Off the Record with Ezra Firestone: How To Create Courses & Community (and Overcome Depression)

You get what you want from people who have it. It is the apprentice model and it is still the way the world works. You're not going to get what you want from some college professor, unless you want to be a brain surgeon, in which case, right on. But like, if you want to learn how to run an Amazon business, you find Ryan Moran, who knows how to do that, and you get that from him.

You're listening to Freedom Fast Lane, presented by capitalism dot com. This is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms.

This is not an interview. We were in New York City shooting some videos for the Freedom Fastlane YouTube channel. Ryan had some big meetings with entrepreneurs in Manhattan and we just had lunch when Ryan got a mysterious call.

20 minute drive from me or from you?

20 minute drive. Hold on one second. Hey, Chris, would you pull out your phone?

So he said, come on, Seamoney, let's go. And we hopped in a cab. I had no idea who we were seeing, but it was a really nice hotel. We walked down the corridor and a familiar face and man bun greeted us at the door. The one and only Ezra Firestone. They got to catching up talking business, and I had to cut out some confidential stuff and sign an NDA.

I might know somebody.

Yeah. By the way. Yeah.

Can't reveal who they are, but if you shut that off for a second.

Don'T bleep it out.

Do me a favor and just shut it off for a second.

But eventually, I think they both kind of forgot that I was in the corner filming. This is a real behind the scenes look at two entrepreneurs talking about, well, all kinds of things. In this podcast, Ryan and Ezra discuss creating evergreen courses. Entrepreneur Lingo. James Altucher. How to build a personal Brand, Building communities and overcoming depression. Enjoy.

Say what you will about. I don't want any of this on video.

The big hairy, audacious goal@capitalism.com to create 100,000 DECA millionaires, which is a trillion dollars. Call it the trillion dollar mission. That is bigger than a lot of governments. And you know my feelings on government.

I mean, ultimately what we have is a combination of like, stuff that, like, I've been doing courses now for six years or something, right? So stuff that I've learned, stuff that I learned from digital marketer, stuff that I've picked up in the industry that we have over the course. Because the way that we always do our courses is we come out, we launch a beta version. All we do is we write the sales webinar for it, it's like, this is what we are promising people. Here's what the course is, here's the story that we tell that engages people in a conversation that's like, has them be interested in this, shows them the value of this subject matter. And then here's what we promised they're going to be able to do. Once it's. Once they've been through this training, then we run it live. Four weeks, five weeks, like webinars. Me teaching, or in this case, Colleen teaching. Smart project management by running it live to a small group of people who get it at a discount. So let's say it's 1500 course. Our price points are 1500 bucks. We sell the betas for 997. So you get $500 off and you get the professionally recorded version for free when it's done. So you get two courses. Basically, you get to go through it live, give your feedback. You're agreeing as part of the beta to give your feedback, to tell us what you think, to say, hey, I want more content in this area. So we kind of learn through that live thing what it needs to be, what people want, how it wants to lay out. So we don't come out and just create a course. We just run it with 30 people, 50 people, 100 people. Then after that and it's more work, but you end up with a better product. We go back and record the final version of the thing which we then evergreen market. This was the plan. The way we used to do it was do a sales webinar, teach the thing, live, be done, don't sell it again. We sold it as a live training and that was that launch model. That was a lot more work than necessary and ultimately never creating assets that we could come back and remark it.

Was a cash flow play. It wasn't building a business.

Yeah. And so through doing that for years, we kind of figured out a structure for like, how do you onboard someone to a training? How do you engage them and get them? Is it better to drip it or have it all lay out? You know, look at all that, you know, spreadsheets for.

Yeah, I'd love to see that because I'm really good at the telling a story, getting people and converting them. I have such a hard time going into the product development mode now. If you give me a room full of people and eight hours, I can blow them away. So maybe you play well off of.

People, but sitting by yourself, thinking module.

One through, I cannot think that I would rather go in for eight hours of Nothing planned and I'll blow them away. But trying to structure all that out is just incredibly labor intensive for me. So I'm looking for that person that gets in, like, they think in product. They think in product.

