The Climb Episode 1: First Book Launch, $100m Visions, & My Next Opportunities | Ryan Daniel Moran

Hey, guys, I'm Ryan Daniel moran. Welcome to capitalism.com and this video is the first episode of a new series that I'm starting here on the YouTube channel called the Climb. And I'm calling it the Climb because this is going to be the series where I document once a month or so the highs, the lows, the ins and outs of my climb as an entrepreneur. As I sit here and record this in front of you. We're right in the middle of quarantine 2020. I've had my own share of ups and downs during this time and I have vacillated between two extremes. Oh my goodness. Everything is crumbling. I'm falling apart. And I really feel like I am just on the cusp of something amazing of the next chapter of my career. And I just decided to document this to see which way it goes. The last couple of years have been a little bit of a whirlwind. As an entrepreneur, I've. I've taken my licks. In 2017, I had a big exit where I sold a company for over $10 million. It was a big financial. And then the last couple years, I've taken my licks. I've been. I've been punched in the face. I bought a business that didn't perform nearly like I thought. I invested money in places that went belly up. And the company that I sold ended up going bankrupt because the company that I sold it to ended up running it into the ground. And I was counting on that company growing it and me having another bite at the apple and me getting a few million dollars more when they sold the company again. So those three things didn't go the way that I thought that they would. And in a few, over the last few years, I feel like I have just been gaining my confidence back and getting back to the place where I can start taking really good swings again. And I feel like I'm there as I sit here and record this. There's also several opportunities staring me in the face and I'm not sure which ones are going to make it. I'm not sure which ones are going to fail. So just for fun, here are the opportunities that are sitting in front of me right now. Right now, as I record this, I am 24 hours away from launching my first book. My book is called 12 months to 1 million. And it is the playbook for building a million dollar business. I've shared with hundreds, thousands of entrepreneurs over the years how to build a million dollar Business. I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs do it and I really just, I know the playbook to getting to a million dollars. And so I wrote the book 12 months to 1 million and took me about 18 months, maybe a little bit longer. When I look at my overall goal as an entrepreneur, what I'm really playing for is I want to have the influence inside of a company that I had a hand in starting and have the influence to bring in the funding, to bring in the exposure, to bring in the ideas to help a company that is really exciting to me blow up and go to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. I used to think a million dollar business was impossible, you know, and then I did that. I used to think a $10 million business was impossible, and then I did that. Right now I'm just in the mode where I realized that $100 million business is possible for me. And the reason I know it's possible for me is because I used to think these other numbers were impossible. And when I see the people who, who have built $100 million businesses, I know that they're no smarter or harder working or have any special skill sets different than me. In fact, I often think I'm more qualified than a lot of those people. So the only thing that has held me back from having a $100 million company up to this point is probably that I just thought I couldn't do it. And now I'm in the place where I'm starting to believe that I can do it. I'm starting to believe that I can have $100 million empire. I haven't done it yet, and it really doesn't matter if I do it or not. But it does feel good to start to have that confidence again, especially after taking the lickings that I've taken over the last couple of years. So I'm starting to get in that place again where my confidence is really high. And I'm excited to document the development of the next stage of my career. But as I sit right now, I'm 24 hours away from a book launch of something that I'm so proud of, of something that I know is going to make a difference in tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. And I enjoyed the process so much that it's already a win for me. It's already a win for me if a few people read it and it changes their lives, because I know that it will. But I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those evergreen, perennial books that people reference for a long time, just because I know the impact that it's going to have on thousands of entrepreneurs. I had these plans. I was going to do like this big media tour for the book. I was going to be everywhere. I was going to travel all over the country and do speaking gigs. But because we're in the middle of quarantine, all of that's on hold. So my strategy, do every podcast interview, do every collaboration with every influencer that I get connected with, and it has forced me to sharpen my sword again. I can't really lean on the strategy that I was going for. So instead I'm rolling