Exciting Life Updates, Burning Man, and Announcing Season 2 Of The Capitalism.com Podcast

Can we just start off with it? I want to have a giant self promotion ask.

Go for it.

So, Al, you know I get bored of my own content.

I do know that.

Yeah, yeah. Because. Because, like, I've been doing it for 15 fricking years and sometimes I get bored of doing it. But I think three of the best 10 episodes that I have ever done in 15 years are in this next season on the podcast. Like three, maybe even four of the best I've ever done. And I'm so my blatant ask of the audience is that in the 15 years of me making content, if I have ever helped you, if I have ever.

Pushed your business in the right direction, if I've ever given you advice that was helpful, you ever got a nugget from one of my episodes, please go subscribe to the capitalism.com YouTube channel. We divorced the personal brand and the capitalism.com podcast into two channels a few months ago. And my personal brand. We're popping. Yeah. Knockoff. Yeah. Cause we're having fun over there. The capitalism.com podcast, where I do all of the interviews is actually way more work. And it's basically a start over now. And the best interviews I have ever done, three of them, are coming up in this next season. So I am. Dude, I am so proud of what we put together in these next handful of interviews. And so I'm just. I just selfishly beg the audience to go subscribe to it. Cause I laid it all on the court. So I am. Dude, I am so proud of what we put together in these next handful of interviews. And so I'm just. I just selfishly beg the audience to go subscribe to it because I laid it all on the court. I put it all on the court for you guys.

I'm excited to see which ones are your favorite.

Should we just jump into it?

Yeah, you said three of them are your favorite.

So. Okay. So the first episode coming up is with Dr. Benjamin Hardy, whose book I read back like nine years ago. It's sitting up here. And he published a new book called the Science of Scaling. And it was a book that punched me in the face and made me feel convicted. And I could not wait to have him here. I think this episode is one of the best that we've ever done because it challenged me in ways that were uncomfortable. It made me face things about the way I see my businesses and my approach to entrepreneurship that forced me to confront if I was going to make a change or keep going in the direction that I was going to I had a very hard time with that book in the best way possible. Like, someone. When someone challenges you to be better and do better, and you know you can, and all your stuff comes up, that's a good friend or a good book or a good insight, and this book did that for me. And so we kick off with the conversation with Ben Hardy, and people are gonna love it or hate it because it's gonna bring up their stuff.

I remember sitting behind the camera when we were filming that, and I'm going, oh, my gosh. Over and over again. He's, like, just taking a knife and stabbing her. Yeah. It's.

It's.

It's.

The whole premise of it is relentless focus is what was. What creates greatness. And when he's talking about, like, Tom Brady as an example of, like, his.

Only goal is to win the Super Bowl. Yeah. To win super bowl money.

He even forfeited his family in service to that goal. Like, there's a lot of things there that are, like, they'll. They'll rub you one way or the.

Other, but you can't leave your wife and children. If you want to be great ladies.

You want to be great, you got to obsess. No, I mean, but.

But I did it three times. I left my wife and family, and now I'm the president. I just wanted to get a ruler.

Of the free world.

I can't even.

Whose Trump impression is better, Alex?

Not mine.

Not mine.

It's not very good.

I think Ryan is the best Trump impression. Everyone knows it. Lots of people are saying it. I'm not saying it, but people are saying it.

The people in their headphones right now.

Are on the cross.

They're crying because you just did that.

I'm sorry.

Well, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, ladies and gentlemen.

Great episode. Frickin great episode. You have this clip of saying that entrepreneurs could do a hundred times more than what they're already doing if they would just change a couple things. And this one just punched me in the face.

Yeah. My feeling is, is that people who are very talented, even very talented entrepreneurs, they could be getting a hundred X the results they are. You know, but, you know, it's very difficult to shoot for a goal that's that big. It's because that goal will force you to grapple with what I call either what Musk calls false requirements or what others would call hidden commitments or just lesser goals.

Right.

These are lesser goals that I actually think that it's very powerful to set a goal that forces you to look at all your goals and say, why do I have these goals?

Really?

You know, that's the sign of a good goal, is that it forces you to look at everything you're doing and say, I have to really dig into the well and say, why am I really doing that?