I might know somebody.

Yeah. By the way. Yeah.

Can't reveal who they are, but if you shut that off for a second.

Don'T bleep it out.

Do me a favor. Just shut it off for a second. Do you wonder where big, hairy and audacious came from?

There's these things that pop up where.

It'S like, take massive action. Everyone says massive action as if taking action was enough.

It's gotta be massive. Where did that come from? Big, hairy and audacious.

I've heard that in our community a thousand times.

Big and hairy and audacious.

It's like, who?

Where do those things that catch on?

Maybe Snuffleupagus. Snuffleupagus, yeah.

I'm sure that's who did it.

Is that the big, hairy, Audacious guy?

The big, hairy, audacious Sesame street character?

Yeah.

I don't know. That's how it starts.

I also feel like there's one right now that, like, really bugs me, which is up level.

Where do these things come from? In 2009, it was hustle.

Where is that now? It's Mario.

Is that Mario up level? Because now everyone, if you notice, this year, it's 2017 is the year of leveling. Up, up leveling.

And it's like, I have started to.

Use it and I'm like, wait a minute, why? Where did.

How did this get into my.

How did this crushing it up level? Yeah.

It's like, dude, what is it with.

These lingo terms that take hold in the business and entrepreneurship community that everyone there's. Now, I'm sure there's books about leveling down or leveling, whatever it is, but like, level has made it, man. Up level is the one this year.

You know, it's good. The counter trend is gonna be like, chilling down.

Chilling down. Yeah. That's what we. I've been promoting. I'm trying to promote the chill method.

I have a good friend of mine in Austin has an Amazon based product, product business. It does like 7 to 10 million a year. And he tells me, he's like, I would consider myself an entrepreneur. That's interesting. Why not? He's like, entrepreneur is like building a vision for companies. I'm a life optimizer. That is, I feel like that's the next trend is you're going to Be a life. Well, if you think about entrepreneurship is people don't really want to be entrepreneurs for the most part now people like you and me, we have an empire and a vision. I can't do anything else. Right. But being entrepreneurs at this point, yeah, it's a life sentence. But there are most. I'd say the majority of people just want freedom. Sure.

Of some variety, time, location, whatever relationship.

And so entrepreneurship is the path through which they become personally responsible for changing something. Which is a great path. Which is.

Then they get caught up on it and they just. Hamster wheel. Is that what you're saying?

Caught up on.

On the entrepreneurship path. They don't intend to be an entrepreneur, but then it happens and then they just. Just hamster wheeling.

Well, it's more. I think entrepreneurship is a gateway for personal responsibility, which is a fantastic gateway. But then they get caught in like the money game becomes the pursuit rather than pursuing up level it.

They start.

Crushing it and they want to uplevel. That's what it is.

Hey guys, this is Ryan.

We're going to take a quick break.

Break and we'll return to the show in a second.

