What I learned from my friend's $100,000,000 EXIT... (not what you think)

I want to make this video for everyone who is watching this. That is 24, 28, 32, 38. I'm 34. So I guess I'm making this video for myself too, as a reminder of how much things can change in a very short period of time. And so many times in entrepreneurship, we spend our energy and our focus looking at the accomplishments of what other people have done after a five or ten year run. And we're looking at it and comparing it to where we are at the beginning of a new journey or the beginning of a new chapter, or when you're 24 and you're looking at what Mark Zuckerberg had done when he was 24, all of a sudden there's this big gap between what one of the most successful 24 year olds in history did versus what you did. And that game goes on throughout our lives where we measure ourself up against what other people have accomplished and then we feel bad about ourselves rather than getting excited about how much can be created in a short period of time. And I want to share a story with you that happened recently here at my house when I had a meetup of some of our investors and our entrepreneurs. And the story ended here at my house in a conversation with a man and talking about how successful he had been. But our relationship started back in 2013 when I first started talking about building brands and selling on Amazon and starting e commerce businesses. And I had this small little group of people that I said, hey, I'm gonna be going on a new journey. I'm gonna be starting something brand new. And I'd like to bring 25 people into a mastermind who also wanna go on this journey. And the first person to sign up was this man in his early 40s who had an interesting network and an interesting background, but was ready to start a new chapter. And this is the same man who was in my house nine years later for a meeting of investors and entrepreneurs. And he told me what was really happening when I was on the phone with him back in 2013. I didn't know this part of the story, but he told me that when we were on the phone in 2013, he had just lost everything. He was literally starting from zero. He had been successful. And then he lost it and lost his relationships and was starting from scratch. And he decided to go on a new journey. Keep in mind, this is a man who was starting over in his 40s. So he was not 24 or 28 or 32 or 38. He was starting over with A brand new network in his mid-40s. Now, he and I worked together closely for the first year or two that he was on this journey. And then we fell out of touch and we didn't talk except a text message once a year or so. And he would come to our yearly events to stay in touch with our community. But we, we weren't close for several years until one day he decided that he wanted to be an investor in the capitalism.com fund, which is my fund for investing in the next generation of million dollar success stories. And while he was at the first meeting for the fund, he said, did I ever tell you what happened with my brand? And I said, no, we haven't been in touch in a few years. And he said, well, let's just say that I had a nine figure exit. For those of you who are bad at math like I am, nine figures is $100 million. And he didn't tell me the exact amount, but he obviously owned some of that. And he had a nine figure exit a few years after being in this small little group of peers that I mentored who were starting over and going on a new journey. Now some people will hear that story and they'll say, well, you were early to E commerce, you were early to Amazon, you were early to building physical products brands. And I like to remind people of two things. One, there's more opportunity today than existed back then. Now it's not as a wide open west as it was before. It takes more maturity to succeed in that marketplace. But the marketplace is far bigger than it was back then. There's far more resources available now. There's far more tools available now. There's things like Shopify, which didn't exist back then. There was. There's things like YouTube ads which didn't exist back then. There are way more resources available today than existed back then. And second, you're always at the beginning of something. You're always at the beginning in the early stages of the next chapter. So it's tempting to look at other people's success and come up with reasons about why they were successful, but the real reason they were successful. Sometimes it's luck or timing or who they knew, but most of the time it's because someone started a new chapter, they started a new journey, and they gave it everything they had for a few years. And when they're willing to be in the dirt and the grime and doing the hard work for those few years, things can change very, very quickly. I've only seen it hundreds of times I've only seen it in my own life. And it's interesting. The years that I spend beating myself up over where I think I should be versus just being where I am and working hard, that's the difference maker. If I'm bemoaning where I want to be, then it makes it a lot more difficult to get there. But if I am just focused on what's right in front of me, I get to where I want to go much faster. And this is so true with entrepreneurs who spend years looking at other people saying, huh, that's the way to success. That's the way to success. Which usually to them means money. That person's making a lot of money, so I'll do that. That person's making a lot of money, so I'll do that. But it has no reflection of what they want, who they want, or how they want to create. And so they stay in this perpetual stuck mode of trying to chase after the results