The Hardcore Truth From The Hardcore Closer with Ryan Stewman

Common sense is it's not common anymore because we have parents that for two or three generations now have looked at kids we raise my video games, iPads, computer, the school, have made it to where like now there's all these grading cards, participation, trophies for education and stuff like that. We're seeing the consequences of that. This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to right about now. Hey, we're trying to make it all right. In today's world and ultimately we're bringing you what's now and I've been following my next guess for quite a bit on social. He doesn't know me as well as I know him. This for at least following him and I'll say this. We say we take the BS out of business. I like this guy because I can see through the bullshit that you see on the internet with some of these people talking and Ryan Stouman, you may like him. You may not like him, but you know what? He ain't full of shit. He knows what he's talking about. He's smart guy and he is the hardcore closer. What's up, Ryan? What's up, man? Glad to be here. Yeah, dude. Hey, just happy to have you, man. You're in my, you know, the algorithms is an interesting thing. I don't know what it says. I don't know if I just, because I will say this, you know, there's an edge of anger to Ryan just a little bit that I feel that's like, I bet you it's old Brian. I could see Ryan like 20 years ago. Might maybe me in a little angry and younger, something. And now he's got wisdom. He's got money. He's got maybe a little bit of power, but he channels it in the right way. But I don't know, it's hitting my eye with it because I don't know if I'm a little angry these days. Could you hit my feet every day? Yeah, I have terrible good side, man. I could see that. I could see that. But I speak the truth. And so I don't feel like I have to put her thing, you know, the lies to be triggered. The bullshit needs to make somebody feel good. I just won't be straight up, you know, and that's how I've always been some like some don't. And it's just, you know, that's just how I am. You don't like me. That's cool. I'm trying to follow the fuck you got to never move on. Yeah, but I think if if people want to, like the rapper, you might not always like the rapper, but like once you get inside, like the knowledge that you have is clearly there. The experience is there. And I think if people spend enough time, they'll see that it's real. But Ryan, I do like to say the table for our audience, you know, for you. I know you're the CEO of founder of Apex. But let's just maybe I'll let you use your words. You've done a lot of shows. People can go watch the episode that's about Ryan's background only, but maybe hit it a little bit of the high notes. And then we'll talk about some business. So, you know, I'm a prolific mistake maker. And that's how I got wisdom. And, you know, I've lived a very humbling life of ups and downs. I call it rock, warm, lows and meteorites. I was adopted at age 7. You came a drug dealer at age 14. Went to prison at age 19. Went to prison again in age 25. I think I was. I've been in eight different maximum security institutions. I've been divorced, but you name it. I've screwed it up. But I'm a good example of what can happen in life. You just refuse to be effective. If you refuse, quit. If you refuse, give up on the opportunity that we have in front of us here. It's America. So, despite all of those prolific mistakes and horrific things that I've had during my life, my husband has been married to a wife for seven years. He's been together 10 years. I've got four kids that are amazing. I run a nice business with children's people's lives who've chosen not to overcome struggles and things of that nature. So, you know, that's being a nut, you know, just a nightmare force of average. I'm a daily painter. I have this belief that the world needs to keep your average. If you look below average, you don't give you support, welfare, three housing, and grant, stuff like that. You don't get a job in middle class. But when we decided to create, we get into a situation where there's this gravity, you know, cool and push against us to push back down to be in an average distance. So, when you're chasing greatness, when you want more than the average person, you're going to pay higher taxes, you're going to take a problem, you're going to have a lot more stress. And so, I've changed the greatness. I'm a long base from great. I'll be the greatest, I'll ever be the day that I've been, but I'm chasing it and it's not easy. No, it's not. I think what's interesting about what you just said, Ryan, is I think all the best practices in the world are set up to get average. Right. And so, when you're actually chasing the top of the mountain or you have, you're aspiring to things and the world is conditioning us, you know, I have to out, I have four boys too. So, look, I have to condition them out of what they get taught, which is to fall in line and be average. And if you want to have a bigger life, a better life to have impact to do things, you have to sort of take risks and break free from average. And I think that's probably what's always stood out a little bit with your content. I'm like, okay, it never felt like it was, it had an agenda because it felt like it was free. Like you were freed up. And, but I think it was because if you want