Latest / The Great Wealth Transfer / What Happens When Money Stops Being the Goal? | Ryan Levesque

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What Happens When Money Stops Being the Goal? | Ryan Levesque · The Great Wealth Transfer

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  We live in a digital world that's left us defanged, dumbed down and dying young. I think the
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  next decade is not going to belong to dopamine. I think it's going to belong to oxytocin, which is
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  the neurotransmitter of trust and love and belonging and connection. A return to real in so
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  many ways is about what is actually valuable. What your body, what your heart, and what your spirit
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  are starving for right now is the same thing your market is starving. For is Ryan Levesque. He built
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  two companies, both of them the Inc. 5000 list multiple times, and then he sold them. And now
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  this seven time Inc 5000 CEO and two time number one national bestselling author. And his
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  next book, Return to Real. And it's about how to live authentically in the age of AI.
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  It was a $70 million offer to buy the majority of my company. It was literally days away from
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  signing a purchasing agreement. And and it was just pencils down, pulling all the deals. So I
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  reached this point where I was like, I don't think I can do what we just did for another decade. If I
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  can just go to ChatGPT or Claude to write a contract and it's good enough,
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  why am I keeping my lawyer on retainer? There has to be something more than just the transaction.
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  And I think it comes down to real connection with the real human being that you trust in real life.
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  If you're an entrepreneur, if you're trying to plan for what's coming next, this is one of these
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  movements that I think there's an opportunity to get ahead of. I know how to make money, but what
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  happens when money doesn't matter? What is actually valuable? And how do we create a real
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  value, not just money value? Yeah. There's so many, so many layers to it. My.
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  When people hear the great wealth transfer, they picture billionaires and dynasties. But the real
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  story and the one we're telling on this show is about the rest of us, the families with a million,
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  5 million, 30 million. Enough wealth to matter, but not always enough infrastructure to steward it.
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  And in many ways, Ryan Levesque is one of those stories. He grew up working class, first in his
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  family to go to college. He studied neuroscience at Brown. He worked on Wall Street. He lived in
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  China managing finance expansion for AIG and then 2008 financial
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  crisis. And Ryan walked away from all of it. He started his first business from a 400 square foot
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  Hong Kong apartment, teaching people how to make Scrabble tile jewelry. He's a creative guy, and his
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  parents thought he was insane. But that business became the foundation of what Ryan calls the Ask
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  method, a customer intelligence framework that I myself have used that has since generated over
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  $100 million in revenue across 23 industries. He built two companies. Both of them hit
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  the Inc. 5000 list multiple times. And then he sold them. And he did something that most people
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  in his position do not do. He and his family bought a regenerative farm in Vermont. They moved
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  there, where he lives today. They're homeschooling their two boys. They're raising their own food.
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  They're living the dream. They're hosting masterminds on the land. And now this seven time
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  Inc. 5000 CEO and two time number one national bestselling author is the creator of a weekly
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  newsletter called The Digital Contrarian, goes out to over 100,000 entrepreneurs, and his next book,
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  Return to Real, is one you're going to want to read. And it's about how to live authentically in
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  the age of AI, something that we all need to know, right? And how to resist the pull of optimization
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  and reconnect with what's real. Nature family oxytocin over dopamine, the things that
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  really don't scale. And so this is really a story about professional services, wealth two exits.
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  What happens after you make it? I think we're also going to find about. Find out a little bit about
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  the one that, uh, kind of slipped away, but then he got it back. And how to do that, what to do when
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  that happens, and about ultimately choosing to build a multi-generational family asset that
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  teaches values, builds capacity and anchors identity. This is not wealth by default. It's
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  wealth by design. And it's exactly the kind of story that we need to hear. So let's go. Welcome,
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  Ryan. So glad that you are here with us, Allie. It's great to be here. Excited for our conversation
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  today. Yeah. So let's just go back to the very beginning, 2008.
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  And you had this walkaway moment. And, you know, it may be that we're on the verge of another 2008. It
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  may not be. We don't know. But if we are, let's go back to that moment
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  where you had made it, and then you walked away from all of it to live in a 400 square foot
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  apartment in Hong Kong and make jewelry. Tell us about that. Yeah. Um, you know, I think
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  there are times if I look at my life. There are times in my life where most of the people around
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  me said, what are you doing? You're completely crazy. And I think the first few times
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  it really shook me like when I was a younger person, I'm, I'm, I'm middle aged now. But when I was
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  a younger person, it really shook me. Um, like, for example, when I was in college, I was studying
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  neuroscience. I was going to go to medical school. I was going to become a neurosurgeon. I was like,
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  man, I was like, that's the path that I was on. And. And my best friend in college is a is a
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  neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic. Like, we were on this kind of parallel paths. And then one day I
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  just kind of had this realization that, like, I'm interested in the brain, but I don't want to
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  pursue medicine. It's like, not what I want to do. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I
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  remember just sort of like kind of flailing for a little while and eventually found my way working
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  on Wall Street. But for my family and my friends was sort of like, you know, you were you're going
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  to become a neurosurgeon now. You're just like a, you know, investment banker, just a money guy
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  chasing money. Like, what's wrong with you? Right? So there was a bit of that. Then I had this
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  opportunity to go to China. You kind of spoke about. And when I was there, I was making good
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  money. Um, 2008 happens. AIG at the time was like the fourth or fifth largest company in the world.
