The Final Show

And so I went through a pretty dark time at the beginning of this year in 2018, where once again, I felt like I was starting over. Just like when I started this podcast in 2012 and 2013, I was back at a place where I felt as though I was back at the beginning.

You're listening to Freedom Fast Lane, presented by capitalism dot com. This is the show about building businesses and investing the 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 Fastlane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran, and I'm excited and nervous to be making this podcast for you today, because today I've got some news. Five years ago, almost to the day, we launched Freedom Fast Lane. And around that time, I was going through a personal crisis. In 2012, I had some businesses not go the way that I wanted them to. I started what I thought would be a publishing company, which ultimately didn't go the way that I wanted it to. I lost about $100,000, and I went through what I would call a quarter life crisis. In 2012, I felt like my career was starting over. I felt like I had hit a plateau that I wasn't sure I was gonna get out of. And so that year, I started clearing a lot of things that weren't bringing me joy, and I instead focused on my relationships. I focused on feeding my brain with books and audio tapes. Audio tapes? How old am I? I started surrounding myself with people who inspired me, and I started some new projects to see what would take. That was back in 2012 and then into 2013. That year, I packed everything that I had into my car, which was my brand new leather seated, double sunroofed, turbocharged Kia Sportage. Paid cash for that car. It was $30,000, and I thought that was a ridiculous amount of money, but I was very proud of that. Anyway, I moved to Austin, Texas that year and I did two things. One, while I was on the in between, in different projects, while I was finding my way in the world again, I decided to document the journey. And I decided, you know, I'm a pretty good writer, but I don't know that I could commit to blogging. And I love being on video, but when, whenever the camera's up, I'm never quite sure what's gonna come out of my mouth. But if you put a microphone in front of me, I'll talk all day. And so I decided to document the journey through a podcast that I called Freedom Fast Lane, which is what you're listening to right now. And I didn't know what was gonna come of that. I just decided I would do it for a year and see if I liked it. Now, about six months into documenting the journey, I started some new businesses. I took on a few email copywriting clients for between four and $5,000 a month. And I got some really great results for those clients. At the same time, I started putting my energy into a new business model that was called physical products. And I did this on the advice of one of my mentors, Perry, who said to me, man, if I was your age, I would sell stuff. I would not sell hopes and dreams. I'd sell real physical stuff because people are always gonna buy that. So that was my Life back in 2012, 2013, and five years later, I have been doing the podcast regularly, most of the time, weekly, and sharing the highs and just as much the lows of entrepreneurship and the journey that I've been on. If you've been following me since the beginning, you have watched a journey that involved experimenting with some new ideas, interviewing some new contacts, building a business that ultimately went to about $10 million a year and then was sold for an eight figure payday. And now I'm investing those profits into places for passive income and upside growth. In the last five years, I've become a father. That was unexpected.

I feel like I was a little kid five or six years ago when I started documenting this journey. And today I feel like I'm speaking to you from the perspective of a grown man. I've moved several times. I have loved and I have lost. I have succeeded and I have failed. I started doing events, and those events are now packed with hundreds of multimillionaires, entrepreneurs, investors, people who are just getting started, success stories, and people who are just finding their way. I feel like I've made new friends, I've connected with some of you and feel so blessed to call you my friend. I feel very honored to have your loyalty. I feel very humbled that you listen to my advice while I speak into a microphone and give you my thoughts on life, on business, on money.