to chase past whatever one else has, you got to be willing to do what no one else is willing to do. And I feel like that's a lot of the ways you've built your business. It looks like it. Yeah, you know, the name of my company is very clean academy for that reason. I didn't even know it. Look at there. I love it. It's, uh, and what, what is that stand for to you? Well, I think that, you know, as human beings, like I've said, we're fighting this force of average. We are fighting mental limitations. We're fighting financial limitations. We're fighting shit, everything in our reality until, you know, freedom means you have the time, the means to do whatever you want, whenever you want. And like in business, most people, they get into business because they want to be their own boss and then have climb freedom. But then what happens for most people is they have neither of those here. They have to answer to investors, reporter directors, inquiry, middle management. And they have no time left over to do the things that they want to do with the money that they've made. So, you know, I'm just trying to help people break free from all of that stuff. Right. What's your opinion, unlike the, the state of America and business? You know, we've got an election coming up. We're not scared to go down any road here. I'm just on right about now. We take the BS out of business. So we're in an election season. I'm personally, and I think you probably feel this way. Like no matter who's elected, it's not going to get in the way of my success. However, I think we all have opinions about the business climate and just respecting you in your experience, your wisdom. What do you make of the business climate right now in America? Well, this is the first time in my life, I'm 45 years old. This is the first time in my life the administration and the government has got in the way of my success. And well, that's not true. So when I was a drug dealer and I was trying to be, that's the drug dealer that government got in the way of my success. And then because I became a convicted spell in, and God's greatness passed in 2010, they wouldn't allow me to do financial stuff anymore because I was in spell and so they've intervened twice. And it hasn't stopped my success. But right now, think about this. This is 2024. Just two years ago, you can make money off of your list list, land redeeming these private jet orders, crypto NFPs, mastermind, do anything we touch, real estate, houses and cars selling for tens of thousands of dollars over list buys, interest rates were dirty, gasoline was dirty, everything you touched you made money from. And our government got to know what these people take it all the way from them. There's no other time in my life, like I was a load off spirit in 2007, 8, 9 and 10. And even though the whole new market was crashing, there was still people that were making money, and it was only the real estate and mortgage market that was crashing. I never seen the government come in and take everything away, like they have in the last couple of years. And what happens is we're chasing policy from when Congress passed a pact or a law or a president puts an executive order in, it takes a few years for it to catch up. It doesn't happen immediately. We're seeing the day that nobody took office and signed 62 executive orders to undo everything that Trump did. We're seeing the results of that in our economy right now. And you're blind if you can't see that, because Stevie Wonder could see it. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I think Kamala got like, so nice for him, because I watched him speak it like one of her events and it was very eloquent, by the way, for Stevie Wonder. But he said, he said nothing while saying a lot of words, which is a lot of what I hear out of her mouth. And I still really don't have a fucking clue what she's talking about. And I mean, let's put the other side in policy, just putting that over here, like I have no idea, no idea whatsoever. Yeah, I'm an independent, you know, I like Bill Clinton. I like Barack Obama. I like Barack Reagan. And I like Obama a lot. I like Bill Clinton a lot. Bush once luck, Bush too was good. Trump was great. Biden's been a nightmare. And Kamala, her thing is it's hilarious, but she just says about your synonyms. She goes, we have desires, aspirations and needs and want. And because we have desires and aspirations and needs and wants, there are things that we feel we should be able to acquire and have in own. It's like, are you just fucking saying the same word? Synonyms at a time. Get to it, lady. Get to it. Tell me something. I saw there was a comedian that did us that's been using that bouncing around or something that talked in circular. I think it's like suing the campaign because they, I don't know, claimed that she's that they were supporting her or something and talking in circles like tomorrow, we're going to do it. And you know, there's something about tomorrow and doing it. That's doing it. Look, what the fuck? That's it. Anyway, it's going to be. It's just knowing as fuck to somebody that's got a little bit of an education and experience in this world, you know. Yeah, I think I'll say this. This is a test of the IQ of America right here. I hate to say it. We're going to get to find out real fast. Where we're at. Well, common sense isn't so common anymore because we have a parents that for two or