Finding Self-Redemption Through Philanthropy with Ryan Long

 

When you’re in a place of incongruence, everything falls apart in your life. However, finding self-redemption is possible if you focus on your real values. Ryan Long, the Founder and Executive Producer of the City Summit and City Gala, opens up about his difficult childhood and how his early career blunders put him on the path to philanthropy. Instead of starting his own non-profit organization for a cause, Ryan took his game to a whole new level. Learn about his incredible journey of finding self-redemption, going back to his values, and finally realizing what fires him up.

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Finding Self-Redemption Through Philanthropy with Ryan Long

I have the Founder and Executive Producer of the City Summit and City Gala, Mr. Ryan Long. The City Summit is a world-class socially conscious business acceleration experience held across the country, hosting events, masterminds and a community for people to network and grow their business. The City Gala happens the night after the Oscars where we highlight the world of charitable giving by raising funds for the people doing the work through channels of different non-profit endeavors. Welcome, Mr. Ryan Long to the show. 

Thank you for that introduction. I appreciate it. It was a lot of energy. 

This is what Game Changing Mentality is all about. There’s no soft stuff, no low energy over here. We believe in changing the game. When you’re changing the game, it requires energy because sometimes life can get you down. You got to have the energy to get back up. That’s why I wanted to have you on the show. I know you have an incredible story to tell. You’ve been on an incredible journey. You’re doing wonderful things in the world with the City Gala. If you don’t mind, I want to talk about your entrepreneurship journey and how you got started in this business. 

I’d love to tell you any and all things. Wherever this conversation takes us I’m game for it. I appreciate you having me on your podcast. I know that it takes a lot of work to do this. I’d like to commend you first and foremost for spreading the good word. Whatever you’d like to know. 

I know that you found philanthropy and life inspiration to be the ideal antidote for resolving your challenges and obstacles. Let’s start right there. Tell us a little bit about how that happened to you. 

The thing about the humanitarian work as I continue to take a self-analysis, why would someone go to these lengths to raise money for organizations and stuff like that? If I get down to the real why there’s this redemption thing that I’m constantly after and that might not be the best reason to do things because you feel guilty. You’ve got to prove to yourself that you want to do something good because you lived such a lifestyle. I grew up a poor kid. I grew up in poverty. We grew up in the ghetto here in Los Angeles. You learn certain types of behavior that it’s hard to shake off the things that you learned in your childhood. 

As I grew into my adulthood, those same sorts of mentalities stuck with me. Straight out of the gate, I’m 21 years old. I have a baby. My son was born when I was 22. I learned that I was going to be a father at 21. Here comes responsibility. What I decided to do from there is I wanted to be everything like what my grandfather was like and nothing like what my dad was like. My dad was a miserable and horrible person to my mom. To me, he was abusive, both emotionally and physically. He wasn’t the type of person that I wanted to model my behavior after. I started my early twenties with this idea of I love to be a lot more like my grandfather. I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to provide for him. 

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I got a job because I played high school sports, you know about that. I played high school baseball and football. The idea of becoming a personal trainer was appealing to me. It didn’t seem that much of a stretch of work. I started studying up. I became a personal trainer. I got very successful at it. I was managing all these gyms around Southern California, providing a good life for my son. What’s the first thing that you do when you’re a poor kid from the ghetto and you got a little money? You blow it not on something smart. You blow it on a car. I’m 23 years old. I’ve worked my way up to the top of the corporate ladder at LA Fitness. I’m a fitness director. I’m making decent money. 

I go out and I get myself a Lexus because that’s what you do. Here was my problem. It started attracting all the wrong sorts of environments. The very first thing that opportunity-wise was thrown my way was the personal trainers that worked for me, as I was the fitness director. I was managing a group of trainers. The first opportunity thrown my way is, “Ryan, do you want to help us start and create this nightclub business?” Being me, Lexus and a shiny new object like a nightclub, “Yeah. How much money do you need? Let’s make it.” Here he is. He’s convincing me, “Ryan, this nightclub, you’re going to make so much money and we’re going to make $10,000 a week, 500 people at $20 per head. Let’s do it.” “Women, party, lifestyle, I’m in. Let’s do it.” 

