Thinking Like A Big Company

Hey, guys and gals, this is Ryan Daniel Moran. Thank you for hanging out with me here at Freedom Fastlane. I've got a lot of big stuff to throw at you today. I've got some heavy, heavy stuff to be talking about with you because today's topic is about thinking like a big company. When I started Freedom Fastlane two years ago, a year and a half ago, one of the reasons reasons why I started it was because all the information that I could find in our little community was, was all about starting little businesses. Little businesses that might cash flow that would replace your job. That's really common in our industry, talk about replacing your job kind of money. But nobody was talking about building big companies, real companies, or that transition from making a little bit of cash flow to transitioning into a big company. So one of the reasons I started Freedom Fast Lane was because I wanted to move the conversation to be meatier, to be better, to talk about what it takes to grow real successful businesses. Now, a lot of you know that my dream in life is to own the Cleveland Indians. I've got a few dreams. One of them is to produce or be in a reality show. I've come close a couple of times. And the other is to own the Cleveland Indians. Now, that's a meaty goal. Especially when I set that goal when I was 16 or 17 years old, that seemed absolutely impossible. And in order to achieve that dream, I've got to think a little bit differently than how do I replace my job. I've got to think a little bit differently than how do I start a website that makes a little bit of money. Now, I had to think like that. At one point. I had to think about how do I pay for college. It's how I got into this little industry. But in order to achieve the things that I personally want to achieve, I've got to think a little bit bigger. Now, I have found that those who think bigger really aren't much different than those who think small, except for little tweaks in their thinking. I used to set goals every year, and at the end of the year, I would achieve about half of them. And I would beat myself up for the goals that I did not achieve. I think this is fairly common.

Among just about everybody. But what I believe now is that goals are not necessarily meant to be achieved. They are more to set us on a certain path. They're more to tweak our thinking. So now I set goals that are ridiculous. And as a result of doing so, my thinking has to change. My thinking Changes in order to do what at one point I would consider big things. And as I grow and as I move and stretch that muscle of thinking a certain way, progress becomes accelerated. Now I tell this to you today because the common knowledge or the common information that is shared in our little industry is. It sets the bar very low. It sets the conversation at a very.

Mediocre level. And today's, Today's show is all about moving that needle and thinking at a much bigger level.

Now, I titled this episode Thinking like a Big Company. We could massage it and say it thinking or setting really big goals. But that word big comes with some baggage because by even saying big, we are putting certain emotion on it because we tend to associate big with hard.

It's just like the word expensive. What is the word? Expensive? It's a comparison to whatever we say is cheap. Expensive carries a certain emotion with it, which usually means if it's expensive, that means it's overpriced or it's not worth it. But there are people who buy.

$100,000 cars, multi million dollar homes, and they don't consider them expensive because of what they're comparing it to. So expensive and big are just comparisons in our brain. So in order to start thinking like a big company or setting and achieving big goals, we have to start being comfortable with the level that we want to be. We can only do that by stretching the muscle of what we are comfortable with. So we don't get comfortable setting bigger goals or going to the next level by settling at the level that we're at or setting goals or setting intentions or thinking on a level that doesn't stretch us. If we're not being stretched, we are not growing. So I recently changed the things I journal about and the goals that I set to make me uncomfortable because in order to think at a different level, I have to get somewhat uncomfortable. I mentioned goals and the path that they set us on a few minutes ago. And I see goals as different paths. So if we. If I set one goal, it puts me on this path. If it's. If I set a different goal or a more challenging goal, it'll put me on a different path. The paths usually take the same amount of work. If I set the intention of making enough money to quit a job and I set another goal of owning a major league sports team, a lot of times they take the same amount of work or thinking or stretching or growing or networking. They're just different paths. And neither one is right or wrong. I know people who say I would never Want to own or make a certain amount of money, that's fine. Cool. So your goal is going to be different, but for me, if I'm going to own the Cleveland Indians, I need to think at a different level. Now, I mentioned getting comfortable with the idea of what our goals are. We can only do this by setting certain intentions or thinking at a level that is even higher than what it is that we want to achieve. We only get on the path towards getting comfortable with something that we currently see as beyond us by moving towards that and eventually moving past that. So one of the things that helped me when I was a younger entrepreneur was simply surrounding myself with people who were at a certain level, who were earning a certain amount of money, who lived in a certain type of home, who drove a certain type of car. Not necessarily because they wanted to have those things, but being comfortable with the idea of having those things. I have a buddy who likes to tell the story about the first time that he drove a BMW. And he was at a certain level in life where that was mind boggling to him. And getting in the BMW, he took it for a test drive, he drove it for a couple minutes and pulled over to the side of the road and went, oh.