up my sleeves and rebuilding relationships that I probably should have started building years ago or been nurturing over the last several years. And instead am calling the people that I have a good relationship with, but also starting new relationships. Even if that doesn't lead anywhere for six to 12 months. That's okay. I know that's what it takes to build a quality relationship with somebody who I know can influence my audience and their audience and help put this book on the map. I'm confident that anyone who reads it is going to tell four people about it. And so this is going to be one of those long slow burners that sells a lot of copies for many years because the quality of the book is so good. So once the book launches, I'll probably do the traditional book funnel where we do a free plus shipping book offer and then have upsells for our programs in order to pay for the traffic and, and build the leads. And I think that's gonna be a really solid offer. My whole goal is to be able to acquire the customer, give them an amazing experience, put them into continuity, and pay for my traffic. So if we can get a book buyer, a free book buyer for 50 bucks, we'll lose money on the front end. But my hope is that the upsell sequence will then pay for it. And we're able to do that at scale. So once the book launches and we have some reviews on Amazon and we've got some great case studies and there's some social media love that we can use in our advert, will turn on a book funnel probably in three months or so. Next thing I'm really excited about that we're working on right now is Capitalism Brands. And I'm really pumped about this. Capitalism brands is like my laboratory for physical products brands where the plan is to train up this team on how to build physical products brands. And when our little small team is capable of doing that, I then want to create partnerships with influencers and with other brand owners to Plug them into our infrastructure. There's a brand that I'm really excited to launch that I'm my working name for. It is Fit Bake Flowers and it's going to be a flour baking line that is a high protein, low carb line. Just because that tends to be how I cook. And I love to make low carb banana bread and low carb desserts and cake and all this kind of stuff. I just enjoy it. And so I thought it would be really fun to make a flour company that was high protein, low carb. And I'm training my team to do the working with manufacturers and coming up with prototypes and going to, going to launch and getting reviews and ranking on Amazon and doing all that stuff to build up an exciting company. And then I want to be able to take that team and partner it with other influencers. So if somebody has a, a million Instagram followers and they're a health and fitness influencer and they want to start a greens supplement line or something like that, they could plug into my infrastructure, who would then develop the product? The influencer would own a piece of it, but my machine would do all the marketing behind it. I'll share more about that as we start to develop it. But I've been working with a few really exciting influencers and I'm really excited to be able to partner with somebody who already has the audience me document it to the the capitalism.com audience. It's my first experiment with training up an internal team and then using that to launch a new company and documenting the whole thing. So none of those are even in prototype phase yet, but those would be the next projects that I work on. And I'll keep you posted about how those develop. The third opportunity that's brewing for me right now is we are just about to launch the capitalism.com fund. So in my line of work, I get this flow of really exciting brands that I would love to invest in. And I know that a lot of my followers who have already made their money and our investors would love to invest in. And so I serve as head curator of the deal flow. My partner brings in due diligence and goes through numbers and we decide whether or not it's a fit for us to be able to help that company grow. We're looking at those businesses that are at or near a million dollars in sales and. And then we bring in our capital and our infrastructure and our relationships to be able to help that company grow. And so we just. Our standard deal is we're 50, 50 partners with the investors. We're the sharks, they're the money behind the sharks. And we go grow these businesses. Most of them have come from this audience. People who have listened to the podcast or people have watched these YouTube videos, or people eventually who will have read my book and then are coming to the table for my fund to invest in and for our network to go help. It's just a really cool full circle experience. If you want to apply to either get funding or be a partner in the fund, you can go over to capitalism.comfund for full details. So those are the opportunities that are sitting in front of me right now and we'll see how they develop moving forward. The thing that is giving me the most excitement right now is I feel as though I am finding alignment in my content mistake that I see in so many people now. But I fell into it for a couple years. You try and make content for what you think is going to get traffic or going to get eyeballs rather