Epic Real Estate Investing - Capitalism... Good? or Evil? with Ryan Daniel Moran | 654

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

Today, we are hosting Ryan Daniel Moran, a founder of capitalism.com. His mission is to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs, so he came to the show to talk about developing the lasting business in the modern day. Ryan is an accomplished and serial entrepreneur who has already taught many how to create, where to invest, and how to double their profits. So, stay tuned, listen to how he manages his business, from whom and how he learned, and what the essence of creating a desirable business is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, rock star Matt here. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the show. I've got a really good one for you today. And if you're listening to this show, whether today is your first day or it's your first year or maybe you're almost your 10th year. Like, can you believe somebody could be listening to this show for 10 years? I know I've been here for 10 years.

I know some of you have been as well. And what that tells me is you're into real estate investing. You want to make some money in real estate. Maybe you're already making it. Maybe you're not making as much as you want and you want to make more. And if you're really serious about it, about learning how to invest in real estate, the right way with regard to learning the lead machine building blocks to attract better leads, the language patterns, to get more sellers to accept your offers, and how to creatively finance

your deals without using your money or credit. I mean, it's with those three things where the real money is made. Join me at the next Epic Intensive Lead Machine Workshop in Manhattan Beach, California, July 18th through the 20th, where we can work on all of this stuff together in person. Reserve your seat at Epicintensive.com. It's Manhattan Beach. California. It's the beach. It's right there in the city's name. It's the middle of summer. Bring the family. Make a vacation out of it. Go to epicintensive.com and let's make it happen. So I joined the Epic Insiders because I'm just starting real estate new. I was doing engineering a couple months ago. And I knew like I didn't have the time. I'm starting a new career to learn everything

on my own. I don't want to make all the mistakes on my own. I didn't have the time to learn everything on my own. So I knew Matt, I've been listening to this podcast. for about a year now. And I just trusted him. I believed in his character. So I hired him. I just wanted to go all out and work with the best that I knew at the time because, again, I just want to learn from, you know, his mistakes and basically just leverage his knowledge so I could get up and running very quickly. This is Terrio Media. Hey, this is Mad Terrio. I got a hot show for you today right here on Thought Leader Thursday on the epic real estate investing show. Stay tuned.

All right. So hello, on today's episode of Thought Leader Thursday, I'm joined by an accomplished and serial entrepreneur, author, and investor. His main focuses on creating lifestyle freedom, helping people create lasting businesses and investing the profits wisely. That's important, while enjoying a higher quality of life and working less. He is driven by the belief that entrepreneurs are solved problems

and that the world needs more empowered entrepreneurs. As the founder of Capitalism.com, his mission is to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs, to create jobs, pay taxes, contribute to the economy, uplift their families and local communities to create a better world. So please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Ryan, Daniel Moran. Ryan, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Matt, I appreciate me on. I'm going to have to kick whoever made that intro and put pay taxes in there. I think

AOC got a hold of my biography and threw in pay taxes. This is not okay. I'm immediately embarrassed. Really? That's the typo, huh? I think what was supposed to be in there was pay fewer taxes. and the ghost of Bernie Sanders got in there and erased, erased the word fewer. I think that's what happened. Okay. Well, let's talk about that. That's what we invest in real estate, right, Matt? So we can pay fewer taxes.

Well, that's one of the biggest advantage of real estate, right? One of the bigger ones for sure. Let's talk about it because as I actually read that out loud, create jobs. Like, screw this guy. No. It's such a positive spin on capitalism, or is it actually what capitalism is, right? contribute to the economy and up with their families and local communities create a better world. That's certainly not the view that capitalists have or the opinions people have of capitalists these days, is it?

I'm always surprised when people have that opinion, though, that it's anything but that. I think the stereotypical crazy millennial, which I am one, by the way, so I can say that. They have the – I mean, when I talk about realtors all the time, I say – But I was one, because I know they suck. I think people have, they correlate capitalism with greed. And I like to throw back to them and say, you know, what system is not correlated with greed. I mean, capitalism is simply the system through which we exercise freedom.