So that's Ben Hardy. Super nice guy, by the way. We got smoothies after we recorded the podcast. Me, him and his son, we had a great time. He is just a delight of a human being.

I agree. Super nice guy. Very down to earth.

I've read every single one of his books. This one was my. I have willpower. Doesn't work sitting in front of me. It's like nine feet away from me right now. Loved that book. I've read every single one of his books, but this one was my favorite by far.

Yeah, agreed.

And then after that we have Mike V. So Mike and I met in 2018. He was here in this room for a workshop and he had this tiny little business and we worked together for a couple of days and then he ended up joining our. Our mastermind. And a couple of insights just triggered something for him. Now he runs is it a $40 million a year business? Same business, but now it has 20x over those handful of years. And and so I wanted to say, all right, all of you have been listening to me for some amount of time, like more than two episodes. You know my shtick, you know what I talk about. You know, I help people build million dollar businesses and then I help people scale from there. And until you do it, you tend not to believe it yet. This is a guy who said, I want to go bigger. I want to go bigger than what I've done before. And if other people have done it, why not me? And this guy goes from a small, tiny seven figure business to a mid eight figure business in a handful of years. And it's just a perfect example of somebody who came from the community, did the work, now they're a multi deca millionaire. Yeah.

And bootstrapped the whole thing.

Bootstrapped the whole. I thought he had raised capital, but didn't he bootstrap the whole thing? Yeah, yeah.

And really the whole episode is about his mindset, which I love. I love those kinds of conversations where it's about belief, about faith in what you're doing, and just a relentless commitment to doing it.

Well, you know what? I changed something in my behavior after I recorded this with Mike was I started writing out one goal that I thought was kind of impossible. And I just started finding evidence for it on a daily Basis like is there something that happened today that gives me evidence for this to be true? And just training myself to look for it, to think about it. Because if I believe it, then I'll act in accordance of it. And the, the, the first conversation with Ben Hardy hit me so hard that Mike kind of wrestling with it with him allowed me to find some practical tools to train myself to believe the impossible goals. So that's why we have the one two punch. So here's the clip of Mike talking about how all of his success is because it comes down to belief.

Because if I'm confident and if I believe myself and everything be becomes clear and if I lose belief, I start to get foggy headed and I get unsure and then I listen to his advice and I listen to her advice and you get this kind of mishmash of kind of, yeah, strategy and, and it's just horrible. And the best leaders like love him, hate him. Elon's a great example. He's like, he just goes, he's just super self belief, decides, does it executes, creates chaos, goes again and he just keeps on going. And he doesn't really doubt himself a lot I imagine ton of examples that aren't as con, you know, like controversial. But I think that's the key. Confidence and belief in yourself.

So first we got Ben, then we go Mike, and then we go to.

Carl Allen thinking bigger.

Oh my goodness, this is, this is one of the best we've ever done. I wanted to run through a wall after this episode.

I actually conclude the episode by saying I don't care if anyone ever listens to this episode because I got so much value out of it. God, man, we did such a good job this season.

You gotta explain why though, why, why did you get so much value out of it?

Well, first of all, Carl, the, the, the, the, the theory.

Words are so hard when I'm excited, man. The theme of this season is about going bigger. And Carl comes in is like, I'm just doing a billion dollar roll up. And you. And my initial reaction when he told me was like, yeah, go yourself. No you're not. Everybody says that. And then he lays out the economics of it. It's like, oh, you really are building a billion dollar roll up. And he's, and for him it's normal. For him it's just a process. It's just numbers and it's people and he knows what to do because he's done it before. And so the flow of this season of having Benjamin Hardy set up impossible goal Mike. Oh, it's just about believing in your impossible goal. And then Carl is just like, impossible goals are normal to me. I break it down like this. All of a sudden you start to believe of your own capabilities because you have this man doing these incredible things, and it's just totally normal to him. And so he breaks down how he's building $1 billion portfolio. The numbers, the processes, the brands they're considering, and he just lays it out into a playbook. So for me, it was exciting because I want to buy more companies. I really love that playbook. But secondarily, even if I didn't want to follow that exact playbook of building $1 billion portfolio, and it made me sit there and go, oh, for somebody, my impossible goal is just another day. So if I can absorb that from somebody, if I can read those books, listen to those podcasts, if I can get around them in some way, for somebody, it's just Tuesday.

