Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Hardcore Truth From The Hardcore Closer with Ryan Stewman

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of the "Right About Now" podcast, Ryan Stewman, CEO and founder of Apex, delivers a gripping account of his life journey—from being adopted and selling drugs to serving time in prison. He highlights how he overcame immense adversity to break free from societal expectations of mediocrity, pushing himself toward success. Stewman critiques modern parenting and the education system, arguing that the over-reliance on technology and the normalization of participation trophies have eroded common sense. He also delves into the current economic challenges, touching on inflation, rising costs, and government policies, while offering insight into the future of politics. Throughout the episode, Stewman underscores the importance of resilience, personal accountability, and the relentless pursuit of excellence, both in life and business.TAKEAWAYSPersonal journey of overcoming adversity and challenges faced by Ryan Stewman.The impact of parenting and education on societal values and accountability.Critique of the educational system and its effects on work ethic and achievement.Discussion on the current economic climate and its challenges for families and businesses.Analysis of government policies and their implications for entrepreneurship and economic growth.Examination of rising costs of living, including health insurance and taxes.Concerns about the Federal Reserve's actions and their potential impact on the economy.Insights on the political landscape and upcoming elections, including leadership implications.The importance of resilience, hard work, and striving for greatness in personal and professional life.Reflection on the need for transparency and accountability in economic reporting and statistics. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

Common sense isn't so common anymore because we have parents that for two or three generations now have let their kids be raised by video games, iPads, computers. The school has made it to where like now there's all these grading cards, participation trophies for education and stuff like that. We're seeing the consequences of that. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. Hey, we're trying to make it all right in today's world. And ultimately, we're bringing you what's now. And I've been following my next guest for quite a bit on social. He doesn't know me probably as well as I know him, just for at least following him. And I'll say this. We say we take the BS out of business. I like this guy because I can see through the bullshit that you see on the internet

with some of these people talking. And Ryan Steumann, you may like him, you may not like him, but you know what? He ain't full of shit. He knows what he's talking about. He's a smart guy and he is the hardcore closer. What's up, Ryan? What's up, man? Glad to be here. Yeah, dude. Hey, just happy to have you, man. You're in my, you know, the algorithms is an interesting thing. I don't know what it says. I don't know if I just, because I will say this, you know, there's an edge of anger to Ryan just a little bit that I feel that's like, I bet you it's old, Ryan.

I could see Ryan like 20 years ago, maybe me and a little angry and young or something. And now he's got wisdom. He's got money. He's got maybe a little bit of power, but he channels it in the right way. But I don't know. It's hitting my heart because I don't know if I'm a little angry these days because you hit my feet every day. Yeah. I have terrible bedside manner. I could see that. i could see that i could see that but i speak the truth

and so i don't feel like i have to sugarcoat things you know the lies need to be sugarcoated the bullshit needs to make somebody feel good i just won't be straight, you know, and that's who I am. That's how I've always been. Some like it, some don't. And it's just, you know, that's just how I am. If you don't like me, that's cool. Unfriend, unfollow, fuck, whatever the fuck you got to do and move on, you know? Yeah. But I think if people want to, like, the rapper, you might not always like the rapper. But, like, once you get inside, like like the knowledge that you have is clearly there.

The experience is there. And I think if people spend enough time, they'll see that it's real. But Ryan, I do like to set the table for our audience, you know, for you. I know you're the CEO and founder of Apex, but let's just maybe I'll let you use your words. You've done a lot of shows. People can go watch the episode that's about Ryan's background only, but maybe hit it a little bit of the high notes and then we'll talk about some business. So, you know, I'm a prolific mistake maker and that's how I got wisdom. And, you know, I've lived a very humbling life of ups and downs.

I call it rock bottom lows and meteoric highs. I was adopted at age seven, became a drug dealer at age 14, went to prison at age 19, went to prison again at age 25. I think I was in eight different maximum security institutions. I've been divorced. You name it, I've screwed it up. But I'm a good example of what can happen in life if you just refuse to be a victim, if you refuse to quit, if you refuse to give up on the opportunity that we have in front of us here as Americans.

