(Replay) What Does It Mean to Return to Real? with Ryan Levesque

Dustin [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Seven Figure Elite podcast. I have a very special treat for you today. What we're gonna play for you is actually an interview that was recorded over a year ago with someone I really respect, a great thought leader, an amazing author, someone I would consider a, a good friend, Ryan Levesque.

Dustin And so when we recorded this interview, Ryan was in the middle of writing this epic book, and I don't even know that he had the final title. He certainly didn't have, the final manuscript or the, the design of the book when we recorded this. But I think we captured in this interview the essence of this really big idea, and that idea is that we need to index for our values and for connection, for humanity, and, and for realness.

Dustin And so as I record this intro for you today, I have in my hands, Re- Return to Real, which is the culmination of Ryan's work. I'm sure this will become a [00:01:00] New York Times bestseller. It's an amazing book, and I've been an early reader, and I'm, I'm very blessed to have received this, personal signed copy from Ryan, this heirloom edition.

Dustin And so I wanted to bring this back, into the limelight because I think you should read this book. I think it's an amazing, conversation that Ryan and I had. And the subtitle to the book is The Last Human Advantage in an Age of Artificial Everything. And, if, if you know me at all, you know that that's really in alignment with my values.

Dustin And as Ryan and I share in our interview, we met through, uh, marketing a long time ago, but we met in a deeper way through Front Row Dads. And what Ryan unveils in this interview, I think, is a very unique deep dive into how he has led with his own values, and how he's structured his business and how he runs his life, around his business, and specifically with his, his two, two young boys and this farm that they've created in Vermont.

Dustin It's really an epic story of going from, [00:02:00] venture capital and neuroscience and, and living in China with his wife, to being a scrappy online entrepreneur, figuring out, how to do things in his unique way, creating a software company, and, a former bestselling book called Ask. And where we left the interview last year was him returning to real, moving to Vermont, having this whole epic chapter in his life, and I just thought it was really cool to reflect back, now that this is real, it just-- this book just came out, and be able to share with you, a moment in time as Ryan was wrestling with these ideas and getting them into book format.

Dustin So I hope you'll pick up Return to Real, and I hope you enjoy this interview with Ryan. And, wanted to do an intro to kinda timestamp it for you 'cause he may be talking, you know, about, "I'm working on this book," and, it's pretty cool to, to be here many months later with lots and lots of, of blood, sweat, and tears poured into the final version.

Dustin And I hope you enjoy the interview, and I hope you enjoy the [00:03:00] book

Intro - Outro You're listening to the Seven Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level Here's your host, Dustin Riechmann

Dustin Welcome back to the Seven Figure Leap podcast. I say this a lot, but I really, really mean it today. I'm I'm, I'm really excited about this interview.

Dustin I finally get to connect with someone that I've admired from afar for probably over 15 years in a professional way, uh, and more so recently in a personal way. And so Ryan Levesque is our special guest today. We'll talk a little bit about his business history and things. Uh, seven-time Inc. 5000 entrepreneur, two-time national bestselling author.

Dustin The credentials are there. Uh, when I, when I think of Ryan, the thing I admire actually is he's a devoted husband, he's got two awesome kids. He's made some really drastic [00:04:00] and I think, uh, fruitful life decisions i- 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.

Dustin So Ryan, first of all, just like thanks for being here. Lots of gratitude. I'm gra- I'm glad we're able to connect here. Uh, we're in a group called Front Row Dads, and we've danced around each other, uh, at different events, but we've never actually connected, so I'm really excited to have you here.

Ryan Well, Dustin, man, it's, uh, 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 Awesome. Well, I think, uh, it's necessary, I don't wanna spend a ton of time in the past, but I do wanna give people context. Most people in the marketing world probably, uh, know you or know some of your story, but wherever you think is appropriate, if you can give sort of that CliffsNotes version of where you started with your entrepreneurial journey and kinda get us up to, uh, close to present day, and then we'll spend most of our time talking about what you're up to now and then 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 2008 that became the [00:05:00] Ask Method Company on the back of a book that I wrote called Ask. And it was a, uh, a book at the time when it was released that became the number one marketing book of the year as voted by Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine, and when it released, it was the number one book in the country across all categories.

