Ryan Blair - Rock Bottom To Rock Star

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What's going on, everyone?

Casey Adams here.

Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, I'm very excited about the guest. We have Ryan Blair here with us and he is a serial entrepreneur who established his first company at age 21 and has since created and actively invested in multiple startups. As the CEO of Visalis, he took the company from start startup to more than $1.6 billion in cumulative sales and was named Ernest & Young's 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year. His first book, nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain, was a number one New York Times bestseller and he lives in Los Angeles, California. So before we get started on today's episode, I just want to say that this interview with Ryan Blair is for sure the top five most amazing interviews I've ever done. We sat down at his house in Beverly Hills and he gave me over an hour of his time and we dove into his story. We talked about how he's made millions of dollars, how he's lost millions of dollars, and how he's passed on. We work and he could have been a billionaire. Just so many different stories about his journey. And if you haven't already read his book Rock Bottom to Rock Star, make sure you give it a read. It's for sure on my top 10 most amazing book list. And today's episode, you're going to be hearing the audio of when Ryan and I met in Los Angeles. He has a beautiful home and the video will be coming out soon. So if you want to give that a watch on YouTube, you can do that as well. So that being said, make sure you leave a comment on this podcast either on my Instagram page or in the description of itunes podcast app that being said, thank you so much for listening to the Rise of the young podcast. Make sure you subscribe, go leave a review. And I am excited to announce Mr. Ryan Blair.

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to the build you'd Empire podcast. I'm super excited about the guest we have on today. His name is Ryan Blair.

Thank you, brother.

Thanks so much for coming on the show, man. And Ryan's someone that I actually came across like when I was 16 years old, it was through Gerard Adams. So shout out to Gerard if you're watching this. And he was always talking about you. And then I bought your book from gang member to multi million dollar entrepreneur and the stories that you instilled in that book. And I remember I still think about them every single day. And the chapters that you broke it down and we'll get into it. But your story is so inspirational, man. This is the first time that we've actually been able to sit down, have a conversation. And I just want to say thank you so much because you're a huge inspiration to me.

That's awesome, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. Well, welcome to my humble abode.

Thank you, man. So first off, I want to kind of take a step back. For people that may not know who you are, what you do, I'd love for you to give them just a recap because I think the biggest thing that people want to know before they listen, listen to a 45 minute hour interview is like, who am I listening to? I'd love for you to just give them what you're currently working on, what you've done briefly, so they can get caught up to speed.

Well, I'm an entrepreneur. I wrote the book Nothing to lose, Everything to gain, the one you're referring to, in 2011. And I've been blessed that it's a New York Times bestseller and it's been selling still to this day all around the world in many different countries. I also wrote the book Rock Bomb to Rockstar, also with Penguin. It's about my journey as an entrepreneur. Both books. I have a documentary on the subject as well that's free on YouTube called nothing to Lose. I write and teach about the subject of entrepreneurship. But based on my own experience, I've started a number of companies. My first company I started when I was 20 years old called Skype, actually 24.7tech, I sold that and I started a company called Skypipeline when I was 25. I had an exit for 25 million. And then I built a company called Vi Salis. Which was most known for the Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge. I sold that for 792 million when I was a few years ago, 2012. And I'm now more of an investor. I'm a creator. I like to create stuff. I'm very creative. So I invest in companies to learn and I take those lessons and then try to apply them to some of my own types of things. But yeah, I've bought and sold a bunch of companies and I've created a lot of great products. And that's the thing I'm most proud of is I have products that have impacted millions upon millions of people's lives.

Insane, man.

Yeah, insane.

So that being said, twice the resume, right?

Yeah.

So nowadays, oh, I was person Young.

Entrepreneur of the year. For those of you who, you know, personal young, I don't know how to really brag about myself.

I think the biggest thing is like, for someone like myself who's 18, just high school at this, as you know, it's like this whole scene of like, do it yourself entrepreneur. It's. It's just a lot of young people are like going towards it.

Right.

They know that they don't want to go to college, have a normal job. They want to strive for more. Right. There's so many different influencers online and people that are talking.

Yeah.

It's funny because you're the type of person where it's like, I follow you on social media hard, but you're not in someone's face every day. You know, it's like you're. I think you sit back, you've done your thing and it's like you have a true story impact and not. And you've actually done things for a period of time and done it consistently.

Yeah.

So first off, I want, I want you to just tell the people as an entrepreneur, when did that start your life? You said you're 20 years old.

Yeah, I started as an entrepreneur. I had a lemonade stand when I was a kid. I picked two paper routes. I was always trying to hustle to make money. I, for a period of time, I lived in poverty. And when you live in poverty, you see a lot of entrepreneurship. And I saw drug dealers, I saw all kinds of different entrepreneurs out there. And so then I had the blessing of getting a mentor. And he was a very successful real estate entrepreneur. And I got to work for him and I got to do his process serving and got to do all kinds of different odds and end jobs. And I saw how a legitimate entrepreneur worked and how he became a Multimillionaire and how he operated. And I started emulating and modeling that. But you know, I'm just an entrepreneur and I like to create companies, I like to create products, but it's all pretty simple to me. It's just, you know, some of us are predisposed to create things. And if you create a good product and then you have a good marketing plan, a good sales plan, it sells. And then once things start selling, you start scaling. And you know, in the case of Visalis, I built that business and 18 months to was a fastest growing company in all of Wall Street. It got to went from 9 million in sales to 624 million in sales in 18 months and 197 million EBIT, 120 million in cash flow in a year. And then I sold it. And then since then I've invested in a number of promising startups and I've been involved in the creation process. But I do see the same thing that you talk about a lot of people, you know, those who can't do, teach. Right. And there's a lot of people out there. I follow them and I see them and I see them regurgitating the same old messaging. Like I'll see Tony Robbins messaging chopped up and spit out by a thousand different people.

Yeah.

And it's great, you know, whatever you got to do to make your money as an entrepreneur, do it. But I'm into creating new things and coming up with new concepts and new ideas and, you know, and some of those fail and some of them succeed.

That's amazing, man. So you live in LA now?

Yeah.

How long have you been in la?

My whole life. Born and raised. Never left? Yeah, I left for, I had to build a corporate headquarters in Detroit, so I lived there for two years. Okay. And that wasn't a very desirable experience, so I came back.

What part of LA did you grow up in?

Well, I was born in Torrance. I was born in Torrance, grew up in the Valley and now we're in the Hollywood Hills.

