How To Go From Zero To $1 Million With An Online Business | Ryan Moran

I help entrepreneurs get to $1 million, sometimes get past $10 million, and exit for millions of dollars. Everybody wants the million and they want the fast lane to $1 million dollars. I’ve become famous for breaking that into 3 stages. The first stage is what I like to call, The Grind, which is figuring out what you’re doing and grinding for every follower and sale. It’s making decisions as fast as possible.

If you’re thinking about those decisions, you can get through that stage in 3 months' time and have a product in the market that is making sales.

Stage 2 is about getting that product to sell, to to the point where you are making 25 sales per day. The next six months are all about releasing additional products and turning on advertising so that you have 4 products.

Stage 3 is where you're making 100 sales per day, at an average price point of $30, which equates to a $1 million dollar business.

There is a way to do it faster, and that is by building an audience.

This doesn’t mean having millions of Instagram followers or having a camera in your face all of the time. Rather, you need a few hundred people who care about what you have to say so that you can start making sales for your product that you can sell. It’s a grind at the beginning. In order for you to get what you want, you have to give more than what you expect to give back.

It’s like burning fat. If you want to burn fat, you have to burn more than you take in. It’s the same in business. One day that comes back to you and you have no control when that day is. That’s the fast lane to $1 million dollars. Be willing to suck for longer than anyone else. On the Internet, it's easy to get obsessed with algorithms or what the rankings are. When you realize that behind every unique visitor per month or every review is a human being, you realize that it’s your job to serve others.

When you think about it like that, the algorithms take care of themselves. You don’t get create an 8-figure business until you think about the person behind the purchase, the journey that they are on, and how you can serve them along that journey. If you are just starting your business journey, make a list of 10 people in your network who are closer to where you want to go in life, and who also take a call from you.

Listen to them and pay attention to what they are trying to accomplish.

If you have anything that you can support them with on their journey, give it to them. If there isn’t, just listen. If they ask what you’re doing, ask for their advice. Conversely, if you know what business you want to be in and you’re building an audience because you want to have customers from day 1, start documenting your business journey. Spend $10 per day advertising that content stream, whether that's a podcast, a YouTube channel or an Instagram page.

Every time someone comments or follows you, reach out to them and say, “Thank you.” Ask them what they need on their journey. When you get curious about your network, life gets really interesting. This is when everything that you want shows up because now you have access to it.

What is your mindset when it comes to fear about putting yourself out there online?

The star of Star Wars is Luke Skywalker. Most people think that their business is the star. The reality is that your customers are the stars. They want to be the hero in their own stories. As a business, the journey that you’re on is to be the Yoda to your customers. This is a little green man who is past his prime. He talks backward. However, he is the wise one who serves the hero along his or her journey.

When I’m building brands for people I like to think about how I can make someone's customer a hero.

That looks a lot like crowdsourcing content rather than creating content. Every time a customer reaches out and says, “I love your product”, screenshot it and put it on your Instagram. This is you celebrating the progress of the heroes in your journey. That ends up encouraging more people to leave reviews and reach out. You are creating a platform for people to be able to go on their journey.

As a result, you get all the crowdsourced content that you want.

If you think about your customer as the hero, all of a sudden, there’s no threat to you having to be better than them. You are just the container for these other heroes to go along their journey. The minute that I confuse myself as the hero I've stepped on someone else’s territory to rise.

How selfish am I to assume that I have to have all of the advice? It is a false belief that you have to be better than someone else in order to serve them. No, you have to be more resourceful on a specific problem in order to serve them. Life gets really good when you make that shift.

What is your mindset when it comes to comparing yourself to others on social media?

Comparison is the enemy of happiness. We all see our own problems, but we miss our own blessings because our brain is wired to find problems, not to make us happy. It’s a conscious choice to focus on what is amazing in your life. Problems are a focal point.

We tune into where we need to focus and we miss everything else. When we fall into that trap, anyone who is doing anything that you think is better than you is going to get your attention. As a result, we are constantly in this unhappiness trap, moving further and further away from who we really are.

When I first started Capitalism.com, I hired some people and optimized for the numbers.

However, nobody was enjoying the process. I realized that I was putting money into something to scale my own unhappiness, because I was comparing my numbers to somebody else’s numbers who had been in the game longer than I had.

Happiness and ease is such a great guiding light. We are all wired to look differently. It’s as if the Universe is conspiring for us to work together. We have similar messages to similar people, but we are just a little bit different from one another.

What makes us powerful is our unique experiences and perspectives on life. Conversely, love is about being willing to make other people survive. We are more likely to survive when everyone is well and taken care of. That means that other people also have our back. Hence, we are now a tribe.

Serving others biologically makes us happy and puts us into a better standing to be wealthy.

Something as tactical as building an audience will help you get results, faster. Be insanely curious about what other people want and then serve them. You will have more responsive customers, your content will be shared, and your message will be more likely to go viral.

People will respond specifically to you over everyone else. You will win, not by trying to win for yourself but winning for someone else. It was Keith Cunningham who said, “If you want to make $1 million dollars, find out what people want and give it to them.” This is a practical strategy for getting the results that you want.

Any final mindset tips that you wish you had been given when you first started?

Your brand is Project LIFE Mastery. Money is just a piece of that. We tend to optimize for one variable in the equation. It took me a long time to realize that the pursuit of money was an amplifier to whatever life I wanted. I had this belief that, if I made the money, then I could address the other areas of my life.

That was true, but I found that, when I had the money, I had neglected all the other areas of my life. The money scaled more unhappiness. It amplified all the other broken areas of my life. Money is like alcohol. If you give alcohol to a generous person, they start giving things away. Money is exactly the same way.

When you give money to a selfish person, they become more selfish.

When you become rich, the amount of money that is in your bank account will change, but you're still living in your body. Every time I'm going through a hard time, specifically in business, I always go back to the belief that my business grows when I really dial into my relationships, my mindset, my body, and my habits.

That's when business gets really easy because I don't expect business to fix all of the other problems in my life. Rather, I expect business to be an amplifier of my life and a way to serve other people. This is when my cup is so full and money literally just shows up. Money is the product of good work. People spend money on other people's good work. I wish someone had told me that ten years ago.

This is how Ryan Moran went from zero to $1 million with an online business.

Ryan is an amazing entrepreneur who has helped so many people scale their businesses and create financial freedom. If you aspire to build a $1 million dollar business, I highly recommend that you follow his work. I trust that it will inspire you to create life, on your terms.