From a gang member to a businessman with over $2 billion in company sales, Ryan Blair has now turned to the role of spiritual advisor through his new company AlterCall. His “nothing-to-lose” mindset has led him to financial success and his calling to help others makes him an entrepreneur with both the Midas touch and a heart of gold.
Blair is a New York Times Best Selling author who is celebrated by the likes of Dr. Phil and Tony Robbins. In 2012, Ernst & Young awarded him the distinguished honor of Entrepreneur of the Year. He has mentored individuals from various industries, from small business owners to major influencers, such as Lewis Howes and Gerard Adams. After decades of building successful businesses, he felt an inner calling to shift his focus to uplifting the lives of others through spiritual wellness. Rather than spending his career in the boardroom, he now provides transformative healing to the masses. AlterCall focuses on healing modalities such as meditation and breath work that are backed by science. He is dedicated to “teaching entrepreneurs to build businesses with soul through self-mastery.”
He has reached the pinnacle of business success, and yet he understands what it’s like to have a great inner void in spite of financial achievements. Through AlterCall he provides a pathway for individuals to find true inner peace and lasting joy. His ability to bring people to a space where they can “self actualize” and find their genuine purpose has brought him the greatest kind of fulfillment.
His greatest losses, coupled with his successes, have been integral to his personal transformation. With the death of his mother and his step-father, who was his closest mentor, he understands sorrow firsthand. He writes, “God, I surrender to you. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.” He provides an example of how one can emerge from the darkness of sorrow into the light.
The Blair Foundation, a nonprofit he founded, donates to programs that support at-risk kids and families. “I created the Blair Foundation as my vehicle to give 90% of my assets away within 10 years of my death. We are specifically focused on causes that teach entrepreneurship to single mothers and at-risk youth,” said Blair. Through the Blair Foundation, he works closely with Urban Born, a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth and teens put an end to drug use and avoid gangs, while promoting education and healthy living. He also donates through this initiative to support ex-gang members.
Blair’s love for humanity fuels this mission to “awaken humanity to the next level of consciousness.” Continuing to funnel his pain into wisdom his global movement is spreading like wildfire.
THE NOTHING-TO-LOSE MINDSET
Ryan Blair: To become a successful entrepreneur, you have to take risks. I believed I had nothing to lose because of the way I was raised. I knew I would never live in a drug-infested neighborhood again. I might have some challenges as a result of the circumstances or the decisions that I made, but I would never go back to where I came from.
Most people come from meager means. When they get something, they’re afraid to lose it. I wasn’t afraid to lose anything. I had nothing to lose. I apply that approach even to this day. I have a lot to lose now, but I still try to apply that mindset in everything that I do.
FORMULA OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Ryan Blair: Somebody out there is making money. Many entrepreneurs make excuses, but there is someone who is figuring out how to adapt to this environment. Difficulty reduces the number of people in the business environment, so there’s less competition. You innovate because the larger players in the marketplace will retract. New concepts will be birthed. This is the greatest opportunity that we’ve ever had as entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are problem solvers, and we now have more problems to solve than ever before. If you identify a problem in the marketplace and elegantly solve it, you can have tremendous success. That is the formula of entrepreneurship.
BUILDING A BRAND
Ryan Blair: Sales drive revenue. An entrepreneur that makes an excuse about lack of capital doesn’t understand how sales work. Come up with a concept of a product, draft bullet points, organize a PowerPoint and start selling it right away. You can pre-sell it and you can crowdfund it.
Be resourceful. If you’re not being resourceful, you don’t have the right mindset. I started creating products in a field I knew nothing about. Everything I’ve done, I’ve had very little knowledge about initially. I would start and tell myself, “Every single day, I’m going to get inches.” Entrepreneurship is a sport of inches. Every single day we work to gain inches. Eventually, you’ll have progress to speak of, but every single day, you go for those inches.
THE POWER OF BREATH WORK & MEDITATION
Ryan Blair: We have this beautiful muscular system to take oxygen into our body, but we forget how to breathe because we never learned how to do it.
You can measure a person’s happiness, calmness and mood by their respiration rate.
When I was a CEO of a $600 million company, I heard problem after problem. I started developing anxiety and was prescribed medication that didn’t work. Finally, I learned the power of breathing. That’s why I’m so passionate about breathwork.
For meditation, make a catalog of the thoughts that come to you while meditating. Collect an inventory of what thoughts are popping up multiple times. If you close your eyes to meditate and a stressful thought appears, that’s okay. It’s telling you what is plaguing your subconscious. You’ll clear your subconscious with time.
My favorite form of meditation right now is to listen to the birds outside. In doing this you connect to nature. Every time a thought arises, focus your ears back on the birds. Pretty soon, you’ll have no thoughts. You’ll be present with the birds that are singing to you. If you don’t have birds in your environment, go to a music store and look for meditation music with birds in it. People have practiced this holistic tradition for thousands of years.
STEPS TO RESET YOUR ENERGY:
Ryan Blair: Take a deep breath for six seconds. Hold your breath. Release the breath completely for six seconds. Hold your breath. Take another deep breath in for six seconds. Hold the breath. And release the breath for six seconds.
If you do this breathing exercise before meetings, you’ll clear your state. We hold energy from person to person, from meeting to meeting and from encounter to encounter. We accumulate energy that’s not our own.
This is a simple meditation we teach at AlterCall, we teach different ways to go deeper into breathing meditation.
