Focus On Less: What To Prioritize When You Want To Make More Money

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Here. Welcome back to capitalism dot com. Hope this finds you well. As I record this, I am getting up and gearing to go to Vcon. I'm actually flying out of here in a couple hours to go to Indianapolis for VCon, which is Gary Vaynerchuk's conference, which is mostly focused on Web3. And I was thinking about skipping it this year because capcon was pretty close before it, but it happens to be in Indianapolis and Indianapolis is where my college is. It was about an hour outside of Indianapolis and Marion, Indiana. So it's an excuse for me to do something that I have wanted to do for years now, which is fly back to where I went to college and see some of my college buddies. So some of my friends that I haven't seen in years I'll be meeting up with over the next couple of days, which I've wanted to do for several years. It was actually I was inspired by something that Tim Ferriss talked about on one of his podcasts, on A Year in Review, where he talked about instead of setting New Year's resolutions, he does Years in Review and he looks at the times in the year, week by week that he was happiest, and then he prioritizes those things and bases the things that he wants to do in the upcoming year based on those things. And I did that exercise several years ago and was like, oh, all my stuff is around relationships. All my best moments are around people that I want to spend time with. Who do I want to spend more time with? And I was like, I haven't seen my college buddies in years. I've been putting it off for years. And now I get to write off the trip to Indianapolis because I'm going for a conference. It just worked out. Now there is a reason for my rambling coming up to this, because after Capcom, I experienced a Capcom crash. After our event, I experienced this high at the event of seeing all of these people come in and collaborate. And I got a peek, a peek into my purpose. I got a peek into everything that I want this community to be, everything that I want my business to be. It was such a highlight of the year. And then I went home and my mom got married. She's 67, is married. Awesome. And then I came home and I built this podcast studio because I knew I was going to have a Capcom crash. And I was like, if I build something, that's a good use of my time for now, I built this podcast studio and then the Capcom crash hit me really hard. As soon as I got back. And it hit me as soon as I sat down to try to work again. And I realized a few very important lessons about entrepreneurship while trying to navigate this tension of I just had this big win. I just had this big slam dunk win, the best event we've ever done. And people were crying when it was over because they didn't want it to end. And now here I am answering emails and thinking about how am I going to sell some things and get that one project that isn't moving. Move it. And all of a sudden it was like going from sprinting full throttle to being at a dead, a dead stop, trying to navigate what I'm going to do next. And it was very interesting to process through this and come to some conclusions and some realizations that have been processing for a long time that I think will really help you in your entrepreneurial journey. Oftentimes as entrepreneurs, we feel pulled in multiple directions. There are a thousand things that we need to get done. There are five projects that we're working on at any time. There are nine different directions that we could take our businesses at any given time. And choosing where to put our focus can be a job in and of itself. I think we all know that if you give singular focus to something, we can make just about anything grow. And one day I sat down and I wrote out all the different projects that were in front of me and all the things that were taking up psychic energy. And I realized how many things get a little bit of my attention versus how few things get all of my attention. In fact, I have so little attention left at the end of the day that it might ever really present with my kids. And I'm better than most, I'm better than most people at juggling all those things and showing up for my kids and, and doing all that stuff, especially as an entrepreneur. But when I wrote out all the things that were taking up my attention and all of the different competing things for my time, I could see why I felt so stressed all of the time. I could see why I would feel this hangover after an event like the Capitalism Conference, which was so much fun. And now I feel just tugged in a thousand different directions. Of course that's the case because I'm giving 20% of my attention to 10 different things. That math doesn't add up. Yeah. Because it's taking twice as much attention as most people's. And, and, and it, it was too much to handle after coming back from Capcom, and I really had a strong Capcom crash. And I was talking with A few team members of mine, and they gave me some really good advice. One of whom said, you know, Ryan, you don't need to do any of this. You don't need to have any of these projects going on, so you could just go do what you want. And I was like, interesting thought. And I'm not just going to walk away from things, but it's an interesting thought to think, oh, not everything is equally important. Not everything needs to be picked up right now. Some things can be picked up later. So if I look at what is right in front of me, how do I put my focus on one thing right now? And for some of you, you're like, yeah, no shit, Sherlock. What are you, what are you, an idiot? You learning this for the first time? Maybe I am an idiot because for most of my career, I've had multiple projects going on, multiple tabs open in my brain, multiple things going on, multiple things taking up my focus and my energy. But I have observed that when I have the fewest number of things going on, I am able to give the most creative capacity to those few things. In fact, I was just thinking today, you know, if I lost everything and I went back and got a job, somewhere within six months, I would have so much energy freed up from my mind that I would just start the next thing. That was interesting and curious to me. When you're a full time entrepreneur, sometimes it can be tempting to say, what's the next project that is going to make me enough money so that then I can free up all of my focus and put it onto the thing that I actually want to do? But the beautiful irony of entrepreneurship is that when you put your energy on the thing that is the most energy rich, it tends to be the thing that grows. Here's what I mean. As I made this list of all these things that were taking up my attention, I looked at them and said, okay, if I don't need to do any of these, which one do I want to do? If I don't need to pursue any of these rabbit holes, if I don't need to do any of these things, then which one do I want?