Ryan Um, and so it was sort of the seed that, um, birthed 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 using a unique combination of surveys and quizzes and assessments, um, uh, built a, a business around that. Um, later built a software company, which was the marketing technology that, um, uh, served that, and collectively, both businesses, as you mentioned, seven-time Inc. 5000. And, uh, in 2024, last year, we sold, uh, our software company, um, uh, to a strategic, uh, buyer who happened to be our number one competitor in the market, which was very, very- What a smart move.

Ryan Yeah ... yeah, it was a very interesting experience. [00:06:00] So our software technology, uh, traded under the name Bucket, and we sold to a company called Scoreapp in the UK, which was co-founded by Daniel Priestley, and today I sit on the board of advisors of that company and, um, and play a role, um, in that capacity and, um, have made some pretty big life moves, uh, in the last few years.

Ryan So that's the short and sweet, uh, 60-second version.

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.

Dustin And so I, 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. I actually, when I, 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.

Dustin 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, our listeners are in [00:07:00] currently, right?

Ryan Yeah, I mean, well, the, the slightly longer version- ... is that, yeah, I mean, I started, I started my business with, with $500 in my pocket and a laptop computer.

Ryan And, uh, you know, after I graduated from college, I worked. I was, uh, you know, working in a cubicle. Um, I was working in insurance, and, uh, had a bit of a quarter-life crisis where I said I c- I just saw my future 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 60s, and I just saw the next 40 years of my life.

Ryan 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, and so I started, uh, a business. I learned, at the time, this is like in 2006, 2007, I learned about, um, online marketing and just all the skills that I didn't have, um, around building a business online.

Ryan And we entered in the... Uh, the first market that we went into was the, uh, most random of markets. So before the orchid business, we went into, uh, the [00:08:00] Scrabble tile jewelry business. That's

Dustin right. That's right. I remember that now, yeah.

Ryan Teaching people how to make Scrabble tile jewelry and, and that's when I learned the power of, um, selling education And training.

Ryan And, uh, the reason for that is, and this is like the instructive lesson here, we... In 2007, we, we came into this business, that, the Scrabble tile business, because we were... There was a brand-new website at the time, um, which is obviously huge now, but it was a startup at the time called Etsy, etsy.com.

Dustin Oh, wow.

Ryan And, um, so it was like a total startup at the time, but my wife was starting to follow the site and, and she saw this jewelry that was selling like crazy.

Ryan 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 $25 in one day. Man, she's making 250 bucks a day selling this jewelry.

Ryan That's not that bad, right? So she reverse engineered the sales of this jewelry, and she said, "This is selling like crazy. We should sell this jewelry." And, and I thought, "Well, that's, like, [00:09:00] not the business I wanna be in, um, but all right, I'll consider it." And then a few weeks went by, and then she came back to me again and said, "Look, I, I wanna talk to you about that Scrabble tile thing again."

Ryan 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. That's awesome. It was a Ryan a girl, right? Um, and she was selling this tutorial on how to make this jewelry.

Ryan And, uh, 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, 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.

Ryan And then you do the math and you think, "She's making $500 a day, 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. We effectively built a better mousetrap, so we learned how to make the [00:10:00] jewelry.

Ryan Well, my wife learned how to make the jewelry. We built a better, um, 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. And, uh, we grew that business to, if I recall, about $8,000 a month, um, just in selling, you know, tutorials.

Ryan And then, um, we learned the difference between an evergreen market and a, and a fad market. I don't know if you heard about this. It, it made the news. The world wilds- worldwide, uh, Scrabble tile jewelry market crashed- ... shortly after we got into this market. Everyone

Dustin remembers where they were at in that moment.

Dustin It was like-

Ryan Exactly, yeah. You always remember where you stand, yeah ...

Dustin 9/11, financial crisis- Remember ... Scrabble tile. Yeah,

Ryan so. 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.

Ryan And so our business basically went, you know, cratered to just, like, maybe $1,000 a month or a few hundred dollars a month. And, and we had kinda one of these, like, oh, crap moments [00:11:00] and, um, and decided to, 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 partner, speaking of partnerships, with a number of other businesses, um, in the golf instruction space, tennis instruction space, the fitness instruction space.

