Empire Report: My Behind The Scenes Look At Building A Massive Brand #TheOnePercent

You need to go succeed in one area first. A lot of the people that I just let go, you know, I had hired them to like, manage an empire. And it was that idea of like, you buy your empire builders and you give them the whole thing. But really what I needed was for them to succeed in one specific area so that then they could have the momentum to pivot to the next area. And that's how you build an empire, not by just giving it to them and asking them to figure it out.

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This is capitalism.com and we are the 1%. Hey, what's up, everybody? Ryan here. I was recording some videos at the house with C Money, and right in the middle of recording, we went for a drive and he says to me, hey, you know, we should do an empire report on what's going on behind the curtain of capitalism dot com. Because one of the things I've wanted to do and I've told him this is I've really wanted to document the story of building a great company, the story of capitalism, through the eyes of capitalism dot com. How poetic and romantic is that? I think. Anyway, so I want to be more transparent and document more of the process of the build out of this company. Because, you know, there's challenges in hiring, there's challenges in finding out what your products and your revenue model is going to be, and there's insights and solutions that come on the back of that, and there's interest in, you know, seeing what the numbers look like, and there's a lot to be learned from that. So in. In this, we're going to go through. How I made some strategic hires when hiring was a real challenge for me. Building out the vision for the team was a big adjustment that I had to make in 2018. And I feel really confident in some decisions that I made recently. And this is almost exactly a year after me going through a lot of team failures that I really beat myself up on. I went to a really dark spot over some failures about a year ago, and I share more about that in this chat. And then we go into the revenue model that is capitalism.com and I can almost guarantee you it is not what you think it is. And we go into what that model looks like, how we're building it, and how it impacts us, our customers, the world, why we're going in that direction when we originally thought we were going to go into a different direction. And this is going to Give you a real peek behind the curtain to what the heck we're really doing. I think you're gonna enjoy this. So sit tight and enjoy. What's up everybody? Ryan here. And I'm joined by my right hand man in the Tesla C. Money. What up, dude?

What up? What up?

So we thought it would be fun. This was C's idea. This is a really smart idea of doing an update on the empire that we're building here@capitalism.com. i think it's kind of poetic and romantic to be documenting the story of capitalism on a business that is capitalism dot com. And so we want to kind of peel back the curtain and show you some pivots in our business. Pivots in, you know, what's worked and what hasn't. Because there's been plenty of things that haven't worked and tell you what's going on at the company. So we can kind of document the story ofcapitalism through capitalism.com.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I, you know, when I first started listening to Freedom Fast Lane, I really like these income reports you did for your physical products businesses talking about like monthly income. And it started to get complicated when you're like different sources, different businesses, you were exiting and selling business.

And I felt like a douche doing it, to be honest. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's actually more interesting to tell people maybe about like what's going on in the company of capitalism. Yeah. Because like, yeah, no one feel like people don't really know much about like the staff or the mission or like how the company makes money necessarily outside of how you make money.

But yeah, I mean, for people who don't know, I think it's an exciting time because we're expanding again. We're growing, we're hiring really high level people.

So it's interesting you call it high level people and I would love to hear your perspective on this because there's definitely been a shift in how I approach hiring, management, team building. And it was a very hard transition. So before I explain that, why don't you express what you mean by high level people?

Yeah, sure. I mean I've been really full time just a year and a half now.

It's only been. Been that long.

Yeah, it feels like we've done a lot, my goodness. Traveled the world, made a bunch of videos and put on events. But yeah, so we've seen a couple people come and go. And what I mean is that I feel like we're hiring people who have done it before and you've talked about your criteria for hiring being like, you want them to have the Rolodex of people in the network who can make certain moves. And if you're hiring someone to do a certain task or objective, they need to have done it before.

There's different pros and cons to hiring someone who can grow into a role. But, you know, new director of marketing, new director of content position. With what I see as people who have that track record who have, like, the super bowl rings.

Yes.

So it makes me feel good because, you know, we're a small team, and being supported by what I see as, like, really experienced and senior people really is helping everyone level up.

So let's go through how we got to this point of being able to identify and recruit and keep talent. And then I want to go into the revenue model and how, like, the overall empire and what it's building. But we need to go back to that time that you and I were on the couch drinking whiskey together, and you were excited, and I was depressed. And the reason why you were excited and I was depressed was. Was I had just let.

