When I Struggle To Take My Own Advice (Love Line For Business)

Hey, capitalists, buckle up. We're about to take a deep dive into Ryan Daniel Moran's brain. Business lessons he's learned over the last year, the growth he has been experiencing through helping other entrepreneurs grow million dollar brands and recognizing his own blind spots. In this episode, he was pushing in the hot seat by Bram and Greg on their podcast Loveline for Business, which was kind of birthed within the 1% capitalism.com community. We started doing these hot seats informally within the group to help people get unstuck. And it's morphed into this great podcast where the boys help entrepreneurs reconnect with loving their work and moving past roadblocks. It's been really cool to see this podcast really take off. So go subscribe to Loveline for Business for more case studies like this. And if you'd like to join us in the 1%, just visit capitalism.com1 and we'll see you on the inside. Let's do it.

So Bram and I agreed that you will be the last guest who gets to kind of set direction of the format here. We're going to force everybody else into our format, but you have the option to do what you want today a little bit.

Greg. No teaching. No teaching.

I even know how to follow up from there. You know, this is one of those opportunities where you could either put me on the hot seat and talk about like, Brian, you brought up my last couple emails, right? Sharing. I'm not quite sure what to do next. So you could put me on the hot seat.

We also just talk very openly. Like, I feel very raw about this.

Spot I'm in as.

An influencer where I'm supposed to have an opinion, but if I have the wrong one or if I don't have it or if I share the wrong way, it's career suicide. And so it's like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. And I'm like, I don't, don't know what to do here.

So it's like this is the first time I've ever felt not comfortable sharing my opinions, but yet I want to. I think it would be really helpful to. And so there's that to wrestle with. Or we could just have an open chat. So there's a couple different routes we could go. And I'm. I am comfortably uncomfortable with. With any of them, so. Awesome.

Yeah. So I think we should probably do a combination of all three and just see where that goes. I think that'll be probably the, the most interesting conversation I'm not worried about us being able to dig into sort of what's holding you up, because that's something you talk about openly and that's never been an issue so present. I mean, I don't see you as someone who feels the need to present something that you're not. So I'm not worried about that either. And.

As speaking about comfortably uncomfortable, me and Greg, so we want to do sort of origin episodes and we're trying to figure out some of the people that we're bringing on that are uncomfortable talking about themselves but have things to.

Give us. Maybe it'd be interesting for them to interview us. Meaning I'll go in the hot seat and Greg will go with someone and vice versa. And the thought of that, because I want to answer really honestly makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

Which is, I think is, which is. Which only proves to me that I must do that as soon as possible.

I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I, I still think your, your long term positioning for getting bigger name guests on is just have them be a guest on Loveline. You know, you put some, a fourth person in the hot seat. You've got three people who are going. Just my unsolicited opinion.

I think, I think you're right. We're still sort of. If we had a better pipeline for guests, then sort of matching those two up would be easier. I think that's something that we're trying to figure out. But hey, dude, we're one month in.

We've got 400 downloads.

Good.

Your, your. The fact that you, you helped me out a lot yesterday because I was feeling a little butthurt about only having 14 five stars and five reviews. And then I thought, wait a minute. But here's, here's a guy who can reach a few more people than I do and he still needs to hustle to get from 35 to 50 reviews. Just the way it goes.

Yes, that's right.

So I, I really appreciated that perspective.

Good. That was very helpful because yeah, I do. It got a hustle, right? Yeah, we're, we're. I'm still personally reaching out to everybody who goes to capitalism.com best and, and ops in.

Yeah.

Right. So like my strategy there is like go one to one with those people.

Yeah.

You know, it is. It's always a grind at the beginning of any new thing. The only thing that changes is that sometimes you have more assets.

That's right.

I'm about to start some new companies. I'm going to be grinding for the first two years and I'll have my audience and my email addresses and my connections. But I'll still have to ask and pound that pavement. It'll happen faster than if I had none of that. But I'm still going to be calling in favors and doing podcasts and sending emails and sending thank yous and asking for reviews. And.

Are you. Go ahead.

I was going to say I'm curious how that feels because, I mean, you haven't. You've done it, but you haven't done it for a while. And so you're kind of starting a lot of this over. And I'm just wondering if that. If it's excitement or dread or something in between or what.

I can't wait.

That's what I thought.

I'm so excited.

I mean, it's the best part.

Because if you think about how our brains work, our brains measure progress. Progress equals happiness. And the biggest spike, the biggest change, the biggest delta is at the beginning. You know, you're going from zero to 1 million. That's infinite growth. Your brain is like, oh, my God, it's freaking out with excitement. It's the most fun. And then you go from 1 million to 5 million. You're like, whoa. And then you go from 5 to 15. It's like.

Isn'T that ridiculous? I mean, it makes a lot of sense, but it's. It's always funny to me how predictable.

Things are and our behavior is. And one of the reasons I. I'm excited to talk to you today is because I think.

Looking from the outside, you could be perceived as someone who's got everything figured out, cracked. You crack the formula. It's all. It's all sort of lined up. Yet I think the perspective of realizing that everything more or less stays the same and you just become increasingly more comfortable with yourself.

Is really helpful. And I think people need to hear that.

Yeah. I mean, Brooke beats me up for this.

Yeah.

Brooke Castillo is one of my best friends in Austin, and I give her permission to be lovingly unkind to me.

Or I should say lovingly, not nice. And I mean, she calls me out for this, which is, Ryan, you still think that when you've got 10,000 members or you've sold a million books or whatever, that you think life is going to feel differently.

I agree with you. And before we continue, I'm just going to insert that for those of you who have just joined us. We're talking to Ryan Daniel Moran.

We're not going to force. Force Ryan to give us five minutes on where. Who he is and where he's from. If you go on the Internet and find Google Ryan Daniel Moran, you're welcome. And if you'd like to save five years worth of listening to free content, you can buy his new book, 12 Months to 1 Million. It's a very, very good summary of everything else he's ever put out there. It will save you a lot of time.

Thanks, Bram.

All right, so we got that out of the way. Brooke, by the way, if you don't want to waste some of your time listening to his free content, the double episode with Brooke Castillo from, from recently is probably one of the best out there. I've listened to that four or five times and it still fucking blows my mind every single time.

