"GaryVee, Brian Lee, and Therap-y" By Ryan Daniel Moran #TheOnePercent

Hey, podcast. This is a meaningless episode. This is me sitting in my hotel room recapping the last couple of weeks that I spent with Gary Vee, Brian Lee and doing therapy. This goes off the rails left and right, has a lot of meaningless rants and a lot of deep thoughts about life. So you shouldn't listen to this episode, but you're going to anyway.

Enjoy. It takes one free person to create change. This is the show for them. We are the creators of the free world. This is capitalism.com and we are the 1%.

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I am cheating. I am cheating on Xevia as I drink my new love, which is called Virgil's Zero. Virgil's Zero. Vanilla. Vanilla Cream is what what Ryan's drinking today. I'm double fisting with decaf coffee.

You don't care. You don't care about any of that. Say something smart, Moran. I am recording this in a hotel in Redondo Beach, Louisiana.

A lot's going on. A lot has happened the last few weeks and I'm going to tell you about it. The last five days each had.

Business changing life, changing direction, changing events happen. I'm just coming back from a dinner with Bedros Kulian, founder of Fit Body Boot Camp, keynote of the capcon. The Capcom. The Cap Con. The Cap Con. Oh, you'll know what that reference is soon enough. Oh, now I have to tell you, I did a Trump impression at the end of capcon. Endorsing capcon. And it's gonna be in an ad for Capcom anyway.

But a lot's gone on in the last couple weeks. I was in New York City to interview Gary Vaynerchuk and A.J. vaynerchuk and C. Money got to sit down with Drock for about half an hour and go over video stuff and audience building stuff. It's really interesting when you see behind the curtain of how people do things. You know, somebody told me. Ugh. Somebody told me how Grant Cardone fills his events. Ah.

Silly. It's silly. Oh, it's far less impressive once you realize how he does it, that he has 30,000 people in an event or something.

Yeah, yeah. They're not all real.

Anyway.

So I met with Gary and AJ.

And you'll hear the whole podcast if you haven't already, depending on when the things I'm saying right now air.

And I'm starting to see a theme come up in my life as I court my next opportunities.

I was speaking with AJ Vaynerchuk about building brands around social media influencers. And even though I think social media influence is really overrated in our world, in the Internet marketing world, because everybody's faking it, it's so pathetic. No, it's just sad. It's sad. I'll talk more about that in a second. But if you find really good ones that have engaged audiences, it's magic. And I think the social media influencer has the potential to really break out as a real celebrity. But as I spoke with Brian Lee and interviewed him, which I'll talk about more today, he said, if you're gonna partner with influencers, you've got to partner with the ones that have a chance to go mainstream. Don't go after the niche influencers.

I'm all over the place today. Whoa, we're four minutes in. I'm already all over the place. It's past my bedtime. It's eight minutes after 10. So anyway, I was in New York with Gary and AJ and immediately after coming back from New York, we went into our quarterly meeting for the for capitalism dot com. And I'm just pumped about where we're going.

We're.

I feel like I'm really starting to dial in who I am, and as a result.

Content'S just getting clearer and easier and more fun, and.

Nothing has changed. You know what's funny is I've lost a lot of money in the last six months. I have invested in projects that didn't go so well. I have had business initiatives not pan out.

Capitalism.com currently has a burn rate.

Rather than profitability because we expanded the team so much. Not so much, but we spend it. We hired some expensive executives that I'm excited about but are expensive and.

I feel good.

It's funny.

I am less rich than I was six months ago.

And I'm happier.

Just because.

I feel like I know myself better.

We're gonna talk about that too.

Now. After our quarterly retreat we went to see my dear friend JP Sears do some stand up in Austin, Texas. And then I took the red eye flight to LA where I had a three day we'll call it a therapeutic workshop.

That sounds trendy. It's a therapeutic workshop and.

It was kind of part two of.

Of the Lionheart series part run by my buddy Ian Stanley and his business partner Brent Charlton. And it was good. We're gonna have Brent on the podcast here sometime. Sometime. We already talked about it. But.

Really what is I'm gonna go through.

What I have been discovering about myself and I have my journal out here because I took some notes while I was out here in LA and while I was in New York. Actually let me just do that. Let's go through.

My New York notes here.