I’m still the fitness director at LA Fitness. I put in the money and immediately the very first week, we go and lose that money. We didn’t have 500 people there. We didn’t even have 25 people there. We had four or five people pay to get in. Between all of us, me and these other two fitness trainers that wanted to be promoters, we had about 20 to 25 people. We had Spinderella from the old group, Salt-N-Pepa. We had Spinderella as our DJ. I can’t remember what we paid her, but it was a significant amount, well over $1,000. She left early. The nightclub closed up, 25 people. It ended up being this miserable experience.  

What do I do to cut my losses? I doubled down, “Yeah, we could do this.” The guys are trying to convince me, “We can do this nightclub thing.” We continue. We keep trying it. It’s failure week after week. The problem arose when I was telling LA Fitness that I was clocked in and working and I wasn’t. I got fired. That was the immediate cut the cord from all employment. When you get disgracefully fired for lying that you’re clocked in and you’re off doing some other business, no one else is going to hire you, especially not at the level that I was in the fitness realm. 

Fresh off of that, I had no choice but to make that nightclub business work because I had a son to provide for. I go back to this thing of you grow up a poor kid. Here I am. I made a good and decent decision to get into fitness and help other people get fit and be responsible for their eating and diet. It was a good, wholesome, wonderful decision, then I’ve forced myself into this nightclub promoter business. You got me in a lack of values, a lack of standards. I didn’t know where I was yet. I didn’t know who I was yet. 

I get into the nightclub business and sex, drugs, rock and roll. We turned it around and we started making a success out of it, which was fantastic and the fact that we had to do it, number one. We did stay persistent on it, number two. I can remember the first time that we had an actual successful nightclub party, emotionally hugging this guy that convinced me to get into it in the first place because we finally had this victory. That’s how I got started in the entertainment realm and to take it from that into philanthropy was another whole journey in and of itself. 

 

I know based on my research, that wasn’t all of the challenges that you had to face. That was one of the things that you went through with the nightclub. There were some things that happened when you were in college. I don’t know if you want to talk about that, but that became a turning point in your life and baseball played more than a significant role in your life. I feel like what I’ve learned about you that caused the shift. I want to learn what did baseball do and your grandfather who taught you baseball? What did that do for you that caused the mental shift? 

You want to talk about granddad. I’ll be here all day. I love talking about granddad. He’s not with us anymore, but the impact that he had on my life from the beginning, I don’t know that I would be anywhere near a person that wanted to be decent at all without that fatherly love that he showed me. He showed me work ethic. He showed me what it’s like to be a man. He did it by example. He didn’t say much. My grandfather was not like the chatterbox, talkative type. He was one of those no-nonsense. To give you an idea, my grandfather was a farm boy. He grew up on a farm. He was orphaned. He moved out from Kansas to out west here in California. He started his way through college. 

He got his bachelor’s degree at a state in San Jose, which is the Bay Area of California near San Francisco. He started his way through college as a boxer. He gets his degree. He comes down to Los Angeles. He gets his Master’s degree at UCLA. He becomes an electronic engineer and a rocket scientist. He’s a total genius by our standards. We would be referring to my grandfather. My granddad was a beast. When baseball came in, he comes to one of my Little League ballgames. You know the feeling, Rodney when your folks are in the stands or your girl or anybody’s watching. You want to impress the heck out of them. I walked up to that box and I’ve struck out every single time. I could have killed a bird with the air. 

