Ryan Daniel Moran argues that a widespread but unspoken problem for entrepreneurs is loneliness: as people become more successful they often isolate themselves, which harms health, happiness, and long-term wealth. Drawing on the Blue Zones research and his own experience hosting the Capitalism Conference, Moran makes the case that deep, selfless relationships and community membership are the highest-return 'biohack' for entrepreneurs. He critiques superficial paid masterminds and pitches building a new, incentive-aligned form of entrepreneur-focused community that fosters genuine connection and shared opportunity.
Chapters
I think the secret plague in entrepreneurship that we don't like to talk about is the fact that most of us feel alone. Do you know that? It's actually been shown the more successful you become, the fewer friends we tend to report having. That sounds weird until you realize why that is. It's because once you've had a certain amount of success, we think we don't need each other. We can afford to isolate ourselves. We can afford not to know our neighbors. We can afford to have everything delivered to our house. We can afford to go on vacations by ourselves. We can afford to not depend on other people. I mean, most of us became good entrepreneurs by learning not to depend on other people, by learning to take on the burden ourselves and to go in a new direction and to say that I will be responsible for the results that I get in my life that made us successful. But once you become successful, it also drives us to be very unhappy. And of course, that wreaks havoc on our health and our long term wealth. There's a great book that you might be familiar with called the Blue Zones. And the Blue Zones studies what the healthiest people in the world all do the same. And there was a follow up book called the Blue Zones for Happiness about what the happiest people in the world all do. And both of those groups, the healthiest and the happiest people, all had one thing in common. And it wasn't diet, although that helped. It wasn't exercise, although that helped across the board. It was relationships. It was feeling like other people had your back, like you were a part of something. And as entrepreneurs, it's the last thing we think about. We want it, sure, but we don't prioritize it. Of course, we're all familiar with the new cutting edge technology and the cutting edge science that'll give us an edge or that will biohack our way to success. But the best biohack in the world is being a part of a group of people that root for you selflessly, feeling like you have a group that you can contribute to, having a sense of contribution without you trying to get something out of that same community. That's the hack. That's the real secret to health, wealth and happiness. I know this in my own life. I know what it feels like to have accomplished so much and yet look up from the laptop at the end of a day after staring at a computer screen for way too long and wondering, what now? Where are my people? Does anybody understand how hard this is? What do I focus on now? And yet I've seen the power of the other side of that. I host an event every year called the Capitalism Conference, where the speakers, who have made sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, come off stage and are just there to contribute to the rest of the community with no ego, with no posturing. Sometimes there's somebody in the room worth $100 million and somebody else who is just starting their journey, and you can't tell the difference between those two people. That's where real community gets built. In fact, that's such a refreshing experience that most of the people who come to events like that wonder, how do we keep this going all year long? Because I get fueled up so much by being a part of a group that invests in me and cares about me, and that I feel like I have something to contribute to that. This makes going home and staring at a computer screen all day look even worse than it used to. Because now I've experienced a sniff of what real community feels like. And of course, we try to fill in the gaps as entrepreneurs by joining masterminds or online communities. And I've done that. I've led masterminds like that. But we both know that most of the time, groups like that are just overpriced groups that are led by one person whose job it is to make it seem like they know something that you don't. And as soon as that life cycle runs its course, what are you left with? You're left with some relationships that you made in that group. But do they last? Or do we bounce from mastermind to mastermind and community to community, looking for our people, wondering why our list of friends isn't as big as it was as when we were in high school, as when we were on the climb, as when we had nothing. The irony is that we all know that our biggest breakthroughs, financially and otherwise, come from being a part of deep relationships. We know this. Aubrey Marcus had Joe Rogan, Dr. Oz had Oprah. Steve Jobs had Woz. We know that there's a very deep financial ROI from being plugged into people that are on our team. We can all think of the mentor that changed our life, or the business partner that made our ideas happen, or the employee that we hired, or the affiliate partner that we connected with. The insight that we got from that speaker on stage. We all know that the biggest financial ROI is the relationships that we make. But do we prioritize it? No. We prioritize our knowledge. We prioritize our productivity, but we don't prioritize our community. Because we're used to going it alone. We're used to being different from everybody else. We're well trained to go against the grain. It made us successful. It got us to this point, but it doesn't take us to the level where we want to go. The strange thing is, it's not like we don't know this. It's not like we don't know this is a problem. It's just that very few people are deciding to do something about it. But we're entrepreneurs. We're capitalists. We solve problems. We see where there's a need and we fill it. We see where there's a problem and we do things better. And I think it's time that we do things better. I think it's time that our industry, our community of entrepreneurs, prioritized community. And there's a way to do it. There is a way to do it that didn't exist just a few years ago. There's a way to build real community and have real incentives for us to serve one another. There's a way to build actual relationships and connections in a way that's profitable so that you feel incentivized to actually do that, but yet doesn't have ego attached to it. There's a way for us to work together and to create opportunities together in a way that builds bonds, in a way that builds friendships, in a way that is selfless and genuinely wants to see you win. And I hope that whether you decide to be a part of what we are doing or not, that it inspires you to do things differently in your business. Because this world is starved for community. And if you create community in the way that we believe is going to be the way forward, it will not only bring more meaning into your business, but it will bring more profit as well, because you'll be first in a new area that this world desperately needs and wants. So we're doing it first for entrepreneurs, building a new type of community that has real incentives for us to connect, to serve, and to give to one another. And I hope that you'll decide to be a part of it.