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  It's since fallen off that list. Um, I was responsible for our expansion across China. I'd
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  also studied Chinese in college, so I speak Mandarin, and it was bilingual. And, um, and so I had
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  this really cool opportunity to do that. I'd achieved everything I wanted to achieve
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  professionally. And then 2008 hits Financial crisis. And I just kind of said to myself, um, I
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  think now is an opportunity to start over. Like, I just kind of had this like quarter life crisis. I
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  remember, you know, going to WSJ. Com seeing the headline, sharing the link with my wife and,
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  uh, she was in Hong Kong, I was in Shanghai. We were living this by country marriage. She was in grad
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  school, I was working it was sort of crazy. Um, and she said, what does it mean? I said, I don't know,
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  but I don't think I'm going to stick around to find out because the headline read AIG to file
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  for bankruptcy, and I just didn't know what was going to happen. So I, like, impulsively typed up a
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  resignation letter, printed it, signed it, walked it into my boss's office and said, I think this is a
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  good time. And I didn't have like, another job lined up or anything. I was just like, I'll figure
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  it out. My wife was getting her PhD at HKU at Hong Kong University. She had student housing. I thought,
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  whatever, we'll just start over. So like it was mid 20s, I sold and donated everything I owned except
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  for a suitcase of stuff, moved into student housing, and we started over and I was like, I can
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  figure out at the time what was new like, how to do this online business thing, like how to make
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  money online. You know, I don't know what it's going to be. Exactly. And you pointed out the first
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  thing that we did that made any money was, um, we weren't selling the jewelry, we were selling, uh,
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  jewelry tutorials on Etsy. And Etsy was a brand new website in 2007, 2008. So it was sort of like
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  the early days. And, uh, we made a few thousand dollars in our her first month, and then it was
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  like multiple thousands. And I think at our peak we made like 6 or 7 or $8,000. And I was like, okay,
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  this this could be a thing. Um, and so I share that story because I think the lesson I've taken from
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  that, that I've applied over and over again in my life is most people are afraid to give up good in
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  order to go after great. And they don't know. They don't know that they can start over and create
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  something from nothing. You can reinvent yourself like you're not too old to do it. And I've done it,
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  you know, and it went from neuroscience to Wall Street and Wall Street to China, China to book
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  stuff. And then I built a tech company, and then now I'm farming in Vermont. It's like every every
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  stop along the way, everyone around me, like when I moved to Vermont and started the farm, I grew a
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  beard and I let it grow really long. I had this idea I was going to grow a beard, which is like
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  you let your beard grow for like a full year. Um, and I looked like whatever you can imagine in
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  your head, like whatever homeless person, uh, like view you have in your mind of what that looks
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  like is exactly what I. What I look like and everyone is like. Is Ryan okay? Is he, like, having a
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  mental breakdown? It's like it's just the next thing. It's like, whatever. I think most people are
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  afraid to do that. So we get we let ourselves get trapped into high consumptive lifestyles,
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  um, like high expense lifestyles. And so you never actually build enough wealth to get out
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  of the rat race and be able to say, I'm done. Like, I'm just I'm done. And,
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  um, you know, having those those ramen noodle and Bologna sandwich seasons of life I think are
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  so liberate is so liberating because like, after we, we're in Hong Kong and things
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  are going good with the business, but then what we were selling turned out to just be like a fad. And
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  then it fell to nothing. And I had a little bit of money saved up, but not a lot. And my wife was
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  studying history, so she wasn't like in a like a high wage earning career. So
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  we're in Hong Kong student housing. She's finishing up her PhD program, and we're like, all
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  right, what are we going to do next? Let's move back to the States. And she gets a job in
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  Brownsville, Texas. If you know where that is. It's like on the Mexico border. Deep, deep south Texas.
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  And she gets a job as a museum curator making $40,000 a year. And that's all the money we have
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  coming in. Now we're living in an apartment in Brownsville, Texas, less than a mile from the
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  Mexico border. There bars on the windows. We have one car. I drive my wife to work. I'm not working.
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  I'm trying to start the business. She's working at the Brownsville Historical Association as a
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  museum curator, which is sort of what she went to school for. I drive to work in the morning, drop
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  her off, come home, work for eight hours, go pick her up in our one car. We have dinner together. We
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  had a $50 a week grocery budget. But I can tell you, Allie, like having sharing a sharing that
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  season of life is like incredibly bonding. Like we feel like we can go through anything together. Um,
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  but that's number one. But number two, I'm not afraid. Like, I'm not afraid because, like, you live
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  that fear of what happens if you had to live. And we had no furniture. We had two lawn chairs in the
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  living room, a mattress on the floor. And I looked back at those days and think, those are some of
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  the happiest days of my life. So if you lose it all tomorrow and that becomes reality and you've
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  lived it, you're just not afraid of whatever happens. And I think living like that is just, um.
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  Yeah, it's so much it's so, um, empowering. And so that was early, probably
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  2009, 2010, 2011. You're in your late 20s at that point. No kids yet. No kids. Yet. Yeah.
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  And I totally agree. You know, the thing that I was always most terrified of once I started making
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  money was running out of money. So then I just did. I was like, okay, I can't be ruled by
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  this fear anymore because it's contorting me. You know, it's causing me to compromise in ways that
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  I'm not willing to compromise. And so what's the way to break free of it? I'll just turn turn
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  toward it, let it all go. That, you know, that was not an overnight thing. That took me actually
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  several years to get to that point and recognize that, um, and for you, it seems like in some ways it
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  was I wouldn't say it was forced on you. It was choices that you made. You made the choices to
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  just say, I'm, I'm I'm not I'm not going to be controlled by it. I want to make my own way.