Yeah, yeah. It normalizes it for you.

It makes it not so crazy for me. It's not an average Tuesday for me, but it is for somebody. And that means that I can learn. It means it's not impossible.

Yeah. This is a good combination. Tactical and also belief oriented and mindset oriented. I love that episode. Then we go to, I think, far more tactical, which is Ryan Dice.

Oh, my goodness. This made me. This made me excited in my downstairs.

That's what this episode did. Ryan was a very important mentor to me early in my career. There's a few people who totally changed the trajectory of my business career. Travis Sago, Ryan Dice. These guys were very involved in my formative years, if you will. And Ryan is basically converting all of those businesses that have matured since I met him into being AI first companies. And so when we look at going bigger, we have to look at the industry, the market that is probably going to lead all of us into whatever that bigger future is. And what I liked about what he said was that he was basically considering letting one of his companies die. And then they converted it into, well, what if we were a bit AI first or AI focused and it completely changed the business? Yeah, that was the fire in my belly. I needed to say, okay, we need to get serious about this@capitalism.com we need to think about the fact that intellectual property, maybe even podcasting, may not be valuable to the world here in, what, 18 months? If that. So how do we serve our people in a better way? And Ryan was the first person who made me not afraid of it, because the way that he described it was, it's there. There's actually opportunities to better serve your customers along their goals. And it requires me to be humbler about what I think is best for the company and actually just think about what is best for the customer. So as I'm thinking about thinking bigger and casting an impossible vision and believing in that, this was a practical one of where I need to reframe my attention moving forward. So his take on the state of AI, how they're using AI, how it is driving down costs and driving up profits in their businesses and across their portfolio was just fascinating and made me really bullish on the future.

Yeah, I agree. And also he talked about it in a way that wasn't scary. It was like.

Right. It was encouraging.

I'm prioritizing my people, but we're using AI and we're AI first. We're not going to cut anyone, but it's AI first. That was really cool. I like Ryan a lot. Then we go to Shaquille Prasla.

So Shaquille, I think, holds the record from most appearances on my podcast. Really? And because I've known him for so long, but this is the transformation that I've seen in shaquille. So Shaquille DMs me before DMs were a thing, I don't remember how they got in touch with me, like a Facebook message or cold email or something back in like 2013 or 14. And he's this dude we met up at Kirby Lane. Kirby Lane got pancakes and he just told me that he was, you know, he had a couple of e commerce companies and he was just excited to meet me because we were both in Austin. Now the dude is having nine figure exits and multiple eight figure exits. He shows up in my house was a Lamborghini that he drove, drove, drove in his Lamborghini. But what people don't see behind the scenes is that this, this man almost lost everything. And I think 2021 had went real. He did the going bigger thing. He set the impossible goal. He found the strategy and the tactics and he went for it and got punched in the face, almost went bankrupt and in the last three to four years rebuilt everything to a new height. So this is like this is one of those stories where we all, some of us are, at least I am. Maybe I'm just projecting when I say everyone, I think most of us are afraid to go bigger because we're afraid what will happen if it goes wrong.

So Shaquille went for. Didn't go so well.

And then as A result bounces back and hits new highs. Yeah. And it was just such a crazy reframe for me. Cause I am afraid of losing it all.

And then again, I've lost everything and made it all back. And now I'm not as afraid, but I'm still a little afraid. But I know that. But the conversation with Shaquille gave me confidence that if I went for it and I failed, I could make it all back or I could change the sales a little bit and go even bigger. Yeah.

And he did it through acquisition. He does it through, like, he has a bunch of these stores. The one beside your house?

Yeah. Shaquille literally owns the corner store in my neighborhood. Like, literally the store I walk to to buy milk. Shaquille owns it. I did not. He owns half of Texas. I did not know he owned the store. I bought the house, I moved in, walked to the store. Then I saw him at an event, and he's like, oh, I as the worst Shaquille impression, oh, I own the corner store today.

He doesn't even have an accent.

He doesn't have. It doesn't sound like that at all. But I own the corner store over there. And I was like, like, you're so.

Canceled for this whole episode.

I am canceled.

You're canceled.

