The Universal Secret of Success and Capitalism

Did you just say action at me?

We're both in bed right now. You saying action makes me think you're coming on to me, man. You know, I already get enough of that in YouTube and Facebook comments. I'm. I'm. I don't need that from you. If we need to have a conversation about that, you tell me now.

A big gay following.

I don't know. That's big.

They.

But they do seem to comment a lot on my posts.

Very vocal.

This is the part where I feel ob obligated to be like, I have gay friends.

Half my. Half my team.

Business partner.

Huh? Yeah, that's true.

I guess I should probably. Since you're recording, I should probably say something of value to the Internet, right?

We're in this very remote part of Kiev, Ukraine, in the countryside.

In this.

I would say big house, but no one's gonna believe me because we're both laying here on twin beds.

Yeah.

Why are they staying in the same room on twin beds? I knew it was a scam.

Entrepreneurial life.

The big, big house. Anyway.

As I was thinking. I think. I think I know the secret. I think I know the secret, Chris.

The secret to what?

Everything.

It's a secret between.

I see. Here's what I was thinking. So we spoke at that event in Bucharest. Now we're in Kiev, Ukraine.

And.

You rebrought out that thing that I said on stage, which was, has anyone here actually left an Amazon review as a result of getting an email saying, please, oh, please leave a review. No hands go up. 500 people who sell on Amazon. No hands go up. Yeah, I've left a review. Why are we doing it to our customers? And the thought I had in my mind was, I think the people who really succeed in life, business, and everything are the ones who have something to give in the first place. And we all do. But for some reason, when there's a transaction or you're trying to achieve something, you go into get mode, you go into. You go into take mode. So it's the idea of if I want something from you, I. It's the idea if I have to get it or I have to take it, rather than, what do I have to give? And then it just seems like, for me, anyway, when I'm in that place of I have something to give and I'm constantly giving, the things that I want come really, really easy, become really natural.

So, for example.

Business partners or, like, business contacts, the ones that I really want to meet show up really quickly and easy when I'm in That zone of creation. And I'm in that zone of giving to other people. And most people, when they're starting out, they spend their time and their thought thinking about, how do I get this thing? Thing? And you, like you, you don't get anything there. There's always a trade. Like, there, there's. There's always a trade for money. There's always a trade for everything. Someone is trading their attention, or they're trading their time, or they're trading their dollars for whatever the thing is that you have. But you have to have something to give in the first place, and we all do. And. And if you don't know what it is, then it's the development of a skill. There's that learning process, and that requires you to give your time and attention until you are valuable enough to get whatever it is that you want. It's the idea of you must be willing to give more than you receive for long enough until you have shown that you are worthy of the result. Now you can, like, you can get to a certain point just by taking. But I think you always burn out. You. You always. You always empty that tank. You. You always. You always empty that relationship bucket. It's like if you're. If you're in a relationship and you're always saying, what do I get out of this relationship? It. It will end. It might not end now, it might not end tomorrow, but it will end. Because if both of you are taking, neither one of you have anything that put into the. Into the tank. You have nothing into. You have nothing put into the. The thing that. That is the giver, the relationship. And.

That'S a really good example too, because if you meet. If you meet someone that you fall in love with, you fall in love with who they are. You fall in love with the time that you spend together, how you feel when you're around them and who that person is. They didn't have to. They were hopefully just themselves. So they had something to give even if they didn't credit that who they were was enough in order to give to someone else for them to receive. The Falling in love, who we are is always enough to give something, even if we aren't consciously aware of what that is. Like, you see money. I mean, you gave a whole bunch the other night when you played music, which was. Everyone loved it, right? Everyone loved it. Everyone was impressed. And you felt how I felt.

Amazing. You know, I felt like I'll go up and do one or two songs and I felt that people wanted more. Yeah, Well, I wasn't pushing the music on anyone. I just wanted to, you know, do a song or two.

Just wanted to be.

And it turned into more. Yeah.

And it. It feels good to give.

Yeah.

That's how you know you're on the right path. I think it feels good to do it. I'm talking right now. And it feels good to share this idea because I know there's one person.

That it will impact, and that one person will, de facto, by product, end up coming to one of our events, grow their business as a result of thus giving them more, because it feels good to do that, and they'll grow.

