Gary Vee’s Conference: Lessons in Community and Success

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Welcome to capitalism dot com. Hey, I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. I just got back from VCon, which is Gary Vaynerchuk's annual conference for his NFT holders, the people who bought into veefriends, which I did. I bought two veefriends. I bought the Hangout Hawk, which gets you a few zoom calls with Gary every year. And I bought the Dinner Deer, which gets you one annual dinner with Gary and the other dinner deer holders for three years. And VCon is interesting to me because I'm a big Gary Vaynerchuk fan and I'm also interested in the whole Web3 community and I also do conferences. So I go to Vcon to kind of see how Gary does these and also to learn what is going on in the web3world. And Gary also brings in a bunch of really high level business leaders to come give talks or do Q and as. So I went last year and I decided to go this year mostly because the event was held in Indianapolis, which is near where I went to college. So I stayed an extra day and took a 90 minute trip up north to Marion, Indiana, where I walked the halls of my alma mater at Indiana Wesleyan University, which was a big trip down memory lane. Got to see my friend Curtis give a sermon because he be. He actually became a pastor. We were in some pastoral ministries classes together, but he actually became a pastor. I became an entrepreneur and I, I came back with some things that I wanted to share with all of you because I did have some takeaways from Vcon, but also had some big takeaways for myself after seeing it contrasted with how Gary Vaynerchuk does things. Now, as a lot of you know, I'm a very big Gary Vaynerchuk fan. He is who I want to be when I grow up. And I have modeled some of my business decisions after seeing how he does things. I also just really appreciate the fact that he stands for kindness and empathy, which are values that I also strive to emulate, to embody, and to pass on into our communities. But the way that Gary Vaynerchuk does events is different than how I do them and how I want to do them. So I want to preface this by saying I'm a huge Gary Vaynerchuk fan, but there were some things about Vcon that left me wanting more. So for those of you who were not there, you should know that if you've come to the Capitalism conference, you know that we keep them to a few hundred people. You meet just about everybody and it feels like A community. When you're in there, vcon is like 5,000 people plus. And they rent out football stadiums to hold these events. They are in huge venues with a ton of vendors, but it's such a big area for a relatively small amount of people. 5000 people in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis feels kind of empty, which creates a little bit of a weird vibe. You're in this huge space and people are spread out all over the place, and it feels kind of empty, which to me is just kind of weird. Like you want the place to be full and packed. That's just Conference 101. So I thought that was a kind of an interesting decision. The other thing that stood out to me is that Gary isn't on stage much. Everybody's there to see Gary, I'm there to see Gary. And Gary gives a quick talk in the morning and he gives a quick talk in the afternoon, and then you really don't see him much. Now this reminded me of something that Russell Brunson said to me at one of my events. This was like maybe Capcon 2 or 3. I pulled out all the stops to get Russell Brunson to speak at our event. I ended up chartering a private jet to show up near Russell so he could get on the jet, fly to our event, and be home by dinner. I mean, I was like, we want you here. We'll do whatever it takes to get you here. And Russell asked me this question when he got to my event. He's like, what are you speaking on? And I was like, oh, I don't give a keynote at my events because I'm the host. I'm doing all the Q&As, I'm interviewing all of the speakers, I'm interacting with everybody. I'm very, very active at our events. And he was like, these are your people. They're here to see you. Why would you not give a keynote? Which really stood with me. So I've done a keynote at our events ever since because of what Russell said to me. And so to see Gary not on stage much, not doing really any of the Q and A's. He did maybe one or two. But not being on stage that much just felt a little bit weird to me. I mean, it was a star studded lineup. They had all kinds of people like Mila Kunis and Drew Barrymore and a bunch of celebrities. But everybody's there to see Gary and wanted to see more of him. So that was a little bit weird to me going to this event of just not seeing the the host of the event as much as you would expect. But there were some really interesting takeaways from this event. And I go to these events to meet people. And the first thing that stood out to me about VCon was how often I was recognized. While I was walking the halls of the event, I was with my buddy Evan Van Aken, who has a TikTok following of about a million people. If you add up his TikTok and his Instagram, it's about a million people total that follow him. So his audience is like 10 times the size of mine. And we had this little experiment where we said, okay, who gets recognized more? Me with the podcast and the YouTube channel, which is a tenth the size of yours, or you with a huge TikTok following. And we have similar