Ryan Lee is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker, success coach and the founder of ryanlee.com. He started his first web site back in 1999. He grew that one fitness site into a multi-million dollar empire. Ryan is the author of 2 books “The Millionaire Workout” and “Turn Your Passion to Profits”. There is simply so much more, but I will now turn it over to the man, the myth, the legend, Ryan Lee.

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Resource Mentioned:

Your Big Idea: Successful Entrepreneurs have One Big Idea. Follow JLD’s FREE training & you’ll discover Your Big Idea in less than an hour!

Success Quote

“Success is the ability to do what you want, whenever you want, as often as you want.” – Jack Canfield.

Business Failure

Ryan has launched a TON of incredibly successful products. So you would think he has a good handle on what will succeed and what won’t, right? Listen close, and you might be a little surprised…

Entrepreneurial AHA Moment

Part of optimizing your business is taking yourself out of the equation… in certain areas. Find out how Ryan does this while still maximizing his profitability.

Current Business

Ryan shares an exciting product with Fire Nation before anyone else. Listen to how he is breaking down all the barriers of Entrepreneurship and taking away any excuse one may have for not pursuing their passion.

Small Business Resources

Basecamp: Project management software, online collaboration.

Best Business Book

Rework by Jason Fried.
Built to Sell by John Warrillow.

Interview Links

Ryan Lee’s site
Ryan’s membership site – (Sorry! This link was active when this episode was first published in 2013. This resource is no longer available.)
Click Bank

Killer Resources!

1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!

2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!

3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!

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Full Transcript

John Lee Dumas: Hire Fire Nation and thank you for joining me for another episode of EntrepreneurOnFire.com, your daily dose of inspiration. If you enjoy this free podcast, please show your support by leaving a rating and review here at iTunes. I will make sure to give you a shout out on an upcoming showing to thank you!

John Lee Dumas: Okay. Let’s get started. I am simply ecstatic to introduce my guest today, Ryan Lee. Ryan, are you prepared to ignite?

Ryan Lee: I am ready to ignite the world! Let’s go!

John Lee Dumas: My man! Ryan is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, success coach, and the founder of RyanLee.com. He started his first website way back in 1999. He grew that one finite site into a multimillion dollar empire. Ryan is the author of two books, “The Millionaire Workout” and “Turn Your Passion to Profits.” There are simply so much more, but I will turn it over to the man, the myth, the legend, Ryan Lee. Ryan, why don’t you take it from here and tell us who you are and what you do?

Ryan Lee: As you said, my name is Ryan. Thank you for the intro.

John Lee Dumas: Welcome!

Ryan Lee: Yes. I mean it’s hard when people say to me, what do you do? I just say, “I’m not exactly sure.”

John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]

Ryan Lee: I help a lot of people. Your show is about igniting, igniting entrepreneurs. That’s what I love to do. I love to just help people truly find their passion and build businesses around it. So I started off online in the fitness world because I was a personal trainer. I started doing online training. I built membership sites for my own products. Let me just preface that. I am not a techie at all. I outsource all these stuff. It started growing and growing, and my business started becoming really successful. This was back in like 2000. I started getting emails from other personal trainers saying, “Hey, if you could do this, can you help me?” I said, “Sure. I could show you how to do this. I love teaching this stuff.” So then all of a sudden, I started to become the guy who taught personal trainers how to build a business online. It started to grow and I helped all the big names in the fitness industry now. It’s kind of a lot of them have started through me, and it went beyond that.

So then people outside of the fitness industry, people who were teachers, accountants, attorneys, just people working in a corporate job, financial advisers, real estate agents, started saying, “Well, if you can help trainers build a business through membership sites and learn traffic, then you could help me.” I’m like, “Of course. As long as you’re passionate about a topic, I could help you.” So now I’m known as the guy who basically helps people build their online businesses. The difference between me and some other “gurus” is that I still practice what I preach because I’m still running my fitness businesses. So I’m still always testing and trying new programs and trying to innovate. So I’m just having fun.