And while I was sitting with Gary V. While I was sitting with AJ I started taking some notes about what they said and what was coming to me as a result of being around the Vaynerchuk's of the world.

And.

So number one, I realize how small I think and play.

And that really frustrated me because.

I kind of brag about, you know, it's fun to say I built an eight figure company and sold makes for good ads but like who gives us, who gives a fuck? It's not that big a deal. Like.

Who cares? It doesn't really feel good.

To do ads about how much money you make. It just doesn't feel good because it's really not that big of a deal.

And there's lots of people that do way cooler things than that.

So that was number one, I realized how small I think. And number two.

It'S kind of clear how simple business is. It's getting leads, it's and it's selling things to those leads and it's building it all around the thing that makes you happy. It's amplification. Business is the way that you predictably carry out the things that you like to do.

Or it's a money source which would be a cash flow play.

And business is really fun and easy when it is simply the way that you gamify what you want to do.

I am starting to.

Kind of open up.

Seeing the world.

Post ego.

I'm starting to kind of see what happens when you play life without ego and.

You realize how much of the world is just operating in order to.

Show something.

So here's a fun story.

I was at the Bulletproof headquarters today. Not the headquarters, not the hud, the Bulletproof Cafe in Santa Monica.

And a couple people. I posted about it on Instagram, and a couple people saw I was there and came over and said, just saw you were here on Instagram and wanted to say hi. I'm a big fan of your work. That was really cool. That meant a lot to me. I love it when that happens. And one person came over and sat down and just immediately started name dropping everybody they know. I work with a Michael Jackson estate and I advise this royal family. And do you know who. Do you know who Barack Obama is? Yeah, I do his SEO and talking about, like, nine different business ventures that he has going on and all the famous partners. And two years ago, I would have been like, wow, impressed. I'm really impressed by you. And this time I looked him dead in the eye and I said, my bullshit meter is way high on you. And I think you're full of shit. I don't believe anything you're telling me for a second. A, you can't be very good at any of your skill sets because if you were, you wouldn't have nine different businesses going on. And you're obviously extremely insecure because otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here trying to win my approval. Some. Some dick on the Internet. It's at Bulletproof. You wouldn't be working so hard to get my approval.

You wouldn't care. You would just know what you got. Like you. You don't need to sit here and impress me, bruh.

Just hang out.

And while I was here.

I'm in la, like, ego City of.

Ego, center of the universe. And it's just so interesting to see.

When people show up completely operating in the sense of needing to get something.

Needing to prove something, needing to be something, you know, I've struck up a bit of a friendship with Zachary Levi. He's Shazam in the new DC movie, number one movie in America. And Zach is, like, such a nice guy and.

Very down to earth. And knowing him.

Outside of his acting career, I don't know Zach for his acting career. I know him through some mutual friends and because he lives in Austin and he wants to build an intentional community. That's how I know Zach. I don't know Zach from the acting world.

And because of that, I'm not, you know, I don't. I don't get starstruck around him, which is great. And, and he's not, he doesn't, he doesn't flex his star, star ness. The fact that he's basically the hottest celebrity in America right now.

And.

That'S really cool.

But watching him operate through the world while there's billboards up all around New York and la, both of which I've seen in the last couple weeks, like one of my buddies from Austin is on all these billboards everywhere. I travel around the world, apparently, you know, he's big time. And watching him operate through the world versus the dude on Instagram who's got a hundred thousand followers and thinks he's hot shit.

You just start to see.

Like when you've got it, you're just confident that you got it, you got the goods.

I'm just starting to see that what the world.

Differently now that I notice how many people are. Are just running around controlled by their ego. Myself included. Oh, man, that hurt to say. I did not like saying that. I am realizing how much of my life has been run by ego.

And I'm just thinking about that stuff.

So let's get back on track here. So I flew out to LA here to attend this three day, we'll call it three day therapeutic intensive with Brent, who will be on the podcast here at some point.

And I still don't know what. I think about Brent all the time because I think Brent is very, very good at what he does. And sometimes I think he reaches. Sometimes I think he makes assumptions that he.

Hasn't earned yet. But I also know that if you are very empathetic, you sometimes just know things intuitively without them being necessarily rational. I believe that. I've experienced that. It's that gut feeling, if you will. And I think Brent operates from his gut. Heavy time, biggie time.

And.

You know what? Let's just do this. I'm just gonna read my journal entry. After three days of.