Wait, wait, wait. Because I said, I want to kiss Ryan Dice.

That was one of the many things that cancels.

So anyway, Shaquille's great. Shaquille owns the corner store, and he also owns, like, a bunch of e commerce stuff and gloves.com, he just buys things capitalist. And he says that he wants passive income, but he owns all of these things. He's the hardest working passive income guy in history. So in this season, we start with the impossible vision, thinking bigger. And then we have a case study of somebody who went from a small business to a really big business because of their mindset.

They.

Then we go through practical strategies and industry insights into how we can actually implement that. Then we have Shaquille, who goes from, you know, negative zero to positive millions. And then we come to Matt Verloc. And Matt, this was such a practical episode. For those of you who follow any of my advice or any of you who are in the 1% or those of you who have e commerce brands, those of you who have heard me talk about enterprise value, building a company to sell, this is a guy who scrapes a few nickels together and then casts a vision for a business and prepares for an exit, and it completely changes his life.

Side note, Matt is Actually, Dan Martell's partner now, he wasn't when he had the success of building this business and having the exit, but. But he is now. So he's kind of known for being one of the guys behind the scenes in Dan Martell's business. But his actual story is, guy starts a company, sets a vision, has an exit, and after going through it, can come back and say, I wish I had done this differently on my climb up. Which I so resonated with. Because if I had known then what I know now, I would have done so many things different about the business that I scaled and sold. And now I get to do it again because I own it again. But this is a beautiful case study of somebody who came from nothing, set an impossible goal, had the big exit, and now is saying, I wish I had known this along the way. Here's what he had to share.

The way that we leave money on the table during the sales process is you sell when you're tired of running the business. And then you already have all the scars from only putting in 70% of your best effort because you're already tired of running the damn thing. And then you're selling the best. You can make it look as much lipstick you can put on that thing, make it look pretty dope, negotiate the valuation. If your buyer knows what they're doing, they're going to see through it. You're going to pay a tax.

Right.

If you can make a business that's awesome to run, that you truly don't want to sell, it will be inherently more valuable because you are showing up kicking ass every day. And that is the business they're going to have to pry out of your freaking fingers with the right number. Like, that's what I mean. It's not a tactical thing. It's like you personally as the founder, the business will reflect you if you build it right. And if you love the thing, then you're only going to sell it when it makes sense to sell something you love.

Yeah, this is really a masterclass in how to sell your business and the structurally, what to do when you're preparing to sell. Because he has a lot of regrets from that period of his life where he was like, I did all these things wrong. And here's if you just know what to do in this case, you're gonna do well.

You know, I'm at this point in my career where I'm finally starting to listen to those things. When people say, I wish I had done this differently. Cause I'm in that stage of my career where I've done things for so long that now I'm starting to see my habits and patterns. And I can say, oh, I need to do this thing a little bit differently. And one of the things that came up in that conversation with Matt was him talking about his partnerships and the people that he hires and the structure that he creates to incentivize people. And it made me look at how I recruit my people and my teams and how I really pigeon myself whole into a corner where I keep myself very busy.

That was convicting to hear him talk about that. And it was one of those times where when somebody said, I wish I had done this differently, I actually listened. So next we have Cody Sanchez. We hope, we think, we think, fingers crossed. We had her scheduled. She had to move it. We like to do these episodes after we've recorded all of the episodes. So we hope we'll reschedule. We hope it'll be code. Stay tuned. It's an Easter egg, ladies and gentlemen. You'll have to see. If we don't, we'll go on to the next best looking person on the podcast, and it's Ryan Lazarus. You remember when I told you how old he was?

Yes. My jaw dropped, hit the floor.

How old did he say he was?

49.

48. 49.

And he looks like he's 30.

Yeah, like late 20s maybe.

Yeah, like 20 does.

It's crazy.

