#101: 12 Months To $1 Million

Welcome to the accelerated investor podcast with Josh Cantwell, Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland ventures, real estate, private equity, and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss and his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen and learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and your investing with the accelerated investor podcast. 

Josh: So hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. I am so excited to be with you. I’m so excited to be part of your entrepreneurial journey wherever you’re at listening to this podcast in the gym, in the car, going for a walk, hanging out on vacation. I’m honored and privileged to be part of your journey today. I’ve got a special guest, a special treat for all of you. His name is Ryan Moran. He is the owner, founder and leader at Capitalism.com He’s a great personal friend of mine. I’ve known now going on for about 10 or 12 years. He’s an amazing entrepreneur and let me tell you a little bit more and just kind of read his bio here. Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, investor. He is actually a passive investor in a number of different businesses including real estate. And one of the reasons why I want to interview him is he’s got his amazing new book, 12 months to 1 million coming out very, very soon.  

Josh: And so we’ll talk about the book. We’ll talk about Ryan’s entrepreneurial journey. Ryan is responsible for get this for creating over 100 millionaires, many of them through his training programs and his personal advisory and coaching and many of them in 12 months or less, mostly in the eCom business. But Ryan has a tremendous amount of experience in e-com, raising capital, real estate information, marketing, coaching. He’s just a wealth of knowledge and I’ve used Ryan personally in many of our different programs as a copywriter and advisory role. He’s just an all around amazing guy and a very established entrepreneur and leader. Ryan Moran, thanks so much for joining me on Accelerated Investor. 

Ryan: I don’t know what you’re talking about, Josh. We’ll probably use on  capitalism.com so I’ll flip this around on you and say welcome to capitalism.com. When you talk about my history like that, I sound so important. I was just out of college and when I, you know, was kind of finding my way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you, you got me at my most my biggest discounted rate ever. We wrote copy together and we want some offers together. And, but before there was any of this, we were working together. 

Josh: Yeah, man, this was we, Ryan and I, for those of you that are familiar with traffic and conversion summit and the digital marketer brand, they did, their very first event was down in Austin, Texas. And when was that Ryan like 2000 or… 

Ryan: It is either 2009 or 2010 cause I had just graduated college.

Josh: Yeah. And I was, it was before I got sick and that was 2011. So Ryan and I were in the very first war room mastermind. There was about 18 or 20 of us. I was a very, I would say immature business owner. Ryan was a very mature recent college graduate and we found out in the mastermind, Holy cow, he’s from Parma, Ohio. That’s where I was went to school were from the same area and, and we just connected right out of the shoot. And we’ve both been on tremendous entrepreneurial journeys over the last 12 years. So Ryan, let me just ask you this first question. You got started as an entrepreneur and an information marketing coaching in college. So a lot of people getting a job and they figure they’re going to start in a sales position or as a nurse or a teacher or whatever and then realize they want to become an entrepreneur. What was it  about your upbringing? What was it about your experience as a very young man in college that you knew out of the shoot that entrepreneurship was for you?

Ryan: So I think all of us have a secret drive for freedom and for about 5% of us, that means that what we want in order to have freedom is to generate a lot of money so that we’ve got a lot of resources that we can play with. I have this, this is my working theory on people in the world right now, Josh, is that all of us just want to play like we were kids and for some of us that means we want a whole pile of money to play with. And for some of us we grew up playing business video games and business board games and monopoly and, and trading baseball cards and stuff like that. And so play for us is making a lot of money and when, when that’s fun, you can’t be anything else but an entrepreneur because it’s a, it’s a big old game and if you have fun with it, 

Ryan: It’s the greatest game in the whole wide world I think. So for me, I actually cut my teeth in terms of learning about entrepreneurship through real estate. I didn’t go to parties in high school. I read real estate investment books. When I was in college, I was going to real estate meetups and trying to like wholesale. I lived in this little podium area called Marion, Indiana and was like trying to get investors from Fort Wayne in Indianapolis to like assign contracts to in Marion, Indiana. Anyway. I mean that’s how I kind of cut my teeth as an entrepreneur. I discovered a different kind of real estate a few years later and it was internet properties. They can be bought and sold just like any other asset. They can be built from scratch. They can be monetized and have a really nice renters in there. You can get them to live up on the nice corner by ranking in Google. 

