Ryan Goes Psychic: Predictions For 2017

This episode of Freedom Fastlane is brought to you by Freedom Fastlane tv. Hey, if you love what we do here on the podcast, you will really love what we're doing on the video show. Every week we answer your questions and we look at a live business case study. We find out what they're doing well and what they can do to make more money and improve their profits. You can find it on facebook@facebook.com freedomfastlane. You can search for the hashtag ffltv or you can find us on YouTube. Just search Freedom Fastlane. What's up, fastlaners? Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran, and today I'm going to be going psychic with my predictions for 2017. This is something we do every year on the podcast, is go through what the predictions are for next year. We also look back at how we did at the previous year. Now, I want to give a disclaimer before we begin. I know this is going to shock a lot of you, but as far as I know, I am not actually psychic. Now. I. This is. I know this is going to surprise a lot of you, especially when we look at some of the predictions that I made a year ago. Looking at how I did this year, you're going to think, you're going to think I have supernatural powers or that I participate in some black magic. I can assure you that's not the case. I promise you. I have no deals with the devil, as far as I know. But we did pretty good this year, at least in certain areas where we made predictions, and I did absolutely horribly in others. So in this episode, we're going to look at my predictions for physical product owners, Internet entrepreneurs. We're going to look at my predictions for the economy, my predictions in the Trump administration and in politics in general, in baseball, and as well as some emerging trends that we'll see in 2017. So let's kick things off by looking at how I did last year, specifically when looking at Amazon and physical products. At the end of 2015, I made the prediction that in 2016, this past year, that there would be overall a slowdown in the number of people that were entering the market. I would say that as a result of the Amazon channel being consolidated, meaning it's not a wide open west anymore, you can't just throw up anything and get reviews and expect it to sell, that there would be a slowdown in the number of individuals who would enter the marketplace. That was spot on. That's exactly what has happened. Now we can really look at any trend or any, any market, any channel where there is a wide open west period. And then marketers ruin it. Some people win, some people lose and then everybody stops talking about it and they exit the marketplace. So that's where we are right now. We've gone through the wide open west period, where you could put garcinia, Cambogia or any Dr. Oz supplement, or you could throw any kitchen product or really anything onto Amazon, get it to rank and think you were a business genius. Then you had the full consolidation where you had some people win and make it harder for other people to come into play. And now we have the slowdown. We kind of have. We're at the downtrend. It doesn't mean that Amazon is not a great place to be. It's still the best place to be if you are starting a new business. It just means that this wide open west period is over and it has consolidated. And the wantrepreneur, the person who just wants to make money in the easiest way possible, is gonna have a hard time breaking in now. You've gotta do it differently and more strategically. We've been talking about that for years here on the podcast and that's exactly where we are. We have a slowdown in the number of people that are entering the marketplace, which is really, really good for established sellers and it's really good for people who are doing this the right way, who are building real brands. There's a reason why we call our training the Brand Builder Bootcamp, not the how to make a bunch of money on Amazon course. So when we work with our students, we're looking at individuals who want to have real big million dollar plus brands. And it's still a great time, maybe even a better time for those types of individuals because you don't have all of this surge of competition coming in all the time. In fact, you have competition more going away now because it's not this wide open west period anymore. I also said that Amazon would finally get their stuff together and they would make a bunch of changes to try and fend off cheaters. They finally did this. They made incentivized reviews against terms of service. They got rid of a bunch of black hatters, they changed their algorithm, they made a whole bunch of TOS updates. They did this. They at least attempted to, to clean up the marketplace. I think they've done a really poor job because the black hatters and the cheaters have just kind of adjusted. But there has been a paring away of at least the old school way of cheating now there are new new school ways of cheating that Amazon will have to address in 2017, hopefully. Amazon has been really slow to get their stuff together in terms of how they decide what's going to rank and who shows up. I'm a little bit surprised at the slowness of their ability to get on top of this, but they did indeed make a bunch of changes and attempt to pare down on fraud in the marketplace. I made one really controversial prediction about Amazon and physical products at the end of last year. I was called out on this one and accused of being a doom and gloomer. I was actually saying it in a really positive way