So you never left in terms of like moving out?

No, but I traveled 200 plus days. Not anymore, but I used to, so I've seen plenty of other places.

Yeah, for sure, man. So I mean, what's going through my head right now, man, is like just in terms of being an entrepreneur, like you said. I think the biggest thing that I, I want to just dissect from you is like you've built and grown companies, like you said, from one year's doing, would you say 9 million to 670.

Yeah. Well, when we started myself like 20,000 first year when I. The first month we did 20,000. The first year we did 1.8 million and then we did 9 million, then we did 27 million, then we fell back down and it was like 6.9 million. And the recession hit and then we rebuilt the entire business model and then we did like 20 million, 211 million, 624 million, something like that for sure.

So you're saying these numbers right, for people that are watching what goes into scale like that? Because I think you hear these numbers like in terms of team, in terms of like your thought process.

Yeah.

What was that journey in the terms of scaling the company but building out the products and building the team and just making sure it runs smoothly? I think that's one of the biggest things. A lot of young people, it's like you'll have these stepping stones but to go that growth of speed and speed of doing so, that's what really intrigues me.

Well, you know, I, I made every mistake that you could possibly imagine. You know, I had, I had a very big problem. I had to scale quickly because the company was generating so much revenue. And I have a friend named Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos and he told me, raise your prices, you're growing too fast. But I had an exit because at that time I'd already sold the company in a multi year earn out. And so I wanted to run up the score as best I possibly could on behalf of my shareholders and myself. So it was, it wasn't necessarily the way I would do it again. But what I learned in that process was a lot. And you know, it's all about the team and the people that you recruit. And you're going to get it wrong about 50% of the time. And so you really have to build that in to how you recruit and realize that you know, you're one person away from achieving a result. But sometimes it takes three, four different people in that particular role or you have to rewire or redefine that role constantly to get the result. I think nowadays though, the entrepreneurs that I'm seeing out there, people need to focus more on building great products. Even a service should be productized. A lot of people out there are selling, coaching or consulting and they don't really have a product behind it. And it's like anything in life. Like when I was in school, if I did a great product, like if I did a great report, know a business school, if I really went out of my Way to do the analysis and do all the homework on this company and interview their executives and put the energy into it. I created a great report, and I got a great grade, you know, to draw in parallel. If you do the same on product, if you do your research competitively, if you're, you know, at Visalis. When I got into weight loss, which was the big game changer for us, I went into the every health food store in the book I took, I bought every product. I tried all these products. I categorized every product by the colors they used, by the claims that they made, by the ingredients they used, and I looked for my particular slot, and I built a product that tasted very good, that was marketed primarily toward females, and that was why it took off so well. But it was all of the energy I put into creating a great product. Steve Jobs, he would say, all Apple is is a bunch of people that create great products. That is it. It wasn't that he was some visionary that was to change the world. He's like, no, we just create great products. So I think that people need to focus on creating better products and become entrepreneurs that create great products. When you write a book, for it to become a good book, it has to be a great product. And the context of the book, the product, is how you structure your story, how you tell the story, how you write the story, the eloquence that you utilize, the skill that you utilize. All of that is product. So I see the world as products now. Okay, that's it. I don't see it as entrepreneurs. In fact, now with all the different entrepreneurial services out there, like, you know, you have an app that's an entrepreneurial service. You don't need to create as much of the internal infrastructure as you used to. Now you just have to create a great product, and then you have to utilize a bunch of other good products as part of your entrepreneurial puzzle to fulfill your orders and, you know, and do your life right, live your. Your dream. Yeah. So, you know, with the ecosystem that exists today in entrepreneurship, you don't need to, you know, invest like I had to, in scale. Like I had to build a corporate headquarters. And, you know, now my best friend invested in WeWork. I passed on that one. It's the biggest entrepreneurial investment mistake I've ever made. I'd be a billionaire today if I. If I would have taken this investment. I got. We.

We work off to me a year.

Well, the valuation we were. Was 2011. The valuation. The valuation WeWork was 30 million. And I sat down With Adam Newman, who's a friend of mine, and my friend Sam Bonaven wrote the check and he asked me if I wanted to take 250,000, a $500,000 piece and I'd be a billionaire had I did it. I didn't. But every time I stepped foot into WeWork, I look around and I see like the sandwiches and all the stuff that they serve there and I think to myself, I can own a piece of every sandwich. Yeah, that was a tough one. Every time I do a deal, I get to remind myself that I should, should have bet on Adam. But Adam's a great guy. He's a fantastic entrepreneur. He had a crazy vision, but he created a product of shared experience at corporate headquarters.

So they've been around for how long?

In 2011 they were like a two year old company. So not too long.

I literally just heard about like two years ago.

Yeah, yeah. Well, they're a 50 plus billion dollar company today and growing and they're doing a phenomenal job. But what they did was they productized the corporate, corporate experience. What Steve Jobs did when he built the Apple headquarters is he created a product out of a headquarters. See, everybody else thinks of headquarters as something other than product. Steve's viewpoint on everything is product. Elon Musk, he's a designer. He says he does hardcore engineering and hardcore designing. I've toured SpaceX and I've had the privilege of being on the inside of the walls of the products that he's created. He just creates products with fanaticism. Jeff Bezos creates great product. Right, so, and now you can utilize the services of many of these entrepreneurs and their corporate entities to create your own niche products. And if they're really high quality and you know how to target, you know the audience correctly, you should have a successful entrepreneurial endeavor. But most people are just lacking product.

Got it. That makes sense. So let's bring us back. So for people that are listening to here we work. And you missed out on that when you were 18 years old. What were you doing back then?

Yeah, so when I was 18 years old, I, I was going to a community college called Moorpark Community College. I was taking computer science courses and I really fell in love with computer science. But at that time, that was the first dot com boom. So this was right when Amazon, this is 1999. This is right when Amazon went public, Right when, you know, the, the world of the Internet started to occur. And I realized at that time I, that, you know, I found a niche in technology. Right. That was My, you know what I was going to do. And I started a company called Sky Pipeline which did mobile broadband wireless that was very infrastructure intensive. I had to put towers up, antennas up, install dishes on people's businesses and then set up their Internet inside their offices. And then eventually we had to voip the product. And so we were a bit of a head of the curve and we exited that company about three years after I started it. But how I, yeah, I went in three years I went from zero to 25 million. But the way that I did that was I created a product and I was relentless at trying to deliver that product. I wasn't, it wasn't a great product in comparison.