Ryan: And do you ever charge higher rents as a result of that? And so all of the same factors played a role in internet businesses. It just happened to be a lower startup costs in a faster way to profitability from me as an 18-year-old from my college dorm. My plan was always to get back into real estate, which I do now. I take my profits and I give them to you and I give them to other people who invest in real estate and you’re the investor behind all of that. So the plan is the same. You still make your money and invest the profits until long-term assets that pay you money over time. I just make money business instead of real estate. 

Josh: You know what’s interesting about that too is we have a very much the same theory inside of our free land business now, which is we make loans for fixing flips and for income properties for landlords for both residential and commercial, and we take the profits from that lending business and invest them passively into income properties. 

Josh: So our whole business is built around income properties, but very similar to the way that you invested in internet assets and the very similar to the way that you invest in teach your members to invest in businesses, primarily built off of the econ platform that and then invest the profits for passive income. We do the same thing. We’re very much in lock step there. Right. I’m interested to hear, you know, you have this new book coming out. It’s coming out very soon on May 5th, 2020 so it’s going to be, and by the time this comes out, about a month or two before it’s available and it’s out and it’s through a major publisher, 12 months to 1 million. And when you really hit your stride. So finish a little bit of Ryan’s story and my connection, you know, Ryan was an extremely, extremely good copywriter. Ryan and I decided to work on an offer we called Middleman Income. It was the story of my comeback from cancer and how to invest in real estate and flip properties. And then Ryan was an amazing part and advisory role in copywriter in a product called 40 K flips, which we sold millions and millions of dollars of that information, product and coaching. 

Josh: And then Ryan kind of jumped into this whole Amazon world, the e-comm world. And this is Ryan, when you really started to hit your stride and have the name brand and the horsepower that you have now, and that’s when you really hit your stride as far as teaching people how to become millionaires, selling physical products. So for my audience that might not totally understand that space, why don’t you give them the, the 30 second to two minute kind of overview of what that is and then let’s jump into how have so many of your members become millionaires inside of 12 months using that process? 

Ryan: Yeah, so the, the way that I made my money was I built eCommerce businesses that I then scaled and sold and I broke that plan into three stages. When you’re starting a business, you have about a three to four-month period in which you’ve got a product and are just begging and borrowing and grinding for every sale. And it’s similar to when you’re doing your first raise. You were just knocking on  doors and taken every call that you can. When you are selling a physical product on the internet, it’s the same way. You’re begging for every review. You are climbing for every little step forward. And I call that about four-month period, the grind, and you’re in that period until you’re doing about 25 sales a day, which you can get into about 90 days to 120 days. At that point, your plan, the process is to rollout three to four additional products over the next three to six months and repeat that process until you have four to six products doing about 25 sales a day, which would be about a hundred-ish sales a day, which at a $30 price point, there’s $1 million business. And so all we need to do is have 25 sales a day across four products for a hundred sales a day to have $1 million business.

Ryan: And so we’re simply plugging in the formula to be able to build $1 million business. Now, what’s important to know since you brought up that I was launching offers with you and doing information products, it was for about 10 years, I was figuring out all the mechanisms. You know, I, I figured out copywriting and information marketing and later Facebook ads and search engine optimization and affiliate marketing and partnerships and Google advertising and Amazon advertising. But guess what Josh? I knew all of that stuff, but I wasn’t a millionaire. I was not a millionaire until I applied it to a plan that built a real business. That’s the important distinction because in our world of especially the internet entrepreneurs, you have all of these so-called experts who knows so much about so many different things, but they don’t apply that skill set to a real business. 

Ryan: So some people I think mistakenly label me as an Amazon guy. I know like a little bit about Amazon. What matters is that I use things like Amazon and like knowing a little bit about Amazon, a little bit about email marketing, a little bit about Facebook advertising, a little bit about investing to be able to build real businesses. But all of the magic is done in the building of a real business. You could be the best technical investor in the whole world, but if you don’t apply that to a property that has a real value, you still suck, right? For sure. You could be the best real estate agents in the whole world and you could be an agent in Helena, Montana and be broke. 

Josh: Where did you come up with Helena, Montana? 

Ryan: I did a book report in second grade on Helena, Montana. That’s where I pulled  that from. 

Josh: Right. I know what you know, what’s resonating so much about this is we’ve made the pivot even in the last six months to a year, and Ryan is, has been a passive investor with me for a long time and we’ve invested in fix and flips and we’ve invested in lending and fix and flips. And with exactly what you just said, that you apply to a real business of copywriting, Facebook ads, having a place to sell this widget, whatever the physical product is that you are selling in your businesses and your members are selling in their businesses. In a very similar way, we looked at fix and flip lending fix and flip investing as a way to make income but not necessarily a real long-term business. 