Man, I hadn't asked myself that question in a long time. It had been a long time since I gave myself the permission to say, oh, you can let all these balls drop, it's fine. You can disappoint all of these people. You could cut all of these projects. So which ones would you fight for? Which ones are you going to do anyway? And what would happen to your life if you allowed yourself to give those things all of your energy. What would happen to those projects? What would happen to my content? What would happen to the projects that I love the most? What would happen if they got all of me? And what's interesting is I actually like all of these projects, but it's kind of like having nine children. You can love two of them at a time, but the other seven are driving you crazy, aren't they? Yeah, because it's a lot of attention.

And so what happened for me is I narrowed in on a few of these projects that I thought sounded the most fun right now. Huh. Fun.

Fun.

Fun's a hard word for me because a lot of times in entrepreneurship, we take things so seriously because we got to make it work, because we go against the pack, we put everything on our shoulders. There's so much responsibility, we're thinking about goals and hitting projections that we forget about fun. And so I came up with a different term for it, and it was energy rich. Which one of these feels the most energy rich for me right now? And when I asked myself that question, it was obvious. It was so darn obvious where my focus needed to be. I'm jazzed about making more content. We're starting a new series on the YouTube channel that I'm really excited about. We're talking about experimenting with some new content styles I'm excited to play with. I just haven't done them because I haven't had the energy for them because it's been pulled in all these other things that are energy poor. And so my. My half filled cup is being dumped out over all of these different cups. Rather than me going to the thing that already has all this energy, already has all this juice, has this momentum that can fill up my cup so that I have it to pour into other things. One of my other team members, my voice of reason on the team is she said something to the effect of, can you please just go have. Please not focus on anything until you go hang out with your college buddies. Because when you come back with a full cup, you have more to pour into all of these other projects. And none of this feels so heavy anymore. And I was like, huh? That's the exact advice that I would give somebody in the 1% or somebody in our community or someone that I was mentoring or a brand in the fund. I would say, don't beat your head against the wall trying to make something work. Although there is a time and place for that if you've been doing that chronically for a long time. You need to do one of two things. You either need to free up your focus to put into the thing that is actually energy rich so that it's you're feeding each other, or you need to take your eye away from this and go get filled up in some other way so that you have the energy and the focus to pour back into your business. I have said on the show that one of the most surprising things that we tell entrepreneurs that we invest in in the in the capitalism.com fund is go get a job. We tell them to go get a job in a lot of cases, because if they are thinking about extracting from the business because their cup is empty, they're not going to have enough energy or focus to pour into the business and that needs it the most.