This is crazy. Whereas at that point, if he was. If that was a big thing to him, then achieving a dream of owning a BMW would be very difficult. It would be beyond his realm of possibility where he kept stretching that muscle and now he owns a BMW and it's. It's no big deal. Businesses have grown far beyond the point where owning a BMW is a big deal. When we think something is big or we think something is hard, we make it. So.

I told my mom once, I said, mom, I need you to believe that I can own the Cleveland Indians more than I believe that. This was several years ago. This was before my businesses had really taken off. And this was still an idea of owning the Cleveland Indians. I was still an idea that seemed impossible to me. And I said to my mama, I said, I need you to believe that I can do this even more than I believe it. And she looked at me and she was like.

But I can't. Now, I don't blame her for that. She has a different frame of reference. She has a different reference point for what is possible.

But what I did after then, because I know that it takes 17 yeses to overcome a no when you believe something is possible, is I started surrounding myself with people that believed that I could achieve that dream. So I actually went home and I wrote down A list of names of people who were at a level where something like that was conceivable to them. And I asked all of them to remind me that that was possible. And I wanted to hear it 17 times more often as someone telling me that I could not achieve that dream. There's a reason why I'm so public about that dream, and it's because the more public I am about it, the more that people say, man, you really could do that? Or, have you ever thought about this? Now, I used to be very guarded of those big. Those big dreams because I didn't want anyone to see me fail. If I fail, failed, then I would look like an idiot, and I didn't want anyone to think I was an idiot. So I kept my dreams very closely guarded so that I would never look like an idiot. Now I have released that fear, and I publicize it everywhere for two reasons. One, because someone always knows someone who knows someone and can connect me to the right people. And two, because I want to hear and normalize the idea that that is possible for me. Now, this might make your immediate circle uncomfortable. If you want to be a multimillionaire and you currently live in, you know, an area or with around people that that is inconceivable to them, they might see you as snooty. All right, it's time to upgrade the people that you surround yourself with by publicizing what it is that you want and getting around those people who support that dream. So one of the ways I normalize this was surrounding myself intentionally with people who would. I asked them to repeat that I could do this. And thank God for my buddy Mark, who, even before this was a habit of mine, would sit me down and say, you're thinking too small.

Your dream is to own the Cleveland Indians. Don't lose sight of that dream. And even at that point, I would hear it and say, I'm 21 years old. I make a decent amount of money, but it's still inconceivable for me to think about this. And he just kept saying it and kept saying it and kept reminding me until I surrounded myself with people who would remind me. And then I started thinking about what it would take when. What path I need to be on in order to achieve that, and started moving towards that path. I'll give you another example. I buy real estate. I buy real estate for the very long term. And I was thinking about my strategy recently. And before I had kind of a switch a few years ago, I thought, I wish I could just Own a few homes free and clear. That gave me a few thousand dollars a month in passive income. That would be really cool. That way, if the apocalypse ever happened, I would still have some rental income that I could live off of. And that's great, but it is also thinking very small. I own a handful of homes right now, and they produce positive cash flow, which is great. But I started to think, how would I have to think if I wanted to own a billion dollars in real estate? How would I have to think differently if I wanted to have enough real estate that would allow me to buy the Cleveland Indians? And I came up with this plan of how I could accelerate this process, of how I could multiply the process that I'm doing a hundredfold so that in 20 years I have hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. If I hadn't asked myself that question, I would have been fine with owning a few homes. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with where I'm at. Wherever you're at is perfect. But if you want to be at a different point that is just as perfect, but. But a little bit different, then you have to ask yourself different questions that get your brain to think about what you would have to do to get there. One of the things that I like to challenge entrepreneurs to do is take whatever their goal is and times it by 10 or 100, and then ask themselves the question, how would I have to think think in order for this not to scare me? So one of the things I practice on about a monthly basis is I look at where I'm at, I look at where I want to be, and then I times it by a large amount and I just see how I feel. How do I feel about. How do I feel about what? What comes up when I set a much bigger goal than what I'm currently thinking about? And usually it's a little bit of fear, it's a little bit of self doubt, and that comes up. And then I just ask myself the question, how would I have to think if that didn't scare me? What would I have to think about? What would I have to plan for? What questions would I need to ask myself if I didn't want this goal to scare me? And all of a sudden, creativity and these new ideas start to come in. Now, if you've listened to my podcast about building a success network, one of the things that I'll do at this point is then reach out to my success network and start to connect with those people and ask them the exact Same question, I say, I realize that if I want to normalize this idea, I need to learn this, this and this. Who do you know that can help me discover this? For example, when I set the goal of acquiring 1,000 units of real estate the next 10 years, I put it out on Facebook and just ask the question, who do you know? Or if you know anyone that I should connect with, please send me a message. And I started getting all of this interaction, all of all of this activity from people who own several thousand units of real estate reaching out to me and offering advice. It was immensely helpful even for me to just say, this is the plan I have. How would you tweak this plan? It was immeasurably helpful. And that came from me asking a question to start thinking like a bigger company. Now, how does this apply to a business, a business setting? Well, let's look at some big companies. Let's look at what has happened in the last few years. If we see major acquisitions happening from companies like Instagram and WhatsApp, they were bought for billions of dollars. And what's interesting, if you look at big companies that have or big acquisitions in the billions of dollars, they're not acquired by because of income. They're not acquired because they're spitting out cash. They're usually spitting out. They're usually acquired because they're disrupting a market and they have a ton of users and they have these huge valuations even if they've got thin profit margins. Now, why is this relevant? This is relevant because these are companies who didn't settle at the point of what do we need to do to make some cash? It was how do we disrupt the marketplace enough to where we attract the people who own the market. And both of these companies, Instagram and WhatsApp, were acquired by Facebook.

