Capitalism.com with Ryan Daniel Moran

Today's episode features a behind the scenes segment from a recent 8-figures workshop held at Ryan Daniel Moran's lakehouse.

Ryan explains the 3 types of managers you business needs and the formula to go from 100k a month to a million. Are you looking for your 8-figure exit? It will require you to make the transition from hustler to entrepreneur.

Key Takeaways

[2:40] Your audience is already generating content for you.

[5:02] Making a business requires a product that you can convince people is better than the alternatives

1. Have your product down

2. Get your sales optimized and get reviews

3. Put your reviews up as content

[7:36] So you have the business 1-2-3 and you want to push further, go from 100k a month to a million…

How do you do that?

You deepen the product line...

How do you do that?

Figure out what your customers buy after your product...

How do you do that?

ASK THEM.

[10:44] The million $ formula is 3-5 products at 25 sales a day and there is a reason behind this: in order to sell 3 products, you have to know who the buyer is. Really well.

[11:33] Audience building and an ideal customer avatar is about helping you make decisions, and decision drive progress.

[11:56] Focusing on Shopify is great as a way to optimize your sales channel, but it won't be a multiplier. Your focus as an entrepreneur should be in building your business, your product line.

Or else you're just a sales channel manager.

[14:03] Building a good business requires 3 types of managers:

1. Ideas manager — inventor

2. Distribution manager — influencer

3. Sales manager — channel manager

Being a business owner means you have all three, you don't have to be good at all three but your business does.

Mentioned in this episode

8-figures workshop events: Capitalism.com/8

So you finally settled the money part and now you realise the happy part doesn't just happen? Today Ryan shares an interview with his friend and lifestyle inspiration Alex Huditan on how to improve life and scale happiness.

Ride the wave and love the flow of life: Alex does his best — and it's really, really good! — at living by his own definition, and he runs a successful 7 figure business on Amazon.

Key Takeaways

[5:12] Alex shares what he does and the ways he tries to positively impact the lives of his fellow Romanian.

[8:31] Alex's lifestyle is a goal of Ryan's and stretches his perception. Ryan is the kind of entrepreneur who can do nothing else but be an entrepreneur…

"How does Alex have so much free time, and is so happy!?" When does he get any work done?

[9:26] Alex shares that he isn't that good at time management, but has been focused in the past 5 years on getting better at being him.

He has created partnerships that free up his time to do what he wants: he mainly focuses on helping his community, and the other parts of life.

[10:53] You should invest in all of your relationships and give as much as you can, the universe will send it back, one way or another.

[13:34] Alex talks about how he was always a fun first person. He explains the fun side of ever job he's held, every failure he's had. It's no wonder he's a happy person, everything has a positive side.

In every job he's had, he always prioritized learning and growing and made room for free time every day.

Ryan resonates with the idea that when things are right, they are easy and the negative connotations of "work" just lose their meaning.

[17:41] Entrepreneurs often fall in the trap of getting good at something, seeing results, getting better at that one thing and somehow beginning to believe they are only good at that one thing.

There are many things to do and create in this life, there is no need to focus on only one thing.

[19:46] Ryan thinks he tends to work and burn himself out because it is the thing he has found so far that gives him the most meaning, excitement, personal pleasure (Workaholism!). And a lot of entrepreneurs are under the impression that once you settle the money part, the happy part just happens.

Ryan know this to be false, by experience.

[22:27] Alex offers one piece of advice to people to have the money but can't find the happiness: go listen to Ryan's podcast about being enough.

It talks about how you need to be happy and at peace with who you are, in a materialistically detached way. If you lost it all or chose to give it up, you would still be enough.

[24:23] Alex shares one of his experience of a meditation retreat. By the 6th day, he felt like he wasn't getting it and was about to quit until it all clicked.

[33:03] Singular events, psychedelics or extreme experience are often the cause of change in our lives even while being non-essential in nature. Epiphany can be achieved with mundane experiences, but that story is much less glamorous.

[34:08] Fun is fun, it really shouldn't be a pursuit in the first place! Let it happen.

Alex suggests trying new things — things that you are not necessarily comfortable with at first and more than once! — and going in with the right mindset.

Be careful of the stories you tell yourself when defining the world: "I don't like clubs", "I don't like to dance", "I don't like fast cars", etc. They are preventing you from keeping an open mind and experiencing the world.

