The Secret To Big Brands: Giving Customers What They Really Want #WednesdayWithWyan

People get too obsessed over the mechanisms rather than the fundamentals of getting in front of responsive people and giving them what they want.

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 clip is from Seller Con in Las Vegas. After Ryan left the stage, he got mobbed by a bunch of E commerce sellers. With over 20 people surrounding him with a bunch of questions, he had to be pretty blunt and direct. So this is about as unfiltered as you're going to get from Ryan this Wednesday. Heads up. There is some colorful language in today's episode. Enjoy.

I feel. I always feel like there's a line, let's all just hang out. I just want to hang out with everybody.

I just.

You want me to sign your journal?

We're going to do like, 4 million. And everything that you said stings really, really hard.

When did you. When did that hit you and you realize that or did you do it from the very beginning?

Those two things, I. I couldn't tell you when it hit.

I don't know. I think I might be better at some. At noticing really stupid trends.

Yeah.

Like, are we all doing right?

Is this what's going on?

No.

For sure.

So I don't know.

I don't know when the light switch came on.

I think I'm just willing to suck at something and then admit it.

Yeah.

I wish I had a better answer for you. I mean, what matters for you is, like, when did you realize it? And you just did.

Well, I mean, the thing is those two concepts, especially if you're coming from just the sales channel. Right. Those two things are very, like, organic.

Very.

I don't want to say arbitrary, but not easy to define.

The other part. Sales channels are easy for you to manipulate.

Yes.

Like, you can make Amazon your bitch. Exactly. You can't make a customer your bitch.

Exactly.

So there's fear of rejection. You have to actually be good. That's risky because most of you know you're not good.

Yeah.

And that's. That's humble pie. Be like, oh, shit.

My product actually isn't any different or better. And I actually don't care about my customer at all.

The thing is, we know it like, like, like, I know I knew it all.

Well, like, do you really know it if you don't say it, it's like, I mean, we, we are really good at tricking ourselves.

But you're right, we're really good at.

Pushing it way back there.

I Mean, it's good.

I mean, like, oh, if they're buying from me, then I must be doing.

It better than other people.

And so you find ways to justify it. But it's not a real business. Right. And so you can keep doing it.

And have a nice little cash flow.

Business, but you'll never be a real entrepreneur.

What would you recommend doing? Like, because I definitely resonate with that. Especially when he said, because we all keep it quiet.

Right?

Because we know that any one of us could.

Yeah, I don't talk about my products.

And I don't, yeah, that, that, like.

I'm in pets.

But so that kind of reserves. So my wife and I have kind of been doing this.

Can you imagine if Dave Asprey did that? I'm in, I'm in Food and drink. Dave Asprey from Food and Drink. I'm sorry.

No, I mean, this was so kind of great to hear this from you because I just, you know, we hear the same perspective, I think so many times just focusing on the sales channel. My wife and I are definitely the sale, the Amazon sales distribution kind of managers and we're doing about 40k a month now, which is great for us. And obviously we're like, we're afraid waking up one day seeing that like for whatever reason Amazon suspended us. I'm curious too. At what point, because I kind of mentioned, hey, you're at the million mark, right? 7 figure annual mark that you definitely need to be thinking about.

Right.

Growing the product, audience side. At what point should I do that? And then also kind of going off.

What?

Yeah, I mean, you should.

So just, you know, if, you know, we don't care about the, you know, caring about the customer or, you know, having product that's not really superior, do we just completely shift into something else or.

No, you find a way to care about your customer.

Okay.

Yeah. And people are really fucking interesting.

It doesn't matter what walk like you. You right now care only about selling more product. When you become fascinated with why the hell people are choosing you over somebody else actually gets really interesting and you start to find out what actually holds them back and what their actual challenges are. You know, people can be really interesting, especially when they want to give you money.

That's a really interesting conversation.

You asked.

The first part was how do I or when do I start building the audience?

Yes, it was yesterday.

Okay.

Yeah.

David, next, next. Best time is now. Right. And like I said this morning, an.

Audience does not mean you have millions of people.

It means going super micro.

I just Finished writing a book called.

12 Months to 1 Million.

And I say over and over, when people get to a point, they start.

Thinking about what do I add on.

Top or what's the next thing I do. The secret is to go super micro. It is emailing your customers and asking for feedback and calling one on the phone. It starts at the super Microsoft.

