Ryan Deiss: The Man Who Started A Million Dollar Business For His Dream Girl 👑 E87

I don't believe that anything that I have is mine.

I believe that anything that I have has been given to me to be stewarded over. And so it is my job to figure out what is the best way to deploy this capital in a way that is going to benefit others.
Right. That's that's what I got.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. We are here inside an RV motorhome in Carlsbad, California.
We're parked in the valet of this fancy resort because our guest, Ryan Dice, inside doesn't have one mastermind going on. He has two masterminds going on.
It's just down the hallway from each other. $42,000 investment for high-level people that want to buy and sell businesses.
Right down the hall on the other other side $55,000 investment partnered up with Damon John one of our favorite guests we've ever had on this episode and so we're going to dive deep into why is it important to be part of masterminds how does he help throw 10,000 person event like traffic and conversion summit and all the things he's done in his career so the way we work here as know, is this podcast will be less than 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes.
So this episode will be between 35 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. As you know, you can visit us at themoneymondays.com.
It obviously helps us when you can like, comment, subscribe. That's why we've been able to be in the top 50 in the world of podcasts because of your guys's support and i've been running this podcast ad free for over a year and a half now just to support you guys because i want people to have discussions about money so without further ado mr ryan dice give us the quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money sure started my first business online in 1999 for my college dorm room so could buy an engagement ring for my then girlfriend.
We've been dating for about two weeks. I didn't tell her.
I didn't tell her that she was going to be my future wife because I knew that'd be creepy. But I did know I was broke.
I figured I should figure out a way to make some extra money if one day I intended to propose. And so I started a website that day and started selling things online.
And the rest, as they say, is history. One website turned into another, into another.
By the time I graduated, we had had a bunch of them and have never really had a real job. That's the idea.
But yeah, literally, it was just started from thinking of how can I make some extra money? Probably something a lot of people can relate to. Are there any investments or brands or anything particular along the way that you're like, man, that was really fun for me? Like that was the one? So there's a lot of missed opportunities that I've had along the way.
I'll tell you, when it comes to investing, my strategy has always been to invest in things that I know that I like in places where I can add value. Where I have completely messed up has been when I've invested in things that I don't know that just seem like good opportunities and when I was chasing.
And so I think a lot of times when it

comes to investing, if everybody's excited about it and you're getting that FOMO, you're probably

about to make a bad decision. When I've looked at something and I said, I know, I have enough

experience in this area to know that this is more valuable than everybody else sees it. You know,

