RECORD MONTH: $1.5m Earned In March 2017

You're listening to Freedom fastlane presented by capitalism.com this is the show about building businesses and investing profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran. Hey everybody, welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran. My apologies, I don't have my normal recording equipment with me today, but I have been a little bit behind on my income and progress report and I wanted to get it out to you as soon as possible. This is an income report for the month of March 2017. All the numbers are in now and I can report on them honestly. And I can say that it was a record month for me personally in my businesses. My businesses did between 1.4 and $1.5 million in top line revenue across all of my businesses. And for the time, one of my businesses did over a million dollars in a 30 day period or a one month period. I guess March is 31 days. So a 31 day period crossed a million dollars in revenue. I've crossed a million dollars in total revenue before in all of my businesses put together, but this is the first time that one of my businesses crossed that. So huge shot in the arm to have a record month, especially after February, was kind of a bummer in terms of bad news. So the bulk of my revenue is made up in my sports nutrition company, my fitness brand, which did just over a hair over $1 million. About 40% of that came from retail orders. So that business is in about a thousand stores nationwide. And we haven't begun the marketing campaign yet. So this should be the last month that I have to kind of be guarded about that. But when that big marketing campaign goes live, I can talk about it a little bit more. But this was all the orders coming in from retail, all the orders of all these stores buying up in preparation for the big marketing campaign. So those orders came in and those were obviously nice. And I've said this before, but it's always, it's just interesting, different in retail to be able to sell a product just because it's you have it. Rather than on Amazon where you got to get reviews and you got to rank for keywords, you got to promote to the list. And in retail, you're just selling to the retail store and getting on shelves. Of course, that's when the real work begins because you got to get people into those stores. But it's just a very different business model and it's been enjoyable. By the way, what we do in the tribe is we incubate businesses. So. So the same person who brokered the deal for my retail deals is also the contact inside of the Tribe who helps people get into retail stores. So that relationship was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the month of March. It'll be worth millions of dollars over the coming 12 months. And that resource becomes your resource when you're in the Tribe. So if you run a physical products business, this is the kind of stuff that we do. We get you partnered with investors and retail partners. And if you're a physical products owner or your investor, you should be in the Tribe. And you can apply@freedomfastlane.com tribe. The rest of the million dollars that came from this business was on Amazon, partially, you know what I teach ranking for keywords, and partially some other advertising opportunities that Amazon has been testing out, which I will talk a little bit about when we get to the section on foxsprin. Okay, I want to give a quick update on Body Vega, which is my redheaded stepchild. And that is a supplement company that mostly sells a fish oil and a couple other supplements. This has been public. This has always been kind of a struggling brand, and it had a dip in March. It went down to between 55 and $60,000 in revenue, which is pretty big dip. I will share more later, but my business partner and I have decided to go separate ways on this. And we just realized that we were not working well together and couldn't see success with our two different ways of operating. So we have decided to separate and I will be taking over the business and I will be sharing about the plan about how to move that business forward, and I hope to turn this into a cool case study. I know a lot of you hear my success or you see other people's success and you've got a struggling brand and you beat yourself up over it. Well, I beat myself up over this brand, over Body Vega because it hasn't taken off like I always wanted it to. So I will turn this into a case study when we resurrect this from the ashes, and I'll be sharing it publicly here on the podcast. So make sure you're subscribed on itunes so you get all of these progress reports. So I'll share more details later. But this has been a struggling brand that I hope to resurrect in 2017, and I will document the experience on how to do that. Okay. The next business is foxbrim. Fox Brim is my beauty company, which is owned by the Capitalism Initiative, which is a holding company that I set up alongside my partner, Clement Wong, who is one of the leaders in the tribe, and our director of operations, Sean Coyne, who contributes to the podcast regularly. And I also built and sold my yoga products companies and activesports with him. So he heads up the operations and we acquire companies and grow those companies. We completed this acquisition February 1st of this year, and in March, it did about $210,000 in sales, which is about even over the previous month. But the profits were up. So we did not do as many giveaways and promotions as the previous owner did at this point last year. But our profit margins are up because of some streamlining that we did. The