and it did happen. It happened exactly as we discussed. And that was that funds, private equity groups and venture capital groups would start to move into Amazon.com absolutely this happened. In fact, I have a bunch of students, I could name half a dozen very, very quickly who have sold their businesses for 9.8 million, 7.4 million, 12 million, 17 million to private equity groups, groups that have come in and said, we're buying fast growing companies. Where do we get it? Oh, you sell physical products on the Internet. Great. Amazon's an emerging trend. We want to buy you. That has absolutely happened. So there are private equity groups and venture capital groups who are buying up these companies in droves. It's a feeding frenzy for a lot of our students. So we have students who are building businesses and selling them for $5 million plus two years later, some $10 million. One student just sold for over $15 million. This is happening all the time because of exactly this trend. I think that trend is going to continue in 2017. However, I think that the venture capital groups are going to want to see more diversified sales channels than just Amazon because I think there is a little bit of sexiness to Amazon right now. Altogether, venture capital groups and funds aren't good operators. So if they're buying an entire business and then attempting to run it and automate it, they're going to have hard time. It is the solopreneurs, the one to two men shows that really have the aggressiveness to be able to put a business like a successful physical products brand on the map and then be able to sell it. But big companies don't know how to think like that. So I think they're going to want to see more diversified sales channels and that is going to be the trend of the physical product entrepreneur in 2017. Anyway, so funds and private equity groups continue to buy up companies on Amazon and really physical products companies as a whole. So that trend is going to continue. By the way, if you're curious about some of these success stories and you want to follow in their footsteps, just head over to freedomfastlane.combootcamp for details on the brand builder Bootcamp. I also said that Jet.com would move into second place in terms of E commerce and I was sort of right on this one because Walmart is the second and they purchased Jet.com for $3 billion. So Jet.com did not have the movement that I expected them to have, but they did cash out for a huge payday. So I predict that Walmart, slash Jet is going to be an emerging trend and you're going to see them put a tremendous amount of emphasis into bringing the customers onto their platform in 2017. And I think that is going to be the opportunity for physical product sellers over the coming year. I made one prediction that did not come true as far as I can tell, and that was that new inventions or new types of products that weren't just your white label like everybody else selling what everybody else is selling would have a huge jump in 2016. And this didn't happen nearly to the extent that I expected. So what I thought we would see happen and what I still think is going to be the long term trend is that physical product owners would launch on Kickstarter, they would launch to their own list, they would launch via a viral video, and then that product would take off on Amazon as well because there would be all this tremendous spillover traffic. So what I still think is the model for a new type of product is to have your audience to do some sort of a crowdfunding campaign, to have that surge of pre orders and then to do a second launch on Amazon because you have the list, because you have the eyeballs, because you have the customers. I still think that's the way to make a huge splash in a new business today. And I think that's still going to happen and become an emerging trend in 2017. Maybe it's just because I'm teaching it more and I'm encouraging our students to follow that trend. So I, I think if nothing else, we will push that trend into the mainstream in 2017. So let me make some predictions for the upcoming year for physical product owners and Internet entrepreneurs. First, I am predicting a bit of a new wide open West. If we look at the pendulum of businesses, as I mentioned before, we've got a wide open west period where it's easy to do things, then it consolidates and then it kind of closes down and they go into other opportunities. I think we're going to see the market open again if people are willing to put in the long term work. And I also see new channels opening up that make it possible for a new wide open west period to happen. Specifically, I think that Walmart.com is going to be an emerging market in 2017. And I predict this because of their acquisition of Jet.com I think Walmart knows that they have to do something different in order to prevent their market share from being eroded away. And they have to go really big online. We saw in 2016 that make some changes in their marketing image with them giving pay raises to their employees and trying to work on their company branding and the way that they're perceived in the marketplace. Now they're going to go online, they're going to put all of their focus into marketing customers, creating Walmart.com accounts. If they do that well, they could start to nip at the heels of Amazon. I don't think that they'll ever surpass Amazon at this point. I think Amazon just has way too much momentum. But Walmart I think will be a strong number two throughout 2017. It'll be interesting to see how they work