The ASK Method® Decoded: How to Truly Understand Your Audience with Ryan Levesque

Dustin: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Seven Figure Leap Podcast. I say this a lot, but I really, really mean it today. really excited about this interview. I finally get to connect with someone that I've admired from afar for probably over 15 years in a professional way, and more so recently in a personal way.
Dustin: And so, Ryan Levek is our special guest today. We'll talk a little bit about his business history and things. Seven Time Inc. 5,000 entrepreneur, two time national bestselling author. The credentials are there. when I think of Ryan, the thing I admire actually is he's a devoted husband. He is got two awesome kids.
Dustin: He's made some really drastic and I think, fruitful life decisions in service of what he's optimizing for right now in the season of his life. And that's really what I wanna mostly focus on today. So Ryan, first of all, just thanks for being here. Lots of gratitude. I'm glad we're able to connect here.
Dustin: We're in a group called Front Row Dads and we've danced around each other at, at different events, but we've never actually connected. So I'm really excited to have you here.
Ryan: Well, Dustin man, it's, an honor and, I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude to be able to have this conversation, so I'm really grateful for the invitation and excited for this conversation.
Dustin: [00:01:00] Awesome. Well, I think, it's necessary. I don't wanna spend a ton of time in the past, but I do want to give people context. Most people in the marketing world probably, know you or know some of your story, but wherever you think's appropriate, if you can give sort of that Cliff's Notes version of where you started with your entrepreneurial journey and kind of get us up to present day.
Dustin: And then we'll spend most of our time talking about what you're up to now and in future pacing for yourself and our audience about some of the things that you wanna share with us.
Ryan: Yeah, no, absolutely. So, I founded a company back in two. And eight that became the Ask Method company on the back of a book that I wrote called Ask. And it was book at the time when it was released, that became the number
one, marketing book of the years voted by Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Ryan: And when it released, it was the number one book in the country across all categories. And so it was sort of the seed that. Birth this business around this idea of instead of trying to figure out what people want, going through the process of understanding at a very deep emotional level what it is that your market truly desires, and then being able to serve at the absolute highest level.
Ryan: So [00:02:00] using a unique combination of surveys and quizzes and assessments, built a, business around that. Later built a software company, which was the marketing technology that, served at and collectively both businesses. As you mentioned, seven Time Inc. 5,000. And, in 2024 last year, we sold, our software company, to a strategic,
Ryan: buyer, who happened to be our number one competitor in the market, which is very
Ryan: interesting. experience. So our software technology, traded under the name bucket and we sold to a company called Score App in the uk, which was co-founded by Daniel Priestley.
Ryan: And today I sit on the board of advisors of that company and, and play a role, in that capacity. And, have made some pretty big life moves, in the last few years. So that's a short and sweet, 62nd
Dustin: That's beautiful and. I will just interject one little thing. So a lot of our audience are, they're experts in their field and they love marketing through relationships and partnerships and service. It's like service above all in the way that we treat our customers. I. [00:03:00] what I don't want people to get the impression is Ryan's only ever been in the ivory tower and had this massive business.
Dustin: when I started following you, you had an orchid company and like the plant, and so, you know, and you grew that very successfully, but that was like you and your wife. And so you know what it means in many seasons of your life to bootstrap. And you understand this journey from six figures to seven figures that a lot of our listeners are in currently, right?
Ryan: I mean the, slightly longer version. Is that, I started my business with $500 in my pocket and a laptop computer. And, you know, after I graduated
from college, I worked, I was, you know, working in a cubicle, I was working in insurance and, had a bit of a quarter life crisis where I just saw my future.
Ryan: As being, in a cubicle or in an office. And I thought, I saw my boss who was getting close to retirement. He was in his sixties, and I just saw the next 40 years of my life and I said like, I don't want that to be my life. And I had this fire inside of me to do something. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I wanted to do something.
Ryan: And so I started, a business. I learned at the time, this is [00:04:00] like in 2006, 2007, I learned about, online marketing and just all the skills that I didn't have, around building a business online. the, first market that we went into was the, most random of markets. So before the orchid business, we went into, the Scrabble tile jewelry business,
Ryan: teaching people how to make Scrabble tile jewelry.
Ryan: And, and that's when I learned the power of, selling education and training. And, the reason for that is, and this is like the instructive lesson here. in 2007, we came into this business the Scrabble top business, because we were, there's a brand new website at the time, which is obviously huge now, but it was a startup at the time called Etsy, etsy.com.