I want to go in. That being said, you also need to trust the people around you who are smarter had a really good friend back in i don't know 2008 2000 maybe 2010 i don't remember the exact date he said you should go buy some bitcoin and i went what is bitcoin he said don't worry about it yeah um just go get it and i think at the time it was like 300 bucks a coin.
And I did. I wish I'd have bought more.
So I kind of have two speeds. I either blindly trust the people that I trust.
And if they say I should do it, then I'll do it. And the group of those people are very, very small.
Or I have to 100% know that I could go in and add value to that. And I have to see it.
And there's nothing in between for me. So you've got multiple masterminds going.
You guys built up traffic and conversion summits with 10,000 people, 8,000 people, 11,000 people a year for many years, for over a decade. Why do you like throwing events? Why do you like being involved in the event category? Man, I hate it actually.
I don't like it. And I think that that's important.
I don't do it because I like it. I do it because our customers like it.
And so to me, it freaks me out. It makes me, I'm terrified of everything.
The reason we sold the company, um, was because I would have recurring nightmares leading up to the event about walking out on stage and nobody's there. Or literally I'm, I'm trying to go from one hallway, trying to make from one stage to another and I get get trapped in the back of the house, and I can't get out, and I can't make my stage time, right? So I didn't set to do it because I was following any particular passion.
And that's characteristic across all my businesses. That very first business that I launched back in 1999 was selling an ebook on how to make your own baby food.
Well, I was a college freshman. I was 19 years old.
I didn't. I mean, now I got four kids and, you know, but there were people who were looking for it.
I happen to know somebody who wrote a book on it. And so I took the PDF that she wrote, converted it and, you know, put it online.
So my game has always just been following the customer wherever they wanted to go. I've seen myself in service of it and and events most of the business that we have because they're so customer centric I've just found that people want to gather and so people would say oh you know I wish wish there was an event on this which you could put together and the very first traffic and conversion summit that we did it was you know my business partner at the time Perry and I saying we should put on an event all the other events suck they're basically just pitch fests what if we did one where our entire goal we don't care how much money we make our entire goal is let's have everybody leave and say that was the best event i've ever been to and just like our plan stated we did not make money we lost lots of money but everybody left saying that was the best ever.
And so we're like, let's do it again. And so we weren't chasing any particular strategic endeavor.
I didn't spreadsheet it out ahead of time. I just knew the market was pulling us in that direction.
And so we followed. So when you're building something like that, that has thousands and thousands of people, then thousands and thousands more people year after year, how do you decide to sell trafficking version in that example? How do you know it's like, okay, you know what? This is the time that private equity group or a competitor that wants to buy us or private investors.
Like, how do you know when it's the right time to make an exit? You don't know. So much of it is gut.
Like I said, I was truly worried about the event was getting to a point of scale where if something bad happened it was potentially financially ruinous sure and i just didn't like the downside anymore and i think this is important in business a lot of times when we're considering an opportunity we consider the best case scenario we don't consider the worst case scenario we don't consider man if this thing fails miserably can i survive that there's a rainstorm or hurricane what would happen well and i and i was truly like what if there's a terrorist attack sure what if um you know i'll tell you what i wasn't thinking pandemic right but what happened i mean we decided that we were going to sell that event in 2018 we had our earn out in 2019 oh my god so you want to talk about timing before march 2020 literally we had we had we we sold and got to earn out before then so you call it gut call it god um but i had a feeling that we needed to do it now how did i at the time justify it i was saying we're coming up on our 10th year yeah 10 years is a really long time we haven't had anything go wrong uh i remember seinfeld you know he seinfeld decided to cut sein seinfeldeld the show at nine years because that's how long the Beatles lasted. So why should he get 10? So that's in the back of my mind.
So there's all these like arbitrary things. And I just want to be transparent again.
I didn't spreadsheet this thing. Now I had a, you know, buddy who sold an event around the same time he had done well.
And so there were enough things that happened where talking to them, he said it was a good idea.

And we did it, but it was mostly just gut feeling.

So for the company owners that are out there listening, why is it important for themselves or their executives to attend business conferences?

I would have said, if you'd asked me this question maybe even five years ago, I'd have said that's where the best content is.

I now think the best content is in venues like this. It's on YouTube.
It's podcasts. Now you go because the content is the gathering, is what creates the reason for people to gather.
Yeah, that's all that it is. And it's the conversations with the people.
And you and I were talking literally as we're walking over to record this. You know, you how's the last couple of days gone? It's been great, but I'm tired, right? Because I'm an introvert.
But I know that if I'm going to grow, it's going to come through the interactions and it's going to come through the network. It's not going to go through me just sitting in my room watching YouTube videos all day learning.
I've got to have ideas. I've got to put those ideas out.
I got to see today in these conversations, can people poke holes in them? Do they stand up to scrutiny? Have people plus them? And it's in those interactions that not only do the ideas get better, do new ideas get formed, but relationships get formed that you can go back to even when you're not at the event. I think it's essential.
And this again, this comes to somebody who generally hates events, like doesn't want to do them and is an introvert and doesn't want to go. But I will make myself do it because it is just that important.
And it's like exercise. I don't like exercising.
I like having exercised. I don't necessarily like going to events.
You know, when I'm there, I like it when I'm done, though. So someone that's out there is considering sponsoring a mastermind, an event, a conference in their industry.
Why would it be useful for them to sponsor or be aligned with certain events in their niche? Because somebody else has already done the hard work. I would talk to some of our sponsors, and they would make more money off of the event than I did as the promoter.
Right. Right.
Absolutely. And because the hardest thing in the world that you will ever do is to aggregate the attention of a definable audience in one place at one time.
I think there's almost nothing more difficult than that, especially in this time where there's so many distractions. Right.
So if you can get everybody physically in one place, man, that's so freaking hard.

