Income Report - $1.1m - January 2017

Hey, fastlaners. What's up, guys? Ryan here. Don't really know what that intro voice was about. It's just what the intro music in this podcast does to me. You look good today. What's going on? Call me later. So today we're gonna do something weird. Weird for me anyway, because I'm gonna be reporting on the progress of my businesses in the form of what I guess I would call an income report. They're really revenue reports and progress reports and I used to do these on a monthly basis and they were hugely. But I stopped doing them for a couple reasons. Mostly because there's a lot of things I just can't talk about in my businesses, either out of respect for some of my partners or because there are just things going on that I can't report on yet. And by the time I report on them, it's old news to me. But I think they actually would be really valuable and interesting to share later. So I'm going to do a little bit of an experiment and I covet your feedback on this. So please do leave your feedback over@freedomfastlane.com or share them on social media so that we can see them. What I'm going to do is I'm going to report everything that I can report about my businesses. And as things kind of develop, I'm going to try to do a better job of coming back and updating you on the different pieces that are moving. And you'll just have to deal with some of the vagueness that I have to do on some of the issues. Not issues, but some of the things that are still in development. So I am going to make a point to do these more often on probably a monthly basis again, but only if you want them. And they've been hugely popular. I don't know if everything that I can share will be as valuable as I'd like them to be. I'm also just not a detail person. So these are revenue reports, not total what I take home reports. I think that's more for show when people do that anyway. And I don't really care to be like, I took home X amount of dollars this month. So the purpose of these is more to show you the progress of businesses and the differences that we make from month to month that create the change that creates the impact that grow those businesses and grow the influence. So the total revenue on my businesses this month was about 1 point. Well, this is January 2017 was about $1.1 million across all of my businesses. That includes just the businesses that I am involved in. It does not include my investment portfolio, which we will talk about at the end of this podcast. So I'll break this down business by business and give you a bit of an update. My sports and fitness company.

Is more than half of that revenue. And January of 2017, the revenues for that were about $600,000. One of the biggest drivers for that business is there because we've been on Amazon for a long time because we have relationships on Amazon. It has opened up new forms of advertising that I can't report on just yet, but I hopefully will be able to report as we both get it dialed in. And also I am freed up to talk about that from the powers that be, if you will. But there are some new forms of advertising that we've been testing, some of which are going really well, some that, you know, they're experiments. But one of them has created a lot of opportunity. Some you could kind of compare it to a prime day response. So some of those promotions have resulted in six figure days, so over $100,000 in sales for a day. So that has, has driven some of the growth and the dust is kind of still settling on some of that because we're still in testing mode of those, those types of Amazon promotions. So hopefully I can report back more on that at a future income report. But for right now there are just some new forms of advertising that are opening up soon, some opportunities and we'll see how the dust settles. But on the surface they look, they look fairly encouraging. So that's one of the drivers of that business. Another thing that we're working on is really dialing in launch processes that don't take Amazon into account. So as most of you know, I take a large percentage of my income from Amazon.com and selling a lot on Amazon, although that is likely going to change what I'll talk about in a second. But we are really working on dialing in the launch process for promoting products that and not relying on Amazon for this. So I have publicly endorsed Zonblast and Viral Launch and the types of blast services that have done a lot of good for helping people rank for key keywords. But as a result of doing that, it's my opinion that a lot of e commerce entrepreneurs got horribly lazy because those services just made ranking for keywords and getting your product selling really easy. But the strategy really became well then who can outblast to the next person? Which is exactly what I predicted would happen. But everybody forgot that there are marketing strategies that you can use that are not just using traditional launch promotions. So I have been active at work developing what those processes would look like. And I should have an update for you on how those are working by the next income report. So we're putting. I'm extremely confident in this strategy and I think it is going to knock the socks off of everybody who's trying to compete with us. So hopefully I'll have some updates for you in the next income report. I have a really cool, exciting thing that happened in January and that is that we struck a deal with a very, very major retail chain throughout the United States. It is probably going to be a multimillion dollar deal, especially when you factor in our marketing ability and the fact that I am confident that we will market better than almost everybody in this retail chain. I think we're just gonna kick the pants off of them. So we have what I think is going to be a multimillion dollar deal in terms of what we, you know, what we. What we sell in this retail chain. And for that reason, it's probably not going to be long that Amazon is the major source of income for this business or for me personally. What I find really exciting about this is retail is a completely different business. But when you sell through a retail chain, you don't necessarily need reviews or even to test an idea. Obviously, you should have something tested in the marketplace, but you could go straight from product to distribution without having to do a lot of the front work. It's like the opposite of Amazon. Amazon, you gotta have a ton of reviews, you gotta have.