Ryan: so it was like a total startup at the time. But my wife was starting to follow the site and she saw this jewelry that was selling like crazy because on Etsy, like eBay, this is like a business lesson. You can see the sales of every seller on a day-to-day basis. And you can effectively like reverse engineer how much money someone's making by just, you know, tallying up, oh, 10 sales of [00:05:00] $25 in one day.
Ryan: Man, she's making 250 bucks a day selling this, Julia, that's not that bad, right? so she reverse engineered. The sales of this jewelry, and she said, this is sounding like crazy. We should sell this jewelry. And, and I thought, well, that's like not the business I want to be in, but all right, I'll consider it.
Ryan: And then a few weeks went by and then she came back to me again and said, look, I want to talk to you about that Scrabble tile thing again. And I said, yeah, but I just don't think that's the business that we wanna start. And she said, no, no, no. Time out, time out. Take a look at this woman here. And ironically,
this woman's first name was Ryan.
Ryan: It was a.
Ryan: Ryan a girl, right? And she was selling this tutorial on how to make this jewelry. And, my wife bought it. Frankly, it wasn't very good. It was like a Microsoft Word document that was barely formatted. It was like seven pages with spelling mistakes and homemade photos. I mean, it was really wasn't that great.
Ryan: But she was selling like 20 or to 30 a day. Of this digital tutorial that she was selling at the time for probably like 25 bucks. And then you do the math and you think she's making $500 a day, [00:06:00] almost all profit selling this. That's a heck of a lot better business than selling the jewelry that you're making yourself by hand, painstakingly that you're selling for a few bucks each.
Ryan: So, we effectively built a better mousetraps. We learned how to make the jewelry well. My wife learned how to make the jewelry. We built a better, tutorial that was like really, really well done. And then we started selling that. We sold a few other tutorials in that niche, like making other crafts and other jewelry using similar but slightly different techniques.
Ryan: And, we grew that business to, if I recall, about $8,000 a month, just in selling, you know, tutorials. And then, I. Huh. We learned the difference between an evergreen market and a fad market. I dunno if you heard about this, it made the news, the worldwide, Scrabble tile jewelry market crashed shortly after we got into this market and Exactly, And it was just like one of these silly little fads, you know, that we see that like it goes crazy for a few months and then it just disappears. And it was one of those things. And [00:07:00] so our business basically went, you know, cratered to just like maybe a thousand dollars a month or a few hundred dollars a month.
Ryan: And, and we had kind of one of these like, oh crap moments and decided to shift gears. And that's when we went into the orchid market, which is story for another day. Which then led us into the memory improvement market and then led me to partners, speaking of partnerships with a number of other businesses, in the golf instruction space, tennis instruction space, the fitness instruction space, all these different markets.
Ryan: Effectively, I went into about two dozen markets, and that's where I refined. The marketing methodology that became known as the ASK method, which is what my first book ask was about, and that was the seed to start the business. So I mean, I started really like, you know, kitchen table business with a simple little laptop.
Ryan: Working with clients as a consultant, as a coach, I structured the work that I was doing in a very specific way where I was effectively a revenue partner in these businesses. So I would get paid, I call it like the three R model, where I get paid a retainer. I'd get [00:08:00] paid an upfront fee and I'd get paid a rev share or a, royalty on all the sales that we generated.
Ryan: you know, and in that experience, I had a few, client partners that we did really, really, really well. One of our, projects, in the golf space, for a company at the time was called Revolution Golf. And we built a funnel that, we were getting about 10,000 golfers a day. So we built a multimillion person list in the golf space and built a very successful business, and ultimately led to an acquisition by NBC, and the Golf Channel.
Ryan: So I was like, okay, we've, cracked a code on something and then did it in the B2B space, in the business funding space with a company called, swift Capital that we rebranded into Loan Builder. Which was an assessment for figuring out what type of business loan or business funding is right for your business.
Ryan: And then we sold that business to PayPal for about $180 million.
Ryan: you know, but you start very simply and you know, it's like, any of these things, like my goal, my big dream, Dustin, when I started my business was I wanted to make $10,000 a [00:09:00] month.
Ryan: That was my numbers. Like if I can make $10,000 a month work from home, not have to travel, not have to commute, and we can live anywhere we want, that would be amazing. and it took. 10 years to do this. It was definitely not overnight. It was like, not get rich quick, get rich, very slow.
Ryan: But it took me 10 years and, to get to $10 million a year in our business. And then we grew that to about almost $20 million a year. And the top line revenue, and generating at the time, at our peak between five and 7 million a year in profit, bottom line, profit. So. figured it out like we were able to, crack the code and learned a lot.