And people will be like,

Oh,

well,

why would I bother sponsoring an event? There's only a couple thousand people.

There are only a couple hundred people.

You know,

if I,

if I go into ads,

I can reach millions because they're not really paying attention there.

Right.

Also the quality of people who attend events is just next level.

So we put on events,

we're sponsors of our own events.

So we sold traffic and conversion summit,

but the business, the business that started that event, Digital Marketer, it still pays to sponsor that event. That's cool.
Because we see the value in sponsoring and still being there. So someone's at an event.
They collected 20 business cards. They got 20 phone numbers, put it in their context.
They followed six people on social media. They interacted with 46 different people.
What should they do the week after the event? Once they've got those 46 people in their business cards and contacts. I think your job, if you want to get good at networking, your job is to be the person who comes up with the reason why it makes sense to follow up with them.
And so if you're just following up to be like, hey, just want to check in and see how things are going. Yeah, that's a distraction.
Like, I don't need that. Successful.
Again, we were talking about this. Successful people don't enjoy small talk.
We just don't have time for it. So if you're serious about actually turning those 46 business cards or, you know, however the docking on the phones happen now into real relationships that are meaningful um you need to put the responsibility on yourself to say okay with everything that's going on how can i come up with an opportunity for this person that i can be involved in don't do what everybody else does which is say you know also what where where do you need help right now right you know what even though like you know what has what has you super excited? Like, I feel like you gave me homework.
Like, I feel like I obligated to give you a really interesting answer that I don't necessarily have. Meet people, be cool, be normal, be kind, positive, helpful, and kind.
That's what I teach my kids, PHK. Everybody likes somebody who's positive, who's helpful, and who is kind.
Be that during the interaction, but then take the next step of doing the creative work of saying, how can I come up with a way for us to actually do something together? You know, it's what we do with Damon. You know, I met Damon and connected at an event.
But there was an opportunity to do some things together in the survival space at the time because I had a business in that space and he did, too. And so that's why we got to do business together.
And that's when we became friends. And that's when we did more businesses together.
How do you convince busy people to come to San Diego, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, et cetera, to a three day conference? It is one of the hardest things in the world that I've ever done in business. Right.
It butts in seats. I know I don't have to tell you this.
Putting butts in seats, I truly think, is one of the most difficult businesses that you can be in. It looks sexy from the outside in.
Looks fun. And it is a combination.
In the first couple of years of an event, you really do need to sell people on what they're going to get when they come. So maybe it's content, maybe it's certain celebrities that are going to be there, but there's got to be a draw.
Now, after three years, people come just because that's where they go. So the goal should always be to create the place, but the mistake that people make is they don't invest enough on that experience when folks are there that they want to come back.
And so people come and they're like, well, people spent some money, so I want to try to extract as much from this audience as I can. Because putting on this thing was really expensive and it was really hard, so I better make a lot of money.
Or what was the point? Without realizing it, that original model of what if we just have everybody leaving saying, oh my God, that was the best event I've ever been to to that is the model for getting people to come back sure the hardest thing you'll do though is get people to come the first year and how do you do it that's like big promises marketing like crazy strategic partnerships if you can get some involve somebody else in it who has the audience so you can piggyback off of their credibility so they bring their people and multiple people are bringing their people but if everybody leaves saying that was the best i've ever been to not only will they come back but they'll tell their friends we sold out traffic and conversion summit months in advance doing very little marketing because it was just the place that people went so you sell a company on a friday tens of millions of dollars comes in i'm just making up a number tens of millions of dollars comes in on monday what happens on tuesday well after you sell a company you've been building up for years and years and years what do you do the day after so i we advise a lot of people who sell their businesses and and the that's exactly the question that that i ask everybody and if they don't have an answer, I tell them, don't sell your company. So what I did the very next day, and we didn't sell it on a Monday, we sold it on a Tuesday.
Tens of millions of dollars did hit. And on Wednesday, I woke up and did exactly the same thing I did the day before.
Because that wasn't the only business we had. We had multiple businesses.
And I think it's so incredibly important because a lot of entrepreneurs, they work really, really hard to build up this company. And then they sell it.
But because they don't know what their next act is going to be, they've lost all their identity. And they're miserable.
And so they do some combination of, well, I guess I'm just going to go and do a bunch of investments. But they don't really know how to invest.
They know how to operate. But they don't know how to invest.
So they wind up losing a bunch of money. Now they don't have any money coming in.
The money they had is getting smaller because they're bad at investing. And now they're flailing around trying to do additional startups, but it's hard and they don't quite have the motivation they had before.
And all they want at the end of the day is to own that business that they sold. And so to answer your question specifically about me, I did exactly the same thing.
And my advice to anybody is, if you're going to sell a business, what new business are you going to be into? What is that next act going to look like? And so if it's not a new company, then what charity work are you going to do? But you've got to have another mountain to climb or you're going to be freaking miserable. So when you have so many thousands of people that attend your events, you have, you know, your phone book gets big.
You meet so many people over the years. How do you decide what you invest your money into? Like, how do you decide when people are pitching you, asking you to do joint ventures, et cetera? Like, how do you decide when you can do real estate, stock market, crypto, angel investing, private equity, debt, debt, debt? There's so many things you could be doing.
How do you make decisions about investing? I create buckets of investments. And so the largest bucket that I have is my active investment portfolio where I'm going to be investing in the businesses that I have some ownership interest in.
Because I am good at scaling companies. I'm good at the growth side, at the op side.
And so I want to put the bulk, I want to invest mostly in myself. So that is the largest chunk of my investments.
It's 60, 70%. Then what I have is about 10% of just, I call it my FOMO fund, FOMO fund fund.
So if it is just, I got to do it because I got to do it. If a friend calls me up and says, throw some money at Bitcoin, if whatever, it's like, Hey, I know you and I trust you.
Then, um, or you got a buddy who is thinking about starting a restaurant. I like this friend.
I think a restaurant restaurant is a terrible business but it'd be fun to walk into a place and norm you know that's going to come from the fun fund investment but that is 10 at most of my of my total of what i've got out there in that but i do think it's important to have just i want to throw some stupid money at it incidentally if i want to, it's going to come out of there too, because that's an investment in fun. Got it.
Right? So if I'm going to buy a stupid car that I know is not going to turn, but this is, I'm essentially lighting this on fire fund, but it's going to be freaking fun. If it happens to work out, great.
If it happens to work out, great. But if it happens to work out, then it moves from that to something I now know, fund.
Right. So'm going to reallocate my portfolio.
So 60 percent, 60 ish percent here, no more than 10 percent here. And the middle is just sitting in index funds or cash equivalents so that I can put it into an opportunity that's in the 60 percent.
And that's that's how I do it. That's how I allocate mine.
I like it. So I have this thing that I speak about for many, many years called the 40-40-20 principle.
Okay. I take 40% into the low risk, hoping to make between 5% and 9% for the year.
I take 40% for medium risk, hoping to make between 10% and 30% for the year. This is cash flow in businesses, the stock market, and real estate.
And then I have my 20%. This is my high risk.
This is my shot at glory.