So I started looking at this for myself and I started saying, okay, I have the most energy and excitement around, like if everything, if I have no other focus and I could just focus on making great content. That was how I built everything in the first place. I don't have the biggest audience in the world, but I have a very responsive audience. And I know a lot of my followers at VCon. I'll be recognized by a good number of people because I've probably answered their DMS or gotten on a video call with them because I go so deep with my followers, even though I don't have that big of an audience. And so the idea of going to where there is the most energy in a weird, roundabout way, is the exact thing that will grow the business. Dang it. This is the exact advice I would give to somebody else, and I just needed to hear it for myself. So I know that putting more of my attention there grows the business. Why am I not giving it more attention? Because I think that all these other things are equally important. Michael Malowitz calls it the queen bee activity. He wrote a great book called Clockwork, and he talks about how as entrepreneurs, we have all these different things that need to get done. But most businesses have a queen bee activity. The queen be is the thing that if it's killed, the entire hive goes away. But if you protect the queen bee, if you protect the queen bee activity, everything else takes care of itself. And in my case, that's creating great content because I enjoy it. I'm going to do it. I build the audience, I get new customers. By sharing what's going on in our businesses, it becomes lead flow for a lot of what we do. If everything else went away, I could rebuild something else based on the relationship capital that I have, from people that I have invested in via my content, of people who I have at least attempted to impact through my content. So for me, content is our queen bee activity. And yet I have been pulled in so many other directions that I have not protected the queen bee. And, and then I looked at one ring outside of that. Okay, with all these other projects that are going on, what are the, what are the other things that are energy rich right now? And one more project stood out around this and it's the Capitalist Pigs community. The Capitalist Pigs community is what we turned our Mastermind into. We used to have a $50,000 a year mastermind. I stopped taking clients inside of that Mastermind back in 2020 because there was Covid and we couldn't do events anymore, at least for a while. And then I didn't want to do it anymore because I just didn't like the model of having a mastermind where you sell $50,000 spots and you're like, I'm the expert. It just wasn't fun for me anymore and I wanted to put my attention elsewhere. And so last year in 2022, I said, what is the most fun way that I could have a mastermind? And I said, well, all the value comes outside of the room anyway. Like, we like to think that in masterminds, all the value comes when people are presenting on their businesses and getting feedback. But the real value happens when you're having lunch with somebody and you make a great connection or you go on an excursion together and you build a real relationship or you stay up late talking about business. It's not the formalized Mastermind where all the value is, it's the relationships that are built. And I'm a relationship builder. That's, that's like very deep to my core. So we did this experiment in 2022 where we launched the Capitalist Pigs, which was my new take on the Mastermind. And instead of doing a $50,000 a year mastermind, we released an NFT. And the NFT was 5 Ethereum. It cost 5 Ethereum, which at the time that I'm recording this is between 8, $9,000, 8, $9,000 and it was a three year pass, which is like, honestly, like, I'm embarrassed that it's that low. But I was like, it's just an experiment because I'm not going to promise any content. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to build a community. I'm going to build a relation relationships with these people. I'm going to do three events a year that are fun. We're going to rent Airbnbs, and sometimes they're going to be super high end, and sometimes they're going to be scrappy and we're going to be in bunk beds, but we're going to play pickleball and play baseball and we're going to talk about business. And I'll bring in my friends in the area who I know can give to this group, and we'll just prioritize fun and, and the breakthroughs will come out of that, and the people who will resonate with that will join it and they'll love it and they'll get so much value out of it, it'll be better than a $50,000. Your mastermind. And, oh, here's another thing that would be fun. What if we brought our deal flow to this group and the investors in this group would be the first people to see all of the deal flow that's coming my way. And if they want to invest in it, cool. And if not, that's fine too. But as a result of it being a super low price point and us prioritizing community, there'll be like, no pressure on anything. People won't feel pressure to come to the events if they don't want to. People won't feel pressure to come to Zoom Calls if they don't want to. We'll just prioritize the fun. Oh, and here's one more thing. What if we did it as an NFT so that somebody could sell their spot, because then it's an asset on their balance sheet rather than an expense. So somebody could literally buy the nft, come to a couple events, get all their value, and then say, hey, I'm out. I'm going to sell this. And they could recoup their investment. Hey, they might even be able to turn a profit. So in doing that, everybody would have the same incentives to make the group amazing, because the more value they bring to the group, the more the value of their NFT grows up. And that just sounded fun to me. And we launched it, and it was a great launch. It was a huge success. We did two events. They've been awesome events. We gave them VIP access at capcon, which meant that they got to hang out backstage with the speakers. We did a special dinner with them so that they could network and meet some of the people who presented. So there was. I mean, it was. It was just so fun and easy. And I was like, I'm giving that almost no.

