YouTube Channel: @RyanDanielMoran

I want to tell you how to build a business that you can sell quickly and for a lot of money. I'm mapping out this speech in a hotel room right now. This is how I plan for a speech. Look at this. I don't do slides or anything. I find them super stressful. I just put all my notes here on a notepad and then I go up on stage and try to remember them. But listen, this is what I'm talking about on the stage at this event out here in Arizona. I think marketers and entrepreneurs are like the most powerful people in the world. But there's problem. There's this problem of entrepreneurs end up chasing the short term stuff rather than building something that's really lasting. Now let me tell you the counter to this. If you've been paying attention anytime in the last year and a half or so, there's a couple things that have happened that are really interesting. Number one, Amazon acquired Whole Foods for 13.6 some billion dollars. That's a sign of things to come.

Look at this. If someone like Bulletproof, Dave Asprey's company started as a blog, started as a podcast, started as a coffee. And now because of the relationships that he has and because he's killed it online, he's now in Whole Foods all over the world and is probably at some point gonna be like a billion dollar company. Valuations stay the way that they have been, right? Valuations have been crazy. But, but think about this. Think about some other brands in the last couple years. Remember RXBar, sold for more than half a billion dollars in four years. Or remember a company called this is the big one, this is the braingasm, all right? Dollar Shave Club sold for a billion dollars in five or six years. And they were built off, wait for it, YouTube advertising. Now here's the reason why I tell all of you this. Okay?

There's someone who I met at the Capitalism conference, I think it was last year, who had a profound impact on me. Not by anything that he particularly said, but watching what he does. His name's Brian Lee. He is the co founder of the Honest Company. And Brian and I just did a Q and A. He didn't do a big keynote. He and I just sat and talked and I talked with him a little bit backstage. We've kept in touch a little bit. And watching how he approaches things has really warped my brain. And it's made me realize that you as an entrepreneur, you as a marketer, you as somebody who's ascribing to something, are way More powerful than you realize. Because when I watch Brian and how he thinks about business, he puts good brands, good products in front of audiences and he basically operates, like my mentor Travis would say, like a producer. The producer being he recruits the person to run the company, recruits the influencer. He recruits people alongside this vision that he's building and that's how he builds companies. And this really, really kind of messed with my head because as an entrepreneur, I'm somebody who has always been in the grind, building everything myself. And there's like, you know, there's a badge of armor to that, obviously. But when you think about the companies that have really been built and sold, which by the way, we're all after this for a better life, right? We're all in this because we want to have some sort of a better experience, better life. Be proud of what we're doing, be proud of the things that we've built, be proud of the things that we're doing with our time. And yet we spend so much time and energy doing things we hate rather than recruiting people to be aligned behind a vision. Now that could be as simple as if you have a brand that you're really proud of, are you recruiting the influencers who want to back that? Or if it is you just want to make money, are you recruiting partners or team members that complement your skillset so that you are doing the things that actually produce revenue, that's ultimately what creates scale. But when unique abilities come together and combine and you build something that can be scaled and sold. Now here's the crazy thing though. In today's world, when you have an example like Dollar Shave Club that is scaled on YouTube advertising, which is, that's how Tai Lopez got big, right? YouTube advertising. When you can build an audience and get customers like that, guess what's happening? Big, big acquisition companies are noticing. And so you have the acquisitions of the RX Bar for half a billion dollars, the Dollar Shave Club for a billion dollars, the seventh generation for 700 some million dollars. These are brands that are simple, but they've used modern day marketing in order to scout and be acquired. And that means things like YouTube ads, Facebook ads, influencers, Amazon. I got acquired because I was good at Amazon. Some people get acquired because they're good at Shopify. What you are building is so much bigger than you realize. If you're playing the long game, the number one thing that I have got to beat into the heads of the people who are about to see me go on stage is that if you play the long game you make more money. Entrepreneurs and marketers are very, very guilty of chasing short term money. And why? Because we started this because we wanted a better life. We started this because we wanted freedom. We wanted the money. And it's okay to want the money. Warren Buffett started because he wanted the money. Warren Buffet wanted to have a different life and now he's one of the richest people in the world. It's not like you have to be some sort of benevolent entrepreneur in order to make the Billy, you can totally be pursuing money, but I will submit to you that you will make way more money if you're playing the long term, if you're building a brand. Which means what's a brand? What is a brand, by the way? Side note, a brand isn't like some floofy thing. A brand is trust. And that trust comes from customers. The more trust you have with people in your market, in your audience, in the marketplace, the higher the valuation of your company. Why? Because you can launch more products, you can charge higher prices. Brand is trust. It's a realization that I really need to speak more to those of you who sell on Amazon or sell physical products because we are so addicted to this idea of like the short term wins and they're great. Dollar Shave Club proved that short term wins and direct response can build billion dollar companies. But there comes a point at which that is simply gasoline on the fire. And the fire needs to be the trust and the brand that your company creates in the minds of your customers. And you do that by having amazing products with good advertising and you use direct response or you use Amazon, you use all the tricks and things that we all love to talk about to add gasoline to the fire. That's how you get an RX bar or a dollar Shave Club or an honest company or something that really blows up. But the foundation has to be there and that has to be built by thinking long term about customer trust, about quality of product, about connection with customers. And that means you dialing down on your unique skill set and recruiting the rest of the people around you who can support that. It's a realization that I'm having. It's taken me a year post my last exit of a company to really think about what's the unique ability that I bring to the world that I need to scale and bring other people around me in order to scale. Because without it I'm just a workaholic who's worried about rent, which is so silly.

So what you are doing, what you are building, what you are chasing, what you are developing is way bigger than you realize and I want to encourage you and honor you on that journey. But please.

Please remember.

That a brand is trust and whatever you amplify with Amazon, Facebook ads, YouTube ads.

That gets exposed. And if there's cracks in the armor of your business, you never build a billion dollar business. So the trust that you have with customers, the minute it's violated, makes you a non sellable company no matter how good your strategy is because you end up scaling something that's broken. I'm rooting for you. Let me know what you thought in the comments. Oh by the way, I mentioned my connection with Brian Lee. I mentioned Michael Dubin. These are all people that I have invited to Texas for an event called the Capitalism Conference. We do that once a year if you want to come sometime. And we're not sold out. You can google it and find out more about it. But we try to bring the best entrepreneurs in the world to basically incubate three days of entrepreneurship into a room that's fairly small so that you walk away with a network and a new vision of how you are going to go as far as you know how to go or can possibly go. Alright, I love you. I'm gonna go on stage. Talk to you soon.