181 Ryan Allis: Unlocking Fulfillment: Transforming Success into Meaning

[00:00:00] ck: Welcome to Noblee Warrior. My name is CK Lin. This is where I interview thought leaders about their journey to master themselves to have greater joy, prosperity, and purpose. My guest today is the ex CEO of iContact, which sold for 196 million. He's also the founder of Hive, with 3, 500 global entrepreneurs.

He's a fellow chemistic burner. And now he is the head coach behind Magic Year, a 12 month live transformation program. If you want to learn more about Ryan, go to magicyear. com. Thank you so much for being here, Ryan. I really appreciate it. Thanks,

[00:00:39] Ryan: CK. I'm super excited to be here today. So

[00:00:42] ck: before we begin, I want to for introducing two great resources to me about living a purposeful life.

I learned about the concept of ikigai. During my year with you, uh, at Hive, number two. You also introduced to me the great [00:01:00] year of, the great work of your life by Stephen Cope. And he has since then, um, been interviewed on Noble Warrior.

[00:01:08] Ryan: Wonderful. I love his book and, uh, I'm so happy to, to have you as Hive community.

[00:01:14] ck: Beautiful. So, number one, let me just first say congratulations on finishing the book. It's, I've been reading it. I'm about three quarters way through. It's full of tools and frameworks and actionable tactics It's also full of really vulnerable stories about your own struggles and how you overcame them So as an opening question, what was the experience of putting this book

[00:01:39] Ryan: together?

Well, i've got a copy here. So this is this is the book you can see it's pretty thick and um It's a 500 page book, and you know, CK, it's a book on everything that I wish my 25 year old former self would have known. And I wrote it over the [00:02:00] last year, but I've been researching and writing notes down for the last 12 years.

And I'm 39, I just turned 39 this week, I live in Nosara, Costa Rica with my family. And I spent the last 12 months living my own magic year, upgrading my own health and habits, and then taking everything that I've learned about living over the last 20 years and condensing it into a 500 page book and a 12 month course.

So the whole point of it is to help people create lives that they absolutely love, where they wake up on Monday morning and it feels like a magic Monday instead of just another dreaded Monday. So that's what the book's about, and, uh, I'm sure we'll talk more about it, but I'm so excited to bring it to the world.

So what was it

[00:02:47] ck: like for you? Because for a lot of the authors, writing a book is like birthing a child. Like, literally, you're excavating, excavating, excavating, and, you know, shave away anything that's non essential, so. What was it like for you to [00:03:00] go through the process of writing this book? Well,

[00:03:05] Ryan: the book, um, the book writing process is one of, um, many internal struggles and journeys.

Uh, I was living in Ubud, Bali, uh, Indonesia last year in October when I started writing it. And I had a two month old son. And at the time, my little baby boy, Apollo, Um, was just a few months old, and I really was inspired to write a guide to living for him. And so the original premise of Magic Year Was original working title was just Apollo's guide.

It was going to be a guide for my future Teenage son, you know that maybe I'd give him someday on his 15th or 16th birthday He's only one years old now So, you know, he still can't read but [00:04:00] soon and someday I'd love to be able to give this book to him So that was the inspiration Um, I, I began a massive upgrade journey in 2012 when my mom passed away from brain cancer and that was the impetus to go on this last 12 year adventure to upgrade myself into a purpose driven, healthy, happy, fully alive leader who's doing what I love, loving what I do every day and helping others create lives they love.

And that process has changed me from being a 27 year old east coast tech entrepreneur from North Carolina to a. 39 year old who lives in Costa Rica, you know, lives in the tropical paradise, works four or five hours a day and really loves what he does and is healthy, happy and fully alive. So that's been the process.

I worked about two to three hours a day, six days a week on the book. I'd wake up, go to the gym, do my cold plunge, do my sauna and have my, my, my eggs and, um, green tea. And then I [00:05:00] would start writing from about 9 a. m. to noon every day. And that would be Monday through Saturday. And, and that was a year of that.

So I, you know, that's how I got a 550 page book out was three hours a day, first for a year.

[00:05:12] ck: I mean, one other thing I was always impressed about your, about you, in addition to our interactions, our social interactions being part of your program at Burning Man, all these different interactions, uh, is your throughput.

I actually knew about you, uh, I think it was 2012 or 13 when you. I don't know if you used to do that these days, but you used to do these, uh, annual, uh, summary of everything that you learned. It was like hundreds and hundreds of pages in PowerPoint slides and really summarizing everything. I was like, wow, this guy, you know, has, you know, massive throughput.

So in terms of writing the book, was it very much like a, like a, like a purge process? You just kind of chisel into it or you start out with a top down [00:06:00] approach, like a framework? Yeah. Expound upon that.

[00:06:05] Ryan: Uh, you know, you're talking about the, the slide deck I did for my 30th birthday, it was called Lessons for my 20s, it was 1300 slides, I published it in August 2014 on my 30th birthday, and, and that went viral on the internet, it got 7 million views.

And my, my 40th birthday is coming up next year. And, and so for my 40th birthday, you know, I was, it was, it was approaching and I sort of figured that, you know, as a man, by the time you get to 40, you sort of got to get your stuff figured out. And I, I, I, I like you and like everyone is, is a work in progress.

And I really wanted, by the time I got to 40 years old, to not only have my own life in a good place, have my family in a good place, have my finances in a good place, have my purpose driven work in a good place, but I [00:07:00] also wanted to be able to have a gift that was tangible, that I could just give to someone else and say, you know what, here's the philosophy in a book.

Here's something I can give you for 20. And it's everything I've ever learned. And so instead of doing a slide deck for my 40th birthday, I decided to do a book. And so I started with the actual 1, 300 slides that I'd started with for lessons for my 20s. And then I added on, so that covered purpose, goals, habits, people, happiness, the first six topics in the book.

And then I added on the last six topics in the book, which I'll just look here. Health, money, community, love, sex, family, and awakening. And that was the stuff I learned in my thirties. And so I started with the framework of the 1300 slides every day. I would, you know, turn the slide deck and the written paragraph by paragraph content.

And then once I was done with that, I've had about 250 pages. [00:08:00] And that would have been enough to publish a book, but you know, I didn't want to publish a book of what I knew 10 years ago. I wanted to publish a book that had everything I'd learned in my twenties and thirties about being an achiever and being a seeker.

So that's what I did. Then I spent another four or five months writing down everything I'd learned in the last decade and for my 39th birthday, which was actually this past Monday, uh, I published the book and then for my 40th birthday, which will be about a year from now. That's when I'm going to publish the second version of the book.

So now I'm spending the next year teaching the book through the Magic Year curriculum at magicyear. com. It'll be a group coaching program for, for ambitious leaders that want to change their lives and up level in every area. And then as I teach each month, I'll be writing the next version of the book so that when the 40th birthday comes in a year, it'll be sort of the final version that I can give my

[00:08:54] ck: son someday.

That's beautiful, man. Well, one thing, as I was mentioning during the [00:09:00] introduction, I was really impressed by how vulnerable you got in your book. You talked about your struggles with, you know, uh, conscious drug addiction and things like that. And, and your, your participation in You know, um, ayahuasca and all these other things.

What did you have to do to decide for yourself, Hey, I'm gonna go public with these things. Cause, you know, actually even beyond those, you also share something really personal. Uh, the letters you, Morgan, your wife, wrote about manifesting a home, or, you know, the letter you write to each other. Like, these are highly personal things.

What did you have to go through to say, you know what, I'm just going to share them in service of the mission that you're trying to accomplish?

