The Climb Episode 3: Product Launches, The Fund, and New Opportunities

Welcome to the climb. This is episode three and I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. This is where I document my journey as an entrepreneur and my climb to the top, whatever that top is. The last time that we checked in together I was feeling a little bit kicked around by life and business. And this time I feel the exact opposite. I feel clear and confident and I feel really clear in where we're going in business. And I'm really excited to share it with you because I not only can see it, but there's momentum moving towards it. We launched the capitalism incubator. It's been so much fun. So we had 25 people join and the price point is six payments of $3,000. So it's a bit of a premium product and an experience. It's been great, it's been, it's been fun, it's been light. And the progress that the students are making, even though at the time of this recording we're only about a month in, it's been monumental and it's been so great to see these entrepreneurs make these big shifts and, and their business and their vision. Even after two weeks there were different people and so they came in with the desire to have a profitable business and what they're doing is they're casting eight figure visions and they get the bigger picture. And it's been fun for me, it's been rewarding for me. And the, and the progress and the momentum that these entrepreneurs are already making is going to set them up to have multimillion dollar businesses. And I'm immensely proud of what we've all already done just a month in and we're just getting started with this round of students. The current plan is to open it up every six months, do two rounds a year. Eventually we might go to four rounds a year, but right now we'll probably do another launch in a few months. And by launch I mean open it up to like 50 more people. We'll have our systems really dialed in by then. We'll be able to have an easier, more predictable process for the new students who are coming in and then kind of make it the real core base of the business because we're able to create amazing results results and churn out great business ideas with good entrepreneurs who have a completely different new set of vision and expectations of themselves and their businesses as a result of going through this. So I feel really proud and excited for what we're already doing and I think it's only going to get better and better from here. Now, personally and as a business Owner. This profit center has essentially doubled the revenue of the business and that has allowed me to to relax into a much more creative and visionary position here@capitalism.com in fact, just recently I think I've uncovered what is the billion dollar vision for capitalism.com and I'm gonna share that with you in a minute. For now I'm just enjoying the fact that we're now consistently profitable. We now have our ideal person that we are serving consistently. And it has allowed me to relax into making great content, creating great long term products and really going all in on our without the tenseness of worrying about what we're going to sell this month. So I feel like I've become a better entrepreneur and I've become a more relaxed entrepreneur in this process of launching this high end product. And it's a really great lesson of I wish that we had just focused on creating the best high end product from the beginning. But I'm glad to get this lesson now because it's already becoming the foundation of the company. And so I am now taking my attention from building this really clear profit center in the capitalism incubator and now doing the exact same thing for the 1%. So the 1% is our membership where we have a one year curriculum and we are building a community of entrepreneurs who are building businesses and investing the profits. And when we have both of those products and visions rock solid, then this is a company that is only focused on creating really great work for our ideal person. And it feels really good to be on the cusp of that now. What's got me really excited is I can finally see the billion dollar vision of capitalism.com now. Quick backstory here. I sometimes like to play with beliefs. If you've listened to my podcast with Brooke Castillo, she is just the master at playing with beliefs and seeing how they feel when you try them on. And I've been playing with different beliefs that I don't have and just seeing how they fit and work. For example, I was playing with the belief that capitalism.com can't be a billion dollar company. I, I believe that I can be a billion dollar entrepreneur. I believe that I can be a billionaire. I believe that I can have billion dollar businesses. But I've never really believed that capitalism could be a billion dollar company. So I decided to try this on and just say, well, what would I think and how would I see the world and my company if I did believe that capitalism.com was a billion dollar company? And I shared what came through when I asked that question. On a recent live that I did on YouTube and rather than tell you the whole story again, I just wan clip of me sharing how this vision came out of me that I shared with my viewers. Watch this.

I believe that we find evidence for our beliefs. Most people think that they come to their conclusions logically, but they don't. They come to their conclusions emotionally and then they justify them logically. So yesterday I was kind of playing with the thought, what in my life do I not see? Because I don't believe it. And I said to myself, I don't believe that capitalism.com could be a billion dollar company. I believe it's my audience, I believe it's my purpose, I believe it's my message, I believe it's my passion. But I've never, I've always thought if I'm going to have a billion dollar empire, it could be fueled by capitalism. But it wouldn't be capitalism.com so I.

Challenged that thought and I asked myself.