So I'm curious from an outsider's perspective. When I was recording it, I was like, there's no way anybody else is going to be able to get what I'm getting out of this experience. And I, and I've been. And I wrong. So, like, lesson number one, you never know what content is going to connect. But I'm sitting there going like, is, are people going to think I'm crazy for entertaining the idea that you have to believe something before you can see it or, like, believe it before you can wrap your thoughts around it, like choosing the beliefs that you want to believe. And so I'm curious from an outsider's perspective, what connected with you about that episode?

So, so I, I don't know what happened to your brain while this was happening. What was very clear is that very significant things were happening. So that's. That sort of was an indication.

Sometimes you need to hear. Let me put it differently. I don't think, I think we already know most of the things that we need to know, but we spend most of our lives struggling with resistance to it because it, it doesn't fit whatever thought patterns we have. Right. It's very difficult to listen to your gut. It's something that, you know until you start going to school and then you get it beaten out of you and then you spend the rest of your life trying to reconnect. That's what all of this, the what, what most of our lives are about. But how could you possibly do anything without imagining it? And, and, and, you know, one of the most significant things I've learned in, in the last couple of years is realizing that if I'm in a situation I don't want to be in, and I imagine the situation I want to be in, and now I'm willing to eat shit in order to get to that situ that situation I want to be in. I'm just setting myself up for, for suffering for another couple of years. It's unnecessary. I can already be in that future situation just by deciding to be there. And then the only thing that might be missing is the actual dollars, the actual accolades, the actual doing thing. But everything else around, that walking around, feeling as if I have already reached everything that I want to do, I can do that right now. It's just a thought. Now, that's very easy to say. And then you try and practice it and you get lots of resistance.

But that's just, that's just being a human being, I think.

And all the resistances that come up are also just other thoughts.

That's right.

So, Ryan, you. You interviewed Brooke about a year ago also?

Yeah, it's about a year ago, yeah.

And what I took from that episode, what. So I've been struggling with, with something for a long time kind of this, this, this tension and conflict between the, what I want to call like the hustle mentality. It's like you've got to set these super high goals. You've got to just pound, pound, pound. But then on the other side, also realizing that when you hit those milestones, it's not going to change your level of happiness. Like, I knew that. But then it's like, well, what do we use for ambition and drive and motivation, right? What's the right answer? Is it present contentment or is it going after achievement? And what Brooks said in that episode was basically, you have to believe both at the same time. You have to simultaneously believe that you have to be happy today because today is as good as it will ever get. And at the same time believe that tomorrow is going to be the best day of your life every single day. And I was like, what?

You know, I'm doing the mind blown braingasm thing here. And I have been just holding that in my head ever since, and it has completely changed my level of happiness. Truthfully, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life every single day. But I also know all the cool things I'm about to achieve in the future. And it's just having that, giving myself permission to be able to believe two things that look like they're opposites but just own them both at the same time is life changing. So every time that you and Brooke get together and that conversation goes out on the airwaves, I dig in. There's always something there for me.

Well, the thing that I have learned both from Brooke and From, from other places as well. I was actually, I was speaking about this earlier this morning with, with my bro Nick Bro, who we were talking about how emotions are very much like muscles. We have to train them. We have to. We have to train them to be the experience that we want them to be. It is not that outside things dictate how we feel. It is that how we practice how we want to feel dictates how we perceive the outside things. Wow. What? Ow, my head. And so the, the, the thing to do today is to be as happy and excited as you can be.

Knowing that that is the hustle. For most people, that is a grind because they're unpracticed muscles, they're untrained muscles. And so it hurts and you're sore and it's difficult to slide into the practice of happiness and gratitude and excitement. But it just so happens that as you do that the things that you want become much more effortless because you don't have the angst around doing the work.

Because you are practicing all the things that you want. And by the time you get what you want, you're very well practiced to enjoy them.

Something like that.

That's awesome.

You okay, Bram?

Yeah, no, I'm. I'm braingasming a little bit.

I closed my eyes so that I could listen more carefully. And it's basically the same thing that Brooks say. They're not. It's not different. Right. It's just another perspective of looking at it. Why do you think it's so difficult to.

To describe and proscribe sort of the way of getting there to people that aren't there yet?

Well, for most of our history as human beings, we have thrived and survived on the efforting part of the experience, of the hard work part of the experience. It's, it's very recent that the ability to survive and thrive based on our mental capacity even exists. So we didn't have the opportunity or the room or even the thought to use the intellectual or the emotional side of our experience in order to grow and thrive. It was mostly about the physical side. And so we have mostly at this point achieved a state of enough abundance to where we don't have to physically work that hard in order to have the things that we want. And so we just entered into a new.

State of awareness or state of humanity, a new state of our evolution in which we're now practicing new parts of our brain that haven't been as necessary before. And they're new muscles and we've only had to practice them for like a hundred years.

Do you think that's.

Do you really think this new state.

Do you really think that's true? Because I'm not. Not to get too philosophical, but trying to figure out what constitutes happiness and what is a good life and how to get there is. Is as old as recorded human history. The fact that that goes along with a lot of sort of suffering that's been recorded during that same time. But I mean, that's. That's what Buddhism is about. That's what's. I mean, just understanding those two things is that's at least two and a half thousand years old, and it's probably 10,000 years old or as long as people sat around fires and figured out what it's all about.

Sure. So there's. There's the diff. There's a difference here of kind of the Buddhist contentment and then the contentment as it goes along with the desire and excitement of achievement. And so the achievement part is where over the last hundred years, we don't need to work so physically hard in order to achieve. And so there was more of like an opt in, opt out before it was you could work really hard and achieve or you could opt out and be content. Whereas today we're now in kind of a new paradigm where it's no longer required for us to work hard physically. And so there is a contentment while we also achieve, which is a new thing for us to have both of.

Them.

Okay, that makes sense.

Bram's not convinced.

He's not? No, I'm not. But I'm going to let it live for a little bit and maybe I'll.

Yeah. No, I'm just not buying it.

I love it.

No, let's not go there.

So maybe switching gears a little bit.

What? I'm just wondering, looking at the sort of the stuff you've been talking about lately about not being. Being sick and tired of doing.

Info.

Yeah.