Josh: That’s why I’ve made the pivot in the last six months to a year to say then we’re going to be an amazingly strong good lender, so no different than your members and students who are selling a physical product. We now sell loans and we saw them for fixing flips. We do it for them for rentals, for small balance commercial. That’s a real business that when you take the net operating income after expenses is worth some multiple that someone will pay to buy our lending business. No different than paying to buy an eCommerce business that sells yarn or sells dog food or sells chains or glasses or headphones. It’s no different. So mindset wise, I’ve been watching you, right? I’ve seen what other e-com guys are doing to build real businesses and I looked at what we were doing to say, look, we have to have a real company that does something real that someone would want to buy. A lending company is something they’ll buy and it’s worth a multiple of that versus just flipping houses. Nobody will ever buy that business.

Josh: We made the same pivot using this exact philosophy. Got to have a real company that someone will eventually want to buy and you can exit from.

Ryan: Yeah, and if you look at it as that, the fact that the real payday happens when someone else buys the asset that you built, then you’re going to be rich like that. That’s when you know it’s, it is just like when you’re buying an apartment building and you know that the real payday is going to happen when this thing appreciates and has higher rents and has higher ROI and someone else is going to pay you three times what you paid for it. Now that doesn’t mean that you are  not taking your profits along the way by operating it profitably. It means you still have the cashflow and if you’re buying for the cashflow, that’s great, but you will ultimately make the most money in the shortest amount of time when you boost the inherent value of that asset and someone else pays you for it. 

Ryan: That’s when you’re going to have the biggest payday, and in order to do that, you’ve got to operate it like a great business with healthy cash flows and business is exactly the same. I don’t, I don’t play in the Silicon Valley world where you’re losing money forever until somebody buys it. I play in the let’s build profitable businesses that you can live on so that you’re a seven figure entrepreneur and then you’re building an asset that when someone pays you for it and they buy it for $10 million, you get to keep the $10 million. It doesn’t go distributed to a bunch of VC firms and you never get your money. So we’re building real assets from scratch that set you up to be free for the rest of your life. It’s the same in business just like it is an investment In my newest real estate investing book, The Flip System, you’ll learn the proven secrets and strategies that I’ve used to be a successful real estate investor. You’ll also hear the story of my journey from quitting my job to doing over 2000 units of apartments. The Flip System is now available for a limited time and you can grab your free copy at getflipsystem.com slash podcast. You’ll learn the same proven principles and secrets and investing strategies that I used to quit my job and pursue a life of financial freedom. In this book, I’m sharing exactly how I was able to personally close over 750 profitable real estate deals. Make over 400 private lender loans, raise over $30 million and acquire over 2000 units of cash flowing apartments. Get my newest book now for free at getflipsystem.com/podcast. That’s getflipsystem.com/podcast 

Josh: Just like in real estate. I love it. You mentioned there were three steps. I wrote down step one being the grind, getting to 25 sales a day, step two being adding three to four additional products with those selling at 25 sales a day at around 30 bucks a piece. That’s a million-dollar business. Did I miss a step three or were you getting to that? 

Ryan: Yeah, so in, in step one, our job is to make every sale we can and get them to leave reviews and tell their friends and post on social media and we’re begging  and borrowing for every single one of those. Right. In that timeframe, we’re also building a little bit of a customer base because when we were doing 25 sales a day. It means we’ve got a little bit of a snowball that is rolling where we’ve got an audience that might buy additional products. So in that second stage, I call it the growth and that second stage where we’re releasing a second product and a third product, each product is getting faster and faster to get to that 25 sales a day mark, because we have repeat buyers and we have more of a social media following, we have more of a buyers list. We have more profit that we can spend on advertising. So the snowball gets a little bit bigger every single time, especially if we’re waiting until we hit 25 sales a day before we release the next product. 

Ryan: So that’s phase two. We’re releasing up to five additional products within the line and then that gets us close or at the million and stage three is what I call the gold. That’s our final three months of that 12-month experience where we can now start paying ourselves. We have enough profitability to take money off the table. Well, we can start taking strategic risks like, okay, I’ve got these, I’ve got my, my business humming and making profits. I can now roll out that product that might be a little bit of a risk, but I’m kind of really excited about. I can now afford to take a loss or a swing for the fences and it won’t hurt us. We can also start doing things like paid advertising or creating unique partnerships in order to get us from 1 million to 5 million. But it’s really at that last three months of the 12-month cycle where we now have enough profitability to be able to do things that could potentially be a home run. And so we call that period the gold.