This therapeutic, I'm all over the place tonight. Fast leaners. Forgive me. I've been doing therapy for about two years. I have done counseling in the past while going through difficult times. I did counseling when I was really depressed in my mid-20s. I did counseling when I found out I was gonna be a dad. I started therapy when Pam and I were kind of navigating our relationship and deciding to raise Esther in two different homes. And then I continued on doing therapy from there. I've always been very, very introspective. And the more I go into the psyche and the human experience, the more I realize how much there is behind the Curtain. I shared a story once about an experience that I had on a very small amount of.

Substance that I took, very small amount about falling asleep and having a bit of a experience or vision about seeing behind the curtain in my psyche. And if you didn't hear that episode, basically I kind of had a vision, if you will. Oh boy.

Where I kind of saw behind.

The veil in our brain from which we operate and see the world and just kind of went on this adventure in my mind.

I'm not gonna be able to explain it in a short amount of time. It was basically like the movie Inside out where there are a bunch of files that they find that are all kinds of thoughts and memories and stuff like that filed away in your brain. And ever since then, I have begun to see in my sober reality.

What.

What how much there is baked into our brains and how much we're operating from the hurts and traumas and hopes and expectations that we had when we were 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 19 years old. We are completely being driven by the past in most cases. Basically our experiences from the past and our fears of the future drive the majority of our decisions. And it's actually really sad. And so my work has been understanding and uncovering and piercing that veil as I find out what has been really driving my decisions and my behaviors. Because I believe that doing so will provide and is providing freedom to operate through the world more freely. Which is why I am.

Probably happier now and feel freer now. Even though I am not crushing it in business as much as I would like to be.

Even though I am not.

I'm not at the point in my career where I want to be.

This is also why I am fascinated with Gary Vaynerchuk. My opening words to him in our interview together was, gary, I've spent the last six to 12 months really diving into the mental health side of entrepreneurship. And I really believe, like you're very mentally healthy, are you a freak or is there something else we should know? And I think he is really operating from a very genuine place. And you watch when someone operates from a really genuine place, how fast their life takes off. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is kind of operating just from this fear based, egoic, tense, low level fight or flight.

And when you pierce that.

Some real interesting stuff starts to happen.

So I think I'm more self aware than most people, than most entrepreneurs, for sure. For sure.

But I got taken through the wringer by Brent recently.

And here's my journal entry from my three days spent with this therapist.

So this is me reflecting on three days. The first thing that Brent pointed out to me is that boredom, which is expressed by my obsessive neuroticism, is a shield for fear. As soon as this was revealed to me, my drive for consumption lessened greatly and I began to relax into the present. Food seemed less distracting. Podcasts sounded gross. I didn't want to learn or read. I just started to relax into the present and pursue what felt good and meaningful. During one of the exercises, I drew out my family as I remembered it. And Brent pointed out that my brother appears to be more seen in the picture than me and that correlates with me operating through life not feeling understood. As a result, I feel unseen, misunderstood, less than and lost within my own family. I discovered that when drawing my family, Esther was the only sign of brightness in my family map, which could be a concern because I may be putting too much pressure on her as a source of excitement in life. Brent pointed out that my masculine cues didn't come from my dad, which it would explain why I would desire feminine affection because I never got it. When discussing roles within my family, I discovered that I play the role of computer and placater, which means that I operate in my head most of the time and I'm afraid to say what I really think. Two areas that I need to work on at work. I play the role of family hero because that has been what's needed at work. I created my own family through work. I'll need to practice connection with my feelings and communicating them in order to escape these roles. Brent accused me of going into my head and not being present, which pissed me off. He explained that I data gather rather than relate as evidenced by how I communicate. I had no idea that I'd do this, but he is right. I'm gonna explain more about that in a second. I learned that from my family because certain members of my family ask data questions which drive me insane. But that's how I know to express love. I had no idea that I was doing it and driving other people away. It explains why I feel unseen and unexpressed because I don't express my true self and I do not allow myself to be seen. I had no idea that I did this. We finished by plotting corrections, which is a thing that part of Brent's philosophy.