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  What did your parents say about all this? Because they thought that you were on a on a track. I
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  think definitely my, like, my mom would ask me, like, is everything okay? Um,
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  like, uh, like when we moved up here to Vermont, my my parents, we moved one of the reasons why we
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  moved to the northeast. I grew up in New Hampshire, so it's not too far from my from my parents, where
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  they still live. And my parents have lived a very, like, simple life. Neither my parents went to
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  college. They both, uh, they got married. They moved into the house that they are still living in
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  today. 50 years later, like they have not moved ever. Um, so they've had like
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  a very just, you know, I've lived in all these different places, right. Um, but I remember when my,
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  when we moved up, like, even I was in my, I was like 40 when we moved up and, um, my, my mom sat me down
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  and she's like, are you guys, like, running from the law? Like, everything okay? She was like. Like had
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  all these, like, like, fantasies or stories in her mind. It's like, yes, parents never stop worrying. Um,
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  but, uh, but I can tell you, like, along the way. Yeah. Multiple times is, um. Hey, Brian, is
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  everything okay? Like, do we need to go down and and see you? And I think it's like people don't
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  like. For me, this is counterintuitive. I've always, you know, people say, go where the action is, like,
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  move to Silicon Valley, move to New York, like be where the action is. I started my business on a on
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  an island in Hong Kong SAR uh, called Marwan that has like 500 people that live on
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  the island. You can't get to it by car. You have to take a ferry. It's like the most isolated, like,
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  place you can be. And I then launched my next business in Brownsville, Texas, away from
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  everything. And then here I am in, like, the middle of nowhere in Vermont. As counterintuitive or as
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  contrarian as that may sound, I've always found myself that isolating away from the frenzy and
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  the feeling of, like FOMO and the feeling of having to keep up with the Joneses has always
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  been helpful, and giving me enough time and space to build enough runway to get to the next
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  thing and not have people chirping in your ear saying, like, what are you doing this for? Like, it's
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  hard when you're going out to dinners with people and like, everyone feels like they're just
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  crushing it. And you're like, I don't even know what the hell is going on. I just try to figure it
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  out. I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow. Right. But. with enough time to reflect
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  and act like it all makes sense in retrospect. It always does. I can tell my story in a way that
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  someone would look back at it and be like, oh, it makes perfect sense. But in those moments,
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  Brownsville, Texas like, whoa, what are we doing here? Like in those moments, it was like, wait, I
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  went to Frick and Brown. I was studying neuroscience. I worked for Goldman Sachs. Like, I
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  what am I doing in this shit apartment in Brownsville, Texas? Like what? How many life. So you
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  you second guess yourself. Like when you're awake at night, like, unable to sleep. And I think it's in
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  those moments. That's one of the things I talk about in the book, is you have to learn how
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  to trust the contrarian voice of your heart, and that is
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  not a head thing. It is a heart body spirit thing. Which many people don't have any connection
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  with. Right. So that was part of What became clear for me as well is when I when I did walk away
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  from everything and I moved to the farm at that time, one of the big things that I discovered is
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  that there was actually a disconnect between my mind and my heart. I had a network
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  chiropractic professional tell me this I didn't know. I my mind
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  did not trust my heart, and my heart did not trust my mind and I. And I'm curious, did you know that
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  you were listening to your heart when you were in Brownsville, and later on when you moved to
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  Vermont? Or do you only know that now? So I think this will be this will be interesting for us to
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  have a conversation about. Um, so there how do we attack this? We'll talk about this a
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  few different ways. So you talked about my first big business that that did really well, that seven
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  time being 5000 business built around this concept called the ask method, which is all about
• 16:34
  finding out what your market wants and giving it to them. So it's about like it's, you know, how do
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  you figure out what to sell and how much to sell it for? And what do you say in your marketing and
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  all this? It's well, it's you just ask. You just ask your market. And if you know how to listen, your
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  market will tell you, um, the the ask method is incredibly powerful. Um, but what it does is it
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  forces you to listen to the voice of everybody else at
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  the expense of silencing the most important voice of the mall, which is yours. You learn to listen to
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  what does the market want? What should I do next? But. But at some point, there's a growing distance
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  between what your market wants and what you feel called to do. And at some point you wake up and
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  that's that disassociation, dissociation that you're describing where it's like you've got
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  you're doing this thing, but it has no connection to who you are when you actually take time to
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  reflect on that. Um, Jason Gaddis describes it as true self versus strategic self, which is
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  something I write about in the book that, you know, we have two selves within us, and at a young age
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  we learned that we have to Um, uh. Silence our true self. So our strategic self is
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  you're in any relationship and there's what you really want to say, what you really want to do, but
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  then you have to kind of mute that. And, you know, you've got to you can't be. Yeah, it's exactly in
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  service of the other person. But then there's your true self, which is what your spirit really wants
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  to do. And at a young age, we learn that in order to be accepted, in order to just function in
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  society, we just have to constantly push that down. And at some point you wake up one day and you say,
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  like, who am I? How did I show up in the life that I'm living right now? And and I think for me, it
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  was a reckoning moment when I was on this rocket ship growing our company
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  and received an offer to buy the company, which you and I've talked about before, um, which was a
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  life changing lot of money. It was a big offer. It was a $70 million offer to buy the majority of my
• 18:31
  company, and we spent almost a year with this group in diligence, due diligence
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  and everything. I had everything together, had a purchase agreement. Like they had spent $1 million
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  in diligence, was literally days away from signing a purchasing agreement. And, you know, at that point
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  your your brain is already, you know, cashing the check in your mind. Totally. You're spending that
• 18:52
  money. You're spending that money in your head, we're going to do this. We're going to do that. And
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  oh my gosh, it's like, you know, our kids are going to be sad. Our grandkids are going to be sad. And,
• 18:59
  you know, we can retire and all these things. And then it was right around. It was beginning of 2022
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  when Russia invaded the Ukraine. Um, and in response, capital markets crash. And it feels like
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  a distant memory now. But if you can take yourself back to that moment, there were some fears that
• 19:15
  there was going to be like a nuclear World War three, like Russia. This Putin's going to go crazy.
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  And capital markets responded by tanking, crypto markets crash. And most relevant to the
• 19:25
  conversation, interest rates spiked. And we were coming out of this private equity environment
• 19:30
  where interest rates were basically close to zero. So money was effectively free. And that completely
• 19:36
  turned the private equity and venture capital sort of world upside down. And it was just pencils
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  down pulling all the deals. So it wasn't just the firm that we were working with walking away. It
• 19:46
  was like every firm in the space at that time basically saying we're not doing any deals. And I
• 19:52
  had been redlining and like my foot on the accelerator, burning the candle on both ends for
• 19:59
  probably 7 or 8 years. And when you get to the end of that and you think you're like, you've run 21
• 20:05
  miles of the marathon, you're like, oh, I have home stretch. It's I've, I'm almost there. And then the
• 20:10
  finish line is actually it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a century race. It's actually a hundred miles.