with Jet and how they balance the two properties in order to have one solidified company while trying to do what Amazon has done of, of bringing on people to, to feel comfortable purchasing through their platform. So I think we're going to see a wide open west period for people who are willing to play the long game. And we're going to see Walmart.com be a very solid number two partnering with the power of Jet.com and that's why I think 2017 will be the year of the big brand. And by that I mean if somebody is willing to come out of the gate with five products, a good amount of funding, build the audience and do the the old school marketing tactics, I think you're going to see that be a really powerful way to build a business. It's going to require more money, it's going to require a longer time horizon and it's going to require more marketing. But that is the way that business has always been built. Physical product owners got spoiled over the last three years because Amazon was just so darn easy. Those times are over. It now requires you to put real marketing dollars and a message and a mission behind your business. Real branding, Real businesses require marketing. They require you to go into the red until you have the collective awareness, until you have the customer base to be able to sustain profitability and Most people got spoiled with just how easy it was to throw up anything on Amazon and be able to rank and sell a bunch of product. I think that 2017 is going to be the year of the big brand with private equity groups moving into Amazon, with people waking up to how much volume there is, with new channels like Walmart and Jet starting to have some market share, with retail stores coming to grips with the fact that things are going online. I think you are going to see this be the year where a big company can release a new line of products, do it well online, put the marketing dollars behind it and be able to have the type of Runway that the solopreneur had on Amazon just a few years ago. So it's going to require bigger thinking, it's going to require deeper pockets, but I think you're going to see big brands experience that same type of new wide open west period. And it's going to be a little bit of a golden age for big brands in 2017. What does this mean for you? If you are a one man show or you are starting a new business? If you it means the principles that we talked about here at Freedom Fast Lane still apply. You need to have three to five products to start. You've got to have a very clear target market. You've got to put a lot of legwork into building the audience and the strategy of having an audience and then launching on Kickstarter and then following up on Amazon is still a very, very strong model. You've heard me talk about pieces of this for the last several years. I think the only thing that is changing for you is that having that audience off of Amazon, the email list, the YouTube subscribers, that is more important than ever today. And if you can put the legwork in there where people want to buy from you, regardless of where you are, you're good. You're in a golden age for physical product owners. But if you're just trying to get your widget pushed out to as many people as possible, you are going to struggle. So if you bring some branding and marketing and eyeballs into 2017, I think you are living in the golden age of someone who really gets building brands in 2017. Let's talk about politics and the economy. Nowhere else was I more wrong than in politics and the economy. But probably the biggest thing I got wrong was I said that we were going to have a really nice election. I thought people were going to be nice to one another. Yeah. I don't know if you noticed, but that did not happen. I thought that the era of dirty politics would be overlooked, because I think people are tired of that and we certainly are tired of that. Now maybe in the next election we might have people play nice because we're tired of just the mudsling that happened. But I thought it was going to happen in this past election cycle. That obviously didn't happen. I said that Marco Rubio would be the Republican nominee and that he would pick Carly Fiorina as his running mate. Carly Fiorina was a running mate but for Ted Cruz. And I said that the GOP would lose to Hillary Clinton and Booker. Cory Booker would be the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic side. So I got Hillary right. I did not get Booker right. I also said that this would be the year of the third party, that you'd have a third party get more than 5% of the vote. The Libertarians got about 3% of the vote. So I didn't get that one either. So I really didn't get much right on the political side of things. So you really shouldn't listen to anything that I have to say about politics in the economy because I also said that the economy would be, I said that the Dow Jones would be at 15,000 at this point. I did not think that we would have this post election swing. I sold everything right before the election because I thought we were going to have a big, a big crash after the election. I thought we were in for some rough waters coming into 2017. I thought that interest rates would climb and they did, but only slightly. So I've been pretty much wrong on politics and the economy. So if you're still even listening to me at this point, here's what I think is going to happen. I think that Donald Trump is going to be mostly a centrist president who is also mostly a spokesperson. I don't think you are going to see Donald Trump