The most important thing to me is my wife and we have four young children. Their age is three, five, seven and nine. So the ability for me to just build my businesses and help other people – and I literally work every morning from Starbucks from like 9 to noon – and that’s pretty much my day. So I just get in there and crank it out. I’m all about leverage. Finding ways to leverage your income more so you don’t have to literally trade hours for dollars.

John Lee Dumas: I love that. You started this off on such an inspiring note. We’re going to use that to transition to the next topic, which is our success quote. We usually use this to get the motivational ball rolling and to get Fire Nation excited, but I can tell you what, Fire Nation is already pumped up with that intro that you gave us. We are already ready to go. But still, Ryan, I know you have a great success quote for us. Lay it on us.

Ryan Lee: It’s funny because I love quotes. I’m such a fan of too many different quotes, but there was one that really stuck out with me. I’ve read it a couple of years ago. It’s by Jack Canfield who wrote “The Success Principles” who I’ve met a bunch of times. Someone asked him, what’s your definition of success, and he had said, “Success is the ability to do what you want, whenever you want, as often as you want.” That’s what it really to me is about. So for me, it’s never been about, oh, I need to have $100 million in the bank or I need to do this or that. It’s just about doing what I want. With me, it’s having the free time and spending it with my family and building a business around what I love to do. So that one has always stuck with me.

John Lee Dumas: So you’ve already given us a great example of how you apply that quote to your life. You go to Starbucks. You crank it for three hours. You come back. Then you can prioritize anything else you have to do with your life, be it an interview on EntrepreneurOnFire.com or whatever. How do you apply this quote to your clients’ lives?

Ryan Lee: That’s a great question, John. I always start off figuring out what’s important to them and trying to find out what really motivates them because sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, I want to make $10,000 a month.” Okay. Well, why? Why do you want to make $10,000 a month? Oh, I want to do this, this and this. Well, why? Because I work from 6 AM till 9 PM and I never see my kids, so I want the freedom. Okay. So that’s what it is. It’s about building a business around your lifestyle.

So just kind of figuring out what it is you want, and then being really specific on the goals. If you want to have that freedom, what number is going to get you there? Because as a personal trainer, we were always driven by goals. This client wants to lose seven pounds in X amount of weeks or take three inches off the waist, whatever the goal is, or lose 13 pounds by their 20^th year high school reunion. But with business, especially for entrepreneurs, we never put a number on it. It’s funny because I always say to people, what’s your number? Like what your goal? And they don’t have one. How do you know if you’re even heading in the right direction? So you have to have your goal.

I have a little thing that we do. Okay. So whatever your goal is. Let’s say I want to build a membership site and I want to have 1,000 members pay $20 a month, which is not unrealistic, right? That’s $20,000 a month. Okay. That’s your goal. Within what timeframe do you want to get there? Okay. Within eight months. Okay. Let’s work on that. Now, everything that comes your way, every opportunity, everything that gets put in front of you, you have to ask yourself one simple question. Is me saying yes to this, is this going to move me closer to my goal or further away from my goal? That’s it. It’s either going to move you closer to your goal or further away from your goal. If it’s moving you further away from your goal, don’t do it.

So I’m really religious on that. That’s why you’ve got to learn to say no to a lot. As entrepreneurs, we get so many opportunities. We keep saying yes, yes, yes. I know I went off tangent a little bit about your original question, but it’s truly about knowing what you want and building everything around that and not getting distracted with everything else that comes on your radar, especially with all the emails you get flooded with with buy this, buy that. Buy this and make a million dollars on Facebook. Buy this and make a million dollars on YouTube. No, not YouTube. Now make a million dollars on Pinterest. It’s like you don’t know what to do, you don’t know who to trust, you don’t know where to turn. So just get focused on what you really want and just move closer towards that goal.

John Lee Dumas: Ryan, EntrepreneurOnFire loves tangents. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about your insights, your inspiration, your journey. I’m going to use that to transition to our next topic, which is failure. Again, EntrepreneurOnFire is about the journey, and your journey as an entrepreneur, like every entrepreneur’s journey, has failures or any way you want to define that word, which can be a challenge, overcoming an obstacle. We all face this in some way, shape or form every day. Let’s go back for Fire Nation to a time when you really faced a very difficult obstacle and how you reacted to that.