Is that. What. Is that something that happened all of a sudden? Why. What made the penny sort of drop?

That's a great question. So I'd love. I'd love Yalls perspective on this because I. I think back to when you were at the house and we were. I think the three of us, a couple other people were sitting on the couch downstairs, and I was in a. In a nice way asking y', all, what the hell am I doing wrong? Is. This is like part. Here's part two of what the hell am I doing wrong? So.

My experience is that when we do one of our 1% calls or calls inside the tribe. It is absolutely effortless for someone to bring me a challenge and for me to see a different perspective and bring my set of experiences to help that person overcome those challenges. So great example is yesterday someone came on our Sunday call and he had just read my book and he was struggling with who is, who was. And in about six minutes we clarified his entire business and saved him three years of work. And he, and it was just so obvious by the end of the conversation what his business needed to be and he would have sat there thinking about it for three years. You know, I, I, I very confident I changed his, his trajectory. Effortless, completely effortless. For me to do that's fun, it's exciting. I love doing it and I can do it with almost any influence in any physical product brand. I can, I can see it in my own, I can see it in other people's. I'm working on a couple physical product brands right now where I'm like, well that'll be, that'll be an eight figure company. That'll be an eight figure, like it's effortless, no problem.

And then when I, but I would say at least half of my stress as a entrepreneur is like, how do I sell things to fund the growth of my own personal brand or of capitalism.com because capitalism.com doesn't have any physical products. We're a community.

And we sell some things to make the team sustainable, to have our systems and processes run. And I put so much thought into the.

Info side and, and last week, while on like this high about what these, one of these brands are that we're gonna, we're gonna release, I'm just like, I'm firing all cylinders. I'm excited, I'm mapping out the products, I can see the flows, I can see the launch plans. I know exactly how it's gonna hit $10 million in a few years. I turned a member of my team and I'm like, what the hell am I doing messing with all this info shit? Why do I even bother? And I processed that for a couple days and a friend of mine was like, oh, I know your problem. Your problem is you're Merlin. Like the hell does that mean? He's like, you're the wizard who can see everybody's future but your own.

That sucks.

What do I do about this problem? And his feedback was, you've either got to own the fact that your personal brand isn't going to make that much money, or you've got to do the deep inner work of finding out why you've got blockages there and not around physical products. Conversation about that. But that's kind of where I. Where I am in the current evolution of that thought.

So I have a third theory where that's concerned. I remember that conversation well downstairs. And the reason we were talking initially is because me and Greg were conspiring to get you to participate in the hot seat.

Yeah.

And the only reason we wanted to do that is for you to do exactly what you do so effortlessly in the 1% so that people there could get a view into what.

What you can get in the tribe. Now, that transformed into this podcast, and neither of us knew that that was going to happen. So that's already a gift. And now you've got community coffee, and you're doing exactly what we conspired to do. So that succeeded. But.

Why do you even think that you need to put out the info products in order to build the community? Because.

You probably see the statistics more than I do. But I can tell you that from the interactions that you've had in the group and the new blood you've gotten in there over the last three to four weeks has been unlike anything else. And the only difference is you stop putting out info products.

You're coming on once a week, and you're doing exactly what you love, and then you go away and you. I mean, you're not required, and you can choose how. How much or how little to be involved in the rest of the week, and you're still bringing so much value that nobody's questioning whether they should be there or not.

So, Bram, I. I can confidently tell you that it's been like maybe three weeks. It's the first time in my entire career that I've even entertained the thought that that was possible.

It's. It's the first time in my career that I have ever questioned the thought, questioned the assumption I must have info products in order to build a following. It never occurred to me that that was an assumption until, like, a month ago.

So, so, so you can understand some of my behaviors. I had an unconscious thought running in my brain that in order to have a following, you must have an info product that sells enough to be able to buy advertising in order to grow. The following.

Never, never occurred to me that that was an assumption. And other people could see it and they tried to communicate it to me, and I was like, couldn't hear it, couldn't hear it because the thought was running over over and over and over again.

Why do you think. But why do you think that is why? Because anybody else that would have presented the same scenario to you within five seconds you would have told them stop being a stop, stop, stop doing. Making things you hate doing because you're never going to attract people to it because you, you hate doing it. You, you love doing this other thing which, which people are also saying is they love it. So do more of that. Why is that so difficult?

Seems too easy.

So. So is.

I mean it's the same blind spot I've got when I'm working with somebody else, right?

Yeah.

Seems too easy. Mo most of us don't allow ourselves to slide into what's easy. It's. This is why Bram we go back to that. We're now in the first time in our human history where we don't have to effort in order to achieve.

And so it's by, by actually sliding into the ease and contentment we can have what we want more effortlessly. And, and I'm, I'm still getting it right. I have practiced thoughts from a decade ago too. So the only difference between me seeing it in somebody else and me seeing it in myself is I don't have the, I don't have a decade of practice thoughts when seeing somebody else. And so the act of seeing it in other people and doing this more often I think has actually given me the skill set to do it within myself.

I think you're running an interesting experiment right now without.

So first of all, the content, the info products that you put out are very good. You just happen to not like doing them right. But I do think people are helped when they're consumed. So you did this scholarship program.

A couple of months ago. So people go through this program called Million Dollar Brands and after they complete it, they basically put forth some evidence of effort and their fee was refunded. But then they also had an opportunity to get into the scholarship program where it was kind of a contest and there were, there were five winners who won some seed money. A lot of those people are now in the tribe. And so what I think what will be interesting to see is after this process you'll be able to ask these people about their experience and ask them, you know, self reported, you know, what, what was your, what was your growth from Million Dollar Brands? What was your growth from the experience of the tribe? Because these are kind of the two different things that you do, right? The info product where people are watching videos and such and it's kind of self taught versus interacting with you and interacting with one another in a group. And I think it will. My prediction is that it will be just overwhelmingly that the experience in the tribe was infinitely more helpful and valuable than million dollar brands. Not that million dollar brands is not great.

But what truly pushed them and just catalyzes their seven figure business creation is the experience of you doing what you like to do.

So hopefully after you can kind of look at these two things then you'll actually have evidence. You'll actually allow yourself to believe the fact that you can just do the one that you enjoy if you wanted to.

