Build Wealth Without Building Another Job

0:01 Being great at what you do doesn't automatically make you great at business. The skills that got you here won't get you there. This is Path to Mastery, the raw and real business podcast for service-based entrepreneurs, consultants, and practitioners ready to stop chasing tactics and start building foundations that scale. Hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop, co-founders of Empire Partners. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the Path to Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And in Scottsdale today, recording on site with my man, Ryan Lee. Brother, it's good to have you, man.

0:42 Two Ryans in the same room. That's got to be trouble or magic one of the two. Not only two Ryans, but two Ryan L's in the same room. I know, man. I mean, we're going to make it happen. Seriously, double trouble. Ryan, author, speaker, strategist. Man, I'm really excited to dive in today because I think we're going to hit on some things that a lot of business owners, especially those that we work with, don't think about. So I think this is going to be a big eye-opener for people today. I want to ask you a pointed question right out of the gates. What do you think is the biggest mistake that business owners, founders, entrepreneurs make? I'm early on that prevents them from being able to actually retire when they want to.

1:24 You know what? I think it's probably the same mistake both you and I would imagine made when we got into business, but it's Stephen Covey 101, begin with the end in minds. When you start a business, you do it because you have this entrepreneurial tendency, right? You have this, this drive and this desire to, But very often that gets overcrowded and overcompensated for with making money in the moment, figuring out what your offer is. How do you put revenue on the table today, support payroll today? But the only way to build a business that is exitable is to build the system from the very beginning. If you're five, six, seven years into a business and you didn't begin with the end in mind, you have to go back and rework it. It's tremendously much more challenging than if you just would have began with the end in mind, with the systems, the processes.

2:09 And really, you're trying to build a system that you can replace yourself in. Yep. This is really important, I think, because so many people, you know, we work with a lot of coaches, consultants, experts, solopreneurs, practitioners. Yeah. Many of whom have businesses that are wrapped around their own personal identity, their name. And when they decide they want to quit, it's just dead. Yeah. They don't have an asset. So how do we begin? Let's just start for somebody who's at the very beginning. How do we do this the right way, not make some of the mistakes that you and I probably made in our early going to kind of set us up for success later? You know, I think being the face of a brand is probably the hardest thing.

2:50 I'll give you a perfect example of this. One of the clients that I do work with is Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson about four or five years ago tried to not necessarily exit, but he tried to start removing himself as the image in the face of ClickFunnels. It tanked ClickFunnels, which is a software-driven company, but that software-driven company was wrapped around a charismatic character. When Russell stepped back, ClickFunnels went down. It wasn't that the software got, got, you know, bad or worse. It was that Russell wanted to take a step back and not be in the limelight. So the biggest challenge with being a solopreneur is oftentimes your value proposition is your name. It's you and you've got to figure out a way to take you out of that value proposition and make it replaceable.

3:35 Otherwise you're creating maybe a highly paid job for yourself, but it's not really a business. I think that's a realization that most of us have had at some point. If you've ever started anything, unless you just lucked into understanding how to do it right or had mentors who taught you differently, there is that moment where you're successful enough that you're not going to quit. But you realize that you literally just bought yourself an expensive job. I'll give you an example from my personal life, because this is exactly how I started out. I do individualized game plans. And when I first got going, if Ryan didn't do the game plan, then there was no outcome. And I started training and building expertise and allowing other people to do the game plans.

4:16 But then that removed me from the game plan. But then is how do you manage teams to get specific outcomes? I was so integral in every part of the decision-making process that a couple of years ago, and I'm in the middle of this transition right now, A couple of years ago, I came to the table and said, look, in four years, I am leaving the company. In four years, I'm leaving the company. Now, I don't know if I'll leave forever, but I did put it on the calendar. I'm taking a sabbatical where I will not be available. I will not be part of the company. Every decision process, everything has to be out. Otherwise, the company falls apart. And. And the cool part about that is when people could see that end in mining, you put it on the calendar, they either have one of two options. I'm bailing because holy cow, I'm going to lose my job in a couple of years anyway, or let's actually build this to where I have some decision-making power.