You say what it was again like the antennas bring it down because people that are listening. Yeah.

So Sky Pipeline, this was prior to ubiquitous data. So this is before the mobile Internet hit the cell phone. This was before, before DSL and cable were everywhere. And so people that wanted high speed Internet, particular businesses, if they were rural or they were in homes or they weren't close to their local telecommunications company, they could not get affordable Internet. They had to buy T1s. So my product brought that product, made that product wireless. And the real magic behind it was our sales engine. We had a no contract approach. We had 100% money back guarantee and we'd install it in 72 hours. And this was against a telecommunication company that would charge thousands of dollars. They'd take months to install and you had to sign multi year contracts. So my sales guys were just out there closing people left and right. And then I had to deliver the product.

Got it, got it. And you started that what age?

2021. 2020.

So bring it down. So when going through, because that was like what you said, 1999, I had.

Braces on when I started that, 100%.

So when you started that like what was like going back in time? 1999, I'm not even born yet.

Right.

Like I don't understand that world. Right. Obviously because I grew up in it.

Right.

So what does an idea like that come from? Is it just like recognizing the marketplace and where you can solve a problem?

You know, I'll tell you, I was an engineer, I went to, we, I worked for a company called Gaming Systems International. Sorry, my dog likes to open the door. I used to work for a company called Gaming Systems International and I went to one of their clients called Mystic Lake Hotel and Casino and I sold them a system to do player tracking across the entire casino. And it was a multi million dollar system. And Then I had to implement it. And I realized I wasn't the salesperson, I wasn't the owner of the company, but I had done all the work technically on that transaction. And so I thought to myself, well, I want to actually own the company and be able to deliver the transaction and the product myself. But I had the blessing of working in a startup enterprise called Logix, which, which bought Gaming Systems International. And so I got to see entrepreneurship from the inside. And then I decided I wanted to do my own. It was a technology company. So I was right at the beginning of, you know, they were deep, deeply entrenched in technology, but I was at the beginning of this Internet thing. Right. And it turned out to be a big thing.

Yeah.

So that, that was, that was good timing and good fortune. But all of us are right now. You know, the timing and good fortune that I had then is, isn't specific to that time. Every day, like AI, for example, is a whole new Internet that's emerging.

Right.

A whole new concept to the Internet, a whole new concept to the way we're doing work. So the very fact that you're alive today and you have access to the Internet and all of these change and this disruptive evolution is occurring in front of you, that means that you have the good fortune of timing or the bad fortune of it. So you're either going to lose your job and be eliminated from the workforce, or you're going to figure out a way to align with this new way of doing business. Right.

So AI, like, I wanna, I wanna go to the current moment in the sense of, like, what you're currently working on, where your head is. Because, like, it seems like when you, when the Internet was coming out, like you found a product and you made it perfect and crushed it.

Right.

Were you spending time. Today, you bring up AI, Are you spending a lot of time there?

Yeah.

What should people know? Like, in the simplistic form, what is it for people that don't know? Because I think that's something that I hear a lot.

Yeah, I don't really. I'll just tell you. The simplest way to describe AI is really simple. So it's algebra. And if you want to solve any problem, you start with, you know, the end of, like. So, for example, if I want to start a business, I'm going to start with the end result is revenue. And then I'm going to break down to get to revenue. What are the steps that I have to take to do that? You got to file an llc, you got to do this you got to do that. That's a simple way to solve a problem, right? You triage it, then you reverse engineer it. Now, AI allows you to reverse engineer problems because of the access to cheap hardware and cheap processors that are designed around using these AI scripts, you're able to reverse engineer things much faster. And so you can have multiple computers or multiple processors rather, working to help you solve a problem that you couldn't have conceptualized before because the processing power would have taken too much, or the amount of hardware that you have to buy, the amount of computer scientists that you'd have to deploy. But now you can utilize AI and you can utilize third party systems, you know, Google's Python or some of the other ones to work on different problems that you couldn't have ever done before because the processing power or the amount of resources to apply. Yeah, so, but like, for example, I'm looking at how AI solves a number of different problems, but I'm specifically looking at how it disrupts jobs and how it's going to disrupt the workforce. Because the biggest problem that I see that is heading our way is job disruption. Now that's going to create opportunity. Pricewaterhouse just came out with a new report that said that jobs that will be more prominent in the near term are going to be social worker or people connection jobs, jobs that actually interface with individuals. Because people are going to be automated out of so many jobs, there's going to be a need for retraining, new skills, new support. I've invested in an AI health tech company called Heal, which is able to substantially reduce healthcare costs for insurance providers and provide better quality of service because, you know, of just the processing power and the approach to the data and to the analytics of the data. Right. But that said, on AI, for example, AI is a new approach to doing business. It used to be that if I wanted to ship product, in the case of Vysals, you know, I would have to hire people to take things out of a box and so forth. Now AI has a robot doing that, right? And the robot has got a lot less errors and is able to operate a lot faster. And it's able to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so I don't have to have the burden of the employee, the training of the employee, the firing and the hiring, the. And all of the things that go with a simple task like pick and pack.

Right.

Which is, you know, something that was very error prone when I used to have to do that manually. Now having machines do that, I no longer have to have as many errors and have a better customer experience and faster speed of fulfillment. That's, that's one simple use of AI in everyday business that makes everyday business better, but it is going to permeate in all aspects of the business.

What do you think? The, the gap of time until it's really true there? What's your thoughts?

It's already happened. So yeah, the, the revolution is occurring as we speak and it's just a matter of catching up to it. The AI allowed you to come up with crazy ideas and then go to work on what does tire.

No, no, I'm just.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. AI, AI, AI, AIs. But AI allowed you to go to work on problems that you would not have been able to otherwise. Right. And so it's just giving you 1000 people doing algebra on your behalf of whatever the problem is. But so for example, if you're looking at what are the correlations between a million people that are using the Heal app and their prescription medication, AI pops up, hey, the people that are on this prescription medication have a higher degree of hospital hospitalization rate. Maybe there's something wrong with this blood type and this prescription medication. Right. These are the things that a normal doctor and a spreadsheet couldn't do.

Yeah. That's some deep info.

Yeah.

So bring me back. So walk around the place. I see you love art.

I see.

Yeah.

You're very into, like creative, right?

Yeah.

About writing. You have two phenomenal books and how many different languages?

Yeah, well, I didn't write in the other languages, but yeah, yeah, but you.

Know what I'm saying.

Somebody else, somebody else did the translation.