As a young man, I was ten or eleven years old at the time, my grandfather saw something. He saw the speed that I was swinging my bat and because he cared to invest a little in me. Another little lesson in there, when he called my mom to ask me if he could take me to the batting cage and help me discover how good I could be, help me practice and instill some work ethic in me. My mom got off the phone with him and came into my bedroom. My mom is a hard woman. She’s raising me, my brother and my sister by herself. She is a tough cookie. I want to bring that up. 

We’re not going to start talking about moms on this show because I can go all day talking about my mom. I know what you mean when you’re talking about your mom was a tough cookie because I have one myself. 

My mom is usually rough and hard. When she speaks, she is a very authoritative-type of thing. She came into my bedroom. I was lying in bed. She tells me that she had got off the phone with granddad and that he was offering to take me to the batting cages. I tried so hard to blow it off. I’m like, “Mom, no. Tell granddad that I’ll figure it out. I’ll be good. I’ll do it myself.” My mom knows her son well. With the gentlest voice that she could, she says, “Give him a chance. He wants to help you out.” Reluctantly, I agreed. That whole thing was a pivot in my life. I could have been a kid running the streets, getting myself into more trouble. The first day that we go to batting practice, I knew that it was real because my granddad made me swing that bat until my hands bled. I’m grateful for that. I had these blisters on my hands. We came home. My grandma is going and saying, “You’re going to kill your grandson. Stop doing that.” He knew what he was doing. 

Teach by example, not with words. Click To Tweet

The next game, I hit a triple and a home run. It changed my life. I wanted to go so bad to the batting, “Are you kidding? Let’s go back to the batting. When are we going again? Let’s do this every day.” Striking out was miserable. The other thing that I learned aside from the mentorship quality, those people that are reading and they’re hesitant on whether or not to get a mentor, get a mentor. It’s going to help you. Have someone coach you through, someone that’s been there before. It doesn’t matter what part of life, business, career, family, relationships, however, it goes, get a mentor. This for me was critical and a turning point. It made him proud. That attention that layered in to make granddad proud. We would have Thanksgivings and stuff. The only thing that he would talk about is my baseball games and what I’m doing and all that stuff. He was on about what we were doing. We formed this bond out of that. That was phenomenal. I wouldn’t change a thing. I love that part of my life. 

A taste of success is maybe a little bit different than what you were expressing with the nightclubs and all of those things. Did that lead you to personal development? What shifted for you and what behaviors changed as a result of that? 

I started to understand the value of work ethic and what it meant to hone your craft slowly but surely. I had some natural talent in baseball, but without a little bit of guidance and a little bit of work ethic, where is that going to? Developing a skill, not having the goal of having this change overnight, knowing that you have to commit to the long-term process of success and taking joy in the practice part, those are some immediate values that I got out of it, but I got more. I got what it’s like to bond with someone over whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. We bonded over baseball. It opened up conversations and dialogues with me and my granddad about what’s going on at school, my personal life, I’m trying to have this whatever girlfriend and she’s breaking my heart. 

It opened many doors of starting to understand myself and family values so much more. Also, what it’s like to do something and have someone else take so much pleasure in what it is that you’re doing. That feeling of accomplishing something along with someone else. I don’t think that I had ever felt that before. Never mind what it’s like to be on a baseball team and all that stuff. It opened up many different values if that’s what you’re asking. There are endless amounts of benefits that happened over a little game called baseball. 

Over the course of time, however, you started discovering the joy and pleasure in contributing and giving back to people. I’m interested in what caused that changed because I grew up poor as well. We didn’t have a whole lot. You take someone like yourself and myself who grew up that way, the first thing you want to do is get a car, get the money. We want to live a life of having it instead of without. You have become known as the person who’s focused on the concept of giving and contributing, which is the very opposite of where you come from. What was your mentality, your attitude and perception towards the world that had caused you to make that change? 