[38:05] Alex shares an exercise a friend taught him called:

"Perfect Day":

You are God on another planet and you can do whatever you want from dawn to night. You can bring things from our reality into yours but not by naming them, you have to describe the senses and feelings related to that experience.

[41:19] Alex challenges Ryan's language on fun and happiness!

[44:01] The people you surround yourself with will dictate how you live your life… be careful to let people you want to be like enter your circle.

[44:50] To the people who have struggled to find the lifestyle after the money, Alex offers this:

Entrepreneurs often want to ditch the 9 to 5 and end up working themselves into a stupor… Delegate, meditate, start life now, start fun as soon as possible, there is no reason to put this off.

Meet new people, do new things and keep an open mind.

[47:56] The word entrepreneur has become a synonym for hustle and grind and workaholism, be wary of using it to define yourself, if only in your head…

[50:11] Ryan thanks Alex for being such an inspiration and invites listeners to follow Alex on Facebook.

Thanks for listening!

Mentioned in this episode

Capitalism.com

Influencers are not a magic button, and working with them can make or break your business depending on how well you enter into the relationship.

We all know there are no guarantees in business, but if you want to use influencers the right way for your business tune in today: Ryan shares 3 easy tips as well as the biggest pitfalls to avoid in building an influencer relationship that works for everyone.

Key Takeaways

[:52] Working with an influencer successfully requires that certain criteria be met the most important of which being:

● Does the product you want to amplify match the influencer's audience.

[2:52] People are selfish. They don't want to mentor you, give you shout outs, talk about your thing.

The first mistake to avoid?

1. Going directly for the ask.

The second?

2. Overrating a spokesperson — it's an audience you want.

[4:07] So how do you position your brand to influencers? It's really 2 simple things:

1. Show the value it brings to their community

2. Does talking about it make the influencer look good?

If your product doesn't do that, you can still pay to get the influencer, but there will be diminishing returns...

[6:06] And the last but most important part of building that relationship is to find the give:

1. Go for the simplest yes possible (can I send you a sample? Can I share your stuff?)

RECAP

1. Bring value

2. Make them look good

3. Give

Today's episode is about really rigorous data based approach to social media advertising.

Tev Marusenko, PhD, takes a very academic approach to data collection, integration and management he shares the tactics he's used in his own business endeavours.

Key Takeaways

[6:07] Max introduces DOCTOR Yev Marusenko, and asks him to talk a bit about himself.

[8:59] After getting his PhD, Yev opted for a career change from theoretical academia to marketing and it turns out there are many transversal skills.

[13:00] Establishing a brand and then marketing or building the brand by testing? Heroclip had huge growth goals and that required both approaches at once.

First, you need branding so: branding strategy sessions! Heroclip is a carabiner, it could have been sold just as a carabiner— mind the competition! — but it already looked different so they spend a great deal of time thinking about what it actually does and how it differs for the customer. Reading branding books, articles, workshops and knowledge sharing.

Second comes the testing, integration and data management and that's more of a word by word process of tweaking and iterating.

Brand optimization [20:28] Yev explains how he sets up a data collection campaign.

Your metrics require variety: you need to test a sizable sample to test (10 taglines for example) and you will need to choose or more measurements (clicks, or shares, or comments, etc.)

From there, Yev usually picks the top 10% regardless of performance and moves on to analysis.

Which brand assets can you test? [25:45] What decides the brand assets that you can test? There are easier and harder ones to get at and generally, the harder assets to get data for are the ones that make the most difference.

Easy (static elements): taglines, headlines, short form copy, images.

When dealing with images, you have to consider 2 aspects:

1. The content to the image (logo, text, etc.)

2. Design aspect (border or no border, tilt, etc.)

Hard (evolving elements): anything about the customer journey.

Where do they go after clicking on your link, the order of the content they view, are they more analytical or emotional… this involves a lot of iteration.

[29:00] Max emphasizes the importance of those evolving elements in brand building, typically people associate brand with static elements.

Starting out with data testing [30:27] for someone who is new to Facebook ads, how do they integrate this kind of strategy?

Don't get too overwhelmed: start with two customer touch points and practice your interpretation skills!

Yev and Max discuss an example on testing website page click through and feature responses that answers two questions in one.