I feel privileged to have shared this journey with you. I sometimes feel like an imposter when people ask for my opinion, and I feel like I'm still finding my way and going through my journey too. But it's been fun to have shared what I have learned along the way with you. As a result of sharing the successes and the failures in my business, I built up a bit of a following, particularly in the Amazon seller community, which always felt really weird to me, but it was something that I was also really thankful for. Thanks to my relationships with the good folks@amazing.com I shared their stage 6 different times in front of audiences of thousands of people. And those keynotes went viral on Facebook and they built up this following on Freedom Fast Lane. And part of that was because my businesses were very heavily concentrated on Amazon.com as physical products brands. You heard me document the journey of Zenactive Sports, a yoga company which I built and sold over the course of about a year. You heard me document the journey of the growth of Sheer Strength Labs, although I very rarely talked about it in name until I had sold a majority stake of the company. You heard me give income reports on my various different businesses, including Body Vega Health, which later got renamed to the Healthy Fats Company. My investments in Neatpak, my investments in real estate, my investments in the stock market. For a while I even documented what my monthly sales reports were until I felt like that was just a big contest to see who was making the most money. You've heard me talk about my trials as a father. You've heard me navigate the difficulties of my faith. You have heard me talk to my mentors and even some of our students who have been successful from the things that they've learned here on Freedom Fast Lane. I don't know the exact number of people who have been impacted by our work, but I know everywhere I go, literally all over the world, people recognize me on the street, which is still the coolest feeling ever. It's also even more exciting to me when people say that they tried something that they learned about on the podcast and they're now running a seven figure business. And I estimate that there's at least three to 400 people who have built million dollar businesses as the result of listening to this show. I have reason to think that it's actually way more than that, but if I had to put a strong bet on it, I put it in the few hundreds of seven and some eight figure businesses that have been impacted by this work. I have seen people sell their companies for a few million dollars. One of my students has sold for what looks to be more than $50 million. We've seen people work together as a result of meeting at a local meetup that I held because there was an audience and a community that was built around this show. I launched a group called the Tribe that was really, really fun for a while until I kind of effed it up.

You heard me share my struggles with my team, I've documented my doubts and failures as an entrepreneur, and I feel so blessed and privileged to have shared this journey with you. It's been five years doing Freedom Fast Lane, and about a year and a half or two years ago, something changed. I'm not exactly sure when it was. I'm not exactly sure where it happened. I don't exactly know what changed, except some of the magic that I felt at the very beginning started to fade. I started to feel the magic of being on that growth trajectory start to wither away. And what I have been able to pinpoint is that at some point, I felt the need to monetize the following meaning in order to make it sustainable, in order to make it worth my time, in order to support the team that was necessary to hire to continue growing the show and this audience, this presence, all of a sudden, it stopped being a pure give, and I had to think about making payroll and paying for overhead. Now, I've been successful in a variety of different businesses. I've made a million dollars in several different ways in my career, but monetizing this business, monetizing this audience and this momentum became a stressful thing. Now, I'm personally well off and set, but keeping these operations going became more difficult than I cared to admit. And as a result, a lot of the magic that got built at the beginning started to fade. When we launched courses around the topics, it started to feel like we had a business that we had to defend rather than some love that I was sharing through the microphone. As soon as we started to professionalize the business, that's when it felt professional rather than fun. Two years ago, I started to cast a vision for what I really wanted out of the company. And when I cast that vision, I realized that the name Freedom Fastlane was a great name for a podcast, was also a great name for a book, but it wasn't a great name for a company. It sounded a little bit Work from Homey, sounded a little bit maybe Get Rich Quickie. And it wasn't the company name that I wanted to represent in the world. The opportunity presented itself to buy my ideal name. And so, after having some long conversations with friends, mentors, and the owner of the name, I was able to acquire capitalism.com and capitalism. That word has a great deal of meaning to me. When I was in college, I studied economics and business. That was, of course, after I stopped pursuing becoming a pastor, which is a story that some of you have heard and is a story for another day. But I was studying economics and Business. While I was becoming an entrepreneur, it was also during the 2008 presidential election, and it was also during the 2007 and 8 financial crisis. All of these events really shaped who I became as a man. And the word capitalism captured all of those passions in one word. So I bought the domain name capitalism.com for a six figure check. And it was some of the best money I've ever spent. And I decided I was gonna build a media company around that name. A year and a half ago, I started building that vision and it didn't go the way that I wanted it to. I hired too fast, I tried to professionalize things too quickly. I lost the love that I had brought to this podcast and to this business and to many of the things that have made me successful over the years. I can tell you that I've gone through some real pain as a result of that failure. Because what was interesting is when I sold my sports nutrition company or a majority stake of that company, again, I still own a small stake in that business, but when I exited the operations of that business, I was really excited to put all of my energy into capitalism.com and what I didn't expect was once my energy to go in that direction for me to struggle so much out of the gate and building a team and in maintaining the finances of the business and growing it the way that I thought that it would. And so I went through a pretty dark time at the beginning of this year in 2018, where once again, I felt like I was starting over. Just like when I started this podcast in 2012 and 2013, I was back at a place where I felt as though I was back at the beginning. It was time for me to clear the space and clear room for new projects, to clear room for excitement. And so I've done a lot of reflecting over the past six months or so, and I've analyzed where I want to go with my career and how I want to spend my own time. And I've reflected upon what's gone really well with this podcast and what hasn't gone well. I reflected upon where the happy points in my businesses have been. For example, the day that I was on stage with Gary Vaynerchuk at our first ever event, sharing how he planned to buy the New York jets and how I wanted to buy the Cleveland Indians. I think of the variety of meetups we had with the tribe. I think of the time that a man came up to me at one of our capitalism conferences and told me the impact that I had had on his life. And he started to cry and he said, I did not plan to cry when I met you. He's become a friend and somebody that I would Back in a second. I think about our variety.

