He Said $35M Was Enough, Then Moved His Family to a 150-Acre Farm (Ryan Levesque)

Daniel Berk (0:00)

Welcome back to another episode of Moneywise. I'm your host, Daniel. This one's different. I usually jump in every couple of minutes to drag numbers out of my guests, but today I ask one question, and effectively just shut up. Ryan Levesque is the best storyteller I've ever had on the show. So this is our longest episode, and I cut almost none of it. It's also the only episode I've ever recorded where I had to stop myself from crying mid-interview. So viewer discretion advised. I won't give you the full story, but here are a few pieces. Ryan quit his job in China the morning a WSJ headline said his company was going bankrupt. His first business was Scrabble Tile Jewelry, and he eventually got offers for $42 million and $70 million for a different business, which are two incredibly stressful stories he recounts. You'll hear why. At one point when he was 30 years old, he received a rejection letter from a life insurance company with news no 30 year old ever wants to hear. What makes Ryan's story particularly interesting is that he amassed a life changing amount of money. But due to a health scare and a wake up call, he decided to radically build his life around the things he valued most. And radical is an understatement. His story really does go into parts of philosophy and life and value that a lot of stories in the show don't even touch. He now runs a 150 acre farm with his wife and two kids, and 80% of the food he and his family consume comes straight from his own land. He walks through the specific cost of running his farm and all the different intricacies that come with doing something as unique as what it is like to run a farm of this size. Listening to Ryan was like listening to my dad tell a bedtime story. It's really that engaging and I hope you enjoy the conversation with Ryan as much as I did. One quick favor, if you're listening to this on audio, please hit subscribe or follow. Audio downloads are how I get paid, and your boy got mouths to feed.

Please follow and subscribe. Lastly, a lot of the conversations I have on Moneywise are a direct result of the network I've built in Hampton. Hampton is a private network for high growth founders and CEOs doing $25 million on average. If you're looking for a group of people that will genuinely change how you view life, business and money, look no further, go to joinhampton.com. Now, without further ado, here's Ryan. Well, welcome back to another episode of Moneywise. I have a really special guest today, Ryan, and man, I've already learned so much about him, and I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface. And so I'm really excited to learn a bit more today, and hopefully my listeners will be as engaged as I was when I first met him. Thanks for joining us today, Ryan.

Ryan Levesque (2:40)

Daniel, it's great to be here.

Daniel Berk (2:42)

Thanks.

I would love to just start from the beginning. I feel like when we first met, you just kind of told me your story all at once. And I was like, it was like a kid listening to his dad read a storybook. And so I just love for you to start from the beginning, tell me how you grew up, what money was like in the household, and kind of walk me through some chapters of your life. And I'll maybe interrupt here and there to ask some follow up questions, but you're a great storyteller. And so I'd love for you to tell your story.

Ryan Levesque (3:08)

That sounds great. Well, I'll start not the very beginning, but at the beginning. I grew up in a pretty blue collar, working class household. My dad worked nights loading boxes on the back of a truck for the US Postal Service. My mom cut hair for a living. Neither of my parents went to college. I was the first in my family to go to college. And I studied neuroscience and East Asian studies at Brown University. And at one point thought I was going to go to medical school. I was fascinated with the brain and thought I was going to kind of pursue that path.

But I decided it really wasn't for me and tried to figure out what it is that I wanted to do. So after graduating, I worked on Wall Street. I first worked for the investment bank, Goldman Sachs, and then later had an opportunity to work for AIG, the insurance company, which promised to send me to China to lead and expand the sales office expansion across the country. And they were looking for a young guy like me who was hungry, young, could speak Mandarin Chinese, had a little bit of a background in finance, and could kind of be this bridge between home office in the United States and Asia.