Josh: Love it. Now you’ve done this, this is all in your book, which I’m excited to be a part of this kind of launch here and get this out into my customer’s hands. Now you have over a hundred members who’ve done this, created over a hundred millionaires following this exact process. So I’m curious to hear from you, what are some of the characteristics? What are some of the traits, the habits, what are some of the things that you’ve seen in these hundred or more millionaires? Are there some certain repeatable characteristics? Are there some certain traits that they all have or most of them have? Is it the way they manage their mornings, the way they manage their evenings? Is it the way they manage their business? Is it the people that they hired? Is it the cashflow that they raised? Is it the product that they sell? Is it the personal leverage that they get from  themselves and how they manage themselves their own time? What are some of those characteristics that you’ve seen in the people that have achieved this millionaire status? 

Ryan: Well, I’m so glad you asked Josh in chapter three of 12 months to 1 million, there is what I wish someone had told me before I started. And it’s all of the mindsets and habits that I learned from advising all of these entrepreneurs, but also what I wished that I had known when I started my journey. And just for full disclosure, in case the FTC ever listens to this interview I know that I’ve helped hundreds of people build million-dollar businesses. I don’t know what their personal finances are. I don’t know if they’ve blown all the money. So I don’t know if I can call them millionaire. They’ve never disclosed that to me. But I do know that over a hundred people have come up to me privately and voluntarily without me soliciting it, saying I built a million-dollar business because of what I learned from you. And if over a hundred people have voluntarily reached out and told me, I’m sure that there are several hundred people who have used a similar formula and it at least helps them on their journey. 

Josh: Often it’s the people that are most successful that never speak up right there just kind of stay to themselves. They keep selling whatever they sell. You’ll never hear about them, although there’s probably five times as many of them than there are the people that have actually reached out and you’ve seen your events or they’ve emailed you. Yeah, I believe that. Absolutely. 

Ryan: I remember I was having a beer once in Vegas and this guy named Jeff came up to me and he was like, Hey, I’m sorry to bug you but I follow your podcast. And you know, I started this business and we do about $2 million a year and it’s, my family business is totally changed our lives. And, and I’m like, why the hell is this the first time you’re ever reaching out? Why have we not met? But anyway, so some of some of the things that, that I talk about in this chapter about those commonalities among entrepreneurs number one, I say for those who achieve millionaire status, they kept their chips on the table. And what that means is they were willing for a while to reinvest their profits into more growth. And this is true in real estate too, right? For a while you are building up the snowball until you have enough to comfortably take money off the table. 

Ryan: Short term entrepreneurs who fail are those who take money off the table too quickly. And so they’re always looking for the next fast sale rather than build being a real ass. So the, the longer you can keep the chips on the table, the faster you’ll end up being really successful. So that’s number one. The second thing that I’ve noticed about those who are really successful is they took the approach that every step forward had an exponential impact over time. So there was an exponential thinking to it rather than a linear thinking. Here’s what I mean by that. If you take a sale on the internet and that customer is wowed by your experience and they post about it on social media and they come back and leave an Amazon review and tell all their friends about your that experience that they had. 

Ryan: They ended up bringing hundreds of people with them. They all start buying over and over again as a repeat buyers and there’s an exponential impact from one person being wowed by your experience. Now if you think about that and you’re touching 25 buyers a day or a hundred buyers a day, that compounds really, really quickly. Really fast. Yeah. So if you have that type of exponential thinking, then things get good real quick. But if you have more of a linear approach of like, cool, I have 25 buyers, I need to get it to 35 buyers, then you will never take the intent of wowing those 25 people. You will never take the intent of investing the upfront thought and costs to make a product that is great to create a bias, that’s amazing, but if you do that, then there’s an exponential impact on the other side of that. 

Josh: I love that, Ryan, in that like if you’re going to build a real estate portfolio similar to building this eCommerce platform and business like buying deals, buying a property, if forcing the appreciation, renting it out, whether it’s a residential one to four unit or whether it’s a 50 unit or a 200 unit apartment, and then keeping your chips on the table, meaning not selling the asset. Yeah, keeping the asset, not just taking all the cashflow out for yourself, but leaving cashflow in the deal in order to make some additional improvements. Make sure you keep the tenant happy. If it’s a multifamily deal and we own many buildings as the largest portfolio deal we have as a 730 unit, you plow some profits back into that to make sure that the occupancy stays very, very high. Not only do you affect the life of those tenants that are in the building at that moment, but then that property gets known and well known. 