[00:09:51] Ryan: Well, I give my wife Morgan a lot of credit because, because a lot of the stuff in the second half of the book, I learned from her. And the number one thing I [00:10:00] learned from her is how to live a life of joy.

I always could live a life of productivity. I always could live a life of entrepreneurial success, but I didn't really know how to live a life of joy and health really before I met her. We've been, we've been four years now together. And so I give a lot of, a lot of credit to my wife, Morgan. And I give a lot of credit to her vulnerability, because she's open and willing to put, um, this out, and a lot of it's about us, you know?

A lot of it's about our family, and about our personal life, about even our sensuality experiences together. And the way I think about it, CK, is that ultimately we're gonna be dead in a hundred years. And we're, you know, our bodies aren't gonna be here. And I think at the end of the day, one of the purposes of life is to be happy, help others and help train the next generation.

And I think it's important that the leaders of this world share vulnerably. About what they've been through, what they've learned from it, [00:11:00] how they screwed up, how they do it better the next time so that the future versions of us can learn. And, you know, with, with AI, large language models, sort of learning right now through reading the internet and through reading, um, books, you know, I think it's important that the wise knowledge that's inside the heads of Some of the most experienced, you know, people in the planet right now that that not die with them when they, when they, when they eventually pass.

And so I think it's a matter of transcendence of ego and a matter of recognizing we are first souls. On a purpose to leave our knowledge behind so that the next generation can build something better So that was the the philosophy that I wrote the book in so

[00:11:45] ck: so i'm gonna put on the hat of someone who may be a very accomplished person or practitioner Their ego may be saying yeah, you know, I know it's gonna help people i'll do it before I die You know [00:12:00] what?

I'm, I still have some years in my life. I don't want i'm concerned about what people my reputation What do people think about me? It's too personal. I don't want to do it just now, so What advice would you give to those who may be a little hesitant to be more personal?

[00:12:20] Ryan: Well, look every everyone's not Intending to be an author.

Everyone's not intending to be someone that transforms people's lives I am you know, and so You know, I would encourage people, whether it's in one on one conversations, mentor relationships, uh, public talks, to help the next generation learn and to be real about the internal struggles. People put on a facade too often.

There's the real internal struggle, but then there's the facade of success. And what it causes is it causes people who are on the path of success, who are maybe 20, 25, 30, to not realize that it's okay To [00:13:00] have challenge. It's okay to have struggle. It's okay to be unsure, you know, that's normal. And, and frankly, you know, I went through some challenges that had I had a good guide, I wouldn't have had to go through.

You know, I ended up as I write in the book using psilocybin and LSD from time to time for micro dosing purposes when I lived in San Francisco, because that was what people did in the entrepreneurial community in 2015, 2016, 2017 in San Francisco as a way of accessing creativity. But one of the things that that did to me was it, it actually caused the anxiety that I had to get worse.

It didn't address. The core symptom of the anxiety, which was a dysregulated central nervous system. And so I had to go through the process of over relying on plant medicines in some cases and conscious medicines and others to, uh, get through the daily existence of an [00:14:00] entrepreneur when I could have simply done things like.

A cold plunge, uh, lifting weights, um, sun exposure, things that I know now help reset your dopamine process. And so I want to get this knowledge out, you know, a lot of people in certain elite biohacking circles, if you're in LA or if you're in Austin, people know what I'm talking about. You know, this knowledge has been 10 years, but when you go to Tulsa, when you go to.

When you go to Wichita, when you go to, you know, Raleigh, when you go to the heart of America, I tell you what, 99 percent of the people don't yet know a lot of the things that I've been fortunate to learn about health and wellness and presence and the purpose of suffering and how to live a joyous, loving life.

And that's what I want to be. I want to be a bridge. From the conscious communities of Bali and Costa Rica and Los Angeles and Austin and San Francisco to just the regular person so that we can show and demonstrate that there is a formula for living a life you love. And that's what I want to bring to the [00:15:00] masses.

What

[00:15:03] ck: you said about the masses, I think it's one thing to hear about some yogis, you know, in Bali. Now that you actually see someone who have accomplished so much and actually say, you know what, the path of productivity, let's just say. Let me to a place of burnout and here are some practices. You don't have to give up your desire for productivity.

Here are some practices that you can take on to, um, to actually calm your nervous system, to live in more in body life. So, I mean, that's the reason why I started Noble Warrior in the first place. So then we normalize this type of conversations. So, I really appreciate what you said.

[00:15:45] Ryan: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:15:48] ck: Um, okay.

So. Can you maybe dive in? Okay, actually, so since you mentioned about a formula, so personally, you know me, I, I love [00:16:00] frameworks and mental models and actionable tactics because in my opinion, it's really important to be grounded and then practice these type of things, right? But the way that you laid it out is a step by step program.

The mind loves it. And, but it also implies that, um, fulfilling this magic year is a linear process. Can you say a little

[00:16:23] Ryan: bit more about that? Yeah, I, um, I like to think of it as a spiral instead of a line. So it's almost like you're always constantly refining your purpose and goals and your habits in service of your, your deeper Dharma and in service of your internal joy and wellness.

And so it's not like a process that you do once and then you're done. Um, but it is a process that you, if you do it the first time, it makes a big transformation and then makes it easier and easier to do it a second and third time. And so in the book, there's 111 action items and I've, I've done all 111 and [00:17:00] I've, I've put a challenge out there since the book just launched last week that the first person who shows me evidence, photo evidence and written evidence that they've accomplished all 111 action ends of the book, there'll be a book at a.

A fully paid expense trip to Costa Rica for a week of in person coaching with me, because I want to put a challenge out there that anyone that actually does these 111 action items have their life transformed in a huge way. And I'm talking about changes to their marriage, changes to their health, maybe lose 30 or 40 pounds like I have over the last year.

Uh, being able to maybe change their job, start a new business that is in alignment with what they love, what they love. So we're in the business of making massive transformations and there are 12 steps in the book and I put them in the order. that I think is going to be most beneficial to people. I start with helping people get clear on their purpose, which is what we do at [00:18:00] Hive, which is helping people get clear on why they're alive in a single sentence, a single statement, that allows them to be able to articulate to themselves and to others what they're here to do, what they're about for the next few years.

And that often has a who, a what, and a where. So, you know, I'm Ryan Ellis and I'm on this planet to create the world's most impactful personal transformation program that serves over a million people globally. Right? So that would be my purpose statement right now. I help people get clear on theirs. And then we help them with goals.

Now you have the purpose. All right, now we need the goals. And once you get the goals, now we need to actually put it into action. And that's where the habits come in. So that's the first three months of the course. That's the first three chapters of the book, purpose, goals, and habits. And then once you have that unlocked, Then I look at hacking the, the relationships and people in your life, you know, you're the average of the 10 people you spend the most time with.

And so some people say five, I like to say 10 because it's really the 10. If you, if you map out the 10 people you spend the most hours with your, [00:19:00] your family, your colleagues, um, those are going to be the people that influence you the most in life and the way you think about life. And so I like to look at how you create an inner circle.

That is inspiring rather than, you know, bringing you down and how do you find mentors that lift you up? And then we we go after in the next part of the book month five is about happiness month six about health And we just go through step by step by step by step. It's a 12 step formula You know, there's 12 steps and Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, there's a lot of 12 step formulas out there For changing lives.

And I wanted to create a 12 step process that anybody who was committed could get through within 12 months to truly change their life. So that's what we've done here.