[38:07] Yev created software that attributes sales to people and figures out how much they're spending with regards to how much you spent to bring them in.

Zontracker does 3 things Amazon businesses can use:

1. Tracks the sales in Amazon coming from Facebook ads.

2. Pulls Amazon customer data into Facebook.

3. Optimize for Amazon purchases within Facebook.

[47:12] Max signs off and invites listeners to connect with Yev on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Mentioned in this episode

Capitalism.com

[email protected]

How do psychedelics play into the lives of entrepreneurs? Today we dive deep into belief systems, religion, consciousness and all that good philosophical magic.

Tune in for a very human discussion on what it means to strip away some of your certainties and what you can learn in the process.

Who better to talk about this than Ryan, who in his single minded and systematic pursuit of truth ended up shedding a dogmatic upbringing as well as a religious career.

Disclaimer

This interview and associated content is in no way an endorsement or recommendation that anyone should do any illegal drugs — there is nothing you cannot achieve or go do on your own through meditation or spiritual practices.

Key takeaways

Questioning everything [:] Ryan has a history of questioning the established structures around him:

1. He questioned the 9 to 5 workday train and became an entrepreneur

2. He questioned his religion in phase 1 and started a lifelong spiritual journey

[8:00] Phase 2 of his spiritual quest has been centered around questioning reality, he now finds himself in the midst of a spiritual awakening.

Losing my religion [8:36] Losing one's religion the way Ryan did, cognizantly and rationally, is profoundly traumatic. It requires a systematic breaking away from brutish indoctrination along with everything from which you drew meaning. All of your certainties, absolutes and reassurances. Imagine the pain of ripping from your source of truth, hope, value, worth, connection, community, home and language. The foundation of your entire understanding of life.

He then went through what he believes to be a necessary part of healing, angry atheism.

In the past year, Ryan produced a Documentary — which he has yet to release to the public — called Losing My Religion. In the opening scene Ryan — having never even held a cigarette in his hand — does 4 grams of psilocybin mushrooms.

Who can you turn to? [11:56] After stripping away so much of himself and his old life, Ryan found himself in a spiritual void. But he hear the many accounts of trusted sources that assured their most profound spiritual experiences came from mushrooms.

His first and only [to-date] trip was both a good, and bad trip during which he had never more intensely wanted to go to church. It was also an incredible spiritual journey which led to a deeper understanding of why he broke away from his religion and concurrently, being drawn back into certain elements of it.

It is still an experience he is unpacking but left him with this indelible sense of falling in love with what he believes is true.

[15:24] THIS IS ALL A JOKE, DON'T DO DRUGS.

The decline of religion [17:34] What is this all for— Making money, getting fit, doing anything at all — if the end result is simply death? Ryan now believes that everything we do is constantly changing, growing and evolving consciousness as a comprehensive whole.

Taken back into it's historically relevant context, religion was the expression of our innermost need to understand our position in the universe. It made sense at the time, as a way to explains our greater purpose as well as the things we didn't have the technical means to grasp.

As time passes and understanding of the universe grows, the language and means with which we explain it needs to be adapted as well: religion has taken us as far is it could.

The conversation is starting to change and it's time to move into a spiritual phase shift.

The first trip [19:30] Ryan's brain began playing every thought he'd ever had, to the point of overwhelm, until he got to the end of the file folder, and then, for the first time ever he felt like he was himself — not the voice in his head he'd always thought he was, but his true self — it was the most freeing, expansive and joyful experience ever.

He now understands he should have listened, he should have stopped when things were good, but he pushed further and took another gram.

And so for 30 minutes of absolute terror, he felt the infinity of time while clawing at the gates of Hell, with no way out.

After that ordeal, he got a glimpse of the world as a whole. A magnificent epiphany of the grand design, his part to play in it as well as that of every other being in existence.

Every choice we make, every person we talk to or play a role in the developing theater of consciousness.

This is what drove his desire to go back to church: everyone plays a part and we're all riding the same wave.

Getting to the bad place [24:38] Ryan had that beautiful first experience, why did he push it further? Does he tend to go too far?

Yes, and the pattern is identifiable as an almost unhealthy addiction to growth, the emotional attachment to breaking the next barrier, the next unlocked secret, as opposed to being in the present.