Josh: It gets reviews. There’s lots of places like apartments.com where people can leave reviews of their tenant experience, no different than a buyer who would, you know, buy your product and have a great experience with your eCommerce product and then leave reviews, like you said, every little step forward. Number two is exponential thinking and then eventually you get to the point where you can take this real estate property and instead of selling the business can actually refinance it, right? And pull some of the cash out. But instead of taking all the cash out, it’s tax free. You could go buy, you know, another house, you could go buy an exotic car or you can go buy all these things. Instead of that, like you said, step number two, exponential thinking is take put that cash, put it back in to buy another asset, get more reviews, get more private lenders. Get more people to invest equity in your deals instead of just pulling the cash out to fund, you know, a 10,000 square foot house, leave it in the business because the exponential thinking allows you to do the next deal or that next deal and the next deal.

Josh: And then eventually get to the point where you’re the portfolio, no different than your eCommerce business is cash flowing. Now you can live off the cash flow and have the opportunity to sell the asset, I. E. the building, no different than selling the business. These are so unlock step. It’s amazing. 

Ryan: Yes, it’s, I mean it’s just simply creation of value across the board. That’s why real estate is similar to e-com, which is similar to every other business where you were thinking about building a real asset and that’s actually the third mindset. It was a beautiful transition you just gave me there Josh, which is those who are really successful build assets, not just income streams. Now assets have income streams as a byproduct, but income streams don’t mean that you’re building an asset, right? There are plenty of people who pursue short term profits and call themselves hashtag entrepreneurs. But if the way that you actually get financially free is by building assets that produce money is a byproduct and that comes from being good to your tenants, from getting them to leave reviews from having people refer other people to your product or your service or your property because there is real value to that. 

Ryan: And that’s what ultimately attracts investors. See you, you brought up earlier like how I kind of, it appeared that I kind of switched to E-comm. To me it’s a natural transition of just doing the same things in a different sector. And most people  think that they’re like the hack is in Amazon. The secrets in Amazon, the secrets in E-comm, like this is the model, the right model is apartment investing. The right model is wholesaling the right way? Like there’s no model, there’s no right model. There is simply service and there’s products to a specific group of people who want what you’ve got. And the better you can do that, the wealthier you will be and money will be the byproduct. So build wealth, not money, because wealth brings money. 

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the great regrets that, not really regret because every deal I’ve ever done had its place in my entrepreneurial journey. Like either that deal launched me to the next deal, I flipped it and sold it, or I bought an asset or I wholesaled it. Or at the time, sometimes as an entrepreneur, I just needed the money. We didn’t have enough cashflow so I had to flip the property. But one of my great regrets is that I didn’t keep them all, right? So, now I think about the past and each one of these 700 properties and the 400 loans that we’ve made have all had a place in my journey. So I don’t look back with any regret for those deals. But on a larger scale, high level, I think, you know what, if I had just kept every single one of those properties, you know all the  income that it would generate and I would have had much more of this long- term build an asset, hold the asset, the asset comes with the income stream as  opposed to my much more immature self said I need the income, so let’s flip every property. 

Josh: Let’s flip every apartment building. Let’s wholesale every deal. Let’s you know, maybe sell a product. We did a launch and the launch boosted a huge amount of revenue, but then it dropped off. You know how people do launches in the IM space, there’s a huge loss, huge revenues. You’ve been part of dozens of those. I have two huge spikes, but then all of a sudden, it’s like we have all these customers to take care of and then it’s like, okay, next month, how are we making money again? 

Josh: Because we did a launch or we did a flip or we did a, we sold the business. Great, but now very similar path. My entrepreneurial journey and yours is mine in real estate is building assets that you can be proud of. People love to live in. They give great reviews, very similar to they had an experience through your eCommerce business or your Amazon store or your Shopify, whatever it is. They  have an amazing experience. They come back, they buy more products, they buy them again and again and again. They buy them for their family and they tell everybody. That is, I think, a very big deal and the guys that I’ve seen, Ryan, that have at a very young age done well, not young as an age themselves, but age of their business, is the guys that have taken that long-term approach very early in the entrepreneurial process, they knew they could forego, like you said in step number one, leaving chips on the table. 

