't do any of those. And we said, oh, I mean they might be great opportunities, but I'd really much rather build a business that I'm happy with. And the result was that they got acquired for $100 million two years after being founded.

It's so easy for us to put money as the thing that makes us free. But money is a byproduct of value.

That's all. Money is the exchange of value. The more value we create, the more money we make. But value.

Is unique by nature. It doesn't happen by copying or model what the next guy or gal does. It's unique by nature. You are unique by nature. Your company is unique by nature. And so when you follow the proven plan of someone else, you diminish that uniqueness. You become less valuable and you make less less money.

It's the opposite of what everybody else talks about.

And then you distribute that unique value. That's how you get what you want. That's how you are free. That's how you amplify and grow a business. Your upside is not from learning a new strategy or adding another to do item you is by distributing and amplifying you and your company's uniqueness. And many of you, especially you physical product sellers, are resistant to this idea of doing anything unique. You're afraid of the uniqueness. And so you fear what's gonna happen when other people start distributing the exact same thing as you. Guess what? Both of you become less valuable. That's what happens. Your job as an entrepreneur is to create and distribute unique value. And you do that according to what it is that you want. Because that's what you got into this for in the first place.

Step two is knowing the how, it's distributing the uniqueness. Step three is knowing who you need with you. Look, we all feel alone in this game. All of us, every single one of us. It's by our nature because we know there's something unique about us. We know there's something weird about us. And so as a result, we always felt a little bit separate from the rest of the group because we're all a little bit unique and weird. And Entrepreneurs are the 1 people in the world who see something different about life and try to change it, which is a lonely journey by nature. Now, for some people, that's just. You're unique and so you're kind of alone in this and it's your greatest strength. But for most of us, that feeling of being alone puts us in survival mode, which is really odd because when we're in survival mode, we start doing things, pulling things toward us, which pushes other people away, which perpetuates the cycle, which is why you get a lot of angry people on the Internet. Loneliness begets more loneliness because we end up doing the things that create survival mode and push other people away. You realize, guys, we're made to be in groups of people. So your uniqueness was supposed to be the greatest gift that you brought to the rest of the group. But in this world, we're all our own tribe.

No wonder we feel alone. No wonder we feel like we carry too much on our backs. No wonder. No wonder.

Here's the thing. We never meet the people who help us build that empire, who build the thing that we want. It literally cannot happen until it reflects the thing that you actually want. Because other people want to feel, feel that same thing. They want what they want too. And so look, if what you want out of your business is to be cash flow positive and to make $10 million in EBITDA a year, great. Own it. Make it your mission.

Publicize it, state it, internalize it.

Don't try to add some purpose driven bullshit to it. If it's not what you want, own it. Because then you'll be able to go recruit other people who want that too. And now your missions are aligned. Now your visions are aligned. If it's to work as little as possible, are still producing a profit. If it's to amplify a message, whatever it is that you want, you can do. But if you're lying about why you're bringing it to the world, you bring on other liars or people who are misled to be a part of your vision in the first place. And guess what? You're never going to have synergy, which means you're always going to be carrying this thing on your back and feeling alone. You never really meet the people who help drive the company to where you want until you're honest with yourself about what it is that you're building. Jeff woods is going to be sharing tomorrow and he's going to be going through. I've asked him to lay out the empire building model. It was really helpful for me. But this is a little bit of a preview. This little graph right here is the first ever model of Disney where Walt Disney was laughed out of the room because it was too crazy to build. Of course it was too crazy to build. Nobody's ever done it before. Nobody's ever done what you do ever before. You have never existed before. No vision has ever existed before. And he was laughed out of the room for it. Jeff will be breaking this down tomorrow in more of a step by step model. But one tool that's been really helpful for me has been the vivid vision. This was shared by Cameron Herold here on the stage a few years ago. It's the process of one, getting real fricking quiet and number two, putting into a two page document what it is that you actually want the company to look like. I use this as a filtering tool when hiring. This is made to elicit either a hell yes or a no when I'm bringing somebody on. Because if they're not a hell yes, like, let's go home. There's other things you can do. There's other things we can do.