Business and psychedelics [26:18] After selling his company for a hefty sum, Ryan found that the money he thought would bring him happiness simply did not. What's the solution then, make more money? How depressingly tedious...

Cue the MDMA and he realised that he had always thought he was defective or broken in some way, and had been looking for validation from outside sources.

In terms of business it translated to a radical change in perspective, from following systems and ideas — hustles if you will — that would profit him, make him money, to a more creative and generous approach: what do I want to bring to the world, what value can I add?

From the take mentality to the give mentality: what are you giving to the world?

He also understood 2 important things:

1. He can wait for the right opportunity.

2. He doesn't have to serve the customer that isn't a right fit just because they have deep pockets.

The inner child [33:12] For a lot of entrepreneurs, their entire life has been driven by the 10,12,15 year old who suffered trauma. We all have stories in our past that are driving our behaviour.

It really doesn't have to be crazy trauma to have an impact in adult life, but it does need to be addressed and unknotted in order to relearn to have fun and be happy.

It's hard to be happy when you're in survival mode.

Building or creating? [46:15] Ryan advises entrepreneurs, and has helped hundreds of them make their first million. The ones that do the best are systematically the ones that create something.

Everyone wants the formula, and Ryan has it, but it'll never work unless you create... It'll all just be price wars and review wars.

Capitalism [47:01] Capitalism is the system through which we create things (it's not the only one through which good ideas come from) but it's the only system where bad ideas lose

We're all on the same team. We're all just fighting about how to get there.

But we won't get there with less freedom, we'll get there with more.

Mentioned in this episode

Tucker Max — MDMA therapy

Reinvesting dividends! It sounds boring.

Just wait 'till you see the compounding cash flow numbers on this strategy, you'll understand why it's the only reason Ryan cares about dividend paying stocks at all.

Are you looking for an investment workhorse that will build a nest egg for your future? Pick up a good habit and put 10% of your earnings into this long term strategy.

Key Takeaways

[2:55] Ryan starts off by sharing his personal minimum criteria: a stock that pays a minimum of 4% and has raised its dividend every year for at least 10 years.

[5:35] As an example we'll use AT&T whose stock trades at about 40$ a share.

Let's buy a hypothetical 300$ worth at a 6% dividend a year for a measly 18$ a year.

[7:08] AT&T have raised their dividend for at least 10 years: let's posit a 10% annual raise.

Y1 — 6%

Y2 — 6.6%

Y3 — 7.3%

Y4 — 8%

Y5 — 8.8%

Y6 — 9.8%

Over 10 years these numbers become really interesting.

[9:03] The next step is the dividend reinvestment plan:

Y1 — 10 shares at 6% reinvested

Y2 — 10.5 shares at 6.6% reinvested

Y3 — 11 shares at 7.3% reinvested

Y4 — 12 shares at 8% reinvested

Y5 — You see where Ryan is going with this...

[11:35] There is a double compounding effect over time which means that at some point when you stop reinvesting, you still have cash flow, and you still own the underlying stock which means you can sell it, borrow against it, etc.

You liked this content? Comment, subscribe and share!

Today, the mysterious Jeff Lieber joins Ryan and Max for an insightful interview covering the reasons why big brand tend not to be on Amazon as much (and why they should be) as well as a host of tips and important advice on expanding your business on Amazon.

Jeff is the Founder and CEO of Turnkey Product Management, a company offering a full portfolio of management options for automating your Amazon growth while freeing up capacity for you to work on your business. Jeff also built and sold a few physical products brand himself and receives Ryan's highest endorsement.

Why should you be on Amazon, even if your brand is doing great on its own channels?

Key Takeaways

[1:54] Ryan starts by roping Max into a question about his initial shock with Amazon product sellers: he was struck by how far you can grow on Amazon by just focusing on product sales, and how inversely low performance seemed to be.

[3:10] How can companies use Amazon in a way that builds their brand rather than just focussing on product sales?

If your brand is successful through your own channels, you will benefit from bringing the branding and messaging to Amazon: make it a place for your existing customers to recognise you, and a way for new eyes to find you.

At the end of the day, having a diversity of sales channels will always make your company more valuable.

[5:07] Amazon used to be a low price, low margin product dumping ground and a lot of physical product sellers still treat it like that. But it's still the largest pool of online hungry buyers looking for products just like yours. If you're not there, you're missing out.