So let's even back up a step further because the two of you participated in kind of my tribe experiment when I just did it for like 12 weeks or whatever it was. And that was the first time that I can recall in which I didn't have like, this is what I'm gonna teach. That was the experiment in and of itself was like, could I just show up and talk people through what they're going through and it'd be valuable and universal feedback was it changed our lives.

But had you told me that beforehand, I would say, nope, too easy. Gotta have an agenda, gotta have a. Gotta have this. Gotta have.

But sometimes, sometimes in order to do things that are unfamiliar, you need to. To some it's. It's called faking it till you make it sometimes. But it's. I don't like those. I don't particularly like that way, but it means the same thing. It's like you have to practice something that feels unfamiliar. You can put like, convince yourself going forward, I'll just do what feels easy because I've seen enough evidence in other people that it must be true. It just feels really foreign to me. So why can't. Why is that difficult?

So I don't know why it's difficult, but I think it's the opposite of faking it till you make it. I have stopped faking it right now. Faking before I wrote an email about this a couple of days ago or it was like before I would have thought about here's the stack that I'm going to give this person on everything that they will get when they join my program.

And now I just tell them what I'm actually willing to do.

So one is like, I'm thinking about what do I need to do in order to get this to give me money. That's one. And the other is here's where I can actually, here's what I'm. Where I'm actually willing to meet you. And if that works for you, awesome.

And what I have found is that I actually sell more when I just speak the truth. Just like here's, here's how I'm willing to help. No, I can't compromise from this because every time I do it feels gross and then we resent each other and.

I over promise and, but is that surprising to you?

Not. Well, not on the other side of it. It would have surprised me had you told me it before beforehand.

Why? Because even before, like half a year ago, it wasn't that you were without experience. It wasn't that you were without having help other people breach this gap. Why. And I, and I think you've provided value before without having everything planned out. I imagine. I mean the first, when you did the tribe experiment, it wasn't the first time that you worked sort of off the cuff.

Right.

Right. So, so why.

I think I'm still trying to dig at and maybe it's, it's, it. We're not going anywhere with this is. I'm still trying to figure out also for myself, why is it so difficult for us to follow our advice if, if we know what we need to do and then we continue slipping out of it. Right. We know what makes us happy because we've been happy before, even if it was one month out of a year for that month. We know what we did if we look back. So all we need to do is go back to doing what we did during that one month, during the year. Why, why do we keep on slipping in and out?

Because we don't value what's easy in our own minds.

There you go.

We don't, we don't value.

Where, where we are.

Where our superpower is because we consider it easy. It's. I, I, I use this analogy a lot. Like give any idea how much it surprises me that people don't like to speak on stage. This shocks me. It's like I can't. How do you. There's a stage and people watch you and at the end they clap. Like, what could be more fun than this? And people are like, like people on my team are like, you just go on stage. You have.

And it shocks me that there are people who think about constructing a stage. It just absolutely shocks me that anyone would enjoy that. But there are people on my team who think about that and love doing that stuff. And so what we consider easy for us, we just assume is easy for everyone. But of course that's not the case. And so we tend not to value.

What we consider easy for ourselves. We, we value what is hard and it's what we see other people doing.

And we go that, wow, they're so good at that. That must be really hard. And so we value other people's hard work rather than value where we're really good and what's. What's easy for us. And so I think, I think we're just trained to see other people's changes. Genius. And equate genius with being hard.

And it's hard to make that, that slip back into that. Thought's been running for a long time of it's got to look like this, it's got to be hard, it's got to be this way, it's got to. And so, but the, the truth is what somebody's really good at is rewarding for them in some capacity.

There was an example that came up yesterday. I was talking to, to one of my parents. Oh, I remember. I was talking about how I got a lot of validation in middle school for being good with computers.

I tell the story in the book. When I was picked on in middle school, I would go hide in the computer lab and people would be like, oh, that's so sad. And I'd be like, are you kidding? I'm so thankful that I went into that lab and I learned HTML programming, which is how I built my first Internet business. It was like, it's like the coolest story ever to me. And, and the thing that gave me momentum to that was I was somewhat good at it and it was easy for me. And then I got validation for it. And I think we undervalue where we.

Have that natural draw to an interest.

Because we just assume that it's easy for everybody else. Computers was easy for me in middle school. Typing was fun for me, and I was typing 100 words a minute in high school. It was fun. I felt naturally drawn to it. You didn't have to motivate me to do it. And it led me to the next stage of my career. And then for a while I forgot that it's supposed to be fun and easy and I made life really hard on myself. And now I'm remembering that again. And I can't wait to see what happens in the next chapter as I re practice this muscle.

What I think is so interesting about this is that I see echoes and parallels to kind of the different way that you teach doing physical product brands on Amazon. So a lot of people in that world teach that you have to have data, you have to have software, and then a spreadsheet is going to tell you what product to sell and what, what brand to build and who to sell to. And your approach is very different. You ask, you ask people, who do you want to serve? Who are you? You know, who are people like you? And you can serve people like yourself generally, because you know, the things that you want. And basically you're giving people permission to do the thing that they want to do anyways without needing some sort of piece of software to tell them that it's okay. And this has been one of the transformational things for me learning from you is that.

When somebody can align their interests and their gifts and talents with serving other people, then that's when things just blow up. And it, it, it. What you're talking about right now is you're basically saying that this is something. This is what you're trying to do in your own life. And this is kind of like the. I think the secret sauce for anybody trying to do anything is trying to align what it is that you love to do and what it is that you're good at doing with actually trying to help other people. And it's. Once all those things come together, then it's really hard not to succeed at what you're doing.

Well said. Yeah, well said. And, you know, I just have nothing to add. Greg.

Greg's got the best words we know.

I've been applying those words to some. To some new copy for our new ads. Bram, I think you've.

Yes, we'll talk about that later.

Oh, you're going to like the new ads.

Yeah. Podcast listeners, find our Facebook page. You're going to love our, our, our advertising wave that's about to hit.

You're gonna love it.

Right? You also mentioned. So one of the other things you mentioned before we, we start recording, Ryan, was that you're sort of struggling with how to, to juggle being a, A public Persona and, and speaking your mind.

Yeah, I'd love, I'd love your feedback on that.