About half the team go because some initiatives that we had tried didn't pan out. I didn't feel like we were heading in the right direction. Progress was really slow. Nothing meaningful was really getting done. And it felt like a real personal failure of mine. And I felt like I had failed in building out the vision of capitalism dot com. And so we reduced half the team, cut expenses, and basically just came back to, like, let's catch our breath here for a second and figure out what we're gonna do. And I so needed that time for clarity in where I wanted to go next. And I realize now that I had spent my entire career reacting and adding more and creating more chaos to cover up the chaos that I wasn't dealing with or wasn't managing well. And I had to get quiet enough and create enough room for me to be able to clearly see what that next stage looked like. And so one of the big turning points was when we let half the team go, and we made one really big strategic hire. And we like to say we have the company before this person.

And we have the company after this person. And that person is, well, Inez.

Yeah, Inez. But, yeah.

Hi, Inez. We love you.

Oh, yeah. Taking it back. You know, we had divided the company into, like, the Ryan Moran personal brand and the capitalism personal brand. Personal brand. And at that point, we were just all over the place in that I felt like I had a lot of bosses, a Lot of people to answer to. I was helping out with our capital gains podcast on capitalism supporting freedom Fast lane over here. So we have the capitalism Facebook and then we have the Ryan brand channels. And.

You know, the other thing is the revenue model wasn't always clear. We were trying a lot of different.

We didn't know what we were doing. We were trying a lot of things and nothing was really working.

And so, like, when Ryan laid off half of the team, I thought, okay, now I know what to do. Everything is really clear. And I'm really excited about this fresh start. About like kind of shedding some things that weren't working. And, you know, I know you were, I mean, of course stressed because it was probably one of the biggest decisions of your career to let go of so many people. And right after that.

We brought on Inez, the chief of staff.

Yeah. So.

And it's kind of hard to completely describe her role, but she's like the over overseeing the entire company and also really protects your time.

Right.

In terms of scheduling events, making sure, you know, like where you're speaking, who you're talking to, our partners.

She's the operational leader of the company at this point. So I was hiring an executive assistant and I told her before even her day one, I was like, you're really going to be a chief of staff. And what that means is that I need someone who has the authority to speak on my behalf. And what I told her was I was finally clear on what I needed. And what I needed was I needed to switch from a company of what was then six. We went from, I think 11 to six. Said I need to switch from a team of six to a team of one. I need one person that I can hand the ball to. I need one person that I feel like I can really rely on and count on to speak on my behalf, to help organize on my behalf.

And I don't even know where I have, like, where I need help on this. And I was hiring somebody who had done it before several times. This was an experienced executive assistant. This was not somebody who was growing into the role. I didn't have to train her how to be an executive assistant. It was somebody who knew how to be an executive assistant so she could be one for me rather than it be me training this person. And that created a lot of space for me to think, which is what I really needed at that time. It allowed me to slow down just enough to be able to see the next part of the vision, which we'll go into sevway.

Do you think that is one of the first key hires that most entrepreneurs need is basically an executive assistant who's more than an executive assistant. Like a someone they can entrust the keys to, like some of the finances, the operations.

I'm not sure because it depends on the type of entrepreneur. I'm a visionary entrepreneur, which means that I have to have somebody overseeing details. Otherwise I'm a mess. Like, I'm an absolute mess. Because it's not, it's not what I create. I create visions, ideas, direction, a mission, content, an audience. Like, I create the overarching goals and vision of the company. And.

I have to have somebody overseeing details because I only have so much decision making ability, so much ability to look at mail, to answer, administrate. We only have so much capacity as human beings, and some of us have more than others. And every minute I discovered, every minute I spent outside of that vision, creating time is really a waste of my time and energy and a disservice to the whole company. So for me, I either need a partner or I need that anchor operations person to help. So I don't know that it needs to be the first hire. It's more like what is the thing that stresses you out the most? And that's a great segue into when we got really clear as a company what are what we call the queen bee, which is a tip of the cap to Michael Michalowicz in his book Clockwork. Fantastic book, is that it's that underlying thing that makes the rest of the company go, you know, if you sacrifice this, nothing else can operate. And when we lay out our vision and revisited our vivid vision with a smaller, nimbler team, and with the help of another leader in Ines.