He has like reversed backwards. I think the reason I'm sharing that with you is because the way that we wanted to conclude this season was we spend the entire ramp up talking about impossible goals and vision and how you do it and strategy and acquisitions and how the big players play. But none of it matters if you lose your health. And you're probably not going to get there if you are not optimized. So Ryan Lazarus has one of those. He's a personal friend and he has, I think, a practical approach to living a 1% life when it comes to health, fitness, energy, and becoming the person who is capable of building an eight or a nine figure vision, Being the person who has the energy and the focus to be able to execute upon an impossible vision. So Ryan is the guy that I personally asked to come here and speak on that because I knew that at the end of this season we'd be all amped up on business and vision. But if we lost the plot in being the person that was capable of doing that, then we would have missed the point. And so Ryan comes in and speaks about how he takes his patients through a process to optimize energy, health, vitality, longevity, etc. And he looks. The party looks like he's 29. And he's actually like. I think he said he was 149.

Yeah, I think that's what he said to.

I think that's right.

I like Ryan's podcast a lot because so often as entrepreneurs, we can just forget that area of our lives because work becomes so important. And that's like most entrepreneurs that I.

Know well, you know, that's how I met him. Really? Yeah. Because I saw him at an event and we went to lunch, and I was basically like, look, I'm doing really well in a lot of areas of life, but I'm tired and I'm not happy. And his answer was very different than what I expected because he put me through his framework, and he basically convinced me that prioritizing fun and energy needed to be my job, that if I didn't, that I was so overemphasized in work and everything on paper is great, but because I've been so focused on work and unfocused on relationships and fun and play, that it was basically draining the battery and that I needed to overcorrect in the opposite direction in order to have the spark to be able to go play in business.

And, you know, that wasn't as easy as him telling me to take a supplement.

But it was the advice that I needed. And so that's. That's how I met him.

Yeah, he's a great guy. And that concludes our second season of the podcast.

This is. This is where we go bigger. This is a really good one. Please go subscribe. Like, I have. I have. I have. I have gone to battle on this season for you guys, and I hope you enjoyed as. How much as we. As much as we enjoyed making it.

Yeah. And it's a public thing. We're just trying to boat race to 10,000 subscribers on that channel.

Boat race. Boat race. We're gonna boat. We're gonna boat race fast. Oh, okay.

Yeah, we're just speed running. 10,000 followers.

Yeah, we're, like, starting over from scratch. We literally started over from zero. Feels weird. It does feel weird. I feel like I'm a noob again.

It's cool, though.

But. But here's the thing, like, starting over from zero, you don't have to take all the old way of how you've done it in the past. Yeah, right. I probably wouldn't have been this loose. Yeah, I'd like. Hello, everyone. Welcome to business.

Ryan Is here.

Yeah. Really? What else do you want to talk about?

You just got back from Burning Man.

I did. Let's talk about that.

How that go?

Burning man was fine. It was fine. But the Playa, dude, it was like the. So I'll tell you some good stories about the playa. Does have some weird magical properties to it. Okay. So one of the things about Burning man is it, like, whatever you think about manifestation and stuff, like, weird stuff happens where. Where you can just think of something and it just happens to. I'm. There is one story where I was with a friend, and she said, what I would give for a big fuzzy blanket to just, like, fall on us right now. And within 30 seconds, and I know the person didn't hear us, a big fuzzy blanket got thrown over us. Like, that kind of stuff just happens. What happened at this Burning man was tomer hen from my partner on Switch sends me a text, and he says, hey, Dave Asprey promoted Switch today. And we had our record sales day. Oh, that's really great. And I said, I'm going to find Dave Asprey at Burning man, hug him, and tell him, thank you for promoting Switch. I didn't know if Dave Asprey was at Burning Man.

Four hours later, I met a friend's camp, and they said, hey, do you know that guy over there? And I was like, oh, it's Dave Asprey. I was supposed to see him today, and I went over and gave him a hug and said, thanks for promoting Switch today. Yeah, that kind of stuff happens. Another one the next day. I said, you know what I want to happen today? I want to run into a friend that I didn't know was at Burning man that night. Guess who I ran into? Alina from season one. Had no idea she was at Burning Man. Had no idea she was there.

Her business doing so well that she's.

Going to Burning Man. She's doing so good. She's hanging out with Ryan Daniel Moran at Burning Man.

That's crazy. That's crazy.

Yeah. So join the 1%.

You'll end up on the Playa.

You too, can dress up like a moron and ride bikes with me at Burning Man.

My favorite thing about seeing cruisers you at Burning man is like, I know that you won't dress up crazy like that. So you're just wearing, like, normal clothes.