And the number one person in the market, Facebook, acquired these companies because they were willing to sacrifice short term gain for long term market disruption. And in order to get there, you have to ask certain questions. You can't ask yourself the questions of how do I make a little bit of money? Had they been asking themselves that those questions, they never would have done the things it took to disrupt the market enough in order to be acquired by those at the top who did not want their market disrupted. Did you catch that? The people at the top who don't want their market disrupted will make acquisitions in order to protect their market share. They're not buying because of cash flow. Now, I have spoken in previous podcasts about the difference between building a market Disrupting company and a cash flow company. They are very distinct types. But one of the ways this applies to someone who has a solopreneurship business or a small business, and you are in this for the cash flow is delaying the gratification to reinvest in your business. This is one of the practical ways that we stretch this muscle in order to start thinking much bigger. My men's fitness company.

Is extremely successful partially because we resisted the temptation to take money off of the table for the first year that we were in business. As a result of that, we reinvested in our company aggressively enough to where we are at the top of our market. Had we fallen prey to the temptation of putting money in our pocket, we would have grown much more slowly. This is reflected in my supplement business, which is also an Amazon business, just like my men's fitness company. But my supplement company has taken money off of the table which has made it harder to reinvest in to long term growth. That is the single differentiating factor between those two businesses. One has continued to struggle, one has been incredibly successful. Same type of business, same amount of market share, but one we thought about how do we build a big company? Let's delay the amount of money that we take off the table. Whereas one was, this is probably going to be a small business, let's take some money off the table. We don't really care about growing this into a huge thing. And also there's a difference in, you know, what each of the partners that I have in those businesses need and their life at a certain time. But that's a major difference between why one business has been extremely successful and one has kind of putzed around for the last year. So that's one of the things that we had to practice in order to think like a big company.

When you look at major market disrupting companies, they usually delay the process of taking money off the table for as long as possible in order to reinvest over and over again into their business. I like a rule of thumb of 50% of profit margins being reinvested into the company. That is, I don't know where I picked that up, but that to me is a good rule of thumb. 50% of whatever you're profiting goes back into your business and you can take 50% of the profits off the table and put them into your pocket. Once you are at the level where that is sustainable, if you are not at the level where that is sustainable, don't take any money off of the table. We didn't Take any money off the table for the first year in my most successful businesses. But now.

It'S that rule of thumb. Half goes back into the business, half can go into our pocket.