It was clear that our queen bee was content creation, creating content and distributing content. And so in that case, you know, we knew what the next hire needed to be. And that person's name is Drew.

Yeah.

And you work pretty closely with Drew.

Yeah. It's funny even talking about Drew because he's been with us so briefly and yet, you know, things do feel different and more focused. So I think about the difference between this year's Capitalism conference versus all the others is that you were saying that you feel like we're pushing through it and we're, we're not like, happy it's over. We're happy to begin on the next stage of the business. And I think it's like, yeah, because we've identified what the purpose is. And, you know, I think that this kind of ties into, like, while we're being transparent about the business, like the offer. So we're really stepping up our content being a lot more strategic and like how it's being distributed and optimizing the website and the SEO of the actual capitalism URL. But I mean, what else is really exciting is the marketing team is working on our continuity offer and then our self liquidating offer.

And I want to go into that in a minute, but I think it. I don't know if you know the story about when I knew I needed to hire Drew.

Oh, you know what? I actually don't.

Drew was not the leading candidate. Yeah, there was someone else. So there were several really good candidates that I interviewed for this position. And Drew was not leading. He was going to make it to the final round. There was one or two other people going to fly in for the final round. But a conversation with Mark, Jenny, made me go, I'm thinking about this wrong. And I got to go hire. I got to go hire Drew. And this was the conversation.

I was sitting on the couch with my best friend Mark, and Mark started really giving me some tough love. He asked me, first of all, he was like, dude, you need better people. Like, whatever you're doing, you need better people to have the vision around you. And I expressed to him that this was a challenge of mine of like, I don't know how to go get, like the best people and lead them. And finally he's like, stop, stop. If you could only hire one person for the next five years, what would that person do or be? I thought about that for a long time, and I actually didn't leave the evening with an answer. But it did pave the way for me making our next hire, which we'll talk about. But he asked me a question in the meantime. He's like, tell me about this position that you're hiring for for right now. And I was like, I was looking for content director because we've decided that our queen bee is creating amazing content and distributing amazing content. And he's like, tell me about the people that you're interviewing. And I was like, one is like an organizational leader who is going to build the team under her. And she has done this before. She comes from an organization I respect, and I know that she can come in and build, like the content team exactly how we want. And he's like, tell me about the other one. Like, the other one knows how to do one thing really well and he loves algorithms.

And I started telling him, you know, he's a specialist in this one area. And so finally he asked me this question. He goes, what is the result.

That this position will create? And I said.

Traffic. Because he kept drilling down. He was like, if you had amazing content but no one saw it, do you want that or would you? Or which would be a better scenario? Amazing content that no one saw saw, or lots of content that lots of people saw that wasn't as good. And I said it would be better, it would be a least a less bad situation if we had lots of traffic to decent content.

Because then we could at least have some momentum to adjust. And then Mark hit me with this, and I'll never forget this. He said, it's a lot easier to build upon the success of one platform and then pivot into another. And then he's like, I would not recommend hiring an organizational leader who is going to bring on the Instagram expert and the written expert and the this expert. You need to go succeed in what, one area first. And I started to look at a lot of the people that I had just let go. I had hired them to manage an empire, and it was that idea of you hire empire builders and you give them the whole thing. But really what I needed was for them to succeed in one specific area so that then they could have the momentum to pivot to the next area. And that's how you build an empire. Not by just giving it to them and asking them to figure it out. So that, that was the hire of Drew, and he's been with us about a month and we're already seeing a lot of progress.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, it makes me almost like a little self conscious because I don't think of myself as a specialist and more of like an all rounder and more of someone who just like, has a lot of different things to. Of bring the table. So, yeah, for people who don't know, I probably should have started with this from the beginning. I'm the content creator. My official title@capitalism.com.

What'S your queen bee?

Creating content that resonates with our audience.

Yeah. Creating world class. Your queen bee is creating world class content that connects with our ideal people. Right, so. And your specialty is video. Yeah. Is creating amazing content for our ideal people. And because you have that skill set, you've been able to pivot that into, like, you weren't into podcasts when you started. You learned podcasts. Yeah, but you already knew video. And so we did a lot of video, and that's why we're able to now that you can do both of those worlds, we can take videos and turn them into podcasts and cut them up into clips. And now. And now you're learning, like, short form. And you had the singular thing that you were good at that allowed you to pivot into other things.