Ryan Lee: That’s the thing. When you’re a true entrepreneur, I mean people talk. They throw around the word “entrepreneur” a lot, but I don’t think people really get it. When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to have to take risks. There’s always going to be a certain amount of risk, and the greater the risk in general, the greater the reward. So I’ve had a lot of successes, I admit, but I’ve also had a ton of projects where I had put a month or two of like solid work. I launch it and it just bombs.

I mean there was one I did about two years ago that was just I was so excited for it. I couldn’t wait. Like this is going to transform the industry and it was just a complete utter failure. From the first minute I launched it, I knew, because I know my numbers. I know when I launch something, I’m going to get a certain amount of sales within the first hour. That’s just the way it works. I knew right away, oh my God, this is not good. I just have to get real with myself. Right? I’d say, okay, what happened? Why did this not work?

In that specific instance, it was because I was trying to force my own ideals and try to guess what people want. I didn’t ask them. No one ever said to me they wanted this type of solution. No one ever said that, but I just assumed people wanted it. That was a huge learning thing for me. Don’t assume. Just ask. People say to me all the time when I do coaching, “Well, Ryan, I don’t know. I have this great content. Should I make this a membership site or should I make it like a one-time product, or do I make it like a DVD set?” I said, “Well, did you ask your list? Did you ask your friends on Facebook, the people who buy this?” “No.” “Well, how am I supposed to know? You’re selling to chiropractors. I’m not a chiropractor. You have to ask them.” They go, “Oh yes.”

So that was a big learning lesson. Then the other thing is that – and I’m not trying to brag, but I think one of my strengths is the ability that when I fail – I don’t even call them failures. They’re setbacks. They’re challenges. When that happens, I always, always immediately – I’ll just look at it for like two minutes, be bummed for about five, and then doze myself off and get up and get ready to fight. Like if I was a boxer, if I’m knocked down, I’m getting my ass right back up and I’m swinging. So it never, ever slows me down even for more than five minutes.

There are other entrepreneurs who’ll do it. They’ll launch something, it doesn’t go well, and they hang their head low and they hide away for months. You cannot do that, especially if you’re focusing on the Internet business, which is my specialty, is things move so fast, you’ve got to keep your feet moving, you’ve got to keep charging ahead, and don’t let it set you back. There are going to be times that there’s going to be setbacks and it’s going to feel like everything’s against you. Just look at all the good things you’ve accomplished and all the steps you’ve taken and what you’ve learned in the process, and just get up and learn from it and move forward and just keep making progress.

John Lee Dumas: Ryan, entrepreneurs in general are so scared of failure. That’s just one thing I stress over and over again to Fire Nation, is that listen, as an entrepreneur, it’s your job to fail. If you’re not failing, then you’re not learning from those mistakes. You’re not testing the boundaries, you’re not pushing the envelope and you’re not going to improve as a person, as a business, as an entrepreneur. Your goal should be to fail on some level every single day, learn from those failures and come back stronger and better. Do you apply that to your business?

Ryan Lee: Oh yes. Absolutely. I always like to do little teaching lessons. So for people who are really scared of failure, it’s usually because they’re just overwhelmed too with the amount of steps they’re going to have to take. So no matter what the project is – let’s say you want to write a book. Instead of thinking about it as this huge project, break it down into these short steps, and I always say celebrate these little small successes. So don’t be scared. Just celebrate the small things.

So maybe today, you’ve heard about, okay, you know you need a Facebook page and you want to start marketing. But instead of looking like, “Oh man, now I have to do 35 steps,” look at step number one. Step number one is just set up a Facebook account. Maybe that’s your whole goal for today. Today, I’m going to set up a Facebook account, and once I do, I’m going to treat myself to something good. Maybe for you, it could be something healthy like a good protein shake, or I’m going to treat myself to something good and I’m going to go shoot hoops or I’m going to go play tennis or whatever it is rather than celebrate with a beer, just trying to think of something good to do, or you’re going to treat yourself to the movies.