This is angel investing, cryptocurrency that if I get it right, I want it to be 8X, 12X, 20X,

something crazy to happen. And if I get it wrong or it takes too long, the medium risk and low risk

will cover the high risk. And you can adjust the percentages however you guys want, obviously.

You have to also determine what type of investor are you when you're listening to me talk about low risk stuff making five to nine percent a year but it's super super safe basically 100 safe maybe that's where you're comfortable with yeah if you just love 10 to 30 percent like real estate flipping houses buying the stocks cash flowing businesses etc well that's cool you can adjust that percentage however you want or you might listen to high risk like oh no i want to be all in a high risk the reason i do that for amanda so i don't go all in high risk yeah i don't just gamble you you have i believe it you got to treat like a business in business you're going to have budget allocations right and so i think as long as you're intentional you'll figure out what works for you like and so for me like i don't like the stock market right because the stock market is too close to business but um but i want to just get my hands dirty there value. So if I'm going to add value, I'm going to invest more in private companies.
But I mean, I invest in index funds. That's technically the stock market.
I get it, but I'm not buying and selling stocks. I also don't necessarily love real estate.
I own some real estate, but I don't even like changing light bulbs. I'm not handy at all.
And so I don't feel like I can add much value there. I'm not saying that real estate is a bad investment.

It's just not my favorite.

And so I think it's important to,

because different people say like,

oh, this is the best possible investment.

You have to be in this category.

The wealthiest people I know

completely ignore certain categories

that everybody else says you absolutely should be in.