Yeah. You know, over the last as well, I've been with the company, I feel like I've developed more of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, which a lot of people kind of talk about in our space. And it's just this idea of, like, people. People say, like, oh, I don't know how to do that versus, like.

I don't know, I can just learn to oversimplify things. But people think of, like, their IQ or their health or their skill sets or their knowledge base as being like, well, I'm deficient in these areas, or I could never be good at this thing. And I just. I don't really look at things like that anymore because I haven't pushed, because I haven't stretched.

Well, the higher of the. Drew was really good for you, because one of the things that I was asking you to do that was probably unfair of me was to set the strategy of a lot of the content. Like, Drew isn't in making videos, and he's not making podcast. His job is to come in with the strategy and to help us, like, create that traffic and that growth from the content that we create. And he manages the writers and the SEO strategy, but the. He is a strategist with specialties, and you were a specialist trying to.

Make me happy by setting the strategy. And it was a challenge for us. So he's been an outlet for both of us in terms of strategy because he's better than us, and he frees us up to do what we do and create more amazing content because we know it's gonna be taking care of.

That's what I wanna be doing. And it's great because I'm doing more of what I want, less of what I don't want. And for me, like, I want the content to, like you said, get traffic, have a big reach and a big impact. So essentially, I have the guidance of, you know, that. That kind of a strategist. I'm doing, like, more of the same stuff I've always done and more intentional. But what's exciting is, like, more people are gonna listen to it and watch it.

Right, right.

Which is. I mean, what you want, too, is, like, people to find it, not for great content to exist in a vacuum that nobody knows about.

Yeah. So I want to talk about the revenue model and like the overall. Overall empire of what we're building because that was a big shift. But before we go there, there was one other hire that we've made and it was based out of. When Mark left my house, I really had to think about that question about if I could only hire one person. And I finally decided the thing, the person that I would hire would be a person who could build a really big email list. Now that might seem like a weird roundabout, but if I could only hire one person. I've built all my businesses on email marketing because I like to write, I like to connect with my audience. I know I can make offers that aren't super salesy and super sales copied and I know that I can launch a podcast and I know I can do all these things. Things if I've got a really responsive email list. So if it was just me and one other person and that person knew how to build really big email lists and I could just be creating content, I knew that I could have a really nice company that I would enjoy. So that became the focus of my next hire, which was the marketing director. And I interviewed lots of people for this role and I brought in someone for a final interview that I was pretty convinced that I was going to hire. I was, I was. And I've said old me would have hired this person.

Yeah.

And the reason I didn't hire them was because I could tell that this person would be coming to me rather than telling me. I wanted this person to tell me, this is how it's done. This is what I would do. And I needed this person to be better at building that email list than me. And out of the blue, someone that I had reached out to a long time ago about joining us and had given me a thanks, but no thanks reached out to me. And.

There'S the coolest. It was the coolest guy on the planet.

Definitely cool.

Mr. McCool, you know, before we go.

Into Sean, let me just ask you though, with the guy who almost got the job.

Yeah.

The second up, how could you tell that they weren't. That they were gonna be coming for you for direction? They weren't as automatic, as much of a self starter. How do you pick up on that in just an interview or two, in a couple of conversations? Because you don't know what it's like to work with someone until you've worked with someone. So how did you know?

Two ways.

One.

I asked him to bring me a proposal of how we would Build our email list.

And it was beautiful. It was very well thought out. I was really impressed with it, but it was a guess. It was a great first pass, but I knew if I gave him 90 days to implement that, it was going to be a guess. In 90 days, we may or may not have been closer to the. To the goal. And my confidence interval in that place plan wasn't very high.

So the plan to get us to that singular goal was his best guess.

Number two, he was a Swiss army knife. He could do a lot of different things. He could oversee social media strategy. He could write some copy. And here comes the hail again, because we're talking about who you don't want to hire. Hail in Texas, hell is freezing over, so we'll might as well give all our best secrets away.

But he was a Swiss army knife, which made him a really strong piece to a bigger organization or even to his own company. And he was an entrepreneur, and he'd be a really good one because he knew all the really, you know, all the different pieces. But for what I needed, I needed somebody to tell me how it's gonna get done in this specific area. And so because I didn't have that confidence immediately, I couldn't see what the quick, like the fast path to success was going to be. I didn't have enough confidence to extend an offer to him. And those were my exact words. It was like.