[00:19:47] ck: You know, one of the things I always wanted, I also wanted to say is, um, I love your clarity of thought whenever I read your stuff, it's often, we talk about these very esoteric things like purpose [00:20:00] or joy, it's very easy to get into, you know, very fluffy.

type of statements, which is fine. It's okay, right? Because ultimately, these are, um, ineffable phenomenon. It's really hard to articulate. But for you, whenever I read your, you know, writing, um, I don't know if you were a gifted writer to start off, or you've been honing your craft over the years. Are you able to Um, right.

Very penetrative statements. Thank you.

[00:20:31] Ryan: I appreciate that. Can you

[00:20:33] ck: maybe share with us a little bit about how you got so good about writing?

[00:20:38] Ryan: Yeah, I think it's just by doing it to be honest. Um, I, I wrote a book on entrepreneurship in 2008 called zero to 1 million and Um, that was the first time I wrote a published book that was through McGraw Hill.

And, um, you know, I, I write a lot. I think one of my gifts is, is writing newsletters, writing blog posts, uh, [00:21:00] writing books. And, um, I think if I look ahead to the next 30 years of my life, you know, if I'm being honest, CK, what I want to do Is I want to spend the next 30 years of my life helping transform people into beings of service where they're lit up.

I want to spend the next 30 years helping people transform their lives. And I'm on this sort of big, hairy, audacious mission right now to serve a million people and help a million people create lives they love. And I did that through Hive and we got 3, 500 leaders through the three day program, but then I realized, well, how am I going to get to a million?

You know, I can't do that a hundred people at a time. I need to be able to use the internet to get to thousands of people at a time. And so that's now what we're doing. We're doing the, these 90 minute designing your life, uh, masterclasses, which are free where people find us through Facebook ads and Instagram ads.

And then at the end of that, we tell them about the course, get them [00:22:00] into the 12 month program. So that's going to allow us to get to a million people, which I'm excited about. So I don't, I don't know how I become a good writer other than, you know, having a mom that taught me to read at a young age and.

Um, just finding the written word is a really fun way of communicating. I grew up as an only child and I had a half brother, but he didn't live with us. And my dad was a minister and my mom was a social worker. And so I had a lot of time. I had a lot of time in my own head and I created mental models. And when I got a computer at age 11, I loved it.

And what I realized is that I could create an entire universe inside of my head. And I like writing, you know, not six hours a day, but maybe two or three hours a day. I like writing because I can almost have an internal conversation with the different parts of my own psyche and my own soul and, um, and then create a formula that can help other people.

So it's my favorite form of communication.

[00:22:56] ck: Oh, so speaking of writing, I'm curious about your process, [00:23:00] you journal, what's kind of process you use as a journalist to have this productive dialogue between your higher self and your

[00:23:10] Ryan: I'm a very, um, spiritually guided person, I would say. I'm a believer that we have multiple lives.

I'm a believer in reincarnation. I've personally experienced evidence of reincarnation. Um, I've had many family members have near death experiences of, you know, through five M. E. O. I've been able to, you know, have near death like experiences and hurt and through ayahuasca, I saw a lot of things from past lives.

And so for me personally, I'm here in this lifetime. To help be a bridge between the old way of living and the new way of living. And, and I, and interestingly, CK, I think the new way of living is actually, it's almost like going back to the ancient future. It's, it's about living in community where your kids [00:24:00] can be free range and run around and be mentored by other people in the community, sort of aunts and uncles everywhere who are really just friends where it's safe, where there's food production nearby.

You know, that's the type of. regenerative eco village living that we're working on building here in costa rica that we're so passionate about and have always been passionate about And what I want to do is I want to share through the book and the writing How people can create for themselves a new way of living where they're escaping the matrix Escaping the anxiety escaping the stress And realizing that life is really simple, it's about doing what you love with people you love.

And if, if I can get that across in a, in a 12 month program or a, or a 500 page book, then I've done

[00:24:44] ck: my job. Well, one thing, Ryan, again, I, I, I'm a, I'm a fan of you. I hope I'm just blowing smoke all the time, like the whole time, but I am a fan. So, um, if you, if I [00:25:00] look at your, what you laid out in the book, your resume effectively, it's very clear that You're all about setting ambitious goals, declaring it publicly, and then put everything behind it, and then achieving them.

And then, if new goals and new inspiration comes, then you will, you know, divert your full energy into that. So, you, earlier you mentioned that you are a spiritually guided person, right? So, for someone who is achievement oriented, when they hear spiritually guiding, right, it seems to be a little bit of a tension between the two.

How do you find harmony between, yes, I set ambitious goals, and also I, you know, um, am receiving guidance from your higher self. So how do you strike that balance for you?

[00:25:48] Ryan: Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a factor of consistency. And one of the things I write in the book, CK, is, is the formula of success.

Now this is a formula I've made up. But it's, it [00:26:00] comes from a long lineage of writers like Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie and many others who have written about similar things. I just encapsulated a lot of these ideas into a simple formula and the formula of success is the following. It's four things. It's vision, plus belief, plus action, plus consistency.

equals results. Vision plus belief plus action plus consistency equals results. That's the formula of success. I made that up about nine months ago. And what I found is that's true in my own life. When I have a clear vision of what I want to accomplish. When I have a belief of the, of the deeper purpose of why that matters in the world, and then I take massive action consistently toward making it happen, then God will move with me toward the realization, maybe not exactly what I thought I was going to create, but the realization [00:27:00] of the impact in the world that comes from that consistent action that's driven through spirit and through vision.

And so I think there's a misunderstanding of when I say spirit guided, I don't mean that I'm fluffy. I don't mean that I'm, I'm inconsistent. I don't mean that I'm not going to show up on time. I don't mean that I'm not going to follow through. Um, I, I got enough, um, East coast. landmarkian Harvard Business School training in me to show up on time 99 percent of the time and follow through 99 percent of the time.

Um, what I do mean by that is that I'm possessed with an obsession to create positive impact in the world. And that comes probably from my higher self that sent me here to come back this time around to do something that was meaningful and bigger than myself. And so when you're possessed with an obsession about creating something of impact.

You tend to be willing to [00:28:00] spend three to four hours a day making it happen and not just drudging through a job you hate, but in being, you know, going through the artist's way, the inspired creator's way. And so that's what I do. And I know some of the best entrepreneurs, some of the best artists, some of the best actors.

Are similarly possessed with an obsession to serve and create and bring their, bring their gift to the world. So that's why I'm here. How do you not

[00:28:28] ck: be, I mean, actually goal setting by itself. It means you're committed to a goal, especially if you made it public. And especially after you have invested all your life, energy, your resources, everything got in there.

How do you continue to remain open or perhaps a divine inspiration that guides you in a different direction? How do you balance that because this is very easy to say, you know what, [00:29:00] there's a huge sunk cost that I've invested so far, I have to see it through before, you know, whatever this divine inspiration idea that I just got, it's probably, I'm gonna, you know, be attached to this thing that I, my, my, my, and my actions have put forth.

How do you make sure that you don't become too attached?

[00:29:21] Ryan: Yeah, I, I think I choose my goals very carefully and I, in the book I talk about the concept of a big goal and the big goal is like a big hairy audacious goal and it's, it's sort of like the one thing or maybe the two things that you're focused on for the next five years.

And I always put that big goal on a wristband. I read about this in the book and now I've got, I've got two wristbands on right now. I'll show them to you here, here on my risk. And you can see one of them, it says a million books sold. You can see that right there, a million books sold. And then the other one, which is inside out right now, it's, it's a little bit [00:30:00] of a longer one, and it talks about building a, I'll just read it.

It's um, it says on this white one, uh, to build a free range global living community of inspiring families. Uh, it says it, it says it right there. And so I keep those two on my wrist. They're very different goals. One is a goal that's about selling a certain number of books. It's a very quantitative goal.