Ryan: I mean, made every mistake in the book, learned a ton. And then ultimately kind of created the opportunity to live the life that you and I have been talking about, which is this return to real and really focus on fatherhood and, not, grinding for grindings sake, but like knowing when enough is enough and then, you know, deciding, to live life and answer that question that we were talking about, knowing what it is that you're [00:10:00] optimizing for.
Dustin: Yep.
Dustin: I've followed you for a long time and there's quite a few things in there that are new to me. And I think what a gift to the audience, because it's so instructive to what I want people to hear in that is the through line, right? It's like experimentation, applying what works in one maybe micro instance into something bigger and then bigger.
Dustin: And then bigger. And, And it brings us to kind of where I really, really wanted to dig in here and double click is this kind of last year in your life, which is really interesting. You obviously had the exit, that's amazing. But I think even before the exit or right around here, this is the part you can give a little color to, but you guys like moved from.
Dustin: Austin to Vermont, and you're like running a farm. And there's this idea of returning to real, which I really want to apply to businesses for like most of the rest of the interview. But maybe, give us some, some, I assume that that came out of your own response to what am I optimizing for? So I'd love to hear kind of the story, the genesis behind these big life changes you've taken.
Ryan: Yeah. So, if I go back to 2021, 2020 2021, we made the decision that [00:11:00] we were gonna, take our business to market, meaning we were gonna sell. Our, our businesses, our combined business. We had a training and education company, consulting company called the Ask Method Company. And then we had a software company called Bucket, and they're very, synergistic, very much symbiotic in many ways.
Ryan: So we packaged it together as a, single sale. We took the business to market, and. With a, couple twists and turns and, you know, winding roads along the way. Eventually we received an offer for, $70 million to buy both
businesses. And I wish I could say that the storybook ending, you know, ended with, the end and then they all wrote off into the sunset.
Ryan: But the, the punchline is that the deal fell apart. And the deal fell apart for a few different reasons, some of which were challenges with the business. it's a very unique asset to have a software company and a training education company. So like it poses some unique challenges.
Ryan: But more importantly, we ran into macro economic headwinds. We started the process and a very favorable m and a environment in 2021. [00:12:00] When, interest rates were near zero, there was a ton of m and a
activity, and by the time we got into early 2022, things started to shift. There were fears in the marketplace of a general recession.
Ryan: Russia had invaded the Ukraine, which had spawn, you know, fears of like World War III interest rates started to rise. So at the beginning of the year, they were next to zero. By the end of the year, I think they were four and a half percent. The fed's, fed rate in the United States. and long story short.
Ryan: Almost all m and a activity sort of ground to a halt, certainly in the space that we're in, in the vertical. And so this is relevant to the question that you poses, which is, so at the end of this, I'm on this like 10 year effectively, what's felt like a sprint, 10 year sprint in this 10 years, seven timing, 5,000.
Ryan: We generated over a hundred million dollars in revenue. I'd grown my team to almost a hundred employees. Like it just was like a rocket ship. But it was exhausting. and I could see that the path that I was on, I was gonna burn
out. I could not keep doing what I was doing. So when we didn't sell the company and we kind of ran into that issue, [00:13:00] I decided to hit the pause button and take a little bit of time to just regroup.
Ryan: I just turned 40 at the time, so it's like a milestone birthday and you, really think about life. And I kind of reflected and realized like I'd spend the first half of my life with my face in front of a screen. In many ways. And I asked myself, what do I wanna spend the next half of my life, the second half of my life, the back half of life?
Ryan: And I felt increasingly called to the way I've described it, to spend the second half of my life with my hands in the dirt. and so, in the summer of 2022, my, incredibly understanding wife. Gave me permission, to take a little bit of time off to live and work on a farm in the Mad River Valley of Vermont.
Ryan: And so, I took some time off in the summer to live in a tent by a pond, outside in a, at a farm in the Mad River Valley. And.
Dustin: Experience here.
Ryan: Experience this, my, this is my Walden experience. Absolutely. And and it was incredible, [00:14:00] man. I mean, I was doing a deep dive into the world of permaculture. I'd, I'd maybe read, I don't know, two dozen books on, on, on permaculture.
Ryan: I'd, I'd come into this through food. Food was my gateway drug. Just as I love to cook. I cook for my family. I've always. It's something I've really been passionate about. And when you start diving down the road of, of cuisine, you really focus on the quality of the ingredients. And so naturally you start at the grocery store.