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  You need to run your body. You weren't preparing for the other 80 miles. And so I reached this
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  point where I was like, I don't think I can do what we just did for another decade. Like, I just
• 20:26
  don't think I can do that. And and so I said, I have to take time off, to pause, to reflect, to
• 20:31
  think about like what? What am I going to do next? Our kids went away to summer camp, and I had this
• 20:36
  opportunity to travel to Vermont to earn my PDC, my permaculture design
• 20:42
  certification. Yeah, I did, I did that to, um. To live and work on this on this farm and apprentice and
• 20:49
  basically sleep in a tent and bathe in a pond and, and do that. And when I was there, Ali, like, I
• 20:56
  had this awakening. It was like I'd reached this rock bottom experience and I thought my life
• 21:03
  was going to be. I thought it was, you know, sell the company $70 million, you know, rainbow happy
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  ending. Done. That completely got destroyed. And I went on this other path and I bathed
• 21:16
  in the pond. I grew the beard. And I just knew in my bones that I was meant to be on this
• 21:23
  farm in Vermont. Yeah. I mean, it's the dream. It's truly my. And it really is. I think that many
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  people listening to this will recognize it, because it is the dream that lives in their
• 21:33
  hearts. It's a dream that many of us, I think, have awakened to in various ways. You know,
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  and I and I do think that it happens through force or choice and and you needed to be forced. I
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  needed to be forced. Many people are choosing it. It's funny that you mentioned Jason Gaddis,
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  because he was actually my therapist at the time when I moved to the farm, and
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  he was the first person that ever really taught me to feel that, like, began
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  to take me in beyond my mind, into my feeling self and and and and into
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  my, I guess, into really into my emotional body and into connecting with my soul in a way that had
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  kind of always been there in the background, but I really didn't know how to access on a, on a
• 22:24
  regular basis. And, and so you, You're you're awakening. Really? Sounds like was
• 22:31
  like you were forced into seeing the truth of what you really wanted. Which if you had gotten
• 22:36
  the 70 million, I don't know, what would you have done? What was the other path that. Well, that was
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  that's I had this moment on the farm where I just had this experience where I was like, if I had if
• 22:48
  we had if I had gotten this big pile of money, what would I have done? And the answer, I knew it
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  as clear as it was, I'd buy a farm and moved to the country to grow food with my family like.
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  And then and then and this is the one that I think everyone, anyone listened to this
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  conversation it's worth sitting with is I had the second question that made me feel uncomfortable,
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  which was, what's stopping you from doing that now? And that and the answer was,
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  there's nothing like there's no reason that I shouldn't be doing this. And so it happened fast.
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  We had, um, we'd been considering we were living in Austin, Texas at the time, and we've been
• 23:29
  considering doing this move. I mean, there's months of, you know, watching the biggest little farm and
• 23:35
  kiss the ground. And just like all those documentaries as a family and, you know, being part
• 23:39
  of farmers markets and like, we just like it was like this kind of swelling. And while I was on the
• 23:47
  farm in Vermont, I texted Killeen with one bar of service and I said, let's do it. Let's put the
• 23:52
  house on the market. Let's just see what happens. And we had a real estate agent that we had lined
• 23:56
  up before I left, because we kind of thought that this might be a possibility. And later that night,
• 24:01
  I get a text message back from Killeen. Uh, first people to see the house, uh, made an offer,
• 24:08
  um, all cash full ask 14 day clothes. It was one
• 24:15
  of those, like, Holy crap, I had to get my butt back to Texas. I yeah, I had to leave the farm
• 24:22
  early. I hopped on an airplane, went back. We got a moving company that shipped all of our stuff to
• 24:27
  Boston and, um, and yeah, we were out of that house in like 14 days, and like, I had no plan.
• 24:34
  Literally, we sold one of our cars. I had my truck. We had like two kids, a dog, one suitcase each in
• 24:39
  the back of the truck. We just road trip from over, from Texas to Vermont with nothing but a dream
• 24:45
  and a vision. Yeah, it sounds so much and a much faster way, you know, for me to 2010. Was
• 24:52
  that right? Like, pack it all up. Move out to Boulder, Colorado. I didn't realize I was going to
• 24:58
  live on a farm. I did not know that's what was coming, but that is what ended up coming for me. Um,
• 25:03
  so. So now, how long have you been there? As of today. So we are four years on this
• 25:10
  property. Yeah. So four years in this property. Um, and it's our. Yeah, it's our fourth year. And when
• 25:17
  we, you know, we had this ambitious goal, like I thought, okay, let's learn how to raise and grow
• 25:22
  food. And it was like all multi. There's many reasons for it right. It's not like this like
• 25:27
  singular reason. It's like be connected to nature. I have an entire uh chapter in the book that, that
• 25:33
  I that's titled hands in the dirt. It's just like what happens to your biology when you
• 25:39
  reconnect, when you rewild? Um, uh, you know, I have this line
• 25:46
  in the book that we live in a world, a digital world that's left us, um, defanged, dumbed down and
• 25:53
  dying young. And I was, you know, I felt like I felt like such a hypocrite because
• 26:00
  we were telling our kids to stay off social media, and we weren't giving our kids devices, and they
• 26:06
  weren't having screen time. And like, meantime, I'm like, telling my kids not to do this. Well, I'm like
• 26:10
  all day, every day in front of a computer. And it just was like, wait, I'm I'm, you know, kids learn
• 26:16