audience bases. We're both in the business education space. But he focuses on short term content and I focus more on long term content or long form content. I go really in depth where he is doing one minute videos. So he gets way more visibility than me, but I have more depth with my people. And we came out about even. I think I was recognized more than him, more often than him, but there were people that recognized him, like, hey, I know you from somewhere. I recognize your mustache. And it was a really interesting case study between the two of us because something that we noticed is that Evan got recognized, I got recognized, but no one exactly zero people recognized both of us. This opened up a really interesting conversation for both of us because we realized that you can go deep on a platform and build a huge following and build a big community of people who will buy your stuff. But both of us have really successful businesses as a result of building audiences. But if you're on TikTok really deep, you're not hitting the same people as if you have a podcast that is really big. So that was actually kind of nice because I don't put a ton of effort into TikTok. I don't have TikTok on my phone, I don't browse TikTok. I don't like TikTok, and I don't really want to create for TikTok. And it was nice to see that Evan got all of this recognition and all these followers from people who do use TikTok. But I got recognized from just making the content that I like to make and going a little bit deeper on topics. And so I tell you that because there's a temptation often to be on every platform all at once. And that's not bad advice. But what I took Away from it is the real audience game is nailing one or two platforms and then you can branch out from there. So for example, for us, I make longer form content for YouTube and for the podcast and then we take that and turn it into clips for Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. But I'm not so concerned about the reach of short form content. I am more concerned about the engagement on my long form content because that's the type of demographic that I want to hit. I like going deeper on topics, I like connecting with my people on a deep level. I don't really want to cast a wide net all of the time. I'd rather have a small but engaged audience. I don't have the biggest audience in the world, but I have a very responsive one. I have a multi seven figure business as a result of people who have been following my work for years, sometimes over a decade. And I don't think you get that with short form content. I can't tell you how many people I follow on Instagram for their reels. A few. Now that's just me, right? There's people who can tell you 12 people that they follow and they really engage with. And short form content can be a great way to spread a wide net, to build a podcast following or an email list. But I'm in the game of longer term relationships and connections and, and it was edifying for me to see that because it sort of made me feel a little bit freed up. I was like, I, you know what, I guess I don't need to be obsessed with TikTok and Instagram. I'm just going to create the content that I really want to create and create more of it. It made me want to double down on where I'm really strong and where I get energy and where I have a natural inclination to create content. So if you have one of those and I would encourage you to double down on one or two platforms rather than spreading yourself wide over a bunch of different places. So just personally that was a big takeaway for me. Now I want to share with you something that was said at one of the stages. There were breakouts all over the place at VCon and they were all Q&As. They were all panels and Q&As. I kind of wish there were more presentations, people with prepared notes and thoughts, but it was a lot of interviews and casual content. But I'm there for a specific reason, right? I want to learn about Web3. So I was hoping that people would go deeper on topics, but there was something that someone said at one of the Web3 breakouts. It was specifically about the state of Web3. Where are we in the overall community of Web3 now? When you hear Web3 or crypto or NFTs, most people are obsessed with the values of things. The value of Bitcoin, the value of Ethereum, the value of NFTs. That's where all the speculators, all the traders, all the flippers come in and they make their money. That's what gets headlines and it brings a lot of people into a space. This is true with Amazon or with Shopify or with ClickBank or affiliate marketing too, right? You see the numbers of how much money somebody is making and it is sexy. It makes you want to pursue something like that. But since the values of things like Bitcoin and Ethereum and NFTs are way down right now, you could tell that the community was talking about and valuing other things. And there was a phrase used by someone that really stood out to me and it was that Web3 is in Developer spring right now, or builder spring right now. You might have heard the term crypto winter. Crypto winter is the time after a big run up where everybody makes a bunch of money and then the bottom falls out, the bubble sort of bursts, people sell, projects dry up and there is a winter that happens where nothing's happening. The values of things aren't going up, there's no projects being built. All of the buzz that was around all these projects and companies