It's Time To Grow - The Climb, Episode 6

Welcome to the climb. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. This is my supposed to be monthly or so update, but we haven't done one in a while. So in this update, I want to share with you some of the changes that are happening in my company and in my life. Because I'm in a really exciting point for me right now that is very focused on growing the things that are already working, that already have momentum, doubling down on those, rather than trying to fix things that are broken. And I think that is something that is going to be worth documenting and sharing over the next chapter of my career. Welcome to the climb. Let's go ahead and dive in. Someone asked me recently what I was most excited about in life and business right now. And I told them for the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm not excited about anything that is new. Meaning I'm not excited about starting a new project. I'm not excited about changing in direction. I'm excited about everything that's going on right now. I have come to a point, and maybe this is just some sort of maturity where I realize that whatever you put your attention on, whatever you put your energy into, is the thing that is going to grow. There is not a path out here you need to find. There is not a route that you need to discover. There's not a purpose that you need to go to India to discover. However, whatever you put your energy into is what is going to grow. If you think about how much you hate your partner, you're going to hate your partner more. If you think about how much you love your children, you're going to love your children more. And whatever you put your energy into is what is going to expand. And for me, we've put a tremendous amount of energy into our incubator, which is called the Capitalism incubator. And as a result, that product is special. Now, it is, I think, the best incubator in our space, but I want to grow it into being just the best incubator, period. I recently read a book, it was actually an advanced copy of a friend of mine's book, in which he talks about how to make your product irresistible to the people who want it, and all about discovering the problems that someone has and making your product the solution to all of these problems. And it made me think, okay, what are some of the problems that our students have when they're building a business to sell it? And I thought of things like, well, picking a product that could fail or getting bad reviews or making poor partnerships, and it made Me start to think, well, what if we created relationships with manufacturers and with suppliers to where our students could just plug into products that they knew would be successful, that had low minimums, that had high profit margins, and we just stacked the deck with a few dozen products that they could choose from to get the ball moving. And what if we invited investors and influencers into the group and we had their contact information, and you had one shot to send your vision or your pitch deck to that group of investors and influencers, and had you followed the training up to this point, you'd be in a position to be able to pitch one of these influencers or investors to make sure you had enough capital and had enough exposure. So those are the kinds of things I'm starting to think about. We can add into the experience to make it even more predictable that these students are going to be successful. And I want to be able to look a customer in the eye and say, we have the product ideas, we have the influencers, we have the investors, we have the strategy. We just need good entrepreneurs to come in and build these businesses. We'll even fund them. I want to be able to have an offer that strong, and we're getting there. And it's really exciting because the students coming in are starting to have real breakthroughs and building real businesses that they can scale and sell. And I'm so proud to be a part of them. And it's becoming a really exciting product center in our business. So that's the capitalism incubator, and that's the thing that is growing the fastest right now. Next, I want to talk about the physical products brand that I've been working on, because my excitement for this really shifted in the last few months. I started a new project to build a nootropic company or mental wellness company called Switch. And the first product that's available right now is called On Switch. And it was made to put you in flow. And people who would try it said that they. They would get like two or three extra hours of quality work done. It was like their caffeine buzz didn't fall off a cliff.