And I work with a lot of physical product owners. I invest in physical products, brands, and.

There'S a mentality to look at, like, what product makes money. And then as soon as a competitor moves in, they get into defense mode. Someone moved into my space. Yeah.

What. What were you giving? Yeah, what were you. What were you. What were you. What were you doing that was of value to someone else? Like, the product's great. Cool. But, like, you went in, you went into a pie, said, there's some pie here. I'm gonna have some pie. And you had some pie. And now you're like, someone's trying to eat my pie. It wasn't your pie from the first place. You just got some.

Yeah.

And it's. And it's totally cool, but you have to recognize that that's what a cash flow business is. A cash flow business is, oh, I see an opportunity here for me to make some money here. But if there's not a. If there's not a giving to it, then eventually that. That pie goes away. Unless you are doing something that makes your pie bigger or someone else's pie. Bigger is probably the better way to say it. And I mean that. That could be as simple as a physical products brand that represents beliefs in the world that the customer has. So if the customer now feels a connection to the physical. Same thing, same product, but now they feel something about it because, like, this brand represents my beliefs. For example, like, Tom shoes. Were there not enough shoes in the world?

Well, yeah. The message and the story is mostly the most unique thing. Mm.

People were buying a feeling.

Yeah.

I don't know. When they came out. When they came out, there weren't a whole lot of people were like, these are just, like, the highest quality shoe ever.

Little cloth ninja slippers.

They were like, what a cool story. They were buying a feeling.

Yeah.

They were buying a story in the form of a shoe.

You can still put that into an email sequence and a follow up and an insert. Yeah.

Or a video or an ad.

But instead you're not just like begging. You're giving and you're sharing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the secret.

Yeah. It's the secret to everything. So if you're, if you're in that place of focusing on where you have to give and sometimes that giving is, you know what I got, I got time.

So I'm gonna give my time to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder.

Might be in financial terms or it might be in somebody who will benefit the most from that time. Or what. What will feel the best for you to.

Give your time to? Sometimes it's, I have money.

I'm in a mode right now where it feels bad to take. Like it feels bad.

I dislike going for the ask.

And you know what it is now? What I've realized, I've realized that when I.

I can still sell, for example, if I feel good about it, but I feel bad when it's an ask. And it's almost like my body's telling me this is gonna suck, don't do it.

Yeah.

It's like when we found the sales processes we've been testing or like the ones that are really easy are the ones that are the most profitable. Like, how does that make any sense? I thought you had to have a big, complicated follow up sequence and you had to have a webinar and had all this stuff.

Yeah.

And like refunds are super high. And then you have, then you have like other things are like. I think our audience is really struggling with this thing. Like, let's put a little group together. Let's just help them get some results.

What's a fair price for this? Like, they'll, you know, keep the tire kickers out.

And it was like easy and fun and it was a, you know, it was like, it was a give.

And.

Did great.

And so.

C. Money and I were talking about.

What that means is like the one, the one thing of the business is like here, here's our mission. Okay. The mission of the business. How do we go about this?

Here's like what we do. Okay. What's the one thing behind that? And what it came down to is the one thing of the business is to keep the entrepreneur, me in the zone of giving.

Yeah.

Cause everything's easier and unnecessary when Ryan's in that zone. Wow.

Braingasm. I was, I was with, I was with Vic a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

Went for a long walk around town.

And he Has a dog.

He didn't bring the dog. No. But we were go for a walk around the city and.

Went back to my place, and we were on the eighth floor, and we're overlooking the river and south of the city in Austin. And this was right after you and I did that video on the couch of me licking my wounds from failure.

Yeah.

Right.

And I was sharing a lot of it with him.

And he was asking me some, like, helpful questions because he was on the team when we were trying to keep all that stuff together.

And I said something, and I was like, oh, snap, that's it.

And I said.

I said we were talking about the tribe and how much success came out of that and why. Why did I, like, lose energy for selling that and building up this grand vision? And I was like, you know, what made the tribe great was we didn't have a plan. I just gave.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It felt good to do that. There was no plan.

And then I was like, oh, snap.

There's so many success stories out of it.

Yeah.

So many.

I didn't have a. I didn't have a plan. I just gave.

Yeah.

So what if I didn't think about what the flow chart, plan execution, monetization strategy was? And I was like, I just give.