The audience. With retail, you just need to have the shelf space. Now, obviously you need to be driving people into those stores. You need to have a compelling message and the bigger audience you have, the more that you'll move. But to really cut your teeth and prove a concept, it's a very different approach, which is exciting for me to learn and exciting to be a part of. And I guess the grass is always greener when you're looking at other businesses because plenty of retail people have said, stay on Amazon. Retail as can be a nightmare. But I'm very excited for the challenge. I'm very excited for the opportunities that have opened up and it's been a long time coming. It's something that we have worked on for a couple of years and it was, it was worth the work and energy to be able to get to this point. So that, by the way, is why I am so. I am so publicly vocal about the importance of building a brand that is bigger than just One product or bigger than just an Amazon business. If, if you have the branding then you have the ability to go bigger than just an Internet business. We're about to be hopefully a multi million dollar retail brand as well as having a seven and eight figure Internet presence. So that couldn't have happened if we didn't have a really solid brand and that's why this is really exciting for me. We also hired a face of the brand, so we hired somebody who is, is an expert in the field to do videos and content for us. It was an expensive investment but so far it has been worth the investment. It's been allow, it's allowed us to move a lot faster in terms of video production, video quality and just putting out content that represents us well. Our goals moving forward on this business is to make a huge splash in retail.

In spring of this year and to dial in that predictable off of Amazon launch process. Those two things I think will double the size of the company and make this basically one of the leaders in the industry.

I am as excited about this business as I have been in a long time. All right, so let's pivot to my supplement company which is called Body Vega Nutrition, mostly sells fish oil and some other products. And this has been one. I'm mostly an investor in this. I have a partner on it who does all the operations. His name is Paul. And this business averages right around a million dollars in sales a year. In January it did about 75,000. So just shy of that million dollar mark. And this is pretty much flat over the last time that I reported on my businesses. So there hasn't been a lot of driving forward in this. And really.

This just requires Paul and I to sit down and create the plan of how big we want to take this thing. This is a cash flow business to both of us. So our goals aren't really any bigger. To be more than about a $2 million a year company and you know, be taken home 10 grand a month in cash on this guy. So Body Vega really needs just for us to sit down and create what the plan looks like. Because Paul has done a great job of launching products but I have kind of been focused on other things rather than working on how we really drive this thing home. So good news is Paul Al just moved to Austin, Texas, at least for the winter. So he and I will be meeting up and coming up with a plan of what we hope will double the size of the company. Company. And that really is my goal to get this to 150,000 to 200,000amonth and have a nice six figure income that comes in fairly passively for both of us. And I know we'll get there. It's just, it's taken me longer than I would have liked to make this a focus. But with Paul here in town, I'm pretty confident that we'll, we'll be working together a little bit more closely on this one. So those are my physical products businesses that I am involved in. I have a couple other physical products businesses that I will mention in the investment portfolio. I will now take things over to actually. Freedom Fast Lane. Freedom Fast lane did about $400,000 in sales in January.

The vast majority of that comes from a webinar where we teach the 12 months to 1 million plan. And then we sell our brand builder Bootcamp, which is our sprint. It's our structured program to take somebody from nothing to having their first product up and selling and on Amazon and growing so that they're on the path to a million dollar business. And then they can apply for the tribe or get involved in one of our other trainings. So that has, that was the majority of the revenue from Freedom Fast Lane. Our traffic costs went way up this month and we were still, you know, we still profited over $100,000 between our ad spend and our sales, but traffic costs were way, way up this month and we're not quite sure what's going on there. So we need to kind of dive deeper into the numbers and see what that's like. By the way, when we're doing this, I am following the same strategy that Mike Dillard talked about here on the podcast. So Mike Dillard talked about how he has his cash flow business where he uses that to fund his other ventures. That's the same thing I do. So if you want to see kind of my control the world strategy, go listen to the episode with Mike Dillard. But basically I teach this stuff because I want to have a big audience so that I have a platform from which to spread a message and also promote other businesses that I'm involved in or to invest in. That's my take over the world Buy the Cleveland Indian strategy, which I'll talk about a bit again in the investment section of this episode.