There’s a fundamental thing. I’m still discovering why the heck I would lose sleep trying to make contributions to people, up at dawn, racking my brain, working like a mad dog to try to do it. We started this conversation talking a little bit about redemption. You only have this redemption, these goals of redeeming yourself when you feel a measure of guilt or that you acted in a behavior that wasn’t becoming of who you are. After several run-ins with the law in my twenties, after embarrassing my family, I have a sweet, loving, simple, very closely knit family that is very conservative and humble. Nothing like this nightclub guy that arrived. Yes, I wore sunglasses in the nightclub because that’s what you do when you’re cool. If anybody wants to know what it’s like to be cool, break out those sunglasses. 

That was me, sunglasses, nightclub all the time, trying to be somebody that I’m not. I was making money. I had women. I had all this stuff. The nightclub industry, especially here in Hollywood, it’s a cash business. It’s tough. It’s rough. The nightclub promoters out here are territorial. There are politics involved in it. I endured getting beat up. I started studying martial arts. To this day, I’m a huge mixed martial arts fan because I got my butt whooped in a nightclub and got my face opened up. I swore I was never going to lose a fight like that again. In that case, I got jumped by a few guys. This behavior had nothing to do with the way I was raised. 

 

It’s like this, when you’re taught better, when you are taught the right way to go and do it, you act out against that and you rebel against that. Trying to prove that you’re grown-up or you’re a man or you’re going to make it in this business that has nothing to do with your family values. When you are actively trying to be macho and fight, why? As you get older, you start to want things like marriage and family. You want to do things that are becoming of the way that you were raised. It’s exhausting to act out against who you are. The inauthenticity, that lack of integrity with who I am, who I was raised to be and the way that I was acting, it’s exhausting. 

I finally get to the point where I hit rock bottom. I was in a relationship trying to get married. It wasn’t working. I was trying to be one person, trying to make this relationship work. There are too many women over here. I can’t remain committed. I can’t be focused on. I have an absolute angel that I am engaged to be married. Before we broke up, she had a second abortion. She had it because she didn’t trust me to be the man that I needed to be. After that second one, I don’t know what happened. I started to fall and crumble into this fat, depressed person. That was not me. 

I’m a high energy, high enthusiasm person that wants to go out and achieve their dreams. That’s more me. Here I am laying on the couch, fat, lazy and depressed. We finally break up. I start to try to get myself back in shape. I start reading personal development and self-help books. What that did for me was it started to bring the actual reasons that I’m failing at life. I’m failing in my business. I’m failing in my relationships. It’s starting to bring all these values into real focus. It’s like, “Here’s what your values are. Here’s what you were raised like. Here’s why this incongruent behavior is not serving you anymore. Let’s start to use and developed all of these relationships in the nightclub business. Let’s start to use all of these relationships and do something productive, do something good.” 

I grew up in poverty. I wanted to help people in poverty. I was abused as a kid. I wanted to help people that were abused and neglected. It started to cascade into this thing where I got as many of the biggest, most influential people involved in this dream of doing something that had meaning. Here in Hollywood, that’s how you get this stuff done. You call the biggest, most influential people. You get them on your side. You rally to try to get things done. Long story short, long way of answering your question, the reason that I believe that I got into all of this stuff is I wanted to redeem myself. 

Now it’s active all the time. I need to overcome. I need to continue on this redemption arc because I still feel there are many things that I could be doing more of it. I could be learning and growing. That’s why we started the City Summit to serve the entrepreneurship community. I don’t want to make my money as a fundraiser, as a charity guy and I need to make money. What better way to make money than to serve the people that are cutting the biggest checks. Entrepreneurs that are successful cut the biggest checks to charity. That’s how it goes. To serve that community and help entrepreneurs build and grow their business has become an absolute pleasure of mine. I love it. I love the spirit of entrepreneurs. They are about overcoming adversity. What entrepreneurship is but solving a problem for income. I was very happy to be in league with extraordinary professionals. 

Thank you for doing that because entrepreneurs need that. We’re out here overcoming the obstacles, driving humanity forward. To have someone like you in our corner to support that is awesome. What is City Gala? Why was it created? 

