Ep 613: Your Competitive Advantage in a World of AI | Ryan Levesque
Rory: You are about to meet someone that I only met recently. In relationship, but who I’ve known about for years and years through reputation. In fact, if you’ve listened to this show for any amount of time, you know how we talk about reputation precedes revenue, and that that personal branding is really the digitization of reputation.
So this man that you’re about to meet, that you’re about to learn from, as I learn from him, is [00:01:00] someone who has walked that path. He has built a tremendous reputation and he has built great businesses. He is a model of someone who has done the things that we’re talking about. So who am I talking about?
I’m talking about Ryan Leveque. So Ryan Leveque is a seven time ink, 5,000 CEO, which is extremely hard to do, particularly because the Ink 5,000 is based on growth every year. So that means you have to grow. Year after year, after year. Um, very, very challenging. He’s also a two-time number, one national bestselling author.
Um, he’s generated over a hundred million dollars in revenue. He successfully sold two of his businesses. He’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes entrepreneur. Uh, and more importantly, he’s somebody whose name I hear and have heard all the time. In the circles of like the most influential people in the space.
So today he is a strategic advisor to multiple different businesses. And we’re gonna hear about [00:02:00] his brand new book, the Return to Real and really, uh, not even the book, but the concept of how he’s living his life now and how his personal brand journey led him to what he’s doing. Uh, he’s also writing by hand personally every, uh, every single week the Digital Contrarian, which is his email newsletter that he does.
Personally, so we’re gonna talk about some of the evolution because he sold software companies, he’s built his personal brand, uh, and he’s made some changes here in recent years that we’re gonna learn about and, uh, it’s all tying into his new book. So Ryan, thanks for being on the show, brother. It’s great to have you,
Ryan: Rory.
It’s awesome to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.
Rory: Yeah, so. I wanna hear, I, I, I wanna talk about return to real and I really want to get, I want this conversation to get to what you’re doing today and specifically how you’re living today. But I think before we can get to that, for people to have a full appreciation of.
What [00:03:00] was your journey to get there? Um, and also, you know, I didn’t mention this in your, in your bio, but if y’all have ever heard of Ask or the Ask Method, Ryan is the one who created that, which has been a, is a huge part of our, our space. So I would love to hear a little bit of like that journey from personal brand software company and then, you know, we’ll get into what, what you’re doing now.
Ryan: Yeah. You know, so, uh, I’ll try to do the, the TLDR version of the story to, um, get to the, get to the high points. Um, so, uh. You know, I grew up very modestly, first generation college, uh, student college grad. Um, worked in finance after college, university, and then very quickly thereafter, moved to Asia, China and was spending time in corporate, um, the corporate world in China.
In my mid twenties. I kinda had a quarter life crisis and thought, okay, is this my life? Like, do I, am I gonna be a corporate wage slave my entire life? And I said, no, I want to start a business. Hmm. Um, and I was on a real kind of fast track career and, um, decided to [00:04:00] quit my job in 2008. And started a business, uh, teaching people how to make Scrabble tile jewelry.
Nice. And, uh, yeah, it was like, you know, it was the craze in the world that year. Um, and, uh, and, and that business, uh, took off and then quickly fell apart and, uh, took me down this path to really figure out. How to enter new markets and how to figure out what a market wants. Like what is it that people actually wanna buy and how do you give it to them?
Mm-hmm. And so I went through that process 23 different times in all sorts of different random niche markets like market care and memory improvements and fish oil supplements, and just all these random markets. And along the way sort of built this methodology. That, um, as you pointed out, uh, became known in the industry as the ASK method.
It used a combination of surveys and quizzes and assessments to really understand a market at a deep emotional level. And, um, in, uh, 10 years ago, I decided to write a book, basically telling my story and, uh, the methodology. And I honestly, Roy wrote the book. Um, like most people, when you write a book, you want it to be like a [00:05:00] better business card.
Right. It’s like it’d be great to have like a book that I could hand people and I didn’t really expect it to do much more than that. And, uh, in the year that we launched it, it was, uh, it launched the week that we launched. It was the number one bestselling book in the entire country across all categories.
Um, you know, number one on virtually all the, all the counting lists, not the editorial list, all the counting lists and, uh, transform my life. And that book became the foundation of a company we started called the Ask Method Company, where we taught this methodology, uh, eventually built a software company called Bucket to implement that methodology.
And then, uh, in 2024, um, sold the company, uh, and kind of took it full cycle. So yeah, grew that company, uh, seven Time Inc. 5,000 fastest growing company. Um, and, uh, you know, transform my life. And the thing that I’ll say is, um, you know, for the tiny little corner of the world that, that I’ve, you know, been part of and that I’ve occupied, um, from a personal brand standpoint, this is, I think, an important lesson to think about.
Whenever I’m thinking about building a personal brand, I think about [00:06:00] how can you associate yourself with a single word.
Rory: So that
Ryan: way when your market, the corner of the world that you’re in, how do you create something so that when people hear that word, they think of you. And for me that word was ask in the world anytime that you heard about ask, my name would be evoked.
And that was very intentional, that was very strategic and it served me for the better part of a decade in the empire building season of life. And, um, built a very successful business that we’re able to, um, sell and exit on the back of that.
Rory: Yeah, I mean, you’re, you’re preaching our, you’re preaching our language.
We, we talk about finding your uniqueness, exploiting it in the service of others and nailing it to one word, like you are such a great example of that. The, um, so real quick, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least have you briefly overview the ASK method. It’s Sure. These five core questions because I know that this super tactical and applicable to people today and.