But something happened to me, and that was that I got Covid. And after Covid, I had really bad depression. And my own product, Switched, took me right out of it within a couple of days. And when that happened for me, my excitement level about this business went to a new height because I was now experiencing the benefits of my own product. That upped my energy and excitement for it, and I started talking about it more, and sales started to go up and now we have an inventory crunch and all the cool things are happening where my team is figuring all these challenges and I feel like I'm new again, I'm fresh again in a new business. And regardless of what happens with this business, if it's a massive success or a failure, it just feels good to be back in a position where I'm starting something new and I'm excited about it. Since my last climb update, we've added two people to the team, I think, and that has been interesting because the team is now bigger than it's ever been, especially when you factor in regular freelancers that are contributing the team. I've never been bigger than a team of seven, I don't think, but now we're eight plus freelancers and it's bigger than what I'm comfortable managing. It's requiring me to step out of the business more and learn to lead rather than manage. And that is a bit of a new muscle for me. I'm comfortable with a team of seven. I know what everybody's thinking about and doing and I know who wants a raise and I know who's struggling and what's going on in everybody's personal life. After seven people, I don't have that anymore. Something happens when it tips over to eight people. Now. I need like structure and other leaders. And so that's requiring me to empower other people on the team and become more of a leader, which is great and uncomfortable. So leading rather than managing is something that I didn't realize I wasn't good at. And when you have to do it, it's, oh, okay, I gotta figure this out and I gotta step out of my current role and I gotta cast bigger visions and I gotta empower other people and I got to manage managers and oh man, this is a completely different skill set than what I had previously. So I'm learning to become a leader, which is a skill set that is uncomfortable but also exciting for me to develop. We just announced that we're bringing back the Capitalism Conference. The Capitalism Conference is our Super Bowl. It's the thing that we're most proud of. The thing that we do best is bring amazing people into one place and talk about money and business and change and personal development and capitalism and bring in entrepreneurs from all around the world. And this year, personally, I could not drum up the energy to do a 700 person event. I wanted a smaller event that was more intimate, more intentional. And so we put a hard limit this year on 200 people, which is both Exciting and scary. It's exciting because I think it's gonna be 200amazing people. And it's scary because, like, revenues and financials and all of this are better when you have 700 people versus 200 people. So we upped the ticket price, we lowered capacity. We have a long waiting list of people who want those spots. So that is September 23rd and 24th, 2021, which is coming up real fast. It's the fastest we' planned an event. We announced it like a week ago. We usually announce it at least six months in advance. This one's less than three months in advance, which is totally testing my ability to, like, relax in the pressure. But I'm very confident in the quality event, and I think it's going to be our best one yet. And lastly, let's talk about content and my book. We're doing a relaunch for my book. We're looking for someone that we can partner with that can help bring in relationships with other influencers and YouTube channels and other podcasts. Because I never did the tour to promote my book. After everything that happened in 2020, I just didn't have the energy to plan it. And I still sold 50,000 copies of my book, which is amazing. With 2000 reviews between Audible and Amazon, it's incredible. It still averages five stars. It's still number one in its subcategory. It's done amazing. Cannot wait to promote my book because it's already changed thousands of lives, and I want to see this thing get into as many hands as possible. We've also started other content channels. We started this podcast called the road to 1 million. That has been really fun for me because I get to start fresh on a podcast again. I've been doing the capitalism.com podcast. It's had a few names at this point, but been doing it for eight years. To have a new podcast starting to bud and grow is really exciting. Those early stages are the best part. And the YouTube channel is back on track now, too. I feel like our quality of content knuckle me over here. Good work, Alex. Our quality of content is the best it's ever been. We're starting to figure out the thumbnail game, starting to figure out the title game, starting to get consistent subscribers and views again. I also just feel like I'm finding my voice because I'm not trying to find my voice. I'm just relaxing into the message that I have to share and am thankful for whoever shows up. I'm in that place and it feels good. So I'm not tense about content. I'm relaxed about content. And that means that I think the content is the best we've ever done. So looking ahead to the next three to six months, the focus is all growth. We have really dialed in the quality of our products. Our content, I think, is outstanding, even best in class. So now the hires we're making, the partnerships that we are solidifying, and the goals that we're setting are all about growth. Getting the products that are so good into as many hands as possible, sharing our content with as many eyeballs and people as possible, and doing the things that allow what we do to get seen by more people who need to see it. It feels really good to be in a position where I don't feel like much has to change. I'm happy with my business, I'm happy with our content. I'm happy with our product line. And I don't feel like we need to do anything crazy or different in order to change things up. I don't feel like there's a result where I have to get in order to feel different. I'm really proud of what we're doing right now. That's a very different energy than I felt even a year ago. But being in that place, I think is like the fertile ground for things to grow. And so I can think about growth from a place that isn't needy or tense. So that's what's going on with Ryan, daniel moran and capitalism.com. if you actually watched it to this part of the video, would you let me know in the comments? I would like to say thank you for watching a video where I talked about myself the whole time. So if you watch it, let me know in the comments. And I'd love to say thank you. Thanks for watching this episode of the Climb. I'll see you next time.