Ryan Lee - 5 Income Models for a Profitable Micro Business

Look, we all have ups and downs in this business and there's going to be ups and downs. But the people who get back up and brush themselves off, they're the ones who are going to keep moving forward and prospering. So there's so much opportunity. Just find your corner, go micro and rock this.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

You're in for a treat today, boys and girls. I have Ryan Lee on the podcast. This guy's been going strong online since the late night 90s. Built multiple seven figure businesses, eight figure businesses, has exited businesses. He talks about it and now he's simplifying. He's going all about that lucrative one person micro business model and he breaks down exactly how to do it. No matter what age you are, what excuse you might have, it's never too late for that fresh start. So let's get into it. All right, Ryan, we're back. Let's do it. This is round two, man. It's been a while since you've been on the show. Thanks for coming back.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited for round two. I'm honored to be asked to come back on. And a lot has changed in the year or two, I think since we did this last. A lot changed for me and a lot changed for you. So I'm excited to come on here and talk business and just rock the mic with you, Joe.

Well, now that we got the mics working. Yeah, you're back. And it was episode 354. I'll just call it out for anyone that wants a little background. We talked about brands cultivating communities and of course the 80s. In movies there's always that. That's in your blood, man. And yeah, things, things have changed. I know you just sold a business. You know, I just, I took over this podcast. It's I'm solo now on this and quite a bit of other things. But let's rewind into what just happened on your, on your side of things.

So, yeah, last time we spoke, I was still building my, my nutrition company, Rewind, which you just said, let's rewind. I got that nice little pun. And it had been going well. Revenue was good, but after so many years of doing it, and plus I had a nutrition company before that, which I ran for about 7, 8 years. E comm is just a different animal. There's a lot of moving parts. It's great in the sense that it's much easier to convert a sale because people understand a physical product. Like if you have a picture of a nutritional supplement and you say, hey, we're going to ship this to you and it does this or, or any physical product, a T shirt, a pair of jeans, whatever it is, it's, it's. People understand the value pretty quickly versus, you know, trying to sell a digital product, of course, coaching things of that nature. And so conversions are good. But in my space in the nutrition world, it was just getting much more difficult to navigate because our raw ingredients continue to go up. It's almost like every week we get another message from the manufacturer. Oh, it's another 3%, another 5%, which really eats into your margins. Plus we were getting crunch from the other side for shipping. You know, even shipping from my manufacturing plant to, to my warehouse would go up, you know, another 5 or 10%. And then from warehouse to customer, like, oh, now there's another 50 cent surcharge, fuel fee. And it was just the margins were getting. I was getting eaten alive. And then you hear customers saying, well, now it's getting too expensive. You can't raise the price. Like, I was ready to kind of get back to nice world of digital and teaching. But it was good. I had a nice exit. And now that I'm 50, I just wanted a fresh start, kind of come back to teaching and doing what I love and, you know, ease in the back nine.

Yeah. Oh, man. And that's where, that's, that's what got my attention big time with the fact that you, you just sold this business. And I knew E Comm, I mean, that's a whole different beast. And you know, you've done so much in the membership side of things and scaling things on digital side and then running that E Comm. I can just imagine margins in general. I mean, what kind of margins were you running with? Or I guess like, where were you at before all these, you know, these costs rose and then finally like almost the breaking point, because I feel like that is the lifeblood of a business. Of course, the margins of these.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can. Depending on the product. Right. In the nutrition space, it's, there's, there's different types of products. If you're doing things that have more of a taste to it. So bars and powders and drinks, the margins are almost always lower than pills. They, it's always been said, you know, the pills pay the bills because there's just a lot more. I mean, some people can do, can do a bottle of supplements and their product cost can be, you know, five, six dollars and they could sell it for 50, whereas a powder, it might cost you. Now, I can't say the exact because I have an NDA with the company I sold it to, but let's just use round numbers. It might cost you $10 and you'll sell it for 40.

So.

But with, with any type of physical product, there's a lot of things to think about. When it comes to margins. There's a lot of things to consider in terms of how many times the customer is going to come back. Are they a repeat purchase? Like if you're selling products that are one time. So let's say you created this really cool water bottle and you're like, okay, it's going to cost me $12 to manufacture and I want to sell it for 24. That's never going to work. You'll. You're not going to get repeat purchases. The margins are just way too, way too thin. If you want to be able to do direct response marketing on the front end, get customers, do ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, TikTok, doesn't matter. You need at least like six times. So whatever your product cost is at least six. Otherwise I wouldn't even consider it at this point.