No percentage of my attention so these two things that I find so valuable and fun and meaningful, what if I gave them 80% of my attention and it was like, oh my goodness, I'm an idiot? Because as soon as I asked that question, I could see all the ways that I could grow my content. I could see all of the ways I could grow the capitalist pigs from 100 members to 200 members. And would those things drive the business? Well, let's see. Out of building relationships with members of the pigs, I'm going to find really cool people to be on the podcast because I'm going to be building real relationships with these people. And out of building a really great community of 250 awesome members and doing three events a year where 30 to 60 people come and we do really cool stuff and fun stuff, I'm going to find the next investment out of that group and the next investor for the deals are coming to my table. And I was like, oh my goodness, I'm spreading myself thin because I'm afraid to go all in on something.

And it was really enlightening to see how much growth can happen if I give something all of my focus. For example, capcon gets all of our focus for three to six months before an event. And if you've been to the Capitalism conference, you can tell it's an amazing three day experience. When I had nothing else going on and I had just a podcast, that was when my audience was the biggest or growing the fastest. At least.

I put all my attention into writing emails to my list. I don't let anybody else write in my name. And so when I write to my email list, I get really good responses. So the things that I give the most attention to, those are the things that end up growing. So where do I want to give more of my attention? And I answer that, I usually answer that question by saying, well, where is their revenue? Where is there already growth happening? Because that's where there's a sign where there's energy. But in, in my case, my revenue was split almost evenly across the board. So it was instead of what has the most revenue or the most growth into what feels the most energizing. And I can let my team handle all the other things. And I'm sharing this, this with you because whether you are a new entrepreneur or whether you are an experienced eight figure entrepreneur, you have a thousand different things that are demanding your attention right now. And it can be difficult and tempting to choose which ones are worthy of your attention. Sometimes we think we have to prioritize the things for Some end result that we think is going to lead to a more fulfilling life. But we got into this game because we wanted the fulfilling life in the first place. And sometimes the fulfilling life is just pursuing projects that feel energy rich, that feel fun. And the irony is, at least in my case, that sometimes when I prioritize the thing that has a natural, a natural interest for me, that's where growth comes from, too. There's this great book called why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. It was written by these AI scientists that ran a bunch of.

Models, these experiments, to see how to find the most efficient ways to accomplish big feats. And the interesting thing is that in all their models, it pointed to novelty being the indicating factor of something being a success. Novelty is newness. Novelty is curiosity. Novelty is fun. Novelty is ingenuity. It's figuring out some new way to do things. It's trying something that hasn't been tried before. Taro Isokopola talked. He's the CEO of four Sigmatic. He spoke at capcon, and he talked about how he looks for blue ocean opportunities by combining two things in a way that haven't been combined before, that haven't been brought together before. And by doing that, he's able to create an area of growth where there's no competition. And it's fun, too. And it's, it's. It's making me rethink how I approach my focus and my time. Because I used to say, these are all the things that need to get done, and here's where I need to block it all in my calendar. But I'm starting to realize that if I prioritize the things that are the most curious to me, the most energizing for me, the most fun for me, then I have a full cup for me, be able to pour into other areas of the business. For example, if I try to bang out some ad copy, or if I try to. If I try to promote something or if I try to sell something, these are less energizing activities for me. If I do those first and then I try to write to record a podcast, the podcast isn't as good. But if I do the podcast or if I write an email to my list, things that give me a lot of energy, that are very fun for me, that are very creative for me, if I do those things first, then I have extra energy to pour into the ad or the sales thing or whatever it is. So if I prioritize the thing that brings the most energy, which means that there's a natural curiosity to it, that I want to do it, I want to grow it, I want to blow it up. It's life giving. If I prioritize those things, I have the energy for everything else. And I've been doing it backwards. I've been doing it backwards. And I think having the.