So despite all of those prolific mistakes and horrific things that I've had to endure in my life, I'm a husband. I've been married to my wife for seven years. We've been together 10 years. I've got four kids. They're amazing. I run a nice business that changes people's lives and shows them how to overcome struggles and things of that nature. So that's me in a nutshell, just fighting the force of average on a daily basis. I have this belief that the world wants to keep you average. If you live below average, we don't give you support, welfare, free housing, grants, stuff like that. You can go get a job and live a middle class life. But when we decide to do greatness, we get into a situation where there's this gravity

and push against us to push back down to being an average citizen. So when you're chasing greatness, when you want more than the average person, you're going to pay higher taxes. You're going to have bigger problems. You're going to have a lot more stress. And so I'm chasing greatness. I'm a long ways from great. I'll be the greatest I'll ever be the day that I die, but I'm chasing it and it's not easy. No, it's not. I think what's interesting about what you just said, Ryan, is I think all the best practices in the world are set up to get average, right?

And so when you're actually chasing the top of the mountain or you're aspiring to things, and the world is conditioning us. I have four boys too. So look, I have to condition them out of what they get taught, which is to fall in line and be average. them out of what they get taught, which is to fall in line and be average. And if you want to have a bigger life, a better life to have impact, to do things, you have to sort of take risks and break free from average. And I think that's probably what's always stood out a little bit with your content. I'm like, okay, it never felt like it was, it had an agenda because it felt like it was free, like you were freed up.

And but I think it was because if you want to chase past what everyone else has, you've got to be willing to do what no one else is willing to do. And I feel like that's a lot of the ways you've built your business. It looks like it. Yeah. You know, the name of my company is Great Crew Academy for that reason. I didn't even know it. Look at there. I love it. Is, uh, and what, uh, what does that stand for to you? Well, I think that, you know, as human beings, like I've said, we're fighting this force of average. We are fighting mental limitations. We're fighting financial limitations. We're fighting shit everything in our reality. And so, you know, freedom means you have the time and the means to do whatever you want, whenever you want. And like in business, most people, they get into business because they want to be their own boss and then have time freedom.

But then what happens for most people is they have neither of those there. They have to answer to investors, the board of directors, employees, middle management, and they have no time left over to do the things that they want to do with the money that they've made. So, you know, just trying to help people break free from all of that stuff. Ryan, what's your opinion on like the, the state of America and business, you know, we've got an election coming up. We're not scared to go down any road here on this on right about now we take the BS out of business. So we're in an election season. I'm personal.

And I think you probably feel this way. Like no matter who's elected, it's not going to get in the way of my success. However, I think we all have opinions about the business climate and just respecting you and your experience, your wisdom. What do you make of the business climate right now in America? Well, this is the first time in my life, I'm 45 years old. This is the first time in my life the administration and the government has got in the way of my success. And well, that's not true. So when I was a drug dealer and I was trying to be successful as a drug dealer, the government got in the way of my success. And then because I became a convicted felon and Dodd's rank was passed in 2010, they wouldn't allow me

to do financial stuff anymore because I was a felon. So they've intervened twice and it hasn't stopped my success. But right now, think about this. It's 2024. Just two years ago, you can make money off of Rolexes, Lamborghinis, private jet charters, crypto, NFTs, mastermind. Dude, anything we touch, real estate, houses and cars were selling for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars over list price. Interest rates were dirt cheap. Gasoline was dirt cheap. Everything you touched, you made money from.

And our government got in the way. What do these people take it all the way from? There's no other time in my life. I was a load officer in 2007 8 9 and 10 and even though the mortgage market was crashing there was still people that were making money and it was only the real estate and mortgage market that was crashing i never seen the government come in and take everything away like they have the last couple of years. And what happens is we're chasing policy from when Congress passed an act or a law or a president

puts an executive order in, it takes a few years for it to catch up. It doesn't happen immediately. And we're seeing the day that Joe Biden took office and signed 62 executive orders to undo everything that Trump did, we're seeing the results of that in our economy right now. And you're blind if you can't see that because Stevie Wonder can see it. Yeah. It's funny. I think Kamala got like show notes from him because I watched him speak at like one of

her events. And it was very eloquent, by the way, for Stevie Wonder. But he said nothing while saying a lot of words, which is a lot of what I hear out of her mouth. And I still really don't have a fucking clue what she's talking about. And I mean, let's put the other side in politics. Just putting that over here, I have no idea. No idea whatsoever.

Yeah, I'm an independent. I like Bill Clinton. I like Barack Obama. I have no idea. No idea whatsoever. I'm an independent. You know, I like Bill Clinton. I like Barack Obama. I like Ronald Reagan. And I like Obama a lot. I like Bill Clinton a lot. Bush 1, Bush 2 was good. Trump was great.

