How To Get Happier and Richer While In Quarantine

Hey, friends and neighbors. What's going on? Ryan here. Yeah, it's a beautiful day in Austin, Texas. There is so much good stuff happening in the world. I was walking this morning, was walking down the street to pick up my little girl, and I looked up and the sun was shining between the trees, and I felt the sun on my face. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and I looked up and I felt the sun on my face. I had this thought.

Wow, the sun just hangs out up there, puffs out his chest, shines down, and the whole world flourishes as a result of that. He doesn't care what kind of a mood I'm in. He doesn't care what's going on in my world. He just keeps on shining. Sometimes I block out the sun, hang inside for way too long. I don't go out and enjoy its rays. But he just hangs up out up there. He keeps on shining, no matter what. I had another thought. I went, I wonder if life just works like that. Maybe there's just as much happiness and as much joy and as much love and as much abundance and as much goodness as I want to bask in. Maybe I can just go outside proverbially and enjoy abundance. Maybe if I just appreciate abundance for being there, that it'll just shine on me like it always does. Maybe if I just appreciate happiness, if I just enjoy being happy, maybe there's as much happiness as I want. Maybe there's as much love, maybe there's as much fun, maybe there's as much anything I want if I'm just willing to bask in it. I'm playing with that thought. There's probably all just as much bad stuff, too, if you bask in it. And right now, we're experiencing this interesting opportunity to see the contrast. Because if you tune in to negativity, you can find it right now. You can find how bad it's gonna get plastered all over the world. But if you tune that out and you look for what's good, you can find that, too. And never before in my life or in my career have I been able to see the contrast so clearly. When I turn off the news, when I turn off social media, I can tune in and focus in on whatever I want. In fact, I don't have anything else to tune into except news and social media, because I can't go to dinner, I can't hang out with my friends, I can barely leave my house unless it's to the grocery store. And most of the time, I'm ordering that Anyway, so I don't have any distractions. So if I just turn off anything that would normally distract me, I can think about whatever I want. It's kind of like being a kid again, where I don't have anything to worry about or anything to focus on except what I want to focus on. So. So it's like being on summer break in a way where I can worry about things if I want to, but I don't have to. So I can also think about opportunity and I can also think about joy. I can also think about creativity. I can also think about play. I can also think about whatever I want to think about and focus on. And I've never seen such a clear contrast. So I'm playing with this thought right now of what if life is as good as I want to bask in? What if life is as abundant or happy as I want to bask in? I'm playing with this. Feel free to join in on playing with that if you'd like. That's not what I am here to talk about today, but I thought I would share that with you in all of this contrast and all of this opportunity. I have been thinking about where my focus is going next and I wanted to share with you a little bit about how I am investing in e commerce brands during this time. And it's important to note that I'm always taking a long view. But within a long view there's also looking for opportunities of how the world is shifting right now and what types of businesses are going to look interesting moving forward. What types of opportunities might come out of this big shift. And I think you're going to see a lot of opportunities that are home gyms, that are new types of food companies that are new types of apps, new types of games. There's a lot of people buying Zoom stock right now. I'm not, because I think there's going to be lots of Zoom competitors coming out. What do I know though? So there's a lot of changes happening and from an investor and an entrepreneur standpoint, I'm thinking about where that puck is moving. As an entrepreneur and as a founder, I'm just continuing to start the business that I'm excited about. I have a food company that I've been kicking around for quite some time. I think I've identified a partner and a CEO and have enough capital to be able to kick that off. I'm really, I'm so excited about that business. I can't wait to get some prototypes so I can show it to you. On social media, I have a couple other brands that I want to invest in or start. So my plan as an entrepreneur is mostly the same. My plan as an investor is I'm watching to see what entrepreneurs take advantage of this and those who get scared. This is gonna be very revealing as an investor. The benefit of being an investor is you don't have to carry the burden of the company on your back. You get to watch how other people navigate this time. And so you're always betting on the entrepreneur, on the founder and on the team as an investor. And it's so perfect because my partner Sam Prentice and I are starting our fund, it's the Capitalism fund and we're investing in e commerce entrepreneurs. And our criteria is as a rule or as for the most part we're looking at businesses that have crossed a million dollars or at least close to a million dollars in total sales in a 12 month period or have a really responsive, amazing audience that's budding that the right E commerce opportunity is going to get to a million really quickly. And the reason we're looking at that million dollar ish run rate is because that's where the most meat on the bone is from an investor perspective. So as I'm looking at e commerce companies, I'm looking at if this business has crossed a million dollars, that means that it's proven itself in the marketplace, then for about the next five years or so there's this window where if it's a good company in a good market with a good audience and a good entrepreneur, then you often have.