Contrast of this super energizing event that was the Capitalism conference, this super enriching, energetic, purposeful, wonderful thing, and then coming back to my daily life, that smash in the face of contrast allowed me to see how broken my approach was, how broken the.

The productivity mechanism was that I was following. Whereas instead, if I say, hey, for three months, I'm going to make these things my focus, how much faster would those things grow? Because they're the things that are the most energy rich. And maybe that means that this profit center over here won't grow. But here's what I've experienced in the past. What I've experienced in the past is that if I'm full on in what I want to be doing, I'm a more attractive person.

I'm a. I'm a person that other people want to be around. There ain't nobody more magical than me than when I'm in my element. And there is nobody that you want to not be friends with when I am a grumpy pants. Now, some of you know, if you followed my content, that I went through a really hard time between 21, 2021 and 2022 after Covid. There was business fraud in one of my investments that really kicked me in the teeth. It was a huge financial loss I went through. I had Covid twice. I had long Covid in the form of a really severe anxiety and depression. But I now can see that I made it worse by trying to make up for those losses, by trying to make up for those setbacks and prioritizing things that produce cash flow, or that I thought would produce cash flow. Now, sometimes doing those things is necessary. Absolutely. And maybe it was in my case, but I can see now that I also held back opportunities for even more growth by not just following where my natural impulse was, where my natural curiosity was, because that's where all the fuel was. And if I'm following the things that give me life that are providing fuel, providing excitement, I'm really fun to be around. And when I'm fun to be around, I attract really great clients. And when I'm really fun to be around, I. I attract really great podcast guests. And when, when I attract great podcast guests, my audience grows. And when my audience grows, we Sell more things. And guess what? I don't like to be as involved in the sales processes because it takes me out of give mode to my audience. But I have great members of the team who excel at that and find that really energizing. And so it's actually better for the customer to let the team handle those things.

But all of this happens by me protecting the queen bee and I haven't been doing that. And so it's again made me rethink how I approach my work. What would my life be like if I prioritize fun and the fun productive projects like content and the capitalist pigs, or that new bonus training that I want to do for the 1% or that keynote I want to get for Capcon? You see, I'm magic when I'm thinking about those things and I'm miserable when I'm not. And so this contrast of the big win of capcon followed by the Capcom crash allowed me to see that from a perspective that I haven't seen before. Because all that was different about capcon was that it got all of my focus. I brought all my creative ideas to it. I was fully present at that and I was focused on doing an amazing job because it was important to me. Can I take that mindset into everything? Can you take that mindset into everything? What would your life and business be like if you decided to prioritize the things that were energy rich, the things that were life giving? What might happen if you followed that as your leading indicator for success? See, where I was going earlier was I think that I need to give my energy to something because it produces cash flow or because I think it has to grow or because other people are counting on me. But what I've discovered is that when I'm in a good place, when I'm doing things that are energy rich and I'm fun to be around, I attract the partnerships and the clients and the right relationships that I can put into that project to make that energy rich and life giving. A good example of this would be sheer strength. Is my old company that I sold and I bought back. It's grown, but it's not getting enough of my attention right now. That's a story I have in my head of like it needs more of my attention. I have this great vision for it, but I feel pulled in all these directions that it's sort of getting the scraps of me. Well, how do I fix this problem? Well, if I'm in a good place, if I'm doing what matters to me, if I am following my impulses and my purpose and I am excited and energized. I can find the partner to run that from my audience and give someone the opportunity to be my partner in this. And I can be choosy about who I allow to have the reins to something like that, which means I can find the right partner. And I find it fun to mentor someone in the context of a business that I'm excited about. Oh my goodness. That's how I can grow that company. So what's funny is if I put my energy into content and the Capitalist Pigs, the two things that right now are the most energy rich for me, then I will meet the relationships and the partnerships and the breakthroughs and the opportunities for me to invest in all the other projects that I have. Plus I will be in a better place when I show up for that coaching call in one of our other programs. I will be in a better place when a client calls me at 6am with a challenge. I will be in a better place to work with my team and guide them toward the vision that we've set together. And so it's flipping the whole thing on its head in a way that I have been able to intellectualize but not really embody. And that has been an interesting breakthrough for me. And I hope that it's valuable for you to think about how there doesn't need to be a grind in multiple directions. The grind part of your business is actually the most fun when it feels purposeful and meaningful because everything is new and exciting and fresh and every little breakthrough feels like you won the frickin lottery. But when you feel exhausted and you continue to grind, when you just don't have the energy for it, everything sucks.