Um, and then the other goal is about, um, the way that I want to live with my family and to create a new way of living that eventually can be spread as a model for other towns and communities and villages around the world with, with, with presence and joy and play and connection. So, um, I, I choose these goals very thoughtfully.

Um, I, I, I, I have a one M tattoo on my back and, you know, that means I wanna not only sell a million copies of the book, but I wanna, I wanna bring this course to a million people and, and help a million people design lives they love. Um, and so you [00:31:00] have to be very thoughtful about the goals you have. And, and for me, I'm going to keep this wristband on until I achieve it.

And I don't know how long it's going to take. Uh, I'm expecting it's going to take about 10 years to sell a million copies of the book. Uh, but that could happen in two years or it could happen in 20. I don't know. I've sold, uh, 770 copies of the book so far in, in launch week. So it's a good week. Um, you know, if we keep up that pace, I think it'll take me 40 years.

But we'll get there, you know, we'll get there. And so that that's what I'm excited about is coming up with goals that are Simple not 25 goals because you're gonna change your goals, but just one or two big goals that you keep with you And am I open to, am I open to these changing? Sure. You know, like life, life happens.

You learn things. Um, but, but I, you know, I do expect that I'll keep these wristbands on my wrist until either I [00:32:00]achieve these goals or I get a really clear message. From my higher self that, you know, maybe it's time for, for a new thing, a new goal that will motivate me.

[00:32:10] ck: Okay. I want to double click on that just for a second.

I don't want to belabor this, but I think it's important as a very intelligent person, as a very smart person, as a very creative person, we have no shortage of good ideas, right? So how do you then filter it out? So then this is, this is the thing I'm going after. This is the thing I'm willing to have ownership.

You know, uh, total commitment, whatever it takes to, to, to, to see it through, can you maybe share with us the, maybe it's a mental process or is it like a visceral? Experience that would be very helpful.

[00:32:50] Ryan: Sure. You know, here, here's the double click on it. So on January 1st, 2020, I was in a food [00:33:00] Bali, and I got a very clear message that that day was the first day of the 2020s.

Uh, that that day I needed to get a tattoo on my back. Now I only have two tattoos, you know, I'm not a hugely tatted up person. I have a tattoo of Africa I got in 2010 because I had gone a lot and I loved a lot of time in Eastern Africa. And then I have a tattoo of 1M on my back and I wasn't exactly sure.

What the number one million meant I knew it was a number. I knew it was one million people, but I didn't know One million people to come through hive one million people to buy the book one million people to go through the course one million people that live in Intentional communities that I helped design like I wasn't quite sure what it was But I knew that I needed to get that 1m and then I knew that it was a decade long goal and so originally I thought that 1m was going to be Get a million people through [00:34:00] the Hive, uh, Designing Your Life curriculum.

Um, and then I realized, okay, I'm now going to take that Hive Designing Your Life curriculum and instead of doing it in person, which is hard to scale, I'm going to do it through the internet. I'm going to do it through these, you know, webinars, live webinars, recorded webinars, and I think I can get a million people that way.

Um, and so that's now what it's become. And so I think the key is finding a metric, finding a KPI. That is in alignment with your purpose, um, that allows you to get your message out there. I mean, for me, I'm an author, I'm a writer, I'm a personal growth transformational coach, and I, and I'm here to help shift human culture.

I'm a culture hacker, and I always knew that if I could get my message out to a million people, you know, a million people is not that many in a world of. You know, we have 8, 000 million people in the world. That's 8 billion people right now. So [00:35:00] that's one 8, 000th of the world. But if I could get my message out to one 8, 000th of the world, I felt like it would be enough people that I could make a positive shift in society.

And I've already mentioned this, but the, what I'm trying to do is help pioneer with my wife and friends here in Nosara, Costa Rica, a new way of living that is out of anxiety, out of stress, out of anxiousness, out of disconnection, out of loneliness, out of war, and is instead a way of living based on presence and play and connection and joy and happiness and where we all take care of each other's children as, as they grow up.

So that, that's the new way of living. That's what I'm trying to communicate. But before we could build these pods of transformational people living together and helping create a new, sort of, a neo modern way of recreating the village, I needed to help transform my own body, my own mind, [00:36:00] and DD uh, remove myself from the American Matrix.

Which has a very, um, sort of, uh, non tribal nuclear family, sort of live in the suburbs in your own home and stick to yourself type of mindset that came out after World War II as we moved away from the village and into very large cities. And so that's what I'm trying to do, and we needed to have a book that helped people upgrade themselves to get ready.

to sort of move it back into these neo tribal villages that were in the process of building. So that's a little bit of the longer answer. So if you can tie the long term goal, the thing that's not going to shift, the thing that your spirit tells you every time you do a Vipassana, every time you take Ayahuasca every time you it takes psilocybin every time you go to burning man and it's 3 a.

m And you're walking through the desert by yourself every time your spirit's probably telling you this is why you're here this time around And if you don't know what i'm talking about Then maybe try a vipassana try some ayahuasca try some [00:37:00] psilocybin go to burning man Go to a vision and then you'll know what i'm talking about But eventually your spirit will start talking to you And if you if you align a short term goal, even if it's a five or ten year goal toward making progress toward the 20 30 50 year goal And that's when you have life alignment.

Appreciate

[00:37:19] ck: the expanded answer on that. So we talked a lot about vision. Let's move to maybe beliefs, right? In your book, one of the principles that you're teaching is cultivating self compassion. You said letting go of perfectionism, especially for So, so the question I have for you is this. Uh, for hyper achievers, the inner critic is really loud.

Yeah. I've experienced that personally. I'm a recovering hyper achiever. How have you found ways to neutralize the self critic whenever it shows up? How do you cultivate this self compassion?

[00:37:55] Ryan: Yeah, I mean look that the inner critic is still there [00:38:00] in me I Put myself out there this week, you know, we have between all of our newsletters.

We've got about 250, 000 people that are part of our email lists And I let them know on Tuesday about the book, you know, and so I send an email to 250, 000 people being like, Hey, I've got a new book. Come check it out. And, you know, you, you've got your inner core inner circle of people who are always going to tell you positive things generally, but then there's like that outer circle of people that you're just not so sure.

What they think of you or if they truly understand what, what you're here to do. Um, and so what you have to do ck is you have to go from being a criti, a criticism avoider to a criticism graver. And no matter how hard it's, you gotta go from being a, you gotta go from being a criticism avoider to a criticism craver.

You know, they tell, they tell you in vipasana, you know, don't crave, [00:39:00] don't crave, don't crave, right? But, but this is the one thing you do wanna crave. You wanna crave. Good feedback and you want to crave criticism because if you're not getting any criticism like if you look around your life And in the last six months, you haven't received any criticism.

Well, then something's wrong. You're playing small. If you're not getting criticized, then you're playing small. Look, I mean, even, you know, look at the most popular president of the last 15 years, it was Barack Obama. At one point he had a 54 percent approval rating, right? The most popular president of the last 15 years, at least according to the numbers.

was 54 percent approval rate. That means 46 percent of people didn't like them, right? And so even the most popular people are polarizing. And what, what is helpful is if you're going to get your message out, you got to be a little polarizing and a little [00:40:00] controversial, and you got to be willing to crave criticism and realize it's not about you.

It's not about you, right? If, if, if, if what you were doing didn't strike a chord or didn't matter, then no one would be saying anything. They would be ignoring you or not noticing you. And so in a world where you have something to say, where you have a message to share, where you have contributions and gifts that you want to get to the next generation, you have to be willing to be criticized.