[8:23] What can product sellers and brands do on Amazon in order to keep their margins high and avoid falling into the low price point race to the bottom?

Differentiate yourself, stay premium, pride yourself on quality and great customer reviews: live up to and keep earning your price point!

[9:57] Price, at the end of the day, comes down to your ability to fulfill the promise your brand makes. A better, stronger brand will command a higher price.

[11:41] Jeff shares that his more successful clients are always great at one or more of the following:

1. Audience building

2. Paid advertising

3. Innovate

[15:38] Bigger brands are notoriously off Amazon, and the reasons may simply be because they have more control over their proprietary channels.

If that is the case you may simply need to shift your thinking: Amazon is the largest marketplace in the world, it should be one of your sales channels for 2 reasons:

1. Make it easier for your existing customers to have access to your products.

2. Meet new customers.

[20:49] Jeff built his own pet brand on Amazon — still the best place to launch a brand — and to day he firmly believes that having multiple sales channels is what ensured his business' success.

[24:53] The biggest impact you will have from an Amazon presence is that customers that see you elsewhere will look you up on Amazon and immediately become a customer because the process for them is much easier.

But for that to happen you need to streamline your page by optimizing your bullets, your copy, your headlines, etc.

Max gets tactical — this is the one biggest missed opportunity he sees — and advises that your listing images should tell a cohesive story that includes the brand and taglines or a promise statement that can be consistent across products.

[29:06] Jeff's biggest forward pushing items for growth:

- Launching new products

- Building (and using) your customer list

- Nurture 1 or 2 off-Amazon channels

[32:07] Ryan turns the floor over to Jeff to talk a bit more about Turnkey Product Management and he invites listeners to visit turnkeyproductmanagement.com/ryanmoran for some exclusive content.

Thanks for listening!

Mentioned in this episode

Capitalism.com

Today is a rare treat, Ryan talks about Capitalism.com's advertising platform which he never does! Why today? While turning a bad day around, he has a huge realisation about his business.

Do you want to muscle out of your ruts, big or small? Ryan shares his sure fire way to pull yourself out of the muck.

Key Takeaways

[:29] Ryan's been following a process he calls success stacking which means that when he feels like he's in a rut he does a few key things.

1. Identify what isn't up to your expectations for the day — journaling is in and of itself a great practice, and here is a tangible way to use it, it can help you put words into what's going on in your head: today's a bad day, figure out why.

2. Get an iota of momentum, it's often all you need — and sometimes that just means going to the gym, or even getting a haircut.

[1:19] Today was a real weird for Ryan, he shares his journal entry and how he pulled out of his day's muck by finalizing a deal he's been after for a while.

Braingasm [3:44] Ryan finally sees how doing one small tweak may in fact take care of a problem he's been seeing with Capitalism.com's attractivity.

[5:22] Finally Ryan shares how the great team he's built around him has awarded him a lot more time to drive himself crazy and how strange it is for him to learn how to work on the business rather than in the business.

Because you asked: today, we diverge from the usual interview and Max breaks down the very concept of 'brand' into easily digestible parts.

So is it just a logo?

Key Takeaways

[2:49] Max asked the community what it is you would like to see on the Brand Builder Podcast and you responded!

Over the next few weeks and months, he'll be covering a lot of the questions raised but for today:

What do we mean when we talk about brand?

[5:15] A lot people think of brand as logos, palettes, packaging, marketing funnels and copy... All of those things are important aspects, but they are not enough.

Your brand is the collective emotional response to your product or service, and that includes your customer's expectations, memories, stories and relationship with regards to your company.

[6:32] In a perfect world, you are not selling someone something the one time, you are entering in a relationship that will last and spans months, years or even a lifetime.

That relationship is built on three principles:

1. Brand promise — the guarantee, quality and efficacy of your product

2. Meaningful differentiation — how are you different in answering your customer's wants and needs

3. Elevating your customer — help them be the hero in their own story

[9:42] Your brand is the only thing that will keep your customers with you when the competition pops up.

[11:22] So brand is something you have do across every single touch point with your customer, and each of those points is an opportunity to strengthen or weaken that relationship.

Reinforcing that relationship requires two things:

1. Agreement on brand direction — you need to know where you are headed

2. Consistently strong communication — everytime someone gets something from you is an opportunity

[15:00] The best brands in the world are built with a specific customer in mind, a singular message that resonates with that customer and they communicate that message consistently across all channels.

