How To Create Content For A Brand That Matters (Backstage At CapCon) #WednesdayWithWyan

Hey capitalists, it's time to crack open your favorite beverage. I like Zevia. This is Wednesday with Wyan on capitalism dot com.

Hey capitalists, this is c money from capitalism.com today on Wednesday with Ryan. We're bringing you a private meeting from backstage at capcon Capitalism conference. So one of our attendees, Matthew, had been talking with Ryan about business and life and of course religion through emails and social media leading up to the event. So in a little break between presentations, I we brought Matthew backstage for a one on one with Ryan so he could ask him about creating authentic content for both himself and his own physical products brand. Here's how it went down.

I'm sort of in a pivot moment for myself. Like I actually my sales were better last year. Like last year when I was at the Capitalism conference, I had more sales than I do now. I was selling like 150, 250,000amonth from you know, like.

October 2017 to maybe like marches. And then I had like a bunch of problems like account got suspended and.

Yeah, and you went through a lot in your personal life.

Yeah, yeah. Last year was a tough year, crazy year. And so I am in this transitional period where it's like I listened to a bunch of stuff you talked about. You have a course about like six months to 100,000amonth or something like that. And like I was using the first couple of talks you talked about building the framework for the brand. Because after our conversation.

Sometime in December, we had that there's this product idea that me and my business partner had had and we're like, okay, if we're gonna do this product, like let's build an actual brand around it that we could like have values for and like a mission and like something that we could build an audience for and serve the audience and then release. You talk about serving the audience and releasing more products to the audience. And I think you're 100% right on that. And you're right in the Amazon community of sellers where they're just doing keyword research and all this kind of Amazon hacking stuff. They're not, a lot of them aren't thinking about those kinds of things.

They're thinking about business. Yeah.

That is one of the things I appreciated about.

Your course and you talked about that is that that kind of gave me some ideas and a framework for what we want to do with this. So since then we started in December just doing Facebook ad testing for my business partners. Really. We were both engineers background, but he's also very artistic and so he Drew up our logo for the brand, and we filed for the trademark. And so we started building the Facebook audience. And since I do wholesale, actually I have a lot of data on customers in that specific niche. So Facebook has a cool thing where I can export.

Names and addresses of orders, and I can build lookalike audiences. So I'm running ads directly to the exact people that are going to want to buy the product. And so we've spent maybe like 400 on ads, and we have almost 2000 likes on our page now, which I don't know how much that actually means in terms of converting those people to customers later, because I haven't done it. But, you know, we're just trying to test stuff to build the framework.

To get the actual brand going. I went to CES recently, just pick up some more distributors, maybe to work with. Because I don't know if you remember, like I told you on the phone, for right now, my cash flow is the wholesale model. So I just try to keep my money busy.

Yeah, of course.

Keep making a return on it. But what you notice when you're at CES is like, 95% of the companies there are brands. So. And, like, I'm Talking to the 5% that are distributors and wholesalers, you know, and so I'm like, me and my friend both went. And he's the guy that went with me. He. He does better than I do, but he's actually the one that got me started six years ago in college, flipping stuff. Like, you know, he had a little wholesale. It wasn't a wholesale. I mean, he didn't call it wholesale, but a hustle business on Craigslist where he just flipped phones. And that's how I got started. And so we were both there, and we were just like, we're in the wrong business. We just like this realization, you know, like, we've been doing this all wrong. We should be building a brand. So he's like, buying website, like, on his phone while we're there and buying a website. Well, for a brand name.

Well, how can I help, man? I mean, I know we talked about business. There's also a personal side. There's the religious side you and I have talked about.

I mean, I just. I wanted to meet you. Cause I honestly appreciate your work. I feel like that you're a genuine person, that you're. You do want to engage your audience. You want to build connections. I understand you want to build your network. You know, you're trying to help empower entrepreneurs. I think that's awesome. I also think, you know, like, you and I would just get along and so I wanted to meet you. But as far as, like, so a couple. A couple of things that I have. What I. What would. What. Because you built what you have with the capitalism, I would call it somewhat of a personal brand. I don't know if you would call it that, but I understand. Okay, a personal brand. So what advice would you give to someone that kind of feels compelled to want to do that, to build a personal brand, an audience, a tribe of people. Because I know there's a lot of stuff that I know that I know would be valuable to people that are more. Not quite. I don't consider myself, oh, I'm way up here, whatever. But I know that I do have value that I could give to other people, and I do feel compelled to share that I enjoy helping people. So, I mean, you've done that. So for someone that's contemplate. Like, last year at the capitalism conference, I had an idea. There was a speaker that talked about building your tribe, and I had an idea. I came up with the branding. I would want to do the brand name for it.

The value is what I would want to do. But I never did anything with it because of all the stuff that happened last year. So I'm kind of back to thinking about maybe doing that.

But also, I'm building a brand, I'm running businesses. And so what do you think about, what advice would you give someone thinking about maybe doing that?

My biggest piece of advice is be absolutely, brutally honest with yourself. People who follow you, like, say the things you don't want to say, because the people who will resonate with you will be like, oh, I know that. Like, I've been there. Shit, I was afraid to say that. So, like, I have one super fan.

Like, I mean, I see that guy all over.

Yeah. Yeah. So we love you, Aiden. We do. So I have. I have plenty of true fans. Sure. But I could count, like 10 super, super, super fans.