And in fact, you want to, you know, you want to actually desire that because if you see that happen, then that means you're up to something and it's still an internal game that's hard. It's still, you know, it's still challenging. You know, when someone writes a one star review or someone writes a, you know, someone, someone said something that they don't understand why you're doing what you're doing, um, but it's okay.

And look, I have some alternative theories of living. Like, um, you know, I go to festivals. [00:41:00] Sometimes I do conscious medicine. I go to tantra temples. I'm an open relator. You know, these are things that are not normal in America in 2023. You know, but I think it's um, it's taught me Ways of being and ways of living that have taught me to become a better version of myself And so i'm i'm wanting to share these things that are perhaps a little edgy about sexuality or about Plant medicine use, um, or about festivals so that people can actually have a guide on how to experience these transformational experiences in a safe way.

So that's what I'm here to share. I appreciate

[00:41:38] ck: that. I mean, I'm on the same journey, so everything you say, I'm smiling because it's a smile of recognition, so thank you for doing the work. Uh, so I want to double click on the believe though, because one of the things that you said is it's really important that believing that you can achieve it, that's the start.

Achieving anything, right? If you don't believe you can achieve it, but [00:42:00] in a critic, the, the, the self doubter, the insecurity, how do you cultivate the belief and the faith in your ability to manifest?

[00:42:11] Ryan: Well, I think it's a false premise that every time I come up with a goal or a dream that I achieve it. So first of all, I just want to say that.

I've only achieved, you know, 30 percent of what I've set out to achieve. And I think it's, um, I think it's important to recognize that, you know, the, the, my career, um, from the outside, uh, was marked by a 10 year software company, iContact that we sold in 2012 and had a nine figure exit and had a really good success.

Um, since then, now this is 11 years ago that that happened, um, I've been [00:43:00] trying to find a scalable business model that would allow me as an entrepreneur to, to be able to build a company to that size again, you know, we got to 50 million a year in sales, 300 employees, and, um, now I'm 39 and I'm trying to replicate as best I can, CK, you know, what I accomplished at 25 and 26.

And after 11 years of effort, I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't figured out how to build another big company, even though I'm trying. And, you know, I don't know why that is, but I, I have some thoughts and, and I think honestly, while my focus and specialty from age 18 to 27 was building a marketing software company, uh, and that was my Dharma to do in that moment, I think right now, what my Dharma is, is to build a personal transformation company.

And frankly, there aren't that many 300 employee personal transformation companies. I mean, you can say [00:44:00] maybe, you know, Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins International and maybe Mindvalley are probably the only two that are that size or bigger. Um, and maybe you could say Landmark as well, if you sort of combine all of the different employees and all the different centers, you know, and so I think what I'm trying to do over the next 30, 40 years.

is to do what Tony Robbins, uh, Werner Erhard at Landmark, um, and Vishen Lakhiani at Mindvalley have done the last 20 years, last 30 years, last 40 years. And that's build the next generation personal transformation company. Um, and, and that might take the rest of my life to do it, but I'm excited to be on this journey.

Um, and, and the belief in me, um, I think that's the hard thing to hack. And that's, that's why you're asking this question. I think the belief. needs to be that over the next 30 or 40 years, I'm going to figure out a way to do it. Um,

[00:44:56] ck: and Ryan, I'm actually asking you that question. [00:45:00] We have a lot of dreamers, aspiring entrepreneurs, first time entrepreneurs are on this journey of building something as highly transformative to support, you know, human beings in the world and they haven't had the success, successful exit that you had.

So. The fact that you're opening up of what you're going through right now, I think is very helpful. Number one, so that way they don't feel that they're alone, like, Oh, I don't know how I can do this. Right. So that's one. Two, uh, if you don't mind getting perhaps a little tactical about how you reinforce that, because there are some schools of thought to reinforce one's belief system.

One could be, Hey, let's look at my past success. If I have done this in the past, therefore the second I might do it, I could do it. Right. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it could be, you know, there's a lot of affirmations, another way to do it could be just a lot of prayers. So if you don't mind getting a little bit more tactical of how [00:46:00] you, you know, overcome the doubt, the insecurity and still moving forward powerfully, that would be for anyone, myself included.

And so I'm

[00:46:09] Ryan: asking that question. Yeah, I think, I think the answer lays in, lies in taking a little bit of pressure off yourself. I think there's an over intensity that is taught in the American school of success, that if you just push harder, work more, do more, execute more, that then you'll succeed. And I think the reality is, is that if you hold the bigger vision, let's just say, you know, if you're listening to this right now out there, you know, really take the time to do the inner work to come up with, what is your 30 year vision?

Right? And then if you hold that, relatively constant, you can evolve it a little bit as you grow and learn more. Hold that relatively constant. [00:47:00] It's been constant for me for 10 years, as long as you've known me. It's to build a personal transformation organization that helps bring people into a new way of living.

So that's what I've been working on for 10 years. That's what I want to keep working on for the next 30. So if you can get clear on that 30 year vision and then take consistent action daily toward building that vision, right? And then here's the hard part. Here's the co on. Here's the thing that's hard to understand.

Then you have to take consistent action while being unattached to the results.

And if you keep doing the same thing consistently for 10 years I've never seen a single person who's been consistent at doing something with quality for 10 years. And it not succeeded. Maybe it succeeded in a way that was different than their [00:48:00] original thought or intention, you know, but there's this, there's this, um, guy, Zach Polgrove that every day on Instagram, he posts a motivational animation.

And, um, he's, he's been doing it for a couple of years and he's like, I'm just going to do this every day for 10 years and see what happens. Zach Pogrup and, um, the guy's got like 800, 000 followers now and it's starting to, you know, scale infinitely and he's two years into this 10 year experiment. And so what I would say is create a 10 year experiment.

You know, what are you willing to do five times a week or five days a week for 10 years? And if you do that, it can be a 30 minute thing that you do as a side hustle. But if you just do. One thing consistently that's in alignment with your bigger vision for 10 straight years You'll break through and become one of the best in the world at doing that at giving that particular gift So that's what I'm that's what I'm working through and I'm figuring out, you know What is my one thing that I want to do every day for the next 10 years and so [00:49:00] far?

It's been when I started on my birthday on Monday a few days ago Was every single day. I want to have a designing your life webinar on how to create a purpose and goals and a one page like plan and I did that webinar on Tuesday live and now I've got a recorded version of it automatically playing seven days a week with about 100 people showing up at each one.

Um, and if I keep doing that, I'll get to my million people pretty quickly, um, and it'll keep scaling. So that's my one thing. I want to, you know, post a blog post and a video from the book every day for the next year. I want to do a recorded webinar on designing your life every day for the next year. And if I do those one thing, if I do both of those things, I think we're going to have a very impactful company.

[00:49:47] ck: Man, I'm inspired. Thank you for sharing what you're up to. Um, I just got chills. So thank you very much for, you know, I, I receive your transmission is what I'm trying to say. So thanks. [00:50:00] Um, so let's actually talk about discipline because we had talked earlier about being spiritually guided and just, you know, allowing our faith, our, you know, our relationship to God, whatever the case may be for whoever's listening, right.

To, to guide our macro, uh, direction. And we'll also talk about being on the ground, being disciplined daily for 10 years, whatever the thing is. How do you, what does it look like to you? Does it look like, you know, Jocko Willink, you know, waking up at 4 a. m. every day, you know, take a picture of his watch, you know, on Instagram, that's, that's, that's it?