In terms of like, the creative process of like, where you currently are now. Like, where are you spending your time? Not necessarily outside of business, but in your spare time when you're, you know, things you like.

So I have a harder problem to solve than most people because I want to again, achieve more in my next endeavor than I did in my last. And the endeavors I've been involved in, you know, grew pretty fast. So I'm, I'm looking and investigating into a number of areas where I could be of service and I can provide the most value. But I haven't necessarily stumbled upon the exact system or product or service that I'm going to, you know, to take to market. I've been heavily researching biometrics and wearable devices and biometric devices and specific to solving problems of addiction and some of the issues that we as a nation are suffering right now with regard to opiate overdick, overdosing, and so forth. So I've been looking at respiratory sensors, and I've been looking at different types of sensors to aid people that are suffering from addiction or. Or on recovery from addiction and things like that. So I study a problem, I look for the various solutions in the marketplace. I go out there and I talk to different companies. And what I found is all you have to do is find a company that is willing to partner with you and you're in business. Right? So if you're passionate about a problem, you've studied it, you figured out the players that are also working in that. And then you start contacting those companies that are working on the problem, add value to them, you know, share research with them, whatever it is, get them on the. In my case, I'm fortunate that I could just get them on the phone and say, what are you doing? How are you doing it? And then I, you know, go back and I really think about it. Now what I do that is. That is different than probably most people is I sit there and concentrate on a problem for hours upon hours, if not days upon days on end. Like, I'm just sitting there thinking about, you know, all right, this respiratory sensor is collecting this data set. Well, what could that data set of respiratory. Well, when you breathe, the deeper you breathe, the more relaxed you are, the more calm you are. What are the various values that could occur? Who are people that are working and teaching you how to breathe? And then I go out there and I start researching all the different players in this particular category. And then I'll determine, is there something in there that I can actually do, or was this just simply a learning lesson? Right now, a lot of people just won't spend the time deeply learning. And so I want to learn everything I can, and I'm just happy to learn. And the more that I learn, then I might go, oh, I see a pattern. And if I see a pattern, maybe I create a product for that pattern. But it's a learning process for me, you know? Yeah, but. But the amount of time that I spend thinking about a single problem is probably an order of magnitude greater than what most people do. Because I, like, I will not talk about anything but that. When I used to run operations company, if we had a problem and it wasn't solved, there was nothing else to talk about. I didn't give a. About how your day was. Yeah, I didn't care any. It was like, is this problem solved yet? Right. Because, you know, when you're running A business, it's a triage thing. You're just trying to simply solve problems all day long. Problem of launching a product or a problem of a product launch that isn't operating efficiently. You're just simply solving problems. That's all entrepreneurs do. Right? So it's problem solving and then it's, it's methods of problem solving. And then you know, to discover your entrepreneurial passion, you just have to find a problem that you love solving that is big enough. And then it's, you know, maybe you found a niche or you have the right timing or there's a change in the marketplace or change in the use of technology or change in the consumer. And so you're able to find a unique solution to the problem that hadn't been found before. And you just got to sit there and say, what problem am I solving? What problem am I solving? What problem am I solving for whom am I solving this problem? And then how am I doing that in the competitive landscape? Right, but it's really just, you know, framing yourself around being a problem solver. In fact, when people pitch, they give me pitch decks and stuff, I always tell them like, just start with the problem that you're solving and why is it a problem and how you and your technology or your solution is unique and new to the marketplace so that you're going to be the first to solve this. Right. And then from there you get other people that agree to the problem, that see the problem as a problem and that have a desire to help you solve it and a vision around the company to do so. And then, you know, you just entrepreneurial endeavor. Corporations are simply solving problems that the government cannot. Right. Corporations, Corporations are simply solving problems that are not designed for government. Right. Like the problem of transportation, the problem of. Right. All it is like we have a system in an ideal world, you people pay taxes and all your problems will be solved. Right. But, but that's not how our system works. Our system is capitalism slash democracy, particularly in America. And so our role as entrepreneurs is to solve the problems that government is not. Right. And, and that might be, you know, and, and, and then secondarily solving the problems that the existing systems out there are not. You have a church system, those are philanthropic systems, you have medical systems, you know, those are different kind of concept. You have all these different systems that people participate in. And you're creating a system by creating a company. The bigger the problem you solve and the more effective you are at scaling, the greater and the bigger your company will be. But it's they're all systems. Everybody is subscribing to thousands of systems out there, right? It's all systems. Like payments are a system. You know, real estate is a system. All these things are just systems. And entrepreneurs are attacking those systems with more efficient methods and means. And it could be your capital structures, what make you, makes you unique. It could be your selling methodology, it could be your marketing methodology, it could be your supply chain methodology. It could be anything within the constructs of a system of a company. A company is sales, it's marketing, it's supply chain, it's finance. What am I missing? Sales, marketing, supply, R and D, maybe product development, design, creative, web it. You know, you could break down a company into maybe 11 different functions and then there are various systems within those functions. Right. And you can outsource a lot of those functions to other people that are great at that. And then you solve one thing. Right? That's the objective.

Yeah.

All right.

That's the whole PhD right there.

Yeah.

Certainly give you. But I had the blessing.

It seems like you went through a lot of failures to obtain that knowledge.

Well, every day as an entrepreneur, you're failing. Every day you have a customer quitting on you, or especially when you're at scale. We had 3 million plus customers, 100,000 plus people selling for us on a monthly active basis, millions of people that signed up to sell for us around the world. And so every day, you know, you're, you're, you're missing something. Every day person's quitting on you, or a product's not getting developed the way it should, or, you know, there's a supply chain issue, or, you know, every day there's, there's problems to be solved. That's all you do. And when you become a CEO of a very large company, you know, you basically have great executives. Like, I had the privilege of hiring and recruiting some great people. And so I would just simply do meetings with them to talk about the problems they're solving, their priorities, and then how they're solving them. Because I wanted to make sure that they were solving those problems within the guidelines of our values and our vision for the company. But it's really much more simple than what everybody thinks, right?

Yeah.

It's not as difficult, but it requires a discipline in multiple categories. You have to be strong in execution, you have to be strong in strategic thinking, you have to be strong in analytics, you have to be strong in relationships, you have to be strong in influence. Right. And if you're strong in those categories, you know if you can develop strengths in all of those particular quadrants, then you can execute on building and scaling a large business that has to have specific individuals in each of those roles. Right. That you're leading. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I mentor Gerard at Eddie League Daily. I've been doing this a while.