Now, if you haven't noticed, one of the ways that I stretch the muscle of thinking like a bigger company is by using very strategic questions. I get very intentional about the questions that I'm asking. And I encourage you to do the same thing. Because when you ask yourself very pointed questions, you get answers. When you ask yourself the question, why am I so miserable? You will find answers to why you are so miserable. But if you ask yourself the question, how can I be blissfully happy? Or how are other people blissfully happy even though they have less than I do I, you start to look for whatever question it is that you asked. So I ask myself very strategic questions, like what would it take to build a billion dollar company in the next 10 years? And then you tune in to those who have built billion dollar companies in the last 10 years. Or another great question I ask myself is how can I shave off 10 years of my goal to own the Cleveland Indians? I want to own them before I'm 55 years old. That's 30 years from now. How would I have if I wanted to own them 10 years from now? Hmm. Now it's just a question. We don't have to put any emotion to it. We don't have to put any difficulty to it. The temptation for me, and I think this is the case with a lot of people, is that we ask yourself the question, then we get afraid of the question, and so we ignore the answer. We ask ourselves, what would I, what would it take to build a $10 million company? And then we think a thought, we get afraid of the thought that we just created and so we then bring it down. Or we ask yourself a different question. Well, here's a way we could replace that. We could ask yourself the question, how do I build a 10 million dollar company without sacrificing my lifestyle or doing anything that compromises my morals? That's a different question because then you tune into something that is more in line with who you want to be and what you want to build. So asking very strategic questions and resisting the temptation of putting any emotion to them frees you up to think creatively and, and look for new solutions. Now, you will not have answers within a few minutes of this, but by repeatedly asking this question, you will be tuned into answers when they show up. Now, depending on your level of thinking, your questions will obviously change when I was before I was a millionaire. I would ask myself the question all the time. How do I become a millionaire? What do I need to do in order to become a millionaire in the next however many months or years? Now it's different. It's what's the fastest route I can put myself on to achieve the net worth that it will take to own the Cleveland Indians or attract the the investors that I'll need in order to put a package together to buy the Cleveland Indians? This is a different question. Now I did not expect to be able to be confident asking myself that question at age 27, but I'm starting to think about it now because I want to be tuned into those answers. That does not change the.

I'm not shutting down any businesses right now because of that question, although that has been the case in the past. I have shut down businesses in the past because as I started to think long term I realized that certain businesses were not going to get me there. But that's not the case right now. It's more what do I need to do with this business to get it on the path to achieving the net worth that I want in order to acquire the Cleveland Indians? Now.

Most people don't think like this. Most people think very small. So there's actually less competition when you think really big. Most people are not willing to ask themselves these questions. Most people are not willing to play at a level.

That it takes in order to really disrupt a market. There are really two factions of business. There are the major players and there are the scraps. The major players own most of the market share in an industry. And then there's the rest. Most people, especially solopreneurs, Internet marketers, people who are building cash flow businesses are going after their piece of the scraps. In the last two weeks I was working with Amazon and E commerce entrepreneurs at here in Austin, Texas and working hands on in their business in my my events which are called the next level. And one of the things that we talked about is how to think like a major player because everyone who is scrambling to just rank on Amazon for keywords, they're settling for the scraps. They're not building a business, they're building. They're trying to attract as many scraps as they can. They're not thinking like a major player. That is most Amazon and E commerce entrepreneurs right now.

This is the precursor to major consolidation which is already happening. And if you are not willing to think like a major player then you will be settling for the scraps. Now there is Plenty of cash flow to be had, going after scraps. There's plenty of cash flow, but there's very little market disruption that happens. You can't really build a sustainable, acquirable business settling for scraps. You've got to be disrupting the market. And that means thinking outside of the pool and that everybody else is thinking in. Now what's interesting is that when you settle for scraps or you are trying to build a small business, that can be really hard. There's a really high failure rate for that. But going all in to build a major company or really any goal, going all in makes it really easy. A because you are completely focused on whatever that is and B, because you put yourself in the minority of people who are willing to do that. Most people are willing to put their toe into the water to settle for scraps and to go after the same pool of cash that everybody else is. Very few people are willing to go full hundred percent building a real business out of whatever model it is that they're following. It's really hard to do things 99% of the way. It's really easy to go 100% of the way. So one of the ways that you can start to train your brain to ask these empowering questions, to look at a more empowering path, is simply asking yourself the question, what would it take for me to be the number one person in my industry? Regardless of what type of business you have, regardless of what model it is that you're following, asking yourself the question, what would it take to be number one? And then looking at the people who are number one and how they got there, is a great way to start to train your brain to look for much bigger things. Now if your goal, if what you want is to be making $10,000 a month, then you may not need to be number one in your industry. But if you want to think big, if you want to have a large business, if you want to transition from a cash flow business to a market disruptor, these are questions that you need to ask. Now let's talk for a second about why this is relevant. Because I know that if you listen to Freedom Fast Lane, you usually fall into one of two camps. You either want to be an entrepreneur or you are an entrepreneur and you are aggressively desiring or working on growing your business to the level that you want. If you are wanting to be an entrepreneur, it is very empowering to ask yourself the question, what do I need to think about in order to achieve X? And then multiplying that by however much you want, and saying, okay, how would I need to think if this did not scare me, if this was normal for me? What would I need to learn or get good at in order for this to be normal, in order for this goal to normalize for me? And by doing that, you train yourself to think much bigger. I can't tell you how many people say things like, all I really want is to make five or ten thousand dollars a month. And my reaction to that is usually not what people expect. Because when you think at that level, and that is your ceiling, achieving that tends to be difficult because you're shooting kind of low and you're probably going to settle somewhere lower, which is going to make you feel stuck, which is going to make you say that quote stuff didn't work, which is going to make you feel like a failure, which is going to train you to think even smaller because you don't have the self confidence to think bigger. And beyond that, well, let's short circuit this process. Instead of saying, I want to make five or ten thousand dollars a month, ask yourself, how would I need to think in order to earn 50 or $100,000 a month? Because when you normalize that, making 5 or 10 is not only normalized, it's really easy because you could do half of what you were thinking about at $100,000 a month and far exceed the goal that you had set for yourself. So achieving the first goal is much, much easier, which empowers you to move on to the next level and the next level. But most people settle. They put their sights on something so small that it makes it hard to achieve. So they fail, they feel like a failure, and then it is a downward spiral into I can't do this or something is impossible. Well, how would you need to think in order for it to be possible? At one point, owning the Cleveland Indians was a impossible dream. Now it's possible. I don't know the how looks like yet. I'm starting to see it. It's starting to come into view. But I don't know what that path looks like exactly, but I'm starting to see it. It's starting to come into view. Now, for those of you who are entrepreneurs, I know a large percentage of you are either on Amazon or you are like Amazon as an idea.