I think about the times I've fumbled in front of the microphone. I thought about the backroom events that I've had and the entrepreneurs that I've helped sell their companies or raise their valuations. I think about the Facebook lives that I have had where I was drinking wine, just goofing around. Those are some of my best times. And I've also thought about the times that I was really scared or really frustrated. Thought about the times that I was worried about event tickets. I was worried we wouldn't sell out the room. Or the times that I was worried that if I shared what was really going on in my heart or my mind, that people would think less of me. There are the times that a YouTube comment came up and said, you're a loser, you dress like a dork. We all knew that one.

I've reflected upon all of those highs and lows over the last six months, and I've gotten really quiet within myself to analyze how I want to proceed and how I want to move forward.

And as I look back on what worked in the last five years, it was always when I was in the mode of growing, when I was curious, when I was sharing, when I was being honest, when I was being humble, when I was being myself. And the times when things have really frickin sucked.

It's been when I was trying, when I was pressing, when I was selling, when I was monetizing, when I was overthinking, when I was hoping for a result.

About a year and a half to two years ago, when my businesses really started to soar, I became labeled as an Amazon guy or the Amazon guy. I think that I might have played as big of a role as anyone in the Amazon seller community at creating a lot of success stories. I guess I'll humbly brag by saying I think that a large percentage of Amazon sellers would credit something that we did together as at least helping them on their journey to building successful businesses. Really, really proud of that. Abundantly proud of that. Super proud of that. But as a result of getting quite a following in the Amazon or physical product community, there's some part of me that felt the need to defend that, to identify with it, to accept the love and the praise and the admiration that I got from it, and then defend it in a way that would protect me from ever losing it that's the interesting thing when we identify with things. If you identify as a Christian, as I once did, there's a need to defend that position rather than just to be in that position. If you identify yourself as a certain race or a certain political ideology or a certain orientation.

Sometimes we feel the need to defend our position rather than just be in it. And that was me, that's been me.

And it brought me a lot of purpose. It made me some money, it gave me positioning in the marketplace, but it didn't make me happy.

I started to lose the excitement that I had when I started this podcast, even started to lose some of the excitement that I had when I started capitalism.com, which was supposed to be a passion project for me. It was supposed to just share a message that I was excited about. But as soon as it became about defending something, as soon as it became about protecting my position in the marketplace.

It started to not be worth it anymore.

The funny thing about that is it becomes a negative spiral. You start to worry about what people think. You start to worry about the number of downloads. You start to do things to try and make the downloads or the visitors or the click through rate go up. And it doesn't always feel like who you wanted to be in the first place. You know, I called this podcast Freedom Fastlane. And Freedom to me is being able to define your life on your own terms. It's supposed to be creating a life that you love.

But what I discovered is as soon as I started defending it, as soon as I stopped growing in it and started, well, dare I say, teaching.

Started doing things that I didn't love.