Before I bring that up, I'll just say people that don't know, like Gerard is someone that sort of introduced you to me.

Yeah, he's one.

I love my best videos, all that sort of stuff. So I was going to say, like, throughout the nods you're giving people, like you've had a privilege of having mentees. I know Gerard talks about that all the time.

Yeah.

And I was going to bring up. So it's funny you say that.

You.

Meet someone like Gerard when it comes to like.

So Gerard read my book. Yeah. Most, most of the people that come into my life come through my book or I'll meet them through social media or they'll approach me if I bump into them at Runyon or some of the other places that I frequent. So I've given keynote speeches all around the world on the subject of entrepreneurship and my unique experience with it. But I really want your audience to understand. It's like, break it down, reverse engineer it. What are the components of the business that you desire to start? And if you don't have the answers, then you just got to find somebody who does.

Yeah.

You're one person away from the information you need and you're always one skill away from the next level.

Right.

Like you're one skill away from overcoming failure or you're one skill away from overcoming what fear that is stopping you from doing this or overcoming the insecurity that you have that's stopping you from the confidence that you need to, you know, be able to go out there and proudly boast about your business at a young age. When I was a young man, people I remember this guy I hired, he said, I have underwear older than you. And I fired him. I was like, I don't want to have anybody that's carrying 18 year old underwear around.

Right.

I was 19 years old when I started my company. Yeah. No, I would have people literally attack me because of my age and I would attack back and say, because of my age, I have information and a perspective. You do not. Right. And I, you know, I would attack right back at that subject. And, and you know, and that's the thing is, you know, in the entrepreneurial world out there, you have tons of advice, you have tons of information you have to find your sweet spot and you have to develop your approach. Much like a martial art or any kind of sport. You have to really get good at playing that sport. Right. And you have to find, you know, your. What your. John Wooden was a mentor of mine, the famous UCLA coach and you know, he would design plays for his players where they were great at shooting and when they got the ball outside of where they were great at shooting, their job was to pass it. Right. Their job was never to take a shot outside of where the play was designed for. Right. So as an entrepreneur, you're just designing the play, right. As opposed to letting someone else design the play for you?

Yeah, yeah. So did you ever have a job?

Yeah, I mean I've had odds and end jobs like I did roofing one summer and it gets Africa hot in Los Angeles and I didn't like that. I worked at a dry cleaner, didn't like that. The only job that I had that I really excelled at was when I was an engineer and I worked in software development environment and I helped build product in the software development world and I ran a data center for a period of time and so that was a job of creating technology infrastructure and I really, really loved that job. And I was 19 when I started and that was when I started observing the entrepreneurial nature of the owner of that company. And I decided I'd start my own company from there.

So what would you say nowadays you say every day you're failing. Like what is something that is your biggest failure at this point in your life? What is something that you don't? What's your biggest failure nowadays?

I haven't thought about that in a while. So nothing to lose. I wrote a book, I wrote a chapter, nothing that was called Million dollar Mistake. And I'm proud to say I now have billion dollar mistakes. Yeah, yeah, we worked. That's one example of a failure for me to see in terms of investments. Yeah, well, as an investor and you know, I have a number of investments out there. WeWork. I asked other people to look at it and I went against my own entrepreneurial gut and I didn't invest. And every time I see a WeWork article, my friend likes to rub it in. Every time I have dinner with him, he's much richer than I am now. But that said, I don't care about that because it's the process and, and then you know the lesson, right? What did I learn? But yeah, I'm one of the very few people that, that has had several billion dollar opportunities And I didn't see some of the magic in them, you know, and that might been that my. My judgment was clogged or my. My views were, you know, you know, I was focused on other things or I was focused on other passions of mine, and I wasn't, you know, capable of seeing it at that time. But, yeah, that said, I've had a number of different failures, some very specific and operationally would have been, you know, one of my favorite words today is impeccability. So, like, I would greenlight things or allow things to go by because I didn't want to be an asshole and want to be driving everybody insane and be on know and be freaking out about every last detail. And so I'd say I got to give people, you know, more space and more freedom to fail themselves. And, you know, and so I think that when I wasn't being as impeccable as I possibly could in my decisions or I wasn't demanding impeccability out of people, that I got less than the result I was capable of. And even though I might have had a great result, that's a failure. If you don't get the result you're capable of, it is a failure. Even though it might be a great result, it's a failure to achieve the maximum potential of your talent. Right. So, you know, I want. And you're not going to be able to do that in every way and every step, but everything is a failure other than the things where you say, I showed up, I played at my very highest level, and I got the result, I won the championship. Right. Everything other than that is a failure.

Got it. Got it. So is that in terms of, like, what you fear the most is not performing at your maximum?

No, I don't really have any fear about the subject because I won't do anything that I know that I can't. And that's new. I used to maybe try things and experiment with different things that weren't necessarily on mission or weren't going to provide me an equal amount of personal satisfaction to that of what the last thing I did, I might venture into a finance project or I'm looking at these real estate things, you know, do I really, you know, is my purpose on this earth to do 100 different types of entrepreneurial investments and 100 different types of businesses? The answer is no. I concentrate my energy, and from that concentration and that desire of impeccability, I'm able to, you know, produce great results. Right. And so when I haven't used concentrated energy is when I've seen less than great results.

All right, that makes sense. I have a couple more questions in. And in terms of investing, raising money, what would you say to a young entrepreneur that's starting a company in terms of raising capital? A good, bad thing, what's the right time? What's the wrong time? As an investor that invests in companies, what do you say to someone, whether that be myself or people that are listening, that have startups, whether that's an app or some sort of tech company, what do you look for? And how do you judge a company in terms of being the investor?