three generations now have looked at kids, we raised my video games, iPads, computers, the school, and I've made it to where like, I wasn't school. It didn't get straight A's. We got in trouble. And now they saw these grading cards, participation, trophies for education and stuff like that. We're seeing the consequences of that. You know, when I was young, if you were told the stove would burn and you put your hand on it anyway, they laughed at you. They were like, you're an idiot. I told you the stove was fine. And now it's like, oh my god, we've got to get rid of stove. It's just a completely different climate. We're seeing the consequences of that. Yeah. Accountability is the word. And it's gone out the window because we have conditioned everything to be convenient and comfortable. And it's great. Look, I think you'd have kids. We want our kids to be comfortable. We don't want them, you know, it's not that we don't want them to have a great life. But you don't learn or have a great life without lessons and consequences and accountability. And I think you've nailed it. I think we're seeing the participation trophy people are now running companies and government and other things. And so they want like, wait, what's crime in California? You know, you've merged somebody you're out of jail in 10 years. Like, it's like, they don't even report it in some of these cities like LA and New York and any report it anymore like that. Yeah, I put a report out today saying crimes now by full percent. But that's because New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Texas, Chicago doesn't report crime enough. Yeah. So we're not getting real statistics. We're not getting real education. We're not getting real accountability. And we wonder why we make us people in an autonomy that are in power. It's crazy. Yeah. Ryan, talk to me about like from a business standpoint, you know, you said you're feeling it. Is there a specific policy or I don't know, you know, enlightening our listeners to because I like to be, you know, we have the and look, I'm independent as well. I've voted on both sides of the line. I think my practicality and principles and morals probably lean right. But I don't, I'm not afraid to cross the aisle. So I consider myself independent. And but I will say this like, is there something specific like for listeners? So we're not the one, you know, say, we don't want to be the Kamala. We want to be specific. Like what's the biggest thing that sort of impacted you from a business with today's client? Well, there's a couple of things. You know, I saw the business owner. So I get to hear from people all day, everything that aren't making much money to use. There's a actually a few things that come into play. Number one, two years ago, interest rates for it's three and four percent. You could go buy a rental property and you could cash low it. Now we have to buy that thing for cash. We'll put a significantly larger down payment down to get it to cash low. It's fixed in a half to seven and a half percent. Then I look at that in a lot of believe states, they have got the amount of raise that you can put on their rent. So if you raise the rent every year, they've said, oh, you can only do five percent. You can do ten percent, but they didn't have the amount of tax increase because the property value is with them. They didn't have the amount of interest. My property is in Florida. I've sold all the one and I'll sell it in November is because I can't raise rent, but the insurance company raised my policy 300 percent. So the government has put a landlord, but when we take care of the insurance companies and the municipalities, and a lot of business owners pull real estate, whether it's the office they have or whether it's the portfolio of real estate, and when that's going to drop cash low and then it tracks those out or moves its damage or it destroys the house and the way out, they're out every dollar that they've raised for an entire year on it. The second problem is, let's say in 2022, we made a million bucks and 2023, you've got to pay taxes on that million bucks, but taxes are paid in the rear in 2023 in April, April, July, when all it is you can decide to pay taxes that has a business owner to pay on when you extend it. You're having a year that is 20, 30, 40 percent less as good of cash flow as it was in 2022. So now every dollar you've played has gone out the window in 2023 and you can't take the loss in 2023 till this year, and this year for businesses down again, you owe, we're trailing from better years in business going down and getting taxing the rears, and it's like, oh man, I'm already out of money, and now that it's actually made from a year ago, we have all things that are going to continue to be good. So I've maybe bought more inventory, they've got a bigger warehouse, they've went higher, more people, and now I'm not making as much money, and I still owe those taxes, and I got a lot of these people going in order to do that. I hear these stories all day, every day, man, so, you know, it's a combination of things, and on top of that, as an American, just not even a business owner, our cost of goods are up, and the reason why, because I'm going to be a truck, and diesel is traditionally less expensive than gas, but a few years ago, they started making us put death fuel on top of diesel, and now it's more expensive than gas, and I want you