If you've been listening to the last few episodes of the show where we featured entrepreneurs who have crossed the seven figure mark and are on their way to eight figures, then you undoubtedly have heard us talk about the Backroom. The Backroom is a group mentoring program where we cast the vision for getting to $10 million a year and beyond and being ready to sell your company because ultimately that's where the big payday is going to come from. We also open up investment opportunities so that you can put your profits into places that give you more wealth and potentially more cash flow or even help you save on taxes. We have some pretty cool places where we put cash that give you sometimes all three. Plus you're in a room with people who are the best, best in the world at what they do. We bring in my team of advisors that help people get into retail. They help people clean up their systems, they help people clean up their books. They even help them reposition their companies so that they can be sold for more money. We also talk about what's working right now on Amazon and on other channels. But the focus of the group is on casting the vision to get to eight figures and beyond and. And clearing all bottlenecks that stand in your way while also opening up other opportunities for you to enjoy a life of freedom. Because that's what we're after here. We're not just after this to work hard and work 16 hours a day. We're doing this so that we can have freedom and we get freedom by making enough money so that we can invest into places that allow us to never have to work again and then building empires with people that we love doing business with. And that's what we're doing inside of the back room. And I could also tell you that we're looking to buy and buy into some of our students businesses through something else that we're doing pretty cool in the back room. But I will save that for another day because that is still in process. But if you have an idea that you're not sure how to bring to the marketplace, if you've got an audience that you know could be the fertile ground for a really profitable seven figure physical products brand, or if you're selling enough product to be able to say, you know, I could step on the gas here if you've got that million in sight, or you're beyond the million and you know that it's time to accelerate the process to get to that eight figure mark. Because you're playing the review game. You're, you're playing price wars. You're tired of sacrificing profit margins. You're working way too long for too little result and you want to clear those bottlenecks so that you can grow faster and have a sellable company. So one day you can have that ideal freedom lifestyle. We can help you inside of the back room. It's one of the more expensive things that we do. It's also the highest ROI thing that we do. So it is application only. You need to be ready for it and you need to be ready to move when you join. So you can go to freedomfastlane.com, click on backroom and, and see the application, see all the pricing details from there. Working with me one on one starts at about $100,000. Joining the back room is a little bit less than that. So just know going into it that it's a serious investment and it is only for people who either have funding, have sales and are ready to go once they join. So if that's you, go over to freedomfastlane.com, click on the back room and you'll see the application and full details.

I think most people really want to be lifestyle optimizers. I really think you just want to have the best lifestyle possible.

I was listening to this guy, he wrote this book on depression. He's got some really controversial new viewpoints on depression. One in five People in America at some point will be on an antipsychotic or antidepressant.

Okay?

So they're clearly over prescribed because one in five people are not depressed or antipsychotic. But here's how he framed it, which I thought was really fascinating. So the narrative that they will tell you when you go to the doctor is that your brain, that it's a chemical imbalance in your brain and that you need to take these pills that will modify the chemical balance and whatever. So depression is measured on a scale from 1 to 51. And to give you a sense of this, modifying your sleep routine will give you six points. If you just sleep more and take better care of yourself, that's worth like six points. On that scale of one being you're in ecstasy or on ecstasy, maybe 51 being you're like suicide, you know, you're suicidal to like really suicidal. So the depression medication will move you 1.8 points on average, which is great. If you're like suicidal, it can take that edge off and like help you.

You know what I mean?

But like, this guy's basically discovered, yeah, it's pretty intense. He's discovered that there's a lot more to the narrative than just you have a chemical imbalance in your brain. And that the way he framed it was that. So in the 70s and 80s, they were like figuring out kind of what depression was, how to identify it and stuff like that and that. It has almost literally the same symptoms as grief. Like, check the boxes. Grief, like the way you feel when you lose a loved one is like how you feel when you're clinically depressed. Same check boxes, almost to the number. And so he framed it as depression being grief for your own life. See, when you're grieving for someone else, you can go hug your family and loved ones and this and that, you know. But depression being grief for where you're at in your life, there's no expression for it.

You don't.

There's nothing. It was a whole thing. It's a really interesting book. It's called Lost Connections.

Up leveling depression.

Up leveling depression. Anyways, I don't know how we got on this connection. I think it's called Lost Connections.

That's interesting because I have this theory that pretty much everything that we do foundationally is made to connect with other people.

I think you're right, man. I think that's what it's about.

If you look, there was a great podcast interview James Altucher did on his show where he was talking to Some psychologist about the happy hormones. I have not heard it, but oxytocin, serotonin.

Yeah, I know what those are.

Dopamine. Those are the three. Right. So check this out.

Ez, listen, let me tell you the book Lost Connections Uncovering the Real causes of Depression and the Unexpected solutions for.

So what's the connections piece? Is that like when we connect, ultimately.