And you've heard me talk about things like market consolidations several times. The way that you survive a consolidation is by thinking bigger, thinking beyond those who get pushed out during a consolidation. You see channels rarely go out of style. Radio is still around. Video did not completely kill the radio star.

It's an old medium. It has changed, but it is almost never replaced. I had a fear that things like mobile would destroy the Internet. No, mobile just has its own channel and desktop computers have their still have their place too. Mediums and channels rarely go extinct. They just. They just change. So when a market consolidates, it doesn't mean it goes away, it just means it changes. But in order for you to compete there, you have to start thinking like a bigger company. You have to ask yourself different questions in order to really succeed and to be a major player rather than settling for the scraps. This matters for a couple reasons. One, because I'm going to be doing a future episode that is all about the consolidation and what to do in a consolidation. Because the consolidations here. Also because I work with Amazon and ecommerce entrepreneurs here in Austin, Texas and an event called the Next Level. If you have a business that is successful but not at the level that you want, I work intimately with about 10 entrepreneurs at a time to come up with strategies to 2, 5, even 10x where you're at and become a major player rather than settling for the scraps. I don't work with everybody, but you can apply@event.freedomfastlane.com and finally, for those of you who have been asking me for the last six months, I am going to be opening the tribe coming in a few weeks. Now, it's a little bit different now, but it is going to be opening for a short window in April. And the reason why it's opening again is because the changes that I had planned making are not complete yet because I had a thing called a baby come to fruition. So that baby is due in June and as a result my life was thrown off a little bit. So the changes that were intended are not completed yet. Some of them are. But we're going to be doing one more round of coaching before all the major changes are made and things are really different. So there are some slight differences that I'll share with you on a future podcast. But it is going to be opening. But in order to I want to preface those of you who are thinking about joining the tribe that you should not join if you are in the modality of thinking about settling for the scraps. That doesn't apply anymore to the type of businesses that we teach inside of the tribe. So we work with people who think at a higher level. So if this, if your intention is to settle for scraps, please do not join the tribe. You will. You will not see success because those who are really successful are those who are willing to ask themselves the question questions of how do they go beyond to the next level? How do they stretch themselves to build a real business rather than how can I extract as much cash from a method as possible? You will fail if that is your methodology, regardless of whatever type of business it is that you're trying to build. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic on how I would love to hear you ask the question Question have you been settling from mediocre results because you haven't been willing to ask yourself questions that stretch you? Have you been struggling because you are trying to settle for scraps rather than thinking like a major player? Have you been holding yourself back because you haven't been willing to look at what it takes to grow a really sustainable company and instead you've been thinking about how much cash can I extract from something which has kept you stuck and prevented you from growing? Would love to hear if that has come up for you as a result of listening to this episode. You can leave a comment over at the show notes@freedomfastlane.com There is more to come on this topic in the future podcasts coming up next. Thank you so much for listening to this one and I'll see you on the next show.