Or super rigid? Or is it more flexible of, like, I'm gonna do this once a day, but I'm not gonna pin myself to a time box? Or just somewhere in the middle somewhere. How do you what's your relationship to? Discipline

[00:50:58] Ryan: and commitment. [00:51:00] Yeah, I I think there's um, what I've observed is there's the masculine way and the feminine way And and to be honest, i'm i'm not an expert in the feminine way of creation Um, i'm an expert in the masculine way of creation Um now I now I will expand on that by saying that there's two halves of the formula of success There's the vision and belief And there's the action and consistency.

It's the vision and belief that come from the feminine side within you. It's the going inward, not outward, the internal, not the external. Um, it's, it's getting clear on your own mind, a future state vision of what you want to create. But then you don't stop there. Then you figure out what it is that you need to do to make that vision real.

And if you're building a company, come up with a sustainable business model to help you accelerate that vision becoming real. And so that's where that [00:52:00] massive action and the radical consistency come in. And I've been blessed at learning how to get myself addicted to good things. And I think that you can be addicted to a lot of things in this world.

But if you look at addiction, a lot of it is addiction to. The dopamine cycle and you can get addicted to bad things, you know, let's say you could get addicted to nicotine, you could get addicted to cocaine pretty easily, actually, and if you were to do cocaine once a day for five days, it would be darn hard to stop on the sixth day because what it's doing is it's activating your dopamine and you get two and a half times your normal dopamine within nine minutes.

of taking a cocaine hit. And so that's why it's dangerous, because it's not good for you, and it requires more and more and more and more, and then you have a crash. Now, or you could do something else, and you could get addicted to a good thing. So let's contrast cocaine with a cold plunge. Okay? Now, a cold [00:53:00] plunge costs 3, cocaine costs 30, so it's much cheaper to do a cold plunge, I'll tell you that.

And what you want to do is you want to get in a nice bath for three minutes, about 40, 45 degrees once a day, uh, seven days a week. And that's what I do. You can have one at your home, you can do one at a nearby place like we have in Nosara that I do. And I discovered this not that long ago, only about six months ago, and I've been doing it every day since.

And then that habit is a good habit that actually, instead of um, flushing my entire system with dopamine that only lasts, You know, peaks at nine minutes and lasts for 20. Now, it takes, um, cold plunging has the same dopamine release as a hit of cocaine, but instead of lasting, instead of lasting 20 minutes.

It lasts all day. Suddenly you're getting two and a half times your dopamine, but it's staying there for eight or nine hours. So yeah, I'm addicted. I'm absolutely addicted to cold plunging, but it's a good habit. [00:54:00] It's a relatively inexpensive habit and it's healthy. And so that's the type of thing you got to do with your work.

Now, after my cold plunge and after my, I start wake up green tea, a cold plant or when we do it again, wake up. Um, green tea gym and at the gym, I will, uh, bench press about 40, 40 reps or four sets of 10 about right now, about 135, 140 pounds. Try to do your own weight, try to build up to that. And then I'll do a 30 pull ups.

Um, and that's super helpful, by the way, 30 pull ups, three sets of 10. And then I'll do, um, some leg, leg presses, you know, just some leg presses, not that much weight, maybe 80, 90 pounds on it. Um, and those three things solved my anxiety, all that stuff I was trying to do with plant medicine as a way to like solve anxiety or drugs to solve anxiety or pharmaceuticals to solve anxiety therapy, to solve anxiety.

I just go to the [00:55:00] gym for 30 minutes a day and do some pull ups and some bench presses and some leg presses. Most people, if you're trying to build muscle, will alternate between different activities. I do the same darn thing every day because I'm not trying to maximize my muscles. I'm trying to, I'm trying to minimize my anxiety and get clear on what I want to create that day.

And as soon as I'm done with that 30 minute gym, I go to the cold plunge. It's three and a half minutes. It's super quick. And then I show up to work way later than most people, probably about 10 45 AM. Right. Cause I'd probably, you know, I've, I've already been through a two hour morning routine. I might've taken my baby to my 14 month old to daycare already.

Um, but I've done my morning routine and now from 11 to three CK every day, I'm working, I'm focused. I eat my lunch at my desk and I'm from 11 to three, I got four hours of focus productivity and I can do more. In four hours of focused productivity, uh, than most people can do in, in 12 or 15 hours of unfocused productivity.

So I'm working 20 hours a week [00:56:00] and I'm happier than ever, and I'm getting more done than most people who work 60 hours a week.

[00:56:10] ck: I guess Steven Kotler would say flow junkie. I appreciate what you said. Thank you. Uh. So, but I want to bring it back to the question I asked you, like, how rigid are you to the start time and some people, Tony Robbins, he's super rigid, nine o'clock, these things happen, I don't eat sugar, da da da, he doesn't deviate from his discipline at all.

Yeah, super rigid. You're rigid

[00:56:33] Ryan: about that. Super rigid, but not, I don't hold it with. Intensity, you know, like if I want to, if like, if I want a cookie or if I want a sweet potato fries with ketchup, like then I'll have a cookie. I'll have sweet potato fries with ketchup. Like it's not, it's not a big deal.

You know, I'll only do that once or twice a week. Um, but it's not a big deal if and when I do that, um, but for me, what I [00:57:00] found is I'm a creature of habit. And so if you know, it's, it's so much harder to go to the gym four days a week than seven days a week. Cause when you go to the gym four days a week, you don't know fricking which days you're going to go.

And then you get in this debate about yourself every morning at seven 30 about whether today is the day or today's the off day. If you just go seven days a week and you create a seven day a week habit. And you just do the same thing. So I, I have two, I have two operating plans. I have weekday and I have weekend, you know, and Monday through Friday, um, I'm a nine to 11.

That's my morning routine. 11 to three is my work. And 3. 30 to 7 is family time, family time and friend time. Um, and then on the weekends, then I, you know, I do the morning routine, but then instead of going to work, I just hang out with my family and friends, uh, in the afternoons. Um, and so because I have the same exact pattern from 8 a.

m. to 11 a. m. 7 days a week. My life works and it's easy.[00:58:00]

[00:58:02] ck: I try to do it three days a week, then my mind will start to negotiate. Ah, today I don't feel like it. I'm not motivated. I got this busy thing, urgent thing that I gotta take care of. And before I know it, it goes to zero. So like you, I do it every day. I started doing a 30 day yoga practice. Today is day 13 and it's been great.

I really enjoyed it. I really appreciate what you said.

[00:58:26] Ryan: Yeah. I love that. And that's not for everybody, you know, but it's what works for me.

[00:58:32] ck: That's right. That's right. Whatever we're saying here, um, it's not a one size fits all. Ultimately here on Noble Warrior, we talk about different mental models, strategy, and, you know, discipline like that.

Um, I know the listeners know this. I know Ryan knows this. We're not prescribing anything, which is like, here's the thing. You may want to give it a shot, try it out for yourself, do direct experience. Then, you know, if it works for you or not.

[00:58:58] Ryan: Yeah. I, the last thing I'll say on [00:59:00] that is everyone should have a morning routine.

And if you haven't yet designed your morning routine, you absolutely should, whether it's reading Robin Sharma's, the 5am club. I don't personally want to wake up at 5 a. m. I, because I, you know, I like to, I like to wake up at 8 a. m., but that's okay. Um, but either way, once you have your morning routine and you get it locked in, your entire life transforms.

[00:59:27] ck: Well, I want to segue to what you said about this, what you said on this, about the simple lives, uncomplicated life without lots of possessions or things that hold you, where you focus on optimizing your time spent creating meaningful things with people you love. So question for you, Ryan, you have had success, you have money, right?

So would you say, so here's a question I have for you, would you say that You now appreciate the simpler life because you've gone through having a lot [01:00:00] of stuff and now You know, you're able to you know, find the joy in the simple things Do you think that applies to everyone or people can just kind of skip?