Got it.

Because product, because ad costs have gone up as well.

Yep. And that's why I wanted to point it out is just, just let's almost like have like this foundational reason why you would. Someone's in that industry. Here's some metrics from yourself. You've been doing this for a while in a variety of businesses and obviously now with this pivot, you know, and this is where it really excites me is that you're, you are 50, like you said. And I love some of these posts you've been putting out on Facebook lately where it's never too late. It's never, ever too late for a fresh start. And a rebrand pivot, a shift, a reinvention. I think those were your exact words. And, you know, so I guess talk about, was it like a breaking point, obviously, with that business, was this on your mind for a while that you needed to shift out of rewind? Was there some other calling, or was it purely, like, numbers for you?

It was. It was a process. Probably the past year or two, I was finding myself not as happy and excited about it anymore. The grind was kind of getting to me. And a lot of entrepreneurs go through this, right? You have this. You launch this. This new product, whether it's a physical product or a digital product or a new course, you get really excited. You're just jacked up. And then after a couple of years, it's not as, you know, sexy anymore.

So it was kind of that. It was definitely the feeling of my kids getting older. And what really affected me was a year and a half ago, my oldest daughter. So I have four kids, and they're all teenagers now, and my oldest went to college a year and a half ago, and that really affected me. First of all, they don't. No one really prepares you for that. First time your kid, like, goes away to college. I broke down. My God, it felt like a funeral. Like, I was. I was a disaster.

Was she in the house with you before that, prior to moving out?

Yeah, yeah, up until, you know, 18. And then we dropped her off in school, and I held it together. We dropped her off, and I came home and I just crumbled on the floor, like.

Yeah.

But it was like, okay, now I only have three more kids at home and the clock is ticking, and what am I going to do? And what am I going to do that's going to really bring me joy? And, you know, it's not even about the money at this point in my life. So what do I really want to do and what gets me excited? And that was the beginning of it. And then, yeah, the numbers kind of crunching a little bit and feeling a little bit of stress and pressure. And I'm like, why am I doing this if I'm not really loving what I'm doing again? I am. I was. I'm very blessed that I didn't have to keep doing it. I kind of was doing it because I was enjoying it and running the business, and I'm able to make a lot more decisions. And I know some people can, but I chose to kind of come back. I mean, that's where the margin and the profit on digital products, on subscriptions, on courses, on, on ebooks. We get spoiled, you know?

Yeah, we do.

We're so spoiled. We're. You sell a program for $500 and your cost of goods is almost nothing. Yeah. You have your merchant account fees and you have some little things here and there. But I'm not talking about customer acquisition costs. I'm talking about the actual cost to deliver it is pennies. And the margins you can make and the lifestyle you can build and the amount of people you can serve too. It's just the greatest business in the world. And it's, it's. The typical grass is always greener. Right. People would see me and Rwanda like, oh my God, I want to do that. And then they get on this side and like, okay, I want to do the digital stuff. It's just. Yeah, we're always on this journey and.

We have this beautiful grass field right around us. You know, if we just look down sometimes and take audit of what we already have, and then maybe make some pivots if we need to, or feel like, you know, some dead spots around us, you know.

Yeah, yeah. And do what feels right. Sometimes we. And my mistake is sometimes I get really impressionable. Like I'll, I'll go in a room with a bunch of people and let's say they all have like nine figure businesses. They're talking about all these big things and I'm like, oh, let me try this. And I start getting like big eyes. And I'm like, but I don't want to do that. I built two companies that at their peak hit seven figures in revenue per month. Now, that wasn't profit, that was revenue. But they were still really successful. But it was stressful, the teams we built. And you know, if we were spending 25 grand a day, so if, if a Facebook ad didn't work, you know, we lost 25,000 that day. So. Talk about pressure and stress. I'm like, you know what? I don't, I really don't need that much. Like, I'm good. So I, I've went on this kind of soul searching on what do I really need, what do I really want, what's most important? And I'm just trying to build my business around that. And I'm trying to show other people too, that like, you don't have to scale. I know that's like the word of the day now. And everyone talks about scale, scale, scale. And I'm hustling while you're dying, sleeping, what the hell the phrase is. And I'm here to tell you that you don't have to. You know, people say, well, if you're not scaling or if you're not growing, you're dying. Your business is dying. And that's not true. You know, you can have a business. And my friend, she had a business. It's funny, I saw her at a wedding two months ago, two years ago, her business was. Did 30 million in top line revenue. She's like. But we netted like our profit was a million.