It'S not a, you're not qualified. It's not a, you're not good at this. It's. I don't have the confidence to extend an offer to you right now because I could see myself getting, getting coming out of my zone of genius in order to help set the strategy for his zone of genius. And that's exactly what I wanted to avoid.

Yeah.

So I decided to wait.

And with. And the same week Sean reached out and.

I was coming back from Dallas to inner, I was interviewing someone that I'm possibly recruiting for a role in the future.

And I had my call with Sean because he had reached out and he said something to me.

That.

On our first interview, I was like, how do I not hire this guy? And what he said. So first of all, you know, I asked him a question because I knew his track record. I had tried to recruit him in the past. And I said, you know, like, name your price. What would it. What would it cost to bring you on?

And it was a bold. A bold number.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I said to Sean, at the price that you want, you know, I could afford you for 90 days. But after that, if we don't see results, you know, I just couldn't justify that expense. I couldn't put that burden on myself or the team. And he said something that blew me away. He said, okay, I understand. Well, I can tell you this. If we decide at the end of the 90 days that it's not a fit, it'll still be more than you ever got out of the. Anybody else in 90 days. Wow. It just showed a level of commitment to rising to the challenge.

Yeah. Yeah.

And. And I so crave. I craved where I was in that time of having somebody else who was rising up to the challenge. I have goose. Look at this. I have real goosebumps right now. And that blew me away. I don't think he knows this. And he listens, he sees everything.

Sean is always watching. He doesn't know this. But you were in the room during his second interview, right?

Yeah, yeah, I was there.

So I moved him on to phase two. And do you remember anything from his second interview without sharing intimate details?

You know, I feel like I remembered something about that in that he said that. I thought I recall something similar where he said at the end of 90 days, if it doesn't work out, we're gonna have come so far.

Yeah.

Like, we're gonna have made so much progress that it would basically be beneficial for both of us, even if it was short term.

Yeah. So.

Well, another thing that came up is I remember you asked him, like, well, in terms of the track record, how many times have you done this? How many times have you had million dollar launches and built huge email lists? And he was trying to count them all up, like, I don't know, 7, 8, 9. So that was something that just gave me a lot of confidence. And at the beginning of this conversation, I was saying, we're bringing on experienced senior people.

Yeah. So we had our second interview and he was very eager to get started, which meant a lot to. To me. But I was also trying to pump the. Like, every time I make a quick decision, I regret it. So I was like, really thinking through this, probably to Sean's frustration. And the thing that helped me, like, oh, my goodness, this has helped me so much. Everybody was. I created. We call it the 30, 60, 90. I created. Here's what needs to happen. 30 days, 60 days, result wise, in order for me to feel like we're on track. For me to feel like we're on track, here's what needs to be in place in 30, 60, and 90 days.

And.

All he said was like, okay, we can get this done, no problem.

Yeah.

And it was like, okay, great. We have agreement of what that 90 days is going to look like now. He wanted to start quickly, and we had a lot going on. So I passed it to Inez and I said, inez, I need you to, you know, like, tell me why we shouldn't hire this guy or see if you connect with him. Because I could be persuaded to expedite this process.

Yeah.

Inez did an interview with him. Now, I always fly people in for an in person before hiring them. Instead of this, I sent him to Inez, and Inez is like, he's hired.

Wow.

And Inez is the one who convinced me to move quickly on the hire.

So you didn't meet him in person?

I met him the same day you did.

Were you not in Austin? Did Sean still come to Austin?

I met Sean in person the same day you did. And he hadn't been to Austin in, I think he said, like, 10 years, four or five years.

Yeah. I was kind of impressed that he, like, drove from Tennessee country in his truck.

Yep.

To come on, hang out with us and, like, listening to podcasts and audiobooks the whole way down.

And he was the right guy.

Yeah.

Shout out to Sean, dude. Really appreciate you, man.

Sean's super McCool.

All right, so let's pivot now. I mean, none of this matters if there's not, like, a clear championship we're trying to win and a clear revenue model. Right. And I think the whole team has been confused on what the revenue model is for a long time because it's been so reactive. And part of that reaction is the fact that we've been so event heavy. You know, we have capcon, and then we split plan it for six months, and we market it for six months, and all of our resources go into planning capcon, and then we have it, and it's this amazing experience. And then we go, oh, we go into, like, depressive mode. What do we do now? Let's plan another event.