Biden's been a nightmare. And Kamala, her thing is, it's hilarious, but she just says a bunch of synonyms. But Mala, her thing is, it's hilarious, but she just says a bunch of synonyms. She goes, we have desires, aspirations, and needs, and wants. And because we have desires and aspirations and needs and wants, there are things that we feel we should be able to acquire and have and own. It's like, are you just fucking saying the same word? Three different synonyms at a time? to it lady get to it tell me something i saw there was a comedian that did us that's been using that bouncing around or something like talking circle i think it's like suing the campaign because they i don't know claim that she's that they were supporting her or something

and talking in circles like tomorrow we're gonna do it and you know there's something about tomorrow and doing it that's doing it like what the fuck that's it yeah anyway it's gonna be it's annoying as fuck to somebody that's got a little bit of an education and experience in this world, you know? Yeah, I think I'll say this. We're this is a test of the IQ of America right here. I hate to say it. We're going to get to find out real fast where we're at. Well, common sense isn't so common anymore because we have parents that for two or three generations now have let their kids be raised by video games ipads computer uh the school has made it to where like

i was in school if you didn't get straight a's you got in trouble and now there's all these grading cards participation trophies for education and stuff like that. We're seeing the consequences of that. You know, when I was young, if you were told the stove would burn your hand and you put your hand on it anyway, they laughed at you. They were like, you're an idiot. I told you the stove was hot. And now it's like, oh, my God, we've got to get rid of the stove. It's just a completely different climate.

We're seeing the consequences of that. Yeah. Accountability is the word. And it's gone out the window because we have conditioned everything to be convenient and comfortable. And it's great. Look, I think you don't have kids. We want our kids to be comfortable. It's not that we don't want them to have a great life, but you don't learn or have a great life

without lessons and consequences and accountability. And I think you've nailed it. I think we're seeing the participation trophy people are now running companies and government and other things. And so they want like, what's crime in California? You know, you murder somebody, you're out of jail in 10 years. Like, it's like they don't even report it in some of these cities like L.A. and New York. They don't even report it anymore. Like the FBI put a report out the other day saying crime's down by 4 percent. But that's because New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Texas,

Chicago doesn't report crime to the FBI anymore. So we're not getting real statistics. We're not getting the real education. We're not getting real accountability. And we wonder why we have fake-ass people ruining our economy that are in power. It's crazy. Yeah.

Ryan, talk to me about, like, from a business standpoint, you know, you said you're feeling it. Is there a specific policy or I don't know, you know, enlightening our listeners to because I like to be, you know, we have the and look, I'm independent as well. I've voted on all both sides of the line. I think my practicality and principles and morals probably lean right but I don't I'm not afraid to cross the aisle so I consider myself independent and but I will say this like is there something specific like for listeners so we're not the one you know say we don't want to be the Kamala we want to be specific like what's the biggest thing that sort of impacted you from a business with today's client? Well, there's a couple of things. I sold a business owner, so I get to hear from people all day, every day that aren't making as much money as they used to.

And there's actually a few things that come into play. Number one, two years ago, interest rates were at 3% and 4%. You could go buy a rental property and you could cash flow it. Now, we have to buy that thing for cash or put a significantly larger down payment down to get it to cash flow at 6.5% to 7.5%. Then, on top of that, in a lot of blue states, they have gapped the amount of rates that you can put on the rent. So if you raise the rent every year, they've said, oh, you can only do 5%, you can do 10%. But they didn't cap the amount of tax increase because the property values went up. They didn't cap the amount of insurance. in Florida, I've sold all of them but one and I'll sell it in November is because I can't raise rent but the insurance company

raised my policy 300%. So the government said fuck the landlord but we're going to take care of the insurance companies and the municipalities and a lot of business owners own real estate whether it's the office that they have or whether it's their portfolio of real estate.

And when that street stops cash flowing and then an HVAC goes out or a roof gets damaged or a tenant destroys the house on the way out, they're out every dollar that they've made for an entire year on that. The second problem is, let's say in 2022, you made a million bucks. And 2023, you've got to pay taxes on that million bucks. But taxes are paid in the rear. In 2023, in April, May, June, July, whatever it is, you decide to pay taxes as a business owner, depending on when you expend it, you're having a year that is 20 30 40 percent

less as good of cash flow as it was in 2022 so now every dollar that you save has gone out the window in 2023 and you can't take the loss in 2023 till this year and this year if your business is down again you owe we're we're trailing from better years in business going down and getting taxed in arrears. And it's like, fuck man, I'm already out of money. And now they're taxing me from a year ago when I thought things were going to continue to be good. So I maybe bought more inventory, got a bigger warehouse, maybe went and hired more people. And now I'm not making as much money and I still owe those taxes and I got to let these people go in order to do that. I hear these stories all day, every day, man. So, you know,