That's all. That is all it is. Capitalism is the system through which you are unable to be personally responsible. And you can do what you can do. whatever you would like with that. And you have no room or judgment to be able to determine what somebody else wants within that system. So I'm always surprised when people are, when I kind of hear the stereotypical rise against capitalism. But I find it to be kind of a silly debate that they come from. So I mean, the world, when left uninterrupted, creates jobs, creates opportunities,

and creates a rising tide. That is just how the world operates. It's how it works. And capitalism, the system through which we practice that. So we call it a positive spin. I just call it reality. I agree. Five, six years ago, I recorded a YouTube video

that painted a capitalist in this type of fashion because I didn't recognize where the negativity was actually coming from. I mean, you have to create the job, right? You have to solve society's problems and when we create jobs, it contributes to the economy and it helps you provide for your family. I mean, where's the negativity in that? I don't quite follow it.

Where I think that people have negativity is when they perceive to be force, gets thrown into the equation. So if we have an entrepreneur who is what we call a political entrepreneur, meaning that their business is built by getting government contracts and getting legislation passed, that's force. That is not freedom. And as long as we are doing things under the guise of freedom, then it's very, very difficult for us to hurt one another.

Whereas if we are doing it through force, it's very hard for us to serve one another. So when we turn this around on somebody who is stereotypically anti-capitalist, I have a hard time finding where we actually disagree. But then we have to place a mental jujitsu in order to get them to see that the very thing that they decry is the enemy is actually their best friend. Yeah, I'm not going to sit here and say me too, the whole interview, but I concur. Hey, Ryan, the last time we spoke, you were in the midst of building a really successful Amazon business.

That was definitely on the rise. And since, through hearing you in various interviews, you're making your rounds. I'm seeing you all over the place now. You had a really good sized exit that then, I don't know, just kind of bring you up to speed. What has happened? Sure. So I've been an entrepreneur for 13 years. It started when I was 18 in my college dorm room.

And I had a skill set that I applied specifically to internet physical products brands from the years of 2013 to 2018. And in 2013, I kind of took my first order. I used Amazon.com because Amazon does all the fulfillment, all the shipping, all those customer service, all that stuff. So I just get to just be a good marketer. And as a result, I built and scaled a few businesses. I had a few acquisitions totaling just north of $10 million.

I still hold stakes in those businesses. So if those businesses grow, depending on what the new owners do, that will determine how much of a final payout I get. So we can talk about valuations and all this stuff, but the truth is it was just over $10 million and received. And I've been investing that money since. And with part of that investment, I've been building up the infrastructure of capitalism.com simply because I believe that entrepreneurs are the solution to all the world's problems

and the greatest contribution that I can have is in the actual individuals who are making change, who are initiating that change, or building businesses. And so my mission has been investing into those entrepreneurs, both monetarily and through content, which is why you've been seeing me everywhere, is because I have been much more aggressive in my content distribution strategies. it. Got it. You might have said this and I might have missed it. You've got the, you started with Amazon.com as far as your distribution and your fulfillment. Did it end that way? So we were in about a thousand retail stores in that business specifically. We took orders on our own website,

but Amazon.com is still the centerpiece of that business. And I'm starting to, like right now, I'm, I'm a partner in a food company that I'm really, really excited about. It's, the company is called Flex. I'm just stoked with it. And our central distribution strategy is Shopify and Amazon. So no matter what the business is, if something is selling physical stuff, Amazon is a very important piece of that business. That is just modern day marketing. I think I often get mislabeled as a quote Amazon guy, but I'm really just an entrepreneur who is using modern day marketing and distribution. And if you're selling anything physical, you better at least understand Amazon.com as a distribution play. Just like if you're putting content on the internet, you better understand

things like search engine optimization. Just like if you are a real estate investor, you better understand wholesaling or short sales or whatever your lane is. So my lane in the physical products world has to have an arm of Amazon.com. Otherwise, I'm going to be playing from behind. Right, right. It's a very timely question. My wife, she's a member of an entrepreneurial organization. And she's in there with a lot of successful entrepreneurs. You have to show your stats to get in.

And she's in there with several very successful Amazon people. And just this last weekend when she had her meeting, one of the guys was Amazon had closed him down. He got too big, too successful. Is that a recurring pattern? Or did he actually do something, didn't tell her the whole story? Or have you heard of that? So there's no such thing as you got too big.