Then maybe tomorrow, you said, “Okay. Tomorrow, now I have an account. I’m going to set up my Facebook fan page,” and celebrate those little small successes. When you start doing that over and over again, that fear of failure dramatically starts to dissipate.

John Lee Dumas: So Ryan, we’re going to move on to the next topic, which is the aha moment, because as an entrepreneur, you are always having these little aha moments that are just inspiring you and moving you forward, and I can just tell from your personality that the way that you think and the way that you actually look at things, that you’re having aha moments all the time and you’re using them to push you forward and to improve your business. Can you go back to some point in your journey when you really had a clear aha moment? Maybe the clouds parted, maybe the sun shone through, and you just said, “Wow! This is it. This is going to resonate so well with my clients.” Can you share that with Fire Nation?

Ryan Lee: Sure. You’re right. It’s not a question. I mean, I have so many aha moments in a day. Like every day I’m having aha moments.

John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]

Ryan Lee: So I’ll give you one of my recent big aha moments. I was trying to redefine my business and get it away from just being about me. I’m a big fan of personality marketing and marketing yourself. I’m a huge fan of that. No matter what your name is, no matter what it is, you could always brand yourself. But I felt like my business was moving a little bit too much reliant on me, and I realized it recently. My wife and I, we celebrated her 40^th birthday, and myself and her, we took all the kids to Paris for 10 days. I realized that like man, the business is still pretty reliant on me.

So my aha moment was to create the new membership site that’s not based on me. So I called it FounderFly. Then just kind of taking the model of over delivering, over delivering, and completely simplifying the business. I read four or five of Steve Jobs’ books in the past month, and it just was clear. It’s like make it simple and just get it away from always being about me, Ryan Lee, and feed my ego. So that was my big aha moment with FounderFly, is just kind of getting away from that and making this simplified membership site. So far, it’s been working out great.

John Lee Dumas: Well, let’s get specific. You did say that your actions after that aha moment were to create FounderFly. It sounds like a very intriguing program. What actually is this and what steps did you take to implement?

Ryan Lee: So FounderFly is a membership site. So it is content, it’s a community for people who are like listening to this right now. People who are entrepreneurs and who want to be entrepreneurs. The goal was to give them one place where they can get everything they need. So I have dozens and dozens of training programs, like complete programs, everything from one hour videos to we did a workshop that we charged $10,000 a person. I put that entire eight hour workshop in the site. So you can go and watch training on whatever you need, plus a community.

So that was my goal. The steps I took were basically the steps I would just to build any site. The first thing was figuring out what’s the hook and what’s the name because that’s where a lot of people have issues in terms of building brands. Do you go with a generic name like MakeMoneyOnline.com, or do you with your own name like the Ryan Lee Inner Circle, or do you go with a completely made up name that you could brand? If you think of made up branded names, think about Google, Apple, although Apple isn’t made up. But you know what I’m saying. Names like Squidoo. Names that you can have and you can own on your own. So that’s why I chose that one, because I figured that’s something that could live beyond me when I’m gone, eventually. Hopefully, not for a long, long time. But when I am eventually, it’s the kind of thing that could live on beyond.

So getting the domain name, and then figuring out exactly how I want it to look and function. My whole thought was to make it simple, simple, simple. Inside, it’s basically like a forum where all the products, everything is on one page. Then I had my programmer that I’ve used over years and years. He’s not an employee. He’s a contractor. I contacted him and said, “Here’s what I want to do. What’s your quote?” Then I went with my graphics guy. They literally built it. I just managed it. Every day, they’d give me an update. I’d say, “Okay, this looks great. Could you just change this? Can you make this look here?”

I use ClickBank, which they process all the credit cards. I didn’t even need a merchant account, although I do have one. I wanted a business that could run on autopilot. That’s it. I kept teasing it for about a week or two, telling my members, “Hey, something big is coming, something big is coming.” Then we went live. Rock and roll! That’s it.