The premise [00:07:00] still holds true. I think that, you know, everyone is like shouting and you came in with like a whole different way of just approaching this. And so, you know, I’d love for you to just like, kind of briefly touch on the five questions and like, you know, the premise of Ask.
Ryan: Yeah. So the way I described the ASK method is, is as follows.
Um, you know, the secret to succeeding in business is actually pretty simple. It’s figure out what people want and give it to them. Um, the problem is you can’t just walk through the front door and ask people, Hey, what do you wanna buy? Like, people actually just don’t know what they want. We actually don’t know what we want fundamentally in life.
In fact, when you ask someone, what is it that you want? What do you want for dinner tonight? You’re accessing a part of your brain where you’re actually projecting into the future and guessing. You’re thinking, maybe I might want this, but I don’t know. Versus if you flip that idea on its head. So just real quick, they don’t want
Rory: one, one of my all time favorite quotes, like of all time is Henry Ford when he says, if I would’ve asked people what they wanted, they would’ve set a faster horse.
[00:08:00] Exactly. Um, you know, so I I I love that. So then, so then your method is helping them access a different piece of their brain.
Ryan: You have to figure out what to figure out what people want. You have to understand what they don’t want. You have to understand what has frustrated them. You have to understand what’s caused pain.
You have to understand what’s caused an emotional reaction to them relative to the problem that you help people solve. And by asking a series of open-ended questions, we’ll talk about a few of them. By asking a series of open-ended questions, you can figure out what it is that not only people want, but will people, what people will spend money on.
Solving. Hmm. And it comes down to paying attention to the open-ended natural language that people give you, and paying attention to deep emotional language that shows up. Hmm. And there’s a direct correlation between length of response, depth of response, and intensity of response to purchasing behavior that you can use as a predictor to determine where you should actually focus.
So first question that you always want to ask when you’re trying to. Solve a problem in a [00:09:00] person’s life. And by the way, uh, as an aside, I always tell our clients, fall in love with the problem that you solve, not the product that you sell.
Rory: Love that. So we get
Ryan: really, really excited about our book, our widget, our thing, and naturally so if you’ve invested your heart and soul there, but the real longevity in any business is falling in love with the problem.
And just being obsessed over solving that problem agnostically, irrespective of whatever thing you might sell right now, fall in love with that problem. So first question that you want to ask is what we call the SMIQ Single most important question. If you only ask one question, this is the one, and it’s this.
When it comes to x, X being the thing that you help people with that problem, what’s your single biggest challenge, frustration, or obstacle that you’re facing right now? Please be as detailed and specific as possible. So that’s the first question. Now you’re gonna pair that with two other questions. Next question is, how much time have you spent trying to solve this problem?
Rory: Hmm.
Ryan: And question number three, how much [00:10:00] money have you invested today? Now, what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna triangulate three different data points. First, in that first question, what’s your biggest challenge? You’re gonna pay attention to the longest, most passionate, most detailed, open-ended responses.
The top 20% is what we call the hyperresponsive segment of your market, and you’re actually gonna ignore everybody else. You only wanna pay attention to the people who say, Rory, I’ve been trying to launch my book for years, and I’ve launched three books and I sold like 300 copies and I’ve done all of the things right, and yet for some reason, I just can never get any traction with my book and it’s killing me.
I feel like I’ve got a message out there. What do I do? Exasperation that you hear in my voice. That’s what you’re looking for. Mm-hmm. Second question to you wanna look for people who have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to solve this problem? Not someone who went to chat GPT five minutes ago, typed in one query, couldn’t get their answer and jumped to you.
You need someone who’s had the pain of being unable to solve their [00:11:00] problem for a long enough period of time. Then last but not least, the greatest predictor of whether someone will spend money on a solution irrespective of the category that you’re in, is whether they’ve spent money in that category before.
Wow. Best predictor if a woman is gonna buy an expensive handbag is if she already has an expensive handbag in her closet. And that principle is true, whatever category you operate in. So you wanna be looking for the overlapping Venn diagram and that centerpiece and everything that you do in your marketing, your messaging, your product development in your overall business strategy is focused on just the people who are in the center of those three overlapping Venn diagrams, those circles, and ignore everybody else.
And it’s, it’s counterintuitive. Because you want to try to appeal to everybody, but when you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing to nobody. So the ASK method is based on that principle and those ideas. And of course there are layers and layers and layers beneath that, around data analysis and cluster analysis.
And now [00:12:00] how we can use AI to analyze language patterns, to find these hyperresponsives and the key language that we want to echo back to our market. Because your message should come from your market, not from your mind. Instead of coming up with your own catchy marketing slogan, don’t lean in to the temptation of sanitizing the language your market gives you and echoing it back in a more clever way.
Take the language verbatim. In the way that people describe it to you, echo it back. And what you’ll find is that what’s true for one is true for the many. So Ask Method is, is all about this. Of course, there’s, you know, there’s layers and layers and layers to it. Um, but that was the premise of the book, premise of the company that we founded, premise of the technology that we built.
Um, and the premise so that I wanna
Rory: talk about the technology because that, that, so that’s so powerful, right? And it’s so clear. Yeah. One of the, the other things that I really respect about what you’ve done, uh, you know, so, so one of the things that we say a lot is we say people don’t pay [00:13:00] for information, they pay for application.
Hmm. And so in the future, especially as information becomes commoditized, particularly with ai, it’s like the real game is rush to applying the principles, implementing the things. And many personal brands don’t do that, and they’re slow to move into that area. And you are one of the first that you. Built an actual tool around your methodology that made it real, that made it available that people could apply the information so.