it's a combination of things. And on top of that, as an American, just not even a business owner, our cost of goods are up. And the reason why is because I own a diesel truck and diesel is traditionally less expensive than gas but a few years ago they started making us put death fuel on top of diesel and now diesel is more expensive than gas and i'm watching great companies and trucking companies go out of business left and right because they've got to charge a higher price in order to pay for the expensive diesel and man when you're in a semi truck and you're burning three, four gallons to the mile because you've got a big ass load in the trailer that you're traveling with, you can't take a loss

on that. You've got to make some money. So you either lower your margin or you go out of business and watch a lot of that happen too. So the cost of goods may only be, and this is the lie, the statistics we've seen from the government, the cost of goods may only be, and this is the live statistics we see from the government, the cost of goods may only be up 4% or 5%, but the lack of drilling new wells, we haven't drilled a new well in America since 2017. We haven't opened a new refinery in forever, and everything's operating at max capacity.

Diesel is super expensive, which means the transportation of goods to get to the floor, to get to our doorstep, is through the fucking roof. And so now we're having to pay more for that too. So health insurance is up, property insurance is up, cost of goods is up. Even if you're making more money right now, you're

actually making less money because everything else that you have to do is more expensive. For a family of six in my house, health insurance, and we're all healthy. None of us have anything wrong with this. It's three grand a month. That's $36,000 a year. So if I wasn't a good entrepreneur,

I either have to go take a job where they pay for my health insurance, which costs the company $36,000 a year, or if I make $100,000, I'm really only making $64,000 to live on just after health insurance. That's not mortgage, that's not gas, that's not food, that's not any of that shit. Yeah. Hey, dude. Look, we take the BS out of business. That was just a masterclass in what is happening in the economy right now that's impacting business. And number one that you talked about, Ryan, I talk about a lot.

The impact of interest rates being high is having a huge impact because here's the thing. Things that aren't even related to real estate. The cash that it's keeping out of the everyday market because those rates aren't so high, because people aren't doing what you're saying, flipping houses, doing things. When you stall real estate in this country, you have stalled the entire economy. There's not as much free cash flow and just business transactions happening. I've been talking about that for months. I'm glad you brought that up. Well, the other problem is I read a statistic from NAR three or four days ago, 47% of real estate agents have not sold a home in the last 12 months. And the median home sales

for real estate agents in the country right now is two in 12 months. It was free just a couple of years ago, right? So that's been cut by a third. And, you know, traditionally hard money rates were like 8, 9%. Now they're 12 to 15. The SBA was 6 to 7%. Right now the SBA is at 12 to 16%. You can't go acquire businesses. You can't acquire houses and profit from them. Even if you buy a primary residence like my home i paid a million bucks for it six years ago it's worth two million dollars right now prices have gone up in my area if i were to sell that out and keep a million dollars first of all i'm going to be taxed on 300 000 of that because it's only a 700 000 non-capital gain primary residence so i would be taxed on $300,000 of that.

Then if I go buy another house that only costs me a million dollars, maybe I move further out of the city so I'm paying more for gas, transportation, things of that nature. And that house at a million dollars costs more than my house right now with the low interest rate.

I have a ranch house that I've bought for $440,000. And the mortgage is more money per month on that than it is for the million dollar house that I bought six years ago and refinanced 2.875%. So I'm paying $1,000 and that's a month for a $2 million house that I've owned for six years than a $400,000 home that I bought just a year ago. Yeah, dude. This is the shit. It's like we throw around all this stuff and people talk about things, but this is the hard reality of it.

It's like this is the impact. This is the impact. And so you have a guy like Ryan, busting his ass, running businesses, creating jobs, doing these things, investments, but these are the impacts for him. Imagine what the impacts, talking about cost of goods,

like everyday people, they're paying $7 for a loaf of bread and all this, but then that's back to the fuel, the cost of getting it there, right? Well, I mean, consider this. You make $120,000 a year, which historically is excellent money. Great money. But you've got three kids. So you're paying $2,200 a month, or let's call it $30,000 a year, for health insurance.