The City Gala is an event that I decided to produce on the evening of the Oscars. Everybody’s in town on the weekend of the Oscars. It makes sense that if we can capture the lightning in a bottle of what it means to be out and about on the evening of the Oscars. Drive home the message of like, “This is what Tony Robbins says, we grow so that we can give.” All of these phenomenal business people love the City Summit, which is a two-day experience leading up to the City Gala. The City Gala itself isn’t an event, but I knew that we couldn’t do an event and accomplish what our real goals were. What we started doing was we started training nonprofit organizations that we’re going to work with because these nonprofits go out of business at a higher rate than the for-profits. 

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For example, someone loses a loved one to cancer and they say, “I’m going to do something about this. I’m going to go out there. I’m going to create a nonprofit. I’m going to start a movement. I’m going to find the answers. I’m going to fund more research. I’m going to help.” They have all this passion when they start. That’s great. That’s what you need. You need that passion. If you do not know how to run a business, you’re going to go right out of business. Your passion is going to lead right to burnout because you’re asking people for their hard-earned money. You’re rallying around your cause.  

I needed to take a step back and say, “I’m happy to cut checks to these charitable organizations, these startup nonprofits, these organizations. We wanted to highlight organizations that nobody knew about. It’s easy to find these bigger organizations and cut a check and donate. I happen to think that the bigger the organization is, the more that there’s probably some waste in spending. I’m not accusing all organizations of doing that, but that’s a behavioral pattern if you look at some of the bigger non-profits in the world. 

There’s a little bit more propensity for waste and spending. There’s a little bit more propensity for some corruption of some sort. I’m not complaining about other organization. I wanted to do something about it. What did I want to do? I wanted to favor the little guys, the guys who are starting. They’re starting their nonprofit. They’ve got a ton of passion. They have all this thump from the enthusiasm and that’s what it takes. You got to keep that energy. The goal for the Gala was to cut checks to organizations that are a little bit lesser-known. 

We offer a year-long training course for nonprofits and we bring in some of the best business speakers and coaches to give them all the tools and techniques that they need to learn from business fundamentals to finance, accounting, promoting, how to get grants, things that keep you sustained as a business. We have these different speakers every week that come in and teach on a Zoom video call teach entrepreneurs that are in the nonprofit space how to sustain their nonprofit over time. It all ends with this big celebration on the weekend of the Oscars where we highlight these organizations and we give them some awareness. We cut a check to their organization after they’ve gone through the training with us. 

The City Gala is a celebration of humanitarian and philanthropic work. People that are wanting to give forward with their passion. The entire experience is on the weekend of the Oscars. The City Summit is the two days right before the City Gala. That’s why we say the City Summit and Gala because it’s a three-day period. You have two days of for-profit training, business acceleration experience, that’s phenomenal. We have the best network of teachers out there, people that are founders of billion-dollar companies. People that have accomplished multimillion and million-dollar business entities right there. 

Fortune 500 coaches right there, knees to knees with the best in the business. They’re there to teach and guide entrepreneurs on how to grow, how to sustain. The networking part, here’s the thing, one relationship can change the entire trajectory of your business. That’s the thing. We realize that one relationship can get you access to funding. One relationship can help you get over the hump that you’re currently stuck in. The networking, the teaching, the educational format and all of that leads to a celebration on the night of the Oscars. 

 

What are some of the big names that have attended, that are present? 

We’ve been very fortunate with people that have a giant heart for philanthropy and humanitarian work. We had Halle Berry come out. She was so generous with her time. She’s been abused. She’s got three failed marriages. She was abused by two of her ex-husbands. She comes out and represents this phenomenal organization called the Jenesse Center that’s helping to rehabilitate people that are victims of domestic violence. She’s a champion. John Travolta came out. He lost a son. I believe the name of the organization that he founded is called the Jett Foundation. John Travolta, another guy that wants to help. 

