Ryan Hanley: How To Be a Kick Ass Leader | On The Homefront With Jeff Dudan #104

Hey everybody, welcome to the home front. I have Ryan Hanley on here with us today who is the CEO and founder of Finding Peak, an executive coaching and media company. Ryan recently exited from his last startup, Rogue Risk, a first of its kind digital commercial insurance agency. Ryan is a sought after keynote speaker. I've seen his stuff, really, really good. And also a best selling author of Content Warfare and producer of a podcast, the Ryan Hanley Show. And we've got a new book coming out in 25. Welcome to the home front. Ryan Hanley.

Jeff, such a pleasure to be here man. Excited to, to chat.

Yeah, awesome. So one of the things I do to prepare is go through people's book and this book, Content Warfare is really, really good. It's, it has a lot of good fundamentals in it. Now when did you write this book?

2015.

2015. So I looked at that and I'm like okay, this stuff is still relevant today. If I'm sitting in an office, I'm sitting in a cube. I've got a business that I want to grow. But you've got a new book coming out in 2025 which I think the working title is Civilized Savage.

Yes.

What's that going to be about? Is that going to be an extension of the material and content warfare or going a different direction?

Yeah, it's a slightly different direction. So back in 2014, 2015 when I wrote, published 2015, wrote in 2014, I guess content Warfare, that was basically sharing the blueprint that I used to revolutionize local independent insurance agency. So that came out of being a horrible traditional salesman. I just was awful and, and I at the time, I'm just a salesman working for an insurance agency. Every little boy's dream right to be in the insurance industry.

And I dreamed I had, I hadn't, I had a State farm Jersey up on my wall growing up.

Yeah, exactly. So I was actually working for my ex father in law at the time. He was my father in law at the time, but now ex but. And he fired me just year and a half into working for him. He fires me. I did what any self respecting young man would do. I got down on my knees and said please do not make me go home to your little girl and tell her that her dad just fired her husband and he agreed to give me a six month extension. And I had to figure out how I was gonna sell auto home business insurance products to people other than the traditional method. And what I did was I, I fell in love with and became fairly proficient at inbound and competent Marketing and then the success from that that I had I parlayed into that book. So that that's highly tactical. The only part that isn't relevant is the chapter on Google. Obviously that doesn't exist anymore, but I'd say everything in there is completely relevant today. And I've used it over and over and over again in my pre. In my. The businesses that came after. Civilized Savage is more a take on mindset and what I found to be. And I have a co author as well, what I found to be the proper set of mindsets that we need in today's society to be successful. I think the pure raging, aggressive, you know, mentality just that doesn't integrate into society. Well, we can't operate today in that methodology yet. We need to embrace many of the, the aspects of what it meant to be, you know, you know, how do we, how do we handle topics like aggression, how do we handle ambition, how do we handle drive, discipline, but integrate them into our lives in a way where we're not pushing people away from us. So Civilized Savage should be out in 2025, early 2025, and it's essentially going to be a blueprint to operating day to day for success.

Interesting because I had under my bullet points under content assertiveness and you know, how assertive do you need to be to get somebody's attention? And then where is the line so to where you fall back from being aggressive or even offensive? In some places people develop, people grow big audiences based on assertiveness and sometimes aggressiveness and sometimes outlandishness. Right. It's a very Jordan, Jordan Peterson type thing that says, you know, men need to be dangerous, but then they need to be able to control it. And you know, that's really the essence of it. You know, people need to know that you will protect and you will do what you do, but then at the end of it too, you need to be, you need to be wise and sage and thoughtful and, and diplomatic in, in a way so interesting. So I find that Civilized Savage, and.