  what's caught, not taught. Like, they see mom and dad, and I've got boys, so they see their dad and
• 26:22
  they're like, oh, this is what it means to be a man. And I was just like, it didn't feel right. And so I
• 26:28
  wanted to teach these boys, um, something else. I had this weird nostalgia,
• 26:35
  like with with AI when it was coming up, like I, you know, been in, like, the digital tech world for
• 26:39
  15 years, and I just felt like I didn't want anything to do with it. Like, I just had this
• 26:45
  strange pull to when I was 12 years old playing in the woods. And, and I had my first garden when I
• 26:50
  was 12 years old. And just like that, like I just felt like the strange pull in that direction. I
• 26:55
  couldn't explain it. So it's like I'm going to just trust that, lean into it. There's definitely
• 26:59
  like a resilience kind of thing that's like a, um, a motif or a theme
• 27:06
  and just not feeling. The story that I opened the book with is in
• 27:11
  2021. I might have my year wrong. It was 2021. Texas went
• 27:18
  through a winter storm where I dunno if you remember this with a grid collapsed. So we lived
• 27:22
  it. We lived through that. And my sister in law, um, lived alone. And there was a 48 hour period
• 27:29
  where, uh, at least in our region in Texas, the there's no fuel getting in the state. And the
• 27:36
  cell towers ran out of backup fuel in the generators, and there was no anything. There's no
• 27:42
  cell communication. So, like, you couldn't there's no internet, no power. But that's like, fine. But
• 27:47
  there's also no ability to, like, call anybody for like two days. And my wife had this weird
• 27:53
  intuition. She's like, you have to go check on on my sister. I don't know that she's okay. And it was
• 27:59
  like a foot of snow. And I'm driving in my truck and I found her, and it was like, like 45 degrees
• 28:05
  in her house. Just no heat, no water, nothing. She's, like, wrapped in blankets, no food in her pantry, no
• 28:11
  water. She had like a gallon jug with just a little bit of water. And it was just like her
• 28:14
  clinging to her dog, shivering in a closet. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And it was like, that was. I mean, so
• 28:20
  there's all these little moments that kind of rocked. You know, it's like you have all this money,
• 28:25
  you have all this wealth, but none of it even matters if, you know, if you don't have some of
• 28:31
  this to prepare. That was a big wake up for me as well. You know, I again, when it when it happened
• 28:37
  for me, I wasn't making huge money, but for me it was huge money. You know, I was making over a
• 28:42
  million a year in my businesses. And this is, um, you know, pre farm and pre my
• 28:49
  version of the farm. And, and it occurred to me like I knew how to make money. But
• 28:56
  what happens when money doesn't matter? I don't actually know how to do anything else. I do not
• 29:02
  know how to provide value in the world. I don't know how to grow food. I don't even know how to be
• 29:07
  a good friend, because really, every decision I was making, even around friends, was like,
• 29:14
  does it create money? And if it didn't create money, I didn't do it. And so it was this big wake
• 29:19
  up of like, oh, I don't actually know how to provide value in the real world. And that's not
• 29:26
  okay. And so I'm guessing that really a return to real in so many ways is about what is
• 29:33
  actually valuable and, and how do we provide value and how do we create value when we're creating
• 29:40
  real value, not just money value? Yeah. There's so many, so many layers to it. My,
• 29:47
  um, my moment was in that same winter storm we pulled into our driveway and there
• 29:53
  was a cedar tree that fell across our driveway, and it was probably about a foot in diameter.
• 30:00
  We could not get in or out of our driveway, and I didn't own a chainsaw at the time, living in like
• 30:06
  suburban, um, Austin, Texas. And, um, and
• 30:13
  embarrassingly, I did not know my neighbor like we had lived there for five
• 30:20
  years in this, in this, in this neighborhood. And I had never spoken to this neighbor. I had to knock
• 30:24
  on a neighbor's door and say, hey, do you have a chainsaw? And that was how I met my neighbor. And
• 30:29
  it was like one of these moments where it's like, I have all of these this big audience, this big
• 30:34
  team, this big following on social media, tens of thousands of people. And I have just been
• 30:41
  too damn busy and too important to even get to know my neighbor. And that was just, like, effed up.
• 30:48
  I mean, that was just like a moment where I just felt like this is not how to live life. So that
• 30:52
  was, again, one of those, like, lead dominoes that kind of set me on this path. And we moved to a
• 30:56
  small town in, in Vermont. And, you know, it's like it's the total opposite. You know, there's there's
• 31:01
  I think community, um, shows up, uh, in the, uh,
• 31:08
  inconveniences of life. What I mean by that is we have so many, uh, we basically
• 31:15
  monetized every form of community. Like, you don't need someone to watch your kids because you can
• 31:21
  hire a babysitter on, um, character. Um, or, you know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Com, um, you, you know,
• 31:28
  you don't you don't have elders anymore in your community. You just, like, pay a coach or a mentor,
• 31:33
  you know, because, like, you don't do that work for free anymore. Um, but when we live in a small town,
• 31:38
  like we don't have, we don't have Uber where I live, if you need a ride, you best know somebody
• 31:43
  like it, doesn't they? We don't have lawn care companies here, so you've got to know, like a
• 31:48
  neighbor that's got equipment that can help get you out of a tough spot. Um, and so, like, living in
• 31:54
  the middle of nowhere in this tiny little town of a few hundred people has forced us to live in a
• 32:00
  way that I think we used to live in. Many of us crave and and it happens in the cracks of
• 32:05
  inconvenience. Um, there's a chapter in the book that is, um, titled heart, humor, humanity, and it's
• 32:12
  all about some of the things that you talked about at the beginning, this idea that, um. The last
• 32:17
  decade has been, in many ways, from a neuroscience perspective, a story of dopamine. You getting
• 32:24
  really good at making money? Me getting really good at making money and doing stuff online has
• 32:28
  been really a story about really mastering the art of spiking dopamine. And
• 32:35
  there's an argument that I make that's pretty compelling in the book, based on evidence that
• 32:38
  I've seen, that I think the next decade is not going to belong to dopamine. I think it's going to
• 32:43
  belong to oxytocin, which is the neurotransmitter of trust and love and belonging and connection.