That phase and just say you know what I don't need the excess stuff relationships networking events hop not with so and so What do you think?

[01:00:23] Ryan: Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I think a lot of people fall into the consumption trap where, you know, let's say they make 200, 000 a year, but then they spend 220, 000 a year, and then they're not actually saving or investing anything, and then they don't have any freedom, and then they're in a rat race where their time, uh, goes away, and it's, the goal is not money, the goal is control of your time, right?

And so, you know, you can control your time by two ways, you know? You could live on 2, 000 a month. You know, and, and, you know, you could work only a few hours a week and just, [01:01:00] you know, do some, do some consulting to make a couple thousand bucks a month. And there you go. And, and you control the rest of your time.

Maybe you work five, 10 hours a week and make a couple thousand bucks a month. And then you just can spend the rest of your time with your family or surfing or adventuring, whatever it might be. Um, but I think what you don't want to be is you don't want to be, um, income rich, but time poor. Um, and you don't want to be income rich, but.

But debt poor either. You want to control your time. And, um, what I've found is that, um, for me going through the process in my twenties of building a successful company. Getting to go to Harvard business school, getting to be part of the United nations, getting to be involved in lots of different global initiatives.

Um, like the nothing but nets, malaria nets campaign in Eastern Africa, like angel investing in Eastern Africa, um, going to different road economic forum [01:02:00] events, going to different, um, you know, global entrepreneurial summits that gave me the intellectual. Um, experience that I was looking for, you know, as a, as a young kid, you always dream of going off into the world and seeing what the world is all about.

And so I would encourage young people to do that, you know, and, and not everyone wants to, but, but most ambitious people, if they're 18 or 19 or 20 or 21, they want to go off into the world and travel and adventure and explore and try different things. And, um, the fact that I accomplished as much as I did by age 30.

allowed me to sort of check the box on like, okay, I've had those life experiences. I've mastered the external world. And now I want to master the internal world, which is something I'm still working on mastering. It's an ever, um, it's a, it's a mountain with no top as Gordon Starwood used to say, you know, it's like a mountain [01:03:00] that keeps getting higher, the closer you get to the top to master the internal world.

And I think that's where the real juice is once you've been able to go through the experience of Going up the ladder of the external world because eventually you realize That the the satisfaction and inner happiness and optimal health that you're really looking for Is not at a 20 million dollar bank account.

It's not at davos You know, it's not at You know, the heights of what some people perceive as material success. It's not in the boardrooms of Manhattan. Um, it's in your heart and in your soul. It resists that exists inside of you and you can discover that, uh, much more quickly instead of a 12 year process of growing, going after a ladder.

You can discover that through a 10 day Vipassana. You can discover that through a three day ayahuasca ceremony in Peru or in Costa Rica. Um, it's that inner journey that interests me now. [01:04:00] Um, and so I've probably given up on a couple hundred million dollars that I could have earned had I, you know, stayed in corporate America and been a fortune 500 CEO or acquired a bunch of companies and did another 20 years of stressful living, but who cares?

Like I'd rather be happy and I'd rather live a life that's more simple. And, um, you know, two years ago, I sort of lost my way a little bit. I was consulting with a couple crypto hedge funds and I was earning 600, 000 a year, but I was working really hard. I was working too much. I was showing up to 9 a. m.

meetings that, you know, I couldn't do my morning routine in. And, uh, at the night that Morgan got pregnant, my wife and, and we got stressed and I gained 35 pounds. I call it the pregnant dad belly. I got a pregnant dad belly, went from 150 to 195 pounds in a year, making those midnight, uh, roast beef wraps with mayonnaise for her and made one for myself too.

And then when my son got born in June, 2022, I was like, [01:05:00] wow, I got to take myself on. I can't be doing stuff. I don't love to make 600, 000 consulting. You know, I need to reduce my monthly expenses. So we reduced our monthly expenses as a family. From the crazy level that they were, which was about 40, 000 a month to now a more manageable 15, 000 a month, which is still a lot, but it's much more manageable and I don't have any stress around it now, um, which is the key.

And so what I would tell young people is, you know, keep your monthly recurring living expenses, you know, one third of your after tax income. If you can make 10, 000 after taxes and spend 3000. You're good because then you can, you know, save five, six, 7, 000 and actually create through your investments and passive cashflow engine that allows you to fully be in control of your time.

[01:05:51] ck: I love how we're talking about very conceptual things and we're also talking about very, that's actually one thing I [01:06:00] love about very actionable, very tactical. Um, what was going to say, so since we're talking about money, let's talk about geo arbitraging. Part of your book is teaching people how to create a cash generating machine so that way they can generate the kind of financial freedom that they want.

Geo Arbitrage was made popular by Tim Ferriss, which you quoted quite a bit in your book. Also came to Kent, Mississippi in 2018. He was my neighbor, by the way. He was right across from me. So it was interesting to interact with him. Knowing what you know today, um, and also you've traveled all over the world to minimize your monthly expenses.

Share with us a little bit about You know what that looks like for someone who is working nine to five, maybe an executive somewhere, and they're trying to make that shift to this time abundance time. Well, you talked about [01:07:00]

[01:07:00] Ryan: well, the key is to make sure that if you. Are an employee that you have remote work job, just period, you know, and this is what Tim Ferriss pioneered in 2007 when he wrote, uh, the four hour work week.

And at the time it was novel, you know, he had templates for emailing your boss to, to, to get the right to, to work globally. Now it's more normal, about 30 percent of white collar jobs in America are remote now. Um, and I think one of the great side benefits or silver linings, if you will, of COVID was that it became normal for professionals to work remotely, um, at least a few days a week and, and certainly, you know, over the summertime.

And, um, I've been working remotely 100 percent since 2015 and. Um, it's been nice. You know, I can [01:08:00] work wherever I am on a laptop, um, and I've found that if you can work where, where the costs are low, a place like Bali, Indonesia, where you can get a real nice house for 1, 000 a month, um, and then, um, earn your money in place where income is high.

Like, let's say the United States or Singapore or Japan or, um, any of the, you know, faster growing economies around the world. You know, if you can earn 200k a year and spend 25k a year, uh, it allows you to, um, have an advantage of saving up money. I think you just want to make sure you stay out of the trap of increasing your expenses as your income goes up.

You want to increase your savings and investment as your income goes up, but not your expenses. So, so that by the time you have kids, you've got You know, passive cashflow engines going. So that's what I've done. So geo arbitrage is, is simply that it's earning an income level of your home country, uh, where [01:09:00] maybe, you know, a professional, uh, income for someone who's highly entrepreneurial and highly educated might be 200, 000, but then it's living in a place where, um, where 1, 000 a month goes a long way.

You know, and and that's what we did in Bali. You know, you can get really great child care in Bali for 5 an hour, and it's important to note that that's not taking advantage of the people there. That's actually paying them twice as much as they would earn from other people. That's actually taking care of the people there.

Um, and so I think there's an opportunity there, whether it's in Thailand, you know, Whether it's in Bali, whether it's in, uh, Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala, Croatia, um, there's so many places you can go live that are beautiful, absolutely beautiful paradises, and pay one third the cost of what you might pay to live in an American city.

[01:09:57] ck: So I have a practical question I want to ask you, Ryan. [01:10:00] So let's say, well, I live in Southern California, as you know. Uh, my family, my friends are here, and yes, Sounds awesome. Or wherever, right, but my, my support system is here. So how do I You know, manage that transition that why you are saying it sounds awesome.

I don't know my mom or whoever I want to see. So can you help us out there? Yeah.