And you don't give to.

You don't give to. I'm trying not to say takers to get more back. Well, what I'm. Well, yeah, you. You give for the sake of. It feels good to give.

And in the marketplace, there is the idea of.

There'S like, it feels good for me to give and to share this, and the people who will benefit the most from it will pay for that. And then there's. And so you can still give profitably. The marketplace is a really good example of where you're giving the most value.

Yeah.

And then there's things like this or the things that, you know, I don't really. As soon as I go into. To that stress mode, as soon as I feel, like, that tension about something that I'm taking, like, for example.

I don't. I don't want to do a product right now. I was gonna say ever, but, like, in this mode, I would. I would have no interest in doing a product about, like.

How to. How to get your first hundred Amazon reviews.

I thought that's what you were gonna say.

Really?

But if you, like, ask me on a Q and A on wine with wine, I'll tell you.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, we'll do a video and I'll share it with You, I mean, we can talk about that. Like, I'll give, I'll give that to you, but I don't want to, I don't want to monetize that. Feels good to give, but as soon as I go in, if, if there were like, if there were a thousand people who wanted to pay $5,000 for a product that I didn't want to do, my, I would rather.

Just do it for free. If, if, if my body was like, this is a take, right? Rather than, than a give. Does that make sense when I say that?

Yeah.

Are you saying yeah because you're, you feel.

I'm just, I'm thinking, who's the audience you want to serve with this content?

Well, you know, that's the other thing. Like I know you're supposed to have a target market.

Because we're kind of saying here that people just pick something they think will make money instead of thinking who they want to serve and who it feels good to support. And so with our content.

Yep.

Are you saying you should. We don't have a target or you just want to speak your truth and see who listens?

I hate that phrase. Speak your truth. I'm sorry, I hate that phrase.

I would say we have a target. With customers.

Yeah.

But with content, I've always taken the mode of.

I speak what I feel like I have to give and share and the people who resonate with that show up. I don't know if I'm right or wrong. I know plenty of people who are more intentional about it are way bigger than me. But that's how I've always operated. Because anytime I go into logical brain, let's do this, then I then, then I don't feel like I'm able to give as much.

Yeah.

I feel less like myself.

When I do that. I don't know any other way. Like, we can be targeted with our ads, we can be targeted with our products. For example, like.

Do you, do you think that in like my career I ever thought I was gonna be like a.

An Amazon guy? I never, I never thought that. Like, I never wanted to be an Amazon guy. I was a guy who built businesses and I used Amazon as a mechanism.

And I am an investor.

Yeah.

But I don't want to be the dividend guy. Even though I buy a lot of dividend paying stock.

Throw up. Right. So.

God, man, can you imagine? We started marketing me as the dividend guy.

Top picks of the month.

But here's the thing. I would love to share that with people.

Yeah.

Like I would Love to tell people what I'm investing in.

Yeah.

And have a proctor and gamble Chevron.

AT&T.

I would, I mean I would love to share that stuff and I would really love this feels like a give to put workshops together at my house for 12 entrepreneurs. Be like, come learn my investment strategy. I'm just going to give you everything I've learned because I see a lot of people struggle with this. It's ten grand.

So.

For someone who wants to.

Go from let's say 100,000 to a million, how do they apply this if they're not in a position where they can give so much of their time away for free?

You mean, you mean the person who's running a hundred thousand dollar a year business and they want to go to them and they want to go.

They're just getting started and they want.

To like, I mean you.

It's funny, I want to go in two directions at the same time.

Because one, I have built businesses.

That didn't come from a place of giving.

Knowing full well that they're a cash flow business and that's what they're there to be so that I have cash coming in so that I can invest in other things. The mistake is when I'm gonna build this and run this forever because it's a nice income stream.

Yeah.

So you can't, you can operate, operate ethically with a take cash flow mentality and build a white label spatula brand that ranks on Amazon. That you don't care if it's ever making a difference in people's lives. Just the cheapest spatula around. You can absolutely do that. There's just recognize that only a few people win that game.

We actually see that a lot where people will say, Ryan, I want to transition out of this cash flow source to something I'm passionate about.

Yeah.

And you don't want to be overly attached to this cash generating source.

So.

You can do the cash flow business and invest the profits.