John Lee Dumas: Love it.

Ryan Lee: [Laughs] Now obviously, within each of those, if I truly went through it step by step and in every detail, I mean I could spend 15 hours going through everything, but for the time purposes, I tried to give the abbreviated version.

John Lee Dumas: I know. What I love about how you talk, and the speed and just the tonality, is you’re getting so much information in such a short period of time. So this is great. This is great information. This is a great pace. Let’s just continue to go with the flow. My next question is have you had an I’ve made it moment?

Ryan Lee: I don’t know how to answer that because I’m always striving. Like I’m never – and it’s not like I’m not satisfied. I’m so satisfied with what I have, but yet again, when I was working in the children’s hospital, that was my first job out of college. I thought I made it then. So I was really happy. Then when I moved to a job as a gym teacher, I was happy.

So I never felt like I didn’t make it. Like I’ve always been happy and I always know that no matter what happens, I’m going to land on my feet. Even if the Internet disappeared tomorrow, I know the next day, I’d be out there earning an income. To be honest, the fact that my wife and I get along and I’m able to volunteer coach as a soccer coach and lacrosse coach for my kids, we live in a great house in a great neighborhood, I don’t think there was one moment. I’ve just always felt really blessed with my health and with my life.

It’s funny. Working the first job in that children’s rehab hospital, I worked with kids of all different disabilities. Everything from Spina bifida to traumatic brain injuries to kids with awful things like scleroderma and cancer and seeing so many kids that I just get so attached to. You see them pass away at such a young age. It really, really makes you appreciate life. Like everyone that works there cannot – you just can’t get wrapped up in little things. Like if all of a sudden, your favorite show goes off the air, you’re not like crying. If your favorite sports team lose in the Super Bowl, you’re not going to go to work bummed the next day. Who cares? This kid is dying of cancer. They’re eight years old and their family is destroyed, and you’re worried about a [Expletive] football game? Like let’s get some priorities straight.

So I’ve always felt like that really always ground me. So I just count every blessing every day.

John Lee Dumas: I love that. It’s all about keeping things in perspective. I love your feedback on this because for Fire Nation we’re always talking about this potential I’ve made it moment, and I always am saying, listen, it’s so important to set goals, and then to achieve those goals. Then once you do achieve those goals, you want to turn around and then set another lofty goal to continue to move forward as an entrepreneur. But I always stress the importance of taking a deep breath, looking around, and really appreciating the achievement that you’ve done thus far. Really enjoying the journey that you’re taking and not just looking at each step as a destination. Do you concur?

Ryan Lee: Oh, absolutely. It’s all about the journey. I mean, I live in a community where pretty much everyone here, they’re all millionaires. A lot of them are in the investment banking world and hedge funds. Some of my friends, they’ll make – in the Internet world, if a guy is making a million dollars, they’re like, “Oh my God, he’s a massively successful guru!” I mean some of my friends could make five, six, seven, eight million dollar bonuses every year. So not a big deal. They continue to work just because they love it, because they love the challenge.

People say, “Well, Ryan, why don’t you retire?” I’m like, “Well, this is what I love to do. Everyone I know works. What am I going to do all day?” This is what I want to do. I can’t wait to wake up in the morning and go to Starbucks and start working on my blog and connect with people. So yes, you’re right. It’s all about the journey. Your life really doesn’t change that dramatically anyway past a certain income. There’s really no difference between a million dollars in the bank and 20 million. Maybe the toys will be a little bit bigger, but you have to figure out, what do you really need to survive? So yes, it is about the journey. Great point.

John Lee Dumas: I love that, Ryan. Let’s use that to move into the next topic, which is your current business. I mean you have so many great things going on. You’re so self-inspired by your own business, which in turn, just inspires so many others. I love that. But what is one thing, just one thing, that’s really exciting you about your business right now?