Wow.

She's like. And then I went like, all this stress in the management, the team, she's like. So I reduced my business. I let people go, I simplified. She. Last year we did 3 million and we did a million in profit.

The best.

You tell me, right, man.

And that's where. This is why I wanted to pivot this show. So this reinvention of this show, this reboot is highlight that and stories. This is why I wanted you on the podcast. I'm so grateful that you said yes immediately and booked in is because I.

Paid you to be on here.

Of course I did. I mean, there's always that page. Thanks for telling the truth. You know, like there's, it's finding enough. Like as entrepreneurs, we all of us have something that we feel like we can improve on or, you know, this, this calling in us for whatever reason, maybe it's from years past that we're like, oh, we never did try that, or that's a great idea. Or I respect this person. And, and there's, there's like a lot of us just don't know what our enough is. What is it that we feel like we have. And for you, you mentioned your family and of course you've, you've have a lot of experience in some of these other styles of businesses. And I would imagine that there's a lot of folks you chat with that might give you the excuse that maybe they're in a business that they've been doing for 20 years and. Or 10 years or maybe gone to school for a long time for some profession or something professional, like a doctor. It's like, I can't pivot now. You know, I'm 50, I'm 55. What would you say to those folks?

Yeah, I would say sunk cost bias is very dangerous. I have one guy who's been a client and he was a veterinarian and he started a side business selling T shirts and he did like two and a half million bucks T shirt sales. Nothing to do with his veterinarian school. Like, the money is already spent. It's already gone. You don't have to do something just because you did it in the past. And we get really stuck on that. Joe, I can give you hundreds of examples of people I've talked with that have built things and just won't let it go. I'll just give you one quick story. A guy. This was years ago. He was a PhD in psychology, and he said, okay, Ryan, I want to sell these videos. And he sent me a couple of video samples, and I'm looking at it, and I said, who's that in the video? Who? How old is this? Because the guy I'm talking to was probably 60. Bald, gray, just like an older guy. The guy in the video looked like Bob Ross. Like, he had, like, big, black, curly hair, a full, thick beard. Yeah, it looked like it was done in, like, the late 80s. That's what. Who is that? He said, that's me. But that was, like, 25 years ago. He said, yeah, but, you know, I want to sell these videos because I already spent, you know, $10,000 to get them produced 20 years ago. I said, well, how much of this information is still relevant? He's like, well, maybe like 20%. I said, so the video is outdated. The content's outdated. It doesn't look like you, but you want to sell it because you spent the money 20 years ago. He's like, I already spent the money. I want to sell it. I want to make my money back. You can tell where this conversation went. But that's just an example of people who are just so stuck in the past. I, for better or worse, I don't get, like, emotionally attached to the business stuff. Not that I don't get emotionally attached to my customers. I do. I want to help them. But, like a business idea, I put it out there. I float it. I see if people want it. If they do, cool, I'll create it. We'll go for it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I'm like, all right, what's next? What else can I do? What else is going to, you know, help people and serve them and bring some income and have some fun? So you just got to let that stuff go. And you got. You have to be willing to try things. You have to be willing to fail. Because not everything I do succeeds. I'm sure not everything you have done succeeds, and not everything everyone listening to succeeds. It happens, and it's fine. It's part of the process. But be transparent with people. They'll support you. They know you're going to take wins and losses. And it's crazy because it might seem counterintuitive when you do have a loss and it's public, people will get behind you as long as you're being open and honest about it, you know, and you're not lying. So everyone acts like their thing is the greatest launch in history when just say, look, I tried. It didn't work. How else can I help you? What else can I do? Give me some ideas, you know, just get people involved, solve in the process.

Love that. See that. More and more with folks building in the open or reinventing in the open and sharing that on social, whatever aspect they. They are choosing to share. But it's, it's really cool and I've done a little bit of that, planning to do that even more so as this show builds out and, and kind of talk about these different phases of, of my reboot. And I think that's healthy. You know, it shows a little bit more. For one, we're getting feedback along the way. As long as we're, you know, maybe consuming the right kind of feedback. Yeah, it depends on who you're asking, where you're sharing. Seems like what you're doing with your new site, or not new, but the reinvented side of Ryan Lee and you have that upcoming show as well, or tv. Ryan Lee tv, that is. Yeah, yeah, talk about that. Like sharing in public and some of these things you're working on too, that are.