• 32:49
  And there's a pretty compelling case to consider optimizing your business and your
• 32:56
  life around oxytocin and not dopamine. Um, for all the reasons that you described, because that
• 33:02
  is what the world is craving. The the loneliness epidemic, um, the disconnection crisis, um, the
• 33:09
  addiction that we face in all corners of society. One way to interpret what we're lacking as human
• 33:14
  beings is there is a global oxytocin deficit right now, and we are desperately craving this,
• 33:21
  even though people don't have the words like they don't understand the neuroscientific mechanism
• 33:24
  behind all this, they just feel all these things. But at a biochemical level, this is what's showing
• 33:30
  up. So then, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, then there's two sides to it. It's okay. Yes, I want
• 33:35
  more of this in my life, but where's the opportunity? How can I build something like this
• 33:39
  in my business? Because if the world is starving for this, and the central thesis of the book is
• 33:44
  the idea that I describe as the double craving. What your body, what your heart, and what your
• 33:48
  spirit are starving for right now is the same thing your market is starving for. And if you
• 33:54
  learn how to answer that call for yourself, then you can find the way to deliver it to others. And
• 34:00
  living authentically and achieving financial success are not at odds with one another. Pulling
• 34:05
  you apart, tearing you apart in two different directions. They can be aligned, but it does
• 34:10
  require taking the road less travel. That does require thinking outside the box. It does require
• 34:15
  all of these things. But there's a path. And the path I'm living is one of a million variations of
• 34:22
  that. Like it's not. I'm not trying to prescribe move to a farm, grow your own food in Vermont. It's
• 34:27
  not that at all. It's it's this was my version. You have your version. Figure out what that thing is
• 34:33
  and frickin do. It and do it before you get forced. Right? Because there is a choice path as well. You
• 34:39
  know, as I was coaching one of our, um, lawyers yesterday and she said I
• 34:46
  and she knows that what you are saying is true. And she says I need to optimize for creating
• 34:51
  in-person experiences. I need to buy a building right now in my town where I can start to
• 34:58
  host community events, community gatherings. We can even have micro businesses that, you know, people
• 35:04
  own in the community. And yes, that is exactly the right track is like, how can we create more local,
• 35:11
  more community with our businesses at the center of it in a way that feels really good for
• 35:18
  us? And you're also doing that on the farm right now? Right. That the farm has a business aspect, not
• 35:24
  just growing food for the family, not just writing the book. What else are you what else are you
• 35:29
  doing there? Yeah. I mean, um, when we. Yeah, when we bought this property, I bought this property with
• 35:36
  the vision that we would take people here, and I didn't quite know what that meant. Like, we had
• 35:40
  nothing yet. We didn't, we? You know, this the this was an old, forgotten hill farm. So it's a farm
• 35:45
  that dates back to the 1800s. It was farmed for many, many years. And then it was forgotten about
• 35:50
  and just sort of became a second home where the fields went fallow, forest started taking over all
• 35:55
  the pastures. And, um, it's a beautiful piece of land, but it has not been conventionally aged.
• 36:02
  There's no conventional agriculture lasts a hundred years. Yeah. So it was it was a needle in
• 36:06
  the haystack to find it. But we had this I had this vision to bring it back to life. And and I
• 36:11
  wanted to take people here so they could experience what that feels like and find their
• 36:18
  version of that. So, you know, every month or so I host a private client days here. We
• 36:25
  host small group masterminds here on site so people can actually like, for example, in a in
• 36:30
  about a month from now, we we're having a group here and they're going to experience what I
• 36:36
  described as as, as real farm to table food, not the green washed version that you get at the,
• 36:43
  um, the restaurant at the, you know, the shopping center that says it's farm to table, which is just
• 36:48
  filled. With it, with plastic around it. The chickens that I raised 100ft from where we're
• 36:55
  standing, uh, and the greens in the, in the kitchen garden right there, and the carrots that I'm going
• 37:00
  to pull out with my hands that are still going to have dirt on them, that is farm to table like that
• 37:05
  is real farm to table and and to experience the energy signature that, that, that that transference
• 37:12
  of energy that takes place in that moment is. It's it's I mean, it sounds trite trying to convey it
• 37:18
  in a conversation like this, but when you're in the moment and you experience it, you say, oh, this
• 37:23
  is what I've been missing. How how do I get more of that? And I think that for me, like that is the
• 37:30
  that is my drug of choice is chasing that. Like, how do you get more of the real. How do you
• 37:37
  get more real? How do you get more of it in our lives? I think we're all craving it. It means
• 37:40
  different things to different people, but we all want more real, less of the abstraction, the
• 37:45
  synthetic, less of living life by proxy, less of just staring at a screen and experiencing the
• 37:51
  world through this tiny little window. But but hands in the dirt, um, touch Earth before touching
• 37:57
  a screen. More time with God made things. Less time with man made things. I mean, there's just so many
• 38:01
  ways to interpret it. Um, that's the thesis of the book. I think there's a generational pivot that's
• 38:06
  taking place. It's not an old people nostalgic for time when we were kids. It's showing up in young
• 38:12
  people. It's showing up in Gen Alpha, in Gen Z, it's showing up in young people who are saying they
• 38:17
  don't want what's been prescribed to them. They want something different. Um, it's showing up in a
• 38:23
  lot of the backlash toward AI. It's like people are anti-technology per se, but they're sort of
• 38:28
  anti everything around it the destruction of the environment, the, um, abdication of human thought.
• 38:34
  It's like all of the negative consequences in AI. I'm not an AI anti AI absolutist by any stretch.
• 38:41
  Um, I think the truth is in the tension of it all, but it's showing up in all these corners
• 38:46
  homesteading, homeschooling, the fire movements. It's just all these different iterations of what
• 38:52
  I describe as return to real, um, is, uh, and it's not just us. It's showing up in their movements in
• 38:59
  China, the lying flat movement in China, their movements in South America, movements in Japan.
• 39:04
  It's showing up everywhere all at once. Um, so I think we're at this inflection point, I really do.
• 39:10
  And I think if you're an entrepreneur, if you're kind of trying to plan for what's coming next,
• 39:15
  this is one of these movements that I think there's an opportunity to get ahead of. And
• 39:19
  whether it's buying a building in your town and being that center of community. Um, you know, as we
• 39:25
  as we head into what I describe as, um, this great bifurcation, where on the one hand, there's more
• 39:32
  and more of what we currently spend money on that's going to be free. And I think it's super
• 39:36
  relevant for lawyers. I write about actually an attorney, um, client of mine who, um, whose
• 39:43
  world was completely disrupted. And I think for attorneys like that's the reality is that if I
• 39:47
  can just go to ChatGPT or Claude to write a contract and it's
• 39:54
  good enough, why am I keeping my my, my lawyer on retainer? Why am I
• 40:00
  keeping my state, you know, attorney, in my world, there has to be something more than just the
• 40:07
  transaction of drafting up a trust document or writing up a contract. There has to be
• 40:14
  something that that binds me in a deeper way. And I think it comes down to, um, you know, real
• 40:20
  connection with the real human being that you trust in real life. Well, and that has a system and
• 40:25
  process for supporting you in a true, true counsel. Right. So
• 40:32
  my, my, my vision 20 years ago was like to bring back the idea of the, you know, hometown country
• 40:38
  lawyer. But in today's day and age, you have to specialize. You can't be a generalist like that.