You see, I developed a following that was asking me to teach certain things, and I was really thankful for that, but wasn't necessarily the things that I wanted to do, but in order to appease an audience or to sell product or to try and make the downloads go up, sometimes I did things that weren't exactly what I wanted to do, but I thought would be.

Good in the marketplace.

And I've never gotten out of that rut.

I recently brought this up with a couple of my mentors, Kevin and Travis. And Travis gave me some really good advice. He said, ryan, I like to ask myself the question, what would I do even if I was failing my pants off.

I started to look at my businesses and my career and said, if this was a total failure, would I keep doing it? Now, in 2013, I would have said yes, because I was honest. I was growing.

I was excited, but I didn't feel that way anymore. I had fallen out of love with the process.

And that was more painful than I care to admit. It's interesting, as entrepreneurs we tend to go through three to five year cycles and mine seems like a repeat of 201213 right now where I've had a lot of success. I just had a big financial win a year ago and now I feel like I'm starting over.

Now. A year ago I thought I could continue building in the same direction that I had been building for the last five years. But what I've discovered is that in order for me to be really happy with what I'm building and to really make the difference that I want to make in the world, it's time for a change. A few months ago I posted on Facebook a couple questions about the direction of the podcast. I said, you know, I feel like I've said everything that there is to say. I feel like I've shared all there is to share on the topics that I've been talking about. And I've thought about packing it in. Should I wrap up the show? Should I start a new show? Should I just take a year off and go hang out at the lake? I am renovating a lake house right now. I'm really excited to ride some jet Skis. I'm really excited to invite some Mastermind partners, some friends, some potential students or partners to the house, cater in some food, ride some jet skis, play some virtual reality video games, and talk about life business.

That does sound really fun. I'm really excited to write. I'm really excited to make some new offers that I'm excited about. I'm excited for the first time in years to make products because I'm starting to think about things that I want to discover and I want to share, rather than what the marketplace says that I should do. So should I just wrap things up, call today and say, it's been a good five years?

Someone answered in the thread.

This person was in the minority on their opinion. What is the answer that resonated the most with me?

This person said, you know, Ryan, freedom is about more than just selling physical products. Freedom applies to everything.

Hmm.

Thank you for the reminder person.

When I started this podcast, freedom to me meant freedom from the things that hold us back, freedom from the beliefs we had as kids or younger people, freedom from money problems, freedom from time constraints, freedom from old structures, freedom from government, freedom from financial worries. And it also meant freedom to freedom to create a life we love, freedom to spend time with the people we care about freedom to pursue growth, freedom to build something that we were proud of. And I felt in this, in between, I felt like I had created my own golden handcuffs that I had to be free from. And that comment reminded me about why I started this show in the first place. And it reminded me of what could be. And so, as I analyze what to do with this show, I originally was going to consider bringing on some new hosts so they could continue talking about the message that I've been sharing for the last few years while I explored some new types of content. But I've decided to do something different. After doing a lot of thinking about where to go in my career and should we even continue doing the show, I decided to wrap it up. I decided that I had indeed shared everything that I cared to share on the topics we've been talking about. And it was time for something new. Originally, I was thinking I would just start a new show and go in a new direction. But what made this show special in the first place was that there was no agenda, there was no destination, there was no roadmap I was following.

I wasn't following anybody else's rules. I was just sharing what I had learned along the way.

And so this episode is me sharing that. I have indeed shared everything that I feel like I have to share on the topics we've covered up to this point. And this will be the last official Freedom Fast Lane podcast episode in this format.