It'S funny that you referenced Jordan Peterson because actually that take which I saw live from him, enormous Jordan Peterson fan. His book 12 Rules for Life changed, changed the course of my life. In 2017. I was struggling to marry these ideas. I'm probably a workaholic by nature. Played sports throughout high school, college, a little bit after college. You know, I've always been that lean forward, push, drive, you know, win kind of person. And what I found is while that had success, you know, that, that got me early success in business, when you got through Escape Velocity and had to start to build real businesses that, that didn't play down organizations, right. I don't think that there's very few exceptions. Elon Musk, Steve Jobs of that manic leader, pounding tables, throwing chairs, yelling, you know, completely unreasonable and inflexible. I think, you know, what I started to understand was the idea of seasons of life and seasons of businesses. And early on in a business cycle when you're first starting, you, you have to be an absolute lunatic. You have to be, you got to get the thing off the ground and you have to get it to Escape Velocity. And what I mean by escape Velocity is that point in your business where it stops being about you and starts being about the business. Right. Early on it's, it's what can you do, how can you manage whatever tasks are necessary. Oftentimes we're wearing five, seven, ten different hats to get this thing off the ground and then pushing through that to the point where now I can start to peel off layers of what I'm doing and bringing in other people that are smarter than me at accounting, smarter than me at sales, smarter than me at marketing, etc. HR and really starting to build a true sustainable business that's going to be resilient. Well, early days, manic crazy, you kind of have to be right. You're putting in 16 hour days. But where people miss is they hit that moment of Escape Velocity and they don't realize they're in a new season of their business in which they still need to be driven, ambitious, visionary. But now we have to start to integrate into that business in a way where people feel like they're heard, we can get grab ideas from other individuals and this plays into our family life as well. So what I found, and really Jordan Peterson being the kickoff to this was that in his book 12 Rules for Life, it opened my eyes to the idea that I could be that, you know, and again I'm a guy, so I'll talk in terms of guys, but this goes this 100 applies to females as well. I can be that strong out front male who has a big idea, who's pushing hard, who has expectations of their team and, but still be, I can still listen, I can still, I can still have compassion, I can still be understanding, I can still bring other people into conversations and allow their ideas to be heard and be executed upon if they're the best ideas. And it wasn't till that point that I started to marry those two things together. This idea of the civilized savage came out where we are at one time. Strong, driven, ambitious, but also compassionate, understanding and caring. And if you can marry those two together, that's how you build true resilience into your business. It's how you build resilience into your family, into your life, your community.

Look, I really, really like this observation. We watch a lot of Elon Musk videos in our family. My son's an aspiring engineer. So anytime there's something going up and blowing up, man, it's on our YouTube screen at home, and that's what we're watching. So, and, and after one of the more recent launches, you know, they showed the, you know, they've got Elon on there. And. Well, first of all, he had done this interview with this kid who had been following him and videotaping them. And they're out at the rocket and they were talking about how they were going to use the propulsion gases or whatever. And he's like, well, we use the cold stuff for this and we use the hot stuff for that. And the kid makes an observation and he says, yeah, but, you know, you could actually use the cold stuff for this. And Elon's like, yeah, but. And then he stopped, and then he thought about it, and he goes, you know, that's actually a really good idea. And then the video, you know, nine months later, was him saying, this is where we incorporated your idea into this rocket. And then you cut to their mission control, and the mission controls of NASA that we used to watch were these, you know, old guys with the dark rim glasses and the white shirts and the ties, right? And they're, they're getting excited because they just launched something and it worked, man. You show the control room at SpaceX, it's kids and it's, it's the brightest engineers from all over the world that he could possibly find. And, you know, he says, and he says, you know what? You know, we're going to go back and we're going to make this decision as a team. You know, we're always going to collaborate. We're going to get everybody's feedback, and we're going to get the best idea. So he truly has this Ray Dalio type idea meritocracy. And he'll sleep on the floor for 100 hours straight and push everybody to their limits. And if you're not product, if you're not productive, like when he went into Twitter, 80%, he goes, anybody that's not keeping the product going is gone. And then we're going to start to build back from there. So, so there's this super aggressiveness, unreasonableness of goals, but yet this collaborativeness that says like we're all going to go here together. The guy's just got a super knack for team building, vision creation and execution.

Well, it's two things that I think unfortunately have been lost in our society are the idea of setting expectations and holding people accountable to them and building a company based on pure meritocracy. No one likes that, right? The, the word of the day is equality. Well, I'm all for equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome is why you see, why you see all these major Fortune 500 companies dropping DEI DI at its core is an incredibly compassionate and empathetic idea. However, the way that it's practiced is not practiced inside of pure meritocracy. And one of the things that I've always found interesting is people who came up in sports tend to get this idea natively, right? When you're on a sports team, especially team related sports, you don't care if what someone thinks, you don't care what they look like, you don't care how they act, you don't care what their hobbies are, where their families are, where they're from. You could give two craps if they can play the game and execute and work inside the team as a unit. You want them there, right? You want to surround yourself with the best teammates. They're going to get you to wherever, whatever goal you have. And that's just a native idea. And then. But individuals who, or people who played individual sports or never engaged in team or group activities in that manner, they, they look at teams as well. You're not properly represented. Well, it doesn't matter. I could have seven people that look like this and one person that looks like this. And this is the best team for what we need to get done. And that could be reversed and those same demographics could be flopped. And there's seven of these and one of these or whatever it looks like at the end. What I, what I respect about Elon and I, I listen, I listened to his book. I didn't read it. I like to make that distinction because I hate when people say they read a book, but they really listened to. I listened to Walter Isaacson book about Elon and while this is obviously a guy who has to deal with some Asperger's is what he calls it, I don't think that's a proper term anymore, but whatever. And, and different ways related to other people, he obviously has struggles with that. But at the end of the day, he sets expectations, he holds you accountable to them. And if you have the merit to be room, he's going to put you in that room and listen to what you have to say. And that's not an idea that mediocre average people want to allow in the world. And the organizations that fight through maybe some negativity from, from the, the, the average, they're the ones that are succeeding today. Those are the ones that are having books written about them. Those are the ones whose companies are, are, are plowing through all these ceilings that we never even knew were possible. And it's why I believe that someday Elon's gonna do a software update to your Tesla and you're gonna be able to hit a button and that thing's just gonna take you to the moon.