So.

What would it be like to pursue that area of the business that is calling you and what might happen as a result of you going full throttle in that direction rather than beating your head against the wall trying to fix something that just isn't working.

Feel free to use this if it feels useful. Sometimes it is necessary to beat your head against the wall and try to make something work. Sometimes that is the thing that needs to happen.

But I'm very curious to see what happens for me if I just prioritize what feels energy rich. I'll keep you posted. I'm Ryan. Daniel Moran. My company's capitalism.com a project I'm really excited about right now is the Capitalist Pigs. Our next meetup is August 7th. August 7th through the 10th in San Diego. We're running this big mansion in San Diego on 15 acres with pickleball courts and a soccer field. And we're going to have a dinner cruise and we're going to invite a hand selected group of people to come help and present to the group. And the events we do at cost, which means we just find out how much they cost and we divide it among the attendees and you just gotta own your spot, which means you own the nft. How fun is that? If you want to join, go to capitalism.com pigs. Thanks for listening. I'm Ryan Moran and I'm done. See ya. And now a quick word from Kyle Carnahan, one of our members from the capitalism.com community.

Yeah, so I'm realizing like, man, I'm a fireman, but like, what am I leaving for my family? I was looking at my retirement because I'm gonna get 60% retirement. I gotta become an entrepreneur, man. Like, otherwise I'm leaving, I'm leaving a lot on the table, man. As soon as that, the opportunities to join the incubator, it was like, no question. And now I know that feeling, like when it's time to invest in something, it's time to invest in something. That shift in mindset of being around these people that are playing this game elevated my expectations for myself to such a high level that like now I have zero roof of what I believe I'm capable of. You know, it's like in this community there's this give and give and give and everyone's just giving back to each other, right? And everyone's giving back to each other and everyone's making more money and everyone's being more successful and they're just giving back to each other. And that's the game, like who can give the most? And I'm taking everything I'm learning from the incubator and I'm starting to use it in my business now. And all of a sudden I'm, you know, like a year later, I'm driving down the road and I look at my wife. I was like, holy sh t Whit. I was like, I'm a entrepreneur.

When I joined the incubator, I had my belief and my trust. All the this takes faith. You have to take a step forward in the dark, you're going to get nowhere. So stay stuck or just make a move. So don't sit on the fence. Stop being a fence sitter.

Make a move.

Either, either get out of here or make a move. You get the right coaches in place and the right people around you, I mean, it's just inevitable. If you do the work. So man, capitalism.com and Ryan Moran has been just an integral part of my growth and it's been amazing. So thank you.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go Deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. One, you can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits. You can get plugged in@capitalism.com 1. And third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell, you can work closely with us inside the Capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do over at capitalism.com Inc. That's capitalism.com Inc.