be the statesman so much as the spokesperson. There is no one better maybe in the world at getting media attention than Donald Trump. So you're going to see him defer a lot of decision making or defer a lot of the actual deal making to the people that he nominates to Mike Pence, to the Cabinet, to Paul Ryan, to leaders in Congress. I think you're going to see much more attention on the actual policies done on those individuals. While Donald Trump is really the rallyman, he is the person who's going to be going out and rallying up support for certain initiatives. He's really, really good at that. You're going to see him change his tune a lot because he can and he can get away with it because he can rally people behind it. So I think you're going to see him change quite a bit in 2017 in terms of I think you'll see him run to the left in order to make deals happen. And as a result, I think he will back policies that he said he would never back. One he was running for president. Now that he is president, he's going to have to rally the troops to get things done. And I think you will see him kind of switch back and forth between different opinions. I don't think anybody is really going to be surprised by that. They've come to expect that at this point. I think that you might see them repeal Obamacare, but that it will mean nothing. And by that I mean I think you'll see them repeal the actual Affordable Care act and if they replace it, it will be mostly the same thing. So it will be a marketing thing more than anything else. I think that the Republicans will, will repeal Obamacare, but they'll want to keep certain pieces of it like preexisting conditions like staying on your parents plan. And as a result you're going to still have Obamacare in place. It just won't be called Obamacare, might not be called the Affordable Care Act. So this is, I bring this up because this is an issue that's important to me. I think I by and large liked President Obama, but I think that Obamacare, the Affordable Care act, is probably the worst bill cast in my lifetime. I hope nothing is cast ever again that bad in my lifetime. But so I hope to see it repealed. But I'm very unconfident in Congress's ability to actually come up with something that is both politically expedient and that they can agree on. So I think you'll see it repealed, but it's really not going to mean much now as far as the economy goes, I have thought we would be in a market slowdown. I thought we were headed for another recession for several years. I've been wrong. I thought that the, the market would be way down. I thought interest rates would be up by now. I thought that we would have unemployment starting to tick back up. I've been wrong on all of these things. But it's really hard to not look at the current state of things and think that asset prices are sustainable. The valuations of companies, the valuations of stocks, the valuation of real estate is in my opinion completely unsustainable right now. I have no idea how that will continue. I can't imagine that it will. So I thought that 2016 would be the year that we re entered recession. I was wrong. I've been wrong for a few years. But if I look at just the underlying fundamentals of things, it's really hard to not see that prices are up, that interest rates are still artificially low, which is going to continue to drive asset bubbles higher while the middle class and the poor pay higher prices and are not necessarily seeing higher wages. So that can't be sustainable. So I continue to be in selling positions on my assets. So I will I am selling most of my investments, most of my holdings. I am more in cash and I'm more in businesses. I've been buying businesses and I am selling stocks. I'm selling other assets so that I can be in things that I control. That's cash and that's businesses. Those are the things that I understand the most and can affect. So that's what I'm in right now. And look, I mean, I hope it all comes crashing down. That's my bias. That's what I want to see happen. Because selfishly, that is a great opportunity to be an entrepreneur and an investor. That's when entrepreneurs and investors do the best. When things come crashing down and then the entrepreneur, the capitalist comes in and creates new things. That's when the greatest shifts of wealth happen. That's when the, the real golden ages happen. I'm saying golden age a lot in this podcast, but that's when the capitalist really thrives, is right on the end of a major crash. So I hope it all comes crashing down because that's when the best fertile ground exists for new things to be invented and new wealth to be created. But it just hasn't happened up until this point. I have been wrong. Now, whether I'm right or I'm wrong, my strategy continues to put all my emphasis in business and then to take my profits from business and put it into long term cash flowing assets. So I continue to buy dividend paying stock when the numbers make sense. They haven't made sense much since about middle of 2016, but when they make sense, I will continue to buy. It means real estate when it makes sense. But again, I haven't bought a house in more than six months for the same reason, because asset prices are, I think, overbought. They're too high. So I'm in a strong cash position and I do buy businesses because the numbers make sense in buying businesses. By the way, if you're the type of person who does like to invest in businesses. If you're the type of person who enjoys either buying emerging companies or you want to fund some of the