That is how you build the equity that makes your brand valuable.

[16:30] Max recaps and invites listeners to share their comments, questions and suggestions with the Capitalism.com community.

Thanks for listening! Visit capitalism.com/events for upcoming events and additional content.

If you have feedback, guest ideas or topics to explore for this podcast, email max Kerwick at [email protected]

Because it really does make a difference: don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

Mentioned in this episode

Capitalism.com

[email protected]

So, should you do Ayahuasca? No.

But if you want to hear what it was like for Ryan DMT Moran and what he took away from the experience, listen in.

Preface:

Ayahuasca has become this cliché thing that entrepreneurs do, they come back changed and want to tell EVERYONE about it. It's like being vegan, or doing crossfit.

Ryan wants to make it crystal clear that he is not a hippie and did not want to talk about this experience. He is not an "Ayahuasca person" but since he also attends burning man, he may already be on a slippery slope...

Disclaimer

This interview and associated content is in no way an endorsement or recommendation that anyone should do Ayahuasca or any other illegal drugs — there is nothing you cannot achieve or go do on your own through meditation or spiritual practices.

Key takeaways

How did this come to happen? [2:58] For Ryan, it began years ago with an obsession for the truth — to witness: he left his faith in his mid-twenties because he no longer believed it was true.

This obsession has had him chasing ideas down many a rabbit hole, and he has been on this self-discovery journey for a long time (it would be ill advised for anyone to jump-start their personal discovery journey with the use of potent psychedelics.)

Recently though, his most reasonable, rational friend shared his very positive experience of Ayahuasca, and because this trusted friend did not come from a spiritual background and had such a spiritual experience, Ryan was convinced.

He had never planned on doing Ayahuasca and never wanted to: isn't that a glowing testament to the power of referrals!

It's been two weeks [6:04] Ryan's afterglow is gone now and he's ready to answer C-Money's questions from a more grounded place.

Surface questions first [7:28] What does it cost? (Shockingly affordable), What did you feel physically? What did you see?

There were no hallucinations per se — nothing like the open-eyed movie of psilocybin (mushrooms) — the experience was more akin to MDMA (ecstasy) but even then, it doesn't really encompass the experience.

Imagine that ethereal feeling in the space between consciousness and sleep, when your thoughts are more material, tangible and textured but free.

Imagine being in this state with a lucid mind.

An intensely personal experience [9:17] Aubrey's Marcus' recounted experience was diametrically in contrast to that of Ryan.

Don't take legal advice from a guy on the Internet [10:03] So the shaman prepares the brew from leaves, and hands you the equivalent of a raisin smoothie flavored shot glass...

Where do they find the ingredients?

What are the legal ramifications?

Ryan doesn't know! But as far as he believes, it's protected as a religious rite if you fit the criteria...

Anxiety [13:26] Managing his anxiety is a goal that Ryan was hoping to make some headway on with this experience, but on the first day he was met with a mind where thoughts were racing at a million miles an hour "How is this ever going to help me get rid of anxiety?"

That was the first realisation: those thoughts WERE anxiety.

Anxiety is the voice in your head who is constantly judging and making evaluations about right and wrong: you feel anxiety because you are making a judgement and that judgement may be right, or wrong.

I judge my body.

I judge my bank account.

According to what? It's all subjective, and who's to say who's right?

If you stop taking that voice so seriously, if you just remove judgement: there is no more anxiety.

Drive [16:36] Entrepreneurs tend to use anxiety as a tool to move forward, and they often fear healing the wounds that drive them, in case it removes their drive altogether.

But say your driver to get wealth is fear of scarcity, having wealth will not fix it! It will only make it worse: What should I do with my wealth? What if I lose it?

Try thinking of it this way: I don't want to be happy because unhappiness drives me!

Consciousness [22:56] You dose everyday for 3 days and Ryan's day 1 was frustrating because he was fighting with the voice of judgement the whole time.

Because of how day 1 unfolded, on day 2 the facilitator gave him a smaller dose before the ceremony followed by a full dose at the ceremony.

This journey was more pleasurable, and Ryan had an out of body experience for which he was required to disidentify with all physical things.

It sounds esoteric but it is a really interesting thought experiment:

Take away the money, the track record, the stuff? I am still me.