goes away and you're left with crypto winter. There's crickets, it's. It feels like death and despair and people lose a ton of money. But when someone said that they were in developer Spring, that really stood out to me. They described developer Spring as the time after a crypto winter in which a bunch of things have been flushed out of the marketplace. There's no more big speculation going on in the market, there's no big end NFT projects that are being launched and printing money. Instead, what's happening in the Web3 community is that you have very, very quiet development. You have developers and entrepreneurs who are building in this space, creating new utility and new platforms, but they're not getting a lot of attention right now. It's like they're sowing seeds, they're planting a new garden and they know that it's going to take months or years but for this to bear any fruit before there is a harvest again, before there's a big bull run again. And I resonated with this because I think that that's true. I think that's where we are in the economy, and that's where we are in the state of entrepreneurship right now. We had a big time of exits. We had 20, 21 in which interest rates were zero, in which you could get money for nothing, in which aggregators were coming in and buying up all these companies. Valuations were huge, and. And people were selling and everything worked and everyone was making money and NFT launches were happening, and every crypto you touched went to the moon. It's easy to get distracted by that and sucked into stuff like that. But the real work happens during spring and summer. Spring meaning the time when you are planting new seeds, coming up with new ideas, fostering new relationships, and summer is when you're working like crazy to try and prepare for harvest. And we're in the early part of spring right now. I talk with a lot of entrepreneurs who are afraid of a recession coming. They're afraid of the debt ceiling, or they're afraid of bad news, or they're afraid to start something new. Because we had this winter in which there was a consolidation in asset prices. The economy is in recession, bitcoin is down 60 to 80%. But people who are leading the next trend are starting new things right now. They're planting new seeds. And I like that. And I happen to agree that that's where we are. If you have been scared or gun shy about all of the losses that have happened in the last year or so, you're not alone. You're in good company among entrepreneurs. But right now is a very good time to start planting new seeds. People are hungry for newness, for freshness, for new ideas. There's still investors who want to back good projects. There are still customers who are eager to try new things. So now's the time to be planting ahead of the next summer, which is when you work like crazy and prepare for the next harvest. One thing that stood out to me at VCon was there were some very interesting vendors at this event. And there was one person who set up a booth outside of the conference that I thought was super smart. So David Meltzer is a media guy in the. In the business space. He has a bunch of Internet web shows, and he has like a mini shark tank, kind of like we have inside of the incubator. And he did something so smart. He set up a booth in which he was just recording live podcasts. So he invited people from stage, he invited people from his network to come to the event and be on his podcast. While everybody was there at Vcon. This was so smart. And I'm totally going to rip this off from David. So what this did, this is just hats off to David. This is so smart. Is it put all the cool people at his booth, all the cool people who are just on stage were coming over and recording a podcast in front of all this crowd that was getting around his booth and so his salespeople could sell whatever they wanted to all of these people who were watching the podcast. Also David was associated with all these smart people that were just on stage. He was able to knock out a bunch of content over two days. And you had all of the cool people surrounding one booth, which made David look really awesome. I'm totally going to rip this off. I'm totally going to do this at events. I've done similar things at events where I just was recording podcasts with cool people at events. But the idea that he was getting people on stage to come off of stage and then do a podcast with David, super smart. I'm totally going to take it from him. There was also a ton. This, this was really surprised me. There was a ton of sports cards vendors and there are people who are literally making a living buying and selling Gary Vaynerchuk Vcon memorabilia. So I didn't realize that there was an entire secondary market of people buying the cards of vee friends, getting them graded and then selling them like sports cards. There's a whole micro economy about this. I had no idea that there was such demand for stuff like that. And so it was cool to see these small hobby businesses, people who are full time sports cards dealers and v con dealers and they were just collectors selling to other collectors. That was actually really cool to see because as a kid I used to trade baseball cards. My dream as a kid was to open up a sports card shop. And so to see other people doing that was just fun to see. My favorite part of the event was a conversation that I had with Evan, who flew in to go to the conference with me. And Evan was talking