Ryan All these different markets. 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 working with clients as a consultant, as a coach.

Ryan Um, 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, uh, I call it, like, the three R model. Um, where I get paid a, a retainer, I'd get paid an upfront fee, and I'd get paid a, a rev share or a, a royalty on all the [00:12:00] sales that we generated.

Ryan You know, and in that experience, I had a few, uh, client partners that we did really, really, really well. Um, one of our, uh, projects, uh, in the golf space, um, 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.

Dustin Wow.

Ryan Yeah. So we built a m- a multi-million person list in the golf space and built a very successful business, um, and ultimately led to an acquisition by NBC and the Golf Channel.

Ryan So then I was like, "Okay, we've, I've, you know, cracked a code on something." And then did it in the B2B space, in the business funding space with, uh, with a company called, uh, Swift Capital that we rebranded into LoanBuilder, 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.

Dustin Holy moly. I didn't know that part. That's awesome.

Ryan Yeah. So, so, so that, like it all, like it... You know, but you start very simply and, you know, it's like, it's like any of these things. Like my goal, my big [00:13:00] dream, Dustin, when I started my business was I wanted to make $10,000 a month.

Ryan Like, that was my numbers. Like, if I could make $10,000 a month, work from home, you know, uh, not have to travel, not have to commute, and we can live anywhere we want, that would be amazing. And it, and it took 10 years to do this. So it's definitely not overnight. It's like not get rich quick, get rich very slow.

Ryan But it took me 10 years and, uh, to get to $10 million a year in, in our business, and then we grew that to about almost $20 million a year. And the top line revenue, um, and, uh, and generating at the time, um, at our peak between five and seven million a year in, in profit, bottom line profit. So, you know, figured it out.

Ryan Like we were able to, to crack the code and learned a lot. 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-

Dustin Yeah ...

Ryan really focus on fatherhood and, you know, not grinding for grinding's sake, but like knowing When enough is [00:14:00] enough and then, you know, deciding to live life and, and answer that question that we were talking about, um, knowing what it is that you're optimizing for.

Dustin Yep. And that's, uh... Well, I'm really glad that we took a little backwards tangent

Ryan there. That was the longer. That was, like, the, I don't know, the five or six-minute version of the story.

Dustin That was beautiful though. But it's effective. And I, 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...

Dustin What I want people to hear in that is the through line, right? It's like experimentation, um, applying what works in one maybe micro instance into something bigger and then bigger and then bigger and, and, and, yeah. And, and, and it brings us to kind of where I really, really wanted to dig in here and double-click is this kinda last year in your life, which is really interesting.

Dustin 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, move from Austin to Vermont, and you're, like, running a farm, and there's this idea of returning to real, which I really wanna apply to business as for, like, most of the rest of the interview.

Dustin But maybe, uh, give us some, [00:15:00] some... I, 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, um, if I go back to 2021, 2020, 2021, we made the decision that we were gonna, um, take our business to market, meaning we were gonna sell our, our businesses, our combined businesses.

Ryan 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 s- synergistic, very much symbiotic in, in many ways. So we packaged it together as a, as a single sale. We took the business to market. With a, a couple twists and turns and, and, you know, winding roads along the way, eventually we received an offer for $70 million to buy both businesses.

Ryan And I wish I could say that the, the storybook ending, you know, ended with, uh, the end, and then they all rode off into the sunset, but the punchline is that the deal fell apart, and the deal fell apart for a few different reasons, um, some of [00:16:00] which were challenges with the business. It was a... It's a very unique asset to have a software company and a training education company, so it's, it's like a...

Ryan It poses some unique challenges.

Dustin Yeah.

Ryan Um, but more importantly, um, we ran into macroeconomic headwinds. We started the process in a very favorable M&A environment in 2021 when, um, interest rates were near zero. There was a ton of M&A activity, and by the time we got into early 2022, um, things started to shift.

Ryan There were fears in the marketplace of a general recession. Russia had invaded the Ukraine, which had spawned, you know, fears of, like, World War III. Interest rates started to rise. At the beginning of the year, they were next to zero. By the end of the year, I think they were 4.5%, um, the Fed's, uh, fed rate in the United States.