That's how it grows.

It does. It does not grow by you sponsoring this influencer and then hoping your brand grows. Because now all you got was people who don't give a fuck about you at scale.

But if you do the super micro stuff, you get a few people who do give a fuck about you. And after a while, a lot of people give a fuck about you.

That's the difference.

One thing, Ryan. Have you read Building a Story Brand? You know what's funny? You know, it's funny. I was a, I was a big Donald Miller fan when he was a Christian author.

I went to school to be a.

Pastor.

And I was a big Donald Miller.

I haven't read any of his business books really.

It's an interesting book.

It's mostly about that.

Like, how do you, how do you tell the story of your business?

Who actually is the hero and being the Yoda?

It's very. I think it would be helpful for you as well.

I think also it's just about listening to the story they're on.

Absolutely.

I went through an exercise. A guy at my house literally sold knee sleeves. And after like an hour of debate.

He realized he had, you know, he was, he was struggling or.

I've got. Some people buy it because they're athletes.

Some people are, are getting old. Like, you realize that all of them are on a journey to be pain free. Yeah, it's like what they all want. And he was like.

Oh, never. Like, I never thought of this before. And if you just focus on that, you know, there's a lot of products you can sell about being pain free.

Absolutely.

But when you're like, when do I sell more knee sleeves? How do I sell more knee sleeves? What else does somebody buy after they buy knee sleeves? Something from someone else.

Actually, I have two questions because I actually came from this, the complete opposite, I'm branded side. And then my Amazon guy brought me here. So, like, you talking about this whole world and you guys talking, I'm like.

Yo, this is great. You're probably ahead of Muslim.

Isn't that funny? Isn't it funny? We are so interesting as human beings. We are so funny.

But two things, two questions. I had just by listening to you guys and seeing this piece. But because he's great and he's been shooting our Amazon numbers up. But as far as, like a Shopify expert or somebody, because like you said, I could hire somebody to handle my Amazon if I can hire somebody to handle work.

I. Man, I wish I had time for Q A on. On stage. Because, like, why do you want to be on Shopify?

I mean, it's been doing really well for us.

Oh, okay.

Oh, okay.

So I've already. We started our platform on Shopify.

Okay. Because most people be like, I'm selling well on Amazon, but I don't feel good. Like, I'm afraid it's going to turn. So what I will do is I will put all my energy into something that's doing zero now. We'll build that up and now I'll have two shitty sales channels and life will be great. Oh, yeah.

We were 50, 50 between Amazon and Shopify, and then we brought him on and our Amazon numbers have shot up. So I'm assuming that.

Yeah, yeah. So that. I mean, that all kind of compounds together.

If you do one well, it will absolutely reflect the other.

So was your question about hiring a Shopify person and a mastermind?

What masterminds? If you had to suggest the mastermind.

You should give me lots of money.

It depends on what you want. I mean, if it's Shopify specifically, that's.

What you want to figure out.

Ezra runs a really good one.

I mean, these are all systems and processes that you can figure out.

But, yeah, you should have somebody in charge of.

Conversion optimization for Shopify when you're at that point where it makes sense. But most people are trying to. Or forgive me, they're trying to optimize.

Pieces of shit rather than building a real business. And what the headline is, what the.

Funnel is, matters a lot less to.

Who the person is, what the product is and how you're serving them.

Whenever you're talking about something being a piece of shit. Right? Yeah. Do you leverage? Although, I mean, that's a little, like, a little hyperbolic, right? Because you're still selling. Do you leverage what you're already doing, that is semi successful, 100% to do those other two things.

100%.

Okay.

100%.

Okay.

Is there anybody outside of the inner circle that wants to hang out?

We got the invite to one day. My business partner got it. So we're on the fence about going out there. We are a custom product business. 85% of our stuff is custom challenge coins from military and Police and stuff like that.

Why?

You know, we're just on the.

You're asking me to pitch you?

Yeah.

I'm the worst person. I'm the worst salesperson at my own stuff.

I talked to you just about, you know, because we filled out the survey and we were very shocked to get accepted and it's humbling for us.

What are you doing in revenue wise now?

We're like 3.6 million.

Okay, cool. So here's a cool secret. Once again, the biggest asset you have.

Is your own systems.