So, shoot. What's, what's on? What's troubling you?

What's troubling me is that right now, as we record this, the whole world's an echo chamber.

And.

I have a perspective.

That I want to share.

But for the first time in my career as a public Persona, I actually feel.

Afraid is a good word to share my perspective.

And I also question if the world needs another perspective or if we're just adding to a bunch of noise right now. And, and I, and I'm concerned where.

You'Re, you're supposed to have an opinion, but it better be the right one if you don't have an opinion right now, you're part of the problem. But if you have the wrong opinion, you're also part of the problem. And if you have the right opinion, but you don't look like the people who are supposed to have the best opinions, then maybe it'd be better for you not to share it. There's just, there's just like no winning with sharing an opinion that doesn't fall into the echo chamber. And I'm finding it, for the first time in my career, difficult to navigate. Where is it appropriate to share your opinion versus where is it more appropriate to, to keep your mouth shut and to let.

Things evolve before you have anything of value to share one.

I don't know if you've ever, if you're aware of him, but if you haven't spent some time listening to Eric Weinstein.

He'S got a really interesting long form podcast. I think you'd, you'd enjoy an episode he did with what's his name. D. Do the, the guy from New York Times. I'll, I'll, I'll find it.

Okay.

But that's a lot about, about sort of what's happening to culture now and, and sort of the, the people that are at the, at the steering wheel and the fact that any kind of opinion that doesn't fit within two or three narratives that are acceptable, they just get kicked to the curb. Yeah, but, but that's something that's changing as the, I really find sort of his perspective on the way that the baby boomers keep on holding on to the levers of power and refuse to let go. Look at everybody running for president. They're all over 70.

They're all over 70.

Look at, look at, you know, people running universities. They're all over 70. This, this generation that's having a little hard time letting go. But as far as as whether to speak or not, what, what's your guts say?

I mean.

Depends on the hour right now.

Okay.

I mean, I mean, so I'm just kind of tuning in and my gut is saying, hang on for a second and share when you're not reacting, because right now I want to react so much.

That's sage. That's sacred program.

That was such a good question. What does my gut say? Because now I'm going to go on a riff. Hang tight for a second because my gut says chill for a second and share when you're in a good place. And when I say that out loud, I realize that all of my tension around this has actually been reactionary to how I'm feeling in response to other people. So, beautiful question, Bram. And I'm thinking about this morning. A good friend of mine who has a large audience posted a piece of content that was simply a scheduled piece of content that looked like all of this other person's content. It was just like. It might have been, like, highlighting what. I think it highlighted the podcast that they had scheduled for today. Like, that's it. Right?

And the.

And this person got taken to the cleaners in the comments for. I mean, some. Some of the posts were, when are you going to use your privilege to speak up against racism? And, I mean, that was the theme of the entire comment thread. There was. There was someone who said, I will not support this business anymore unless it will unequivocally come out in support of Black Lives Matter.

How is that helpful? Like, how. How is it helpful?

Like, it's just a.

It was just a regularly scheduled piece of content talking about the podcast episode that went out today. And. And. And so there's. There's like this reaction of, like, I guess I can't say anything right now, but you asked me that question of what does my gut say? Tells me that when I'm asking that question, I'm actually just reacting to other people's reactions. And that's what everybody is doing right now, is they're just reacting to the echo chamber. I mean, half of the violence that is happening is not about the situation. It is about somebody else's reaction to another part of the situation. And so we're all just reacting to one another, like atoms bouncing around in a chemical exchange, trying to figure out what the problem was. And so when I kind of just talked that out with you, I realized that the best thing that I can do is tune into my gut and get into a good spot. And when I'm in a good spot, I might have something valuable to say, because right now, it seems like. It seems like that if you're not reacting in the right way of everybody else's reactions, then there's just going to be a counter reaction to take you out, and only one team is going to win that, and we're going to call it history.

But the right thing to do is to tune in to where you are at your best and to speak from that place, which is almost always a place of love, unity, gratitude.

Togetherness.

Because if, to paraphrase something that we talked about the other day is.

If your instinct is to teach, shut the fuck up. Because nobody wants to be taught.

Yes, I'm going to interrupt real fast. I have two quick things to teach.

So first of all, I think we can all agree that decisions made from fear are generally not good long term decisions. They're short term decisions.

Right.

Dealing with survival. So when we're in a state of fear, generally our choices are either fight or flight. And those are fine short term, but they're usually not good long term. There's a third way that's good long term. And what that third way looks like is more like what Gandhi did in response to the situation he was in. He did not fight and he did not flee. It was a third way. Okay, so first of all, throwing that out there, just saying decisions made from a state of fear are, should generally be avoided. Number two, I had a discussion with Bram the other day in kind of a different context, but I think it's, it's relevant here. In my, in my view, there are only two kinds of public, public people. And you have to be either one or the other. It's, it's almost impossible to be both. So there are people who, who rally their troops.

Right?

We see this all the time in politics. There are people who are speaking to people like them. They're only speaking to people like them. They're purposefully polarizing of people not like them. And they're very effective at doing what they do. They gather an audience of like minded people, but it is impossible for them to speak to the other side in any kind of reasonable way. It's just, it's immediately dismissed. There are also people who can build bridges.

Right.

And so I think I, this is, this happens very rarely in politics, but maybe more often in other spheres. I think we might, we might see this more often like, like in religion, some people are trying to build bridges without rallying troops. It's like a different, a different thing. And so bridge builders are. I, they're willing to maybe take some flak from their base in order to reach out and, and try to find commonalities with the other side. But in doing so, they're going to get arrows in the back.

Yeah.

So.

As you decide how to show up here, you know, if and when and how. I think that just understanding those two distinctions is important because both roles are necessary really. But it's very difficult for a single person to be one and the other. You do kind of have to choose. And so just knowing that you're inevitably kind of going to end up as one figure or another, I think can kind of help craft and frame that decision. And the way in which.

The engagement is made, if that makes sense.

I just want you both to know that the last seven minutes of this conversation have been meaningfully impactful in my life because you. Your question, Bram, what does your gut say? As simple as that is was such a great reframe. And Greg, listening to hear you say that, obviously I want to be a bridge builder. It's like, obviously I want that. And right now I am not in a bridge building state.