to me about one of his businesses. And one of his businesses is in a space that I know extremely well. And he's doing fairly well in this business. He's taking home a modest six figure income and take home profits from this business. But I could see right away how he could triple this business in six to 12 months. It was right up my alley. I knew exactly what he should do. And I, during one of one of the talks on stage, I think Drew Barrymore was talking about her businesses I didn't even know she was an entrepreneur. Forgive me, but I was like, hey, Evan, let's. Let's go back to the room and talk about your business. And we mapped out his plan for how he could increase his profits by 200 or 300% over the next six to 12 months. This was very enlightening for both of us. It was enlightening for him because I sort of gave him the playbook of how he could grow this business. But it was also enlightening for me to see how much value I can create for the right person. You know, you've heard me talk about how important it is to identify the person that you want to serve. Sometimes we need to be reminded about who that person is. The person that we serve in our businesses is the person who can benefit the most from us, that we also enjoy serving. And it was surprising to me to see that I could create literally millions of dollars in value for Evan within a few minutes. And. And I know that if I bought into that company or if I served as an advisor to that company, I could help him make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in extra profit, millions of dollars over the course of a few years. If he decides to sell that business, it'll be worth seven figures more than if I wasn't involved. And it was so effortless for me because I've done it before. I've been in that exact type of business before. I know exactly what he should do. I've helped other people in that exact same space. And it was super energizing for me to do that. And it gave me a lot of cool ideas for where I Want to take capitalism.com next. It made me think, hmm, I'd be really good at identifying the content creators that want to have a platform that are good at creating product. And I could bring them into the capitalism.com platform, give them a space on the YouTube channel, give them a space in our membership where they can just create content and help our people. And I can build the team to be able to make those products look good and make sure that that content gets distributed. Hmm.

Hmm.

Maybe I don't have to be the only content creator for my business forever. Maybe I don't have to be the person making all of the product or doing all the coaching calls. It was good to see how I could make partnerships that would benefit everyone. You might have heard me talk about the owner's model in the past. The owner's model is my preferred way of building businesses where you, as the owner Come up with the vision, and then you plug in the resources around you to be able to keep you in the owner's seat, which keeps you in the visionary mode. What this allows you to do is do the most important things and the most energizing things. So if you have an idea for a business, you cast the vision for it, and then you say, who do I need to bring into this? And based on who I bring into this, can I raise the capital to be able to make sure that those people are paid until the company is profitable enough to be self sustaining? This felt like Owner's Model 2.0 for me because I looked at Evan's business and I was like, you know, if I bought into that or if I partnered with him, I could double or triple that business, which would be great for Evan. It'd also be great for me. And maybe I could plug him into what we do here@capitalism.com and I'm using Evan as an example, but this would be true for anybody that might be like that. That would serve my audience. And so it was a really interesting way to see how I might be able to do things differently, grow faster, do things bigger, and stay in my zone of genius, where I am both pretty producing a ton of value, but also really energized in the process. The next thing that I took away from VCon was seeing how some of the businesses that were represented talk about and feature their businesses and their brands. So I have a supplement company called Sheer Strength Labs. I sold it in 2017, I bought it back in 2022. And to be honest with you, taking it over again has been a little bit of a hard adjustment for me because I'm. I'm like back in the grind on a business that was doing $3 million in EBITDA a few years ago, and the company that bought it tanked it. So I'm sort of back in the grind and turning it around again. And I saw and was reminded. I knew this, but it was cool to see some examples of this. Of the brands that really connect are the ones that are talking about vision, not product. As physical product entrepreneurs, we often obsess about our product and how our product is different from all of the competitors. But big brands talk about their vision and their person. Now, I know this, I teach this. But seeing it again, seeing these examples of companies that were doing this, the people who. The companies that sponsored VConn and the partnerships that Gary Vaynerchuk has made with other brands and the businesses that Gary started, like Empathy wines. Watching how they communicate to their customers was a refresher for me while I'm back in the grind. And I'll share some of these examples