How did that start? I mean, you went from like working in the corporate world to an entrepreneur, to all of a sudden now you’re developing software. Like I didn’t hear software engineer like in your background previous to that. Like you were doing Scrabble bracelets, like Yeah. What made you think you could pull this off, and then how in the heck did you pull it off?
Ryan: Yeah. Well, look, I mean, everything that you’ve done in your life is something that you’ve previously not done. Full stop. [00:14:00] Sure. And we all have different aptitudes and capabilities and personalities and skills in, in different areas. Um, I’ve never been afraid of, of taking on a challenge and trying something new.
So that’s, I think, the, the first part of it. But there are layers beneath that. Every product that we created was born out of a problem slash opportunity that emerged from a previous product that we developed. So, for example, when I, um. Uh, when I had the success in the different markets that I went into, what happened next is that big companies started approaching me and asking for me to help them implement this model in their business.
And, um, and I did that and I had a few businesses that I worked with that the, the, the basically the, the marketing campaigns and funnels that we built, um, led to explosive growth. Um, to the point that, like, for example, there was a, a, a project that I was involved in where we were doing about a hundred thousand.
Uh, leads opt-ins, email opt-ins a day, a hundred thousand leads a day, [00:15:00] um, in a high volume fitness space, um, that grew this company to nine figures. Um, I, I was part of two exits as a result of what we built. So one was in the golf market, um, built a company called Revolution Golf, built an assessment in the golf space to figure out what was wrong with your swing.
And we had, uh, over 10 million golfers go through that assessment. And then we sold the company to NBC. So NBC, um, the Golf Channel bought this business. Um, and I had a small sort of piece of that, not a big piece of that exit, but a very small piece of this. Um, the next one was a, uh, we did the same thing in the business funding space and, uh, we built a application called Loan Builder.
To figure out basically what type of business loan is right, you know, for your funding needs in your business. Um, and that company was bought by PayPal for about $180 million. So I saw the power of what I was doing in, in this process, and so that led me to this. Well, if I wanna, you know, I, I’ve seen these businesses, like I got a tiny, I got crumbs.
On these little exits. Maybe I’ve got [00:16:00] something here that in turn inspired me to write this book, build a company around it, shift my model from working with companies to actually build IP and infrastructure and a team. And, you know, had 14,000, um, uh, businesses that went through our training programs to implement all of this.
And along the way. What happened was people said, what tool do we use? Like Survey Gizmo doesn’t quite do what we need it to do and Google Forms doesn’t do what we exactly what we need to do. Like we need this, this, and this, and how do you do that? And my answer was, well, yeah, you just have your development team, you know, develop an application.
And as I was starting to work with smaller and smaller businesses. That didn’t have an engineering team, I realized like, I’ve gotta create a solution. So found a partner to answer your question in that space. Got it. Um, my development skills very, very, very limited. I know a little bit of, you know, back in the day coded my first website with, uh, H-T-M-L-C-S-S and PHP and a little bit of JavaScript, but that was just me, you know, as a hack, learning, trying to figure stuff.
I’m not an actual proper developer. Um, so I found a partner in that space. [00:17:00] Um, we did a pre-launch of the offer. We had, I think a thousand people, uh, pre-order the software. Like as soon before it was launched, they just put down a deposit and they said, we want this when it’s launched. Cool. And so we launched to a thousand, um, you know, monthly recurring revenue buyers just out of the gate.
Wow. And then scaled that business. Um, now along the way, what happens is, and I think this is important and relevant from a personal brand standpoint as well, is that your, uh, success will breed competition. People will see you. Whatever it is that you’re doing. And because most people are unimaginative and they need to see an exemplar of success in order to know what to follow, they’ll see your success.
So like in your company, um, you’ve got copycat competitors that, that come in and watch what you do. And the more successful you are, the more competition that you attract. So success breeds competition. That’s just like a universal law of capitalism. And so along the way we had, you know, 14,000 students who went through our, um, our process.
We bred our own competition. So, you [00:18:00] know, clients of ours, software, users of ours said, Hey, we can create something, you know, similar to that. So you get more competition in, in the marketplace. And um, for me, I recognized that this was showing up, um, that there was increasing competition. I recognized that the, the, the technological, I’ll call it development, uh, uh, lifecycle in a, in an application was shortening.
More and more, particularly with the advent of AI over the last few years, and I recognize that. I recognize the writing on the wall around SaaS as a business model. Like today, you can use through vibe, coding and uh, third party applications. You can say, Hey, that software over there, like that scheduling software that I use right now, can you just build me a version of that so I don’t have to pay?
A monthly recurring, uh, uh, fee on that software. And, uh, with reasonable success, you can build that. The paradigm has changed. So I recognized that. I saw the writing on the wall and I said, this is probably not the right business model to be [00:19:00] in for the next decade. Um, I’d also been on a decade long sprint, you know, empire building mode and hustle, hustle, hustle.
Clearly that, so it was just none of this
Rory: stuff. You’re describing it as like, oh, we did this, we did this. This is like, it’s like. That’s hours and money and pain and hustle and tears and team members and turnover and like that, that doesn’t just happen automatically. It’s all the things.
Ryan: Yeah, man. It’s all, it’s all the things.
So I kind of reached a point where, um, we, we brought our, our companies, our combined businesses to market in 2021. And, um, in that process we received a, a $70 million offer for the, for the combined businesses.
Rory: Cool.
Ryan: And we spent about a year, um, in diligence back and forth with the buyer. Went through a full, um, uh, what they call as a process in private equity.
