Ryan Moran, founder of the popular Freedom Fastlane Podcast, is only 30 but he’s already been in business for 10 years.
“I feel like I came out of the womb an entrepreneur,” says the Austin, Texas-based entrepreneur. “Some people just have the itch. I like to say my first business was selling hand-drawn pictures door to door when I was five years old for a penny each. Instead of trick or treating, I knocked on doors.”
That trend continued, and when Moran finished high school, he used the $1,000 in monetary gifts he received for graduation to start a business. Tapping what he had learned about HTML from one of his teachers and what he’d taught himself about Google advertising, he created an affiliate marketing business in between attending classes at Indiana Wesleyan University. At the business, he built websites where he generated revenue promoting products of the businesses with which he had affiliate relationships. The business was successful enough to put him through college and leave him with $100,000 in his bank account when he graduated, he says.
Podcaster Ryan Moran has tapped what he learned about building high-revenue, ultra-lean businesses... [+] to create a portfolio of them.
Freedom Fast Lane
That worked well as a dorm-room venture, but Moran eventually had the urge to go bigger with the business. He invested heavily in advertising it and hired employees, but that proved to be a mistake. “There wasn’t a real business model behind what I was doing,” he says with 20-20 hindsight. “I was just selling things from websites.”
Moran quickly ran through his savings and, short of cash, moved into a friend’s basement. “My friend was a very successful entrepreneur who encouraged me to take all of the lessons I had learned and build a real business,” he says.
To get a fresh start, Moran got in his Kia Sportage, drove to Austin and rented an apartment in 2013. He started the Freedom Fast Lane podcast to raise his profile. “I was able to get in touch with people I wanted to learn from and feature them on the show and ask them the questions I always wanted to ask,” he says. Still, he did not view the podcast as his main business.
Where he focused his efforts was on selling physical products. His first business in this area, Zen Active Sports, sold yoga equipment, such as mats, blocks and towels, online—items he knew were in hot demandbecause of his proximity to Austin’s lively yoga culture. “There’s a yoga studio on every corner,” he says. “Instead of McDonald’s, we have yoga studios.” He found a buyer for the thriving business before it hit the $1 million revenue mark.
His next venture was a sports nutrition company, Sheer Strength Labs. It sold pre- and post-workout supplements. Armed with the knowledge he gathered from selling his first business, he sold Sheer Strengths Labs to a private equity firm.
Tapping some of the money he was making, he moved on to a new business, Foxbrim, which sells personal care products that use healthy oils, such as a coconut milk and honey facial cleaner and a hair repair product that incorporates argan oil. Moran is now rolling out a protein-heavy food line.
Both Sheer Strength Labs and Foxbrim, each of which Moran ran with a partner, grew into million-dollar, nonemployer businesses beforehiring any W-2 employees, Moran says. Moran runs all of his businesses through a holding company, which has now grown to 18 employees and has revenue in the $15 million to $20 million range, he estimates. Meanwhile, his podcast kept growing. It evolved into a media company that has diversified into running events such as The Capitalism Conference and a book club. Moran now operates a site called Capitalism.com to share ideas on business growth.
As he has expanded his knowledge of entrepreneurship, Moran has candidly shared his experiences on the podcast. “I think I have a unique ability to simplify complex ideas and keep the processes really simple,” says Moran. “The fact that I was able to distill down the one or two things I was doing that made an impact was the reason so many people were able to try or test different things.”
Moran finds that many solo entrepreneurs and teams of business partners who build their business to a substantial size stall out, as they reach the limits of their knowledge. His advice on how to keep growing?
Don’t neglect your customer base. “Entrepreneurs at $1 million are often so focused on getting the next customer they forget they have already sold $1 million worth of products,” he says. “They forget about the customer base that got them to this point and worry about the next set of customers.” Keep your original customers happy and stay in touch with them, he advises. They’re an important source of sales.
Put your ego aside. Moran didn’t have trouble outsourcing work he was not good at, but he found that because he had a knack for marketing tasks like writing copy, he was reluctant to hire anyone else to do that work. To scale his businesses, he found, he had to recruit people who were even better than he was at marketing. “To think you are the best in the world at something is a lie,” says Moran. “You’re not that great.”
Pay attention to your personal finances. Many entrepreneurs treat their businesses like their personal piggy bank and never establish the separation they should between their personal and business finances, Moran finds. That keeps them from managing their business as they should.
Get your personal finances in shape, and you’ll prime yourself for a new level of business success, he believes. “Entrepreneurs tend to worry more about the company health than their own health and financial health,” says Moran. “One of the best things I did was to create a personal emergency fund and a regular investing plan for my own personal side of the house. It freed me up to operate the business like a business.”
Moran put aside six months’ worth of business and personal expenses about five years ago. He now has the security he needs to live the entrepreneurial life without fear he won’t be able to pay the bills if something goes wrong.
Saving that much money may sound like a fantasy, but it’s not unattainable. If Moran could do it after losing $100,000, others can, too. And even if you save just one or two months’ worth of living and business expenses, you’ll be ahead of where many entrepreneurs are today--and in a position where you have opportunities that might not otherwise be possible.