Take away health? I am still me.

Take away the "Ryan" construct? I am still me.

Take away your daughter? This was immensely painful but I was sad for me, for what I had lost. Somehow, I am still me.

Everything is temporary and everything is a blessing. If you accept what is, you can create what you want without any attachments to the results.

[27:40] This realisation does beg the question as to the place of legacy in this world… The obsession about legacy, immortality is rooted in a fear of death.

Death [29:37] Three weeks ago Ryan didn't believe in life after death. He does now.

He tries his hand at explaining life after death in two minutes or less:

In our experience of life, we are slaves to certain rules about our existence as reflected by certain things like biology and physics. Those are reflexions of the physical world.

Ryan asserts that consciousness precedes the physical world and in that construct, when our biology decays and goes away our consciousness remains.

"You remain in the physical world even if your meatsuit goes away."

Life after death (or before birth) is a physical but not in the sense of a biological experience, it means in essence that your consciousness is situated on a continuum which intersects other realities including this one.

Where is my meatsuit? [:32:21] What does it mean for consciousness to live on without the brain?

Ryan offers 2 analogies to better grasp his understanding of consciousness.

1. The dolphin:

A dolphin swims in the ocean and one day, he jumps out of the water and is amazed — The air! The sky! The trees! Wow! the whole though pattern about this experience is contained in the 3 second jump — and suddenly it becomes scared to lose all of this new wonder. But as soon as it hits the water it realizes it's home, and home is the same place after the jump as it was before.

Life is the jump. When it's over you just fold back into what existed before, and that's home. We need to enjoy the jump, man.

2. The flashlight:

Turn it on and it beams out wide and the light goes on, and on, and on forever and we are all photons in that beam expressing what is happening at its source, the origins of the beam: the singularity.

The lesson [37:03] Ryan's big lesson from all of this was: Relax.

There is no end or arrival, nothing to grasp, nothing to figure out, to do, no one is in control. Literally nothing is under control.

Anything you chose to do is all equally fine: at the end of it we all go back into the same ocean, weather that means nothingness or pure consciousness.

In that context, there is nothing to fear! You are already fully expressed so dance in it.

Resistance is futile [39:47] We quite literally create the things we don't want by resisting them. Your resistance to a thing supposes its very existence and possibility.

Trump is the perfect example of this: the reason he is president is because all the people talked about was how he shouldn't be president (they created the constant media noise about him.)

"Trump shouldn't be president" is a qualitative statement that includes the possibility of "Trump is president".

Back to reality [43:58] Ryan has done a lot of personal work and although he did gain some important insight, he didn't feel the urgency to proselytize as some do after such an intense experience.

Goal [47:29] To be content with what you have, to stop judging and comparing: there are days even Elon Musk doesn't want to be Elon Musk.

What if we just didn't play the comparison game? We'd all be equal and actually free! Which would probably result into you doing the thing that will make you the "Elon" of what you love to do.

Happiness [56:23] Stop making life so hard. Ryan has such specific rules as to what is required for him to be happy that it's easy to fall short, and when he does, he feels miserable.

When he meets other people and they ask what he is up to, his answer is now "I am practicing being happy". Happiness is the game, and business is just one of the ways Ryan is happy.

Find pleasure in what is.

Leadership [1:00:04] One of the things that occurred to Ryan was that if he wants to become all he wants to be, he has to to empower other people to do the same.

What he had done in the past was pull other people along — preventing them from learning and growing — when in fact he should have been pointing to the goal and calling people into that path.

A leader's job is to set the overall vision for the goal and then hold their people accountable for that.

Capitalism [1:03:16] After having a hippie experience, do you relax the marriage to Capitalism as an ideology?

Nope! It still stands that Capitalism is the system through which we exercise freedom and freedom requires people to be responsible, not coddled. The purpose of Government is to set the rules though which we practice freedom. As few rules as possible.

The judge [1:05:50] Ryan used to view God as the outside judge but the idea that there is a god outside ourselves, judging us, is actually a miscategorization of our own inner judge.

People who have a very profound desire to judge other people are actually just judging themselves. If you forgive yourself then you have the freedom to not judge other people which allows them to be what they want to be.

Let go of judgement will set you free, and that is a very humbling thing. But means everything to overall happiness.