Wearing, like, Walmart clothes.

Yeah, that's like, the most counterculture thing that you can do at Burning Man.

I get made fun of at Burning man for dressing up in Walmart clothes.

Hey, Guys, I'm a teacher from the Midwest.

All these freaking psychonauts and space people.

Spend such crazy amounts of money for stuff that's going to get muddy. And I'm like, I just want to ride my bike and see art and cool talks. Yeah.

This is a real conversation I had at Burning Man. Are you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

Hey, man, how you doing? Oh, dude, I'm so tired. Why? I don't know. Like, I didn't even go that hard last night. Like, I only had one and a half tabs of acid and a little bit of ketamine, and I was back by five, and I was like, do you know what you just said? Like, what are you on? I'm like, granola. Like, I had granola for dinner. That's what I'm on.

I know so many people that go to Burning man, and so it makes me slightly curious.

But then I.

It's great. You got to go once, but you got to go with a group that's at your speed, right?

Yeah, that's the thing.

Because it can be whatever you want. It can be a. A drug bender for seven days, or it could be like, my ideal day at Burning man is I wake up and see the sunrise, and I'm like, what are all these people doing awake already? Oh, no, they're actually still awake from the night before. But I wake up, get a cup of coffee, watch the sunrise. I ride my bike around the Playa and just see what happens. And it's. It's amazing because after three days, I become a little kid in a candy store where I'm like, I have no idea what's going to happen. I'm just going to ride my bike around and meet people and see what's going on. It's going to be great. But you got to be. You got to be with people that are at that speed. Because quite honestly, this last one, most of the group that I wanted to be with was not at that speed. And so I just felt like I was being antisocial.

Yeah. You weren't in teleportation mode, and that's fine.

Correct.

Yeah. Right. I get you. I get you.

Yeah.

I don't know.

We'll see.

But you know. You know what has me more excited right now than anything else is I'm so nerding out on investing right now. Yeah, I'm so nerding out. Like, I, I. I feel like I'm 12, and I found a cool hobby. I.

You moved on from PayPal yet?

I have, but I Don't want to. You're not selling, though. No, no, no, no, no. So PayPal is still my. My investment in PayPal is now.

Thousands of shares.

Mm.

So it makes up a large amount of my portfolio. And to add more shares would just be like an out of balance approach. But, man, do I want to buy more because it's still so cheap. I'd buy. I want to buy as much PayPal as possible. But I have moved on to other investments.

This is not financial advice. Don't take any.

I'm an idiot. Don't listen to anything I say anyway.

But what else about investing is getting you.

I love the process of sitting down and having eight things that I'm interested in. Now, my rule is I can only invest in one stock per month. I'm at monthly allocation. So those eight companies are going to fight it out for what is the most.

Underpriced best investment for me, according to what I'm researching. And so it's like I can only pick one. And once I pick, I tend to stick to that for a few months until it's overvalued or something else drops in value.

Yeah.

So, for example, I would love to buy shares in Uber right now. Uber is. Has an amazing price.

Profit. Sorry, pe. Yeah, that's great. Pe. Very low PE ratio. They're very profitable. Their new CEO is growing their profits. They look great, but they're not undervalued. They're like, properly valued. So if they were to fall 20 to 30%, I'm all over it. But instead, you know, I'm looking at something like Alibaba. Alibaba I still think is undervalued. You know what I think is the most undervalued stock right now? I haven't invested in this yet because I just don't understand enough about the company. I have my story, but it's not like I don't intimately know this company. So it doesn't make sense for me to move into this one. Novo Nordisk.

Is that a pharmaceutical company?

The maker of Ozempic. Oh. So Ozempic is the brand name, but you have all these other companies that have competitors. Right. So what's the name of Eli Lilly's Semaglutide or. Nobody knows.

Right.

Ozempic has the brand name, but the other companies have the competitors. But if you look at Novo Nordisk's financials, if you go back to the year before Ozempic was released, so if you take out all of the profits and sales of Ozempic, they're still undervalued to those numbers. So the market has said, oh, Ozempics no longer king of the market. So the stock has tanked. It's fallen.

Yeah, it's fallen a lot.

You have the chart? Yeah, I do.

Its high was 142 and now it's at 55.