I am. I am in a little bit of fear, I'm in a little bit of hurt, a little bit of anger for a multitude of reasons, right? Angry about the situation, angry about what people have said to me about the situation.

Hurt that some people that I love have reacted to me in a certain way when I've been actively trying to build a bridge with them.

And that doesn't help me build more bridges.

And so when I think about which of those two. If you can't be both, which you. Which you might be able to, but it'd be very hard to do both. Which do you want to be? Obvious that I want to be a bridge builder is obviously. So what's the best way for me to react to that is say nothing until I'm thinking, like, thinking and feeling like a bridge builder.

And then I will have something of value to share.

I have no doubt. And this. This whole idea that we have to have everything figured out 100% of the time is. Is what makes so many of us miserable.

The secret to being a human being is. Is understanding how messy that is and loving that. Because you can't. If everything's amazing all the time, it will have absolutely no value. So when you're in a rut, you can actually, with, with time and practice, you can learn to love the ruts more. You don't have to really be into them. But if you realize that the ruts are what gives the. The really good times its value as a contrast.

I think that helps a lot. Me, I mean, me personally, that's helped a lot. I. I try and remember that as. As difficult as that is sometimes.

Yeah.

I need a cigarette.

Good.

Mission accomplished.

Can. Can I jump into the woo for a second with you guys?

Please, please, please, please.

I've. I've, like, I've walked up to the pool of woo and yelled cannonball.

Okay.

And am like, like enjoying the sink down into the pool of woo and just, like, looking at what's around.

Have you been resistant to woo before and now it's new for you? Okay.

Oh, yeah, Right.

So.

I'm currently enjoying this thought. And when I look at the world through this perspective, makes a lot of sense to me right now. But you guys are familiar with the quantum theory that everything that exists is existing simultaneously, right? And that all possibilities exist simultaneously at the same time.

This is, this is like quantum theory of the world. Well, if that's true, then our brains are actually filters of all those possibilities to allow us to live into a time space reality. I always thought the brain was the creating mechanism. But if I go opposite and I go, well, if the quantum theory is right, then it means that everything is happening. What I'm doing is filtering all other possibilities except for one, so that I can have a time space experience.

And the way that we experience that is through contrast.

So our lows can only be as, as low as our highs are high. You know, our good experience can only be as good as our bad experiences are bad. And so our brains are actually filtering through contrast.

In order to tune into one of the infinite experiences of reality. Ow. What? I need a beer.

But I, I think biology backs that up. As far as the brains being a contrast machine.

And what do you think about it being a filtering machine?

Isn't that the same thing?

It might be.

Meaning.

Meaning.

Meaning that reality exists outside of your head. And, and Greg and I had this conversation the other day. All three of us are on a zoom call.

We're seeing each other and we're assuming that what each, each of us sees is the same thing that the other sees. And there is absolutely no way of proving that whatsoever. Right. So our entire lived experience is in our head. We imagine it's out there, but it's entirely in our head. So if that's the case.

Isn'T filtering and contrasting and all the rest of it the same thing? And does it matter whether or not it exists outside of our head? As long as we have enough common. As long as we have enough common language so that we can share experiences across heads, as it were.

Yeah.

Here'S what I'll add. So I think we can all acknowledge that our experience of reality is entirely dependent on our ability to perceive it. So we have things coming in through our senses, and we're assuming that our senses are telling us the truth, but we know this is not the case. Our eyes only see a very, very tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. Right? Our noses are not that good compared to dogs or something like that. Our ears are really not that good compared to bats. So we kind of have like this shitty little subset of senses compared to other animals, but we just have all this processing power that's attaching meaning to all of these, these things. And so for us to assume that all that exists are the things that, that we can directly perceive I think is the height of arrogance.

So of course it's possible for, for things outside of this physical world to exist. Right? And to say that they don't exist is absurd. There's no way to prove it. And it's, it's, it's kind of, it seems very close minded to assume that that's the case. And so I think opening up the possibility that there's just more out there that we will ever comprehend and just allowing that to be okay is. It's a really difficult thing for people to do. We want to feel in control. We want to feel, we want to feel in control. We want to feel safe. And acknowledging that what we understand reality to be might just be like this tiny little piece, it might be wrong to a large extent is very discomforting. And people don't want to be in that place. But I think when you open yourself up to that possibility, it just, it completely changes how you see the world, how you see other people.

So it's, it's, it's a, it's a difficult transformation, I think, to accept, but just starting to maybe dip your toe into the pool before jumping in. Cannonball. It's, it's worthwhile to dip your toe and see what you find.

It's too late.

He already cannonball.

I'm already cannonball.

That's it. He's all wet.

So I've had two conversations to reflect this recently. One was with C. Money who, who brought up the question. He said, do you know that, that dogs only have 30% of our eyesight, but their sense of smell is 10,000% more acute than ours? And, and so they, they have a completely different. And the brain is just the interpreter of that. So their reality is completely different than ours because their sensory perceptions are taking in a different set of data. And I was like, oh my, that hurts. Okay, so my real, like my sense of reality is. It's just one interpretation, just one filter. And then the other, the other conversation that really blew my mind is somebody brought up.

They brought up this guy here, my buddy, Jesus, and they said, can you imagine what would happen? Or actually, maybe it was, maybe it was George Washington. Same thing, you know, Jesus, George. So let's, let's go with George because it's a more modern example. So can you imagine if you gave George Washington my iPhone. Right. This isn't even the most updated iPhone, but if you give George Washington My iPhone 300 years ago, how he would react, he would think it was magic. What is this devil device.

That can call anyone in the world, access more information than watch videos immediately? Like, he's like, what's a video? What's a call?

And it's 300 years ago.

And it would look like, it would look like sorcery to Georgie.

So what is it going to be 300 years from now.

That it looks like magic and sorcery to us? And those two conversations have given me.

A lot of humility about my perception of reality and a lot of humility about the thoughts in my head because I realize.

That every thoughts valid and at the same time, because it's just my own interpretation, it's valid based on my own experiences and there's no way in hell I can know that it's actually real. It's only real in my brain. And my brain is operating on a limited set of data from my own experience. And so we might as well just choose the thoughts that feel good and empower us to move in the direction that we want.