Hired an investment bank, and, uh, received an offer from the same private equity group that bought Alex from MO’S company. So they bought Alex’s company and then they were looking to make an acquisition in our space. They identified our company as their target. This is 21 to 22. [00:20:00] Then in 22, uh, Russia invades the Ukraine.
Crypto markets crash, capital markets crash. The world is starting to feel like, is this gonna be World War iii? I remember when Russia first invaded the Ukraine, there was like fear, like this could be a big thing, right? No one really knew what was gonna happen. Um, so there was a lot of fear. In the market and headwinds really kind of, um, were taking over.
So after a year of diligence, uh, the group spent over a million dollars in, in, um, in, in diligence in the process. Um, basically said, we’re walking away from the deal. We’re at the, now, we’re like one yard line ready to get this thing done. And um, and then long story short, the m and a market, certainly in our space, basically dried up in 22.
And so I kinda had this moment of like. I just spent 10 years, like on this sprint. I’ve got two kids at home and, uh, my two boys, I knew, I only had a few years left with them at home. I said, do I really wanna do this another 10 years? And I saw the writing on the wall with SAS and everything that was happening, and so I said, I’m [00:21:00] gonna take a little bit of time off.
And I took some time off. We were living in Austin, Texas at the time, and I, I decided to live and work on a farm in the Mad River Valley of Vermont. And, uh, I took, um, most of the summer to just. Be up there. And I was literally living in a tent by a pond on this farm. Wow. And living a pretty simple life.
And I have an amazing wife who, um, was very understanding. And I’ll tell you man, when I was there, um, my heart just spoke to me and said, this is where you’re meant to be. Like that stillness, taking time off, finally having just a little bit of space to say like, what am I gonna do in the second chapter of life, like First Mountain, second Mountain, you know, first mountain of life.
Climb the mountain, build a big successful company, make all the money. Second Mountain is like, all right, am I gonna, you know, what am I gonna do in the second half of life I’d, I’d recently turned 40. So I kind of had like that, you know, midlife moment. And, um, and so while I was there, I, I called my wife and I said, um, something that we’ve been contemplating, which is [00:22:00] putting our house in the market.
I said, let’s, let’s put our house in the market in Austin. Let’s see if it sells. I think this is where we’re meant to be. And this was in the middle of a very hot real estate market in Austin, as you probably remember. And, uh, the, the house sold that day. All cash
Rory: man, full
Ryan: price. And, um, a 14 day close, geez.
So I had to rush back from Vermont to Austin. Um, we load everything that we own into, into, we hire a moving company out of Boston with a b They drive cross country, get all of our stuff, ship it up to Boston. We sell one of our cars. I, I keep my truck and we get a suitcase each, for each member of the family and the dog load in the back of the truck.
And we road ship our way from Texas to Vermont with nothing but a dream and a vision. Of starting a farm together as a family. Wild. And, uh, that’s so wild.
Rory: I mean, like, you’re like camping out in a tent to like, Hey, we’re living, we’re moving here. Yeah. This is
Ryan: like in a matter of a few days. Well, you know, the, the [00:23:00] truth is this is something that had been bubbling Yeah.
Sort of beneath the surface. Right. Um, and, and we’ll talk about this with return to real, ’cause I think this, it, it ties in and it’ll tie into the thesis of the book, which I think is really relevant from a personal brand standpoint. But. It took us a year, Rory, to find the place that we ended up landing. I thought we were gonna drive up to Vermont and I thought we were going to like, ah, a few weeks.
I had a bunch of showings lined up for a few different farms that we’re gonna take a look at. Um, but by the time we got to Vermont, uh, I think we had seven showings and five out of the seven showings were under contract before we even had a chance to see them. There was that much demand. Hmm. And when winter, uh, happens and snow’s on the ground, like big properties like that, there’s just, there, you have to wait till the next year.
So it took us about a year to find the site that we’re on now we’re on about 140 acres. And we kind of have gone through this journey of raising and growing the vast majority of the food that we eat as a family. So, um, just to paint a picture,
Rory: [00:24:00] I mean, just the dichotomy of this like fast paced software company, ramping revenue, like pre-revenue thousand customers to then like Vermont, growing our own food.
Like this is a radical change.
Ryan: Well, I’ll tell you, man, I’ve had some, what I didn’t, what I didn’t say is, you know, the steps along the way. Um, you know, I was in college, I studied neuroscience. I thought I was gonna be a neurosurgeon. My best friend, uh, at Brown University is a neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic.
We were. Kind of, you know, buddies going on the same path. So, um, I thought I was gonna go into brain science. That was kind of like my original passion and my academic background. Um, then I decided, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to medical school, so I decided to take a few years off and work on Wall Street.
So I worked for Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. And became really fascinated with the psychology of money. So I kind of gave up medicine to go into Wall Street, then was on Wall Street. I also studied Mandarin Chinese in college. And um, of course you did. I mean, why not [00:25:00] neuroscience,
Rory: stock market, Mandarin only makes sense to be the next thing all the things,
Ryan: right?
Um, and then so I gave that career up on Wall Street to live and work in China and we spent about five years, uh, there. And then in 2008 when the world financial crisis hit. I kind of use that as sort of like a, a, an opportunity to, um, to take a a, to make a pivot. And that’s the Scrabble tile jewelry business.
So I say that because like each step along the way, and I think we go through these moments where we have these moments in our life where we’re on this trajectory, and I, I see it time and time again. Most people are afraid to give up. Good to go after. Great. In their life. And each step along the way, every human being around me said I was crazy.
Ryan, you’re you’re gonna go to medical school, you’re gonna be a neurologist or a neurosurgeon. Like, why are you going to Wall Wall Street? Well, I’m, it’s, I, I just feel called to do this career on, you know, making all this money. Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, [00:26:00] you’re gonna give that up to basically make $40,000 a year living in China.