than just doing the thing that feels good and that you want to do. For a long time. I did content that I thought would get exposure rather than doing content that I thought was interesting for myself and for other people. And I don't like doing that. So instead I'm just enjoying the practice of making content from a much more aligned, congruent place. Podcast audience has started to grow again. The YouTube audience has started to pop a little bit, but not as quickly as I would like. But that's okay because I feel like we're finding our footing and we're getting better and I'm starting to create content that is really in service to other people and also stuff that I'm much more proud of, thank you. Than what I used to used to produce. And lastly, I'll give a quick update on where we are financially@capitalism.com at the beginning of this year, I set a three year goal of being a $25 million a year company and that had two profit centers that had our continuity program called the 1% and it had our incubator, our lab called the Tribe. And the tribe is a 10 currently a $10,000 a year program. Although I think that's, that's either going to become a $10,000 per six months or it's going to be like 16,000 a year. I think we're going to raise that at some point. Tribe is doing awesome. Like we have a handful of people in there who, man, I am so jazzed about this group of entrepreneurs that is just starting to see it and get it and grow. I brag about the entrepreneurs inside the tribe. I mean, as I'm recording this, there's only like a dozen people in there. We just launched it a few weeks ago and we didn't even launch it. Like I just kind of like announced it in a PS of my, of my email. I wanted to get some momentum before we did a big launch for it. But I'm so jazzed at the momentum of these entrepreneurs who come in with an idea or no idea and are now getting clarity and speed. And it's so fun to help people who are just all in on this business. And what I realized is when you price things accordingly so it's, it filters out the people who don't really want it, but it's still priced, you know, like a university because that's kind of like what it is. It's kind of a 6 to 12 month semester of taking a business to launch and then it's another semester or year to grow that or get it to a million dollars or get it profitable or whatever your milestone is. So when we price it at that kind of level where you treat it with the seriousness of kind of a university, we're getting, the entrepreneurs we're getting or the aspiring entrepreneurs we're getting in the group are just fantastic. And it's just been a marvelous experience working with this group. The big takeaway is I'm really pumped about the progress that the students are making in the tribe and that makes me confident that over the next three years we're going to take that to a thousand students, have that be an eight figure profit center inside the business, but also just have amazing success stories from the group. Other side of the business is our continuity which is called the 1% which hovers. It's currently right around a thousand members. So that's where we are right now as a company and where my empire stands is I have capitalism.com, which is. I really feel like we are starting to hit stride as a content company and also as a company that invests in and empowers entrepreneurs. We're doing this thing inside the 1% every Sunday right now, which we just call the capitalism community. Coffee. We all get together with tea or coffee and we hang out for an hour and a half and do Q and A and update. Like the community comes on and people share what's working for them and it's been really great, it's been really fun. Content is starting to get dialed in. So I feel like I am at this point turning point inside my business, which, which gets me really excited. But I'm. What, what gives me the most peace of mind or the most excitement is knowing that I can now see the hundred million dollar empire. I don't need to have the million dollar empire. I just now feel like I have the confidence to be able to do it. I've made enough mistakes, I've screwed up enough, I've done enough dumb investments, I've hired, made enough bad hires that I feel like I am now ready to go for that big empire. I sometimes get tripped up though, when I can't see the path. If I don't see how I'm going to get there, then that bothers me because then I feel like I have to figure it out. But the truth is if I just relax, the opportunities are everywhere and there's so many. I don't care how bad the economy gets. We are so spoiled. Like we have so much opportunity in today's world to build exciting, amazing companies. And so it just takes one phone call. Like today I was having kind of a crappy day and then my business partner called me with some new ideas, turned my whole day around, made me want to do this, made me want to do the first version of the climb. So thanks for hanging out with me for episode one of the Climb and I intend to do this once a month or so and just update you on the overall direction of the empire and direction of the journey as an entrepreneur. Thanks for joining me and if you watch this, please let me know in the comments. I would love to say thank you for catching the first episode. Thanks for watching. See you next time.