Discovering all of this made me tired and nauseous. It also blunted my appetite and brought me into the present moment. Moving forward, I will practice expressing myself more and speaking about my needs and wants. I will also pay attention to When I go into my head and get out of it by practicing active listening. Let me explain to you what all this means. I had a moment when I was sitting. I wrote about this on Instagram and emailed it to List. I was sitting with Dr. Brent, as we'll call him, and he basically was like, hey, earth to Ryan, are you here? And I was like, what are you talking about, douche? I'm right here. I'm paying attention to you. And I'm. And I am, like, feeling my body. And he's like, ryan, you are in your head, and I don't think you realize how much that affects other people. Your whole energy changes when you go into your head. What are you talking about? He's like, you aren't present because you instead.

Data gather, and you judge the world through the data that you gather. And I'm like, this guy does not know what he's talking about. And then he pointed out a case to me. He's like, when you were talking politics at lunch yesterday, you were asking everybody their opinion and not offering yours. I was like, yeah, I do that out of respect. If somebody doesn't ask me my opinion, I don't share it. And he said, but, Ryan, you don't relate to other people. You don't share what is going on. You don't even ask permission to talk about politics. You just start asking people their opinion, and in your head, you have yours, so you're evaluating it against yours. And so people just feel judged. And I was like, wait, what?

And I finally saw his point.

That.

There'S a part of me that I hold back.

A friend of mine compared it to the boy behind the corner that there's a point in me that I hold back in my interactions with other people.

Out of either protection or I don't know.

And without expressing that, I don't really connect with the other person.

Because instead, I'm just operating from my head, judging whatever is going on. And I was like, oh, my goodness. I know why I feel lonely sometimes. It was like somebody.

It was as big a realization as the you are enough episode recorded post Burning Man. It was as big of a realization of that. Because I can tell you.

For example, even when I was at the last capitalism conference, I never feel more like myself than when I'm on stage. But.

There'S definitely something. I mean, there's something weird about.

Having. I think my podcast has been downloaded not quite 10 million times, but it's approaching that. And.

To have that many people hear you and then a Few hundred of them show up at your event, fly from all over the world to be at your event. A bunch of them bring gifts. A lot of them have made millions of dollars because of advice that I gave them for free. It's a wonderful feeling. But to then come down off stage and. And try to hang out with them, sometimes that's difficult because there's.

Lots of selfies and lots of conversations, and it's all fine and great and I love it. But it's also. It feels like part of me has to go hide.

And.

I realize that it's not just like a capcon thing, that I do that in my interactions with friends. I do that with my interactions with women, I do that interactions in business, that there's a part that kind of gets tucked away.

I was having dinner with a friend, and.

I said, hey.

I feel like everything I tell you, you judge as if it's useful or not. And I said, oh, I know what you're talking about. Let me power down my computer. And then I powered down my computer, and.

I was like, oh, here I am.

I was in an Uber today and.

Realized that I was really in my head. And so I just started to power down my computer.

And I know that I'm powering down.

When my body relaxes and I actually go into my center of my belly.

I can actually feel my energy.

Go into my belly, and my whole body relaxes.

So I just feel like I am starting to.

Pierce the veil.

Pierce the veil of how we operate in the world.

And.

It'S really interesting what's beyond it, because all of a sudden.

Things like social media followers are highly uninteresting.

And.

Money is just a representation of.

Cool things that you can do. And fame and status.

Are just assets or things that happened that don't really mean anything.

It's.

Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna be in that. This, like, what I think is a healthy mental space all the time. But.

While I'm here.

It is interesting to view the world differently. I really get that idea.

That Jesus said to seek ye first the kingdom.

And all these things will be added unto you as well. It's like money and fame come when you find the inner kingdom. And I'm not claiming to be, like, enlightened. I'm not enlightened. I'm a dude on the Internet.

But I really get now.

That whole idea of when you pursue money, it flees from you and doesn't satisfy you. We're mostly pursuing egoic things out of trauma.

And Business gets real good, money gets real good when it simply is the amplification of the kingdom, if you will. Just doing good things, doing the things that you want to bring to the world rather than going out and pursuing the money.

After my three day.

Session, I interviewed Brian Lee for the podcast. Oh man, that guy just like makes me want to be better. The guy has 3 billion dollar companies on his resume.

And a 9 figure business on his resume with Kim Kardashian. I mean, this guy is just so cool and no ego at all. He's very humble.

And.

Man, it just made me want to be better as an entrepreneur. Man, he just made me want to.

Think bigger and play harder and do cooler things. Like.