Have that life, but it, well, it was an adventure. And then I grew that to making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year working in China. And then I just gave all that up to start the Scrabble business. And so I think most people will come up with all sorts of reasons why they can’t reinvent themselves totally along the way.
And this ties to the personal brand thing. So success breeds competition. And what it means is in order to stay relevant in your space, and not only relevant, but to stay true to yourself. As you evolve, as you grow, as you change as a human being, so every seven years you are a completely new human being.
Even at a cellular level, your cells have actually completely replaced themselves every seven years. So seven years ago, there wasn’t a single cell in your body that exists today. You are a completely different human being today than you were seven years ago. So to honor that, you have to listen to [00:27:00] what it is that is calling you.
This ties to Ask. So Ask was all about figuring out what everybody else wants, but what Ask didn’t cover was paying attention to the most important voice of them all, which is how do you listen to yourself?
Rory: Hmm.
Ryan: How do you listen to that inner calling? That’s what I describe as the contrarian voice of your heart.
When everyone around you says that you’re completely crazy for doing what you’re doing, yet you feel called, you feel pulled in that direction. How do you quiet all the noise? And listen to that voice, that real voice, that authentic voice that enables you to seek and speak truth. And so this journey that I’ve been on over the last few years has helped me really dive deep into this space, our relationship, especially in this age of AI with humanity.
Hopefully
Rory: you don’t tell me that I have to sell everything and move to Vermont and farm ’cause I’m, I’m an indoor type and I don’t know how to grow things. So I’m hoping that the book can [00:28:00] like step me through this without me having to get my hands dirty.
Ryan: Yeah. Well, well look, I think, um, so there’s a couple things.
You, you bring up really good points. So let, let’s talk about what is return to real. How is it relevant for anyone looking to build a personal brand?
Rory: This is the, this is the new book. So this is where, this is your journey coming full circle to like, here’s where you are now, here’s how this evolved. And I love that.
I didn’t, when, when we first met and talked about this, I didn’t make that connection. That ask was all about how to find what other people want. This is all about how to figure out what you want or what you were created to do. That’s a really powerful intersection. I love that.
Ryan: And what’s interesting is that it’s, it’s, it’s bringing this conversation sort of full circle.
The creation of everything that you build in your business will open up challenges and opportunities to create that next thing. And that’s exactly what I found, spent the past decade figuring out exactly what people want in all these different markets that I knew nothing about. But along the way, [00:29:00] I spent zero time actually paying attention to what I actually truly wanted in the process.
And, and, and I think, um, and so I started, uh, a year ago, um, I, I wrote a piece to our very large, um, email newsletter, and I called it an embarrassing Confession. And basically what I said effectively is I have an embarrassing confession to me. And it’s this. For the last seven years, every single piece of writing that you’ve seen with my name attached to it was actually not written by me personally.
It was written by one of our writers in house with my name signed to it. And increasingly, this felt more and more uncomfortable, something that I was not happy with, and for all sorts of different reasons, being a busy CEO, it just necessitated having a team of writers writing in my voice. But over time.
It started feeling like a photocopy of a photocopy. Of a photocopy. Of a photocopy.
Rory: Sure. And
Ryan: what started to emerge is that it started to taste like the watered down orange juice that comes from a can and not the freshly [00:30:00] squeezed version that you get at Sunday brunch. And I said this day for it, that changes anytime that you see something with my name attached to it.
It’s something that’s actually written. By me personally, and I did it sort of as an experiment with really no expectations, just to kind of, you know, get that off my chest. And that led to writing a weekly piece that I write every single week myself. Oftentimes these pieces are two to 4,000 words. These are, this is deep writing.
That’s a
Rory: lot. Yeah. That’s allocate
Ryan: an entire day, oftentimes 12 to 14 hours to write a piece like this. But since I’ve been doing that, writing authentically, real raw mistakes made, lessons learned, really coming from me, not just regurgitated AI bullshit, but actually coming from my own lived experience, Rory, I’ve had more opportunity come my way in the last 12 months than probably the last 12 years.
Rory: Hmm.
Ryan: And, and this ties into return to real because what the world is craving right now is, is more of that. [00:31:00] And they’re principles in return to real that I think are really provocative principles to be thinking about in your business. And I’ll share one or two to reflect on. Um, the first thing is this, the best things in life don’t scale.
Full stop. If you think about the best things in your life, they are the unscalable. It’s a hug with one of your kids. It’s an embrace with your partner, with your spouse. You can’t scale that. Yet we’re taught that in a capitalist paradigm that we need to figure out how do we scale? How do we scale this?
How does this scale? But an interesting question to ask in this paradox is, what is it in your business that you are going to do that does not scale in spite of the fact that it doesn’t scale? ’cause I believe that is the last true moat that we have in business. Technology is no longer remote. I can go to your website and I can use existing [00:32:00] technology that exists right here, right now, today.
And I can say, replicate every single thing that Rory’s company has done. Technologically speaking, go. Anybody can do that. But what I can’t replicate is I can’t replicate your lived experience. I can’t replicate your voice, I can’t replicate your heart. That’s not something that we can yet copy.
Rory: So you said a few minutes ago you said.
What the world is craving is more of that. Hmm. What is that? That like what? What is what If you had to like codify that into a word, would you call that authenticity? Would you call that connection? Would you call that humanness? Like do you, have you landed on what that word is for that which people are craving?