And. Oh man, that's.

It'S, it's just, it's, it's, it's new for me.

I agree that we get to choose our thoughts and I think real meaning and power is attached to that when we are very intentional about the thoughts we choose and that the path that they lead us on.

Greg, you managed to make me shut up.

Wow. I, I can't believe that, that this is where we are with the, with the, the time mark that we're at. Because.

I feel like this conversation is probably owed like another hour or two.

And I don't think, I genuinely don't want it to end.

Well, we can continue another three hours. I've got time. That's why. And you're always welcome to talk to us.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure.

I mean.

I'm proud of this because it's a reflection of me living and practicing what we're talking about. I decided to do what was fun and easy and the two of you met and now you're doing what's fun and easy for you and a community is starting to build and a community starting to build really quickly.

I'm amazed and shocked at the amount of goodness that is happening out of our once a week community calls.

And just the fact of getting everyone together and doing this for our members is. I'm shocked at how fast the community is gelling. And so this is just like one piece of evidence. This podcast, this conversation is one piece of evidence of one person who decided to just let it be easy and see what happened. And now the two of you are doing it, and you've just begun, and there's already businesses and minds that are changing. And I think what we're showing is that there's evidence to conclude that when you do what is fun and easy, life can get really good really quick.

I think for me, watching people's lives change for the better in real time and having a hand in that in some small way, I can't imagine anything else on earth I'd rather be doing than being a part of somebody else's success story over and over and over again. And I feel like that's what that community is an opportunity to be. So I'm actually going to see if I can write into my will that they have to keep paying for the 1%.

After I'm gone, your great grandchildren will be debt slaves.

Well, thank you very much.

So I, I, I'm just going to talk this out. And this is just me purely asking the two of you for my for advice.

Sure.

I am currently operating under the, the theory that the way that and I publicly said my goal is to take the the 1% to 10,000 members and then next three years. And I love the thought of having 10,000 entrepreneurs who are living what we're talking about. Right. I mean, imagine the ripple effects that we can do together. Oh, I just, I love the thought. And so my strategy for getting the 10,000 members is going all in on the existing members, bragging about them, talking about them, highlighting them, with the understanding that the other people that resonate with those people will be drawn into the 1% without me having to sell it or do a bunch of dollar trials like I was trying to do for a while, or pimp it out on podcasts with the perfect copy like I was doing a year ago, or doing info products and launches, which I was doing up until like three or six months ago, and simply allowing the community to speak for itself while I stoke the flames of that community. That is my strategy and it's more uncertain than, you know, running funnels. And full disclosure, we do have a book funnel right now that is actually performing really well and I'm really excited about it because I wrote a hell of a book and I'm excited to talk about it, but I'm starting to.

Allow it to just be me focusing on building an awesome community and Since I've made that switch, the two of you have been very vocal about how much the community has improved. And so I just, I just wanted to open the floor for the two of you to give me feedback on the approach so far. And if you.

As, as members believe that to be the right approach, real.

Fast, you go, you want to go.

It'll be super fast. I feel like our conversation in the basement at the lake house was you giving us permission to take ownership of this group in a way that we could do this. We could tell other people about it. We could be in there interacting with people, helping people without worrying about, are we doing like, is this okay? Do we need permission? Are we doing, you know, is this what Ryan wants? So ever since then I've felt like, well, of course this is what this community should be. It should be about the people in the community being resources for each other and bringing in their, their friends who are like minded. And I think that that strategy is fantastic. Like Brian mentioned earlier, the last couple of weeks, the people that we've seen coming in, it's, it's astounding. I've never been a part of a group like this group is and it's still growing. So I think strategy good.

But to accelerate, could you simplify that, please?

To accelerate that. I think that if you have an opportunity to truly give everybody in that group permission to take ownership of the group and let this group be what you want it to be by doing what you're already doing, give generously and invite others who you think would benefit. And just you saying that explicitly, I think will even accelerate the process.

That's beautiful. I didn't know that that was such a moment for the two of you in that group. Thank you for telling me that.

So my perspective, one, are you still charging a dollar for the first month?

I've moved away from that. The page still exists, but we've. If you into doing dollar trials, right?

So if, if you're, if you're having trouble with. So let's say you turn that off and you're. It's now at 100 bucks and you're suddenly seeing uptake of that go away, then perhaps try it's a hundred bucks. But if you're really, really active the first month, your first month is free.

Sort of in the same way. So, so the way that you, you reeled me in into your entire ecosystem also the fact that I was aware of you for years was. I told Susan this when she interviewed me.

I needed something. So I found million Dollar brands. And I said, I'm gonna. I'm gonna suck the out of this. And then I'm gonna. The motherfucker is gonna pay me back. I'm just gonna finish it and I'm gonna, I mean, disconnect. I'll, I'll. I signed up for the 1% for $1, but said I. I had a reminder, you know.

Give up the 1% so that that doesn't take your hundred dollars.

And it, it took. Let. It took less than a week to realize that that was probably not going.

And.

Even before sort of the 1% turn into more of a community, it was a pleasure for me to pay my dues. Way of expressing my appreciation for everything that I'd experienced.

And I think that.

Getting people that are willing to risk at least 100 bucks to dip their foot in, that's not a bad filter. And then.

You know, if, if, if you can try and hold wanting 10,000 people in there and having only 5,000 people in there and be okay with both of them at the same time, I think that'll be really great. Because the other thing I think you should say is, anybody who doesn't feel like they're getting their money's worth, please let me know. You leave, I'll refund you for the last month, whatever you want. I mean, it's just. I mean, like, nobody should need to feel like they're captive somehow because they're one month away from getting their box or they're just about to release. Because someone asked me the other day, what's the difference between.

The free group in this group? And I told them, you can get all the content. I mean, you can get everything, practically everything that's in the 1%. You can get it outside the. You might have to work at getting a little bit more, but you can see the live feed from the coffee. You don't need to be in there. You just don't get in the community.

Yeah.

And that's. I mean, that's really what's worth it. Like the access to you, the fact that you decided to sort of make access to you stop that. Stop that. Being the premium product, I think is a very, very good decision.

Yeah, you just, you just said it really well, Bram, which was. I. We've talked about kind of the info product model a few times throughout this. It just has always felt icky to me to be like, I know something else that you don't know, but you have to pay for it. It just feels gross to me.