I mean this isn't always the case, but there's a lot of companies that have 50 to 100% growth in the next three to five years. So you've got a company that is doing a million dollars the next year they do 2 million, then 4 million, then 8 million, then sometimes 12 to 16 million. And so that's 100% growth for four years.

That's amazing. And then after that point you start to professionalize the business, you start to bring in executives, you start to stabilize. And that's where.

I've never run $100 million company, I've only run an eight figure company. So that's where we would look at exiting. But for that five years you've got this really juicy, meaty part of growth where you've got 50 to 100% growth in the business, assuming that it's following a lot of the trends that have existed previously. And if it's 50% growth, it's only like A, you know, a base hit or a double, then that business, once it's at a million, the next year it does 1.5, then it would do 2.25, then 3.25, then 4.5. So that's 50% growth every year for four or five years. That's still an amazing return for, for a business. And, and so what my strategy is, is within our fund, we're looking at those businesses that have a million dollars in run rate or at least are close to that, or have a really clear path for that. They've proven that they've got a product that people want. And you can do that. You know that people want a product or are responsive. When you've passed a million dollars, especially when you've done it in 12 months or so, maybe I'll give or take, but around that time frame, you know, you've got something that people want and you've got enough profit that at least the founder can be full time in most cases. So if that's the case, then if you know the market well enough and you know the plan well enough, then you could reasonably assume that a good business could have 50 to 100% returns every year for the next several years. And that's like, for me, the meatiest part that I want to carve out as an investor and as the manager of a fund. So the way that I put it to Sam when we were starting to kick this off was it's like having the filet part of the porterhouse. Somebody who is really savvy and can take a business that is doing a million dollars and can see the $100 million vision that they're gonna eat the whole porterhouse. They're gonna eat the whole or not in the porterhouse. The T bone. You can tell, that's how much I know about steak. But they would eat the whole T bone, right? Well, I'm just going after the filet. I'm just going after the meaty, juicy, easy to cut, most delicious part of the steak.

And so I'm going after that period of years, 2 to 5 or 2 to 6. In a business where it's proven itself, it's gonna grow really quickly over the next several years and then we're gonna get out. And I'm really excited about this. So we're raising money inside of the fund and I'm looking at deal flow. If you wanna invest in the fund, by the way, just go over to capitalism.com fund and you can fill out an investor inquiry. We wanna make sure. It's a fit for us, a fit for you, that our timelines match and all that jazz. And this is, you know, investing in businesses is obviously riskier than buying bonds or anything like that. So we want to make sure that we're all clear and honest about expectations for everything. But if we have some home runs, that's great. Maybe we'll have some strikeouts. We'll see. But if you want to invest, it's over@capitalism.com fund. You'll just fill out a form. It puts you on our radar. And then we have a couple conversations and we see if this is a fit for both of us. So if you want to participate in that, sweet. If you are an entrepreneur, the reason I'm telling you all this is because this is a really interesting time to prove whether you are going to have those really meaty, juicy four to five years or if you're going to get crushed right now. And it is so driven by the investor's mentality and the investor's mindset. Your beliefs about whether this is an opportunity or this is a setback will determine how you grow through this. There are opportunities for you to grow faster than you were before. There are opportunities for you to have new customers and new exposure that did not exist before. Before. What are some of them? There are more audiences to tap into and those audiences need more content than ever. It's easier and faster to build up audiences. There's more demand for new things to buy online because people aren't shopping. There are old brands being replaced by new ones because people can't buy their old stuff cause it's out of stock and they're not shopping at the store as much.

There is less word of mouth advertising because people aren't hanging out with one another anymore. They're seeing posts on Facebook and other forms of advertising. They're digesting content. There are more opportunities for small, scrappy brands to be able to take advantage of this time than there's ever been. If you get that, if that's exciting to you, you're probably gonna win. If that's scary to you, you probably aren't excited about your business in the first place. Which is also great because now you have the opportunity to pivot and to build something that you are excited about. Oh, it always comes back to that. It always comes back to that. So if you have that mentality of you're gonna do this anyway and now there's the puck has moved a little bit, the cheese has moved. If you know that reference, then you're gonna find it and you're gonna do great. And if you're at a million dollars or so, we might wanna talk about working together, especially if you've got an audience, if you've got a clear vision and your biggest constraint is capital and advice. I'm so excited to be able to roll this out because this allows me to sit in the position where I am just a resource for the entrepreneur who has something special that they're scaling. And we have the capital, we have the network, we have the plan, we have the advice to be able to help that person get through the challenges that have held them back to this point or are preventing them from going from 1 million to 10 million or 1 million to 25 million, or if it's, you know, more the person who's gonna get 25 to 50% growth every year, then it's just going from 1 million to 5 million or 5 million to 10 million or what, you know, now I'm just throwing numbers at you and that's boring. But I'm really excited to be able to sit in that position of bringing resources to the table for that entrepreneur who needs to scale. So if that's you, I don't currently have a way for you to apply to work with the fund. I'm just using my own network and the tribe and the back room to look for those deals. But, you know, if you're hungry, you'll find a way to put it on our radar or you'll join one of our programs where you will have a much easier time getting on my radar.