5:04 Let's actually build this to where I could be a part of driving this company forward. And I love that mindset of seeing the people, the builders in my company build. I mean, right now, you know, you and I are recording a podcast, but there's sales, there's trainings, there's game plans, there's things that are happening right now in the company that two years ago, three years ago would have been unimaginable. Right. not here. The company just kind of sits around and twiddles its thumbs to say, what do we do next? Well, let's wait for Ryan to get back. Then we'll decide what we do next. So you've got to remove yourself from the process. And I always find giving yourself a deadline to do it and verbalizing that deadline, especially if you have a team, it's probably one of the most powerful ways to do it. And this reminds me a lot of, you know, some of the things that Ben Hardy talks about, you know, science with scaling things, you know, 10x.

5:51 What are you optimizing for? Yeah. Right. If you're optimizing for Ryan just runs the business for forever, then, you know, that's your outcome at the end of the day. If you're optimizing for Ryan has to exit in four years, holy crap. that's a totally different story. I love that because it puts guardrails on that weren't there before, you know, different constraints. But I also think it, I think those deadlines open us up to the creativity that we lack when we don't have them. Totally. It just, it gives you that, that constraint that you're working under a sense of pressure and that pressure is going to make or break you. And that, that brings out the best of all of us. It really does. It brings out the best. It allows the winners, the builders, the creative engineers to rise to the top and their creativity and their problem solving wins.

6:32 And that's really what we're trying to do when we build a business. You, you know, the way I look at being a business owner for me specifically is I want to be the visionary. I always want to see further into the future than anyone on my team can see. And that might not always be the case for every single one out there listening, but that's how I look at myself. I'm the visionary. I know where we're going 10 years out, but I want my team thinking in, you know, I want my team thinking in three year pictures and then operating on 90 day deadlines. And if that's the way we can do it, then I can always be casting the vision, always moving us forward, but I'm not getting stuck in the minutia of the day to day. Yep. I'm curious. I want to get to talking about the book and some of the things that you're doing with the business now, how you help people.

7:15 What was it? I want to go back, though, a little bit, because you kind of had a bit of an event years ago now that that turned you on to a lot of the strategies and the way that you think about money and wealth and all of that. Tell me a little bit about that. Well, first, I'll point to the book here really quick. That book was a manifestation of I'm taking a sabbatical by the time I'm 50. We needed a marketing piece that didn't require Ryan to go on YouTube and do constant recording. This thing can be sold and it is selling hundreds of copies a day. That was a function of that manifestation, of that deadline that we set. Now, where this book came from, I run a financial strategy company.

7:55 And, um, that strategy company is a function of me being broken financially. That's really what it is. You know, uh, for me, my financial path, you know, I'm, I've always been very entrepreneurial. Um, but you know, I had a lot of social pressure and conditioning, I would say around, you know, getting a good job so I could, you know, be a responsible person. And out of college, you know, I went to college, not because I wanted to go to college, but because that was what you're supposed to do. Right. And in college, I met a phenomenal woman. And I was like, I want to, you know, I want to marry that woman. And she's like, well, you better get a good job. And I'm like, okay, cool. I better get a good job, right? And so we graduated. And it's odd that we're in Arizona right now. We graduated together. And I took my first professional job just down the road in Tucson, Arizona.

8:36 Okay. Never been to Arizona before, by the way, up to that point. I moved to Tucson, Arizona, and it's hot. It's a desert, man. It's a desert. And I remember I got to Tucson. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I don't want to be here. But now I've got a job. And, you know, my wife, she got pregnant here. Our first son was born with, like, massive heart deficiencies. And I had all this pressure on my shoulders now. You have to be responsible. You have to make money. You have to make money. And I remember I had to report to a boss named Rob. And anyone that's reported to a boss, you guys know what that means, right? Not my favorite thing to do, but I remember when I got my first paycheck, what should have been validation for the path that I was on was the exact opposite for me.

9:19 I looked at that paycheck, and after taxes and deductions and moving expenses came out, I was making less money as a college grad with a professional career than I was as a side hustler. paying my way through college. But in my mind, I decided to apply the entrepreneurial mindset, but I decided to be an intrapreneur. I'm just gonna climb the corporate ladder as fast as I can. I'm gonna make as much money as I can, I'm gonna save as much as I can, and I'm gonna retire early. That was my goal and objective. And I graduated in 2005. And so from 2005, six, seven, all the way up to the crest of 2008, that worked, right? I was making a bunch of money. I was saving 5%, 10%, 20, 30% of my overall income into this idea of retiring early.