That's not a real thing. I thought it sounded like a one-sided opinion, but I wasn't sure what was going. I don't know enough about it. Could a competitor have reported him? Sure. Could he have broken the rules? Sure. Could something have thrown up a flag at Amazon?

Sure. Could it be a combination of all these things? Probably. So it could be any number of things. You know what's funny, Matt, is I think we all have this idea that there are no problems in everyone else's business. Like, real estate investors want to be entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs want to be real estate

investors, Amazon sellers, want to be info sellers, info sellers want to be coaches. We all see the glory in everybody else's businesses. But the truth is there is stuff that sucks in every business, every job,

every life, no matter what. And you can either get really, really good at your industry, or you can complain about the challenges that exist. And we just knew that Amazon slaps or challenges is going to be part of the process. And so we just went all in that world

and owned all of the things that could possibly go wrong. Right, right. All right, let's get back to the program as it was designed. You know, speaking of you, getting your content all over the place because you are very visible right now. And you've had a recent get together with Mr. Gary V. And I noticed you speak on that experience in multiple platforms. And so it seems like it had a big impact on you.

What would you say was your biggest takeaway from that experience? So I've met with Gary several times over the years. And I originally started following Gary Vaynerchuk because I saw him say that he wanted to own the New York Jets more than 10 years ago. My personal goal is to own the Cleveland Indians. So this guy's 10 years older than me, 10 years ahead of me. And so I started following him, kind of having him contextualized the process 10 years ahead of me. So I've learned a lot from Gary, not just from kind of his content, but just watching how he does business.

And it's interesting, Matt, I'd say that the thing that I have learned on this meeting with Gary was not anything he said, but watching the actual organization of VaynerMedia. For example, I went up there most recently when he was in the middle of the launch for Empathy Wines. Empathy Wines is one of his projects that, you know, wine companies have huge valuations if they're done well. So I'm really interested to see how they roll this out. And watching how he stays both involved but also trusts his team to be able to do what they're doing was really interesting to me. and how he structures having multiple projects at the same time without him being in the weeds on all of them was really interesting to me. So I have a lot of things going on and I'm the bottleneck and all of them.

And so it was really interesting to see someone who's 10 years ahead of me having even more projects as I do, but not in the, but he's not stressed about them like I am. What is he doing differently? And I just saw kind of the, first of all, what it takes in terms of infrastructure and also just the organization that he's built to be able to free him up to focus on those projects was my biggest takeaway with Gary. So what does business look like for you today then? And why was that stuff so interesting? Yeah. I mean, capitalism.com is my primary focus in terms of content creation. And we do a yearly event called the Capitalism Conference.

and we have a continuity program called the 1% that is about building businesses, investing the profits, and creating wealth. And my entire play is to build up an audience that is large enough to be an amplifier of whatever I desire to bring to the world, whether that is a brand or a business or a message. And at the same time, my strategy is to be putting myself in a position to be in front of deal flow and opportunities and connections throughout the course of decades. Not this year, not next year, not for the next three years, but for decades. And that's my long play. What that means practically is I have a, as you call it like a lab of physical products

brands, because that's my background, which is called the Capitalism Initiative. There's a couple supplement companies in there. There's a paleo skincare company in there. And then I invest my profits into other businesses and other passive income streams. So I just invested in a company called Outstanding Foods, which is similar to like a Beyond Meat startup. I'm invested in this food company that I mentioned earlier, which is called Flex, which is a just add water protein-based food company. So that's, those are what my holdings look like. And so what seeing Gary in context did for me was see that I really needed to put more of an emphasis on empowering other people to be decision makers so that everything wasn't coming to me all of the time. And that would help

me stay at the top of the food chain without being overly stressed about every random decision. You know, you'd had, I mean, through the building of your business, this one that's, that you've just had this exit on. You know, you had the freedom fast thing? podcast, I think. Yeah. So you had a podcast, you had a social media presence, but now, I mean, definitely you're much more visible. And so it's obvious that you are directing some energy towards that.

But it hasn't been that long. What has your experience been as far as becoming, I don't know, for lack of a better word, the influencer? Wow. I have to think about that because I don't think of myself as that at all. Right. Well, would you not consider yourself that being the correct label if the intent is to build an audience that then amplifies what you're up to.