Yeah, 100%. And it's funny how as companies grow and we're in it here, I mean, we've gone from like nine people 24 months ago to like 70 people and 200 franchise owners and 600 markets. I mean, it's, it's like our growth over the last 24 months has been crazy. And it's amazing how quickly sometimes the main thing stops being the main thing about the main thing. You know, it's about this and well, this person's doing this and this person's doing that. I'm like, yeah, but like, we're not talking about the business goals now. Now we're talking about what makes people comfortable or maybe what people want to do or, you know, like what's the trade off on excellence that we're willing to have here because it's too hard or, you know, what's good enough. And you know, I, you know, you get, you get a little worn down from it. But I'm telling you this, it is so refreshing to be able to focus on just the things that matter and to be kind of have a team of what I call business athletes. Look, you don't have to be an athlete athlete. Like there's business athletes out there that basically whatever you throw to them, they will dive skin their knees and elbows to catch it and, and do whatever with it. It's funny, man. Like you see it. We had some interns here over that we did successful internship program. And it's like, wow, you know, we put an intern into this department and they raised the production of, of the other six people in there by X. And you know, and, and it's just, it's really, it's all about the athletes. If you Listen to Belichick or you listen, like they, they, you know, they could get all drunk on reading their own press clippings about what a great coach they are, but they always go back and say it's always about the athletes because they're the ones that are making the plays. I mean, you put people in the right position. I was coaching football. You know, our staff's goal was to not get in, make sure that there was absolute clarity. There was a simple game plan with which we knew the basic things we were trying to accomplish. And then from a coaching perspective, if we could manufacture one turnover and one touchdown because of some strategy that we did, then everything, then we knew that, like, all our players had to do was be even and we would win the game. You know, so, like, it's, It's. But it's always about the players and, you know, but it's. It's challenging today to create these environments where, you know, you know, it's like, it's okay, well, I want to work remotely. Well, like, if I'm a young person today. Oh, by the way. And I really want to. And like, in our company, we have incredible executives, we have brand presidents over our franchise brands that have built national companies over and over and over again. If I'm a young person and this is my first job, I want to be. I want to have access to those people on a daily basis. From a mentoring perspective, how do they think, how do they get where they go? What are the opportunities? If I'm sitting at home three days a week, you know, yeah, I get to play with my dog, right? Or it's maybe more, or I don't have this commute or whatever it is, but are you really getting the full experience? Are you giving yourself the opportunity and taking full advantage of the people that you get to rub shoulders with every day? Now, remote work, like, we have our, Our. Our franchise development sales team. Super talented group. They're spread all over the country. They're constantly on teams, and nothing goes 10 seconds. I mean, like, that works, and it works fine. But I will tell you, they're all experienced people and they're. They're. They're tools that do a very specific thing, and they do it exceptionally well. So, you know, that works for them. But when you're trying to build a culture and you're trying to, like, give young people an opportunity to, like, find out what their area of brilliance is, what's their unique ability, and then to be able to pour resources into them, to really develop them, it's hard to do when you don't see them.