If this isn't your thing, it's totally fine. Because if you're not happy, we're both going to be unhappy. And so you end up doing this thing where it's like.

I think a lot of times in hiring, especially when you're hiring your first people, you think that other people are only motivated by money.

And so you feel the need to like, always work out the numbers perfectly rather than creating an environment and a structure and a way that makes people live the lives that they want. Entrepreneurship is a route to get the life that you want. So is working for somebody else. Like, we're all trying to do that, live the lives that we want. So if you're honest about the life that you want, you can also create it for other people too. And you can invite them into that vision which allows you to build the empire that it is that you want to bring to the world. Jeff Hoffman called it building your New England Patriots. You know, the perennial winner, the team that keeps going back and winning. You know what's funny about the Patriots is they don't have a lot of stars. They got one now, right, because he's probably the best quarterback ever. But apart from that, there's not, like there's no standouts. It's a system, it's a family, it's a culture. And they all have one aligned goal, one aligned vision. And it's win Super Bowls. And people join because they want to win Super Bowls, not because they want to be stars. And when that is all aligned, you can be a perennial winner. The answer to almost all of your problems is who. Who you're with, who you're doing this for, who you're trying to impress, who you need to meet. The answer is almost always who. But the first who is you.

And if you're not real honest about what it is that you want, you'll never get it because you'll be building something that you don't.

These three keys are knowing what you want, identifying the unique value that you bring to the world, knowing how to get there.

And actually doing. Being the freedom. Freedom is the doing of it is the amplification of that uniqueness and then surrounding yourself with people who are in the exact same mode of wanting to amplify what their uniqueness is.

Very briefly, I'm going to share myself as the case study because this was really hard for me.

This was really hard.

I spent so many years.

So many years trying to figure it out, trying to build something that I didn't really want.

And sacrificing my health, my happiness, getting all of the external things and feeling more trapped than ever.

Not knowing what was wrong.

And what was.

Increasingly frustrating about it was when I did my exercise of, you know, best and worst, my best moments were when I got drunk with Billie Jean and argued about politics, religion and abortion.

By the way, did anyone ever see this video?

Yeah, four people watched it and I didn't give a fuck.

It was so much fun. Now, the reason I share this with you is because when I made my best and worst list, all of my best were, like, times I was performing, times when I was a kid, times when.

I was doing things that I thought were easy. And so I had done that before this experience. And then I hung out with Billy and I went back to my hotel room and I journaled. How can I do this every day? You wouldn't have to pay me. We would just talk about big ideas and then hug it out at the end. It would be great.

That's totally weird, by the way. I've come to find not everyone enjoys this, but I sure did. So this is frustrating for me, right? This isn't what I think my skill set is. This isn't what I've practiced for 10 years.

But because I've been thinking about this for a long time, I was reminded of an experience, a moment where Carl Icahn, a famous investor, tweeted this tweet. And he said, we currently have a large position in Apple. We believe the company to be extremely undervalued. So spoke to Tim Cook today, more to come. This tweet added tens of billions of dollars in valuation to Apple. A tweet, that's weird.

That's not supposed to happen.

As I modified that success formula, as I started to pay attention to this, I started to see where my uniqueness could be applied to the actual doing. And so I was having dinner with Tim Ferriss. We're at this restaurant in Austin. Special thanks to Jason Hartman, who made this happen. And it was funny. A mouse, a rat ran up. We were sitting outside, it ran up a tree, and Tim says, wow, I really want to tweet. I really want to share on social media that I just saw a rat at this restaurant, but I know that it would really hurt this restaurant. I was like, whoa, that's powerful. That's kind of badass to say that you can tweet and hurt a restaurant sales, that's kind of cool. But I was kind of fascinated with this idea of audiences. You've heard me talk about audiences for years, right? Because I'm fascinated by this idea of somebody who has an audience can impact a brand or a business.

And as I've continued to surround myself with other people, I was really struck by the words of Brian Lee. This was last year at the Capitalism Conference. And Brian is talking about how his entire process is. He goes audience first.