most important thing with this brand is we're putting a tremendous amount of effort into getting the profit margins up by driving down costs and driving up the value that people see us as representing. That will allow us to raise our prices. We're way underpriced. Our customers even think we're underpriced. And there's a few things that we can change or tweak about the brand that will really elevate its position in the marketplace. You have heard me say many, many times that I don't believe in selling products. I believe in selling brands. And when you are targeting a very specific person rather than a product, you are able to charge higher prices because you're solving problems and you're serving a market rather than just selling a commodity. So we have put a lot of our emphasis into who is the person behind the purchases on Foxbrim, and how do we create a clear, consistent message in our branding? Because if we can do that, we can charge higher prices. And in a space as competitive as beauty, every quarter matters in terms of profit margins, because you need to be able to spend enough to show up in the marketplace to rank for keywords. If you're gonna compete over as many SKUs as we have and have, like, 24 of them, you've got to be able to have that brand consistency to show up and the profit margins to be able to run some marketing to it. So that's our focus, is creating that consistent brand message. And that that means answering questions like, what's the reason people choose foxsprum over the competitor? How do we want people to perceive us in the marketplace? Does our packaging and our color scheme reflect the type of company that we want to be? Is everything consistent over all our different products? Those are the types of conversations that we're having to be able to elevate the perception of this business in the marketplace. The next Thing we are doing is we are rolling out additional products that are higher end. So we are just beginning to get some formulators to be creating some higher end products that we can charge a premium for and really get the higher end of that market so that we have something that's really different in the marketplace, that attracts the best buyers, that represents who we want to be in the marketplace. That will also give us the profit margins to be able to drive outside traffic to both our listings and our own website and increase our customer base. He who gets the most customers wins. Having a higher priced products allows us to spend the money that we need in order to get those customers and get them to come back and buy other products. So that's the primary foci inside of Foxsprin. Alright, so altogether those businesses did about 1.3, 1.2, $1.3 million. And then Freedom, Fast Lane and Capitalism.com did about $250,000 in top line revenue selling our various courses, communities, etc. The primary one being our brand builder Bootcamp, which we sell via automated webinar and the Tribe, which is our business incubator. We also have a mastermind which is called the Back Room, which is our best people. You have to have at least a million dollar net worth or a business that's doing a million dollars in order to qualify. We get together on a quarterly basis and help each other's businesses grow and network and share what's working in our businesses. We have some other offerings coming out on the capitalism side on capitalism.com we're creating some other products and services that'll be more mass market and allow us to spread a wider message. Pretty much every dollar we make at Capitalism and Freedom Fasting goes into spreading a wider message. So if you see us running a lot of ads and boosting a lot of videos, it's because everything that we spend goes into spreading a wider net. All I care about on this business is how many people can we impact? How many people can we get a message in front of? So that's our key performance indicator on capitalism.com and freedom fasting is how many people can we get rallying behind a message so much that they'll show up to events and they'll talk about business and politics and freedom to their friends. How much change can we drive in the world? That's what I'm concerned about with Freedom Fast Lane and Capital Capitalism. So we're really starting to dial in our content distribution model and our ability to get a message seen. And the more we dial that in the more of an impact we'll make. And that is what I care about with my personal brand and with capitalism.com as far as investments go, I'm invested in several businesses which I have documented in the past. The biggest change in March was I added to my position of Target. The retail company got really beat up in quarter one, so their value fell and I bought up a bunch of it. I love Target as a stock, so I very substantially added to my position in Target and I continue to sell my other positions because I think we're at the top of the market. I think Target is probably the best value there is right now. So I continue to buy it as it stays kind of beat up. It's got a solid dividend. I think it's a solid company that is well run and well organized. So I'm not scared by the consolidation of retail. I love Target as a company and continue to buy them. And I will buy any company that has been around for 30 years and has consistently raised its dividend. So that is the only change on the investment side of things. On kind of a personal note, my biggest growth as an entrepreneur this past quarter has come as the result of really learning how to grow a business versus a profit stream. I have learned how to