I think it's really important to document. And I just did a training course with, with my members talking about this, taking them through this whole system of, you know, we tend to create a lot of times secretly, and I don't know why. I think we're. We're either scared that if, if we talk about it, hype it up, and it comes out, it doesn't work, you know, we're going to look like a failure or. Which is even crazier. We feel like people are going to, quote, unquote, steal our ideas. Oh, my God. I don't want to tell everyone they're gonna steal. No one's stealing your damn ideas. Like, get over yourself. Your idea is already out there. But if you, if you get out there and you, you just put it with the perspective of, hey, it's me, it's Joe. This is what I'm excited about. This is what I'm trying. What do you think? I can't wait to share it with you. Oh, it's Joe. Here's a second day. Look what I just created. Just Getting people involved in the process. And even if it's. If you don't have a big email list or a big following on your business, social media, just do it on your personal page because you don't know who your friends and family know. Like you might be building something in real estate investing niche and maybe like, well, my friends and family don't do that. But one of your friends might say, you know what? I actually know this really big real estate investor in, in Alabama and I just forwarded your thing to, to, to him or her and all of a sudden like you're in business so you just don't know. And if you're a good human being and hopefully everyone listening to this is. And I'm sure they are because you're, you're going to attract good people, Joe.

Thank you, sir.

If you're a good person and have treated people well, most people will want you to succeed. Yeah, right. There'll be some that'll be haters, but who cares? Just put out good stuff. I did this when I was starting rewind. I called the behind the rewind and I was just filming little videos. This is the bar. This is what I'm testing. And I'm doing the same thing with the show. I'm saying, hey, here's, here's the logo, here's what we're going to do. It's coming soon. And you'd be shocked how many emails I get of oh my God, Ryan, I'm so excited. I love what you're doing. It looks like you have so much energy. People want to feel that passion. So don't create in silence. Start documenting what you're doing and share it.

I love it, man. And yeah, don't create in silence. And I know my, one of my. When I find myself thinking too much internally and not sharing my thoughts, actually putting those things out into the world, that's where maybe procrastination shows up. Momentum just kind of ceases, you know, when we, when we're up too much in our heads, man. And I feel like enough in our hearts sharing it, being open and being receptive to feedback too because you know, our feel like we think too much and that can get kind of dangerous and take us down directions that we might not shouldn't be going. It's great to have people around us and let's be honest, it motivates us. You know, we're creating energy around that thing that we're building and we're always going to have support from someone even if it's our parents to start or whatever.

Yeah, there's a lot of people pulling for you. And when you put something out in public, it, it kind of forces you to do it. Yeah, right. Like, you announce it, you're like, all right, now I, I'm kind of being held accountable by family and friends and you go for it. And people are just nervous, they're scared. And I, and I get it and I empathize with that, but I look at it like, what do you have to lose really? Like, depending on your age. I'm 50, you know, look, 50 years from now, I'm sure I'm not going to be around. Hopefully I am, but yeah, there's a really good chance I won't. And you know, on your deathbed, are you really going to say, man, you know, I put logo out there or I put, you know, I did that little video and I only got seven likes. Like, is that really going to be what you're thinking about in your deathbed? I, I highly doubt it. Put it out there. Like, let's try some things. We have this self inflated, you know, feeling of importance. Like everyone is sitting around all day waiting to hear what we have to say, you know, oh my God, like, Joe. And as much as people love and support you, and this almost sounds like I'm going against what I said, but it's not like there are people that love and support you, but there aren't billions of people sitting around waking up every morning, the first thing they're doing is, oh, my God, what's Joe doing?

Right? What's he doing?

What do you say? Well, well, he's, you know, six months ago he said he's doing this show and now it's called this. Forget it. I don't trust him. Like, they're, everyone's kind of worried about their own thing, but, but get there, show up and, and share some stuff and kind of get in their head a little bit. Not get in their head, you know. Yeah, like you're playing Michael Jordan games, but, you know, like, just be visible, get people excited. Know that it's not the end of the world. And let's just. I look at it instead of waking up saying, oh man, I got to do this and I have to work. I look up and say, I wake up, man. I get to play today.

Yeah, man. And it shows. And you have, you've always had great energy, but even more so now, you know, just everyone peek at Ryan's Facebook profile and just look at all the fun smiles. You're Putting out there and the cool things you're doing. Seriously, man. Because, yeah, it's. I don't know, hold. Holding up. Well, I'll just say back to what you were saying earlier. That is something I have struggled with is like, if I don't put out a podcast episode on this exact day or, or post something there, you know, there's some pressure internally and I feel like we all have whatever trigger like that, but it's kind of B.S. it's like, let. Let the grip go. It's okay. Show up. Keep showing up. Of course.