Yeah. So where I've made mistakes in investing in other companies is when. When the individual isn't 100% dedicated to that particular company. So one, you know, a red flag for me is if a person has other interests, like they have other business ventures, they have six companies. I hear these motivational speakers brag about their company count, and it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, Mark Zuckerberg has one company, right? And, you know, he doesn't talk about him having six companies because he owns Instagram and he owns Oculus and he owns this and he owns that that. He talks about one company. It's Facebook, right? And here you have these people go, I got six companies. It's one company. The company is you. In the case of being a speaker who has multiple business interests, right? They're selling them. That's their company. But they talk about, I have six companies. I have 27 companies. All that is dumb. At Visalas, I had to have a lot of companies roll up and report to me, but I never walked around saying I had 27 reporting entities, right? Because the more complexity you have, the less you're able to create. And value complexity is the enemy of value creation, right? And so most entrepreneurs out there that I see, they do too many different things. They pursue too many different ideas, you know, and they don't pursue one of their ideas to its ultimate success or failure. So you just take one core concept and pursue it until you're, you know, until people don't even want to talk to you anymore because you won't talk about anything but this, right? Like, I want entrepreneurs that are so committed and so obsessed. I bought a company called Neon. It's an energy drink company through Visalis that has done quite well. And the reason why I bought that company was the entrepreneur, he could not stop talking about it. I was sick. I was at dinner with him. I was like, please, like, you got to just stop talking about this shit. But he just wouldn't stop. He had no choice. Like, next thing you know, I'm like talking about something else. He's interrupting, showing everybody videos at the table. Brand promotion. And I didn't like the brand promotion at the time, but I was like, this guy is insanely obsessed with this product, right? So that's what I, you know, that's what I look for now when it comes to raising money. I've done that a number of times through a number of different companies as a CEO and I've also been on the board of companies raising money and I've helped them raise money and I've done that a lot. You know, in order to raise money, you got to be good at influence, right? Investors are ruled by fear and by greedy and they're very smart. And so you have to learn how to create a deck. You have to learn how to. The deck has to be influential, the story has to be influential. It has to match the investors needs. If the investor works at a venture capital firm, you want to make sure, you know, you know, what are the other investments in that venture capital firm that have failed? What are the investments similar to yours that have worked? What entrepreneurs have, they worked with are young like you. You know, you want to know all that you can about your target and then you want to work diligently to close that target and be relentless, be willing to burn that bridge. You know, I want, if I'm raising money from somebody, I want them to say, ryan, no and please never call me again. You know, I'm not trying to make friends with a thousand people out there. I'm on a mission and I believe that I'm going to make better use of their capital than they and better use of their capital than any entrepreneur working with them. And I have that conviction. And so I'm going to do everything I can to demonstrate that conviction. And if they don't like that, then so be it. Now most people that I deal with on fundraising, they'll reach out to me, they'll say they have a deck, they'll send me a deck that has errors, that has typos, that's, you know, and they just think creating a deck is going to get them the money that they need or they've raised money from certain individuals and they've spent it unwisely. You know, know, I want to find entrepreneurs that are like living and dying by the company that they create emotionally, right? And, and, and, and then secondly now most important thing is to have a demonstrable product or a demo, much like what you were sharing with me with the Modi app. Right. I want to see people that have something to demonstrate. And what that shows me is they've done the hard work, they're thinking about the business processes, they've tested it little bit within the marketplace. They've gotten some of the bugs worked out, and now a person like me can come in and help them scale or give them the, you know, the contacts and the resources and some of the knowledge for them to be able to take their business to the next step. But all too often, I find entrepreneurs that they haven't yet created the product, they haven't done the hard work. You know, they're, you know, they're, they're in perpetual fundraising. I want entrepreneurs that despise fundraising, hate fundraising. They're doing it because they have to, not because they want to. Because now with, you know, modern business services that are available, you don't need a lot of money to start a business and to bring a product to market. I mean, you can put in, you can have an app together for 10 grand, probably 20 grand. I don't know what an app costs these days, but you don't need to spend a million bucks to get a proof of concept. So I would always advise entrepreneurs to raise the least amount of money that they need to create a proof of concept. Sell your Xbox, your tv, you know, you know, do whatever you have to do to build that proof of concept. Get people testing your proof of concept, and then bring your investors on and bring on good investors that are, you know, going to be, you know, in the case of a early stage company, angel investors. They're going to give you the resources you need, going to help you not make rookie mistakes. Right. You know, people that have read through financial statements, understand how finance works, they're going to give you the guidance that you don't have. And so you want to surround yourself with a good board of directors and a good group of people. They're going to help you in each step of the company's journey. Right. And, you know, I always, I always started with a good business model. Like, I obsessed about the business model. Yeah. The mathematical aspects of the model. And when I break down a business model, I write down a list of what are the drivers of this business? So what are the things driving the business? For the case of Skypipeline, for example, was the distance between the business and the local telephone company. So if you were within 5,000ft of your local telecom company, There were great products for you, but if you were 10,000ft, right, there were less. So then I took all those companies that were outside the range of 5,000, and I focused on those individuals. I marketed to them, I mailed to them, and I built profit products for them. Right. So, you know, really? Yeah, really just. It's really just coming up with a business model, and then the magic is in the business model. And the business model is composed of your marketing expenses, your salesforce expenses and commission plan, your cost of goods sold, and then ultimately, you know, through those different types of services and different types of things that you utilize to get to an end result, you spit out profit, or ebitda. Right. And then that particular model is like, that's the operating plan for the business. And so if you've really thought through a good business model, you have everything in there from every vendor that you're utilizing to fulfill the service, to market the service to, you know, the. The rate of which you acquire customers to salesforce to customer service. All of those ratios having been thought out and thoroughly articulated into an economic model, is what becomes the business. That is the business plan. So, like, I would start a business by modeling every detail I possibly can, as much as I possibly can, and then figuring out, all right, what do I have to adjust? How do I have to operate to, you know, to have a functioning operation? And I did that at my sales. You know, when I got to the point where we were throwing, we got up to 65 million a month in sales, and we're doing about 15 million, 20 million in profit at that time. A month, right? Yeah. And that was because I tinkered with a business model over and over and over until I found the right different ratios and the right drivers. And then I, you know, got those drivers really operating efficiently, and the business started operating efficiently.

So what really intrigues me with that, and I have two more questions is when you say the number, and I saw the YouTube video was like 65 million a month, right? Yeah. Looking back, back to when you're 18 now, seeing where you're at today, like, what would you tell your 18 years, your own self of, like, before you step in this journey, know this. What would be one of the things you want someone like myself to know?