And carve out lots of time for you to be in that zone of genius for your next thing or your side hustle.

There's a member of our, of our back room who does. There's several that do eight figures.

One's in more like the mid eight figures. He's doing great.

And you know, doesn't have a brand, just sells products.

But.

His give is that before he ever goes to market, he obsesses over the product.

Yeah.

Like the product has to, someone has to see it. Be like, this is great.

Yeah.

That's how you get product Reviews.

Yep.

That's how you get reviews on Amazon. Everybody have a great frickin product. Because the alternative is like, I'm white label this. So the same thing everybody else is. How do I get reviews? Need to take from somewhere to get reviews. And again, you can do it. It's just a fixed pie in everything. It's just like a relationship that will empty out at some point or you can automate it and go into something else and give like you can, you totally can. Cash flow businesses are great. Just don't, don't like. Let's be real about what this is. Yeah, let's be honest about what this is.

That makes a lot of sense. I just had a C money brain chasm.

Oh, tell me more.

No, I mean, it's just like, it's, it's clicking. Just this idea that.

Like kind of how we started this video. If you're trying to extract more.

Than you're giving and use tactics, then.

It's almost like stealing or ripping people off or trying to trick them. You don't want to trick people into giving you reviews. You, you have a message, you serve an audience, you make a good product. And it just happens.

You don't look at. I hear what you're saying. I don't go quite that extreme if it is a giving thing to say, holy snap, there's no one selling this on Amazon. Yeah. Because people are probably looking for it. And so you bringing it to the marketplace is a give. That's how value works. There's, there's supply, there's demand. You bridge together. You are a good person, you get paid for it. You have, you have done a give for people.

Yeah.

The opposite or the thing that, the thing that is exhausting.

Is when.

There'S already people there or people start coming in and selling the same thing and you get into defense mode and now you're like.

This was mine, I own this pie. Because you're not consistently bringing something new, you're not giving more to the marketplace. You got yours, you got paid for it, and I hope you make that money forever. But there's a mentality of.

There'S all, there's all these, there's this market and there's these people doing well. I'm gonna go in with the exact same product, get more reviews by.

Making it green. What's that said?

By making mine green? Offer a new color.

I was gonna say by using like review groups.

You'Re gonna hack the system. Because I want to get this certain result rather than what am I Gonna what am I gonna provide into this marketplace? Seeing an untapped niche and putting products there is a give.

Taking is trying to just pull out from a market as much as possible without ever asking the question what value do I bring here?

And those people always end up eventually burning out or going away. I just love capitalism. Capitalism is the natural system through which the good ideas stay and the bad ideas go away.

And I gave this, I was telling Aubrey about this on his podcast Aubry's the Aubry. Capitalism is the only system. And I never explain it this way, I never explained it this way. And I finally, I think I have a way to convert all the socialists. Capitalism is the only system where bad ideas lose.

Yeah.

Because you can't say capitalism is the only system where good ideas win. You can't say capitalism the only system where.

The poor succeed. Even though that's true, it's not a convincing argument. You can't say capitalism is the best system even though it is. But you can say capitalism the only system where bad ideas go away.

Other systems have ideas and then they hold them.

They keep them the same because through government and you can eventually control, change an idea, except it's controlled by the system. And so people don't have a say in the bad ideas losing. And so you're stuck with a bad system unless you can theoretically create the perfect structure which doesn't exist. Capitalism is the only system through which bad ideas go away and create room for good ideas. And the more you distort that, the more bad ideas stay.

That right there is just a clip. It's like evolution of products, evolution of ideas.

It's the survival of the fittest ideas.

Fittest ideas. Yeah.

Because.

I'm always hesitant and cautious to use Darwinian language.

When talking about political systems because it assumes that there's people who are going to lose and die. And so naturally you say, well what about people who are handicapped, people who are disenfranchised, people who are orphaned?

And.

It would be a bad idea to not take care of them. We've proven through free market principles that good ideas to take care of them come about it.

You have, you have, you have the capital and freedom to provide solutions for them and they exist in, in better variety and more customized solutions than in socialist.

Nations.

Yeah.