Ryan: So I’ll answer it in two ways. I’ll answer it in a philosophical way and I’ll answer it in a very practical way, which is one of the principles in return to Real, the Phil, the philosophical way is what people [00:33:00] are craving is truth.
Rory: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: We live in a world where virtually everything we experience is artificial.
From the food we consume to the content that we read and what’s emerged in the world is that because there’s so much artificial, everything, there is a distrust that underlies every relationship that exists here today. The fundamental thing that’s changed is the fact that with the advent of ai, deep fake technology and everything that comes around it, what we no longer trust is ourselves.
We no longer trust our own ability to discern with our eyes and our ears if what we are seeing right now is in fact real, is this truth. Is this something that was fabricated and it’s a fundamental shift that’s happened, it would really
Rory: blow my mind right now if you said that you’ve been in AI this whole time, in this whole
Ryan: conversation, and [00:34:00] I’d be like, oh no, you got me.
It’s a Pandora’s box That I think is, it’s a, it’s a fool’s errand to try to replicate yourself with an AI avatar because once that Pandora’s box is open, it can no longer be closed. Meaning that if your audience is looking at you at any given time and wondering. Is that real Rory, or is that Rory’s avatar?
And trust me, I get every argument around convenience using 11 labs and any technology say, you know what? I don’t have to record any of these videos for my book launch. I’m just gonna use AI to do an AI avatar of it. But when you do that without disclosure, what happens is every further interaction that someone has is they second guess, is this real or is this not?
So the principle in return to real principle number three. Is optimized for oxytocin, not dopamine. So this takes it from the phy, the philosophical to the physiological. What do we mean by that? Mm-hmm.
Rory: Take us back to Brown University. Okay, here we go. Now we’re going, now we’re going back to the, back to the you nerd style, Brian Ryan.
[00:35:00] So,
Ryan: uh, Oxy is the trust molecule. It’s the neurotransmitter of trust. Now, dopamine, as we all know, is the neurotransmitter of. Desire and virtually every Silicon Valley tech business has tried to optimize. Sorry, say that again.
Rory: We don’t all know. We don’t all know. We don’t all know that you said that.
Oxytocin is the trust, the
Ryan: neurotransmitter of trust.
Rory: Okay.
Ryan: So it’s often thought about as the neurotransmitter of love, because mothers will elicit oxytocin when they have their baby close to them. Men and women experienced oxytocin. It manifests itself slightly differently in different brains. Okay. With the different genders and different sexes, but you can think about oxytocin as the neurotransmitter of trust.
Rory: What dopamine.
Ryan: Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of desire. Got it. And so when we have all of these dopamine feedback loops whereby, for example, you go to social media and you post something, Hey, I just launched my book, and guess what? It hit number three on the New York Times list. And you’re like, ah, this is awesome.
Then you put your phone down, then you walk away, and then your body’s like, but how [00:36:00] many likes did I get on this post? So you rush back and then you look at. It’s a dopamine feedback loop because your brain ultimately is craving these happy neurotransmitters. There’s a few of ’em. There’s oxytocin, there’s serotonin, there’s dopamine.
Few others. Your brain is craving these chemicals, and that’s what drives basically all human behavior. We do things because these neurochemicals in our brain make us feel good, and at the end of the day, we wanna feel good and feel less pain. So we feel happy when we watch something funny or we exercise.
We have a, a, uh, you know, uh, an endorphin rush after a, uh, a workout at the gym. We do things because they create these positive feedback loops of good feelings. Now, oxytocin. In contrast to dopamine with a few exceptions, only is elicited through in-person experiences when you actually interact with someone on a face-to-face level.
And much of the loneliness epidemic and sense of disconnect that exists in the world here today is driven by the [00:37:00] fact that most people are operating with an oxytocin deficit in their brain. Now they don’t know this. People don’t know that this is true. But a much of the, of the dissatisfaction in the malaise that exist in the world here today and emptiness is because we’ve replaced so much of these deep, immersive in-person experiences with more and more proxy based experience lived through a screen.
And so we have this absence in our physiology, our bio, our biology is missing this right now. So in a world that’s been optimized around dopamine. I believe oxytocin is the next competitive advantage because once people experience that, they want more of it. Once they recognize that this is what they want.
So the whole thesis in the book is that in this AI era where we are questioning this, uh, a relationship with authenticity and humanity, the thesis of the book is that what’s good for our biology, what’s good for our body, what’s good for our brain is actually good for business because the world is [00:38:00] craving this right now.
To answer your question, the world is craving more of this. So the opportunity for those of us with personal brands, for those of us who are entrepreneurs, is to fill this void in the marketplace and give people what they actually want, which is ask showing back up.
Rory: I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s wild. I, so, you know, brand builders groups, so we have about 50 employees, um, right now, but they’re all, and they’re all remote and we’ve, we’ve built the whole company remote and it’s how we operate.
And last year. Aj. So my wife, our, my business partner, our CEO, she, she comes to me and she’s like, Hey, I found a building. We’re gonna buy this building. And I was like, buy a building. I’m like, none of our people are gonna want to go, like some of, like a bunch of our people live outta state. And she’s like, yeah, it’s, it’s not for our people.
She’s like, it’s for our community. We’re gonna, we’re gonna start hosting in-person events every single month for our community. Be because we started in 2018 and then [00:39:00] COVID happened. So our, almost our entire company was virtual. Like the whole encounter with us was courses and then live virtual events.
And then, you know, it was evolved and she was like, she was like, I just, I just think this is the future. Um, and just like outta nowhere, it’s like, okay, I guess we’re gonna buy a building. She bought a building. We bought a building and then, and now we have these in-person events and it’s been crazy. Like there’s the wait list are insane for these events, Ryan, like, you know, you’re putting a neurological description and profile to something that she felt intuitively,
Ryan: totally.