Yeah. I mean, I would tell you, you're gonna be, you know, massively successful. So don't compromise. Don't, you know, like, invest in the. Invest in the business. Invest in, you know, creating the right business models. Invest in, you know, obsess about the Economics obsess about the facts, obsess about the drivers of the business, obsess about, you know, the vision of the business and how, you know, how your data collection is going to ultimately result in you being able to efficiently create new products. Obsess in the business model, right? And that obsession is something no one else is going to do, right? Because it's going to be a unique business to you and it's going to have, you know, your economic footprint everywhere in it. So the more that you really obsess about how your business is operating and how it functions, the speed of which it functions, the processes that you utilize to function, the stronger that business becomes, right? And so my advice to my younger version of myself is like, you're going to make hundreds of millions of dollars in your country, career, so just don't do anything stupid, right? Do only the best work that you possibly can do and only allow yourself to work with great people and fire people that aren't great as fast as you humanly can, as soon as you notice it. Because you're the one that's going to be spending all night long working on the subject. You're the one that is going to put your reputation at risk. You're the one that, you know is going to talk to everybody you humanly can about the subject. And if they're not doing that, then their, you know, their opinions are weighted in comparison to yours at best, right? So, you know, I would tell my younger self not to compromise and, you know, and that I would reinforce the fact that I have a talent in this particular thing and that that is my talent. And I'm never going to let anybody else tell me anything other than that, right? Like, this is my talent. And it's easy to use a sports analogy. Like if you're a great shooter, that's your talents, you know, shoot. Be on a team that lets you shoot, right? In business, you got to play multiple different functions until you find the function you're great at. And then you got to find people to support you at being great, right? And they should pass you the ball when you're great, and it should be very clear to them where you're great and where you get the ball and where they don't. And otherwise what happens is everybody's trying to run, you know, trying to get the ball and everybody's trying to score, and you end up having a business that doesn't run as efficiently as you possibly could.

That makes sense.

Yeah, makes so much sense.

Last thing. So myself growing up with my mom and dad, they. I was not introduced to entrepreneurship. They've been working corporate jobs. So now that you have a son, what are some of the things that you're instilling into him as someone that's young and growing up with someone like yourself who has so much road experience, success? What are some of the foundational principles? That's super interesting to me.

So for one, everything that I'm doing right now when I investigate a business, I get him involved. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Because anything that I do is going to take time away from him. So for one, if I start a business or I invest in a business, it's taking money away from his future inheritance. It's taking time away from him. If I have to not be able to attend to function for him. He needs to understand this is the business that we're working on. And so I'm integrating him into the business concepts. Yeah, 100%. And I'm teaching him about the subject of entrepreneurship every single day by way of example. And then I, you know, I teach him like when we're, you know, driving the car and he wants to listen to the radio, I talk to him about the entrepreneur that created the radio. Right. I talked to him about how the radio. Excuse me, I talked about how the radio was created. I talked to him about, you know, how entrepreneurship is all around us. But I think ultimately, you know, my approach today is to. He'll be a part of the business that I create. And I look at him as a partner, right? Yeah. Because he is a partner. And if the business becomes very successful, you know, God willing, then it's going to cost him something. Right. It's going to cost me time from him. It's going to cost him time from his dad. But if he's a partner, then it all makes sense, right? This is for the betterment of the family, for the betterment of him. And, you know, and it's, it's a great thing. If I do this without integrating him into it, then it becomes, you know, a challenge for me because I'm having to worry about, you know, the time I'm taking away from him as opposed to saying, you know, when I talk to him on the phone, I'm looking at this investment. It's a video game company or, you know, it's. It's in the context of what he loves, video games or the sports he loves. And I try to bring it back to the context of him and what he's into and explaining it to him and get his Opinion on it. And he's been giving me advice.

That's so cool.

Yeah.

Last thing. So eat. Like gaming, right? You just played Fortnite earlier.

Yeah.

So are you in, like, esports lane? Do you understand, like, what's your mindset on that and in the sense of, like, him being someone that's a huge gamer because, like, that's a huge industry.

Yeah.

Esports, like, what's. I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah. Well, you know, so screens are addictive, right? Yeah. Screen addiction is a big challenge. And there's actually rehab centers. I looked at buying one that actually helps people break from screen addiction. Yeah. What happens is when you're playing a video game, like the ones I like to play, like Halo or Fortnite, you know, I love playing too. You're in fight or flight mode, right. And when you do that, that means your, your body's releasing dopamine. And if you're not careful, if you release too much dopamine, you know, you become a crack addict basically.

Right.

They've measured the dopamine release from playing an aggressive video game like Halo. You know, I, I can get even a little, like, racked up in my nerves just thinking about playing Halo.

Right.

Like, you know, because it's aggressive.

Right.

So I want to make sure that I measure the amount of dopamine that he's releasing. I, I try to keep the screen time down to less than an hour per day, and I try to get him out doing other things that emulate different gaming environments and things like that. But I'm very careful about the amount of dopamine that I let my son utilize. Because if you think about it, the product designers and creators at all these companies are simply trying to get you and your family addicted to their shit. Right. These guys are modern day drug addicts or drug dealers, I should say. And. And I don't want my son to become an addict. Right. But I do definitely want him to learn how to participate because there's benefits to it. You learn higher end coordination, you learn greater acuity, you can learn strategy, you make friends. So there's benefits to it. Right. But with anything you want to make sure that, you know, you're very careful about, you know, the use of that. Yeah.

Real quick, wrap it up now that we're writing, because I remember a while ago, I don't know if it was on your Instagram, where you talked about, like, you would do like clothes, lenses, without your phone. Oh, yeah, I was telling Roger that. Do you still do that because I find myself like I am, I spend too much time.

Way too much. Yeah, way too much.

If I put on my screen time, you're probably like, dude, get the head off your phone. Yeah, that, so that screen time, because I remember you talking about it and I was telling them on the way here, it's like, would you do, was it a week, six weeks?

Like, yeah.

How do you manage your time on the device?

Yeah. So for one, now that they've given us great time, thank God for Apple Gifts giving screen time reports. It's sad. Like I saw at one point I was up like four hours a day and I'm like, this is, you know, I don't want to spend four hours a day on this thing. I don't, I rarely use other screens. So it's not like, it's not like I'm, you know, like that's pretty much all the time that I was spending. But still four hours per day. Right. Is the equivalent of a part time job. Right. And there's so many other things that I'd want to do. Then give that time to Mark Zuckerberg and give that time, you know, to the advertisers. And you know, I love reading about news and I love reading that type of stuff. So I do put my phone down for extended periods of time. I, I, I keep it away from me at night. I use on Apple they have this time restraint app that actually makes you, it's like there's time restrictions. So like I don't want to be on my phone past 8:00'. Clock. I just, nothing good comes of it if I'm sitting on my phone dicking around past 8 o'. Clock. And so there's, I forget it's called, it's a time restriction thing that you can set up where you really can't use your phone past 8 o'.

Clock.