10:00 And I had no idea what I was doing. So I was just doing what everyone else does, right? Max out my 401k, get the company match, open a brokerage account. I even bought a course back in the day to try to figure out option trading. And I remember my net worth crested $100,000. Now, I don't know what that meant back in the day, but it felt like I was on track. And I thought if I just keep doing this, one day I'll buy my life back. Now, everyone knows 2008 and everyone has a 2008 story. I'm so grateful for mine because my net worth went from 100 to 28. And in the beginning, I thought it was me. I thought I did something wrong. But as I looked out over my coworkers, people that were 10, 20, 30 years ahead of me and I watched their financial plans falling apart right in front of their face, I realized that's me.

10:42 That's me, I have a window into my future. There's no way I can ever retire early if I don't control what I'm invested in. All of these last four years has been for knots. And I'm grateful for that because my opening up, my awareness was I've got to take control over my money if I ever want to take control over my life. And that is what routed me down an alternative investment pathway, which is now the manifestation of that book. Man, journey. Yeah. Journey. I am curious about this. I want to ask you, you went through this tough time. I mean, 2008 is a polarizing time for anybody that was in business at that time, especially. But I want to ask you a pointed question about, I mean, how did you, how did you and your wife navigate that at that time?

11:29 Man, my wife, she's awesome. She's been so supportive of me for so many years. And I've taken on the highest of the highs and the lowest of the low roller coasters. Any entrepreneurial spouses, thank you for your support. We could not do it without you, 100%. But, you know, at the end of the day, I don't know if this came along the way, but it's something that's now so deeply ingrained in both me and my wife. Money is a tool. Yeah. Yeah. That's all it is. Money is a tool. And unless you're clear about what you want in your life, money is meaningless. Yeah. And that's partially the reason we find such a major financial problem in people's worlds today. The retirement system is broken because everyone has this vague, arbitrary wish of an idea that one day it might work out.

12:15 But in the moment, they spend all of the money that they have. Money comes in and out of their life just as fast as it came in. And they look back 10, 20, 30 years of making money like, where the heck did it all go? Yeah. And so for me, money has always been very, it's been very, I've been very cognizantly aware of it. Every dollar represents time that I've traded. And if I don't honor that dollar, that means I'm dishonoring the time that I've traded, but it's also the very tool to buy my time back. And I think... Most entrepreneurs, you know, we have the same core value or one of the same core values, which is freedom. Yes. And money is the tool to buy freedom. And so I've always felt that and known that. And so I've always been hyper-consciously aware of how do I use my money to give me more freedom, more control over my time, and more options within the time that I own.

13:01 I love that. So tell us a little bit about the book. When we picked this up, first of all, what's sort of the differentiator? What makes this book different from other books on finance, wealth, things of that nature? Well, I love that you started with Ben Hardy. You know, Ben Hardy is probably a perfect example of what this book is about. Like retire in 10 years or less. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Like if we said, if we said, retire one day, then anything works, right? That's right. But if I tell you, you're gonna do it in 10 years or less, your brain immediately has to start thinking differently about money and how to optimize the money that you have. Yeah. And it's really a process, especially for an entrepreneur, your best investment is never external to you or your business.

13:42 It's always internal. Yep. Your business is your best investment, but this is where most entrepreneurs get radically stuck. and you've worked with a lot of them, you know this, man, they make a lot of money, but they have nothing to show for it. They're one quarter, they're one payroll, they're one launch away from complete bankruptcy. And man, I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've personally worked with that I'm like, dude, you have made millions of dollars. What do you have to show for it? Yeah, you've got some nice watches, you've got a car, you've got a house, but your business controls you. And if it doesn't work next quarter, you're out of business. Yep. So anyway, you have to master two mindsets of money that are completely opposite, making money and keeping money.

14:25 And if you can start to build this framework, and this first framework came from Mark Ford for me. Mark Ford, he's one of the co-founders of Agora, the largest publishing network ever created. And he said, look, my goal has always been to live on 50% of whatever I make. I'm like, well, that's crazy. But what does that drive you to do? Like you've got to make good money to then live on 50%. And if you can, and I'm not saying that's the, like my target for every entrepreneur I work with is you got to have at least 20%. At least 20% of everything you make comes off the table and it has to build an income stream independent of your active income. That's financial freedom. Financial freedom is how much income does some asset deliver without your time, effort, and attention.

