Ryan Blair's Top 10 Rules For Success (@RyanBlair)

You continue to add value to people's lives, and then the more you do that for a long enough period of time, it starts to have a bit of a ripple effect.

So I created a board of directors, a board of advisors, and I sought to surround myself with the smartest people I could.

This business is about a will, a will to win. Any business, entrepreneurship's about having a will in you.

Even if you're down to the lowest financial lows, you're gonna wake up alive the next day.

You have to set your expectations, and then you have to be willing to deal with the results if you don't meet them.

When you have nothing to lose, you're either backed into a corner or— and you cower you submit, or you fight your way out.

The real compensation was really having people come to me and say, "You changed my life," that were just customers.

He's an American entrepreneur and author.

He's the co-founder and CEO of a multi-level marketing company.

Ernst Young named him as Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012.

He's Ryan Blair, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success.

You continue to add value to people's lives, and then the more you do that for a long enough period of time, it starts to have a bit of a ripple effect. Well, if you If you focus on that, then you get shit like this.

So, but if you focus on this, you never get it.

If you're chasing money, you'll be chasing your whole life. But if you're trying to create value, and the more value that you create, then you figure out an economic engine around creating that value, then you can spend your whole life just doing that. You know, and then in that particular scenario, money, you know, it follows, it doesn't lead.

After you start your business, then the next idea is to surround yourself with great people. So I created a board of directors, a board of advisors, and I sought to surround myself with the smartest people I could in my industry so that way I could build a business, you know, utilizing and really unifying their collective strengths to really mitigate my weaknesses. So that's tip number 2: surround yourself with great people to mitigate your weaknesses so that you can work on your strengths. Now I apply that in my business today. Today I own, you know, I'm the CEO and founder of a company that's doing literally $400 million a year in sales, significant profit. Also I'm an investor in a number of other businesses, and I still utilize that same advice that I gave myself and I learned literally from my venture capitalists and my advisors, which was surround yourself with great people. And I do that in every company, whether I'm an angel investor in it, or I'm running it myself, I look to surround myself with great people. You know, we have a mantra at Vaisalis that we only hire A players. You know, the reason why is an A player will hire other A players, but a B player will tend to hire C players, and a C player will hire D players. So I look to hire the best of the best, the smartest people I possibly can find, and I really have a formula for it. It's simple. I look for people that are passionate, that are smart, and that want to win. I'll repeat that: passionate, smart, and want to win. Meaning they have big hearts, they really love what they're doing, they love the idea of the business that they're in, they want to win, meaning they have a competitive drive in them, and they're smart. They're going to make smart decisions along the way. And that's really my hiring mantra. And if you can't afford to hire people because you're part of a small business, then give them equity or give them some other form of compensation that you can give them. I've always built every company utilizing equity as my number one form of compensation to get people around me that are smarter than me and many times much more expensive than I was at the time.

This business is about a will, a will to win. Any business, entrepreneurship is about having a will in you, a will to win. One, I'm tired.

Two, I was on a red-eye.

Three, my son gave me a cold. Four, my mother's in critical condition. There's a million things that I'm not happy about going on in my physical energy. You know, I got stress on me, I got a deal closing, I got a book launch, I got the biggest event of, you know, my company, I got a mobile company I'm rolling out that's a big opportunity for me. You know, you take all that stuff and you say, wow, that guy's got a lot of stress, or, you know, he's sick, or whatever it is. It's about your will. The show must go on. And you know, when you have a commitment, you have a goal, and you want to win, it's really about a will to win.

You're a kid in the ghetto, you're a kid with nothing, you're foster homes. How are you making $100 grand a year at 19 years old?

It's an interesting story. I was in youth camp, and I found the— in preparation for coming on the show here, I found a letter that I wrote to my mom in camp saying, I'm going to do better, I'm going to get my life, you know, I'm going to make you proud one day. And today I started playing with computers, and I really think I want to do something in the industry or in the field of computers. It wasn't that quite that letter, that moment. I didn't realize it at the time. I didn't even realize it. I was about 14 years old. I was in camp for over a month, and I remember I really was fascinated by computers. And at the time, if you recall, in the dot-com 1.0 era, anyone who had skills with regard to computers— there were talent that was high in demand. We were making absurd amounts of money. So I would get, you know, I'd sign on to a company, get a $15,000 signing bonus, and 3 months later I'd get a 30% raise and sign on to another.

And what happened in '19?

So at 19 years old, I just got struck with the idea to be an entrepreneur. I was afraid though, I'd had a lot of things going right for me, making good income. I'd bought a car, so I'd taken some risks, got some debt, and I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I went to my mentor, my stepdad, and I said, "You know, I'm thinking about being an entrepreneur," and he said, "Do it, you have nothing to lose. So what? If you fail and if you lose everything, who cares? You're still gonna be the same person." What people don't understand in our society is even if you're down to the lowest lowest financial lows, you're going to wake up alive the next day. You're not going to have everything, you know, your life, your body, your health cannot be taken from you if you've taken, you know, if you've taken control and taken care of it.

I've learned a principle in business, and that is that you have to set your expectations, and then you have to be willing to deal with the results if you don't meet them. Every once in a while you get that euphoric feeling of having your expectations exceeded, and that's a wonderful thing, but in In business and in life, it's about setting your expectations accurately and correctly. And if you set them correctly, then you'll never be let down. And most of the time what an entrepreneur does, or what I used to do in the past, I said, "I'm gonna have 10,000 people there," and, you know, I only had 400 or 40 or whatever it is. And when you set your expectations wrong, you're crushed, you know? And that's the trick, is set your expectations correctly.