Yeah.

But show up when it's right for you. But always, you know, give that value and don't just do it to just do it, you know, because that's. Yeah. If it's a have to, it's going.

Yeah, it will. And. And we put so much pressure on ourself. And. And there's. There's definitely. We're listening to a lot of. There's this like kind of hustle porn mentality now, you know, and it's. I hate calling them out, but, you know, it's. It's like the kind of grant Cardone, the Vaynerchuk, you know, how to do 7,000 pieces of content a day. It's like, you just don't need that. Yeah. Do the. Do you go on the one or two platforms that feel effortless to you that. Where your audience is. Do a couple things that. That are really right in your wheelhouse and experiment and try new things and. And put stuff out there and let's. Let's see what works. I know this sounds kind of loosey goosey, but I do think you'll find out pretty quickly what's resonating, especially when you can get people onto your email list. Like, that really is where the magic happens. Social media. Okay, that's fine. And my Facebook, it's cool. Hey there. I am with the boombox. But the end of the day, if you want to make sales, you want to pay your bills, you have to get them on your email list.

That's right.

You have to make offers.

Well, let's talk about that. I want to get into the structure. And I know micro businesses is kind of this thing you were describing earlier. Without the lack of teams or a big team, at least the bloat is very minimal. If not anything, stress is lower problems, lower, higher margins. So walk us through more the structure side of what you're doing now and what kind of promoting to people.

Yeah, it's. It. All right. How do I. Because there's there's a lot to kind of dissect here. You have to start thinking about where you are, where you're going to be in the market, right? Like where you're going to show up, what's your positioning. And then starting to look at what's my business model. And I've come up with, I've, I've looked at all the different products I've created over the past 25 years and all the people I've helped and it really, the income models are really going to come down to one of five different things. And some people have one income stream, some have two, three, four or all five. They're the five Cs. I made it easy for everyone. The first C is course are courses, right? Taking your information, packaging them up. When, when you put the micro lens on it, I say, look, you don't have to go crazy with the size of the course. And sometimes we think that, well, if I'm going to charge 500, I'm going to charge a thousand, I've got to give them more. When the reality is people sometimes just want less. I don't want to go through a seven month course with 400 hours of webinars. That sounds exhausting. So that's, that's actually a disadvantage in today's world. So think, think smaller, think more digestible, think practical and tactical and give. I was, I did a workshop one time. This woman came up and said, yeah, no one's buying my course. It's $500, I don't know why. And I said, what's the course? She said, well, I overcame cancer, you know, four years ago. And it's the whole course detailing if you're diagnosed with cancer, what I did and how to kind of help. And I said okay. And she said, and it's a, it was, I think it was like a 12 or 16 week course.

Oh, wow.

I said, okay, timeout. Who's the person buying this? Well, you know, they were just diagnosed with cancer. Okay, get in their shoes for a second. I'm just diagnosed with cancer. Do you want to wait 12 weeks to go through a course?

Nowhere.

I might not be alive in 12 weeks. So that's what I'm saying, like put it up, don't make it 12 weeks. Give it to me in 12 hours. Give it to me in 12 minutes. Yeah. So we, this is where we, we look at everything like what the gurus teach and we don't apply practical, real world experience to it and real human emotion. So that's, that's courses, right. Number two is coaching. And coaching is, you know, one on one or groups. And to put the microlens on it, it's instead of saying well I have to do a four week coaching program or a six month coaching program or a one year coaching program. How do you condense it? How do you reduce the time? Even one hour programs coaching. I don't do one hour calls, I do 20 or 30 minute sessions. That's it, that's my coaching session. And people like it. We come on, I get right into it within. I did a 20 minute call the other day and after six minutes he's like, all right, I got what I need.

Nice.

