Rant-isode: Selfishness, Happiness, & The Direction Of The Podcast #WednesdayWithWyan

We all pursue the routes to happiness. It's kind of funny if you watch for this and you'll see other people doing it. We pursue the things that we think will make us happy rather than pursuing happiness. So I just decided to flip it and pursue happiness. And I've discovered two things that really determine my happiness.

Hey, capitalists. It's time to crack open your favorite beverage. I like Zevia. This is Wednesday with Wyan on capitalism dot com.

Well, well, well. Greetings. You look great. You look happy, healthy, a little sleepy, but you look good. Hope things are going well. Greetings from Austin, Texas. I once in a while like to do little rantisodes, if you will, where I just update you on what's going on in life, business, and the pursuit of happiness, if you will, which will actually be kind of a theme today. So for whatever reason, I get some of the best feedback from some episodes that I do where I just sit back with a drink of choice and update you on what's been going on@capitalism.com and in my life and what's working and what's not working. So if you enjoy these episodes, please let me know at Twitter, I'm Ryan Moran. Or on Instagram, I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. I'm always honored when you sit and listen to me rant.

But there's actually a lot going on. And if you've been listening to the show or following our work for any length of time, I would love to sit down and have a beverage with you. My beverage of choice today is calm magnesium calcium tea. That's for real. I actually recently made the decision to experiment giving up coffee, which probably isn't going to be a permanent decision, but actually has been one of the. The best decisions that I have made in, in a long time, which I will, I will get to in a second. But first, I want to update you on the podcast. We made some interesting decisions here at, at, atcap@capitalism.com around these parts. And it's taken me a good year, two years maybe, to really find my footing and my voice again. After having a few acquisitions, after being humbled a few times in business, it's taken me a good while to really find that platform again, to really find that launching pad where we're building something that.

I guess there's kind of this fallacy that happens. I've been told this happens a lot when, when somebody goes through a big win in life or business that you just kind of buy into this lie that it's always gonna. You're just gonna keep on crushing it. And man, did I get humbled the year after I sold my last company and did not keep on crushing it. And had some really had a really rough year and then about a year of recovery and now I'm like back in the saddle, if you will. I feel happier, healthier and more energetic than I think I've ever been in my life. But it took a year of taking my lickings and then a year of recovering, which I'm excited to document. More moving forward.

But now that I've kind of found my footing on my voice and where we're going again, what we've decided to do at the podcast we've experimented with once a week, we've experienced with twice a week, we've experienced five times a week. What feels really good to me right now is we're going to be going to a three times a week format and we've broken it up into three themes. And moving forward, the capitalism.com podcast with Ryan Daniel Moran, which is the name of the channel, will be broken into three different themes and they are the 1%, which will be an mostly an interview type of podcast or a clip from an event.

That'Ll be airing on Mondays. Wednesdays will be Wednesdays with Wyan, which is what you're listening to right now, which will be more going behind the curtain of me teaching and also sharing some things that are not always business related. For example, actually looking at my list of podcast episodes I'm going to record here shortly, I really, really want to talk about a year of therapy summarized. I'm going to talk about my favorite biohacks and other illegal drugs. Going to talk about my new perspective on God, faith and religion. I think I have kind of reached some actual conclusions on what I think which will make for a controversial episode. I want to do an episode on Trump, North Korea and the 2020 election. Gosh, I think I know exactly what is going to happen in 2020.

So Wednesday's show will be solo cast time with me to talk about.

Random stuff. And then Fridays will be Freedom Fast Lane. And that will be mostly what I'm hoping for is to get submissions from all of you and do some one on ones, do some a Q and A and also bring back some old episodes. That man, we have some good stuff that hasn't seen the light of day in a year and a half or so. And it's just we'll bring them back from time to time. So if you ever want to be on the show or if you want to submit a question, head over to capitalism.com fflpodcast fflpodcast. There's a little submission form where you can fill out a little questionnaire and my team will follow up with you and possibly schedule time with you to make you an interview on the show. One thing I'm excited about is I am attempting to bring in onto the Monday show the 1%.

