Ryan Daniel Moran outlines seven traits of successful capitalists: take responsibility, create unique value, give first, think long term, compound efforts consistently, practice transparency, and sustain yourself. He argues that responsibility and freedom are linked, and that compounding value over time builds lasting success.
The type of person that you become determines the results that you create. It determines what you build. It determines what you enjoy. I have narrowed this into seven character traits. Seven things that a free person does. The first one is that you take responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are not opposites. They are linked. You do not get one without the other. Handing off responsibility to someone, someone else does not mean that you are free of it. It means that they are going to make decisions on your behalf. It means they have control over you. When it comes to something like starting a business, you have to take 100% of the responsibility for the result if you want to be free. One of the downfalls of our society right now is that there is a lack of responsibility. There is a lack of saying, I will do something about this. When you do that, you get control, and that is freedom. The number two character trait is that you create unique value. This is why I get so frustrated with business owners who are selling the exact same thing as everyone else. Capitalism is the system through which unique value gets distributed to people who want that unique value. You can always create unique value to a other people. You creating what is unique in the marketplace to a group of people that want. It is how you create value. Which leads me to the third character trait, which is that you have a give first mentality. Now, giving is not just an airy fairy way of making the world a better place. There must be a greater amount of value that you create for other people in order for them to pay you. In order for a relationship to work, both of you have to be giving more than you expect to receive. So you have to have a mindset that what it is that you are providing is more valuable than what you are charging. Number four, you think long term, the longer term you can think, the more wealthy, the happier, the more fit you will be. Short term decisions produce short term results, usually at the expense of the long term. Number five, they consistently compound what this means is you are taking swings that will build on top of one another over a very long time. How did Bezos become the richest person on the planet? By doing the small things over a long period of time. Number six, you practice transparency. You are honest about what it is that you want, you are honest about what you charge, what the value is. And the reason for this is because when you are transparent, you actually are free to create what it is that you want. Finally, number seven, you take care of thyself by taking care of yourself, you take care of the rest of the empire. Nothing else can be created when you're off. If you are out of alignment, everything you produce sucks. If you want to be free, you must take care of yourself so that you can practice transparency consistently. Compound. Think long term, give first, create unique value and continue to take responsibility for the results in the life that you want. That is how you maintain freedom over the very long term.