Ryan And long story short, almost all M&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 posed, which is, um, 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 [00:17:00] over $100 million in revenue. We'd, um, I'd grown my team to almost 100 employees. Like, it just was like a rocket ship, but it was exhausting. And I, 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, and we kinda ran into that issue, um, 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, you really think about life. And I kinda reflected and realized, like, I'd spent 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, incredibly understanding wife gave me permission, uh, to take a little bit of time off to live and work on a farm in the Mad River Valley of Vermont

Dustin Wow.

Ryan And so I took some [00:18:00] time off in the summer to live in a tent by a pond, um, outside in a, at a farm in the Mad River Valley, and-

Dustin Your, your, your Thoreau experience here

Ryan of- My Thoreau experience Okay, yeah ... this was my, this was my Walden experience. Absolutely. And it was incredible, man. I mean, um, I was doing a deep dive into the world of permaculture.

Ryan I'd, I'd maybe read, I don't know, two dozen books on, on permaculture. 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 w- when you start diving down the road of, of cuisine, you really focus on the quality of the ingredients.

Ryan And so naturally, you start at the grocery store, then you go to Whole Foods, then you go to farmers' markets, and then what you realize is that even the food at Whole Foods and farmers' 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, uh, available conventionally at a regular grocery store.

Ryan So the, like, natural conclusion that you get to is, "Well, I've got to raise and grow [00:19:00] my own food." Like, that's the only, like, that's the only option. So, um, so I'm in Vermont, and I'm there, and man, I don't know if you've ever had one of these moments where it's not even your brain, it's like your full body, "This is where I'm meant to be."

Dustin Yeah.

Ryan 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, um, 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, um, 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 100,000 people.

Dustin Holy moly. Wow.

Ryan Yeah. So it 5X'd in a decade, and it just was not, 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. [00:20:00] We lived through the winter storm of Texas, and we saw sort of the risks associated with that, and it led us to maybe rethink if that's where we wanted to be. Um, I'm from the Northeast. I'm from New Hampshire. Um, my parents still live in New Hampshire. When I applied to college, I applied to two colleges, one in Rhode Island, Brown, and one in Vermont, Middlebury.

Ryan I got into both. Um, ultimately chose to go to Brown. I was accepted there early. Um, I could have played soccer at Middlebury, didn't, and so there was always, like, a small piece of my heart- ... that was tied to Vermont. Like, I felt like I had unfinished business. So long story short, I go there, I'm at this farm, and, um, we're considering putting our house on the market, and we, uh, 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.

Ryan And while... And this trip to Vermont was gonna be, like, the f- the decision-making trip. And so while I'm there with one bar of service in the, in the Green Mountains of Vermont with, like, no cell service, I text my wife and I say, [00:21:00] "I think this is meant to be." Like, "We should do it. Let's do it. Pull the trigger."

Ryan Put the house on the market, and, uh, within 24 hours, the house sold, all cash, full price, uh, 14-day close.

Dustin Wow. Okay. Well, that's, that's another sign, right?

Ryan 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, uh, put it in the back of the truck, and we road-tripped from Texas to Vermont with nowhere to go.

Dustin 'Cause you didn't own this farm. You were, like, hanging out on someone else's farm

Ryan for this time period. I was working. My, my... I was just there. Yeah. I wasn't... It was done, right? I was, uh, going through a PDC, a Permaculture Design Certification, and doing some work on this farm. And so we lined up a whole bunch of, uh, visits to, um, to tour different properties to purchase a property, and between the time we left Texas and the time that [00:22:00] we arrived in Vermont, uh, five out of the seven properties that we had lined up sold.

Ryan Wow. And then the other two were not a fit And this is in the fall, this is in autumn. It's in leaf peeper 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 to live.

Ryan So instead, uh, we spent the next year bouncing around Airbnbs and, uh, 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 then ultimately, after knocking on every door and telling our story to anyone who would listen, every waiter, every like- We're homeless.