Ryan: Then you go to Whole Foods, then you go to farmer's markets, and then what you realize is that even the food at Whole Foods and farmer's markets and the practices used to raise and grow, a lot of that food is not that much better in many cases than what's, available conventionally at a regular grocery store.
Ryan: So the like natural conclusion that you get to is, well, I've gotta raise and grow my own food. Like that's the only option. So, so I'm in Vermont and I'm there and man. I dunno if you've ever had one of these moments where it's not [00:15:00] even your brain, it's like your full body saying, this is where I'm meant to be. And I just far felt my heart pulling me in this direction. And at the time we were considering if we wanted to leave Austin, Austin, we were in a suburb of Austin and we were there through the whole like explosive growth. So when we got to, or the town that we lived in was called Georgetown. And Georgetown was, about 20,000 people when we moved there.
Ryan: That's what the US census read. And when we left Georgetown, a little over a decade later, it was over a hundred thousand people. Yeah. So it five XD in a decade and it just was not, I mean, you know, a great place to live, great place to raise a family, attracted a lot of people, but we saw the. Stress on infrastructure.
Ryan: We saw the issues around water security. We lived through the winter storm of Texas and we saw sort of the risks [00:16:00] associated with that, and it led us to maybe rethink if that's where we wanted to be. I'm from the Northeast. I'm from New Hampshire. My parents still live in New Hampshire. When I applied to college, I applied to two colleges.
Ryan: One in Rhode Island Brown and one in Vermont. Middlebury, I got into both. Ultimately chose to go to Brown. I was accepted there early. I could have played soccer at Middlebury, didn't. And so there was always like a small piece of my heart that was, that was tied to Vermont. Like I felt like I had unfinished business.
Ryan: So, long story short, I go there. I'm at this farm. And, we're considering putting our house on the market and we, took, had pictures taken, lined up. A real estate agent, did a fancy video walkthrough, aerial video, drone footage, the
whole thing of our place in Austin. And while, and this trip to Vermont was gonna be like the, the decision making trip.
Ryan: And so while I'm there with one bar of service in the, in the Green Mountains in Vermont with like no cell service, I text my wife and I say, I think this is meant to be like, we should do it. Let's do it. Pull the [00:17:00] trigger, put the house on the market. And, within 24 hours, the house sold all cash, full price.
Ryan: 14 day close. I had to, yeah, I had to fly back from Vermont to, to Texas. We hired a moving company out of Boston with a B and they drove cross country, put everything we owned into these moving trucks, shipped them into storage, sold one of our vehicles, loaded up the family, loaded up the dog, everyone got a suitcase, put it in the back of the truck and we road trip from Texas to Vermont with nowhere to go.
Dustin: You didn't own this farm, you're like hanging out on someone
Ryan: I'm just, I was working, I was just there. I wasn't, it was done right. I was, going through A-P-D-C-A Permaculture Design certification and doing some work on this farm. And so we lined up a whole bunch of, visits to, to tour different properties to purchase a property. And between the time we left Texas and the time that we arrived in Vermont, five out of the seven properties that we had lined up sold.[00:18:00]
Ryan: Yeah. And then the other two were not a fit. And this is in the fall. This is in autumn, it's in leaf paper season. So it's like the beautiful autumn that you've, you know, seen on every calendar of, of, you know, photos of every Vermont calendar. So it's absolutely stunning. Real estate market is super hot and we realize, oh crap, like we're not gonna find a place.
Ryan: To live. So instead, we spent the next year bouncing around Airbnbs and, jumping from place to place. And it gave us an opportunity to tour different parts of the state and, and, and really decide where we wanted to be. And, and then ultimately after knocking on every door and telling our story to anyone who had listen, every waiter,
Ryan: every like. Exactly. We're like, Hey, like, you know, where do you, oh, you know, we're actually looking. Do you happen to know anybody who has a farmer or, we were like the, we got known across the state as the crazy family
from Texas. And so it took us about a year and a half. And then we finally landed, at our place that we're at right now.
Ryan: And so we're on our site now. We [00:19:00] landed at a place, we're on about a hundred. Plus acres. It's, it's stunning. It. And we, in the last year made the transition to raise and grow about 80% of the food that we eat as a family. So we, we raise cattle. We, raise pigs. We raise laying hens, for eggs.
Ryan: We did a hundred meat birds this year. So we raised and process a hundred meat birds. We've got multiple ponds on the property, one of which we stock with trout. So we have a fish supply. We have 48 beehives on the property. We've tapped, we have a thousand maple taps, so we tap our own maple syrup.