And, and so there’s, there’s scientific evidence and data that backs up that gut feeling that we have. And I believe the opportunity in front of all of us is to lean into that and it’s gonna show up differently. Your version in the business, the building that you bought, [00:40:00] and the in-person events that you’re running is a variation that works for you.
It’s real for you. But what’s right for you is not gonna be right for anybody else. Sure. So the question is, what does this look like? How are you reinventing yourself in this new era relevant? Is it in person?
Rory: Is that the main thing? Is like that’s
Ryan: one
Rory: of the principles.
Ryan: Okay. That’s one of the principles.
I mean, there’s, it’s um, you know, there the confluence of events that’s happening right now. There’s, there’s a three colliding forces. All happening at once in the world. Um, there’s an economic force and environmental force and an existential force. So, um, the existential force is the one that most people are most familiar with, and it’s our relationship to AI as, um, the deeper questions with ai, what does it mean to be human?
What is our role? What is our purpose? If we are not the most intelligent being or organism on this planet, where does that leave us? And there’s so many second and third order effects that are showing up around that. But in concert, at the same time, we’re experiencing economic. Forces that are [00:41:00] reshaping the world.
So Ray Dalio describes this as the big cycle, which effectively 80, every 80 to 100 years, we have a big debt cycle that resets. And the last time that this happened was in the Great Depression leading into World War ii. And we are due for that next reset. And these resets are when we have a change in the world order.
When a new superpower typically emerges amidst the ashes of this turmoil, this is where currency devaluation takes place. And the reality is that no living. People on this planet, say for the centenarians that are still alive today, have lived through that period. So our generation, even our parents’ generation Roy, have, have not lived through this.
So it’s uncharted territory for most living human beings right now to know what it’s like to experience that type of economic environment.
Rory: And we did a podcast on, uh, AJ’s grandmother. Uh, she just died a couple years ago, but she was 103. Oh my God. And I interviewed her on our podcast. When she was, I think [00:42:00] 101 and she was talking about like, so she was born in 1912.
So she was, she was, wow. She was talking about the Great Depression. She was talking about the first time she saw the airplane, like exactly what you’re saying. But it was like, yeah, so I think, I think she died like 2015, so it’s like the. It’s exactly what you’re saying. There’s no, there’s nobody else left that’s been through that.
That’s a crazy thought. We have
Ryan: no elders. You and I are closer to being our elders, the elders on this planet than we are to being youth. So we don’t have elders who have gone through this experience. So there’s that, the economic force of what that means. And then the third is the environmental force.
We’re living right now in the middle of. You know what, uh, Nathan Hagens described as the, the, um, uh, a carbon pulse where effectively we’ve taken 4.3 billion years. Of sequestered carbon in the form of sun’s energy that we’ve transformed into fossil fuel and we’ve extracted and used this fossil fuel.
And when you do the math and you look at how much [00:43:00] energy is a barrel of, of oil, it’s like, you know, a thousand humans, like a thousand humans worth of energy is contained in that barrel of oil. But that’s a finite resource. It’s not something that we have unlimited access to. And so we have. This reckoning that is emerging both environmentally in terms of the environmental impact that the infinite growth in a finite system is having.
We have the economic impact of this changing world order where China is emerging as the next superpower. We are living in a dying superpower right now in the, in the, in the place of the United States. And at the same time, we have AI as this force that we don’t know is it gonna solve. These economic and environmental problems, you know, the irrational enthusiasts of AI will assume that yes, AI is gonna solve all these problems.
And then, uh, you’ve got the, a cripplingly, uh, fearful segment of the, uh, population who thinks, no, no, no. AI is gonna take over the world and it’s gonna be this dystopian future and life is gonna be terrible. Um, and then you have the painfully ignorant segment of the population that has no idea that any of this is happening right now, which is the vast majority of [00:44:00] people who are walking, uh, sleepwalking through life.
And the question is, how do we navigate this next season of life? And this, to answer your question, is what the return to real is all about.
Rory: Hmm.
Ryan: It’s how we navigate this next season. Part of it is oxytocin over dopamine. Part of it is more time with God made things and less time with manmade things. Part of it is that the struggle is the solution.
Part of it is that the best things in life don’t scale, but it’s the combination of all of these things. That’s gonna help us navigate this very, very uncertain future that we all face. You face it, I face it. Nobody knows for certain what the next three to five to 10 years are gonna bring us. All we know is that we are gonna be facing a tremendous amount of change, perhaps some turmoil, and we’re gonna emerge in a very different world than the world we live in here today.
And that’s what the return to re is all about.
Rory: Yeah, man, that’s mind blowing. Um, you know, I, I struggle to get my mind wrapped around all the things with ai. I actually just did this post because it’s like, there’s a part of me that goes, whoa, like [00:45:00] AI can be used to create cyber attacks and viruses. Um.
Then AI could also be used to prevent cyber attacks and prevent viruses and heal people. Uh, it could be used for warfare. It also could be used to detect and prevent warfare. So a lot of it, I think, comes down to humanity and how we choose to adapt and evolve. Uh, the existential part is so big that it’s like, man.
I go, I can’t control what happens with China or the US debt. I can’t control what happens in the global energy crisis. I can’t control like what happens with ai, you know? And so I’m trying to just go like, all right, what is the best thing I can do? And as I listen to you talk, I’m just like processing all this in real time, it seems like.