Up until this point, I've shared a lot about physical products. I've shared a lot about some of the strategies that we've used, and I've said all that there is to say. And so what we're gonna be doing is taking some of those episodes and we're gonna be putting them on a separate podcast so that if anybody ever finds this work and wants to go through that structured type of content style, they'll be able to find it. In fact, there's one that's going live right now called Million Dollar Brands. That's a collection of some of the best of Freedom Fastlane, specifically about building seven figure businesses online, specifically physical products brands. But I'm pivoting over into being an investor in physical products brands. I'm partnering with the people that I've met along the way. I'm investing in private placements and syndications. My next goal in life is to build a 25 acre compound where that'll I hope, be a model for how people live their lives. And so moving forward, we're gonna throw out the playbook we're gonna throw out the strategies, we're gonna throw out the way that we have done things up into this point. And we're doing a hard reboot of freedom fast lane. I am still on a journey. We are still on a journey together. We are still pursuing the dream of building lives that we love, building something that we're proud of, of something that gives us meaning and purpose and wealth. We are still building businesses. We are still investing the profits. We are still creating life on our own terms. I am still exploring fatherhood, faith.

Family.

Wealth.

Hard questions, development, investing, cash flow. These are all things that I continue to pursue. So if you've been following me up into this point and you follow me for my Amazon tips, for my physical product advice, or for the journey of building those types of businesses, thank you. I love you. I appreciate you. You mean the world to me.

Moving forward, we'll be taking this podcast in a new direction.

I'm back in growth mode. I'm back in pursuit mode. I'm back in curiosity mode. I'm starting to be really curious about what the next stage of my life and my career looks like. I'm still the CEO and the founder of capitalism.com and we as a company are starting to get curious again about where the world is going, about where business is heading, about what investments make sense in this crazy economy.

I don't know if you've heard, but we have some political tension going on in the world. Old structures are also crumbling.

Even religions are crumbling. Institutions are crumbling. I'm fascinated by this. The pursuit of that, to me is freedom. To me, the world is still pursuing freedom. And that's why we're at this interesting inflection point. And I feel very curious to pursue that while also being on a journey of, of being the best entrepreneur that I know how to be. The pursuit of owning the Cleveland Indians, the pursuit of constantly pursuing a life that is totally on my own terms.

And so in the next episode, you're gonna hear some changes. You're gonna hear a new direction for the show. You're gonna hear a hard reboot and a reset because we're still on a journey. But now I am on the next stage of that journey. I started this podcast as a boy. A boy who was pursuing a business that would give him lifestyle freedom. A boy who was trying to find his way in the world. A boy who was exploring different investment vehicles as a 25 year old. A boy who was rebuilding his life in a new city. Today.

I'm a semi wealthy man. I'm a father. I'm on a journey. I'm still on a journey. I'm a little bit more established now.

I have a little bit more flexibility in terms of finances. I'm still skeptical about faith. I'm still skeptical about relationships.

I'm still.

Fine tuning my place in the world.

But the journey continues.

And if you'd like to continue along with me, I'd love to have you. As we explore the next stage of Freedom Fast Lane. I love you. I'm thankful for you. I'm excited to be on this journey with you. If you decide not to continue along with me while we explore some more controversial topics, while also exploring business and investing, I understand there are other people who have followed in our footsteps who are probably better suited to to talk about the tactics of building online businesses, to talk about the nuances of Amazon.com to talk about the beginning stages of building a business. And there's plenty of podcasts, YouTube channels and other courses that you might want to follow, like Amazing.com, like Stefan Palarnos at Project Life Mastery, like Scott Volker over at the Amazing Seller, like Trey Llewellyn, Jason Fladlian, or the many other individuals who specialize in helping beginners or help people get started on their journey. In the course of the next few years, we'll probably do some more of that as well. And we actually are working on some courses that I'm excited about for the first time in a long time because they're coming from a place that feels authentic rather than what just sells in the marketplace. But moving forward, we're going to be rebooting the direction of this show and this audience to pursue bigger ideas, bigger topics and going even deeper into the pursuit of freedom. If you decide to continue with us, I'll consider it a privilege to run alongside you, to be asking hard questions, to be to able exploring deep ideas that are sometimes difficult to talk about, to explore new concepts, new business ideas, new areas of growth, new investment opportunities. And I'm excited to meet more of you as you continue on your journey for freedom. To create a life on your terms, to build businesses, to invest the profits. I hope our paths continue, continue to cross and I hope that you'll continue to follow along the journey that is Freedom Fast Lane. As always, I appreciate you. And guess what? I will see you on the next episode.