Ryan Lee: I’m working on a couple of different exciting projects. One, which no one knows about this yet, which I’m excited about because I cannot stop having ideas. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to just do one thing and focus on one thing, and I’ve come to the realization I just can’t. I just physically cannot do it. I get depressed if I’m just doing one thing. So I need to always be doing new things. My strength is being able to create new brands and new hooks. I’ve created dozens and dozens of really cool brands and hooks for other people and for myself, but there’s only so many businesses I can do.

So what I’m creating is a new agency where all of these ideas I have for businesses in terms of finding a great domain name, finding a really cool hook, I’m literally going to create the name, the brand and everything, and then give it to people. Like a done for you brand. Like if you want to buy whatever this domain name is with the logo ready to go, here’s the domain name, here’s the logo, depending on the quality of it, for like a thousand bucks. You’re ready to go. You’ve got the brand. Now, we just create the product. So I’m going to be launching that within a week or two, depending on when people listen to this. So I’m really excited about that. That, to me, just gets me excited.

Like even this morning, I was looking at about ten new domain names and was creating new logos for them. So it’s going to be a cool way for people who have an idea, but they’re like, “Oh man, I can’t find a good name. I can’t find a good hook.” So there’s no excuse now. For like a thousand bucks, it’s yours. You’re ready to go. You don’t have to worry about getting the logo done. So that’s just one of my 2,000 ideas that I’m launching.

John Lee Dumas: Okay. Well, we’re going to use that right now. You are so excited about this, the current, present part of your business. This is just over the tip of the horizon. It’s about to be out. In fact, when people listen to this, it will already be out in the public. So this is what’s going on in your business right now that you’re truly excited about. You’re a man of ideas, Ryan. Give us something over the horizon that you see in the future. What is your vision for the future of Ryan Lee?

Ryan Lee: I am going to make definitely more and more companies and programs that are not necessarily linked to me that are not just about me and my brand. So building real, true systems that could be duplicated. I’ve also started hiring some new people, some new virtual assistants. I’m going to have some new ideas for companies. I get it up, I launch it within two or three days, hire them, and they run the whole company. All the companies are going to focus on my favorite thing in the world, which is recurring revenue, or in the Internet marketing world, we call it “continuity income.” So it’s just going to be building those over and over and over and replicating it, and then hiring someone just to manage everything and just build a really cool brand of companies that are going to help impact millions and millions of entrepreneurs. That’s just over the horizon.

John Lee Dumas: I love where your head’s at as far as scalability. That’s what it’s all about in this day and age, and you just have some really exciting things going on in that area. Ryan, we’ve now reached my favorite part of the show. We’re about to enter the Lightning Round. This is where I provide you with a series of questions and you come back with amazing and mind-blowing answers. Does that sound like a plan?

Ryan Lee: Yes, or I can come up with really crappy answers, but I’ll try to do the amazing and mind-blowing ones. Let’s go.

John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] It’ll definitely be one of the two, I’m sure.

Ryan Lee: Yes. Alright.

John Lee Dumas: What was the number one thing that was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Ryan Lee: The security of a job. The security of a paycheck. Getting paid every two weeks, having the benefits. That was definitely the biggest thing holding me back.

John Lee Dumas: What is the best business advice you ever received?

Ryan Lee: It’s all about marketing. That’s it. You’ve got to always continue to drive traffic and promote your business. No one’s going to do it for you. You’ve got to do it.

John Lee Dumas: Love it. What’s something that’s working for you or your business right now?

Ryan Lee: Continuing to focus on the customer experience and just constantly making sure that everything I do, it’s over delivering. It’s not just about launching one crappy product. It’s about launching good stuff and continuing to keep people in the loop and just really, really blowing them away. Like not creating a program and putting my head down and saying, “Oh man, I hope they don’t know it’s me,” but creating something where they’re like, “This is the greatest program ever. Not only do I love it. I’m going to go out and tell 20 friends that they’ve got to join this too.”

John Lee Dumas: Ryan, you are self-admittedly not a tech guy, but you’re always online. You’re always staying current on all these different ideas. Do you have one Internet resource like an Evernote that you would recommend to Fire Nation?