But beyond that, I do activities that you really can't utilize your phone in. Alright. So I'm constantly looking for ways to make sure that I'm not becoming addicted to this thing. Because I know there are brutal, brilliant engineers at Google and at Apple and at Facebook working on keeping me addicted to this thing. Right. So I've got consciously, yeah, these are brilliant people thinking, how do I get Ryan Blair to spend all his life on my phone and ruin it? Like they don't want me, they want me to look at their ads and spend all my life on this stuff and be addicted to social media and addicted to, you know, playing games and playing video games and all of these things. So you have a force trying to addict you, and you need to counterbalance that, knowing that that exists in its best way possible. The other thing is I take. I'll take a week without my phone altogether.

Yeah, Just like no communication. Nothing. Like no text, no calls, Zero. Will you let people know or you just do it?

Just done. Just.

Is that every month? Every year? Like, what's. I'm curious. I remember hearing this.

Yeah, I've taken. I did it for over a month.

Month.

One time. You have to break yourself of your routines. You build up bad habits. And when you look at your screen time report, it's real simple. It shows you your apps and you're like, I love this app called Smart News. And one week I spent 12 hours on it. And I was like, do I really need to be reading this shit for 12 hours? Right. I didn't realize I gave 12 hours of my life to that. What could I do with that 12 hours, right. I could take music lessons. I could go to concerts. I could, you know, I could go explore nature. If I value my time as an entrepreneur at a number, you know, a significant number per hour, then I should go take a vacation, right. As opposed to give 12 hours to an app. Right. Now, there are apps that are productivity oriented, and then you should measure that against your productivity goals. So as a writer, I write notes all the time. And so when I look at my screen time reports and I see that, you know, I put eight hours into notes, I know I'm working on my next book, you know, that's something positive. But if I had eight hours on Instagram, right. That's not how I make my money. Right? So, you know, I should be asking myself, is eight hours? You know, there's some enjoyment there. There's fulfillment. I get to talk to people, I get to learn. But now that you can measure it, you can just, you know, improve it.

Yeah, mine's so bad. You're gonna roast me.

Yeah, but you have to, so. But there's nothing better to break yourself from. To back bad habit like that. Where you, you know, you. You've gotten into a routine where it's comforting to jump on your phone right away. I see people do this all the time. Like, I refuse to. I'll never pick up my phone during a meeting. I'll put my phone away. I don't allow. When I'm talking to another human being, I don't allow this thing to be a distraction. I always have the ringer off all the time. You know, there's never a time where I'm letting it control me. You know, I have to control it. And that's really the approach that you have to take if it's not furthering you and your entrepreneurial pursuit. And a lot of times you get caught and you trick yourself.

You're like, I'm justifying.

Yeah.

I know people that watch so many motivational videos on YouTube and they get stuck watching motivational videos all day long. And I'm like, you know, you got to get out there and take action, right? You got to. You got to actually, you know, pick up the telephone and start calling people. And, you know, you can't be sitting there just watching videos and getting, you know, and constant education realm.

Right.

Like, you know, I see people that are becoming junkies on receiving information. It's great to receive that information, but you have to take an equal amount of action to the information that you've received for that information to really lock in and become part of your DNA.

Yeah, that's amazing, man. I want to end on that because it's like, people that are watching this or listening to this, it's probably on their phone, right? So it's like, this may be a good time to go check your screen time. That's something that I always. Because now that when the update came out, like, I. I've tried to track mine and reduce it every single week, it's like, I'll catch myself looking back, and I'm like, why did I spend.

That many hours on an app?

Right.

An update. You don't.

I'm so glad you brought that up because that's always something that I've heard you talk about.

Yeah.

The.

The cleansing of putting down your phone and just doing it. I personally want to do it, and I haven't.

The way. The way I look at it. The way I look at it is like, it's. It's dopamine. So Instagram is when you're getting likes and when people are engaging, people are commenting. It feels good. Yeah. Messaging you, and you meet a new person. There's a euphoria there. And that's fantastic. And that's fine. You should only do that for, say, an hour a day or two hours a day. And if you're a social media influencer like yourself, maybe that's part of your job. So let's say it's four hours per day, right. And then the other four hours needs to be on hard calling the people, talking about your business and talking about your new app or, you know, or Raising money from investors. And so now that we can measure it, though, we can improve it.

Yeah.

Where. So I'm so. I'm so blessed to see that report because I see fluctuations of like, 20%.

Yeah.

Now, if you think about that, you had a fluctuation of 20% in a single week. Great. Let's acknowledge that. And let's. Let's work on that. And then, you know, if you. If you nail the. If you nail the week, you can nail the month, and if you nail the month, you'll nail the year. Right. And so I highly recommend becoming sharply focused on how you allocate your time, because at the end of the day, we are all, you know, equally the same for the most part. It's how we spend our time that makes us different. Right. Intellectually, human beings are not that much different. It's how they actually spend their time that makes sense.

Spend your time wisely, everybody. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for everything.

My pleasure, man.

That's.

Watching this.

Where's the best place that they can connect with you?

Connect me. Instagram. Realryanblair. Or you can read my books. Nothing to lose, Everything to gain. Pick it up on Amazon or Rock Bottom to Rockstar. Or you can watch my free documentary on YouTube. Nothing to lose. The documentary.

I'll make sure I put everything down below. You guys can go check that out. Make sure you go check out Ryan, because like I said, that was one of the first books I picked up. I remember I went to this event and I met Gerard just real quick. And he signed it. It was one of those things where it's like, that was one of the true books that really. That's awesome for. How do you do this, man? Truly means a lot.

Yeah, that's great, man. Well, I appreciate it. God bless you, brother.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Yep. Absolutely.

Thank you, man.

Alrighty.

So we are back. And that interview completely blew my mind. And I just want to take this moment to say thank you so much to everybody for listening to this episode and check your screen time, because what he just ended this podcast on is something very important to me and that is allocating your time to things that are bettering you. And if you have not already read Ryan Blair's books, that is one of my most recommended books that I would like you to pick up. So I'm gonna make sure to put the links down below to both of his books. Buy both of them. They're absolutely amazing. And that being said, thank you so much for tuning in to the rise of the Young podcast. Make sure you screenshot this, put it on your Instagram stories, tag myself and Rise of the Young. Leave a review. Make sure you subscribe. And that being said, I will talk to you on Wednesday. Thanks so much.

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If you come with me, you'll know everything.

I promise.

Oh, my God. Go, go, go.

Monarch. Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV. Plus.