Is that like this is the first time ever in society that we have de tribed. We usually like humans are herding animals. We have tribes and here we are. You know, you can tell like obesity that it's a societal problem. Like obesity came when we as a society went into, you know, he talks all about it, all the different ways that we're not eating real food anymore. And depression has like been on the rise as a society as we've gotten less and less tribal. Tribal and communal and relating with other people and feeling connected to a mission and a purpose. And like the narrative that society sells you is that you want to work all day and all night and slave away people. Most people check their first email at 7.40am on average and leave work at 7pm they're in their work life to buy these things that ultimately don't bring them any meaning.

It's the replacement for the connection. And the reason I brought brain science is because it reflects this. But before we go there, you're building a community, Right? Like an intentional community. Ish. And I want to do the exact same thing.

Mine will be smaller than yours. Your vision sounds quite grand.

120 people.

That's 30 times. Whatever. It's much larger than the group. I want 30 times bigger.

That means your community is going to be four people.

Yeah.

So maybe 15 times.

I'm going to have two kids. I have a community, one or two.

Other families kind of thing is what I'll doing be anyways.

So dopamine is the distraction chemical in your brain. It's the new opportunity, it's the newness. It's see a pretty girl, see the red light on Facebook, text notifications. Ooh, it's the distraction, right? And then serotonin is the status hormone. So I grow, I have progress. I'm measuring point A to point B. Or it's the bragging. It's the I'm better than this group. It's the comparison hormone. When I compare how I'm doing, serotonin goes up and then oxytocin is connection. And they can be sequential. So it's like distraction, Facebook comparison serotonin so that I can feel Connected, get oxytocin. But at the end, we're all just trying to connect to one another. We're all just trying to get oxytocin because that makes us feel safe and it makes us want to probe, create, because that's what we do when we connect. We're in a group, and we have fun with one another.

You think we're going to get accused of bro sciencing right now?

Bro Brain Science.

That's the name of a podcast.

I recommend the book.

All right.

I'm not trying to say I know about this stuff. I read some stuff I thought was really fascinating.

I recognize the podcast. I don't know anything about this stuff.

I do think James Altichur.

Yeah, the funny hair guy. I spoke at the same event as him one time, and I was struck by his appearance. I think it's a good shtick. Whatever he's doing like that. You gotta have a shtick, man. It's like, it helps. It makes you memorable.

Yours is the man bun.

I got the bun, But I'm more than that. I got more going on. I could explain my shtick to you, but here's the thing. My viewpoint is that we judge books by their covers. Your appearance. People are gonna prejudge you based on how you look, what your window dressing is. And window dressing is a lingo term that I use to describe how people communicate, what their cadence is like, what their tonality is, what body gestures they're using, whether or not they're directly connected or if they're hiding behind some bullshit like window dressing. So how you appear physically, how you dress, and your window dressing, that is your style of communication, is going to give people a sense of who you are, who they think you are, and they're going to judge that. And so it might as well be deliberate. This doesn't mean con people. This doesn't mean not be authentic, but it just means that know that you're presenting in a way. If you're going to come on camera, if you're going to talk, if you're going to. Going to do things like you're putting on a show.

This is show business.

It's all show business.

Right.

Because ultimately, we want people's attention. In order to capture people's attention, we must also entertain them with the content. So I do have a schtick, and it's very deliberate. And it is also a side of me. It's not like the whole me, but it's like, this is also who I am.

Yeah. When you start projecting Something I think that's that I think that in your lens of depression is a nice reflection.

Of this guy's lens of depression.

My technology.

Well, the idea of so many people are projecting something that they don't feel is really them in order to get status, but really it's not them. And so as a result, they become grieving about where they are in life.

I totally get that.

Because they're not the projection that they're putting on. I had somebody recommend, like, let's. It would be good for your Instagram following. Let's go rent some Lamborghinis and drive them around. I was like, I don't want to be. I'm really happy being the guy who drives a Tesla purple truck, lives in Austin, is a great dad.

Totally. But you did have a funny video in a fancy car. So you're not above funny video in a fancy car. Yeah. You're not above funny videos and fancy cars now.

Your video was my funny video.