Ryan: So we have. A hundred percent of our sweetener between the honey and syrup produced on farm, a hundred percent of our protein between the beef, pork, chicken, and eggs and trout that we produce on farm, we planted 500 trees, so nut trees, fruit trees, berry bushes. We've got like 30 different kinds of berries on the property.
Ryan: And then we did a few acres of production gardens. So, you know, we raise, we grow. You know, our potatoes and, [00:20:00] and all of our root vegetables and squash and onions and garlic, all the things that you'd expect. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, all of our herbs, all of our greens, and, between overwintering and root cellar, made it through this past winter.
Ryan: Yeah, with freezers full of protein and sawdust bins full of, root vegetables. So, it's been a. Incredible journey and an incredible learning experience doing this. And, it all comes back to what you were talking about this, this desire for the return to real, this desire to not just live in this abstracted world that we experienced through a, you know, 14 square inches that we can fit in our hands, but actually living life, you know, truly hands in the dirt.
Ryan: And I mean that like in my case, literally, but also metaphorically, figuratively, actually. You know, being in this real world and existing in our corporeal, our body's existence, not just in our mind. So, yeah, that's a bit of, that's a bit more of the story and,
Dustin: I appreciate it because [00:21:00] I, and probably the way you would normally tell it, and I appreciate the freedom by which you, you know, you're opening up here. It's amazing. I like, it's super inspiring, but I, I think even in there, there's a business lesson of, I think what most people would hear in your
story without that color is.
Dustin: Oh, Ryan sold his thing in Austin and he's like, got a farm and that's cool, but like, no, it's like a several year, several year journey with like this
parallel story of thinking you're selling the company and that falls through and so you've still got all that to deal with and you've got a wife and two kids and you're like on your own in the summer and like kind of pouring yourself into a whole new intellectual journey with permaculture and agriculture and all that stuff.
Dustin: It's like, yeah, like that's a really good microcosm for some people who are like. I wanna go from selling courses to coaching or from coaching to consulting. You know, like it's never a simple, straight linear path. Like it's, there's always some sort of erratic, under, under underline. And even with some of the like, I don't know, fortuitous things that you had with selling the house really fast, that sounded really good at the beginning of your story.
Dustin: I'm like, [00:22:00] oh, he finally gets the fairytale ending. And it's like, no, they were homeless for two years, like, and running around trying to find a place to sleep. So that's amazing. I'm, I'm really glad that we were able to dig into that. And I know I also wanna be conscious of time. So kind of putting our business hats on for a moment and, and speaking to the audience here who I think all, we all, I'll, I'll just say for myself, I know I deeply feel this with three teenage kids and, and a wife of 23 years really feel.
Dustin: This need to return to real. Right? And so I kind of microdose that, like take my kids fishing and, you know, we live in suburbia, but, and I do desire to have a, a smaller but meaningful farm, of my own in, in this in several years. So I think there's these sort of lifestyle things we can do. But in the, let's say people
don't have that freedom and they're like, you know what, I, I, I'm making my 10,000 a month and we're paying the bills and things are good, but like, I still wanna, I still want more fulfillment.
Dustin: I still, I still wanna like get unhinged from this whole like, digital existence. Even if that some of that's required from my, my online business. Like what are [00:23:00] maybe some simpler ways or some ways that like on online entrepreneurs who are coaches and consultants can start to experience this return to real without.
Dustin: A dramatic shift as you've been through.
Ryan: I'll give you a few simple ones, right, and I think it's, the way you described it, microdosing makes a huge difference. It's like I'm always looking for what's the minimum viable dose of anything. So I'll give you a few, one of our, mutual, front row dads, brothers, and a dear friend of mine, Ali Jian, has
this expression that I've adopted, and it's a practice that I've adopted in my life, and it goes like this, touch earth before touching a screen.
Ryan: So first thing in the morning when you wake up. Resist the temptation when the alarm on your phone goes off to start checking your email or check social media or whatever. Just don't even touch that phone. Walk outside, even if it's cold outside. Take your socks off, take your shoes off. And even if it's just for a few seconds, plant your feet on the ground.
Ryan: Look up at the heavens, look up at the sky, [00:24:00] and put things in perspective. And that practice right there for me sets the tone for my entire day.
Ryan: It doesn't matter if you wake up and the sun has risen, or for, like in my case, you wake up and it's still, it feels like the middle of the night. It's still dark outside. That practice sets the tone. So that's a simple thing. Another principle in the return to real movement is as follows, more time with God made things less time with manmade things and, and really what that means, if you think about your day-to-day existence, if you're like most people, 99.9%. The world that you interact with is the manmade world.