He'S special people.

So spending time with Gary Vaynerchuk, shortly followed by.

Brian Lee, was like, you know, those are the two people that I want to be when I grow up.

And it was just.

Like, really?

Really. I don't have the words.

Enlightening. And tonight I had dinner with Bedros Kulian and we just talked about life and we talked about purpose and we talked about.

What really matters. And.

The more successful I get, the more people that I meet, the bigger my following, the more I realize we just want to be happy.

We just want to connect, we just want to be proud of what we do.

And the results don't matter that much.

The things we think are important really aren't that important. They're more like things we do to impress other people.

And the really like the fuck of it all.

Is that when we pursue the things that are meaningful, the things that aren't meaningful follow in a good way.

I spent so many years stressing to go get the money.

Stressing to go get the followers.

Stressing to go get the approval of that person, networking my way into that room.

And I am realizing now that the way to get all of those things.

Was.

To.

Do what is meaningful to me. And everything else would open up. But I could never have discovered that if I hadn't gone through that egoic pursuit first, never would have.

And I'm not sure if other people can either. And so there's a sense of like, I don't want to discourage people from.

Pursuing like what they think they want, that, you know, money and status and all these things.

So I'll just be an example of what it looks like on the other side while I continue to document my journey and personal growth and in business at the same time.

So that's what's going on for me. Also, the Indians are good.

It Seems best rotation in baseball. Maybe the best rotation ever. What?

And.

Right now, I feel like this is the least valuable podcast I've ever done.

And I'm actually pretty stoked about it.

So I want you to do me a favor and shoot me a message on Instagram and say I actually listened to that rambling rant that you posted on the podcast. Just that. And I'll send you a video. Thank you back.

Okay.

So.

Takeaways from today. Seek ye first. The kingdom. The kingdom isn't heaven. The kingdom isn't religion. The kingdom is.

Is. Is peace.

The kingdom is. You know. Yeah.

Neil Strauss wrote the Game. He also wrote the Truth. He also wrote I Believe. He wrote Marilyn Manson's autobiography and Jenna Jamison's autobiography.

And he has this quote that I just love from the Game, which is about picking up girls, where he says, to win the game was to leave it. He met the one he wanted, so he got to leave the game, and that was winning. And I have applied that principle to other areas of life. You win the game when you decide to stop playing.

How do you win the status game? When you say, I'm good, I don't need your approval.

How do you win the money game when you say, I have enough.

How do you win the social game? By not caring about what other people think.

And then the world just kind of comes to you.

And you get to direct it.

And all the things that you were pursuing in the first place, just.

They become optional so there's no tenseness around them so you don't push them away.

Crazy.

It's just crazy.

How can just open up as a result? It just opens up effortlessly. When you are willing to step back from the angsty egoic approach.

I wish I could describe it in less spiritual terms. Forgive me, folks. I grew up very religious.

When you let go of the neediness of the things that you think will help you get somewhere.

And you realize that that somewhere is just another moment.

In which you will carry all of your hurts, fears, hopes, and disappointments. You realize that the things that take you to that place don't solve what it is that you're trying to solve.

Many of us feel fear about our own destruction. And so we pursue money so that we can build wall around ourselves. We can have money in the bank. We can have passive cash flow. We can have freedom. I know because I pursued this for 30 years of my life.

And.

When you realize that when you have the money and you have the income and you have all the things.

And you still will have.

The fear that drove you to pursue that in the first place.

You will still have the doubt.

About yourself and about life that led you to want to fix it in the first place. When you still have that.

You realize that on the other side of all those things that you think you want is just more experiences with you and your psyche.

And so I made the decision to go in and address a lot of that. And I'm a work in progress. Like all of us, I'm probably.

I'm going to say that I'm approximately 17.5%.

Clear, if you will, 17 and a half percent.

Ego free.

And I still have 82 and a half percent of it. And even that is like.

Completely different way to view the world.

This episode's getting weird, so we're gonna call it here. I promise to talk about business and money another time. And.

I think we're going to be doing more long form podcasts here@capitalism.com. pretty jazzed about what we got going on. So I hope you're subscribed to the show and I don't know how you found my work. I don't know why you listen to my work. I don't know if it's even valuable for you, but it means the world to me that you listen. So thanks for listening to the show. See you on the next episode, bruh.