Josh: So many people like, Oh, I made 200,000 in my business. I’m going to pull $180,000 out. Then go do this, that and the next thing. So many people say, I don’t want to work that hard, right? I had. I did it in a podcast interview other day and my guest was like, I just don’t really want to work that hard. And I’m like,  I get it, but the work goes at the beginning and especially if you have that long- term approach, then the business will pay you forever. You’ve got to put in the  time you got to sprint at the beginning. Entrepreneurship is for sure a marathon, but there’s a sprint portion. I don’t, you know, in your case, like you said, it’s the first, maybe three to four months. Then you hit the growth pattern. You’ve got to put in the work a lot of work at the very, very beginning in order to set up for long-term success. I made that mistake and I’m totally reinvented myself in this last year or two to create our fund and apartments and cashflow from all these different things, businesses that we can actually exit and sell. Are you ready to automate and explode your real estate investing? We’re searching for extremely motivated individuals who are sick and tired of wasting time and want to finally see real results from their real estate investing business. We’re searching for investors looking to get to the next level and become a bigger, better version of themselves while being a more successful real estate investing entrepreneur. Apply for mentoring in coaching at JoshCantwellcoaching.com forward slash podcast. That’s Josh cantwell.com forward slash podcast. 

Ryan: Yeah. It’s a very strange paradox that if you plan for the long term you get faster short-term results. There’s like there’s the curve ends up passing those who are pursuing short term results because it just compounds faster and faster. I had the same transition as you, Josh from the last couple of years where I’ve started the capitalism.com fund where we’re investing and entrepreneurs who have  some real value and we have a little something together for them. And that is now that you know this fun don’t make money in the short term like they can, they can make enough to pay for their operating expenses, but you’re using that money to buy assets and those assets mature and they compound and as they compound the returns can be amazing. But only if you’re buying real assets, not just pursuing a short-term profits. So I’ve had that same transition where I’ve realized, you know, I’ve sold a couple well companies, I know what happens at the other side of doing things right for a long period of time. 

Ryan: And I also know that when company or entrepreneurs get scared and start pursuing the short term, they end up ruining the company. So the longer term you can think, the more exponential you can do. Every step forward, the wealthier you will be. Even in the short term. 

Josh: No doubt. And I need that. You know, this is such a parallel. It’s amazing. If I look at a couple of my buddies my friend Jack, my friend Tim, some of the guys that forgo, that left and got out of the flipping game, the wholesale game, the flipping property, flipping apartments and just said, I’m going to buy everything. I’m going to own it forever. I’m going to own it in perpetuity. It was amazing because that was their focus. That’s where all their mental energy went, was investing for the long-term investing for the long-term. 

Josh: It didn’t take them 20 or 30 years to build a super successful portfolio. Just like your members, it’s taking them roughly 12 months. It’s not taking them five years or 10 years to build a business because they build it for long-term from the beginning. I look back and I think, wow, man, I’m so jealous of the fact that they, you know, like in Jack’s case, he was able, his wife had a successful business and a successful job. He was able to live on her income and he was able to leave all of his chips on the table. My friend Tim had some residential properties that he was able to live on and leave all those chips on the table. And I look at the same thing now that we’re building our lending companies. We can leave all those chips on the table and just make all of our investments for the long-term. So I would encourage all of our listeners, whether it’s on the Accelerated Investor podcast or Ryan’s podcast, wherever you hear this, to really put some thought into whether on a daily basis right now, are you doing something as you listen to this,   are you doing something to make profits today or are you building for the long- term? 

Josh: Are you doing something to take chips off the table today so you can feed your family or go have fun on vacation or are you building for the long term? Ryan and I both, you know, over, you know, 20, 30, 40 years here of entrepreneurial experience, both would say, if we could redo it again, we would just invest for the long-term much sooner in our journey. Am I right there, Ryan? Are you ready to automate and explode your real estate investing? We’re searching for extremely motivated individuals who are sick and tired of wasting time and want to finally see real results from their real estate investing business. We’re searching for investors looking to get to the next level and become a bigger, better version of themselves while being a more successful real estate investing entrepreneur. Apply for mentoring in coaching at JoshCanttwellcoaching.com forward slash podcast. That’s Josh Cantwellcoaching.com forward slash podcast. 