to break companies and truck companies go out of business left and right, because they've got a Georgia higher price in order to pay for the expensive diesel, and man, when you're in a semi-shortening, you're burning three, four, you know, gallons to the mile, because you've got a big ass load in the trailer that you're traveling with, you can't take a loss in that, you've got to make some money, so you either lower your margin, or you can go out of business and watch a lot of that happen too, so the cost of goods may only be, and this is the lily list of districts we've seen from the government, the cost of goods may only be up four or five percent, but lack of really new wells, prematurely new wells in America since 2017, we have an open and new refinery, and forever, and everything's operating at max capacity, diesel is super expensive, which means the transportation of goods to get to the floor, to get to our doorstep is through the fucking roof, and for now we're having to pay more for that too, so health insurance is up, property insurance is up, health insurance is up, even if you're making more money right now, you're actually making less money, because everything else that you have to do is more expensive, for families, for ex, in my house, health insurance, and we're all healthy, none of us have anything wrong with this three grain of milk, that's $36,000 a year, so if I wasn't a good entrepreneur, I'd either not be able to take a job where they pay for my health insurance, because the company's $36,000 a year, or if I make $100,000, I'm really only making $64,000 to live on, just after health insurance, that's not mortgage, that's not gas, that's not food, that's not any extra. Yeah, hey dude, here's, look, we take to BS out of business, that was just a master class, and what is happening in the economy right now that's impacting business, and number one that you talked about Ryan, I talk about a lot, the impact of interest rates being high is having a huge impact, because here's the thing, things that are not even related to the little state, the cash that it's keeping out of the everyday market, because those rates are so high, because people aren't doing what you're saying, flipping houses, doing things, when you stall real estate in this country, you have stalled the entire economy, there's not as much free cash flow, and just business transactions happening, I've been talking about that for months, I'm glad you brought that up. Well, the other problem is, I went to statistics from NAR three or four days ago, 47% of real estate agents have not pulled a hold in the last 12 months, and the median home sales for real estate agent in the country right now is two and 12 months, it was three, just a couple of years ago, right, so that's been cut by a third, and you know, traditionally hardening rates for like eight, nine to spend, now they're 12, like 15, the SBA, let's picture seven percent, right now the SBAs are 12 to 16 percent, you can't go on fire businesses, you can't acquire houses and profit from them, even if you buy a further risk, like my home, I paid a million bucks for it, which years ago, two or two million dollars right now, prices have gone up in my area. If I were to sell that out and keep a million dollars, first of all, I'm going to be taxed on 300,000 of that, because it's only a $700,000 non-capital data by Mary Lesity, flow would be taxed on 300,000 of that, then if I go buy another house, it only costs me a million dollars, maybe I'm going further out in the city, so I'm paying more for gas and transportation, things of that world nature, and that house at a million dollars costs more than my house right now with the low interest rate, I have a ranch house that I've bought for $440,000, and the mortgage is more money per month on that than it is for the million dollar house that I bought six years ago in refinance, 2.875 percent. So I'm paying a thousand dollars and that's a month for two million dollar house that I've flown for six years, then a 400,000 dollar home that I bought just a year ago. Yeah, dude, this is the shit. It's like, we throw around all this stuff, and all the people talk about things, but this is the hard reality of it. It's like, this is the impact, and so you have a guy like Ryan must have asked, run a business, creating jobs, doing these things, investments, but these are the impacts for him. Imagine what the impacts talk about costs of goods, like everyday people that are paying $7 for a load for bread and all this, but then that's back to the fuel, the cost of getting it there, right? Well, I mean, consider this, you make 120 grand a year, which historically is excellent money. Great money. But you've got three kids, so you're paying $2,200 a month, or let's call it 30 grand a year for health insurance. Then you're paying 35%, 38% in taxes. So you're really living on about $35,000 to $40,000 a year after these taxes and health insurance on a W2 job with a couple of kids in $120,000 a year's salary. It's fucking crazy. And right now, I'm somewhat of a main street economist because I've been in the financial markets for 20 years, but anytime the Fed cuts rates, they're chasing problems, and unemployment is at an all certain high right now. You're not going to get that from the government statistic, but it is what it is. And inflation is actually going down a little bit, so the Fed cuts rates