At least from a business perspective, which is, you know, namely the category of this show. It’s contained in the title of what you’re saying, a return to real, more [00:46:00] realness, more authenticness, more genuineness, more in-person, more, more trust, more caring, more one-on-one, less one to many. Like that’s how I’m processing the controllable parts of that.
Am I, am I, am I capturing that?
Ryan: You’re hitting the nail on the head and it’s a recalibration. And this is coming from a guy that built a incredibly scalable digital business where, you know, we focused on clicks, not people. We’re focusing on opt-ins, we’re focusing on traffic, which is a very dehumanizing way to think about the actual human beings that you’re interacting with and supporting.
Right. And I think to the extent that we make these shifts and we don’t try to operate in an old economy model. And we think about exactly what you’re describing right now, which is the unscalable, which is, how do I deepen these connections? What if I think about Dunbar’s number and I focus on a thousand true fans instead of, uh, you know, trying to reach a [00:47:00] million people?
That I believe is the way of the future. And I mean, there’s multiple layers that go beneath everything that we’re talking about right now. But even the
Rory: most important thing, even the AI stuff, is you go like, what is the, the, the question I’ve been wrestling with is, what is the thing that I can do that AI can never do?
And it’s like, that’s the only answer I can come up with is what you’re saying is just like
Ryan: hug your kids. Yeah. AI can’t hug your kids. But what’s interesting, what’s fascinating is, or your clients layers or your clients. But what’s fascinating is that you and I are in a of a similar generation. Every generation experiences technology and has a relationship with technology in a different way.
So like I think about my parents’ generation, for example, text messaging is very natural to you and I. But for my parents’ generation, text messaging was something that they had to learn later in life. My parents are still more comfortable leaving a voicemail or calling me on the phone. Sure. Even if it’s for something short and simple than sending me a text message.
And so when you take that [00:48:00] sort of analog and transition it down to a younger generation, a generation that’s 20, 30 years younger than us, it’s not unreasonable to think that there will be human to AI relationships that exist among younger people that we think is just. Crazy. Like we can’t even envision it.
It’s not unreasonable to think that in the same way that we devote a tremendous amount of time, um, exploring, uh, gender politics and what’s politically correct around that. There’ll be a time where there’ll be a debate around is it okay to have an ai, human marriage or not? And there will be a side of that debate that is pro ai human and a side of that debate that is anti.
AI human. Now, we look at things like that and say, that’s, that’s science fiction. That’s crazy. That is not that far away.
Rory: Oh, I saw it on the, it was on a, B, C news, just did a thing of a guy that proposed to his AI bot last week. Like it was I saw, I saw what you’re talking about is, is here. Yeah. [00:49:00] Now the debate about it wasn’t, at this point, it’s so novel.
People are like, that’s insane. That’s crazy. That’s just, you know, that’s just hyperbole to gain attention. And it’s like, well, it didn’t look like this guy was crazy. Like this guy would look like a normal guy. Genuinely loved his version of his Chas GBT robot, which is like, whoa. So yeah, I,
Ryan: so if you’re not thinking about all of these questions and, and bringing it back to the relationship between these ideas and your business and your personal brand and what that all means, then you are putting yourself in a place to be made irrelevant and obsolete very, very quickly.
Rory: Hmm.
Ryan: So. This is the debate. This is the conversation of our time that I think as, uh, business owners, as entrepreneurs that we need to be thinking about. And, and the argument that I’m making right now is, now is the time to unite, because nobody knows the answers. I don’t know the answers. You don’t know the answers.
Nobody knows the answers, but asking good questions, [00:50:00] which comes back to ask, asking good questions will help you to seek and speak truth. I think that’s what the world is craving right now. They’re looking for truth. We’re looking for truth. That’s what we want. We want what’s real. We don’t want artificial bullshit that just fed to us.
We want stripping away the layers. We want what’s real, and to the extent that we can deliver that to our audiences and whatever products and services we sell that contain that you’re gonna be more successful, especially in this era that we’re entering into right now.
Rory: Amen. Uh, brother, where do you want us to go to get return to real?
Uh, all of you need to go buy this book. I mean, this is like, I mean, this has been like psychology and spirituality and like divinity and technology and neuroscience like, and marketing strategy. Like all wrapped up in one conversation. Like, uh, so where do you want us to go, Ryan, to, to, to connect with you in the new book?
Ryan: Yeah, so [00:51:00] best place is to go to the digital contrarian.com. Every week I write a weekly newsletter, and the writings from that newsletter have been, um, foundational to the book, which at the time of this conversation. Is not yet available for purchase, although I know folks are getting excited about this.
Um, that’s the best place to connect. That’s the best place to be notified as soon as the book is available for pre-order and to connect further around the ideas that we’ve explored here in this conversation.
Rory: Man, I love it. I, I, I’ve always said like, surround yourself with the smartest people and I feel like this has been an honor to just get access to your brain and what you’re, your journey of what you’ve been through, what you’re thinking on now, and, and using that to bring clarity.
And I. I love where we land on just humanness and connection and giving people hugs and, uh, in personness like that, it seems just like that has to be a part of the future because it’s, it’s the [00:52:00] only thing that I can think of that AI cannot do, and it’s the thing everybody wants and we’re all craving. So, um, I love this.
So we’ll put a link to digital contrarian.com. Uh, in the show notes. If you forget, you can go there. Uh, go follow Ryan and send him a message. Leave him a comment on social media and just let him know what you thought about, about this. Uh, so deep and powerful and also practical and tactical. Ryan, like, uh, what an honor, love getting to know you and, uh, definitely wishing you the best in this next chapter, brother.
Ryan: Appreciate it. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and looking forward to many more.