More people who are behind the curtain. You know what's funny? In the Internet marketing world, if you built a $10 million business, which I've done, hooray. You're like, you're a big deal if you've done that. In the real business world, that is getting started. That is warming up most people. You know, the Internet marketing world is very small. In the real world.

People are quiet about how much money they're making. They would rather be rich than famous and they build big, real established businesses. And you know what, I'm 31. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 18, so for 13 years. And I have been trapped in the Internet marketing world. So I want to bring on some normal people who are rich and I'm hoping to have about 50% of more name worthy episodes and 50% 1 percenters who.

Live in the big house in your neighborhood. And you've always wanted to know what they do for a living and I want to find out. I don't have a good way to take suggestions for people to be on that show, but I would really welcome them. If you want to float somebody by me, email me@ryanapitalism.com I would. I'm really interested in getting into the brains of really rich people who have net worth of at least $10 million but aren't out there talking about it. I want to know how they made their money, how they grow it, how they invested it, what they would tell their younger self. I want to hear it from people who aren't trying to build an audience. So that's what's interesting to me right now. So that's where we are going.

With the podcast now.

There's also some other cool things going on@capitalism.com.

We'Ve gone kind of hog wild into the search engine optimization world. What's old is new again, folks. It's actually how I got my kicks as an entrepreneur was learning search engine optimization. And man, I'm really enjoying getting back into it. So capitalism.com is becoming a really, really powerful domain name for SEO, which is not what everybody's teaching these days, but it sure is fun. It sure is fun working on the old Google machines. It's actually how I got into Amazon, by the way. I was really good at Google SEO and then obviously carried over to Amazon SEO as well.

So one thing I want to share with you, which is both a personal and a business kind of transformation that I've had. This has been possibly the most significant shift that I have had in years. And I am, man, I'm including Ayahuasca in that. I'm including.

Other therapies I have done in this. The most meaningful shift, I think. And maybe I'm biased because it's like a recent aha. But.

A team member.

I don't remember the exact words, but a team member kind of.

Helped me see how selfish I am in business and in life.

Now every time I tell this story, the person who was on the receiving end of the story says, ryan, I don't think of you as a selfish person. You're actually a really giving person. And I say, yeah, on the outside, but on the inside, there's always that voice that is like, when am I going to get mine? When am I going to have my payoff? When am I going to ease off the break and be happy?

And.

Aubrey Marcus is a friend of mine. He runs on it. He said to me once that he put on this mastermind. He did this mastermind event, and everybody loved the event, but he was really drained and discouraged at the end. And he was analyzing, you know, why am I not happy with this? Everybody's happy but me. Why am I not happy? And what he realized was that he had conflicting goals. One of his goals was to have a great event, and another one of his goals was to be profitable.

And those are conflicting goals. And so no matter what happened, he was going to feel like he was pulled in multiple directions, and so he couldn't be happy with it. And, man, I so related to that. I so get that. I so get the conflicting goals of, you got to make sure the team is taken care of, but you also need to be profitable and you also want to build a product you're really happy with. And all of those conflicting things.

You know, that's a lot for any entrepreneur. And somehow in a conversation with one of my team members with C Money, actually.

I just realized how.

Selfishly I have thought about business, thinking about how much money do I want to make, how much do I want to want to work, what do I want to do, what do I want to talk about? Some of that is healthy.

But at the same time, I actually, I Cried. I just. I like, I mourned the idea of what that has cost me of. Of what that perspective has cost me. What has it cost me to be selfish? You know, it feels really freaking good to give without expectation. And I get now what Gary meant. When Gary Vaynerchuk and I were sitting in his office and he said he was talking about giving without expectation, he said something to the effect of Ryan, you believe me 90% now, but one day you'll get that I really mean give without expectation. I get it. I get it now. It just feels good to give without expectation. I have a theory right now. Biologically, our brains are not wired to make us happy. We're wired to survive. Happiness is actually a byproduct of survival. Think about that for a second. You experience happiness when your brain thinks that it is going to survive. So when in fact, money does not make you happy, but more money does.