with you from my context. While I've been thinking about product and what I'm going to sell, I was reminded that, yes, there may be a bunch of other supplement brands in the space, but no one's targeting my person in the way that I want to target them. And so it's less beneficial for me to talk about why our testosterone booster is is better than all of the other testosterone boosters in the world. It's much better for me to talk about fatherhood and how as a father, your job is to be present and a provider for your kids. And testosterone plays a huge role in that. And the world is sort of stacked against men producing high testosterone. We sit at desks and there's actually studies that say the more time you spend with your kids, the lower your testosterone because is an anti bonding agent. And I won't go into the science, but it's actually very interesting. So one of the best things we can do for families and to heal fatherless homes and to empower dads to be great leaders of families is to give them a testosterone booster. That positioning is much more powerful and has higher conversions. It has a wider base of customers that I could target than if I'm just talking about the ingredients of my product compared to the other testosterone boosters that you could buy on Amazon. And I was reminded of this as I watched some of the brands like hexclad. Hexclad is a home and kitchen company that was talking about how they're changing that industry and they were not talking about why their pans are great. And they talk about it a little bit like they might make a mention about one of the features of their product, but that is not how they think about or how they talk about their brand to the end customer. They talk about their brand as if it's the only solution in the marketplace and they're out to recruit more people into their vision. And so when I heard the founder of hexclad talk about that a little bit, it was a reminder to me about how I talk about my businesses and how I make the customer the hero of the story and how I communicate vision and what we're here to do. Right, Rather than compare our product to all of the other products that exist on the shelf already. Because if you're doing that, then you're existing in a crowded marketplace. But if you're Talking about vision and to the direct person that you want to serve, then you're really in a blue ocean, in a wide open space and communicating in a way that nobody else is communicating. Okay, I'll wrap up with a few tactical takeaways that I got from VCon. We one was something that Drew Barrymore said when she was talking about how she looks for opportunities to start businesses. I think she has a brand called Beautiful. I don't know anything about it. I'm not the target market. Didn't know it existed before this event. But Drew Barrymore was talking about one of her mentors early in her career who was saying, the way that you come up with ideas that you know are going to hit are first you go out into the world and you notice what you see, and then you notice what you don't see and build that. I thought that was really interesting because the gaps in the marketplace between what exists and what we don't see, but we feel like we should see, that's where the white space is. That's where the opportunity is. And I loved how she put that because oftentimes as entrepreneurs, we go out and look for what we see and what's working for everybody else, and then we try to mimic them and copy them. But the real magic happens when we look at what's out there compared to what we think should be out there. I don't remember who said it, but somebody mentioned that real creativity is the 5% that is different from everyone else. It's the 5% difference in your product, the 5% difference in your marketing. It's. I think about that in the context of sheer strength. I think about the fact that our products are 5%. They're actually more than 5% different, but they're a little bit different than the competitors. But they're vastly different in how they're marketed. I'm targeting fathers who are on a fitness journey who want to be leaders and providers for their families. And the way that I communicate to them is going to be different than Onnit is going to communicate and sell their testosterone booster or their pre workout. And it's going to be wildly different. And it's that 5% difference that creates raving fans high profit margins and allows you to stand out in the marketplace. So I really liked that combination of what Drew Barrymore said of looking for what you don't see in building that and seeing that creativity is the 5% difference from everybody else. That really stood out to me and landed with me about all of my different businesses. But the thing that I got the most from was Gary V's closing talk. Gary gave a keynote all about fear. And I took about a page of notes about what Gary had to say about this. And I thought he had a really unique perspective on how he sees fear. Gary's opinion is that most fear, or what we call fear, is actually the fear of the judgment of other people. So it's the fear of what someone is going to comment on a post, or the fear of looking stupid if we post something that doesn't land or doesn't go viral. It's the fear of what people will say about us when we're not around. And that all stems, according to Gary, from a reference point that we have about someone doing that to us in the past. So if someone made us feel stupid, if