Ryan: Yeah, a hundred percent and I know that can be a little bit overwhelming for people to hear about the long-term when they’re first starting. So I want to address something at the very beginning of your journey what playing for the long-term means. What it means is doing something really well. That’s it. It means doing something so well that other people will want it. Now in selling a something like a physical product, that means making a great product and or ensuring that the customer buying experience is awesome. That’s it. That’s what that means. And in terms of investing, it means protecting those who lend you capital, being good to those who entrusted you with their money and reserving your attention for deals that look really solid on paper rather than chasing the results that other people are posturing. So for example, here in Austin, I mean property values have just absolutely skyrocketed. 

Ryan: There are people who are buying apartments with negative cap rates because they’re planning on the appreciation. Now you can do that once you are a really established successful investor, you can take those risks. But if you’re beginning your journey and you’re buying properties with negative cap rates, your toast. You’re absolutely toast. You have no meat on the bone to be good to your  tenants and good to your investors. So at the beginning of your journey, it means protecting and taking care of them and blowing away every stakeholder and if that’s a single family house, that means being great to your tenant and making sure that the house is safe, secure, and taken care of. Do it well once.

Ryan: And when you do it well once, then the results compound very quickly. Where people run into trouble is they go for the fences on the first one and then they’re on a hamster wheel of trying to maintain the profits. So the value that’s being created is going down and that’s where they get stuck. And why some investors never are successful and why some entrepreneurs are never successful.

Josh: Yeah. Ryan, I want to stick with this theme for a minute because when you say do something so well that everybody wants it so many, it’s funny when I hear of a new entrepreneur or relatively new in their first couple of years, let’s say, of entrepreneurship, and they’re like, yeah, I started seven businesses last year.

Josh: Oh God, you’re destined to fail. You know? And the same with real estate. They’re like, well, I bought, you know, six apartment buildings in the last six months. And, and then if you dig, you find out that none of them are cash flowing. You know, very similar with these businesses, e-com businesses or other companies I started. And it sounds sexy and they posture up on Instagram and Facebook that they started their fifth business, but the other four are not profitable or not cash flowing and they’re really bleeding. Yeah. And so what kind of advice do you give your people and what kind of maybe tack tactics or hacks have you used or your members used to really stay focused to really stay dialed in on the one thing. Because so many of us entrepreneurs, we start to see profits in one business or one venture and we make the grand mistake of saying, you know, that’s starting to take off. And instead of really babysitting that little thing, we move on to something else. It’s such an amazing temptation. How do you stay focused? 

Ryan: Yeah, so this is my, this is my answer to everything. Don’t do anything that you don’t have some genuine care for. Now here’s what I mean by that. You don’t have to be passionate about your business. You don’t have to be passionate about your product. You don’t have to be passionate about your process. You don’t have to be passionate about the system you’re following. But if you’re not  passionate about any of those, you better be passionate about the person that you’re serving. You better be passionate about the customer. There has to be something that is very interesting to you to compel your attention long enough for you to do work that is good. Now, the reason why most people start seven businesses is because what they’re passionate about is the results they’re hoping one of them gives them. But they never take the time and attention of being passionate about something in the business. Now, a passion is a word that is thrown around. Let’s just call it interest. Something that keeps your interest long enough for you to do good work and my default is always going back to the who behind it 

Ryan: Because at the end of the day, all of your customers are people. All of the money in your bank account was spent by other people and because other people are the secret to you getting what you want, then you better well understand and be interested in serving the person who is transacting with you. If you do that, then you can stop being real mantic about what the product is or what the process is because all you care about is that the person behind the transaction is served. And if you can be humble enough to serve that person, then all the mechanisms and systems become real easily. So this is why I repeat over and over again. I’m not an Amazon guy. I’m not an Amazon guy or even an eCommerce guy. I’m not even an internet guy. I’m a businessman who uses these tools and opportunities to more effectively serve the people who are transacting with me, right?

Ryan: And if you can think like that, then you will automatically think long-term. Because the question goes back to how do I help the customer get what they want? How do I make the customer the hero in this journey? How do I make the customer happy with this experience? Because if they do that, then you can suck at everything else. You can literally suck at your entire business. If your customers are being served and they bring all the boys to the yard and they pay a higher prices and they want what you got and they post about it on social media and it doesn’t matter what you do or what you look like or where you come from or what your background is or if you care about the product, it doesn’t matter. You don’t matter. Only the customer matters. Only the tenant matters. 