businesses that we teach and talk about here on Freedom Fast Lane, there are a couple ways that you can do that. It's one of our major focuses going into 2017. There's two things. One, inside of our tribe, we partner investors with entrepreneurs. So someone who comes through our training and they are excited about building a new brand, but they're scared of the idea of investing a few thousand dollars or as much as, you know, 10, $20,000 into a new brand to really do it right. Even if that has a proven track record of building million dollar brands. If that makes them nervous, we'll partner them with an investor who says, great, I've got the 20k to put up. I don't want to do any of the work, but I want equity in the company. And, and then they create this, this new entity. We make that happen inside of the tribe. So if you're an investor, you can join the tribe@freedomfastlane.com tribe and we can partner you up with opportunities to get involved. Or if you're the type that just wants to be involved in emerging brands that are already past the million dollar point. We are starting what we're calling the capitalism initiative, which is our division of the company that essentially is investing in and buying brands that have proven themselves that make an impact and that we know we can grow with our operators, our systems and processes, our influence, our audience, we know we can make a big splash on these companies or acquiring them and then putting them into our portfolio of brands where we know we can, we can really do something special. So if you want to be a part of that, you can head over to freedom fastlane.com/partnership, freedom fast lane.com/partnership. And all that will do is give you a form. You can fill that out. It'll put you on our radar for certain opportunities as they present themselves. Let's talk about baseball. Man, I nailed this year. And also I've never had so much fun as a baseball fan. Obviously my Cleveland Indians were kind of a sleeper pick and they made it all the way to game seven of the World Series. I was at game seven of the World Series. It was fantastic. So it was a great year for Cleveland Indians fans. I got this one right. I picked that the Cubs would win the World Series. People laughed at me. I did say that it would be Cubs Astros and it was actually Cubs Indians. So I did get the Cubs winning the World Series. Right. I'm going to take my hat off to that one. Did pretty well there this year. Coming into this year in 2017, there are some clear favorites in Major League Baseball and they are, in my opinion, the Rangers, the Red Sox, the Indians, the Nationals and the Cubs. It's going to be one of those five teams. Here's what I think is going to happen. If the Rangers upgrade, if the Rangers go aggressive in the off season, which I thought they would do, but up until this point, they have been kind of hung back. But if they go out and they get a Jose Batista, if they go out and make a big trade World Series coming to Texas and the Rangers win the World Series, but they have not done that up until this point. So if everything else stays mostly the same, I predict a Red Sox, Indians, American League Championship Series and a National Cubs National League Championship Series. And people are going to talk about it's going to be a repeat of the Indians, Cubs. It's not. Too many things have to go right for the Indians and too many things have to go right for the Cubs to even come close to repeating. So I am calling for a Red Sox, Nationals, World Series. With the Nationals winning the World Series in 2017. You heard it here first. Let's move over to emerging trends. I said very loudly last year at this time that a couple things would happen. One, there would be new ground in nootropics in 2016. And I also said that 3D printing and virtual reality would have early adopters by this time, right now, at the end of 2016. So in nootropics, we definitely had a change, mostly because of new interest in psychedelics, psychedelic research, psychedelic and psychedelics treating PTSD. Microdosing became really big in 2016. So it was a definitely definite new wave of nootropics, but not in the way that I had expected. I thought there would be more of a refinement of the products that are on the market, not a demand for LSD research, although I think that is a very healthy discussion for us to have. I've been very public about my interest in this topic, as well as the documentary that I'm making called Losing My Religion, in which the opening scene is me on psychedelics. I also said that 3D printing and virtual reality would, that 2016 would be the year of those things. It definitely was for virtual reality. And we definitely do have those early adopters out right now. I was just at Jesse Elder's house a couple of weeks ago playing on his amazing virtual reality sets. I don't know the names of them, but they're out. You can go buy them. They're amazing. I did think, however, that 3D printing would have more of an early adoption at this point, and that hasn't happened yet. So I was right on nootropics. I was right on virtual reality. I didn't get 3D printing right. So maybe 2017 is the year that a lot of people have 3D printers in their house. Here's what I think is going to happen with this trend in 2017. With virtual reality probably increasing by leaps and bounds this year, and with all the divisiveness that we had in the last political season and all that is going on in terms of basically us hiding behind screens on a regular basis, we are at the point now where there