The question, well, if I believed that capitalism was a billion dollar company, how would the company change? If I believe that capitalism.com is a billion dollar company, what happens when I look at the company and then the billion dollar vision just like beamed in? And I have had the idea of making capitalism.com more like a marketplace in which people brought their business plan with a write up of the business plan and a write up about who they were as an entrepreneur. Well, if someone comes to capitalism.com with the business that they want to start and the problem that it addresses in the world, other people to bid on, investing in the company, supporting the company as an influencer, serving as an advisor. And they have 20 to 40% of the company earmarked for investors, relationships, advisors and influencers. Well, what you have is you have other people seeing this business and wanting to support it, wanting to invest in it. And you have a platform for entrepreneurs to present their business plans and the vision and the direction that they want to go. So if you think about Kickstarter from a product perspective, this is the marketplace or the platform for the business ideas that solve problems. And it only takes one Twitter or one Quest Nutrition to really establish this as a marketplace that churns out great ideas and great entrepreneurs. So as a result of us doing what we do of supporting entrepreneurs and teaching entrepreneurs, we can also give them.

A platform on the marketplace that gives.

Them more exposure, the funding and the opportunities that they need in order to scale beyond their previous levels. And we'll have a small piece of all those businesses or at least the option to buy into those businesses, businesses as a result of creating exposure for them. So that is my billion dollar idea.

And that came from simply playing with.

The idea of if I believed that.