Ryan: It's things made by man. So unless we're intentional about carving out even 10 minutes a day to coexist and interact with God made things, things that the, the hand of man has not touched is just enough to bring things back into balance. [00:25:00] There's some simple practices like that that can give you the minimum viable dose for me.
Ryan: We raise our own food, we grow our own food, and I'm the cook in the family. So I'm, I bake and some weeks I'll bake six to nine loaves of sourdough in the oven. I try to cook dinner for our family at least six nights a week. We might go out to eat one night a week, so you know, but six nights a week we're having dinner at home or with friends.
Ryan: With meal. Like the, the meal that we're, that I made last night is a chuck roast. From that, we put one of our cows in the freezer with carrots, potatoes, shallots, garlic, all from, our farm. And that's the meal. And that was a meal I made last night in the slow cooker or yesterday in the slow cooker.
Ryan: We're having leftovers tonight. I know that's what I'm gonna be having tonight after I take my son to lacrosse practice. But that may be un. Unrealistic, but pick one meal in a week. So if you've got three meals a day, seven days a week, 21 meals, 20 meals, you can do [00:26:00] DoorDash, you can do Uber Eats.
Ryan: We don't have that where I live, by the way, but you do do all those things. But pick one meal where you're actually making that meal with your hands.
Ryan: And, and get your family involved, right? Like, I get my kids involved. Like you're doing, you're making the salad and you're, you're, you're doing this, you're doing that.
Ryan: We get all involved and we sit down and there's something rewarding about making something with your hands and then getting to enjoy that thing. Whether that's the food that you cook, whether that's a craft that you enjoy making. You have to remember, we exist in this body. And the work that we do as coaches, consultants, as as business people, largely is devoid of engaging this physical existence.
Ryan: So we have to find a balance for that. We have to find an outlet for that. So pick just one meal. Make it, eat it with your family. Agree on what that's gonna be, whether it's, who knows Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning, whatever brunch, whatever you like to do, just do [00:27:00] one in a week and that's the minimum viable dose.
Dustin: I love that. That's awesome. And. I love that as a daily practice. I mean, the food thing I think is extremely attainable, but who, no matter where you live, there's some piece of grass. Even if you're in New York City, right? Like, there's some piece of grass you can go out in the morning and just commit to, like, I'm gonna go out here and stand, maybe say a quiet prayer, walk around, take my dog out barefoot, whatever, before you.
Dustin: You know, engage in a digital world and touch your phone. And then I love the idea of just like one meal a week. Maybe it's your Sabbath day or whatever. That's like the meal after church or service or whatever you do. It's just like a dedicated routine. Like we do have a, a family brunch that we have every Sunday.
Dustin: It's not through, it is at home and it is a, a staple of our routine. And I think like another practice that I've really tried to do is, you know, we really try to emphasize experiences as a family more so than consumption. And so. Not to say they're necessarily cheap like we do cool stuff, but like trips, you know?
Dustin: And, and so next week as we're recording this, our spring break trip, we're going to Sedona. [00:28:00] And of course we'll interact, we'll go to restaurants and things. We're gonna spend a lot of time out in the things that
God's made and experiencing new, new ways to do that. And I'm taking my front row Dads, band, as we call it, our small group.
Dustin: We're going to Breckenridge this summer. It's four days. Like we're gonna hike a 14 k, you know, peak. Like that stuff is just, to me, is, that's a return to real in a way that maybe I can't do it every day, but like once a year, I can, I can at least set the intention at the beginning of the year that like I'm putting these things on my calendar, I'm committing to them, communicating with my family that this is important.
Dustin: Yeah. So, that, that's, that's beautiful. So,
Ryan: Two things I'll add to that. I know we're, we're short on time, but I think this is valuable. Two things. Number one, when you ask kids as adults, what they. Remember most when they're growing up, nine times outta 10 90, respect, 90% of responses involve some type of trip.
Ryan: So how do we make space for this?
Ryan: [00:29:00] Number one, we're gonna make time for it because windows open, but windows close. Like windows don't last forever. So what we do in our family is we set an experience fund. So we budget for this. It's an experienced budget and we don't know exactly how we're gonna use that money. And it, and here's the thing, one of the things that I've learned with our kids is I try to teach how to experience awe and wonder in the mundane. It doesn't have to be first class tickets on, air Emirates to Dubai with gold crusted hotel. It doesn't have to be that. It can literally be, a camping day trip. To the state park. That's 45 minutes away. Awe and wonder in the mundane, but take trips, do the experiences.