Then you're paying 35%, 38% in taxes. So you're really living on about $35,000 to $40,000 a year after just taxes and health insurance on a W-2 job with a couple of kids and $120,000 a year salary. It's fucking crazy. And right now, I'm somewhat of a mainstreet economist because I've been in the financial markets for 20 years. But anytime the Fed cuts rates, they're chasing problems. And unemployment

is at an all-time high right now. You're not going to get that from a government statistic, but it is what it is. And inflation is actually going down a little bit so the fed cut rates because of unemployment companies to go out and buy cheaper money to expand and hire more people but anytime the fed has cut the rate there is always in the next three to 12 months a 20 to 55 percent decline in the value of the stock market overall so that means we're we haven't seen the

market crash yet and the ramifications of what are to come from that because of this rate cut because they don't just cut the rate because they're like we want to be nice to people and give them more money that's not how it works no and the whole point in that is yeah we want the rates to come down but we didn't they didn't need to get that high to begin with because these policies created this. Now, they're both the cause of the disease and the prescription. That's the problem. You know, it's dangerous when you cause the problem. I'll be a problem solver if I don't go create a bunch of problems.

That's right. They go create a bunch of problems and then promise us that they'll solve them. It's like, motherfucker, you get this. Yeah. The solution was not to raise rates six fucking consecutive times in a row. You could have like, yes, 3% interest rate is ridiculously low. That was great. But anybody with a half a brain knows the sweet spot in America for mortgage interest rates is 5.5%. That's enough to keep people buying.

It's not too expensive. That's the sweet spot. They should have raised from 3 to 5.5 and just stayed there. But ah, fuck that. They went for 7.5. Yeah. And they flatlined everything else. And you don't feel it immediately.

That's why we're starting to feel it now because it's catching up. Yep. Yep. And that's why I'm going to mention one of our sponsors. It's the independentcenter.org. If you believe in independent thinking, you want to be part of a community dedicated to that. It's about policy, and it's not about partisan politics. That's what they are about. We support that

constructive dialogue, policy reform and improvement. We're talking policies, that stuff that you don't hear out of the mouth of certain candidates. Independencecenter.org, they are an official sponsor of Right About Now. We support them because we need more free thinkers and we need to talk about policies and not politics. Yeah, brother. I mean, you're speaking the truth here. Where do you see, what's your crystal ball say? I guess if you knew who was going to win the election, you'd probably have some money on it or something, but what's 2025 going to be like? on it or something but uh what's 20 22 it's like what's 2025 gonna be like is it like well let me see after november well i try to have a positive outlook on life so i think trump is gonna win but they could cheat i think he won in 2022 unpopular opinion but i don't believe that more people voted for joe biden and voted for Obama. I just don't believe it.

I don't think that as many people like Kamala as the media is making it out to be in the polls and stuff, but let's say that she, or by some miracle of the stupidity of this country, she wins. She's going to be the first female president. She's going to be the second person of color president. If she fails and doesn't turn this thing around, it's going to be a major problem. And if I was a minority, which I'm not, but I can't speak on their behalf, and Obama came in

and by his second term, turned the economy around. It was fucking doing great. Things were on the boom. It set up Trump to come in and take it to the economy around. He was fucking doing great. You know, things were on the boom. It set up Trump to come in and take it to the next level. And Bush, a white guy, obviously, screwed the economy up his last four years, right? Obama, it takes a while to get things right. By about Obama's third or fourth year in, things started turning around. The mortgage market picked back up.

Things started working well. We needed that because we wanted a guy like you that was the first African-American ever elected president to go, hey man, we elected an African-American. You did a hell of a job for us when it was all said and done. What a great guy. We've got to do the same thing with a woman or a woman will never be fucking elected ever again. She's got to come in as a person of color and a woman and she's got to make new changes Especially if she wants to get re-elected

So I think no matter who wins If Trump wins He's got nothing to lose He's only got four more years So he can come in and fucking God knows what Put all the Department of Justice under investigation Turn the economy around He's got a whole bag of tricks he can use

She can come in and make herself look like she changed the world as the first person or the second person of color to be president and the first woman she could open up aspirations for a whole generation of people who used to not want to be president but now see themselves and it could really make a big change and she's going to want to get re reelected and keep that power for the second time around because she's not as old as Joe Biden. So I'm hoping that no matter who gets in there, they can actually, they're actually smart enough to make things better and see the bigger future

and the bigger picture. Because if Trump gets elected, he's paving the way for a guy like Vivek to come in after him, another billionaire, another businessman, and run the economy, burn it around, and keep running up the score, which is who I wanted to be president anyway, right? If she wins, then she's paving the way for the future women that want to be president, the future minorities that want to be president, and should pave a way. And from she leads office, there's such a legacy that she turned around this shit show and did such a good job. But I don't know if that'll happen or not, but I would like to

assume that that's the agenda of both candidates to get in there and make a positive difference and leave a legacy for the future of our country. But I'm a big guy. I'm not a degenerate piece of shit like most politicians are. So you can come in here and just fuck total control of the media, take away guns, raise taxes, and fuck the country too.