is going to be some sort of a demand for more community, face to face interactions, maybe intentional communities. We as a species have not evolved to be alone. We have evolved to be in groups. This is why the pattern of families of four living in high rises, living in isolation, is just crumbling. There needs to be some sort of a shift of more intentional relationship. And when you have something like virtual reality and Facebook giving us a false sense of that virtual reality, I think it's going to set a premium on in person experiences and people actually connecting face to face. What that looks like, I'm not sure. I don't know if that means that intentional communities become really big this year and people start living off the grid and tiny house communities. I don't know. But I think that you're going to see this big surge towards the fake sense of connection and then almost a counter trend toward in person experiences, relationship because that is how we are wired and we cannot get away from that. I think that is very much needed in today's world. I'm very fascinated by the idea of intentional community. If that was a popular thing, I would. If that was easy to get, I would probably be the first person to go give up my life in a downtown high rise and go live among a commune. I probably would. As capitalist and modern day as I am, I've never been happier than when I have been in a close core group of friends. And I think that we're at that tipping point. I think. I think we solve most of our problems if we are more connected as a species. I think even the political trend reflects that. I think that there is a demand to move away from divisiveness and for us to actually work together and that we are basically poised for some sort of A revolution of community and relationship. I don't know what that looks like, but I think we are ready for that now. I was asked one question in terms of my predictions and that was about overseas policy with the Trump administration and tariffs and how that would affect physical product sellers. I think most of the noise is overblown. I think the tariffs and the taxes on exports or imports or whatever it is, I think are mostly going to be overblown. I think that we are too interconnected at this point to have a wall built. We are too interconnected to have 40% tariffs on anything that is brought into this country. I think that's overblown and there will be mostly no change, especially for physical product sellers on the Internet and brand builders. I don't think we are going to be affected by anything in the Trump administration, at least not in 2017. We're just too interconnected for any event. So I think that is overblown and there is overall nothing for us to worry about. To conclude today's show, I want to talk a little bit about what's coming for Freedom Fast lane and for capitalism.com in 2017. First things first, we're going to be releasing a new type of show here at Freedom Fast Lane. We're going to be doing more structured content. We're doing it in more of a seasons format where we talk about a topic so that it is structured and solidified in one place place so that when you want to really download the best minds on a specific topic, you can go to that season and listen to that binge, listen to that and be ready to take on that type of a challenge. So we're going to be moving over to more of a seasons format. We're also going to be bringing on other contributors to the show, people who know about building businesses and investing in profits building better than I do in certain areas and they will be contributing to the show. We're also going to be moving a lot of our content over to capitalism.com you know that a year ago I purchased the domain name capitalism.com with the intent on spreading a message that the profit motive is not only the best way to get rich, it is the best way that we solve all of the world's problems. That is my mission in life. That is the commitment I have made to defend and spread that message for the rest of my life. So we are going to be moving a lot of the conversation over to capitalism.com so freedom fast Lane stays exactly as it is in terms of what you've come to expect, but you will see other people contributing to the show. You will see the seasons format which means that you will be hearing from me more often. And you will also see us put pushing a lot of the content over onto capitalism.com as well. Highlight of the year for me was once again Freedom Fast Lane live. We had 500 people who are taking on big challenges as capitalists. They are changing their financial family trees because they are building businesses and investing the profits. And we sped up the process and accelerated the growth. And I'm so proud of what we did at Freedom Fast Lane Live. We will be doing it again in 2017, so I hope you'll join us in December in Austin, Texas once again for Freedom Fast Lane Live. As always, I appreciate you listening to the show. If you are not subscribed on itunes, you're not going to want to miss what we're doing with Freedom Fast Lane in this upcoming year. Especially with the seasons format and bringing on some other people, you're not going to want to miss a single show. So make sure you are subscribed. Subscribed. Just go to freedomfastlane. Com itunes. It'll pre populate the subscription button. It's free to subscribe. You hit that and then every episode will be automatically prompted to you as soon as it is live. Thanks so much for listening to the show and I will talk to you on the next episode.