Right.

So because of that, I think we've been really reactionary. And bringing on Inez gave me the place for me to think and talk about what do I really want to do? What's the thing I really want to be.

The thing that drives the company. And I finally found a way to communicate it, to communicate what was in my head. And it was when I said.

What I enjoy most is lighting fires. And what that means to me is, like, look, I got goosebumps again. Is to build, like, this roaring fire, where everything that touches it catches on fire. And to me, that roaring fire is the responsive audience. It's the people who listen to our stuff. It's our community. It's. That's the roaring fire. It's why I am so hesitant to sacrifice any goodwill. I am always trying to build that fire. And what I want naturally to happen is for somebody to plug into that fire and is something to catch on fire. And so what that means is using the audience as the. As the nucleus to affect other businesses that we might, may or may not have a stake in, or may or may not.

Be related to us, but they might pay to show up in front of us or we have a partnership with them in some way. And that gave me the insight of where I wanted to take this. But then we ran, really started to outline how we would go about making that profitable and sustainable. And I'd be curious to hear your take on.

Well, first of all, I'm gonna make a side note. It's interesting. I don't know anyone else in the world who, like, can be so physically triggered and get goosebumps when they are talking about something they're passionate about. So I think that's interesting that you're kind of like, in alignment with your purpose and your emotions, which is interesting. I mean, I think it makes everything fun and not feel like work when you feel like you're making an impact.

But on the. On the business side, I feel like we definitely had a really interesting, sordid history of trying to shore up our products. Like info products and courses.

Yeah.

Aside from the events and like, just trying to offer value. And I think one thing is we were trying to do too much. Actually, when I look at some of our previous products, it was like, let's just throw in the whole kitchen.

Yes.

Like, do you want to learn how to. How to sell physical products through Instagram, how to do this, how to do that, how to do your Facebook ads. And I feel like we tried to.

Do everything for everybody every time, always, like so much.

And I think that comes out of a really good place. But I think we've also learned that you can, I guess, offer more value when it's a clear A to B. Like, people have a specific problem and we're trying to get them to a specific place or address a certain pain point or problem point. So we've been shoring up, like, the products and we haven't brought up our. Our project manager who's been involved in some of that. We're looking for a product manager, a product role.

But I don't know. Do you want to dive into, like, the 1%?

Yeah. So we got. We got a lot of clarity over what our company. One thing needed to be.

Yeah.

And that was our continuity. Our monthly program that could both. If it was scaled, it would pay for our overhead and allow us to sleep better at night, but also allow us to light more fires.

How do we light more fires? Profitably and sustainably. That was the clarifying question. And the one thing that we could do is have a continuity program that built up sustainability and also was amazing for the people who went through it. And we launched it and we were happy with it. But something wasn't perfect. Something's been missing. And the thing that's missing is there's amazing content in there.

Yeah.

And I mean, I've gotten better feedback from some of the stuff in there than anything I've ever done.

That's awesome.

But something was missing, and it was. The thing of this isn't helping us light other fires. How do we. What elements missing that would jazz us up so that we could go light. Go light the next fire. And that's when the idea for the monthly box came in.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'd be curious to hear you describe it. And then I'll add my flavor.

So I'll clarify for people who are listening, just some basic terms. The continuity offer is like a monthly recurring program. So somebody subscribes to a monthly offer. And the 1% was, you know, initially, before. This box component just lessens about opportunities, investment opportunities, business opportunities. So we might do a lesson on dividend stocks and a lesson on saving taxes in 2019 after the new tax law. But.

While content was great, it feels like we need to shore up the user experience. And then there's also just something really special about a physical component. So we're going to be starting with a mailing letter where people will get, like, physical mail with information about taking the next step and summarization of lessons.

And then the purpose of that is consumption, because you can have a library of content that you never use. But if you have a newsletter, like a magazine, with case studies about how it's being applied right now, it just makes it easier for you to consume the content that's already in there and get results. So that was the thought process behind that.

Yeah. So the box. I mean, what's important about the box beyond just a newsletter is if the company's purpose and your purpose is lighting other people's fires. Now we can Highlight some of our favorite businesses. So that might be a paleo brownie or protein bar, or it might be a green smoothie, or it might be a book by an author.

Right.