I have a thousand things that I want to be doing in Freedom Fast Lane, but I realize that there are only so many hours in the day and so many people on our team. So we have really focused on the brand building side of things because it's where we're strong on our tribe and Our back room and all of the money that we make in Freedom Fast Lane goes back into promoting the message, developing new eyeballs, spreading a message of freedom and capitalism to more people. We really need a content manager, somebody who is taking all the content from my brain, all the content from our different contributors and putting them into a systematic flow and growing our exposure. So by the way, it's. If you have a strong digital marketing background and you're passionate about what we're doing here and you have an experience taking a piece of content that gets seen by a hundred thousand people and you know how to get it to a million and ten million people, shoot me a message at facebook.com Ryan Moran or write into us and let us know that that's your skillset. Cause I would be interested in talking with you. We have so many different content pieces like Freedom Fastlane TV is just, I think it's fantastic. We get such good feedback from Freedom Fast 9 TV where we do case studies on our successful students. We talk about what's working right now, we answer students questions. I love doing it, the audience loves it, but only gets seen by like right now about 5 to 10,000 people. And I would like that number to be more like 50,000 to 100,000 people. So every dollar that we make here goes back into spreading the message and growing the audience. But we could really use some help from a content manager who has experience driving a message to more and more people. So that, that is the strategy. That's why I talk about the stuff, that's why we, we, we work so hard at delivering content. Because my, my three year vision involves us having a huge platform of people, a huge platform of, of a big audience where we can incubate more businesses, where we can put more retail partners and investors into one room and build really incredible businesses together. That's why we do what I do. And my by the Cleveland Indians plan is to be a part of these businesses and start these businesses and to be able to control the process because we have so many eyeballs@capitalism.com so if one of our students is doing something really cool, we can write a blog post on capitalism.com and blow up that business really quickly just because we have millions of people following us. That is my takeover the World plan. That's how I'm going to buy the Cleveland Indians. By investing in businesses, promoting them to our, our, our following, being able to grow those and having equity positions in those businesses. So our goals for Freedom Fast Lane is to get to a hundred thousand really Engaged people. By the end of 2017, capitalism.com is already close to that. A lot of our videos get over 100,000 views and we just need that system in place to be able to duplicate that over every piece of content. So my coo, Evan, his quarterly objective is to be able to systemize that plan so that every piece of content that we have goes out and gets seen by at least 100,000 people. So once again, forgive me for repeating myself, but the plan there is to have a big base of eyeballs and a lot of content going out. So we have this rabid following. And as a result of having that, we can put any message, any business on the map. We can support our students by featuring them. We can promote the businesses that I'm involved in. We can put a message of freedom and capitalism in front of hundreds of thousands of people. And that is, that is what we are building. I'm going to move over now to my investment portfolio. So I invest in both passive income streams and other businesses that I want to be a part of. And I'm gonna drop a huge carrot here. Once again, I can't talk about it yet, but I am hopefully wrapping things up either this afternoon or tomorrow on a. I'm a part of a multimillion dollar acquisition and I am not going to be in the operations of this business, but I will be serving as an advisor and an investor and it is hopefully the first of many like it. So I have all. I have recently realized that I'm not gonna get the Cleveland Indians by just starting businesses. I'm going to have to have the ability to acquire businesses as well and scale them up. Gary Vaynerchuk actually said that the way that he was gonna buy the New York jets was that he was gonna be really good at branding, then he was going to buy. I think Dove might have been the example he used from stage. He's going to buy that. He's going to buy a big brand, he's going to grow it and then he's going to sell it. And that's going to be how he buys the New York Jets. I have a similar strategy for how I'm going to buy the Cleveland Indians, which is to acquire brands, acquire physical products brands, because that is my singular skill. That is what I'm really good at doing, is a physical product side of things. I'm going to have a portfolio of them, I'm going to grow them up with my audience and what I'm really good at doing and that is going to give Me the equity and the cash flow to buy my Cleveland Indians. So I am put the putting the finishing touches on my first multimillion dollar acquisition which should be completed today or tomorrow. And I will be sharing more about that business and how we grow that and what we do to really put that on the map and grow it from a $3 million business to a $30 million business. So I will be sharing more about that with you as it becomes relevant and as we close on the, as we close on that business. I own a decent amount of real estate, most of it in Cleveland, Ohio. I own a portfolio of houses that's worth just under a million dollars. And that is my passive cash flow, if you will. So I have a management company that manages those and you know, I get positive cash flow from that. And that's my, you know, how if everything went to, if everything hit the fan, that would be how I paid for my life and ate. So that's my passive income. I'm invested in a couple of businesses passively. I'm involved in a fulfillment company called Falcon Fulfillment. I'm just a capital partner there, which is a fulfillment house for physical products brands. So if you sell on your own e commerce store or in retail, Falcon Fulfillment is a great solution for.