It was a billion dollar business, what would I do? By the way, I go live on YouTube almost every Thursday, so subscribe to the channel if you want to be notified when I go live. The next important update is that we officially closed the capitalism.com fund, which we raised $1.6 million to invest in physical products, brands. And we currently vetting four deals. There's three of them that are very, very low risk and about medium reward. You might call them doubles or triples. The reason I describe them that way is because we found a way to help the entrepreneur in a way that is really low risk to us. But also our payoff is less than it would be if we were to take a little bit more risk with them. But it's going to be a dating period where we'll invest a little bit and get a little reward if we do our job with the idea that eventually we might be able to do more business together as we get to know the entrepreneur a little bit more. So I'm excited about that because it allows us to date before we get married and make some money together and give a return to my investors in a way that doesn't put a lot of their capital at risk. But there's a fourth deal that is medium risk, very high reward. I'm so excited about this deal because it's a company that I just love and the entrepreneur needs help and the person running the business is such an amazing, amazing product developer. I respect them so much in their craft and I'm so excited to help them. But it's gonna take some resources and some time to do that. And if we pull it off and I think we're gonna, it's gonna be such a cool company and such a cool story. I'm so excited for this. I'm thrilled to be working with this business and this entrepreneur. And again, it's gonna take time and resources and that's where the risk comes in. But if we do what I think we can do, it's going to be a huge reward to the investors in the fund and it's going to be an amazing story for us to share on capitalism.com I'll share as soon as the ink is dry. Right now we're still going through the legal process and even just negotiating on a few things. So I will keep that under wraps until. Until I'M at liberty to speak more. So all the major areas of the business are in a much healthier place than they've been for a long time. The place where we've been a little bit stuck. There's actually two places we've been a little bit stuck. But the first is with Capitalism Brands. Capitalism Brands is my lab for physical products brands. And we've hit some roadblocks there because the product development timeline has taken a lot longer than we thought. We're a small team. There's. There's only a. There's only five of us@capitalism.com and a couple of part time people and there's only three of us that are working on Capitalism Brands. But it's okay. We're really still really excited about the product lines that we're developing there. There's three product lines and Capitalism Brands. There's our nootropic line, which is called Switch, which has three products. On switch, off Switch and out Switch. On Switch is a drink. Get up and go in the morning, put you in flow, optimize your focus. Off Switch is decompress at the end of the day, gives your brain that signal, I'm off. I can decompress, I can think about other things. I'm going to relax now and then out. Switch is a nootropic. Right before bed, get the best sleep of your life, wake up the next day and go back on. So it's made to optimize circadian rhythms, happiness and focus for the high performer, specifically the entrepreneur who works from home. Because we tend to not have this separation between work and home and our circadian rhythms are all messed up and this will help fix that. So that's the first brand. The second is a line of protein powders that are specifically developed for baking. And then third is a baking line. It is a line of baking products that are basically perfectly macro optimized for some of your favorite foods, like pancakes and cake mixes and stuff like that. So those are some of the brands that we're developing. All of them are still in concept, not ready for launch. Switch is the one that's closest, but we're still at least 30 to 60 days from taking a sale. We're already really behind on our timeline, which is frustrating, but I'd rather do it right than do it fast. The other place that I guess we're kind of stuck is we ran an experiment over the last 90 days that was a YouTube experiment that did not perform to our expectations. So we saw a big spike up in our YouTube growth when I started going live. So the experiment was, okay, why don't I just go live way more often? So we went from a few lives a month to several lives per week. It didn't go how we expected. Now we had a lift in overall view count and watch time, but we had less views and watch time per video. So we were getting more frequency, but we were getting less overall viewers. And I think that's just audience exhaustion. It's just people not wanting to see the same thing over and over and over again. So I have concluded that more does not equal better. So I'm glad we did this experiment. It has focused me on developing quality content rather than quantity of content. And it's been a reminder to me that it doesn't require more effort for me to grow. It requires more thought and intention and creativity. And that's when I create my best content. So we're actually going to be doing less frequency, more quality, and that's the experiment that will run over the next 90 days. So yes, our focus is still developing YouTube as a presence, but it has not had the adoption that we thought it would. And so we're going kind of back to the drawing board and running some new experiments. So I'll keep you posted on how things go. With that in mind, we still had our highest growing quarter on YouTube in over a year. We added about 3,000 subscribers over the last 90 days. It's a much higher average than we've averaged over the last year. I expect that to continue to go up as we really dial in the message and the quality of content. More does not equal better. Better equals better. And so we'll be experimenting with a different attention on quality of content rather than quantity over the next 90 days. Moving forward, we're moving around some roles on the team. So as of right now, we've got two people on the team who are switching hats just a little bit. One of my team members was kind of had her hands in a lot of different things and she needs a much more specific focus. And so she's taking a much more direct impact on the type of content that we develop and how we plan for it and organize it. And it's only been a couple of weeks, but she's really taken to it and she's really doing a great job. And then there's another person on my team who wants to focus more on the brands side of things. And so we're working at how we could possibly reallocate some of her attention so that she could do more of what she's excited about, which is developing more physical products, brands. We've also got a couple roles that we're considering hiring people for and there's a couple people that we're dating, if you will. I'm not in a hurry to spend the money I just made, not in a hurry to force growth. I'm in a hurry for this to unfold fold the way that it needs to unfold. And it's been a beautiful lesson for me over the last quarter. Quick book update before we sign off. So my book has officially crossed 10,000 sales, which is officially considered a success in the book publishing world. Selling 10,000 copies of a book is, is, is a winner. My goal is still to sell a million copies of the book. So we're officially 1% there. Hooray. At this rate, it'll take me 30 years. But I expect that rate to go up over time. So right now I'm now have the capacity to put a lot of focus into running ads for that and coming up with a proper marketing strategy around other influencers and audience. Maybe sponsoring some podcasts to get the word out about the book. I'm just so proud of the book that I want as many people as possible to read it. We're now over 200 reviews on Amazon. Almost all of them are five stars. I get DMs every day from people who said the book has already changed my life and I'm already in chapter six. I'm so proud of it and I want a million people to see it. And so I'm going to fall on that sword and, and see how far we can take it. You know, I think the biggest lesson that I am learning is that things don't need to be so hard. And I'm actually really confident in where we're going next. The more that I'm just authentic to the type of entrepreneur that I want to be. I don't need to be Jeff Bezos. I don't need to be Elon Musk. I need to be Ryan Moran. And I need to do what is my authentic gift to this world. And I'm realizing now that I've tried so hard to make my content shareable and viral that I've created really crappy content. No wonder my following isn't as big as I think it should be. That's just entitlement. And so I'm finally realizing that in a healthy way of realizing that the more I give, the more I get. As long as I don't expect to get anything. And so the more humble I can be in my expectations, the faster I'll grow. But I can't be humble because I want to grow. I have to be humble because it feels good to be in a place of service and giving. And so when you're in that place, I think you're dangerous in a positive way. And so I feel dangerous in a positive way. I feel excited. And that's enough. Thanks for watching. Thanks for sharing this journey with me, and I hope you'll decide to subscribe to the channel, and I hope to see you on an upcoming coffee or at one of our calls inside the 1%. Thanks for watching. Talk to you guys later. Take care.