because of unemployment. Companies go out and policy for money to expand and hire more people. But anytime the Fed has cut the rate, there is always, in the next three years, 12 months, a 20 to 55% decline in the value of the stock market overall. So that means we're, we haven't seen the market class yet in the ramifications of what are to come from that because of this rate cut because they don't just cut the rate because they're like, we want to be nice to people and give them more money. That's not how it goes. No. And the whole point in that is, yeah, we want the rates to come down, but we didn't, they didn't need to get that high to begin with because these policies created this now, you know, they're, they're both the, they're both the cause of the disease and the prescription. That's the problem. You know, that it's dangerous when you call us the problem. If I don't go create a bunch of problems, that's right. They go create a bunch of problems and then promise us that they'll solve it. It's like, what the fuck are you get this? Yeah. This solution was not to raise rates, things fucking consecutive times in a row. You could have like, yes, 3% or strange ridiculously low. That was great. But anybody with a half a brain knows the sweet spot in America for more than two interest rates, five and a half percent. That's enough to keep people buying. It's not too expensive. That's the sweet spot. They should have raised from three to five and a half to just stay there. I hope that they look for seven and a half. Yeah. And they flatlined everything else. And you don't feel it immediately. That's why we're starting to feel it now because it's catching up. Yep. Yep. And that's why I'm going to mention one of our sponsors. It's the independent center dot org. If you believe in independent thinking, you want to be part of a community dedicated that it's about policy and it's not about partisan politics. That's what they are about. We support that. Constructive dialogue, policy reform and improvement. We're talking policies. That's stuff that you don't hear out of the mouth of certain candidates. Independent center dot org. They are an official sponsor of right about now. We support them because we need more free thinkers. And we need to talk about policies and not politics. Yeah, brother. I mean, you're speaking the truth here. Where? Where do you see? What's your crystal ball say? I guess I guess if you knew who's going to election, you probably have some money on or something, but what's 22? It's like, what's 2025 going to be like? Is it like, well, let me see after November? Well, I try to have a positive outlook on life. So I think Trump is going to win, but they could cheat. I think he won in 2022, unpopular opinion, but I don't believe that more people voted to go by and then vote for Obama. I just don't believe it. Yeah. I don't think that as many people like Kamala as the media is making it out to me in the polls and stuff, but let's make sure we are by some miracle of the stupidity of this country she wins. She's going to be the first female president. She's going to be the second person in color president. If she fails and doesn't turn this thing around, it's going to be a major problem. And if I was in minority, but I'm not, I can't speak on their behalf. And like Obama came in and by his turn, turn the economy around. He was fucking doing great. You know, things were on the boom. It set up to come in and pick it to the next level. In Bush, a white guy, and obviously crude the economy up his last four years, right? And Obama, it takes a while to get things right. And my battle of almost started a four year in and started turning around and won your market, picked back up and things started working well. We need that because we want to, the guy like you that was the first African-American ever elected president. Oh, hey, man, we elected African-American. He did a hell of a job towards when it was all said, what a great guy. We've got to be the same thing with a woman or woman to be fucking elected ever again. She's got it in as a personal color and a woman which he's got to make changes, especially since he wants to get real elected. So I think no matter who wins, if they have a decouple wins, he's got nothing to lose. He's only got four more years so he could come in and fucking God knows what put all the department of justice, hunger, investigation, turn the economy around. He's got a whole bag of books he can use. She could come in and make her self look like she changed the world as the first person or the second person in color to be president. And the first woman, she could open up aspirations for a whole generation of people who used to not want to be president, but now see themselves and it could really make a big change and she's going to want to get real elected and keep that power for the second time around because she's not as old as Joe Biden. So I'm hoping that no matter who gets in there, they can actually, they're actually smart enough to make things better and see the bigger future and the bigger picture because if Trump gets elected, he's paid him away for a guy like his effect to come in after him. Another billionaire, another businessman and run the economy, burn it around and he's running out the store, which is who I want to be president anyway, if she wins, then pay the way for the future women that want to be president. The