There was a guy in there and he disappeared and he came back and the whole thing.

Did you have a JP Sears?

That's the guy.

He's a good person.

I'm sure he is.

Hi, JP Sears.

Luke seems awesome. What's up? I don't know if he's watching, but he seems like a good dude. But the point is, your fancy car video wasn't. Oh, look at me and this status symbol. You could be me and have the same status symbol if you then buy my, you know, shit. It was some kind of entertaining, informative story about your life. It was well done.

And I genuinely like driving a Tesla.

I do too. I have never enjoyed a vehicle more. I lived in New York City for 10 years. I forgot that cars were any fun to have. I didn't have one. I then got an Audi and that was cool. And I had a car and then I got a Tesla and I was like, oh, this is the most amazing thing ever. It's so much fun to have. And also, I believe in the mission and all that. I'm sold on the whole, you know, shtick, but. But also, it's the best car ever.

Hey, guys, this is Ryan.

We're gonna take a quick break and.

We'Ll return to the show in a second.

Hey, fastlaners. You all know that I made the majority of my wealth by building, scaling, and selling physical products companies. And now I run a fund and.

A firm that purchases them.

And when we want to grow our businesses, we heavily rely on the services of viral launch. You've heard them on the show before. I'd highly recomm that you go and listen to the episodes with Casey Goss because they have more data about what's working on Amazon.comWhat products you should sell, how you should optimize your listings, what keywords you should go after. They have more data on that stuff than pretty much anybody else on the planet. So we rely on them to look at markets we should go into, what products we should release, and I would recommend that you at least check them out. And when you do, use the coupon code capitalism to get a fat hefty discount. We use them pretty heavily as a tool in our tool belt alongside just about everything else that we talk about here on the podcast. So head over to viral-launch.com to check them out and when you decide to test them, use the coupon code capitalism.

At checkout to get a big fat.

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I want to build compound. Can I have your help?

Yeah, that would be an interesting post.

Talking about what it takes. I'm so fascinated with this community building and group living and community, the communication structures that you need to manage and facilitate a group that actually works. Because there's obviously a million examples of groups that have failed. I have a lot to say.

Jim Jones, you know they went out together.

Yeah. That's not so good. You want to be on the Comet drinking the Kool Aid.

So can I cut a quick story?

I'm gonna take your silence. I said yes.

Let me check.

I'm listening.

I was gonna check my textbook.

Yeah. When I sold the company and I got the check within my brain, I was thinking, okay, I gotta reverse engineer my investment strategy to give me the lifestyle that I want.

But then I was like, wait, what's.

The lifestyle that I want if I'm gonna set it up to where I never have to work again, never have to worry about money again? What is the lifestyle I really want? And I started to think, I want to wake up and hear my best friends cooking breakfast in the next room. I want to go to a workout with my good buddies, make some fun videos, have some people come in, talk about business. I start to map it out. I was like, what I'm outlining is a community. It has nothing to do with anything except who I'm spending time with and how we're all connected with one another. And I just don't think that anyone's having the conversation about the answer to almost every question is who it's not what, it's not how it's not when it's who. Who do you want to be with? Who are you going to do this with? Who can help you with this?

Yeah, you get what you want from people who have it. It is the apprentice model, and it is still the way the world works. You're not going to get what you want from some college professor unless you want to be a brain surgeon, in which case, right on. But, like, if you want to learn how to run an Amazon business, you find Ryan Moran, who knows how to do that, and you get that from him. And, like, just me.

Have you ever been on a trip or, like, the same place twice and one time it sucked, and one time it was great because of who you spent your time with, like, who you met along the way.

The interesting part, while we get into this is, okay, so you get this group of people together and you're all committed to this grand vision. What are the power dynamics? What are the communication structures? What do you do when someone does not live up to the agreed behavioral structure that you've set? Not saying one way is right or one way is wrong, but you set some, like, here's how we're going to do it. This person's going to cook dinner this day. This is who's going to take out the trash. What do we get? How do we resolve conflict? I mean, there's so many things. And this is why most relationships of two people cannot make it. Really.