Dustin We need, we

Ryan need, we need to live. Exactly. Like, "Hey," like, you know, "Where do you... Oh, yeah, we're actually looking. Do you happen to know anybody who has a farm or..." We were like the... We got known across the state as the crazy family from Texas. 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 [00:23:00] And so we're on our site now. We landed at a place. We're on about 100-plus acres.

Dustin Oh, wow.

Ryan It's stunning. It... And we, uh, 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, uh, raise pigs. We raise laying hens, uh, for eggs. We did 100 meat birds this year, so we raise and process 100 meat birds.

Ryan 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, uh, we have 1,000 maple taps, so we tap our own maple syrup. So we have 100% of our sweetener between the honey and syrup produced on farm, 100% of our protein between the beef, pork, chicken and eggs and trout that we produce on farm.

Ryan We planted 500 trees, so nut trees, fruit trees, berry bushes. We've got like 30 different kinds of berries on the property. Um, and then we did a few acres of production garden. So, you know, we raise, we [00:24:00] grow, you know, our potatoes and, and all of our root vegetables and squash and onions and garlic, all the things that you'd expect.

Ryan Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, um, all of our herbs, all of our greens. And, uh, between overwintering and root cellar, um, made it through this past winter, um, yeah, with freezers full of protein and, uh, sawdust bins full of, uh, root vegetables. So, um, it's been a incredible journey and an incredible learning experience doing this.

Ryan And, um, it all comes back to what you're talking about, this, this desire for the return to real, this desire to not just live in this abstracted world that we experience through a, you know, 14 square inches that we can fit in our hands, but actually living life, you know, h- truly hands in the dirt. 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.

Ryan So, um, yeah, that's a bit of, uh... That's a bit [00:25:00] more of the story.

Ryan appreciate it

Dustin because- Maybe a

Ryan starting

Dustin off point ... and probably the way you would normally tell it, uh, and I appreciate the freedom by which you, you know, you're opening up here. It's amazing. 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, oh, Ryan sold his thing in Austin, and he's, like, got a farm, and that's cool.

Dustin 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 still got all that to deal with, and you 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 that's a really good microcosm for some people who are like, "I want to go from selling courses to coaching or from coaching to consulting." You know, like, the- it's never a simple, straight linear path. Like it's... There's always some sort of erratic, uh, under, under- underlying. 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, "Oh, he finally gets the fairytale [00:26:00] 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 really glad that we were able to dig into that, and I know I also want to 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 this need to return to real, right?

Dustin And so I kind of micro dose that, like take my kids fishing, and we live in suburbia. But, um, and I do desire to have a, a smaller but meaningful farm, uh, of my own in, in, in several years. So I think there's these sort of lifestyle things we can do. But in the... Uh, let's say people don't have that freedom, and they're like, "You know what?

Dustin 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 ex- I, I still want more fulfillment. I still, I still wanna like, get unhinged from this whole like, digital existence, even if that, some of that's required for my, my online business." Like, what are maybe some simpler ways or some ways that like on- online entrepreneurs who are coaches and [00:27:00] consultants can start to experience this return to real without maybe such a dramatic shift as you've been through?

Ryan I'll give you a few simple ones, right? Yeah. And I think it's, uh, the way you described it, micro dosing makes a huge difference. It's like I'm always looking for what's the minimum viable dose-

Dustin Yeah ...

Ryan of anything. So I'll give you a few. One of our, um, mutual, uh, Front Row Dads brothers and a dear friend of mine, Ali Jafarian-

Dustin Yeah

Ryan 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."

Dustin Hmm. I like that. Yeah.

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.

Ryan 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, look up at the heavens, look up at the sky, and put things in perspective. And that practice right there, for me, sets the tone for my entire day.

Ryan And it doesn't matter if you wake up and the sun has risen, or for like, in my case, you wake up [00:28:00] 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 man-made.

Ryan And, and really what that means, if you think about your day-to-day existence, if you're like most people, 99.9% of the world that you interact with is the man-made world. 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.

Ryan So there's some simple practices like that that can give you the minimum viable dose. For me, 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.

Ryan So we might go out to eat one night a week, so you know, but six nights a week [00:29:00] we're having dinner at home or with friends 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, carrots, potatoes, shallots, garlic, all from our farm, and, uh, that's the meal.