Dustin: I love that. I have my, my core memory as a kid, I grew up really poor and we didn't really do any vacations as a family, but my grandpa, we loaded up a pickup truck and one tank of gas and we drove. I lived in the [00:30:00] St. Louis area. We drove to Tennessee to this, lake called Real Foot Lake. And I remember I went croppy fishing for like three days.
Dustin: He taught me how to swim there. And I remember like vividly as a 7-year-old, we went from one side of the lake to the other, and I had this, or I had to help get through this, this what, what I now know is like, culvert, right? It was just like this pipe and it was full of spiders. I'm sure there's one spider.
Dustin: In my mind it was like these tarantulas everywhere and like such an adventure. I'm like, I'm fighting our way through the tarantulas to get to the other side of the lake. And like I, I remember like. Feeling like Daniel Boone, you know? And I was like, well what a, what a memory. And it probably cost a hundred bucks or whatever to go down there and do this.
Dustin: And every book report, I think, in my elementary school is about Real Foot Lake and how it was formed. And it was just like, it, it left such an impression. And it, I just love what you shared with that, the simplicity of that. So that we can end with a little more of a, a businessy note. I think we have the return to real, and that bakes into this question too, but I think, I'd love to hear you just reflect a little bit for someone who's in this stage and maybe they're like, you know what? I feel like I'm really doing well. I made [00:31:00] $200,000 last year. I'm a solo coach. People are respecting my work. I feel this pull to scale, scale, scale, but I don't really know what scale should feel like I.
Dustin: And a, a phrase, you actually said it earlier in this interview, but like, what are you optimizing for that? That's a thought. I've really been living with myself as we've experienced some rapid growth here at Seven Figure Leap, so I love just your reflection for that, that person, this, this woman who's sitting here and she's 200,000, she's coaching people and, and, and getting a lot of fulfillment out of that, but she doesn't know, should I build a big team?
Dustin: Should I be trying to exit someday? Should I just be content with, with where I'm at? Like how do we, how do we wrestle with that? Because I know you've wrestled with it many times over your career. I.
Ryan: Yeah, gosh. So I'm a big believer in the power of questions, change your questions, change your life. And the question that you brought up and it came up organically is a question I would invite everyone listening to this or watching this right now to reflect on, and that is what are you optimizing for? Like for me. [00:32:00] I have this, this photo of my two boys, and it's me standing behind them as they're walking down this winding path, and it's from 2017. And they're tiny. They're tiny little kiddos. And I have the same photo of me standing behind these two kiddos from this year, and they're not tiny
Ryan: anymore. And. That window goes by so fast. So for me, what I'm optimizing for is, to quote, throw you brought up Walden, to suck the marrow out of this season of life. That's what I'm optimizing for. So I'm personally not in empire building mode right now. I'm in this mode of wanting to soak up. I coach soccer.
Ryan: I'm, I'm taking my son to lacrosse. I cook dinner for the family. We go fishing. It's, that's what I'm optimizing for and I leave a lot of money on the table. Even the sale that I ultimately had [00:33:00] with my business was, it was not for $70 million. I'm just gonna say that. So it was a lot of money left on the table, but I'm okay with that because I'm very, very clear on what I'm optimizing for.
Ryan: And what I'll say, what I'll end with is, is this on the question of scale? I hear that all the time, but does it scale? How do I scale it? What I'll invite you to reflect on is this, the best things in life do not scale.
Dustin: Yeah,
Ryan: I.
Dustin: there's your quote, there. If you only got that from this interview, I think that that, and, and that'll transition into how we'll close and, and direct people to your current thought leadership. But yeah, so the best things in life don't scale. That's, that's, that's a truism if there ever was one.
Dustin: And it's definitely not something that gets brought up in the interwebs, when you're talking about business growth. So, yeah, I. I'm writing that down 'cause I, for personal, for personal reasons, but as Ryan and I were, [00:34:00] talking a little bit before we hit record, I was talking about in my own business, you know, like we've had some rapid growth and there are things I'm doing that are very much not scalable.
Dustin: Like I run a mastermind and that. Somewhat scalable. I cap it and like I certain I want a certain amount of personal attention, but I host two in-person events a year. I just had one in Florida a couple weeks ago. I don't charge for that, you know, like I could and I could like squeeze some more dollars out, but I really want people to be there and I really wanna remove any obstacle because the moments that we share together in person and hugging and breaking bread and walking on the beach in this case, and jumping in the ocean when it's freezing, like in a business sense and with my business family like.