The double diamond just joined the double diamond circle, it's just.

It feels odd. And so. But what. What I can put. I. I don't like to hold secrets. I'm not good at keeping secrets. Don't tell me something you don't want me to tell somebody.

Ryan. There are no secrets. This whole idea that there's a secret, I mean.

And people, it's just a language, just like everything else. Anybody who claims to have secrets is for. Of.

I'm not even good at keeping my opinions secret, guys. So it's like I decided I was going to stay silent and then, you know, we talk for 45 minutes and now everybody knows my opinion on. On the world.

Yeah.

So that's how good I am at secrets. I can hold them for about 45 minutes. But. But what? I know that I can put.

Value is the wrong word. But like, I do have real restrictions of energy. It doesn't require energy for me to give information or to share or to interview or to talk or to hang out, but it does require my energy to focus and focus. You can only build so many relationships. You can only build so much of a container for structure. You can only focus on so many team members to be able to hold the lines of what's going on within a community. And so what I really have given myself permission to do is to give all information for. For free. You like, you can have it. Our main course, million dollar brands. You get your money back if you complete it. We stream our lives publicly on YouTube. All our. Like my podcasts. You're not. You're not gonna. You're not gonna learn anything new when you join my $50,000 a year mastermind than you would have gotten from the podcast. The only thing that's different is the focus that I can put on you and your personal attention and my team's attention and the group's attention. And so I've given myself permission to give absolutely freely and put containers on who shows up where and focus that attention and that cultivation, even to the point where, you know, I loved for a while.

Doing these posts on Instagram where I would say, like, how can I help you Put it in the comments and responding and calling people and like, I loved doing that stuff. Stuff. And then it got to be too much.

So I love to do it in the 1%. Now he's like, I put my. Those are the people who I know need it the most and are paying attention the most. And so I. I've simply allowed myself to give freely, but to do it within a structure and Hearing you reflect back that. That has been helpful. So thank you for that feedback.

I think the other thing you need is.

Valuable is to realize that everybody has a very lopsided relationship with you. Meaning.

You'Ve had anywhere from zero to a couple hours of interaction.

With us. Right. And all of us have had anywhere from zero to hundreds, if not thousands of hours of. Of exposure to you. And I think about this a lot about people that are sort of exist.

Out there, and I guess Greg and I are now turning into those people, too.

Where. Where the context is really lopsided. But in order to. To get value from these short interactions that we have that you have in the 1%, the more context around who you are as a person and how to read what you're saying and what you're not saying, that's. That's really, really helpful. It's. I mean, the way that I.

The more I know you, the better I'm able to.

Understand what you're saying.

Because. Because I've got context. And the same is true for Jason.

And. And see Money. His podcast has given me so much perspective on him as a person. It's amazing.

He's very deep.

Yeah.

And. And. And Jason, just watching him, he's been so short the last couple of weeks.

Weeks.

It's just been amazing. It's just so short.

I'm actually starting to worry that he's secretly funnier than I am. But he just.

But he just. He just lets it out in these very, very controlled bursts.

So.

Anyways, Ryan, I want to respect your time. I know that we're. We're way over our allotted time here, but we. Bram and I could go all day.

So let's do it again sometime.

Yeah. Cool. This has been. So, I have to say, for me, like, for me, this is like you having Gary Vee on stage at your first event. It's kind of surreal, but it's just been wonderful to get to know you a little better through. Through the tribe and the 1%. And I just want to thank you for, you know, the. The changes that. That you've helped me make. I'm definitely a different person than I was six months ago, and just so excited with what we've got coming down in the future here. And, you know, my friendship with Bram came about through you, so just that. That, you know, this is. This is what you. This is. This is what you want to do. This is. This is the fire that's lit. So I just, you know, we. We both owe you a huge debt of gratitude. So, so thank you for that and thanks for your time today, Greg.

What you don't know is that I reached out to Ryan the other day to thank him for creating the environment where I met you. So that's entirely mutual, buddy.

Cool. Cool. Look at us men sharing our feelings.

There we go.

Oh.

The gratitude is mutual, my friends. Thank you very much.

Excellent.

Ryan, do you want to take the last few moments to, to talk about the book or tell people where they should go, what they should Google to learn all about Ryan? Daniel Moran.

I wrote a book. It's a hell of a book. It's called 12 months to 1 million. It distills everything that I think I know about building million dollar businesses. And it's, it's a really good book. And you can find it at Borders Books.

And Books A Million and all other bookstores that have gone out of business in the last 10 years.

There's no place else where you can buy this book.

I'm sure if they look for it.

They'Ll find it somewhere. Yes. You just believe in something and your heart is pure. You can find it.

And if not, they'll get, they'll hit a really nice funnel.

Yes, that's true.

And by the second upsell, you'll even confess it's an upsell.

I think.

Did I share that with you? Did I tell you the story?

No, I'm just intuiting it. No, no, this is just, just my intuition.

Okay.

And a little, and a little information which.

Okay, yeah, got it.

Speaking of sharing, everything that you said before, you, you kept that in for about 20 minutes and then you told everyone.

I'm not good at secrets, everybody. There's the secret.

All right, man, this was a lot of fun. Thanks so much.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much.

Hey team. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please let me know on Twitter or Instagram. I'm Ryan Moran on Twitter and RyanDaniel Moran over on Instagram. And if you're looking to start a business or you know somebody who's starting a new journey during this crazy time, you're wondering, what am I going to do next? You're wondering, what do I do with my time? You're wondering, where's the world going? My new book, 12 months to 1 million is going to give you the clear plan to pick a winning product, to build a seven figure business and to become a successful entrepreneur. This is for those of you who want to live life on your own terms. For those of you who are struggling with a lack of clarity, who are wondering, what am I going to do next? We're wondering, what's the path to building a successful business so that I live life on my own terms, I can call my own shots, and I don't have to go back to work after all of this craziness is over? If you're the type of person who has to to be an entrepreneur, then you've got to read this book. You can get it on Amazon, or if you're in a position to order multiple copies, you can book that over@capitalism.com book I'm so proud of this, so proud of this community for all that it has done. Thank you so much. I hope you love the book.