Yeah, because it's like he told me, I said this is what you need to do, you need to do this, you need to send this email. You have to go do it now. He's like on it. So that's so that's second coaching. So second C. So we've got courses, we've got coaching. The third one is continuity, which continuity income, which is subscriptions and membership sites. If you look at the micro lens, think instead of big bulky memberships, trying to appeal to a hundred different people, get as niche down as you possibly can. Don't talk to marketers, talk to media buyers. Don't just talk to media buyers. Talk to people who buy media on YouTube, you know, and YouTube ads. And then instead of giving them 100 videos, give them maybe an eight to 10 page newsletter every month showing them one campaign that's working really dial it in. The two other Cs which are kind of additional. One would be commerce, which is E Comm, which is merchandise and physical products. Again micro, instead of coming out with a huge product line and 100 items and even with in the nutrition space, I would come out with one, come out with one product. Start there and focus on subscriptions if you possibly can, if your products warrant it. And the final C is commissions is affiliate programs. It's once you're building up your, your name, your reputation, your brand, your list, find other programs where you can get commissions. You could either bring, you could even bring other people in as experts and split course revenue or, or subscription revenue. I just did. I did two programs recently, one about list building, one about social media. I brought in two different people to teach the four week course. We did revenue, revenue shares. I brought in someone who kind of did all the heavy lifting and I got them in front of my audience. They were happy because they got paid to just teach and we just kind of Put the micro lens on that too. Creating these short four week live training programs. So that's, that's really an overview. Those are the five Cs courses, coaching, continuity, commerce and Commission.

Love it all, man. And would you recommend folks to you know, obviously email list because that's, that's going to be the community that you quote unquote kind of own. You know, you have, you have folks around you is how would you tell someone to you know, kind of bite off one of these or maybe multiple of these. Do you think it's smart to. I'm sure starting with one, but do.

You think start with one? Yeah, yeah, you got to start with one. And if, if there was all of those to choose from. Look, there are some people who either don't want to be or, and I hate to say this, they just don't have the motivation or even the chops to be the quote unquote face right. They don't want to create products, they don't want to do teaching or maybe they don't feel like they have enough to offer. So they would rather be more of a, of someone who finds the content. You know, maybe they're a host, maybe they're producer and maybe their model is purely like I'm going to build my list and I'm just going to make money on commissions. That's it. I'm just going to promote other people and I'll get a piece of all their stuff and not have to do any fulfillment. But for a lot of the people, probably I would going to assume most of the people listening to yours are going to fall into the other side. They want to, to be a face or at least drive the company. So I would say out of all of those, start with something that is a one time purchase, a one. You know, it's a lot of people love the recurring revenue and so do I. I mean that's where I really cut my teeth and made a majority of my revenue with subscriptions. But they're really, really tough to sell on the front end, especially to a cold audience. Like if I never heard of Joe, you know, and I see an ad, it's going to be very tough for me to go from never heard of you Joe to okay, here's $50 a month for the membership. Yeah, but if you say here's how I built my podcast or here's how I built this program or here's how I market and it's a one time $50 or even one time 99 or even one time $1.99, I'm much more apt to buy. So I'd say find that one thing. Find the thing that's really unique and different in the marketplace and sell that and start building the list of buyers, even if it's low ticket stuff, just to get people into your world. And then you could do the other things on the back end.

I love it. And that's momentum too. It's, it's less commit long term, you know, starting with that one time purchase thing and, and you learn so much just with the people who are buying. Could survey them and then see what the next steps might be now.

Oh yeah, yeah. Even if you. I like to put, I like to work in constraints. So if I say to you, okay, let's create your first product, you know, we would map out what are your steps, what's your system, you know, coming up with this kind of program to package all of their, their intellectual property. And then I say, okay, here's your constraint. You have to condense that all and teach it in one hour. And all of a sudden your brain starts to go into overdrive. Okay, well each, if it's three steps, each step would be about, you know, 20 minutes while I got an intro. If it's 10 minutes or each step is 15 and all of a sudden it feels achievable, yep, that's it. And just create the damn thing.

I love it.

We overthink, you know, we definitely overthink this stuff. We're like, well, it's got to be a six month course and it's got to be all this stuff and you're, you know, you're setting up funnels and you're doing a hundred things. Just create a one, a one time thing. Sell it on PayPal. I mean I've done a couple of courses recently where my whole sales letter is on a Google Doc and a PayPal link. And they did six figures.

There you go, man. Oh, that's the thing. And that was going to be my next kind of going into it. But you're already there. Is over complicating it. Like us entrepreneurs, I feel like we just know how to stack and we know how to take the pressure. Held this load for so long. But you're talking about no, like constraints I think are the best possible thing. Constrain your time, constrain their consumption time and the commitment that they're going to have in your product. I mean, you know, the overcomplicating kind of just goes away if you're keeping true to your Constraints, that is. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's, there's other ways that can be complicated in this model. Like I know your big thing on with, with this model there's not much of a team, like there's not really much needed there or other bloat in the business. Are there any other things that, that I guess other qualities of this business that would be appealing and you know, for maybe someone listening, it's like, man, I am overcomplicated every which way and kind of dropping those somehow.