Sure. It's just, what's interesting to me is the only thing that has changed in the last five years is who has showed up. And by this, I mean, you mentioned that I had a podcast called Freedom Fasseling. And I, now that is a time slot on capitalism.com, which is my media company. And there was a very decisive direction change because I knew that if I kept talking about the same thing that I had talked about, I would be targeting the same people over and over again. Not that I have anything against them, but I had grown past it. And so the only thing that has really changed is my audience size is not any bigger than it was a few years ago.

But my content output is a lot higher. So from the inside, I've experienced a lot of frustration. But what has changed is I've changed and my message has changed and the type of people that are attracted to my message have changed. So there's a reason why you and I are having this conversation and you're an influential person and you're following my content because I've grown up and my message has matured a lot over the last few years. Whereas had I stayed doing what I had been doing, I might actually have a bigger audience, but I would be influencing less. influential people. So the experience of becoming something is really just been the becoming more of myself or the more mature version of myself. I've learned more and more over the last few years that all of this is an inside out game. Everything that is wrong in your life is 80% your fault

and 20% things outside your control. 20% of it is the economy. 20% of it is white privilege. 20% of of it is your parents and 80% of it is you. And if I'm frustrated with something, it's probably my fault. So it's just interesting to hear from the outside, you know, what has it been like to kind of rise as an influencer? Whereas the way I answer that is in direct correlation with who I am and who I become over that same time period. You know, I speak to my audience and I tell them like,

every week we're talking about the new tactic, the new strategy to make you more efficient and do better things and make more money. And I always share that I can teach you out of fill out a purchase agreement in 15 minutes or less and you'll be the best purchase agreement filler out everywhere, ever. But why you don't do it on a daily basis, that's going to come from within. And so I'm always trying to tap into how do I, without getting too woo-woo on people, how do we tap into that internal drive and the thing that makes somebody develop that type of habit or the habit of just money-making activities and do those consistently?

What type of work are you doing on yourself internally, if any? I do a lot of therapy. I am very consistent with journaling. I am very aware of my own thoughts and stories in my head. And it's interesting, you bring. bringing up, I used to say I could sit by someone at their computer and show them how to start a business for three days and they would call me a scam artist or I could hop on an hour call with the right person and tell them what to do and they would tell me that I changed their lives.

And the only difference there is the person, right? And I say sometimes the problem isn't you. Sometimes a problem isn't your product. Sometimes a problem is just the people that you're targeting with your product. And I have relinquished my desire to try to change people for them to become the right people for my content or for my products or my businesses. That's their business. That's their job. It's my job to be very mentally healthy, to be around people who keep stretching me and

for me to keep moving forward. and to let the chips fall where they're going to fall. And that's my work. That's my business. And I let other people's business be their business. And I think that allows you to have freedom to move forward towards what it is that you want. What does journaling do for you? I've always been curious about that.

Well, Matt, which page should we turn to here? You've been doing it for a while. Yeah. That looks like the... I probably have a dozen. The last arc. I probably have a dozen of them. Well, I can tell you, here's what I would share with you, Matt.

The first journal entry I ever had was back in 2012. And I was in a really, really dark spot coming out of a breakup, coming out of some business failures, living alone in a place where I didn't feel like I had any upside. And so what I was really struggling with was finding purpose and being purposeful. So what I ended up doing was pulling out my journal and writing down, okay, I'm struggling with purpose. Let's do something about this. The purpose of my life right now is, and I just made a decision. And I remember writing down, it's getting back in shape. It is shoring up income streams.

It is building a friend group. and I just made a decision of what my focus was going to be for the next six months. And every opportunity, decision, or person that came into my life, I looked at my criteria on the piece of paper. And I said, does this meet what is my purpose in life right now? And from then, it evolved to sometimes I'm writing about goals. Sometimes I like to write when I'm really clear-minded. Because then when I'm not feeling so much that way, I can come back.

to when I was really clear. And we all have times that we're like, we feel more like ourselves. Those are the times that we want to bottle and share with the guy or the girl who's not our best selves three months from now. And if we can carry some of that forward to help us to those times that are difficult, that is journaling to me. So I will write letters to myself from the past. This is what I'm learning right now. Don't forget this lesson. This is This is what's important. And I actually read my journal more than I write in it. And I come back to, like, my best self has a lot of notes in here and things that he is discovering.