Ryan: Only the investor matters. Only the buyer matters. Only the person who is doing the transacting matters. Your job is to be a steward of their attention and their dollars and to ensure that they’re getting what they want out of it. And if you do that for long enough, you will get everything that you want and more. It’s straight out of the parable of talents man. Absolutely fabulous the way it is. One hundred percent parable of the talents. Yeah, you’ve done well with five talents. Here are five more. Like it is one a hundred percent that and the person who is scared, buries it in the ground and they go to where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Right? That, I mean that is straight out of that. Like that is the way that you get rich. 

Josh: That is phenomenal. But I want to make sure…

Ryan: I can flex on that one.

Josh: Yes you should. I can see your muscles through your shirt. That was awesome. Your events or to learn more about your programs. Like where can our audience go to learn more about you, your upcoming book, et cetera. Is it capitalism.com? Is that the best place? 

Josh: Yeah. So the book is called 12 months to 1 million and the subtitle is How to Pick  a Winning Product, Build a Real Business and Become a Seven Figure Entrepreneur. It’s available for preorder on Amazon right now. It will be in bookstores everywhere if you want to wait until May 5th or if you still go to bookstores like nerds like me do. And my overall business strategy is to build businesses and invest the profits. So I make my money in business and I invest the profits and give them to people like Josh. 

Josh: Ryan’s book, as you’ve been hearing throughout this interview, has tremendous parallels between building a business, scaling a business, investing the profits, and doing it on the eCommerce or the internet side. And on the real estate side, there’s a tremendous amount to learn. I’ve learned a ton from Ryan over the past 10 or 12 years. Highly recommend you pick up the book and jump on that as soon as possible. 

Ryan: If this book doesn’t change your life, I will personally call you and tell you you’re an idiot. I mean, it’s that good. That’s my guarantee. Results guaranteed or I’ll tell you you’re an idiot.

Josh: Personally call up.

Ryan: Yeah. I’ll personally call him and tell them that they’re an idiot. Yeah. So Josh…

Josh: The greatest guarantee.

Ryan: I’m gonna put that in my marketing now. It’s guaranteed or you’re an idiot. Yeah.  All right. So Josh, there’s fun hanging out with you, dude.  

Josh: Absolutely dude. This is the best. I wish we were hanging out again at Catherine’s deli. Little story about me and Ryan, we were heading out both of us, kind of that crossroads in our lives, I don’t know, maybe eight or 10 years ago. And we met at Catherine’s deli and Ryan and I were talking about real estate and internet properties and what we were going to do next. That seems like forever ago, but one of my favorite conversations that we’ve ever had in addition to this one, man, it’s been amazing to see your growth and how you’ve become a leader, a thought leader in your niche, the amazing people that you surround yourself with and can’t wait to hear more about your investment opportunities. And I appreciate you investing with us as well. 

Ryan: You bet, Josh, I’ll be in Cleveland in June, so I’ll see you then.

Josh: Absolutely, brother. We’ll see you then.

Ryan: All right. Thanks Josh.

You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the accelerated investor podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us a five-star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his company’s Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellcoaching.com. 

Those guys who do a lot of talking and posturing about their businesses, but are really too scattered to be truly successful? That’s not Ryan Moran. Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, but he has developed a process to scale and grow e-commerce businesses. He’s also responsible for helping over a hundred people create million dollar businesses, and he is not shy about giving advice.

Ryan built e-commerce businesses that he then scaled and grew in a 3 step process. He details this process, and why it works in e-commerce regardless of the product you choose to sell.

No one is a millionaire until they put their actual business plan into action. Ryan knows a little bit about marketing, investing, Facebook ads, and Amazon, but it’s just enough to build a real business. And that’s the key! You have to apply what you’re learning to real life. You don’t need to be an expert in everything.

I’ve made the pivot in the last 6-12 month into being a lender. We now sell loans to real estate investors instead of relying solely on fix-and-flip. What you sell doesn’t matter in a business because business principles can be applied across industries, whether you’re selling knitting supplies or fix-and-flips. Ryan talks about how to choose an industry to focus on.

Don’t get distracted by people posturing about how many businesses they’ve started in the last year. Ryan gives advice for how you can drill down and focus on making that new business truly successful, and why the key is really customers.

Ryan’s book 12 Months to $1 Million will be released May 5, 2020, and you do not want to miss it!

What’s Inside:

  • Ryan details his e-commerce business plan.
  • How reviews can help both e-commerce businesses and real estate.
  • Build real wealth with these tips.
  • If you plan for the long term, you get better short term results.
  • What playing for the long term means and how that changes your journey.

Mentioned in this episode​

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