Ryan And that was a meal I made last night in the slow cooker or yesterday in the slow cooker. We're having leftovers tonight. I know that's what I'm gonna be having tonight after I take my son to, uh, uh, lacrosse practice. 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 DoorDash, you can do Uber Eats.

Ryan We don't have that where I live, by the way, but- ... do all those things, but pick one meal where you're actually making that meal with your hands and, and get your family involved, right? Like, I get my kids involved. 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. Whether that's the food that you cook, [00:30:00] 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 one In a week, and that's the minimum viable dose

Dustin I love that.

Dustin That's awesome. And then I, I love that as a daily practice. Um, 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, um, 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, you know, engage in the digital world and touch your phone.

Dustin And then I love the idea of just like one meal a week, maybe it's your Sabbath day or whatever, [00:31:00] um, 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. It's not through... It is at home and it is a, a staple of our routine.

Dustin And then 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? And, and so next week as we're recording this, our spring break trip, we're going to Sedona.

Dustin 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, uh, band as we call it, our small group. We're going to Breckenridge this summer. Oh, awesome. It's four days, so it's like a quick trip, but we're gonna go hike a 14K, you know, peak and, uh- Oh, that's awesome

Dustin 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 as 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, uh, that, that's, uh, [00:32:00] that's beautiful.

Ryan Two things I'll, I'll add to that, uh, since if I... If react, and I know we're, we're short on time, but I think this is valuable. Two things. Number one, when you ask kids as adult what they remember most when they're growing up, 9 times out of 10, 90 respect- 90% of responses involve some type of trip.

Dustin Yep.

Ryan How do we make space for this? Number one, we gotta make time for it because windows open, but windows close.

Dustin Yes.

Ryan 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 experience budget. And we don't know exactly how we're gonna use that money.

Ryan 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. Doesn't have to be first class tickets on Air Emirates to Dubai with gold-crusted hotel. Doesn't have to be that.

Dustin Right.

Ryan It can literally be a camping day trip-

Dustin Yes

Ryan to the state park that's 45 minutes [00:33:00] away, and wonder in the mundane. But take trips. Do the experiences.

Dustin Yeah, I love that. I have my, my core memory as a kid when... 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.

Dustin I lived in the St. Louis area. We drove to Tennessee to this lake called Reelfoot Lake. And I remember, like we went crappie fishing for like three days. He taught me how to swim there. Uh, and I remember like vividly as a seven-year-old, we went from one side of the lake to the other, and I had this oar, and I had to help get through this, this, what, what I now know is like a culvert, right?

Dustin It was just like this pipe, and it was full of spiders. I'm sure there's one spider. 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?

Dustin And I was like, uh, well, what a, what a memory. And it probably cost 100 bucks or whatever to go down there and do this. And every book report I think in my elementary school is about Reelfoot Lake and how it was formed. And it was just like it, it s- left such an impression. And I, I just love what you shared with that, um, the simplicity of that.

Dustin So that we can end [00:34:00] 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, uh, 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 $200,000 last year.

Dustin 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." 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.

Dustin So I'd 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 getting a lot of fulfillment out of that, but she doesn't know, should I build a big team? Should I be trying to exit someday? Should I just be content with, with where I'm at?

Dustin Like, how do we, how do we wrestle with that? 'Cause I know you've wrestled with it many times over your career.

Ryan Yeah. Gosh. So I'm a big believer in the power of questions.

Dustin Yes.

Ryan 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 [00:35:00] listening to this or watching this right now to reflect on, and that is, what are you optimizing for?

Ryan Like for me, 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 anymore.

Dustin Yeah they're like as tall as you now probably, yeah.

Ryan And that window goes by so fast. So for me, what I'm optimizing for is, uh, to quote Thoreau, 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.

Dustin Yeah.

Ryan I'm in this mode of wanting to soak up. I coach soccer. 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 with my business-

Dustin Mm-hmm ...

Ryan was, it was not for [00:36:00] $70 million, I'm just gonna say that.

Ryan Oh, darn.

Dustin Okay.