Sure.

And Aiden's one of those. And finally I was like, why do you follow me? I don't know what you do. He's like, the minute you said that you were a virgin until you were almost 26.

And I was like that.

Respect.

Yeah. That was the time. The times I spent. Matt, I have spent so much energy, like, trying to be the business guy, trying to be the this. The Amazon guy, and all I ever wanted to be was myself and hang out with people and hang out.

And build my tribe, and people are multifaceted. So when you share.

The real honesty, business sucks today. And here's why. People are like, shit, me too. That's how you build. That's how you build a tribe. Now that's not how you build authority. That's different. So if you're building a personal brand, be really honest. If you're building personal authority, be the light post the lighthouse. And it's being the mentor. Now you can be both. I struggle.

Seems like a hard one.

I struggle with that one. And I'm starting to become just more okay being the brand rather than the guide or the mentor because it just feels better. Like for example, one of my mentors, Kevin nations, he is a lighthouse. He's not so much a brand. He is like, he just like holds the anchor and is like, no, it's this way, it's this way, it's this way. And you need that. But I don't necessarily feel like that's me. So I'm getting more and more okay being the brand.

Yeah. I feel like being the lighthouse put a lot of pressure on yourself to like, have to know everything and you psychoanalyze every word you say.

Exactly.

That's correct.

And I am.

That's correct.

Yeah. And one of the things characteristics I got from my dad was I'm a bit of a people pleaser. So like, it bothers me when people don't like me. Like, not as much as it used to because I recognize that in myself now. I've kind of gotten a little more self awareness about that. But I'm like this weird paradox between, like, I don't care what people think. But yeah, okay, I really do care what people think. You know what I mean? So I can see. I guess that's probably one of the things that makes me hesitant to start creating content or putting out videos and, you know, trying to get some message about, you know, business or, you know, personal life, all this, you know. Cause like, what I would want to do is I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to just talk about business because I think business is connected.

I think business, I've made that mistake for many years.

I think business is connected to everything else. You know, I think that we're tripartite beings. You know, we're spiritual, we're physical, where we're mental. So, you know, you, you had to nurture all those areas and finding the balance is the difficult part for everyone.

So what do you ultimately want to happen?

That's a good question. I'm not 100% sure one of the speakers Talked about, you know, being like super self aware, you know, about like exact. Your exact vision of where you want to go.

So not necessarily.

No.

Not necessarily a vision of where you want to go, but like, how do you want to be? How do you want to experience life?

Vision is like out, right?

Yeah.

Sometimes the vision doesn't come till later. You know, Aubrey was at my house talking about the growth of Onnit. He didn't have a vision for on it. The vision came later. It's something he wanted to do. Yeah.

I guess my thinking right now is just that I enjoy meeting new people. I'm an extroverted person. I like the diversity of opinions. I mean, we had similar backgrounds. I was raised Christian as well, but I've always been a skeptical person. When I was 11, I started reading atheist blogs. There's this guy named Stacks Roche, he had a blog called Dangerous Talk. I started arguing with that guy from when I was like 11 to 14. I talked to him all the time talking about different things and, you know, like just trying to understand other perspectives. And I think that there's a lot of value in that. And so I see the value in building a tribe of people that resonate with the things that I would talk about and then also in turn, me learning from them. Because it's not all just about me. Because I know that when you make connections, you build relationships with people. It's a symbiotic thing. Like, yes, I have value that I can add to them, but they're going to be able to give me feedback that is going to be beneficial for me as well. So it's a symbiotic relationship. So I guess maybe looking at it right now, my ultimate goal would just be to build relationships with people.

Then you know what you want the tribe to look like for you and you need to start communicating to those people by being really vulnerable. Actually, I think vulnerability is thrown around by being real honest.

Vulnerability is having its heyday right now. Yeah, it's not gonna be popular two years from now. It would be like, stop sharing your shit on social media. That's gonna be.

There's a fine line.

Honesty. Honesty is always popular. Honesty will always be like, the truth will always be popular. Like when I share a political opinion, that is not me being vulnerable, but I like to think that I'm very honest in my evaluation of things.

Sure, sure, sure.

So I always default to honesty.

So do you have like, what would. And going back, you know, all the videos, everything you've created, is there anything you would have done differently with your personal branding. I know you mention you feel like in the beginning you maybe focused too much on being that lighthouse and only talking about business. So maybe one thing would be being more diverse in the topics you cover.

But also there's that, there's that inherent fear of like.

Because I am such a skeptical person and very. Facts, data driven. I'm so hesitant to speak about things because I know that there's probably data I'm not aware of that would impact the things I'm speaking about. You know what I mean?

Do you know who the president is right now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is a lot of things that are not supported by data, but you might consider directionally. Correct.

Sure, sure.

And I'm not necessarily encouraging that. Yeah, no saying your style. Just do your style. I don't like data. I don't, I don't get. I don't geek out on data.

I don't ever talk about it.

I don't make my decisions on data.

I wouldn't say I necessarily geek out on data, but I do think that, you know, facts and information then be.

Willing to change your mind and share when you do.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. It's vital to, you know, because as we learn and we grow, we ideally bring in new information to our worldview. And your worldview should somewhat adapt, I would think. It shouldn't stay stagnant.

Correct. And so you share, you share. When that happens.

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Sam.