So that's like 75%.

Yeah, yeah.

And why did it fall? Because Ozempic is no longer the preferred.

GLP1. But if you just take it out of their profits, they're undervalued at this price. So it's like. There's a great story and numbers there, but I didn't make an allocation because I just. I have. It's a new awareness for me. I'm still studying that company.

And you're still following your plan of the s and P500.

And then.

I make an allocation every month into index funds, then one stock, and then if I've got extra, then I'll allow myself to buy a speculative play. So, like this last month, Bitcoin. Bitcoin is always going to be a speculative play because it doesn't produce profit. So if I'm going to buy Bitcoin, it has to be from the excess cash after I put it into index funds. After I make one placement, then I can buy Bitcoin or then I can buy that stock that, you know, I think is going to moon. There's this, the one stock, you know, Mind Mend. Do you know them? Mind Mindmed? Yeah, they're the psychedelic research company. They're actually. They're super interesting. Be super interesting for me to take a flyer on, but that would have to come out of my speculative bucket. Right? They're impossible to value. It's totally speculative.

I invested in a coworking space here in Austin and I plan on using it. I think it'll make my life better being there. That came out of my speculative bucket. So I have to hit my minimums and then I can go into the speculative stuff.

Yeah. Step zero to that whole thing is build a business that produces enough income for you to actually invest things and cover your lifestyle. Yeah, I'll be there one day, too. I'll be there. I'll be.

You're gonna get. You're pretty close.

No, I could do. I could do the speculative stuff, but I'm talking about. You write a blog article about.

What was the title?

The Billionaire Next Door.

Yeah.

What was the title of the first one, though?

I invested 135k into these three stocks.

These three stocks yeah, that was a blog post I did someday. Oh, you like that? Okay, got it. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, you know what? I am investing more money than I'm making right now.

Explain that.

Yeah. So I have a couple things and I planned for this when I started this plan two years ago is I had the amount, the target that I wanted to invest. And I knew that over a period of time, unless I made a lot of cash flow, that I would be draining my savings. And so there are months that the business is really profitable and I replenish everything that I invested. Most months, at least for the last three months. You know, capitalism come at a down. Our summer was not fun. Like, we had some people resign, our sales went down, we lost some salespeople. I've been, it's not been a fun summer. Cash flow wise work, we're on the up and up again. But it's been.

So I didn't have those same distributions as I normally have. So I've been taking money from savings and being my investing plan now. So I'm. What I'm weighing there is, is it a better move for me to have it in the bank account or in the number one most researched stock on my watch list?

Kind of makes sense for me to have it in the most researched stock on my watch list, at least long term. Right. And so the, and, and, and if that keep, if that were to keep happening and my savings were to drain, what I would do is I would sell my speculation bucket and I would put it into my long term bucket. Got it. So I would basically reallocate into the thing that I'm never ever going to sell, which is index funds and my highest conviction, stocks.

So you're just making sure that you hit that number every month, regardless of if it's coming from income or savings or whatever. It's just going into the market.

Yeah. I have to put in 10 to 15 grand a month into index funds, no matter what.

Yeah.

And you run the numbers over the course of my lifetime becomes $100 million.

That's good, man. That's good. I feel like when I have seasons where the distributions go a little bit drier, I just stop the investing.

Yeah, you get a little saving.

Right, right.

And so then I look up and I'm like, wow, this year I haven't invested that much because I've been focused on growth in other areas. But then recently I've started to be like, actually I feel really good when I do hit that investment number regardless of what the business is doing. Right. So kind of adopting the same thing that you're. The same way that you're thinking, yeah.

It'S because it's my $100 million plan that if everything else were to fall to shit, I still have a hundred million dollar plan. So let's relax a little bit.

What's that lets you relax a little bit?

Yeah. Now I can be choosy about what I do. Yeah. I can't tell. Do you know how many times in the last three months that I've been like, fuck all this shit. We're going back to just doing a podcast.

Like once a week. And I have the option to do that now.

Doesn't mean I'm gonna pull that trigger tomorrow. But there have been times where I'm like, I don't wanna do these nine things in the business anymore. I wish it was just a podcast again.

Mm.