Dustin: That's the stuff that sticks right. And I think that's, that's the stuff I'm optimizing for. That doesn't mean I can't sell more courses or have more, you know, coaching clients and things like that. But for me, it's important to build community and build human touchpoints and give people the freedom and
transparency and vulnerability to show up and be real.
Dustin: To go back to that. So being real in the [00:35:00] sense of, yeah, like touching the earth and growing your own food is amazing, but if you're even in your online business, I think there's ways to incorporate. Realness, human connection, vulnerability, transparency, some of the things I just said. And, that was, that was, that was sort of a lightning bolt when you said that.
Dustin: I, I got chills 'cause I'm like, I am doing that. I'm not, I'm not sure I'm doing it consciously enough. I'm not sure I'm articulating as well as I can to the people receiving it. But that is, that hit the nail on the head for me as far as like why I think I'm called and in this season with my business to not just like.
Dustin: Put the pedal in the metal, try to outsource everything, have everyone else handle all the, all the things in the business so we can quote unquote scale. It's like I could do that, but also I think I'd lose a lot of the joy and fulfillment I get from it. And so like is that really worth that sacrifice?
Ryan: It's the story of the Mexican
Ryan: fishermen. You get into this business as a coach, as a consultant, so you can help people, so you can engage with clients, you can connect with people at a deep level. Then if we're not careful, we end up putting things in our business so [00:36:00] that we're doing none of those things.
Ryan: And we find ourselves like the Mexican fishermen who got into the business because we want to fish and build this fishing empire, spending no time at all fishing. Just so you could do what? So you could retire and Fish but you had it right from the beginning.
Dustin: Yes. Yes. That's beautiful.
Dustin: Well, Ryan, this is a, this a total gift. Obviously people can go read the book and, you know, all your, all your thought leadership lives, on the internet for people to find in, in many forms. But this digital contrarian, or the digital contrarian, because I know that's the, the URL, tell us about a little bit about that.
Dustin: I mean, that's, ultimately how we started corresponding personally since we didn't make it happen at front road ads yet. But tell us what that's about, how people can access it. 'cause I think it's a real gift that you're giving.
Ryan: yeah, so it's, it's a perfect tie into our conversation. So last year I. Made this realization that it had been seven years since I had actually written
something to my audience with [00:37:00] my name attached to it that actually was personally written by me. I had a team of writers. We used obviously AI to, create, and I was fed up with it.
Ryan: It was something that made me uncomfortable for a really long time. So I, I literally spot, you know, sort of out of the blue spontaneously, just took my computer, opened it up, and started typing this letter that I called the embarrassing confession. And I wrote an email to our entire, my entire email
Ryan: list
Ryan: and hit set.
Ryan: Yeah. And basically, and and, and I didn't know where that was going, but I sent that out. On a Saturday and the next Saturday I sent something else out, and the next Saturday I sent something else out and I made this decision that once a week I would share real raw, no AI personally written by me,
business wisdom, and oftentimes contrarian insight from lessons that I've learned along the way.
Ryan: And it's evolved into the digital contrarian, which is still [00:38:00] personally written by me, nobody else, no editors. It's just all coming from me that I write once a week. And, it is really a, something that takes me, as crazy as this may sound, it takes me an entire day of my week to research the content, to write the content, to edit the content, and,
Ryan: it's one of the most important things that I do. So, if you're interested, you can go to the digital contrarian.com. If you're curious, you can subscribe. And after you subscribe, you'll be asked to confirm your email address. And when you confirm your email address, you get access to all the archives.
Ryan: So if you wanna see some of the more recent issues and some of the things that we've talked about, including the issue that, spawned this conversation, you can go to that link and, check it out.
Dustin: Yeah, it's awesome too. I mean, it's there's some stuff about farming and then permaculture and things like that, but it's, it's very heavily focused on. How you run a business right now, ai, you're investing insights. It's a, it's a really well-rounded, tap inside what is clearly a very brilliant [00:39:00] mind as we got a, a little taste of today.
Dustin: So I highly recommend it. My encouragement is like, go subscribe. And when Ryan shares something that really hits you between the eyes, I. Hit reply and say, Hey, I, I got here from Dustin in that podcast interview you did with him. And, we'll, we'll complete a virtuous, circle here. So Ryan, thank you so much again for the time, for the vulnerability, the insights.
Dustin: I don't know how often you talk about some of this stuff, but, I feel really gifted, to receive it and I know our audience will as well. So thanks again for being here.
Ryan: Our conversation and.