15:07 That's what that book is about. It seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you're saying two things. Number one, you know, yes, we got to have a threshold for what we're going to save. But in addition to that, make more. It's always make more. The solution to any financial problem is make more. Why do we not just subscribe to, you know, what many of us were told, especially our generation, you know, when we were younger? OK, don't worry. You just you you can live on 50, 60 grand a year. You know, just just find a way to stuff away as much as you can and you'll be fine. Well, I talk about this in the book. We are being robbed. Yeah. we are being stolen from every single day. There is a system working behind the scenes that make those outdated beliefs radically dangerous if you adopt them and keep them.

15:52 And that is what is called the printing press of the United States government, right? Right now, every single year, your dollars are getting less valuable by minimum, if you believe what they tell you, two to 3%. If you look at how much new money is being added to the economy every single year, it's about five to 6%, which means you cannot, stay stagnant because every year you stay stagnant, both in income and retained earnings, you're getting poorer. So the system is built to optimize for pressure. And that pressure means you have to rise to that level of, of, of opportunity, or you're going to become a victim of the system. And so the way I talk to this about people is there's four wealth forces that They're omnipresent, right?

16:37 They're happening right now all around us, but they're kind of like gravity, right? We're born into gravity and we just assume that when I pick this up and drop it, it's gonna fall to the ground, but no one really understands the mechanics behind it. And here's the four wealth forces. And these forces are either pushing against you, they're pushing you further into poverty, making it harder for you to ever retire, or they're optimizing for your financial plan and making it easier. And you just have to determine how you position yourself against these forces. It's number one, inflation. Inflation is either making you wealthy or it's making you poor. Right now, there is a big narrative going on in our world right now where the rich are getting richer. And people in their feelings understand something is wrong. And they're like, it's not fair that there's a trillionaire.

17:18 But the trillionaire became a trillionaire because he created assets in the form of businesses that create such massive value that inflation is actually making him wealthy. It's driving up the price of assets, not down. Taxes. Taxes make you either rich or they make you poor. The first statement in the tax code, if you open it like a book, it says everything that you make is taxable. Most CPAs and most people close it after that statement and say, I guess I read the whole book, right? But there's 3,800 pages after that and then thousands of addendums after that to tell you how not to pay taxes. So taxes are either making you poor or they're making you wealthy, but it all comes down to your financial education and your positioning. Third are interest rates. Interest rates are the price of money.

18:01 You've got people like Dave Ramsey saying, pay off debt when money is debt. Yep. Yep. It's crazy. And it's the responsible thing to do in the old game of money, but it's the absolute worst thing you can do in the new game of money. And then the fourth one is opportunity cost. If you lock your money in a 401k, which is what I was doing, your money is by default being destroyed by every single wealth force, and you're just crossing your fingers saying, holy crap. I hope it all works out. Yep. Man, okay, first of all, that was so clear. And I love that. And I think the distinction for me is that most people look at all four of those things as the attacking force.

18:42 Not in any way, shape or form a help is turned in the right direction. So I think that's really powerful. I'm curious, you've got a lot of strategy around what you do with your clients. But one of the things that we deal with a lot in working with entrepreneurs is that the end of the day, it's not just about strategy, but it's got to be about state as well. I love that. What, what are some of the things that you've seen? You've studied, I'm sure a lot of the financially successful people in this world that you've become financially successful yourself. What are some of the things that you've seen in terms of the separators from a state and a mindset standpoint? Dude, you could not be more on points.

19:22 And I'm so glad that you lead with that with your entrepreneurs. I believe this came from Tony Robbins, but state, story, strategy. That's right. When you put those three things together. And so for us, people come in, everything that we do, we bring people into this world to say, hey, you can be financially free in 10 years or less. I don't care where you start from. And it requires a very customized game plan with a definitive understanding of what your win looks like. And then specific 90 day targets that build momentum with every target that you hit. That's the strategy. Yep. But that's meaningless. Yep. Unless we're in the right states backed by the right story. And so when people come in, they think they're going to sit down and build their game plan. And we're like, cool, we'll get to that. But we ask them three questions. And man, I have asked these three questions to no less than 10,000 people.