So no matter where you are, how rich you are, the money you have doesn't make you happy. Getting more money does make you happy because your brain sees an increased chance of survival.

If you've listened to my podcast that I've had with Dr. Loretta Bruning, she talks about this, there's almost like hedonistic fatigue, which is kind of a paradox of life.

So.

We'Re wired to survive. That's how we're happy. Well, think about this for a second. What is the best way for us to survive? And this is very counterintuitive. The best way for us to survive is to be part of a group, part of a tribe that has each other's back and takes care of one another. And who is the person who survives best in the tribe, the person with the most resources, the person who everyone loves, the person who gives the most. I think that's why giving makes us happy, because it literally increases our standing with the tribe and therefore our chances of survival. It's like the ultimate win. It's the ultimate way to survive. Give without expectation.

And I've just realized how much it has cost me to.

Not to give with expectation and how much I've held myself back on.

Just not putting it all out there. I had this realization maybe.

Three weeks before I spoke on stage at SellerCon, which I gave my updated 12 months to 1 million talk. And I just went on stage and just gave everything I had with, like, no attachment to what happened. And it felt so good. And I want to live life like that. Like, I want to live life in that zone. And ever since then, I have said that My primary focus is I'm just practicing being happy. And yeah, I got cool business initiatives going on, but I really am practicing being happy.

And I've been kind of distilling down, okay, what do I need to do differently to make. To make myself as happy as possible? We all pursue the routes to happiness. It's kind of funny. You watch for this and you'll see other people doing it. We pursue the things that we think will make us happy rather than pursuing happiness. So I just decided to flip it and pursue happiness. And I've discovered two things that really determine my happiness. And one is giving without expectation. Or I would call it service. Just operating in the position of service. That's number one. Since I've realized that I have way less resistance to getting into the grit and the grind and the dirt and the mud and the climb and the crawl that is that.

Startup entrepreneurial culture, I've been doing videos on getting started stuff that six months ago I wrote a really hated. But I know there's millions of just getting started entrepreneurs who need that advice right now and that there's no real good option for them and they're following a bunch of schmucks. And I have a unique voice in that space. So getting out of the idea of what I want and doing what I know is in service to other people makes me happy. And that's the first thing.

The second thing is sleep.

I went back down to like, what's the lead domino on my happiness? You know, when I don't sleep, I'm kind of a. I'm kind of an ass.

And I do stupid things and I make stupid decisions and I'm way less rational.

And I binge eat.

And I do like, I do self sabotage when I'm running on low Sleep. Okay, well, what. Okay, so I guess sleep needs to become my number one priority in like my daily life. And so I immediately was like, okay, cut out coffee. Because I've done a couple coffee fasts and if you've never done one, it's shocking how your body responds after three days. And by the third day when I do a coffee fast, I feel like I have the flu and I literally, by 9:30 at night will crawl into bed and pass out and sleep for nine to 10 hours and wake up in the same position where I fell asleep. It's actually a little bit scary. It's like, what have I been doing? What was I like before? And after about a week of catching up on that, you're like, oh, I feel like a person. And so I'm experimenting with that again where I'm allowing myself to have some tea. So not being a caffeine Nazi here, but I gave up coffee because coffee is such a vice for me. If I'm bored, I have a cup of coffee. If I'm lonely, I have a cup of coffee. And that sets off a tidal wave of neuroticism of have coffee, check Facebook, eat a snack. Now my brain is.

So if I sleep and I meditate and I'm in regular network chiropractic, which is my woo woo thing I do, that keeps me in one with the universe or something.

Man, my happiness is up like 50% when I do those three things. So that's been my focus.

As I just zero in on making happiness the aim rather than anything else.