So for someone like you, your best asset might be your customer list. And if you are stuck in this mode of I'm gonna sell more coins, you're gonna have a hard time. Like that's hard to scale because there are only at any given time so many people that need more coins or shoes or whatever. But if you start looking at what is going on before that and you want to build a business around that, you're in good shape. I probably can't help you sell more coins. But if you have that shift alone and you go home and you're like, I have a friend who's basically like a full time email marketer. And after we talked for a few hours, he said, I didn't realize that one list of customers could actually be the nucleus for launching multiple brands. Right. As soon as you realize that it's people, because I don't know about you.

I buy multiple things.

You suck at the audience part. You're just a channel manager. You double down and hire somebody else that's excellent, that lives and breathes audience, or do you pull yourself out to learn?

It's a good question.

It's hard to be Yoda when you don't know.

My strategy for everything is make a lot of mistakes and correct later.

So I couldn't tell you what the best.

Order of hiring is. Are you really hell bent on building an audience? If so, you need to go hire somebody from a competitor who's built a really great audience. If you have no idea how to do that, then you need to get something off your plate so that you can go figure it out enough to be able to hire for it.

I wish there was a playbook, man. I really wish there was.

We're all figuring it out. Like we're figuring everything out. Everybody you think who has it all together.

It's at least one area of their life that's really fucked up. And we're all guessing at shit. All of us breaking things and fixing.

Them along the way.

Yeah.

Dammit.

I meant to say that from stage my original plan.

So they didn't even. I didn't know I was doing a second talk. My original plan was to just come.

In and be like, guys, this is an inside out game.

We're going to talk about some deep shit. Because, like, we're all scared little children running around trying to be safe, all of us.

And it's all inside out.

Like the person who's been struggling for something for a long time is struggling in other areas of their life too. The person who is amazing. Human beings are really, really fascinating that get really interested in your customers, man.

People are just interesting.

Here's my rant for the day.

When you talk about people, you take care of your team and your team takes care of your customers. If you infuse both people are the most important resource and value.

I don't have this all buttoned up yet. I'm practiced with you. We as human beings are tribal.

I mean, even the nuclear family, the perfect nuclear family, is still missing a.

Lot of tribal inputs.

We are made to be in groups of 30 to 120 people. That is when we are happiest, how we are wired. And so if you think about your immediate and today, not only do we not have 120 friends, we sit behind screens all day and judge ourselves compared to what other people are doing.

So if you think about your immediate impact is your tribe. Like your job is to take care of the tribe and you as a tribe take care of the next outer ring of the tribe. That's like you and your immediate team taking care of your customers because they have families and tribes too.

And then there's ripple effects and you realize how epically powerful you are, that you have people who report to you for a specific mission. If you treat it that way, if it is to pay them as little as possible and to maximize sales, then it is always you against everybody else, which you can do. You'll just never be happy. You won't. It's impossible to be happy. But if you think about it like this is your immediate group and you're taking care of them and it is your job to take care of them and they take care of other people. Do you have any idea how much people crave that today? It's like, ugh, world just opens up.

For you for just starting out. I'm just starting out and stuff and obviously we're gonna have a tremendous amount of stuff that we're gonna be overwhelmed over this thing. My background is in marketing and video, so, like, I get that.

Yeah. Cool.

But what do you think is like the one of the number one thing that you'd recommend? Like, where for. What's the priority?

What's the priority?

Like, to get started.

To get started doing what?

Selling on Amazon. Single product. I'm doing full face snorkel mask. So I'm telling everybody it's okay.

But.

Yeah, so I'm going to. I did the research.

It's really cool.

And so my person is someone who's kind of a traveler, a nomad, you know, a family.

Is that you?

Yeah.

I love traveling. Okay. And you're good at video.

Pretty damn good.

Okay.

You need guys at Maverick.

You. You need to be documenting everything and just posting it.

Okay.

And being like, the process of creating the product. Absolutely.

The photo of the video shoot.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Okay.

A hundred percent. Yeah. I look at these two prototypes I got. Okay. Which one do you guys like? I'm leaning towards this one. Yeah.

And just build a following.

Here's the new post. I made the decision to go with this one. Here's why. I didn't like this, this, and this. This really sucks. This is $3 more expensive than this other one. And I'm really worried about profit margins. Not sure what I'm gonna do about it. Bye.

Okay.

And like, you're saying just $10 a day to build the audience.

Yes.

And Instagram is the place to be.

Yes.