• 40:44
  Well, now you can actually. Right. You you can you can be this kind of
• 40:51
  hometown country lawyer again. But you do have to have the systems and processes. And now with
• 40:56
  technology, it's so exciting that it all comes together because the technology can make it so
• 41:01
  that we can produce the document in a way that, you know, to actually used to take us quite a long
• 41:07
  time. When you think about it, you know, 25, 30 years ago, in order for a lawyer to create a document,
• 41:12
  they had to put a triplicate doc, you know, a piece of paper in a typewriter
• 41:19
  and type every word and use whiteout if they missed, you know, misspelled something and
• 41:26
  then go back and and that was how we produced documents. And so it made sense that documents
• 41:31
  were expensive. And then this weekend I spent this past weekend, the full weekend. So it was quite a
• 41:38
  lot of time that I put into this. But I created a template for a document, I call it the Stewards
• 41:43
  Trust, that used to cost anywhere between 10 to $25,000. If you went to a lawyer to get this
• 41:50
  particular kind of trust that can own your assets and create asset protection and, um, an airtight
• 41:56
  kind of asset protection that you can't give yourself because it has to come from your parents
• 41:59
  and this whole thing. It would cost you 10 to $25,000 just to get that. And now I'm like, okay,
• 42:06
  I just created this. It is template ized. Now, what is the right thing for me to do
• 42:13
  with it as a business woman, as an entrepreneur, as someone who cares a lot about the commons, as
• 42:19
  somebody who wants to make sure that this is used in a good way. Um, as you know, somebody who is
• 42:25
  giving my lawyers a new model for counseling, what is the right way to embed this
• 42:31
  technology with a system and process around it, so that the person who is using this trust in their
• 42:38
  business can become a true counselor? Using the trust to actually educate as an educational tool
• 42:44
  to to create a model of stewardship around resources, that I think that we just have not been
• 42:51
  able to do, especially those of us that have between and I would say, you know, you and me, we
• 42:57
  fit in this category. You know, people who have 1 to 30 million in assets.
• 43:04
  We have not had the time or the focus to be able to actually steward what we
• 43:11
  have. We get, you know, a document from a lawyer, we get insurance from an insurance person, we get
• 43:18
  investment advice from our guy. We get tax advice from some other guy. They're generally not all
• 43:24
  talking to each other. We can't afford a family office because that's, you know, for billionaires.
• 43:29
  And and we're trying to steward these resources in a way that we're not actually educated to do.
• 43:35
  You know, for you, private equity comes in. I think I remember you saying some, you know, years ago
• 43:40
  that you'd worked with, you know, a real you know, that you were working with a real fancy firm in
• 43:44
  different ways, maybe investment banking, maybe, you know, high end estate planning, whatever it was. I
• 43:49
  know that the plans that you were putting in place are likely to fail when your family
• 43:53
  actually needs them, because it's all fragmented. So, you know, it's like, okay, how do we use this
• 43:58
  technology to create real value in these professional services so that the thing like
• 44:05
  the document can be produced very quickly. But the but the thing underlying the document, which in my
• 44:12
  case is stewardship is really what we now have time for. It's the council, it's the stewardship.
• 44:18
  It's the education of the kids. It's the integration of the parents. So those are the
• 44:22
  things that we're looking at of like, what do we do with these professional service providers who
• 44:28
  cannot just file tax returns anymore, who can't just sell an insurance policy or, you know, a
• 44:33
  document, but actually have to be real counselors to their clients? Is that what you're seeing? Kind
• 44:38
  of things shift in the in the legal profession like now that like even as an attorney, you know,
• 44:43
  it's probably easier to draft legal documents than it was, like you said, you know, years ago. And
• 44:48
  then you've got laypeople who would otherwise be clients thinking, all right, I'm going to spend an
• 44:53
  amount of money to have this drafted. I'll just whatever it's I'll use ChatGPT. It's good enough,
• 44:57
  you know, for whatever this case. And of course, there's going to be, you know, I'm talking about, um,
• 45:03
  individual, uh, family clients, not necessarily multinational organizations that have, you know,
• 45:09
  billions of dollars at stake. They're going to, you know, they're going to still employ a legal team.
• 45:13
  Yeah. Even the individual family clients, like I think about your parents. Like, we could talk about
• 45:17
  your parents. They are simple people. They've lived in the same house for 50 years, right. If you draft
• 45:24
  their legal document, maybe it'll work because you, their son did it, and you're smart, and you could
• 45:31
  put in the time to sit with them and engage with the AI and make some good
• 45:38
  choices that when they become incapacitated or die, is not going to cause you to get stuck in the
• 45:43
  court system. But in most cases, most cases, even with the most simple
• 45:50
  situations, it's not going to be done right, even, by the way, by a traditional lawyer who's just
• 45:56
  going to give you a set of documents that you put on a shelf in a drawer you never look at again,
• 45:59
  they're going to go to a lawyer, they're going to spend three, 4 or $5000. They're going to get a
• 46:04
  fancy binder. They're going to put it on a shelf or in a drawer. You're not going to find out until
• 46:08
  they become incapacitated or start to have cognitive decline. And then it's too late or they
• 46:13
  die. And now you're like, ah, okay, what what am I going to sit at their house
• 46:20
  and wait for their mail to come to even know what they owned? And maybe it wasn't a lot, but it was
• 46:26
  something, and it was enough that it's now going to suck you into a court context. That just takes
• 46:32
  so much time. And so really because of AI, for for us, our whole model gets to change
• 46:39
  in a way where it's like, oh, okay, I actually get to sit down and have a conversation with my
• 46:44
  parents and show them that, okay, number one, we should not wait until you die to pass
• 46:51
  anything on. The process should be starting now. We should be in a conversation about how
• 46:58
  do you want the end of your life to be because you're looking at the end of your life and it
• 47:03
  could be a year. It could be 30 years. You know, people are living longer, but 30 years goes fast,
• 47:09
  as we know and you know, and a lot of that could be in a cognitive decline context. And what do you
• 47:15
  want? How do you want to live during that time. You know, so these are like I think the conversations
• 47:21
  that we now actually have time for that maybe we didn't have time for before because we
• 47:28
  were just also busy. I see the shift. Yeah. It's less about just like transactional me using a
• 47:33
  template ized, um, you know, set of estate planning documents, um, or powers of attorney and
• 47:40
  just like, all right, wham, bam. Done. Okay. Next client. Wham, bam. Done. Okay. Next client. It's like,
• 47:45
  actually, you know, I think it's a case that I write about in, in in the book about, Um, it's sort
• 47:52
  of adjacent to the space that you play in, which is just with concierge medicine, that there's a
• 47:57
  whole segment of the world that just wants a doctor they can talk to that they trust. That's
• 48:01
  not being like the Lazy Susan model, where you're just like going from one specialist to another.