Oh, one side note about the podcast, since we're talking about that, since we're going to three days a week, Brand Builder. The Brand Builder podcast, hosted by my friend and partner Max Kerwick and I.

It has its own audience and its own life now, so that is going to live on its own channel. So ensure that you are subscribed to that. Just type in Brand Builder podcast or my name or Max Kerwick and it'll pop up. But make sure you're subscribed to that on its own channel. And we're going to be doing some it's going to have its own unique, its own unique flavor, its own unique content over there on the Brand Builder podcast. Really proud of what we've done over there. And as a company, I'm actually looking to publish more podcasts like that. I really see capitalism.com as a media company for, for podcasts, probably eventually for a video as well, maybe books at some point. But right now, I mean, it's really the foundation of who we are as a company. We're built to build business, help entrepreneurs build businesses and invest the profits so they can create the change they want to see in the world. But the way we kind of build audience has always been podcast. So probably going to be looking to acquire some podcasts, people who have, you know, 100,000 downloads a month. But what they would really want is to be a full time podcaster. Maybe we'll just buy their podcast and put it on the capitalism.com network, which is something that I'm really interested in doing moving forward. That's kind of the direction that I want to take the media side of the company.

I'm a little bit all over the place tonight, but one of the things that occurred to me when I had this moment of man, I realized how selfish I am in life and business. I immediately had this thought of, okay, how would I operate if I could only think about my customers results?

I don't get anything out of it. I don't get to think about what I get. I have to create something which is, you know, what business is supposed to be. Surprise, surprise. But no one in this marketing world talks about it. They talk about what you. It's all selfish in this Internet marketing world. How much you can make, how much, how little you can work. So I just started to flip it and say, what would I do? How would I operate if I could only think about my customers results? And I immediately got creative because I immediately was like, okay, what if at after someone completed one of our training courses, if they filled out a form saying what they were going to do with the information, they got a refund on their course. Or they could submit it for feedback and my team would review their business plan or something like that. Like, how could we make the end result of the product so good that they were incentivized to take action? Because we don't need more information. Nobody needs more information. Information, products, you can find everything on YouTube. People just need to make more decisions. So what if we just incentivize the decisions? And then it was like, wait, how much money do we spend on Facebook ads? Do we need to spend that much on Facebook ads? Or can we take a portion of that and put it into a scholarship fund or an investment fund for physical products, brands and give money to our students who have good ideas. And you know what would probably happen and you know what would be cool? Let's put the best ideas to a social media vote and have other people voting on the best ideas of which ones are going to get funded by capitalism.com you know what would happen is we'd probably get a lot more love from our customers. We'd probably have happier customers, probably have lower customer acquisition costs, we'd probably get more free traffic, probably get less refunds.

Now I'm just using myself as the case study. But it was just that thought of what would I do if I had to think of everything I do as a service? I started thinking about my physical products, brands. How would I operate? How would I operate foxbrim, how would I operate Flex, the food company that I've become a part of, how would I, how would I have operated? Sheer strength. Had I only been able to think about service, I had to think about having the best product, having the best experience. What would I have done differently, man? The ideas and the creativity that came out of that when I stopped seeing myself in the picture because it wasn't about me. Oh, my goodness. I'm actually getting a little emotional thinking I have goosebumps talking about it. I can't tell you, like, the freedom that came from the idea of making the business not about me. And I feel like such a putz saying that. The idea that I realized how selfish I was and how much it cost me and how much it hurt.

I wrote in my journal right after that revelation. I said.

All selfishness is fear based. It's all fear of not having enough, of being alone, of having everything on your shoulders.

And it's just fear. Like, if you're selfish, it's because you're freaking afraid of something.

No one who is happy.

Is like, is a selfish taker. You become selfish because you are afraid of something. And I'm pretty sure that's just brain science.

What happened? I went on a rant there for a second.

So as soon as I had that realization of, like, all right, everything we do is going to be in service. It's going to be positioned as a give, I started rethinking our products and our services. I started thinking about, like, you know, when I work with somebody who's doing at least a million dollars a year in revenue, they think that I'm going to come to them with, like, the plan of all. Right now I have this secret plan.