we're valuing the opinions of other people, then of course we are going to be afraid of their judgment. Of course we're going to feel held back in pursuing what we want to pursue because we have subconsciously this fear of that judgment from that one person. And I wrote down this note because I was just kind of wondering to myself, if I eliminate judgment, will I also eliminate fear? If I can eliminate judgment, judgment of myself and judgment of other people, why also eliminate fear? If I don't judge other people at all, and if I don't judge myself at all, then what is there to fear? There's no outside opinions that I'm worried about if I'm not judging myself and if I'm not judging other people. It kind of gave me a fresh take of what Jesus says in the book of Matthew when he says, do not judge lest you be judged. And most of the time we think about that as, don't judge other people, because other people will judge you in the same way. That's how it was always taught to me. That's how I always interpreted it. But if you think about it from a different perspective, if you think about don't judge. Because if you don't judge, there's no one to judge you. It's almost like you judging is the cause. It's the cause of other people judging, and it's the cause of fear that you might have. And it's also the cause of judgment on yourself, which is going to hold you back. I don't know if that resonates at all, but I just played with this idea of if I didn't judge, would I have any fear of other people's opinions or other people's judgments? If I'M clear of all judgment, which means I don't over evaluate myself and I don't judge other people, then I'm kind of liberated myself. We think about not judging other people as being an outward thing, as no, I don't want to judge that person over there because that wouldn't be right. But if we think about it internally, if I'm not going to judge that person because I don't want to judge myself, huh, then actually being a non judgmental person is a new level of freedom. And I really liked that interpretation. Gary even went as far as to say as the reason he hates 8th place trophies is because it's, it teaches kids that it's not okay to lose. And his opinion is we're always losing all the time and you should just learn to lose faster and you should enjoy the process of losing because it makes you want to win. And so the idea of giving kids 8th place trophies is like a way of saying it's okay, you, you participated, you won, and it's done from a loving place. But it teaches young people that you shouldn't lose. And in reality you have to lose because somebody is going to win, which means that everybody else loses. And if you don't lose, you'll never get better. And if you always win, you'll have a perfectionist syndrome about you and then you'll always be afraid of losing. But if we just get used to losing a lot, then you're not afraid of it anymore. And I really liked how he put that. I really appreciated that. Gary ended on a note of talking about fear because as he said, fear is what gets ratings, it's what gets clicks, it's what gets attention. But it's also a lie. It is almost financially rewarding to popularize fear because if you're the one who is saying that the world is going to end, people will pay attention to you. If you judge other people publicly, it tends to get more spread. It's easy to judge other people. It makes us feel justified when we judge other people, whether it's the president or Congress or celebrities or our parents. It is easy to judge other people. And we all kind of want to because it makes us feel vindicated. So it gets clicks, it gets views, it gets more viral spread, negativity tends to get more attention, but it's also a lie and it doesn't really help us at all. And so I really enjoyed hearing Gary unwrap this talk about how everybody else is casting fear and judgment into the world and it's affecting you so don't be affected by it and don't spread it. I have learned that in the last couple years after going down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and being afraid of what was going to happen with the virus and the vaccine and the government and debt and inflation. Right. Like, there's always a reason to feel scared, but there's also always a reason to be optimistic. Sometimes you just have to look for it a little bit harder. But my favorite takeaway from all of econ was an experiment that I ran where I asked myself the question, is fun contagious? Is being happy contagious? If I have a really good time, can I spread that to other people? And it was a resounding yes. Oftentimes we look for fun, we look for happiness, we look for entertainment. But the most fun you can possibly have is lighting it up in other people. And so if I feel happy, if I feel fun, if I feel entertaining, then it spreads to other people. And I ran some experiments with some people that were vendors, at booths and even on the airplane when I was just trying to make the day of the people around me. Fun is really contagious. People want to do business with people who are having a good time. People are attracted to people who are happy. And it sort of confirmed a thesis that I have been wondering about, which is, what if I made fun my aim this whole year? What if I made my mastermind events as fun as they possibly could be? I used to think that the way to do business was to be serious and to say, I've got the secrets and I'm going to teach you the