I don't. Yes. But I will say this, Ryan. Trump's such an interesting candidate because, you know, people – I don't know about you. I feel like there's a lot of people that are going to vote for Trump that actually would tell you they're not going to vote for Trump to your face. Yes. Because he's a polarizing like they're embarrassed of him. And that's kind of a shame. I mean, people are stupid if they are. But like but a lot of you are. I think they're like they don't want to admit that.

I feel like there's a lot of that out there. They're like they don't like what's going on. They probably lean Democrat or might even be Democrat. But they're like, you know, they own businesses or they're feeling that impact. But they'd never admit it to your face. And they might even pull that they're voting for Kamala. But when they get behind that window, I don't know. I don't know. What do you think about that? Well, I think we judge Trump on his bedside manner.

People do the same thing to me. They're like, Steumann's not a nice guy. I'm one of the nicest guys out there. You just can't tell from my face or my voice. And you can trust me to do what I say I'm going to do. You can trust me to keep my word. I don't have to be nice, quote unquote, to people because I don't have anything to hide. Oftentimes in my life, the nicest guys that try to charm the pants off of you or turn the money out of your pocketbook are the liars and thieves. And that's why they're so damn nice. The guys that are straight shooters, I always appreciate, and this is from my prison days,

I always appreciate them because I know who they are and how they act, whether they're nice or not, I know who they are and how to treat them. It's the guys that pretend to be one way and the ladies that pretend to be one way, but are actually another way because they're living this thought or this life. And people don't understand that they want somebody to make them feel good instead of somebody to actually be good. Yeah. And that's why I respect you, man. I know you got to go. I hope we had a little bit of technical issues at the beginning. Let's do this again, man.

Let's do it again soon. And you don't have a part two if you've got time for it. Yeah, that'd be great. Hey guys, look, Ryan just nailed it there. You need to go follow him.

You need to go check out apex because it isn't about being nice. It's about being right and being good and not catering to what people want to hear, but what they need to hear. That's what we're doing here on Right About Now. Ryan, where can I keep up with you specifically? Just to add one more thing to that. If you're fat and everybody tells you it's okay to be fat and you're beautiful and all this stuff when you're clearly not, those people are lying to you and doing wrong versus the person that calls you fat and hurts your feelings and tells you to get in the gym and start eating correctly and holds you accountable. Now, you're more likely to hate the person that calls you fat and tells you to get in the gym and eat right. But that person actually cares more about you, you as the person, than the people who care about your feelings and how you perceive them as nice people. So the truth hurts.

But God designed the truth to hurt us because we're only motivated by two things, pain and pleasure. And the truth hurts to motivate you because of pain to go do what you need to do. And we just hide as citizens, as humans. We're hiding from the truth and we're trying to get pleasure out of everything. But pain is a bigger motivator than pleasure. Yeah. And I want to add to that. It's a cycle of comfort because the person that doesn't tell you the truth isn't not telling you the truth to make you feel good. It's so they feel good because they don't have to see you respond negatively and be hurt.

They want to be liked, too. Everybody wants comfort. Everybody wants to be liked. liked too. Everybody wants comfort. Everybody wants to be liked, but it takes real strength, real courage, and real belief to tell you the truth, because then that's what's truly good for the other person and not good for them. I love it, Ryan. Where can everybody keep up with you? Instagram, at Hardcore Closer, Facebook, Ryan Stooman. Both of those have blue checks. They're verified accounts. I'll never get you up for crypto or sliding your DMs from a backup page asking for bullshit.

If you enjoyed the show, if you got something out of what I said, just slide in my DMs, say hello, say you enjoyed the show, let me know. And it's me really managing that now to team, so I'll talk to you on there. I love it. He's real and he's right. You know where to find us, ryanisright.com.

We'll have links to all Ryan Stumann's stuff, Hardcore Closer, go follow him. And you can find us over on YouTube. Watch this full episode. We're blowing up over there. We're taking it over. We're taking the BS out of business. We'll see you next time on Right About Now.

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.