A couple of years ago, we had Matthew McConaughey come out. Now here’s a guy that wants to champion kids that are in high school on mentorship programs, right when you need it the most. Before you break out into life, you get all these hormones run through. All these challenges that you’re going through in high school. Here’s some advice from real mentors in his organization. I know this one for sure because I can hear his accent. He’s got that Texas accent saying, “Just Keep Living Foundation.” That same year we had Ashton Kutcher come out. He and his ex-wife, Demi Moore, created an organization because they were utterly disgusted by human trafficking. This is modern-day slavery around the world. Ashton Kutcher wanting to talk about why he created Thorn, his foundation and how he’s helping people identify human traffickers, the people that are recruiting and making money off of modern-day slavery. 

It is phenomenally tragic. The whole thing is the most disgusting thing that you would ever think that humanity could perform, chaining young girl to a bed and having multiple men come in after. It’s disgusting. I admire that Ashton Kutcher, who is a very successful entrepreneur in and of himself. I believe he’s one of the first investors that invested heavily in Airbnb and helped that company grow to what it is. These guys are crazy, they’re phenomenal. Guys like Les Brown came out and inspired all the entrepreneurs at our summit. Jack Canfield, another guy, Chicken Soup for the Soul. I can go all day name dropping. I don’t want to chew up too much time. It’s like this, these people have accomplished something in business, accomplished something in success and all eyes on them. They’re using that success to go out and change people’s lives consistently. 

That’s what I call Game Changer Mentality. We need more people like that. That’s amazing. In your opinion, Ryan, what does it take to drive humanity forward? I asked that question because this is wonderful what you’re doing to support a good cause. It’s absolutely needed in the world. I consider you a thought leader in this area. I want to hear what do you think is necessary? What can we do as human beings? 

The only thing that I can think of is this. Find what lights you on fire and do it. It doesn’t matter what it is. If your family lights you on fire, great. Build the best family unit that you can. That’s your soul’s purpose. Find what lights you on fire. There’s a saying and don’t fact check me on this. It goes like, “There is no force in the universe greater than the human soul on fire.” Nothing can be truer than that. I have my down days. I have my downs weeks. I have my down months, but when I’m up, there’s no stopping. There is nothing that can stop you when you’re on fire. You have to find the thing that lights you up like that and cultivate a lifestyle that keeps that fire burning bright. I believe that is the way forward. 

How can people connect with you, Ryan? If they wanted to learn more about you, get involved with the City Summit and the City Gala, how can they do so? 

You can find all my social media. You can write me an email. You can find anything that you want on CitySummit.co. You’ll find everything about from our social media to our upcoming events, to a little bit of background on what the company does and what we represent. 

One relationship can change the entire trajectory of your business. Click To Tweet

What’s next for Mr. Ryan Long? How can people support you? 

The next annual City Summit and Gala is February 7th through 9th. If you go to CitySummit.co, you can register. We’ll send you an email when tickets go on sale. You can grab your tickets to the next City Summit and Gala. I can promise you that you will feel something different. You will leave that thing knowing how to be on fire. That you stay on fire is up to you. I can’t promise that you stay on fire, but I can promise you this. You get around these people at our events, they will light you up. They will light you on fire. CitySummit.co, the annual event is coming up February 7th through 9th. We are going to have a banner year. 2020 is an election year. 

Whether we choose to recognize it or not, when you are committing yourself to a nonprofit or to a cause, in essence, it’s a political statement. You are making a statement out in the world. You’re saying, “I’m against homelessness. I’m against people going hungry for no reason. I’m against people being abused. I’m against illness of any kind, mental illness, any illness. I’m against those things. I’m for the cure. I am for people having full bellies at night, people having a roof over their head. I’m for that.” Whether we like it or not, you’re making that commitment when you choose to get involved with something. I feel like as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you have to find things like that because that’s another thing that can help you stay in that flow of things. Stay in the flow of what it’s like to be on fire for yourself. I believe that. The expectation that I have for City Summit and Gala 2020, if we don’t blow the roof off of this thing, there is no better year to do it. 