For making that happen. It basically serves as your Amazon warehouse. If you're not selling on Amazon. If you're an Amazon brand, you want to be using fba. But if you're not on Amazon, Falcon Fulfillment is a good solution for basically serving as your warehouse that automates all of that shipping fulfillment. I am also invested in a restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio, which is my hometown, called Fresh Planet. If you're in Northeast Ohio, please go to Fresh Planet. We need it. And that has been my black sheep investment. It has just never performed the way that I expected it to, even though I really believed in the concept. So I'm not involved in that at all. I was just an investor, but that has been kind of the black sheep of my investment portfolio. It's been a little bit soul sucking because it's very, very capital intensive to put something like that together and the cash flows on a restaurant are bad. So let's move on. My final investment here is that I'm considering investing in one of our tribe members businesses. They've been doing extremely well. They need a capital partner and an advisor right now. I think that I am uniquely positioned to help this business, so I'm considering investing in one of them right now. This is something that I regularly like to consider when our Tribe members have businesses that are growing. I enjoy being an advisor and an investor in those businesses and I have the retail relationships and the audience relationships and all of these other places where I can add value. So it is fun for me to be involved in that type of the process. So new revenue this month was about $1.1 million between my sports and fitness company, my supplement company, which is called Body Vega, Freedom, Fast Lane. And then of course I have my investment portfolio which is the businesses I invest in, the houses that I buy, the restaurant, the black sheep of the portfolio. And my overall strategy is to make my money in business and then put them into other investments that I'm not involved in and to consistently be growing my investment portfolio, which is where I'm building my real long term term wealth. In other news, esther is now 19 months old, which blows my mind. She says a handful of words, now she's running around the galaxy. It's amazing how fast it happens. It seems so slow at the beginning and then they just sprout out of nowhere. It's, it's pretty crazy. I really struggled being a dad for the first year, but it is the joy of my life now. I am really stretching myself in terms of hiring and leading a team. This has been new for me over the last year and the last year I went from being, you know, about a three person operation or, you know, me and a partner to having there's 12 people who work for me now across my different businesses. So that is a stretch for me. It's a skill that I feel challenged by. But I think it is the next step stage for me as an entrepreneur. Learning to build and lead teams and following a vivid vision has been such a game changer for me and for the teams I lead. Following Cameron Herald's formula, his outline for building a the vision for a company has given us the direction of breaking things up by quarter. You know what's important to us this quarter in order to be able to hit that three year vivid vision. If you haven't heard Cameron on the podcast, I would definitely go listen to that. He's helped physical products brands grow from 1 million to 100 million and he gives a lot of that to leadership people and a vivid vision. So I have been following his, his instructions on that and has really given us an aligned purpose and mission for where we're going on all of my different businesses. How are you going to get to where you want to go if you don't know where you're going to go? And answering that question of where we're going and what it looks like in the future has been instrumental in us really getting our stuff together and building something lasting. So that's where things stand as of February and that's where we are heading going forward. So I would love to hear your thoughts on this type of an income report where, you know, I give you kind of the overview of my different businesses and investments. If this is helpful for you, please let me know in the show notes over@freedomfastline.com so I know to do more like this. I covet your feedback on something, something of this nature. So if you like them, I'll keep doing them. If not, I will. Hey, I always appreciate your thoughts on the show. Thank you for listening to Freedom Fast Lane. If you found value out of this, please do leave a review on itunes and subscribe. It really does help us out and share this with an entrepreneur who, you know needs to hear this because it wasn't long ago, it feels like yesterday that I was kind of a struggling entrepreneur trying to put the pieces together. And today I run businesses that do a million dollars a month and I have a investment portfolio that is growing and budding and we're acquiring businesses. And I get to share all of this with you because I believe that entrepreneurship and capitalism is one of the most important missions that you can take on as a person. So I hope you found this valuable. I appreciate you listening to the show. I'll talk to you guys on the next episode.