So as long as you got an allocation

and you think in terms of risk tolerance, which is exactly what you're describing, the specific asset class that you're investing in, you know, don't feel like you got to be in it all. So as I mentioned, inside, you got $42,000 mastermind in there.
You have a $55,000 mastermind with Damon John in there. Why is it important for people to invest into themselves? Why are masterminds important? What is the value of it to network and things like that it's the ultimate shortcut it takes a really long time to build a network if you're building it organically just doing the shake and howdy especially if you're an introvert right i've got i had a guy that worked for me for a number of years director of um of sales and partnerships this guy would walk into a room of total strangers and think, yay, new friends.
I walk into that room and I go, oh, God, kill me. He would be that weirdo who sits on the plane in first class and strikes up a conversation with a stranger next to him.
I'm the person who's walking in headphones on. Don't talk to me.
For him, he probably doesn't need a mastermind. Now, it'd still be faster.
Sure. But he probably doesn't need a mastermind now it'd still be faster sure but he probably doesn't need but but he is the ultra other end of the spectrum you know the mastermind would be a good filter for him instead of working in the bar it'd be yeah it'd be much much faster but i think again somebody's already done the hard work of aggregating the people that you want right you don't have to do that.
And because if it's an established mastermind, people get figured out pretty quickly. You know, we both run masterminds.
And every now and then, slimy chuckleheads will find their way in. We can do our best to filter, but snakes are good at pretending, right? It's why they are who they are.
But they do get filtered out in a group setting like that. You just can't hide in a group.
So not only have the best people been assembled, but the quality of a mastermind is determined by who's not allowed in the room and great masterminds. They don't just assemble great people.
They keep bad people out. And so to have that all in one place, it's the best money that you can spend in business.
And I don't just say that because I run them. I run them because I benefit from them.
And I want to do them with other smart people. You know, you've talked about the two we had today.
The two days before that, we had a different one. Right.
Targeting a different group of people. So we had three different masterminds going on over the last four days.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's fascinating. It's a lot of moving parts.
It is got a great team yeah got a great team i don't have to think about most of it okay on the charity side of things why is it important for executives at a company to get their staff members involved in some charity work so i i take a slightly different stance on this i'm, I donate a fair bit to charity. I believe that you should tie 10%, you know, so for me, I do that to, you know, to my, to my church and I don't, I give over and above that to the, to the charities that matter.
Um, at the business level, I've always struggled a bit and maybe you can help me, you know, on this can you can do some personal therapy here with me I've struggled a bit um to force that value upon my team members and so I know a lot of businesses where one of their core values is like we give back and we're charitable it's not one of ours and it's not because I don't value it it's because that doesn't exist at the company level um now the people that we hire are charitable people and I like to think that they give, but it's not necessarily something that we force top down. So, you know, I mean, that's something obviously that I know you do and you're passionate about, you know, it happens.
Like, what am I missing? So oftentimes people think about the money part of it, the cash part of it. I make it the experience part of it to make the staff members closer together and so i get them to rally together hey we're all going to go down to the homeless shelter for four hours okay well we do that there you go okay cool there we go i gotta be missing something here yeah no it's back to school supplies thanksgiving food drives toy drives yep i don't care if they put money up i want them to show up with their kids and their cousins and sisters and husbands and wives and they all network with each other and they get to rally together and bring 300 toys to for years at digital marketer we stopped doing this during because of covid because the charity that we were giving to had had some issues um but we did this event called the black friday boot camp and it's like hey while everybody else on black friday is running sales we're just going to give away free content so we're going to run this like all day session where we're just going to be