hire and how to fire and how to keep people accountable. And that is a growing profit process for me. But it's one that is necessary. Gary Vaynerchuk as well as Jeff Hoffman and Cameron Harold have all said here on the podcast and at our events that people have been the biggest steps that they've taken to go from 1 million to 100 million. So I've built a million dollar company. I've built a $10 million company. I haven't built 100 million dollar company. But I see now how important the people side of things are. And I can now see it in the horizon of what it might take or what it might look like to run a hundred million dollar company. I can kind of visualize like I can conceptualize $25 million in terms of revenue of a business. Like I can see that I know how I'm gonna get there. I don't yet see the how to piece on the hundred million, but I now can see what it's going to take to get there. And it requires me getting out of the way and getting people who are better than me at every area where I think I'm really great. For example, I think I'm great at sales and marketing, but I'm only one person and there are people who are better than me. So I shouldn't be doing that. I should be getting the best people in the world. On that is probably the biggest realization I've had in the last year, is how important that is. And if I were talking to myself a few years ago, I would say that you should always pay a premium for getting the best people. But ensure that they're the best people. Move slowly to hire them, be willing to pay what it costs to bring them on. Don't be in a hurry to bring them on. And your team and your culture will determine where your business goes. So if you're building a business, especially if you're at like that million to two million dollar point, I would suggest that you think about that now about what are the things that you might not be willing to give up right now because you think you're the only person who can do it. And start thinking about what it would look like to have someone who's better than you at doing that. Dan Sullivan says that most entrepreneurs free themselves up from where they're good too late in a business because they just assume that since they're good at it, they're built. They'll build a team around them that supports them when really they should replace where they're strong so that they can be freed up to go build the vision of the company. And I'm not sure if that's the right order. Like I've built people who are good at what I'm weak at doing. And now I'm filling the roles of people who will free me up from even where I'm strong so that I can just go lead a company. But realizing that I need to get out of the way and that I'm the bottleneck, I'm the problem. Where I'm good is the problem. It will keep us stuck where we are. That has been a real realization for me and I hope that is valuable to you. Okay, I guess that is the, the quick overview on where my businesses stand. So about $1.5 million in March of 2017. Changes moving forward are continuing to build out the infrastructure and the team and I will share more about retail and team building and oh, you know, what I missed was some of the new advertising opportunities that exist on Amazon.com I am really high where Amazon is going as a company in order to take over more of the global retail landscape. You know, I basically pioneered the strategy of ranking for keywords to grow your, your sales on Amazon. Like I'm pretty sure I made that Popular, but where all the growth is happening is outside of just keyword searches. For example, Foxbrim is experimenting and having really good results with something called Amazon Best Deals. It's basically an extended lightning deal which gives you some really premium real estate on Amazon.com so you get all of this traffic and attention which brings you new buyers and also fuels Amazon's algorithm to have you show up in other places too. So by utilizing Best Deals and lightning deals and some other places where Amazon's just opening up new advertising opportunities, it makes the total pie bigger. And as Amazon continues to expand and grab more market share, that is going to become more and more popular. I think they're gonna go after QVC and start doing video on Amazon.com and allow you to do like infomercials. So I think as more of the global retail landscape consolidates to Amazon, those opportunities are going to continue to get bigger and bigger and be even more massive than just, you know, where do you rank for on keywords? So that's where some of our growth is centered on Fox Brim. And yes, of course we continue to rank for keywords and do all that stuff that you should do, but were focused on some of these other areas as well. We're in Amazon Exclusives now, which has been a really solid experience. I would choose Amazon Exclusives over something like vendor central every day of the week and twice on Sundays. So those are some of the new advertising opportunities that we're exploring at Foxsproom and that have contributed to some success there. Okay, so that will do it for March of 2016, 2017. Please forgive me, I know I was a little bit behind on my income report for last month, but I hope you found value in this. Let me know in the show notes. Give me a comment if you enjoy these because it's always weird talking about how much money you make on the Internet. So I appreciate your feedback on things like this. Alright, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Share this with an entrepreneur you know would find value in it and I will see you guys on the next episode.