20:06 Yeah. And I can probably count on my two hands the number of times they've been articulately and passionately answered. Most people have no idea the answer to these three questions. So let me ask them, and I'll ask them to you, because listen, these are the questions that every single one of you have to attach to money, otherwise money is meaningless. What do you want? I mean, think about that for just a moment. That's the easiest question of all. But how many people can actually define definitively, I want this question. And I want this within this time. It's this arbitrary, vague idea that, ah, maybe I want a bigger house. Maybe I want a nicer car. I want less stress. What is it that you actually want?

20:47 That's number one. And why does it matter? And if I can get my brain mentally clear and my heart emotionally connected to what I want, I call it a major definite aim. And we make our people do a, we step them into a state of their life when money is driving, like the decisions that they make. It's, it's empowering them to live their life that they want. And I just get them to picture a time like wake up. Where do you wake up? How do you feel? What house do you live in? How's your relationship with your kids and your family? Like, are you cold? Are you stressed? Are you warm? Feel the feelings. Where are you at? And if they can step into this state, this envision story, now they can come back to the present moment and say, holy crap, I now know what money means.

21:29 And that third question is, who do you have to become? If you're going to take control over your money, that is the most optimal place to be, but it's also the most dangerous place to be. Money is a tool. And just like any tool, like if you give me a chainsaw right now, I'm just as liable to chop this table in half as I am to cut my foot off. I'm not equipped. I don't have the right skill set to competently use a chainsaw. That's right. Same with money. If I give you control of your money versus you handing it off to financial advisors on Wall Street, you could just as easy destroy your life as you could build a life. So you have to become the right person. You have to raise your financial intelligence. I love this. At the end of the day, what this boils down to is what got you here won't get you there.

22:10 And we're going to have to get rid of when we want to make that kind of a shift, we're going to have to get rid of a minimum of 80 percent of what got us to where we are to get to a place where we're doing something that most people would think is crazy. Yeah. In a lot of cases, brother, I want to honor you for the work that you're doing, man. I feel your passion and your heart and what you do. I love it. Money is always an important topic, but I think right now it's even more important than maybe it's been in a really long time. And I also think that the way that we support entrepreneurs is, I think it's one of the most noble things that can be done right now because you as an entrepreneur, you're needed.

22:53 Your services are needed and you being able to sustain those services long term. That's what's really needed. Not you, you know, burning yourself down in a ball of flames because you don't know how to do it well. So I want to thank you. Where can people get the book? Tell us more about how we get our hands on this. Yeah, man. I want to just honor you as well for setting up this environment to allow me to be here to for creating an audience. You know, whenever someone invites me on their show, I'm stepping into the trust that you've created. And I don't take that lightly. And I hope I brought some value today. So for anyone that's watching this show right now, my mission over the last 12 years has been to empower people, entrepreneurial-driven people with money so they can build and live a life that matters.

23:34 And I love that you say entrepreneurs are needed. They are. You know, listen, our world is full of problems. Like all you need to do is walk out your front door. And I think the scary turn that our culture and country is taking right now is we're hoping that we can elect solutions to problems. That has never worked. Those elections are meant to protect the environment where producers, entrepreneurs, visionaries can rise up and say, look, I've been given God-given talents and I'm going to use those talents to solve problems. Yeah. And so my objective with this is to empower more business owners to stay in business because you solve problems, you employ people, you make the world a better place.

24:16 And we know the stats, 85% of us are out of business within 10 years. 85% of people who have an idea, have a solution, cannot make it just 10 years. And so the objective of this is to remove the constraint of money in your life, allow you to pay less taxes, be free because the best business is when you can show up freely into your business because you want to be there, not because you have to be there. So if that resonates with you, go to retire in 10 years.com, retire in 10 years.com. We've put everything, man, this book comes equipped with a course. You can literally build your own game plan and see how every one of these principles work for you without ever talking to anyone. And, But go there, get the audio book for free.

24:58 Buy the book if you'd like, please buy the book. It is the manual, the playbook for you to operate it and become free, become free. Use your business to make money and then use the system to do this really weird thing that free people do. They keep the money that they make. So why don't you use that? I love it, man. Brian Lee, thank you, brother. I appreciate you, man. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Path to Mastery podcast. Until next time, take care. Thanks for listening to the Path to Mastery podcast. If you got value from this, leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. And if you know another entrepreneur who needs to hear this, do us a solid and send it their way. We'll catch you next time on the Path to Mastery podcast.