And I actually have that option now because of that plan, because of my investment plan. Because all that ever has to happen is I need to make 10 to $15,000 a month that I can invest. It's very doable. Like if, again, if everything went to hell. That's one small E commerce brand or three clients.

So that's my hundred million dollar plan. Now I don't need to have a hundred million dollar company or $100 million idea, but I can choose to have them.

By the way. I'm only saying advice that I probably need to hear right now. When I was at Burning Man, Sam and I spent a lot of Sam Prentice, my partner on the fund, we spent some really good time together where he shared with me. He's like. He said, ryan, you don't need to build from fear anymore.

And I was like, what do you. Okay, what do you mean? He's like, well, you've made it to a certain extent, but you got to this point building from fear, meaning, you know, you didn't have money, you built something, you didn't want to be poor. And the approach to that was what gave me skills to bootstrap and hustle and sell and gave me these skills. But he's like, but you don't have to keep building from that perspective. You can build from the perspective of you just want to. And in my mind I was like, well, I'm all, I already want everything that's on my plate. Like, I want to do the podcast, I want to do this brand, I want to do this. Everything on my plate now is stuff I want to do. But the way I'm approaching it is still with the perspective of because I don't want it to go away.

Rather than I want it to exist and grow. And it makes me happy that it's there. And that's something I've been playing with since I got back is I noticed that on the days that I'm really grumpy, it's because I'm operating from this perspective of, oh no, what if this goes away?

And when I'm happy, it's just like, I just want to do this thing. I just want to do this thing. Like I just wanted to do this episode today. And I'm not a nasty pants today.

Yeah, makes sense.

So I'm just, I'm. I'm observing things from that perspective right now.

That's a good lesson.

So having the investing plan is allowing me to think about things from like, I just want. Just want it to exist.

Yeah. Frees you up a lot, which is.

Nice for the 19 of you that still listened to this part. Leave a comment what do you want to see in season three? What theme or topic? You know, let's let. We can see the board from here. I can. Because we've thrown some ideas at the board for season three.

Public CEOs. Because I'm fascinated by public companies right now.

Investing.

The state of blank. Like the state of AI. That's. I think that's the one. I think that's the one that we're going to do. Really? I do. Yeah. I'm just predicting. No, no, no. Like an episode of the state. And I understand the state of the economy, the state of E commerce, the state of politics. Just bringing in experts on doing a state of season. That's the one. I think. I don't know yet. Taking million. Taking million dollar case studies from our audience is saying where are they now? You've been on the podcast before. Where are you now? The one that you really like is positive politics. Are there people in the world who have a optimistic view and then one that I just, I want to do this at some point. I just want to do it is I want to bring influencers in and I want to help them with their business.

Like Shark Tank for influencers.

Yeah. Yeah. Like tell me what you're working on and let's make this a thanks.

Build it.

Yeah, I like that a lot.

I like that as a YouTube series as well. I think that could be really cool.

So do any of these tickle your fancy? Do any of these make you feel like Ryan Dice makes me feel in my inside? If so, put them in the comments and we'll see what we do. Please stay here for season two. Subscribe to the channel. This is some of our best work ever and I think you're going to love it.

You know what? You should finish off by by just talking about what's happening in capitalism.com world because I don't know. We don't know, Ryan. We the audience don't know what's happening in capitalism.com world. How's the 1%? How's capitalism incubator?

The 1% is doing freaking great.

Yeah. Tell me about some.

The incubator has been really slow. So we've spent the last three years just focusing on the 1%. Yeah. And we are getting awesome results. I mean last week we had 2 people cross 100k a month for the first time and wasn't one of them.

Their first month in business? Am I getting that?

No, that's not right.

I thought somebody launched and had 100k.

In their first month.

No, if that's a story, I don't know about it. I mean that has happened but I don't know one recently I know two longer term clients have cross 100k a month for the first time and we're just getting insane results.

My convictions really high. My like the community is just growing. It's doing a great job. Yeah. Like it's. If you're in e commerce it's like some of the best money you'll spend. If you want to build a million dollar business you should just join the 1%. You should just do it. The incubator has been slow. Very slow. It's just been very slow.

It's just been. We've been very. The team has done a good job of preventing me from selling something until it's 10 out of 10. Excellent. And because the 1% can pay for the entire business now.