So now we build up this continuity list until the point where it's growing and growing and growing. We get to 1000 and 2000 and 3000 and beyond and we really scale this offer. But now we can take someone who maybe doesn't have the biggest following, doesn't have the biggest audience, isn't doing the most sales, and we can quickly like pour gasoline on it.

Right.

And so that's really exciting thing I think is totally in alignment with what we're doing.

And think about this, for example, it's if you've got a product or a brand or a service based business that would be, you know, applicable to our people, imagine for a second that there's an insert or there is a.

A.

Sample or a full product or a mention in the newsletter that goes out to 10,000 entrepreneurs who each have a following, they each have an email list, they each have a, they each have connections, A lot of them have capital. You're putting your stuff in front of the most impactful people in the world.

Yeah. The caliber of people that we've seen join the 1% has been very, very high.

Yes.

This isn't just like people, it's not just like random people. It's, you know, it's the same, it's the same reason, you know, when you're at the capitalism conference with five or six hundred people.

It'S not like you're just spreading your message or talking to like a bunch of, a bunch of folks.

Yeah. There's, there's big ripple effects to that. So if you put the, the right product, message or brand in front of this type of an audience, the ripple effects on that are just, you know, it, it has the potential to be a career maker.

Yeah.

And so that, that is how we are, you know, creating a profitable and sustainable roaring fire that lights, that sets other things on fire.

So I guess the question then is this is the focus really right now. Growing the 1%, the continuity offer, scaling it, optimizing it, getting people in. When it's wildly successful. What are we gonna do with all the money or what do we do next?

I'll tell you exactly what we do next, Chris, because I see this stage of the business being about sustainably building the fire, the roaring fire, sustainably building the eyeballs, sustainably building the members. And the content's gonna be like, my goal is for every lesson to be potentially worth a hundred thousand dollars to somebody who's there because they're seeing a new opportunity or learning something new that is gonna drive their business or their investment strategy. So it's gonna be amazingly impactful for members, it'll be amazingly impactful for the people we partner with and it'll be amazingly impactful for the things that we feature in the box. But where it creates that.

You know, even bigger compounding effect is when that audience is its own big fire now. And we can leverage that to put other businesses that we start or own on the map. And here's what I mean. So, so I've had some conversations with some people, you know, who these people are, but nothing's on paper yet. So I won't say them out loud. But about starting an investment bank. So like, you know, the capitalism investment bank essentially, maybe call it the backroom bank, I don't know, that buys companies, brokers companies, gets them prepped for exit.

Increases their valuation, creates strategic advice. Right. And guess what's going to launch that? It's going to be our audience. Right, Right. Because we have all these case studies, we have all these business owners who are growing and they want to have an exit and are thinking about investing and that might pave the way for us to have, you know, the capitalism wealth advisory. You know, and there's a, there's a wealth investment fund that is launched from this audience or one of the things I'm actively courting. Like I'm looking for a funnel building agency. Like an agency that's so good at building funnels and driving traffic that I can partner with them and put them on the map. Because I'll have tens of thousands of entrepreneurs who need that type of a service. Right. So everyone that plugs into our fire becomes a big company as a result.

That is the end result here.

Yeah. And you'll have a stake in them. And this is how you eventually end up buying the Cleveland Indians for one. But also how capitalism.com ends up really creating a lot of change in the world.

Yes.

So it's super cool to be a part of. I mean, and one of these is going to become like a billion dollar company. There's going to be a lot of nine figure companies that we end up like igniting funding, growing, advising.

Yep.

It's pretty wild, man.

So there's one other piece to this and it's that in addition to having the fire, we need to have the sustainable engine to create those opportunities and create that deal and lead Flow. And the way we'll do that is through the products and the organizations that impact and empower entrepreneurs. So, for example, the back room. The back room is where we're going to be going to the first people that we end up partnering with for like, features inside of our continuity or to our audience. The back room is where we end up finding people who speak on our stage. The back room is where we basically pull a seat at the table to the opportunities that we're building here.

So the back room is one of the pieces where we're always looking for opportunities to get people plugged into the fires that we are looking to light. And we need a lead source for entrepreneurs who have ideas too. And that will be the return of the tribe at some point this year. And that will be our mentoring program for entrepreneurs who are building real companies, real brands with really good ideas that when they plug into our system, they catch fire. And so we might have equity relationships in there, we might have distribution opportunities for them, but they'll be building businesses alongside the mentors that are in our community. And those two places will be our lead source for other fires that we can light. That's the empire.