Is there an opportunity for this to be continuous? Is there a membership opportunity to be connected over the course of time? 

There is a network that we have on CitySummit.co. You can join the network. The network is $9.99 a month. It gets you into all of our events. It’s for $120 a year. You’ll be invited to regional City Summits and you’ll also be able to get into the annual City Summit. You can connect, stay involved and there are special little treats that we invite people to because I promote. I’m in league with extraordinary people. The most extraordinary people that you can get your hands on, that you can shake hands with. Because I’m involved with that, sometimes I will go and appear at other events around town. I’ll send invitations to other phenomenal events. CitySummit.co, there is a membership. You can join that anytime. 

Ryan, I want to say thank you for stopping by, spending some time with us, dropping some knowledge on us and sharing what it is that you are contributing to the world. It’s phenomenal. Thank you again. You’re such an awesome person. You exude humbleness. I can see it all over you. I appreciate you for being a game-changer. 

 

I appreciate you. Thank you for that, Rodney. We have a couple of choices. You can either be humble or get kicked into humble. You’re going to get humbled. That’s what life does. It throws humility at you until you understand like, “This is the lesson.” I’ve had to learn that lesson so many times. I’m stuffed full of humble pie. 

I haven’t quite heard that one. I was going to ask you the final word, but I liked that you can either choose to be humble or get kicked into humble. I’m going to take that. I appreciate you for stopping by. I congratulate you on all of your success. Anything that we can do to support you, let us know. Thank you. 

Thank you for having me, Rodney. It’s been a real pleasure. I enjoy your interview style. I enjoy what your show stands for. 

There you have it another successful episode of the show. Thank you for reading. As always, remember to remain resilient in the pursuit of greatness. Thank you very much.

Important Links: 

• City Summit 
• City Gala 
• Jenesse Center 
• Jett Foundation 
• Just Keep Living Foundation 
• Thorn 
• Chicken Soup for the Soul 
• www.CitySummit.co 
• www.CityGala.org 
• Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
• Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today https://rodneyflowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734

About Ryan Long

Ryan Long was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Throughout his childhood, he was presented with many difficult obstacles. Born with a club foot, being raised in poverty and the death of his Grandfather by suicide led Ryan into a path of unconscious success.

He produced and promoted events that weren’t serving his spirit which landed him at Grandma’s without a job and without love. This was Ryan’s time of transformation and re-programming via keeping his head in self-help and success books. This created a new mindset about service. He chose to dedicate his life from this point forward to giving and providing value to the world and growing himself so he can give back.

This is when Ryan branded a new event called the City Gala. The Gala’s vision is to advance the community through humanitarian activities and events. The purpose of the gala is to assist startup, charitable organizations gain access to funds and awareness. The City Gala has featured speakers and honorees such as Sir Richard Branson, Sean Combs, Jane Seymour, John Travolta, and Halle Berry.

Shortly after founding the City Gala, Long executive produced the Novus Summit and the United Nations that featured speakers and a theme of how innovation and technology is moving forward against today’s global grand challenges. The City Summit, which Ryan founded in order to assist entrepreneurs in building and growing their business is themed “a world-class, socially conscious business acceleration experience.” Ryan is excited about the future and the possibilities he sees before him. He looks forward to expanding his company and fundraising endeavors internationally.

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Are you ready to shed your past, rise above your present, and go confidently in the direction of your dreams? The first step? Decide. Choose right here and now to make a move. Set your intention. Then simply ask Rodney for help. https://rodneyflowers.com/mentoring/ 

Want an inspirational story and a magnetic personality plus interactive actionable strategies to transform your audience? Book Rodney for your next event. https://rodneyflowers.com/speaking/

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