That's all. That's really all I wanted to share with you today. There's opportunities everywhere and I'm so thankful to be sitting in the position where I can empower entrepreneurs to take advantage of those opportunities if they're going to do them anyway. And to be able to bring the capital and the advice and the opportunity expertise to make that happen. So I have a few extra minutes. So I'll tell you what else is going on.

Combining resources with my buddy Leron to bring some new opportunities to the back room. We've relaunched the tribe. Oh, and it's so much fun. These entrepreneurs are doing such cool things and there's only a handful in there right now. And so we get to be really hands on with them. And, you know, we want to take that to a thousand people, which would be a really, really fun group. The 1%'s really popping. People are talking about the stock market. I still think the stock market could come back down to 18, 000 or so. But it doesn't matter because it doesn't. You shouldn't try and catch the bottom of the. Of the knife. I'm just really pumped, guys. I mean, I know there's a lot of people who are going through hard times right now, but there's no reason for us to focus on them unless there's something that we can do about it. If there's someone we can help, we should help them. If there's someone that we can serve, we should serve them. But helping people and serving people is really fun, especially if we love them or if we're just good on our own and we don't need anything back from them. I'm using this time as a way to refocus on that abundant state of just giving and service. And that requires that I have something to give and that I feel abundant in the first place. And so if I stay there, life is great and everything that I do is great. And if I don't stay in that place, then everything sucks anyway. And this is the interesting paradox. If you're not in that place of abundance, then everything that you do is to try and get to a state of abundance, but you're actually reinforcing the idea that you're not fulfilled and you're not abundant. If you feel poor or if you feel broke and you start a business to try and fill that hole, you're actually perpetuating the thought of, I feel broke and I don't feel fulfilled, and that sucks. That really sucks. But if you feel really abundant and you feel really fulfilled and then you start a business as a way to distribute more of your goods and services, then you just get more abundance flowing back to you. And those are really successful businesses. It's weird, you know, I'm actually. If you think about the parable of the talents, Jesus says at the end of it that to him who has more will be given, and to him who has not, even what he has will be taken away from him. And I view that so much differently now than when I was in the church.

I don't know how I viewed it in the church, but I think I probably tried to assume some heavenly reference to it. But if I think about it just practically, it makes sense now that if you have a lot and you focus on it and you share from that place, you get more. In fact, if you just focus on what you do have, you end up finding more things to focus on. And if you focus on what you don't have Then you end up doing things to try and fill that hole and you lose even what you have.

Man, it's weird.

These are the thoughts I'm having during my quarantine.

I woke up today so happy. I woke up so happy today, excited for the day and basking in the sun and excited to record this podcast, which is now one of the most mumbo jumboed podcasts I've ever done. If you actually listen to this, sent me a message on Instagram and say, I listened to the whole mumbo jumbo and if you focus on that, if you focus on what you have and you get into that abundant place, everything you touch from there becomes more abundant. I'm really starting to believe that that's how the world works.

No, no. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Shoot me a message.

I appreciate you. I really do. Like, it means a lot to me that you listen to the words that I say on the Internet sometimes I still can't believe that people do. So thank you for inviting me into your quarantine, inviting me into your home, inviting me into your brain. I consider that a privilege and a responsibility. And so more than ever, I am taking the stand that I don't want to put anything in your brain that isn't helpful, that isn't giving, that isn't making your life better. So thank you for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate you and I'll talk to you on the next episode. Take care. There are two kinds of people in this world. There are members and non members. If you are enjoying this stuff, you have got to join us inside the 1%. 1% members get access to our courses on building businesses and investing profits. They get access to experts who are bringing in lessons on a regular basis, some of the best in the world. And they're joining regular calls with myself or members of my team to keep the community growing. The 1% is a community of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who are actively building businesses and investing the profits. And every month you get a community newsletter to see what's going on in your community and what the opportunities are to create the change that you want to see in your world. Join us@capitalism.com the number one. That's capitalism.com one.

Sam.