Ryan Lee: Yes. Great question. I’ve got about a dozen, but I’ll give you one. I use it every day now. I started using it again about two months ago. Basecamp. It’s like a management – I don’t even know what they call it.

John Lee Dumas: CRM, yes.

Ryan Lee: Yes. Like a CRM. I manage everything through there. I work with all my different programmers, designers, virtual assistants. Everything goes through Basecamp now. There’s just one place to log in that have all my documents. It has completely transformed my business.

John Lee Dumas: Yes. Jason Fried over at 37signals, we’re getting those guys on the show. They are just awesome. They’re the exact kind of people that you’re talking about. They are always going out to their clients, to their audience, and asking, asking, asking, what do you want, what do you want, and then they’re implementing it. So that’s why Basecamp, Highrise, their different CRM programs that they have instituted, are just so good at working with the individual.

Ryan Lee: Oh yes. I’ve read their books. I love their book, “Rework.” I thought it was brilliantly done. I agree with like 99% of the points they made. Whatever it is, just simplify it. That’s the biggest trend you see right now. No matter what market you’re selling to, no matter what product it is, people are just busy. Just stop trying to overcomplicate it. Just make it simple and save people time. That’s a huge, huge thing.

John Lee Dumas: Love it. Rework is awesome. It’s been recommended on the show as a book more than one time. What is another business book that you would really recommend that you’ve read in the last six months?

Ryan Lee: I’ll give you one. In terms of keeping on that theme of a replicatable business and something that’s scalable, I thought a really well done book was called “Built to Sell” by John Warrillow. Built to Sell. It’s a parable talking about a story. A fictional guy and how he builds his business and it’s a saleable business. I thought it was really well done. So keeping in the theme of this talk, I’ll say that one.

John Lee Dumas: Awesome!

Ryan Lee: I can give a hundred more, but I’ll stick to that.

John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] We will link that up in the show notes for sure. I’m sure it’s a great book. I’m excited. It’ll be on my Kindle Fire tonight.

Ryan Lee: Yes. It’s very cool.

John Lee Dumas: So Ryan, this is my last question, and it’s my favorite one, but it’s kind of tricky. So take your time, digest it, before you come back with a great answer. If you woke up tomorrow morning and you still had all of the experience, knowledge and money that you currently have today, but your business had completely disappeared, forcing you to start essentially with a clean slate, which many of our listeners, Ryan, find themselves in right now, what would you do?

Ryan Lee: I would do exactly the thing I’m talking about right on the horizon the stuff I’m building now, is create solutions for people. Keep your mouth closed. I would target professions. So whether it’s personal trainers, chiropractors, doctors, lawyers, accountants, real estate, a specific profession as opposed to a mass consumer product, and I would build a simple solution for them and something that has some type of recurring payment. That’s it. Then just go after them. Even if it’s a $20 a month solution, if you go after them and you get 10 people a day, that’s $200 per day per month in revenue. After a few months, you’re looking at a six figure income.

John Lee Dumas: I love it, Ryan. That’s such a specific advice. It’s so actionable. It’s just perfect for Fire Nation. You’ve just given us actionable advice throughout the entire interview and we are all better for it. Give Fire Nation one parting piece of guidance, then give yourself a plug, and then we’ll say goodbye.

Ryan Lee: Surround yourself with positive people. Listening to this is a great example. Constantly learn. Continue to put yourself in this mode, but again, you got to stay away from the negative people because the people who tell you “I can’t,” it’s like a cancer. So stay with good people.

I guess the plug will be for my community that I built, which is all good people. That’s what I’m trying to attract. I don’t want to attract [Unintelligible]. It’s called FounderFly.com. Then just check out my site, RyanLee.com and get on my free newsletter. I put out a newsletter almost every single day. Always actionable content, I do tons of blogging, and I’m always there. I’m always on my blog, answering questions. So there you go.

John Lee Dumas: Awesome, Ryan. I will link all that up in the show notes. You’ve given us this great actionable advice. We salute you here at Fire Nation. Thank you so much, and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Ryan Lee: Thank you so much for having me. Everyone, good luck out there and go get them!