And those are the things that I want to carry with me forward. That's interesting. That's why I had you on the show. Because I like how you respond to questions. Oh, thanks, Matt. Yeah, you bet. What is something a few people know about you that you wish more people did? well, we're going to open up a whole can of worms here, Matt.

I love talking politics. And, you know, there's two topics that you should never talk about with people, and they are. Politics and religion. Yeah, that's what people say. I knew those are both. Well, politics is my number one favorite thing to talk about. And my second is religion. So I went to college thinking I was going to be a pastor,

concluded that I didn't believe the faith that I had been grown up in, and I walked away from it. And I have had my own spiritual journey that is funny. If there's ever a movie about my life, which is, by the way, the most egocentric thing I've ever said in my life. If there's ever a movie made about my life, there will be the front story of the journey of the entrepreneur and the underlying or overlying journey of the spiritual quest.

And the thing that I wish more people knew about it was was that story, which is something that I'm sure someday I'll put out there and there will be more discussion around that. But that's probably the one thing that I wish more people knew. Got it. Nice. Who would play you in the movie? I mean, can I play me? Is that allowed? This is a, this would be, if it were a posthumous thing. Is that the right word?

Oh, well, hold on a second. If that's the case, then I got to pick an actor who's really young. Well, wait a minute. Okay, just too young to play yourself at your age right now. Oh, okay. Well, Ryan Gosling's older than me, but I'm still going to go with Ryan Gosling. I like it. I like it.

Great. So, wow, we might have just answered my next two questions with that one answer, but I'm going to ask you this anyway. What commonly held truth? And maybe there's more of it. Let's pick one. What commonly held truth do you disagree with? Money buys you freedom.

Okay. Explain. Can you allow me? So money expands the menu of options. But options are not freedom. And I have changed my tune on this, which is why I know it's a commonly held belief. Yeah, those two are synonymous for me. Yeah, money and freedom.

No, options and freedom. Oh, I see. Yeah, but you're not really free until you make a choice. So, like, more options does not mean more freedom. And I think the paradox of choice is very true in the sense that as the menu of options expands, we feel more paralyzed. It's kind of like, if you have a room in your house that you really don't like, And so you clear out all the furniture.

You're like, let's get rid of this junk. And you put it on Craigslist and you sell it all. And now you got this empty room. You now have the freedom. You have unlimited options to be able to put whatever you want in that room. But until you make a choice, it's a really boring room. And if you were in that room paralyzed by choice before you enjoy anything that's put in there, you are not free, man. So I think a lot of people, specifically freedom-motivated people, like to keep their options open.

But as a result, they never really move forward because it's decisions that give us freedom. Money allows us to make different decisions. But freedom is not really experienced until we make decisions in alignment with what it is that we want. and I think we sometimes use money as a distraction from finding out what we really want. I really have been humbled when I discovered how little I and most people need in order to live lives where they're happy. Because happiness is kind of a choice too. So I no longer believe the idea that money is equal to freedom because I think that freedom comes on the other side of making choices and being present in those choices. And if you want to make a different choice, making a different choice, but I think it's more of a practice than something that money requires.

Interesting. You're welcome to push against me a few times. line again yeah no I just I mean you can certainly say options like if you're paralyzed by choice then yeah that's not freedom but if you have the option of what you want to do today and you don't have to do anything to me that's freedom yeah but in what scenario do you have to do anything right I mean we can speak spiritually and metaphysically and I think you're actually I mean I mean practice I mean I know I know people believe that that They have to go to work.

Right. No, they don't. Every day you wake up and you go to work. And you can him and ha and resent your boss and do kinds of things. No one is making you get in the car and go to work. But I have to pay the bills. Do you? Do you have to pay them?

Or can you change them? But I have to keep my house. Do you? These are all choices. Right. And so I think we are often trapped by our own choices. and we want the freedom from the previous choices that we have made. That's what people really mean when they usually say freedom.