It's like, you got to the top level of Scientology. Now I'm going to tell you what really happened, and I'm going to tell you what, what Xenu, the galactic emperor really did 75 million years ago. But there is no playbook beyond a million. Like, you can three step your way to a million dollars. But going past that, you have to become a different entrepreneur. There's different, I guess, roadmaps to go from 1 to 10, but they're different. And they're so different that you have to become a different entrepreneur in order to follow it. And so, so much of my work with successful entrepreneurs is on changing them has nothing to do with them following strategy. It's getting them ready to follow the strategy that's going to take them to 10 million or 50 million.

And so I've started putting together, like, a curriculum for the back room and even pardon, like the 1%, which is my monthly membership.

I've been putting together a curriculum that is basically, if you go through it, you can't not upgrade as an entrepreneur. If I could incorporate all of the business, all of the network and all the personal development that I have done over the last two years and give it to an entrepreneur who's doing at least a million dollars in revenue, I change the world.

And I would have never seen this had I not been like hit over the head with the realization that I was being a selfish dick.

Man. It was very humbling to have that realization.

So I didn't plan on talking about that at all. That's what happens when we fire up the mic for a random sode.

One thing that I did want to float to the audience here is a couple things I'm looking to do that I'm not sure how I'm going to do and I could use some help or feedback. I have really always wanted to put together a tour.

I have dreamed about this since I was like 22. I have always my favorite thing is speaking to crowds. If there's a stage, put me on it. And I have always wanted to do a tour. I have a traditionally published book coming out in May of 2020. It's called 12 months to 1 million how to pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business and Become a Seven Figure Entrepreneur. And I'm really proud of it. It's a freaking great book. I think it's going to be a game changer and it's going to create a lot of millionaires. So I'll be definitely be doing a tour around then, but I kind of want to do one earlier. Like it's something I've always really wanted to do.

So I'm thinking about just carving out some time and if going to any city where if someone who listens to the show or someone who reads my emails can put 50 to 100 people into a room, book the venue and I'll show up and we'll drink wine together and we'll record it for fun. I think it just sounds like an amazing time and we'll talk about life, business, politics, wherever it goes. It's just something I have always wanted to do and I don't know yet how I'm going to do it. One thing that I've enjoyed is some people have posted on Facebook, hey, if 50 people in this area comment on this thread, I'll send it to Ryan Moran.

Or maybe if somebody like sets up an eventbrite or something and books the 50 spots. I don't, I don't know what the appropriate way to do it is yet. I could take feedback on this but if, if you can assemble a room of business owners, it's at least 50 people deep and you'd enjoy having me in your city. It's something that I'm interested in doing. You know what I think we're going to call that? I think we're going to call the tour Wine with Wyan on the Woad. Because I have to, I have to call it that.

I am also looking to do more live content. Just going live on Facebook.

Live on Instagram. How do do you consume live content? Just curious if you actually do and if so, where, because I would really like to jump into the community more. All right. I've been talking about myself a lot, so I'm gonna shut up. But I wanted to let you know that the podcast is going to three times a week. So the capitalism.com show capitalism.com with Ryan Daniel Moran is a show. It's going to have three themes. The 1% which will be mostly an interview format.

Or a clip from an event Wednesday with Wyan, which will be solo cast with yours truly talking about life, business and all kinds of things. Some of the upcoming shows will be about marriage, drug use.

Some businesses I'm working on.

Some commonly asked questions I get from Amazon sellers, a follow up from my time with Gary V. Predictions on upcoming elections. So that'll be the Wednesday show and then Freedom Fast Lane on Friday will be a very tactical.