secrets. And there's a place for that. But the truth is, I can teach somebody the secrets in like two hours. When I saw the places where Evan was leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, I was like, let's go back to the room. Let's map this out for you. I got you. I can help you with this in like two hours. And when I would do three day workshops, like half the value, maybe 80% of the value, happens outside the room when people are connecting and having dinner and having a great time and staying up late, talking about business and really developing friendships and relationships that can give them the next breakthrough. So I'm doing kind of an experiment where I'm having more fun with my content, I'm having more fun with our masterminds, I'm having more fun with our events, I'm having more fun with our promotions, and I'm sort of turning a blind eye to things that I don't want to do. And it's not that I'm not willing to work hard, it's just if something doesn't feel energy rich, I'm going to put my attention to things that are energy rich. Because the worst case scenario is I'll have more energy at the end of the day to then attack the things that need a little bit more attention or a little bit harder to do. So one example is our next Mastermind event is in August in San Diego and we rented this 15 acre mansion because it just sounded fun. And there's pickleball courts and a pool and a baseball diamond in the backyard. And the weather is going to be amazing. And we'll do like a two hour mastermind and I'll bring in a few people that I think can add value to the group and we'll have a chef come in and make amazing meals and we'll play games outside and maybe we'll go in the pool. And I think that people are going to really connect, have an amazing time, and the breakthroughs will be better than if I were to just sit up at the front of the room and teach everything that I know about business. Let's do that over dinner and drinks. That sounds more fun. Anyway, we're doing that in our Mastermind, which is called the Capitalist Pigs. If you want to find out more about that, you can go to capitalism.com pigs. So that's what happened at Gary Vaynerchuk's VCon 2023 event. It's not the conference that I would do. It's not how I really like to go to conferences. It was a little bit bigger. Too many people, not enough connection, not the type of presentations that I wanted to see. It actually sort of edified the way that I like to do conferences and made me want to double down on what I'm doing. Actually, I think that was my biggest takeaway from all this was I wanted to double down on the things that I felt like I was doing really well. I went to that conference and I was like, you know what? I like the way we do conferences and I want to double down on that. You know what? I like the way that I do content. So I'm going to double down on that. You know what? I see how Damon John does his Mastermind and he gave a little pitch for it. But I like the way I do masterminds and I want to double down on that and maybe it won't be as big as Damon's and maybe I won't have a 5,000 person event like Gary, but those aren't the things I want to build. And so it sort of re confirmed the way that I want to do business. And there's so much freedom in that. We spend so much time looking at what's working for other people and thinking that's the way, but the way is doing it in a way that is meaningful and energizing to you. At least that's my thesis right now. I hope you enjoyed this recap of VCon 2023. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com, i'll see you next time. And now a quick word from Tristina Timm, one of our members from the capitalism.com community.

We joined the incubator because. Because we knew the things that we didn't know. So we didn't know e commerce at all. And we needed that. We needed somebody to tell us where to go and what to do. Right now we are on track to hit the 3 million mark this year. However, I think next year is just going to double that. We have so many plans for the future and just executing the plan that the incubator brought us, it was fantastic. It was step by step, what to do, how to execute it, and then if we did fumble the ball, we had somebody there to help us through it and walk us through our plans for the future. Of course, this year we have 3 million and then next year 6. And we're hoping to get to 10 million within the next three to four years. Freedom is everything to our family. I homeschool and I love that our family can wake up to get together every morning. Nobody's running off to school, nobody's running off to work. If I had to work at like a 9 to 5 job, there's no way that I could also homeschool. I get to set my own hours and they're not as many hours as a normal job would be. So that's really fantastic. But again, freedom is everything for our family and I don't. It's strange that our kids don't know any other way. Mom and dad are home every day. I would describe the capitalism community as family. When you get so many tips from people, we give tips and I think that we're going to start to work with a lot of our fellow community members and everyone really is rooting for everybody else. Nobody is like in competition at all. Like everyone is everyone's biggest cheerleaders.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. 1. 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@capitalism.com inc. That's capitalism.com incident.