[01:10:29] Ryan: I mean, I mean, these are important factors. Like one of the reasons why we're in Costa Rica is because it's in the Western hemisphere and Morgan's my wife's parents live in Seattle and, you know, to get from Seattle to Costa Rica, it's a lot quicker than getting from Seattle to Bali, uh, you know, it's a eight hour flight instead of a 20 hour flight makes a big difference.

And so I do think that family matters, and I do think family should be a consideration and a factor of where you choose to live. And frankly, you know, I think having [01:11:00] grandparents live near You and having your parents live near you and your future kids perhaps is a very important thing for the passing of the generational torch and the knowledge transfer.

And so we're hoping to get Morgan's parents, you know, to come down here to Costa Rica and spend a lot of time down here. So that is important, but I think it's important to look at this definition of support system. You know, you said your, your parents and your friends live in Orange County, you know, and that's true.

Um, but if you spent more time in, you know, Sarah or Chengu or a boot or Kofi Nyon or Chiang Mai, um, some of these, you know, conscious communities around the world, you develop a support system there and being able to, to being able to find. Whether it's romantic partnerships or great friendships or a brotherhood of men, uh, or, uh, the ability to do your work remotely to be able to do that, I think it's important to being able to know that you could support yourself and thrive in any community where there's [01:12:00] inspiring people.

And so that's what I encourage people to do. Get out of the community. You might love where you are, but a lot of people don't love where they are. So get out of these. Um, communities that bring you down and move to communities that are perhaps lower cost and, and might inspire you to become a new version of you.

And at least visit at least at least take a visit.

[01:12:20] ck: I appreciate it. I think in your book you say something about conscious adventures or something like that Epic adventure experiment right a couple of months check it out before you Jump in. I think that's the intention of that section.

[01:12:35] Ryan: Yeah Yeah, you want to you want to write down your bucket list and then every single item on the bucket list You know, you can frame it as an epic adventure and you need to be scheduling epic adventures in your life.

Minimum every six months. You want to be checking off. If you have 30 things on your bucket list and you do two a year, all right, you'll get through it in 15 years. But too many people die, uh, before their time, [01:13:00] and they haven't actually done the things they want to do. So that's not going to be me, and I don't want that to be the person listening to this

[01:13:05] ck: today.

Well, one thing that you mentioned earlier, and one of the best hacks that I know in terms of raising my standards, achieving my goals, living to my dream life, the fastest path I know of is Change your surroundings, change your relationships, you had alluded to earlier, we are the average of the 10 people that we spend time with, and you're really, really good at building communities.

Can you say a little bit more about curating and building communities?

[01:13:38] Ryan: Yeah, I think that because we're Social mammals that grow up in a family structure most of the time, most of us are reticent to leave that nuclear family structure and, and strike out into the world on their own. And I do find that it's important to do [01:14:00] that as part of the process of living, as part of the, um, the, the events that will guide our evolutionary development.

At least for a time, having your own hero's journey of leaving the homeland, going out to see what's out there and experiencing something new. And then if you want, coming back to the homeland or building a new homeland in a new place with some of the people you met, I think that's the, that's the hero's journey of, of every person and what I.

It is not for everybody. A lot of people are very happy staying where they grew up. Um, you know, and if we go back to our hometowns, we went to high school in, you know, and I talked to people there. Um, what I'll find is that 75 percent never left the home state. I grew up in Florida. So, you know, I go home and three out of four people never left Florida for more than a week or two, you know, for more than a vacation.

And I [01:15:00] just think that's sad. I think there's so much more in the world. Um, and so I I've been to 45 countries. I like to adventure. I like to travel. I like to learn. I like to explore. Um, and I think it's important that whether you're 20 or 70 that you take advantage of this unique opportunity of living on the beautiful earth to actually see this planet to see different cultures and to not buy into this narrative of fear that it's unsafe to travel.

It's unsafe to be in other countries. I've seen, you know, many people you. Um, who I've read about that have visited, you know, 210 countries, all of the countries out there and, you know, and they say that the one thing they always say is People are really, really nice. And if you actually spend the time traveling, you end up feeling way safer.

Um, I talk to people across regular parts of middle America and they're always afraid even to come to Costa Rica or or, you know, to travel outside the country. And I say, you know what? This is your life. Go take an adventure. You know, you can get a round trip ticket to [01:16:00] 400. Save up that money. Come visit a cool place and it might just change your life.

So those are the chances I encourage people to take.

[01:16:09] ck: And that mindset, what I'm hearing is the world is a safe place. Friends are everywhere and people are eager to connect with you. If you're willing to connect with them, um, in the book, you also had mentioned, uh, take on any kind of public speaking opportunities you got.

So I'm assuming correct me if I'm wrong, that also helps you. Amplify the attraction right of the right kind of people resonating with your frequency,

[01:16:37] Ryan: is that right? Well, it does and, and it, and it trains you to not be timid, to not be mild, to not be afraid, to not hide. Uh, I, I was scared of public speaking when I was 17.

I ran for president of my, my service club, key club in high school in Florida, and my knees knocked and I was super scared, and so I said to myself, you know what? I'm going to [01:17:00] do a hundred public talks over the next two years, and I'm going to get over this. And then at age 18 and 19, I went on a tour. I was an entrepreneur at the time, tech entrepreneur.

I went on a tour to a hundred colleges. Uh, it's called the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour with my friend Michael Simmons. And, you know, we gave a hundred speeches over the next few years. Um, and because of that, I got over my fear of other people's judgment. I got over my fear of what other people think, and I just decided I was going to be myself and live, live a wild, unfiltered life, um, of doing what I love and loving what I do and hopefully inspiring others to do the same.

I love

[01:17:36] ck: that, man. You know, you've been doing this since high school. No wonder you get so good, you know, uh, reps, right?

[01:17:44] Ryan: It's the reps. 20 years now. 20, 20 years of experience.

[01:17:50] ck: Uh, is there, I know that we're coming to a thing that I should be asking, but I didn't ask you.

[01:17:58] Ryan: Yeah. I think you've done a [01:18:00] great job today.

It's been intellectually engaging. You know, I do want to, uh, Say that there's an opportunity for the people on the, that are listening and watching to this around the world to join the magic year course. It's a 12 month program kicking off in September. And it's, it's going to be me personally coaching all of the members.

We do a group coaching call once a month to go through the magic year curriculum. And it's super affordable. It's about 249 a month. And so it's not crazy priced and you know, it's something that almost anyone really that wants to be committed to life transformation could afford. And we'd love to have you in it.

We'd love to have anyone listening in it and it's at magic here. com and we will go through. 360 degree life transformation process. So if you're ready to take yourself on in every single area, the ones we've talked about today, plus money, entrepreneurship, community, sexuality, health, family, awakening habits, goals, purpose.

Like this is the sort of thing that I've spent the [01:19:00] last 15 years preparing to do and I can't wait to do it.

[01:19:04] ck: Ryan, let me just take a moment to acknowledge you. I really appreciate how you show up. In private conversations, in public conversations, and the artifact you built, whether it's the

[01:19:14] Ryan: PowerPoint slides or just

[01:19:15] ck: your play it out.

Um, for anyone watching, it's very obvious that Ryan's poured his heart and soul into this thing. In, with a sincere, earnest effort to support you to live a magical year. So, for those of you watching, I would highly recommend it. Thank you so much for being here on Noble Warrior, Ryan.

[01:19:38] Ryan: Thank you so much ck Everyone check out the magic here book and magic here.

com I so appreciate all of you listening around the world and just go out there and be kind do what you love Love what you do that. That's my final message for today