future minorities that want to be president and should pay away from she leads office through such a legacy when she turned around as Kitsho and did such a good job. But I don't know if that'll happen or not but I would like to assume that that's the agenda of both candidates to get in there and make a positive difference and leave a legacy for the future of our country. But you know, I'm a good guy. I'm out of the generate decent debt like most politicians are, so you can come in here and just pull the code and pull them in and take away guns, rates, taxes and fuck the country too. I don't. Yes, but I will say this, Ryan, Trump's such an interesting candidate because, you know, people, I don't know about you, I think there's a lot of people that are going to vote for Trump that actually would tell you they're not going to vote for Trump to your face. Because he's a polarizing, like they're embarrassed of him. And that's kind of a shame. I mean, people are stupid if they are, but like, but a lot of people are. I think they're like, they don't want to admit that. I feel like there's a lot of that out there. They're like, they don't like what's going on. They probably lean Democrat or might even be Democrat, but they're like, you know, they own businesses or they're feeling that impact, but they never admit it to your face. And they might even pull that they're voting for Kamala, but when they get behind that window, I don't know. I don't know. What do you think about that? Well, I think we judge Trump on his bedside manner. People do the same thing to me. They're like, Stu, man, it's not a nice guy. I'm one of the nicest guys out there. You just can't tell from my face from my voice. And you can trust me to do what I say I'm going to do. You can trust me to keep my word. I don't have to be nice, quote, unquote to people because I don't have anything to hide. A lot of the time for my life, the nicest guys to try to charm the pants off of you or from the money out of your pocketbook are the liars and thieves and that's why there's a damn nice. The guys that are straight shooters, I always appreciate this is from my prison days. I always appreciate them because I know who they are in the act whether they're nice or not. I know who they are and how to treat them. It's the guys that pretend to be one way and ladies that pretend to be one way but are actually another way because they're living this for thought or this lie and people don't understand that they want somebody to feel good instead of somebody that actually be good. Yeah, and that's why I respect you, man. I know you got to go. I hope we had a little bit of technical issues of getting let's do this again, man. Let's do it again soon and you don't have a part two if you get time for it. Yeah, that'd be great. Hey guys, look, Ryan just nailed it there. You need to go follow him. You need to go check out apex because it isn't about being nice. It's about being right and being good and not catering to what people want to hear but what they need to hear. That's what we're doing here on right about now. Ryan, where can I keep up with you specifically? Just to add one more thing to that. If you're fat and everybody tells you it's okay to be fat and you're being full and all this stuff when you're clearly not. Those people are lying to you and doing wrong versus the person because you fat will hurt your feelings until you get in the gym and start eating correctly and hold you accountable. Now you're more likely to hate the person who calls you fat because you get in the gym and eat right but that person actually cares more about you. You is the person than the people who care about your feelings and how you perceive them as nice people. So the truth hurts but God designed the truth to hurt us because we're only motivated by two things pain and pleasure and the truth hurts and motivate you because of pain to go do what you need to do and we just hide as citizens, as humans, we're hiding from the truth and we're trying to gain pleasure out of everything but pain is a bigger motivator than pleasure. Yeah and I want to add to that it's a cycle of comfort because the person that doesn't tell you the truth isn't not telling you the truth to make you feel good. It's so they feel good because they don't have to see you respond negatively and and be hurt. They want to be liked too. Everybody wants comfort. Everybody wants to be liked but it takes real strength, real courage and real belief to tell you the truth because then that's what's truly good for the other person and not good for them. I love it Ryan. Working here by Keep Up with you. Instagram at Hardcore Cozer Facebook, Ryan Stuman, both of those have blue checks or verified accounts. I'll never get you up for crypto or sliding your DMs from a backup page asking for bullshit. If you enjoyed the show, you got something out of what I said just sliding my DMs, say hello, say you enjoyed the show, let me know and it's me really managing that so I'll talk to you on that. I love it. He's real and he's right. You know to find us Ryan is right.com. We'll have links to all Ryan Stuman stuff. Hardcore Cozer to follow him and you can find us over on YouTube. Watch this full episode. We're blowing up over there. We're taking it over. We're taking the BS out of business. We'll see you next time. I'll write about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.