Because in, in socialism you have to is this, this was the, this was the problem with Obamacare or any socialized, any socialized healthcare. It wasn't that it's a bad idea to give everyone, to make sure everyone has healthcare. It's that it is fundamentally impossible to come up with a system that can be customized to every need and normalize it across different people. It's just fundamentally an idea that doesn't work. Even though we like the simplicity and the idea of healthcare being available to all, you cannot provide the same solution for everyone when everyone has different needs. That's why no one got this. And it made me so, so mad. Mitt Romney, who I regret not voting for.

Mitt Romney.

Had almost socialized health care in Massachusetts when he was governor. 97% of people were covered and 60 some percent, 62% of people liked the system.

It was fairly. Actually, it might have been higher than that.

So it was a. It was a fairly. They used that as a model for Obamacare and that was the problem. It worked in Massachusetts.

Yeah.

That same plan if put into Texas. Good freaking luck.

Good freaking luck.

So it's the only system where bad ideas naturally go away. But as soon as you socialize something, as soon as you nationalize something, now you are forcing the bad ideas to stay in. They can't go away because the government has the ability to just tax more and keep the system going.

Isn't this exciting? Yeah.

I've never heard Gremlin put it that way. That totally makes sense.

So my view is I don't not want people to have access to education.

I just want the bad ways in which we do education to go away. It's another great example. Like, does. Does everyone knows college is out of date, right? Like, everyone knows The K through 12 system is like, terrible. Yeah. It's like. It's like not optimal. For sure.

Yeah. And there's no competition.

There's no competition and there's no freedom to explore because there has to be. There has to be a baseline. For example, there was the no Child Left behind act thing. Right. And the idea was to ensure everyone had a floor. But what it did was it brought everything else down to the floor.

Yeah.

It was like, this is the standard. This is what everybody has to meet. And the idea was there's now a system through which all children will have the chance to learn. And I totally get it. But there's a lot of bad that comes out of that too. And there's no way to get to, like, to poop out the bad. It just stays constipated in the system. So the question of, like, is it charter schools? Is charter schools a solution? It may or may not be.

It might be a solution, but now. But you see how hard it is to change a Government system here. Because we're gonna debate about. You might, you're smiling. So you might disagree with charter schools. I might love charter schools. And now we're gonna fight over do we get to force everybody to have charter schools or not?

Yeah, that's the lack of consent is the problem.

Yeah, right.

With, same thing with healthcare, you're just talking about.

Yeah, so, but, and in capitalism with any good, the bad ideas would go away. And you don't have the government coming in saying this is a good idea or a bad idea. And in education.

For example, I had this debate once with my buddy James. We used to joke that he's gonna run for senator as a Democrat, I'm gonna run as a Republican. And if both parties are around, then hopefully not. And we're gonna have heated debates on the senate floor and then go have a beer and talk about how much fun it was. We used to love have this debate. And he was saying, he said, well, what about the people in Missouri who wanna teach young earth creationism in school?

I say two things. One, you're only upset that they want to force it onto other children, which is government force.

Yeah.

So we're upset about the same thing. And number two, people who are raised like I was with the belief that the world is 6,000 years old under a six day creation. Yes. I was brought up to believe that, believed it until my teens.

They will be at a disadvantage.

Now we can be upset that those children will be.

At a disadvantage because they were taught something that wasn't true. Yeah, we should be upset about that. Which means that the idea will go away very fast.

And.

Those people who are taught something bad will accelerate faster once they get into the right system. And so they'll end up being ahead of where they would have been otherwise. For example, like I probably know more about evolution than the.

Average, even above average.

You know, non sciencey person. I'm not a sciencey person. I probably know more about evolution because it was like, wait, I learned, I became fascinated with it because I was taught something else.

Yeah. So you do your own research.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Huh.

So that disadvantage actually became an advantage.

Yeah, yeah.

So we spend so much time trying to keep people up that the bad ideas never go away. And so we've created this very, very low bar that does more harm than it does.

Isn't this exciting?

This is sharing. This is sharing you're talking about.

We'll get some mindset shifts here, some braingasms. Braingasm below.

So this is. So this is me. I feel very much in my zone, in my creative zone right now. So I would like to hear your feedback in the comments.

I don't know why I do this. Every video, put them in the. You don't know where comments are. So I will put. My gift is. I will show you where the comment box is. We're gonna enjoy this big, big house.

Comment below if you know that song.