of other people rather than just saying, I'm starting a new chapter and I'm starting a business and I'm going all in and I'm gonna spend two to four years being in the grunt and the dirt figuring it out. One story that comes to mind that's a great reflection of this is one of our current students, Damien. Damien graduated from our incubator knowing what his product was going to be, knowing who his manufacturer was, but experiencing all kinds of delays. This is at the height of all of the supply chain issues where Damien is trying to get prototypes and product. And he got delayed again and again and again and he had every reason to quit. And then Damian finally got a product he was really excited about. They were late night snacking cookies with sleep enhancing ingredients in them that wouldn't ruin your sleep. Once he was finally happy with his prototype, well then he had to place a really big inventory order because his manufacturer gave him really high minimum order quantities. So he had to put in his entire life savings to bet on this thing. That would have been another reason to quit. And yet he kept going. Well, then he didn't have an audience, he didn't have anybody to launch to that would have been a reason to quit. So he spent the next two months documenting his journey, which is exactly what we teach our students to do. Document your journey as an entrepreneur so that you build up raving fans and connections and you make relationships with influencers and investors. You just document the entire thing. And within two months, Damian had thousands of people on a launch list ready to buy his cookies. Now they're still not ready. At the time of this video, he just pre launched them and he pre launched them with $10,000 in pre orders in five days. Now that's a cool headline, right? $10,000 in pre orders in just five days. But what they don't see is the late nights of Damian wondering, am I on the right path? Am I doing the right thing? Like I'm gonna put my life savings into this thing. I don't have any audience, I don't know how to promote on TikTok. Why is anybody going to listen to me selling cookies? Is there even, even any margin in that? Is this a good idea? They don't see that mental loop playing over and over again for a frickin year. They don't see the grime and the grunt. They just see $10,000 in sales in five days. You know what else they'll see? They'll see when he has a $10 million exit six years from now when he'll be 27, that's what they'll see. And they'll talk about that. Oh, he got in at the right time, right before the cookie boom. He got in early, right before the TikTok boom. He got in early, before it was oversaturated with nighttime snacking cookies. That's what people will say. But Damian had every reason to quit before he started and he just kept going. And I'm so proud of this kid. These are the people that I root for. I recently had this realization where I noticed that when someone buys a course of ours, or if they buy our challenge, which is a five day challenge, a hundred bucks, map out your million dollar business. Only about 1% of people ever do anything with it. 1%. 1% of people who buy something and say, I'm going to make a change, I'm going to start something, I'm going to do something. Ever do anything. And you know what else is interesting? 1% of the world are millionaires. Tell me there's not a correlation there. And the only difference is some people use all of the evidence of the world as the reason why they're not successful. And other people use all the evidence in the world of why they can be successful. Which one are you filtering for? Which one are you choosing the evidence from and making decisions to move forward from that place. If you're 24, 28, 32, 38, you got time. You could spend the next 10 years figuring it out and then hit and you'd still be ahead of my friend who just had a Nine figure exit, you'd still be ahead of most entrepreneurs because the greatest number of entrepreneurs start in their 40s. So if you are under 40, you're ahead of the curve. If you're under 50, you're right on track. If you're over 50, you've got experience, you've got a network, you probably have more capital. So if you're like me and you have found yourself comparing your results to the results of standout successes, just remember, you're early. You're early in your life, you're early in the marketplace, you're early to the next trend. And when you can take that perspective, it's easier to relax into that and to focus on what the next domino is in front of you, which may be joining a mastermind, or it may be promoting that product really hard or, or it might be having that hard conversation. And those dominoes become the path to the success. And the irony is the process of pushing over those dominoes is the best part anyway. Some people just don't realize that until they're at the end of their journey. You got time. You got lots of time. If you have your $100 million exit or your eight figure exit nine years from now, 12 years from now, you will not spend any time saying we should have happened faster. You'll look back on the exhilaration of the journey. So get into that place now and just know that it's gonna happen. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com if you would like my help. I help entrepreneurs build million dollar businesses. I have a free video series. It's called Finding the perfect business and it's what I believe is the perfect business for entrepreneurs to get to. A seven figure business. So you can find that for free. It's four videos, totally free. You can find that around this video. Thanks for watching. Appreciate you. See you in the next video.