Your book is titled Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain. What does that title mean to you?

You know, it's a mindset. So it's a mindset that I had when I was on the streets, when I lived, you know, in boys' homes, and I was in juvenile hall. And the essence is, is when you have nothing to lose, you either are backed into a corner, or— and you cower and you submit, or you fight your way out. And so I've been backed into a corner a few times, both when I was a kid, but then also in my professional career when I decided to become an entrepreneur. When the recession hit, you know, I had to apply that same mindset.

Now, it's your mantra. Why do you think so many people don't live with that mindset today? I mean, there's a lot of fear out there, fear of the unknown too.

Yeah, you know what, fear is a trap, and people are domesticated, so to speak, so they're comfortable. And if they just realize that they have nothing to lose, these middle-class folks, they think they have something to lose. They think that their reputation with their neighbors, or their credit, or their Louis Vuitton luggage, or whatever it is, is worth holding on to. If they just ventured out there, started a business, took action, they'd realize there's a better life.

Everybody else in the world lined up to tell me don't do it, right? Because everybody, you know, they said, right? They said that entrepreneurship doesn't work, or they said the industry you're getting into is difficult. So don't listen to these people that are telling you advice unless they're qualified to give it. People who have done it, who have lived it, and then listen keenly. One of the things that you mentioned in the book, and we're going to talk about your success, is that not everyone is built to be an entrepreneur.

Talk about that.

Well, you know, entrepreneurship's about ambition.

It's about problem solving, and a lot of people don't care to solve problems.

So, you know, as entrepreneurs, we try to solve problems, and we have to have ambition to do that.

And sometimes we have to be crazy enough to think we can, and other people, you know, they're so employee programmed and so employee minded that maybe that can't break from them in terms of, you know, their thinking. How do you parse that out? So you have all these ideas. How do you know where to start? As an entrepreneur, I've raised millions upon millions of dollars for my small business ventures, and I always start with my network. Who do you know, and who within your friends, your family, business associates? And if your network runs out, then What events can you go to, whether it be fundraising seminars or business venture capital seminars, or even charity-related events where these investors are, where you can talk to them, but build rapport, meet them as friends, and talk to them about the subject of your investment. And that's what I've always done, is use your network and grow your network if it doesn't have enough people in it to help.

It was interesting, when I started this business, I had no idea that, you know, what the real compensation was, and the real compensation was really having people come to me and say, "You changed my life," that were just customers. You know, "You changed my life because I lost X amount of weight," or, you know, "My husband and I have a renewed sex life or renewed, you know, marriage because we're both, you know, feeling great about ourselves, have our peak energy, we like the way we look, we have confidence, you know, in ourselves again." And I mean, it's neat. So you get to restore people's confidence, you get to restore people's marriages in some cases, you get to, you know, You know, you get to really help people a lot.

Thank you guys so much for watching.

We made this video because FJO asked us to. If there's another entrepreneur you'd like us to profile, leave a comment below.

We'd also love to know which of Ryan's top 10 rules had the biggest impact on you— had the biggest impact on you and why. Leave in the comments below and we'll join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe. And we'll see you soon.

So how does a kid who's 13, heading to foster homes, nothing, a penny in the world, mom on minimum wage, how does a guy like that, give us the secrets to by 19 starting his own business, by 30 having 6 multimillion-dollar businesses, how the hell did you do it, man?

You know, for one, I had to grow up very fast, right? So at 13 years old, I kind of had to be an adult. I had to fend for myself and I had to take care of me first. So I became a person who took care of myself first and foremost from a survival standpoint. So I kind of built these instincts, not realizing it, that were very suitable to entrepreneurship because— Which ones?

What are those?

Well, you know, really not being afraid, right? So in contrast to where I'd come from, where I was going was only gonna get better. So I was never gonna go back to the bad neighborhood. I was never gonna go back to a one-bedroom shack in the middle of a gang-ridden territory. I'd never go back there. So starting a business was real easy. It was risky though. I left a job, a career where I was making close to $100,000 a year. I was 19 years old and I said, I'm going to risk everything.

How will you take me to that, man?

Who are my role models in life?

I have a number of them. My 2-and-a-half-year-old son Reagan, uh, you know, I know it's weird to call him a role model, but he teaches me how to laugh. Uh, he and I just go yelling and kicking and screaming and, and roll around on the floor and, you know, and just, you know, so my son is kind of my my role model to an extent. Coach John Wooden mentored me. Coach Dale Brown, from LSU fame, has mentored me. Bob Gergen, my partner at Blyth, and the chair of the Wharton School of Entrepreneurship, or the Gergen School of Entrepreneurship at Wharton, rather. You know, I've got a lot of role models out there. So, you know, I look up to a lot of people. And, you know, Tony Hsieh, for example, is a role model to me, what he's done at Zappos. I've had the privilege to be able to pick his brain a few times, and I can tell you there's a lot of role models out there.

You have to sell products that you believe in, and if you believe those products, that'll be conveyed. Now, there is a science to it, so if you have the belief, that's great. That's probably, in my opinion, 85 to 90% of the sale. The other 10% is knowing exactly how to conduct yourself and the skill behind selling, which there's books such as Robert Cialdini's that demonstrates that skill.