I mean, it's hard to make a.

Relationship of two people make it.

That's why mine is going to be one polyamorous community.

So everyone's just getting down, and I'm the alpha male. Sex it.

If anyone breaks a rule, I chop off. Right.

I mean, that's a tough way to go. I don't know if that's going to work for you, but let me know. But I mean, listen, Sex, money, religion, time, these are the areas that people are victimized in their life. Most commonly. Money, sex, religion, time. That is, you know, age and how much you're spending time with and politics and religion. That's where people are most heavily victimized. I mean, there's other areas, but you got to cover those things in a group setting. And I think one of the ways to do it is to set it up such that people are not sharing houses. So communal houses are harder than people who have personal space. And then there's shared communal space. That's more like co housing. There's a model that exists, co housing, where people have their own individual houses. And then there's a communal space that you share and then there's structure around that. When you have everyone living in the same house sharing bathrooms, sharing kitchens, that's a little more difficult because and to how the way I grew up actually I grew up on a commune where people shared houses and bathrooms and stuff like that. A little more difficult to make those communication structures work than if you have going to be interesting. Did you buy the land?

Not yet, no. I'm courting different opportunities.

One of the interesting things about your model that I think is probably a good move is the people who are a part of the group share a similar ideal lifestyle. Entrepreneurs who are committed to projects in the world, who are building things, who are using that. So there's like some core. It's not an ideology that you're asking people to subscribe to that you are prescribing to them, which would then be like a cult.

Right.

Where it's like you must subscribe to this ideology and I'm gonna tell you what it is. And you're not part of the group unless you subscribe and you prove that subscription in all these number of ways. You're saying, I think from what you're saying, from what you told me is like I'm looking to curate a group of people all moving in the same direction in the world. Not you don't have to be a particular religion or whatever. So that already I think gives you a good shot because you have.

Yeah.

And imagine what we could do if we all were here together. And part of this was my last workation, if you will, with one of my mastermind groups in Mexico, with some of my best friends in the world who are all productive entrepreneurs. I was so creative. I felt so much like myself. I felt inspired. And the best connections in the world are literally next to me. Why don't people live like this?

Are you familiar with the concept of phenylphylamine? Phenylalan, Thyroid?

Is that a supplement?

No, it's literally the chemical that your body produces when you meet someone new who you're interested in procreating with. So here's what happens. This is why people are serial monogamists is because what happens is they meet someone and for six to eight months their body is literally pumping chemicals through their system that has them rose colored goggles has them like really into this person. And then at about the six to eight month mark, nature figures, oh, you haven't procreated. If you're going to procreate, you've done it by now. If you haven't shuts off. And then people are like, where did the magic go? What happened? And so the. The hard question that I proposed to you is a workation is you step out of your normal life and you go party for a little bit and.

Then you go back.

What happens when people get sick? What happens when the initial excitement wears off and someone's not carrying their weight? It's not insurmountable. Obviously, as someone who wants to have their own community as well, these problems are not insurmountable. And I have ideas around how you solve them and stuff. But with a group that large, those problems compound by a lot because you're opening up more opportunity for that. And that is where I get to. The group that I grew up in was about that size. It was between 50 and 80 people at any given time. It's a large group. And what usually ends up happening in a group that large, there's like a subgroup that's kind of running things, you know? So I think a smaller group's a.

Little easier to manage. Cool.

This is not.

We were not.

Yeah, this was not what we were going to talk about, but actually, this is what it's all for anyway, right? I mean, we talk so much about money and grind and hustle and leveling up. Level. But really, we're all in this because we want, I think, to connect with one another. We want to have lives defined however we define them, and this is what it ultimately leads towards. And cut.

I hope you enjoyed being a fly on the wall for this conversation as much as I did. Hey, go subscribe to the Freedom Fastlane YouTube channel to see more of Ryan's travels in New York and a ton of exclusive content you won't find anywhere else. Seamoney out.