As of this window for building an audience, it's Instagram. Yeah. If you like that platform. I like to talk. So it's podcasting.

It's actually really hard to build an audience podcasting. Really hard.

Right. So. So. So then. Then you do video. Yeah. So go YouTube. Go IGTV.

Yeah.

Facebook.

Like it. Go where you will be consistent with it. It doesn't matter that there's more organic reach on Instagram because you won't do it. Yeah. There's more organic reach where you will go real hard consistently. So do the whole thing on YouTube. That's fine. Yeah, totally fine. People get too obsessed over the mechanisms rather than the fundamentals of getting in front of responsive people and giving them what they want. Gotcha.

Okay.

Anything else?

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about selling your business?

What would you like to know?

Well, how do you find the right person?

I need you to talk that out a little bit more. The right person.

To buy your business?

No, just in general. You know, like when you're. How do I put this? Let's say you have a business idea and a concept, you know, like to go up to Somebody and say, this is my business idea. I just, I'm looking to get a royalty or, you know, that type of thing. Like what kind of environment do you have to be in?

So I'm not. You asked about selling your business, but then you asked about a new idea, so I'm not understanding the connection.

Okay, so let's say you wanted to sell a concept.

Okay.

Where would you find the person, the group of people that you would want to sell that to? Let's say you live in a remote area.

You are.

Yeah. Pitch the concept.

You are overvaluing ideas. Okay, what is your end goal with this?

Oh, I'm just talking in general, actually. It's just a general idea. Like, it's not something I'd even think about doing, really.

It's just I have a hard time commenting on a theoretical idea, but I think most people are way too protective and overvalue their own ideas.

Right.

There's no asset to an idea. Pretty much. You know the phrase, if information and ideas were the problem, then we'd all be billionaires of perfect apps.

Trying to be protective of ideas. Man, I tell people everything.

Anything you want to know, let's talk about it. It just doesn't feel good to keep things like, locked up.

That's very helpful, thank you.

To me, it just doesn't feel good.

Thinking about a business is like planning to build your business so it can be sellable easy. Like, is it building processes and people?

I'm sorry, I just want to repeat back to what you said.

I guess it's not, you know, like, we're growing. We're growing an Amazon business, but you don't want to be the person that has to do it because if you sell that business, you're the person then. To your point.

Yeah.

That business.

Yeah. I had to tell somebody recently that.

Was at my house.

I was like, he's like, I just want to sell this one and move on to another one. And I was like, dude, nobody wants to buy your shitty business.

He just told me you work 16 hours a day to make 100 grand net. Nobody wants to make that trade. You think someone wants to pay you to work 16 hours a day to make 100 GS?

You gotta like build like what you're saying the tribe, so then that tribe can move.

Uh huh.

That's the problem.

All right, I'm gonna go here.

John, thanks for hanging out. Al y'. All.

Good to see you. Yeah, you bet.

Hey team, real quick, shameless plug here. If you've ever seen my company logo for capitalism.com, it's a red sea with a flame at the end. And the reason why that's the company logo is because I believe that our purpose as a company and my purpose as a leader is to light other fires. And that means creating content for entrepreneurs who go on to build great companies, working with entrepreneurs to help them break through their plateaus and to invest in companies that really have a shot of breaking out. Teaching this stuff so that more success stories get created. I like to light fires. That's what I'm here to do. One of the ways that I do that is is inside of our monthly membership, which is called the 1%. And inside there we send out a monthly newsletter which features case studies of success stories, what's working right now from some of the best people in the world who are doing this stuff or building businesses and investing the profits. And we feature business ideas that you can literally rip off and steal. We often even just throw keyword lists.

At you and say, go for it. Hey, we might even invest in this post.

In the community, you'll probably find an investor too. And the idea is to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, influencers in one place where we can light fires really, really quickly. We also have a year long curriculum that is made to help you build businesses, invest the profits, increase your profits, create the change you want to see in the world. You can't not change as a result of going through this. So you can find out more@capitalism.com 1. If you've been listening to the podcast and you're missing community, you're missing opportunity, you're missing connection, you're missing being a part of a movement that is going to make you a better entrepreneur. This is going to fix that for you. It also gives you discounts on our events and our other products. And it's more than worth $10 for every dollar we charge. That's my rule as an entrepreneur. I don't collect a dollar unless I know I can provide 10. And this absolutely meets that. So that's@capitalism.com then one hope to see.