I want to be free of the stress that I caused by my previous choices. That's what most people consider it to be free. I wish I could not have the stress that came with the life that I've created up into this point. But the truth is you can always make different choices. You asked about Gary earlier. When I first met Gary Vaynerchuk. I was on stage at the capitalism conference in 2015, I think. And I asked him about his relationship with risk.

Because he legitimately just puts it all on the line all the time. And I said, do you ever fear losing it all? And he says, not only do I not fear losing it all, I secretly want it to happen. It's like, what are you talking about? He said, I love the idea of being in some small, apartment with cockroaches in it. And I look at the cockroach. I'm like, you and me, cockroach, we're going to take over the world.

He's like, I live for that. That's freedom to me. And a few years later, when I was having dinner with him, he was telling me about a business he had just acquired and how he had taken the team from 50 to 100 people. And I was like, Gary, how do you feel comfortable going from 50 employees to 100 employees on a business that you just bought? You're driving on the profit margin real fast. And he said, Ryan, my only fix.

expenses rent. And so it was then that I kind of had the internal shift of he is genuinely free by putting it all on the line. He is genuinely playing a game to him. And I think we buy into this misunderstanding that you one day get to a level where you are supposedly free. But the truth is we are choosing it over and over and over again with the decisions that make on the daily basis. So that's my long way of saying why I don't believe that money equals freedom.

Got it. Yeah, you said what I just shared with you on my position, but I've also shared with you what you just said before so I can see I've contradicted myself in the past. I can't really lay it all out there. Who's the ideal person you're looking for right now inside of your business? Sorry, which business were we referencing there? Got it. So capital is to go to a completely different part of my brain there. Okay, sorry. Yeah. Left turn. So capitalism.com, this is your main focus now. Yeah.

And who's the ideal person for you? Who do you help? Yeah. So I used to think that it was my job to win people to my side of the argument or my side of a political debate or my telling people why they should be entrepreneurs. I no longer believe that. I no longer take that responsibility. I now, if you give me the guy or the girl that had lemonade stands and shoveled drys when they were kids,

because that was more fun than all the other stuff that their friends were doing, that's the person that I could give a formula to and have them have a really successful business very quickly. There's a common character traits among the people. people are really successful in my community. And it's that ever since they were kids, they wanted to be entrepreneurs or they wanted to be successful. They knew they were different. And they come to me because I give them the how-to. I'm their how-to guy. I'm their practical implementation guy. But I know secretly that at the end of the day, what we're all seeking is some sort of enjoyment and well-being. And so I kind of speak to that on the side. So my ideal person is the

dire girl that always knew deep down that they had entrepreneurial tendencies and they just haven't seen their path yet. I give up the path. So that person, what is the best way for them to reach out to you? So my podcast, I have a series of podcasts at capitalism.com. The one that I'm probably best known for is called the 1%. About building businesses, investing the profits and creating the life that makes an impact. And my Instagram is at Ryan Daniel Moran

And contrary to popular belief I actually do read my DMs. I don't always get back to them, especially the we call them ask holes, people who just ask for more and more and more and more. But I genuinely do read them. That's my Instagram handle. Very good.

I just discovered that there's a separate little inbox in DM. Yeah. And I was like, wow, I got a lot of DMs. I was like, why doesn't anybody ever DM me? I didn't know they're all over in this one little section. Matt, are you a father? I am, yes. Yeah, are your kids laughing at you when you check out that Instagram?

Yes, well, he's only seven, so still. Yeah, but he does run circles around. Yeah, you didn't know there was another inbox? I know, right? But that's highlighted. It's like in a font or a color that you can barely see behind the white background, at least with my old eyes. Ryan, it's been a pleasure.

Congrats to you on all the success, and I wish you all the best in the future. I think you're one of the great ones out there to do, and I think greatness is for you, just bigger and bigger for you. I've watched your rise over the last couple years. I really appreciate you bringing me on every couple years or so. So thanks, man.

I'm rooting for you as well. Super, thanks. Let's not wait two years next time, three years. You know how to find me. Perfect, buddy. And likewise. All righty. So God bless to your success.

I'm Matt Terry. I'll see you next week on another episode of Fat Lee to Thursday. All righty on the epic real estate investing show. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.