And the impact that audience brings to the world. Then he raises the money and he stays in the production chair. He just brings the people together because that's what his core skillset is. And he's super humble about it, puts great people in place and he stays out of the way. And I went, huh, this is really interesting. And I've listened to people like Gary Vee talk about how that's the trend, how that's going to, how that's the wave in business, how.

The unique audiences, the weird audiences are the things that will put the big brands out. So when I wrote my Vivid Vision, we just went through this as a team. I started it with this. Our end game is simple. To have an audience so responsive that we can take any business to new heights. When we promote products, people, or brands, we impact them by leveraging our audience and our network. Every relationship that we foster, every customer that we take under our wing. Every video that we release exists to make this endgame a reality, because this is what I want to do anyway. And if I can build the business to put me in the place to just do what I would do anyway, I'm happy no matter what the result is. And the cool thing about this, do you have any idea how good it feels to be able to just say what you're up to in the world and not care if somebody copies you or not care what anybody thinks about it, because it's just what you want to do anyway? Tom, Bill, you said the exact same thing to me. They had a mission as a company that they wanted to bring out, and if somebody else could do it better than him, he was happy for them. That's freedom.

So.

I spend a tremendous amount of time and energy doing weird things on the Internet, like drinking wine in front of a camera and launching podcasts, because it was what I would do anyway. I can't not. I can't not talk about of this and all of you are here like there was no goal, there was no path, there was no formula.

Until there was, and I stopped enjoying it.

And it became less unique and it became less valuable.

And it's taken. Shedding all of that attachment to. To go back to this is just what we would do anyway.

And if we get paid for it, that'd be really fun.

And so my empire, after a whole lot of being quiet and doing a lot of work, is building an audience and building brands and combining the two together.

So I have a business with my partners, Clement Wan, Max Kerwick.

Of developing and Investing in brands with purpose of building brands that we're just excited about. We had a meeting recently. I had two beers, so I was sloshed. Two beers. I could barely stand, and I put my cup on the table and I was like, we need to do just more things that we like doing just because we like doing. That's what we're here to do anyway. That's the point. That's why we got into this. And so my empire is taking an audience because it's what I would do anyway. And launch businesses that we're excited about because it's what we would do anyway. And investing in other entrepreneurs who are doing the exact same thing, launching brands and businesses that we're excited about. And capitalism.

The platform becomes the way that we amplify that and incubate other businesses and at the same time, surrounding ourselves with people who are playing a big game. We said in the Vivid vision. We're here to bring exciting businesses in front of an audience to light their fires. And to do this, we continually cultivate a responsive audience of high achievers. And we maintain a pipeline of deal flow as we empower emerging entrepreneurs. Because that's what I would want to do anyway.

But what's interesting is when you're really, really clear about what that is. The monetization model, the path forward all shows up. We've all seen the trend of brands being acquired for billions of dollars. Hell, George, you guys know George Clooney had a. I don't even know what it was. A tequila company be acquired for $4 billion. More money than he ever made as an actor because he had an audience. And he just did it because he wanted to do it. That's where our greatness is. What about you?

Your greatness doesn't come from a system that you apply or a path that you follow. It's innate to you. When you're so clear.

When you're so in tune with what that is and not like finding some outside purpose, but the thing that you wanted to do anyway, the thing that you would do just because, like you got into business cause you wanted to do this thing. When you are in tune with that.

That'S your greatest shot. That's how you make it.

When you know what that is. Because you're quiet, because you're in tune and because you just do it anyway. That's when you create a life you actually love. And the crazy thing is it's actually when you create the biggest business you've ever had. And that is when all of the stuff that we spend so much energy trying to learn and trying to figure out just becomes the thing that makes that even better. And that is when we start surrounding ourselves with team members and with partners who help amplify and bring to the world what it is that we want to do. That's when it all comes together. That's how you build the life that you want. That's how you change your family and your community. That's how you actually create the ripple effects that matter. Because this world doesn't need you to reverse engineer some system. It needs you to be completely lit up. It needs you to actually be free. Because that is how you create the life that you want for yourself, for everyone around you. And that is how you change the fucking world. Thank you. I love you. I support you. I believe in you. Thank you.

Please let him hear it. Ryan Moran. Put your heart and soul into appreciating this guy.