Yeah, empire's the right word. It feels a lot bigger than when I first joined the team and.

We were just trying to grow your brand and help a couple people out growing what were mostly E commerce physical products brands.

Yep. Not anymore. I should probably give a quick update on that side of the house.

After I exited Sheer Strength, it was a tough time for a lot of Amazon sellers and some of my businesses were affected. Specifically Foxbrim, the company that I acquired about two years ago, really had a hard year and I'm really glad it happened because it made me such a better entrepreneur. And the entire process that we went through last year as capitalism.com has given me the place for me to think about how to lead physical products brands as well. Because I have my portfolio of physical products brands. That's, you know, the area of business I know best. And it's forced me to think about things like, you know, what, what is the unique selling proposition of that company? What's the team need to look like? And now I'm going through kind of the same evolution on the physical products brands as I did@Capitalism.com and so now there's several opportunities for me to invest in or be a part of physical products brands. And it's coming from a completely different energy source because I feel like I'm starting to begin that next five year cycle. Of an entrepreneur rather than being at the tail end of licking my wounds and wondering what I'm doing with my life. So this process has made me a much better entrepreneur and coming in and working and advising physical products brands, too. And I feel like I'm just gearing up again in that world. It's really exciting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what was the main thing you feel like you learned from Fox Berm having a hard year?

The main thing that I learned.

I'm trying not to say how I've said it in the past, which is that value is only valuable when it's unique. You know, when you're just trying to sell more stuff, you don't get to charge a premium. And so we had to go through this whole rebranding process and this whole reformulation process and.

You know, learning how to create a brand that influencers just wanted to talk about and one that customers wanted to share. And we're just at like the end of all that rebranding and the results are just starting to kick in, and it's kind of like that really hard completion that we're really glad we did. So the value is valuable only when it's unique. And the other thing was.

Creating a business that is true to the people who are involved. Just selling products that you can rank or that will make money is one thing, but then you're always playing somebody else's game. And in this case, what we had to really get clear on was who's making the decisions of the products we're going to launch and what do they want? What do they see that the customers want? Not what do the numbers say, but what do people want? That was a really hard transition to make. And it's one painful lesson I had to learn several times over. And I got it now. And I'll never be the same after getting the lesson, but life had to kick me around a few times.

Well, it just makes me think about how you say how the game is changing and the game is getting harder and some of the stuff that maybe used to work by not offering unique value a couple of years ago, it's just not enough anymore.

Well, one clarifying point there is the game has always changed. Like I remember writing this blog post back in 2009 which was, is Internet marketing getting harder? And I was. And right. This was right after a Google pay per click slap. Now, if you're old enough to remember Google click paper. Yeah. Slaps on Google. That meant when they would make a change and all of your sites and all Your advertising campaigns would either get paused, changed or deleted. And everybody freaked out. So I've been waiting for the Amazon slaps for a long time. I knew they were coming. But I wrote this article about, you know, right on the back of all these Google changes. And I said, no, it's not getting harder because I started in 2006 and I didn't have WordPress.

And WordPress is, you know, makes it really easy to optimize your keywords and do all add all these plugins.

I hand coded websites on Dreamweaver and HTML.

Absolutely I was. And at that point social media was fairly new. I didn't have social media when I started. So there's all these new opportunities that are being created. The same is true with physical products. Like it's not getting harder, it's just changing.

It's like the ball is moving.

Amazon might be harder, but when you started, there were no Instagram ads like there were. There was no many chat, there were no drip sequences, there was no influencer marketing. This shit didn't exist. So now there's all these other opportunities and you're sitting here going, who moved my money?

Your job is to get better. You're an entrepreneur. Your job is to get better and to change with it because it's down the edge.

There's more opportunities but your competition has the same opportunities.

Right? Exactly, exactly.

You can't just stay stuck.

So you got to be really good at something. You can't just have products that manipulate people to giving you money.

This was fun.

Yeah, this is cool.

Thanks for listening everybody. Let me know what you thought on Instagram is actually you should email me@ryanapitalism.com or send me a DM. I'm Ryan. Danny Moran. I check both. I don't always get back to everyone, but I see them all. Thanks for listening. Yeah, okay, bye.

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