In the, you know, getting into the weeds, into the like minutiae of business and, and preferably your business. And if you want to be on the show, head over to capitalism.comfflpodcast to let me know. The Brand Builder Podcast is moving over to its own stream, so you'll find that just by subscribing to the Brand Builder podcast, it has an audience all on its own now, so you'll want to find that there. I also I'm keeping my eye out for a couple positions. I'm not in a hurry to hire these, but I am actually looking to bring on somebody full time to be a podcast manager. That probably won't be the title, but I am looking for someone who has experience.

Growing the audience of podcasts, someone who can make introductions and book guests, and someone who is well connected in the podcast world to the point where they could make introductions to podcasts that we might bring onto the capitalism.com network, meaning we might license or buy that business and bring them into the fold of capitalism.com so, you know, it'd be somebody who worked at Radiolab or Gimlet Media or podcast movement on the lookout for somebody to manage the podcast. I'm also eventually going to be hiring head of special projects. I have a lot of, like, just side ideas that I want to work on under the wing of capitalism dot com. Like merch. You know, we don't sell our entrepreneur T shirt. It's crazy.

And just like fun projects. I would really. I'm going to be hiring ahead of special projects to oversee just random fun ideas at some point. At some point we'll be doing that.

What else?

What other stuff is going on?

You know, I just.

I'm in this place, guys and girls, where.

Not everything is going well, but I'm really happy.

I'm happier than I've ever been.

Even though.

My. My health isn't where I want it to be. I want to lose about 15 to 20 pounds.

My business isn't where I want it to be. Capitalism.com.

Is growing in some areas and struggling in other areas.

I don't have like my perfect route to buy the Cleveland Indians yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be in private equity because I really want to acquire a bunch of businesses.

Oh, that's another thing. I'll be looking for a private equity partner at some point to buy up businesses.

So I used to really beat myself up over those things.

And now.

Now I just recognize that even if those things existed, my happiness would be exactly the same of what it is now. So I might as well just focus on the happiness part.

It's that idea of seek ye first to the kingdom and then everything else will be added on to you.

I feel like I get that now, but I'll save my religion update for another day. If you made it through 30 minutes of me ranting, please let me know on Twitter or Instagram. I'm Ryan Moran on Twitter and RyanDaniel Moran on Instagram. Hey, I really do appreciate you. It still blows my mind that people line up on the Internet in the hundreds of thousands per month to listen to me say things about life, business, investing, politics, mindset. And it means the world to me that you pay attention. So thank you. I'm recognized on the street regularly because you listen to my Voice in your AirPods and in your car. It means the world to me. Thank you. I appreciate you. I'll see you on the next episode.

Hey, team, real quick shameless plug here. If you've ever seen my company logo for capitalism.com, it's a red sea with.

A flame at the end.

And the reason why that's the company logo is because I believe that our purpose as a consequence company and my purpose as a leader is to light other fires. And that means creating content for entrepreneurs who go on to build great companies, working with entrepreneurs to help them break through their plateaus and to invest in companies that really have a shot of breaking out, teaching this stuff so that more success stories get created. I like to light fires. That's what I'm here to do. One of the ways that I do that is inside of our monthly membership which is called the 1%. And inside there we send out a monthly newsletter which features case studies of success stories, what's working right now from some of the best people in the world who are doing this stuff or building businesses and investing the profits. And we feature business ideas that you can literally rip off and see steal. We often even just throw keyword lists at you and say, go for it.

Hey, we might even invest in this post.

In the community, you'll probably find an investor too. And the idea is to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, influencers in one place where we can light fires really, really quickly. We also have a year long curriculum that is made to help you build businesses, invest the profits, increase your profits, create the change you want to see in the world. You can't not change as a result of going through this. So you can find out more@capitalism.com 1. If you've been listening to the podcast and you're missing community, you're missing opportunity, you're missing connection, you're missing being a part of a movement that is going.

To make you a better entrepreneur.

This is going to fix that for you. It also gives you discounts on our events and our other products. And it's more than worth 10. $10 for every dollar we charge. That's my rule as an entrepreneur. I don't collect a dollar unless I know I can provide 10. And this absolutely meets that. So that's@capitalism.com the number one hope to see you inside.