You don't need a big team. In fact, it's funny because the first time in 20 years. So since I sold this company, I don't have any full time employees. It's crazy.

Sure, it feels great.

You don't realize it. Like even if you're paying a full time employee, let's say they're based in the US and you're paying them like 60,000 a year, you have to make that back. And if it's an E Comm company, that means you have to generate like 200,000 in extra revenue just to pay for that employee. But you can do this? Absolutely. With a few very strategic outsourced people to help. Like if you don't want to do the video editing yourself, find someone on Fiverr to edit it. Five bucks a video.

Yeah.

It's very easy to find people on a project by project basis, whether it's tech stuff, whether it's graphics. But the beauty is, and I know I'm gonna sound like a cheesy marketer from 2005, but really you can do this by yourself from anywhere. I don't have my office anymore. I'm recording this right now from my basement office right in front of my 86 inch TV and my records and my music videos playing. Like it's just easy and it doesn't have to be that hard. And if I want to update a sales page or create one, I just open up Google Docs because people are, they're not buying for all the flash and all that stuff. They're just buying because they want their problems to be solved. And you could just do it open and honestly and stop trying to oversell everything. Just, and stop with all the pressure. Just say hey, hey, I'm, I'm Jenny and I'm a fitness pro and I help people lose weight without dieting and blah blah blah. And look, I put together this, this two week program and it's going to show you how to eat, meal plans and recipes and blah blah blah. And I think you're going to like it. It's just X amount of dollars. Here's the link. Give it a try. And if you don't love it after the two weeks, I'm happy to give you a full refund. That's it. Done.

Simple. And it is, it really is. And if we can constrain our brains and stop complicating crap, I mean, on the front of your website. And I love it, it calls out exactly what every one of us face when we start getting into things. If we don't know some prior experience or have some guidance like we're talking about here from you, man, it's just, it's very simple to complicate everything. Doesn't need to be.

You can get in the weeds very quickly. Yeah, really quickly. Like it. And that's the problem. Like it's, it's so easy right now to get started online. You don't even need a website like you, you can theoretically just do it with a social media account like an Instagram, a TikTok. You could start driving people there and you know, send them to a, an order button somewhere. But so because it's easy and because the barrier to entry is so low, it means so many people are doing it now. And Covid has sped it up. Right. People know they can work from anywhere and they could do zooms from anywhere. So you've got a ton of competition. So the old way of doing it just isn't cutting it anymore.

Right.

But with, with all of this, with all the low barrier to entry and all the competition, there's a lot more information. I mean, how many people now are teaching or creating courses how to create a course? There's hundreds of them. So it gets complicated. Well, do I create a course? Do I create the continuity program? Do I do coaching? Like even the five Cs that I said, I almost hesitate saying it because I don't want people to think they have to do all five. Because you don't.

Right.

That you could just do one and within that you could just do one product.

That's all you need. It's usually just a single thing and just, just keep on with that thing. And I think that's, that's where I've always burned myself, is going to the next thing before I've maximized my effort on that one thing and just keep doing the boring work. I mean, if we could stick with it as much as possible and keep focused on that and serve who is actually paying us money or joining our email list, you can't go wrong. And those people are probably not going to leave as long as you're staying true to them, giving them value along the way.

Right? And when you shift or pivot, as long as you're explaining it to people and telling them why, hey, this is what I'm doing, and this is why I'm changing, or this is what I'm creating, there are going to be some people that stick with you and maybe some people that drop off because whatever direction you're going in isn't for them. And that's fine. Like, you cannot be everything for everybody, nor should you try to be everything for everybody. And if you were in the, let's just use that example, real estate investing niche, and after five, six years, you just don't want to do it anymore. You're like, you know what? I want to teach guitar because that's my passion. And I've been in a jam band for 15 years, and I just want to teach it, then do it. Then go to your list and say, you know what? It's been great. I. If you're interested in guitar, like, this is what I'm gonna do now. Come on over. Right?

I love it. And that's. It's freedom. And I know it's one of your other brands too. It's literally, we have our own freedom. It's usually us holding ourselves back for whatever reason, excuse or thing that we're telling ourselves. Again, we're probably in our heads too much. So put it out there and guaranteed you're gonna get some support. It might not be everyone, but that's okay. And you can always attract more from those folks that are already with you too. So no reason not to speak specifically.