Ryan Yeah. Um, 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. And, and what I'll say, what I'll end with 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 There's your quote. Uh, there's a... 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, uh, that's a truism if there ever was one, and it's definitely not something that gets brought up in the interwebs, uh, when you're talking about business growth.

Dustin So yeah. I'm, I'm writing that down 'cause I, for personal, for personal reasons, but a- as Ryan and I were, uh, 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 a- and there are things I'm doing that are very much not scalable. Like I run a mastermind, and that is somewhat scalable.

Dustin I cap it and like I cer- I want a certain amount of personal attention. But I host two in-person [00:37:00] events a year. I just had one in Florida a couple of 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 want to remove any obstacle.

Dustin 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, um, like in a business sense and with my quote unquote business family, like that's the stuff that sticks, right? And I think that's, that's the stuff I'm optimizing for.

Dustin That doesn't mean I can't sell more courses or have more, you know, um, coaching clients and things like that. But for me, it's important to build community and build human touch points and give people the freedom and transparency and vulnerability to show up and be real, uh, to go back to that. So being real in the 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.

Dustin And that was, it was sort of a lightning bolt when you said that. 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 it as well as I can [00:38:00] to the people receiving it. But that is, uh, that hit the nail on the head for me as far as like why I think I'm called in, in this season with my business to not just, like, put the pedal in the metal, try to outsource everything, have everyone else handle all the, all the things in the business so it can, quote-unquote, scale.

Dustin 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 The story of the Mexican fisherman.

Dustin Yes.

Ryan 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.

Ryan And then if we're not careful, we end up putting things in our business so that we're doing none of those things, and we find ourselves like the Mexican fisherman who got into the business because we wanna fish and build this fishing empire, spending no time at all fishing just so you could do what? So you could retire and fish.

Dustin Fish, and yeah.

Ryan What you had it from the beginning.

Dustin Yes. Yes. That's beautiful.

Ryan Yeah.

Dustin Well, Ryan, this is a, this is a total gift. I do wanna, [00:39:00] you know, obviously people can go read the book and, you know, all your, all your thought leadership lives, uh, on the internet for people to find in, in many forms. But this Digital Contarian or The Digital Contarian, uh, 'cause I know that's the URL.

Ryan Yes.

Dustin Tell us about, a little bit about that. I mean, that's, um, ultimately how we started corresponding personally since we didn't make it happen at Front Row Dads 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-in to our conversation.

Ryan So last year, I made this realization that it had been seven years since I had actually written something to my audience with my name attached to it that actually was personally written by me.

Dustin Wow.

Ryan I had a team of writers. We used obviously AI to, uh, create, and I was fed up with it. It was something that made me uncomfortable for a really long time.

Ryan So I, I literally spo- 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, um, my entire email list.

Dustin Yeah,

Ryan I remember

Dustin getting that. And it

Ryan said... [00:40:00] Yeah, and basically

Dustin called- I was like, "Is this real?"

Dustin And I'm like, "I think this is real. I know Ryan enough to know this is legit."

Ryan And, uh... and, and I didn't know where that was going, but I sent that out. on a Saturday, and then next Saturday I send something else out, and the next Saturday I send 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 Contrarion, which is still 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 it's one of the most important things that I do.

Ryan So, um, if you're interested, you can go to [00:41:00] thedigitalcontrarian.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'll get access to all the archives. 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, uh, you can go to that link and, uh, 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, your investing insights. It's a, it's a really well-rounded, um, tap inside what is clearly a very brilliant mind, as we got a, a little taste of today.

Dustin So I highly recommend it. Uh, my encouragement is, like, go subscribe, and when Ryan shares something that really hits you between the eyes, hit reply and say, "Hey, I, I got here from Dustin and that podcast interview you did with him," and, uh, we'll, we'll complete a virtuous, uh, circle here. So Ryan- Mm-hmm ... uh, thank you so much again for the time, for the vulnerability, the insights.

Dustin Uh, I don't know how often you talk about some of this stuff, but, uh, I feel really gifted, uh, to receive it, and I know our audience will as well. So thanks again for being here.

Ryan Amazing, Dustin. I really enjoyed our [00:42:00] conversation, and look forward to doing it again sometime soon.