giving away free content and every you know it was a paid webinar essentially it's like 10 or 20 bucks and so we're going to donate all of it to um the children's cancer charity that was kind of local local in town and um and and it was you're right I mean people worked on Black Friday because it was a give-back right opportunity on their day off and when we would bring that charity in and those kids and present them with the check that was one of the best days so yeah I don't know why I didn't think about that it creates an emotional bond it creates memories yeah makes them think about the company different it makes them think about each other different and so that's why i'm so pushy about charity events i literally never say bring cash yeah i want you to bring cranberry sauce to thanksgiving food drive bring toys that are two dollars for all i care come to the back-school supply drive and bring pencils and erasers.
I just want people to show up. And then when hundreds of people show up and they're taking pictures and videos and networking and meeting people and seeing the actual kids, they talk about it for years.
Well, let's be totally transparent. You get everybody that we're going to be working with at a certain level.
It is far more valuable for them to give an afternoon, a day of their time than it is for them to write, you know, a check in most cases. And I believe that's actually true of most of your team members.
I mean, in Western society, come on. I mean, all of us are doing pretty well.
The thing that is most scarce is time. So, yeah, I like that.
All right. So the last question is a question I ask every time.
I've never gotten the same answer. And it's a emotional decision that sometimes you have to ask your counterpart.
It could be your wife. It could be family, et cetera.
Many, many years from now. It could be 100 years from now with modern technology because you might have bionic arms and a lot of diseases are going to get cured.
So hopefully it's a long, long time from now and it's finally time for Ryan Dice to pass away. All right.
Sad. And in that moment, you've acquired billions of dollars.
You've had all these investments. You've built up all these companies.
You have the biggest masterminds on the planet. And you've claimed all these assets.
And now let's just say you have $1 billion cash. What percentage do you leave to those children? As it stands today, the vast majority, if not 100% of it.
Wow, I love it. Because I trust my, man, I've got a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old.
Oh, cool. And these kids are awesome.
these kids, they're not perfect. But these kids practice being positive, helpful, and kind.
They're not selfish. They're not.
I believe, to me, if you're going to leave it, leave it with a good steward of it. I don't believe that anything that I have is mine.
I believe that anything that I have has been given to me to be stewarded over. And so it is my job to figure out what is the best way to deploy this capital in a way that is going to benefit others, right? That's what I got.
So who gets it? The best steward gets it. I hope that that's my children because at the end of the day, the only legacy that I have is my kids.
The businesses will be sold. They'll be broken up, whatever.
They'll move on. They'll get disrupted and defeated and all those other things.
Fine. The only legacy that I really have is my children.
And I hope the legacy is a legacy of good stewardship. And if it is, then they will get it.
They will get all of it, as much of it as possible. All right, guys, you're listening to The Money Mondays.
Make sure to check out Ryan Dice across social media. That's D-E-I-S-S.
His content is fantastic. He's been doing this for a long, long time.
A lot of people just talk about stuff. He's actually lived and breathed it for many, many years.
I've watched him for almost two decades now. Being in the game of marketing and obviously building large format format events but really about the marketing side of things and investing in the companies helping them scale and exit so check them out across social media obviously if you can go to one of his masterminds go to his live live conferences etc get involved in these circles and situations because it can literally change your life forever being in those type of rooms and the people that you meet the content you can consume is fantastic but the people you meet us for a lifetime here at the money mondays as you know we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money and at the money mondays we believe it's rude to not talk about it so make sure to have a discussion with your friends family followers share this content across social media so we can keep being in the top 50 podcasts it's important to us as you've seen we ad free.
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out ryan dice we will see you guys next monday on the money mondays