To, to that one person. Like, that's, that's the key. Even yesterday I was interviewed on a podcast, and the interview, and I was his first one for this new reboot of the show. And even at the end, he goes, did that come out okay? It didn't feel like it was great because his, his questions weren't really hitting, they weren't really engaging. And I think he felt it. And I said to him, I think it's because you're too. Your market is too broad. Because he's trying to help people that are on quote, unquote teams. And, you know, there's marketing, CMOs, there's the employees, there's someone in tech, there's an agency owner. It's like a mishmash. And it's, it's very challenging to pinpoint your marketing, your Emails, everything, when you're trying to hit this really big, broad target. So, yeah, the more specific you get, the better it's. We're in the age of specialization, even more so now. Like, you have to be a specialist. Generalists are dying.

Well, that's. Yeah. And look at AI, all the tech that's coming out every single day. Yeah, that generalist stuff is going to go away pretty quick here. Well, Ryan, before we wrap up, let me know and tell everyone what's. What's coming up for you, because you've been rebranding everything. You have this Ryan Lee TV been creating graphics for it looks like in Canva, I was kind of like, hey, I know that. I know that template, all right? I've used that before. Tell us what you're doing and then the mission behind it, too, because I feel like that really rounds this whole conversation out.

Well, you know, I'm practicing what I'm preaching. Like, I've kind of come back full circle and now I'm building businesses and teaching other people to build businesses that are just more, you know, less hassle, more profit, you know, small but mighty. So I'm going to create a few new programs. I'm actually working on one flagship program that's going to take all of my 25 years of business building and condense it into one program. But basically, my concept is almost like a choose your own adventure because it's hard to know what path to take unless you know every possibility. So I'm going to say, okay, step one. Here are the two marketing things. Which path do you want to go? Okay, Here are the five Cs. Which path? And then go. And then explore each one. And then by the end, you're like, okay, this is my marketing channel. This is my marketing market. This is my path. This is my, my monetization. And here's how it's all going to look so you know and you have clarity. So I'm building that out. That's going to be fun. And I'm working on this new show. I used to do a daily podcast years ago, but it was just audio. But now I'm going to do new one. It's short. They're going to be 10 minutes or less. And it was funny. It was. It was going to be Ryan Lee tv, but as I was saying it out loud, and that's important, test is to whatever product you want to create, say the name out loud. Because what might look good visually, people say it in their head or they say it out loud if it doesn't roll off the tongue. It's a little tougher. So right now I think I'm going to the name. I think I'm shortening it up. I think I'm going to call it Rye tv.

Ride tv. Yeah, that rolls off more for sure.

Yeah. RY tv.

I like it.

And we're going to do this kind of daily ish show because I'm not putting pressure on myself. And then what we're going to do is we're going to have content behind that that is going to be a membership. So if people want more, there's going to be an option for a. Like, you get more stuff. Yeah, I can't get into too many details now because I'm still fleshing it out, but it's. It's going to be based on the Ry TV brand.

Love it, man. Well, when you, when there is something to share, I will definitely want to share with the folks listening here and with the list as well, because you're speaking the language I've been, I've been really thinking about for a long time now and finally putting in action is this whole reinvention. And you know, I had my own excuses. I took them and, you know, I shared them publicly and here in the podcast and social and man, the support's there and I know you have the same and it's a beautiful thing. And the fact that you're leading this for a lot of folks, I feel like now you're in your 50. You are 50. I'm about to turn 38. I mean, there's. This is the time of our lives. I feel like the. One of the biggest shifts and a lot of folks are kind of around that age range listening right now too. So again, drop the excuses. There's big example right here and there's so many more as well. So just, just create your own game and play your own business. Play by your rules. I think that's what you said as well. Yeah, yeah, man.

Ryan, your sandbox, your rules. And I really appreciate you having me on and I love your reinvention and your doing what's bringing you joy. And we. Look, we all have ups and downs in this business and there's going to be ups and downs, but the people who get back up and brush themselves off, they're the ones who are going to keep moving forward and, and prospering. So there's so much opportunity. Just find your. Find your corner. Go micro and rock this.

Yeah, baby. Oh, I love it. Pumping me up, man. I want to go play some 80s video games. Now you got me ramped up and. And let's do it. All right, brother. Well, we'll do it again soon. And thanks again.

Thanks, Joe.

All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.

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