• 48:06
  Nobody actually knows who you are. And it's not that the doctors don't care, it's just that they
• 48:11
  have to get an appointment done in 11 minutes. And if it takes 12 minutes, it's a problem. And so like
• 48:17
  I can see there being like a concierge law type analog to concierge medicine that
• 48:24
  will continue to emerge where it's less technical in the sense, but it is more relationship. It's
• 48:30
  hard. We call it relational law. Um, the model that I'm developing is called Lifted Advisor. So it's
• 48:37
  the it's the person who holds your legal, insurance, financial and tax reality with you. And
• 48:41
  it's very human centric with the tech layer. Um, uh, functional health for your family
• 48:48
  wealth is, uh, current, a current tagline that we're playing with, and it's really
• 48:54
  exciting. Um, because it really does bring together this, this knowing that
• 49:01
  I've had for so long of this like, town lawyer context, but we really didn't have the technology
• 49:08
  for it, and now we do. So a lawyer can can really be that lifted advisor that that
• 49:15
  is holding it all with you and give all of us access to family office type counsel because we
• 49:22
  have all those same things, you know, and and yet the middle is shrinking because we're paying
• 49:29
  too much in taxes. We're buying insurance products that don't end up paying off for us. We're
• 49:34
  invested in the wrong things. We're making legal mistakes that get us stuck in court while the, you
• 49:40
  know, people who are wealthy enough to avoid all that can. And then, you know, everybody else, I guess,
• 49:45
  becomes poor again. You know, ultimately. And so it's like, okay, let's save the middle. Um, because,
• 49:52
  you know, ultimately I think that the middle is most of us. And it turns out we control
• 49:58
  $62 trillion, $62 trillion out of the 124 trillion that's
• 50:05
  transferring. And most of us are just cut, you know, kind of oblivious to what to do
• 50:12
  with it. Hopefully we'll move to farms and or at least support our local farmers. Um, you know,
• 50:19
  but a lot of people are going to stay in the city. They're, you know, it's like, okay, how do we how do
• 50:24
  we do what you've done? Uh, and and what I did without having to walk away from all
• 50:31
  of it and move to a farm, you know, and, and and I'm imagining that Return to real is
• 50:38
  going to speak to a lot of people's hearts about how we can do this. Well, I think you're I mean,
• 50:44
  that's that's immediately what came to mind when you were describing that model, as I see that
• 50:48
  model as an example of return to real. It's going back to actually knowing your clients,
• 50:55
  having the time and space to instead of sitting in front of a computer screen with a document
• 51:00
  that you're drafting and however many hours you would spend doing that. Being able to spend that
• 51:04
  same amount of time face to face with the client, talking and walking through and not having to
• 51:11
  jump to that next document. So it is a lot more time with the humans and less time with the
• 51:18
  technology, because the technology takes the grunt work part of it. That was probably for
• 51:25
  many attorneys, maybe not the favorite part of the work. I mean, I speak for myself and the clients
• 51:30
  that I'm aware of and be able to do more of what, um, you know, they really want to do, which is to
• 51:34
  help people and, and take really great care of them. So, yeah, I see this as, as, as a, a
• 51:41
  variation on the return to real theme. And I think it's really cool. Thank you. thank you. So for those
• 51:47
  that want to return to real. Um, what's the best place? I I'm imagining there's somewhere better
• 51:53
  than go to Amazon and buy the book. Yeah. If you go. To return to real book com.
• 52:00
  Um, we have a this is a special hardcover edition that's only available on the website. It's not
• 52:06
  available on Amazon or anywhere else. We wanted to do an actual, um, a book you could hold in your
• 52:12
  hands that is really special. I think this is a book that, um, that some will really enjoy having a
• 52:19
  chance to hold. I've hand illustrated the entire book, so it's actually it's human made in as many
• 52:25
  ways as it possibly can, even though it's, you know, at scale and, um, yeah, return to real book.
• 52:32
  Com I think there are a lot of interesting insights that, um,
• 52:39
  you can take from this and apply in your life personally and then also in your business as well.
• 52:45
  And it's what we all need to do. It really is. I mean, this is this is really the future. And I will
• 52:50
  say that, you know, Ryan, you got. You got ahead of it. And in many respects, because life forced you
• 52:55
  to do it. And if we can choose, it's just going to be an easier path. The good news is,
• 53:02
  is that I do believe it is what life is wanting for all of us is this path towards
• 53:07
  interdependence. And that's what you've described is like life wants us all to become more and more
• 53:12
  interdependent, and it's going to force us or it's going to, you know, or we're going to be able to
• 53:17
  choose it, and it will be easier if we choose it. And if you fall and if you're forced, you'll know
• 53:22
  you'll be okay as well. But get the return to real book and return to real book and get the actual
• 53:29
  one you can hold in your hands. I'm going to do that. I read everything digitally. I'm going to get
• 53:33
  the actual book I can hold in my hands, specifically because it is a return to real, and I
• 53:39
  think there will be something for me in that. So thanks for encouraging people to do that. Yeah.
• 53:44
  Thank you so much, Ryan. And thank you to all of you who are really looking at what can we do. What
• 53:51
  is our role in this great wealth transfer? If this spoke to you, please share it with someone.
• 53:56
  Subscribe wherever you are watching and go on the other platforms as well, and subscribe to because
• 54:02
  we'll just help get it out to more people. And most importantly, I would say share this with your
• 54:07
  adult kids. If you have adult kids or with your parents and let it help you get into the
• 54:13
  conversation, because that is really one of the most important things that I think that we can be
• 54:17
  doing right now is talking to the people that we love about what matters most. So thank you for
• 54:23
  doing that. Thank you for doing your part. Ryan, thank you so much for being here. What a joy to
• 54:27
  reconnect. And I'm going to have to come out to visit you on the farm anytime. So thanks, Ryan.
• 54:34
  Thanks for doing it. And thank you all for being here. Bye bye for now.