I completely agree. I want to give you an example of how this works, especially with remote. So as you mentioned, I exited last November from a commercial insurance aid. So my experience in the world, yeah, I grew up, I grew up in the insurance industry and my most recent endeavor in that was starting my own digital commercial insurance agency. We were national, we wrote business in 43 states. We had people spread out throughout the country. And where we excelled was through bringing in single moms and moms at young kids. Because in the insurance industry, the dynamic nature of their schedules made them a liability to the traditional business. Right, right. So they're often tossed out of organizations. These are high quality, incredibly intelligent, incredibly experienced individuals who are driven to get things done. Yet because they can work a standard 9 to 5, they get tossed out the door. So what I started doing was hiring these individuals and bringing them in and saying, I don't care if at 11 o' clock your kid's sick at school, you got to leave and go get your kid. If you got to pick your kid up from the bus at 3 and you need a half hour to go get, do what you have to do. I understand the dynamics. I'm a single dad. Like I get what you're going through. However, we, we're a metrics based organization. You have goals that you have to hit, you have things you have to get done and if you don't get them done, that's a problem. So I think where most leaders go wrong when they get involved with remote employees in particular, and I think this goes across the board, it doesn't sound like it happens in your organization at all. But I think for those listening, you can, you can overcome any of these issues if you will hold, if you will properly set expectations for the people that you bring in up front and then hold them accountable to those expectations. And that's the part no one wants to do, right? We can say, you know, we're driven and we're goal focused and you know, but you can say all these things. But if you then aren't regularly meeting with them, asking them what's going on, I mean simply just sending a text message or a slack message or teams message randomly as a leader to one of your teammates and go, what's going on today? How you doing? Where's your head at? Just something, just check in with them, see what's going on and then look at their numbers, you know, and we would say, you know, you don't get to miss two Months in a row you get to have a bad month. We understand it. But if you have a bad month, let's sit down, figure out why it was a bad month, see if there is any changes or adaptations we can make. Maybe, maybe Fridays are a terrible day for you, but you can work on Saturdays. Well, that's great, right? People are always looking to buy insurance, so we're working seven days a week anyways. Maybe we can adjust your schedule. Maybe you can pick up two four hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday and now you get Wednesdays free because Wednesday is a day that you need for your family or for your kids or just to get shit done, whatever, right? But you don't get to miss two months in a row. Because missing two months in a row means you're not, you're not doing what you initially signed on to do when we brought you into this company. And if we're unable and unwilling to hold our people accountable, this is where the problem comes in. And so often we give lip service to accountability as leaders, yet we don't actually have the mechanisms in place. So what? One of the things that we implemented very early was a profitability scorecard for our sales, for our sales representatives. And what that meant was I wanted them to see directly how the work they were doing, the time they were spending, the accounts they were bringing in, the revenue they were generating, minus the expenses associated with them and their salary, how that impacted the bottom line to our organ. So they would literally get a scorecard emailed to them at the, at the beginning of the month, from the following month to say last month you generated X in profit for our organization or you didn't generate any profit for our organization. This is what we had to pay you. Here's the expenses associated to you. And based on what you brought in, you as a salesperson actually cost us money to work here. That would be a miss. So what that did was create transparent, open and honest conversations with our sales reps to say what's you, you can't hide from this right now. That again, that doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. You could have just had a bad month. All the accounts that could have, could have been small, you could have five huge deals in the pipeline that just for whatever reason got pushed to the next month. All those things are perfectly reasonable reasons for not hitting your numbers. But we need to have a regular and transparent conversation around your actual performance, its impact on our organization, and the reasons why you did well, or the reasons why you're struggling One of the.

Dots that I connected early on was that true. A players want an adult workplace. They do not want to be micromanaged. If they have to go pick up their kid, I mean, they're going to work themselves to death to meet the goals and objectives or exceed the objectives of the organization because not because they, they, they, it's not because they care or don't care about what's in it for the company. But like, that's just who they are. Like, they just, they just have this, this invisible hand that's pushing them to say, what can I do better? What's next? How do I, you know, they, they always want to figure out the mousetrap. They want to hit their numbers. But then like, don't treat those people like children and say, well, you can't clock out until 4 o'. Clock. Give them the flexibility to go pick up their kids. Give them the. Talk to people like we teach people how to treat us if I want, if you want people to be accountable and to do the right thing when nobody's looking and to manage themselves so that you don't have to create all these silly systems around managing people. Bring great ideas to the company, have freedom of thought, be able to offer ideas without the fear of, you know, reprisal or repercussions, maybe even take a little chance. And if it doesn't work out, they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna get their hand slapped too hard because they were trying to do something within the guidelines of what's allowed to make a great play. Because great players make big plays and big games. And man, if you want great players, then you got to give them the chance to make great plays. I love that kind of work environment. When you're running the call center, look, there's hours that need to be hit, there's calls that, there's metrics that need to be handled and things like that. But for most, most places you can, you can create the feeling or the framework to have some freedom within it and to, and, and the really good people that I think you, we want to work with every day are going to be more attracted to that. Because if you can't compete, you can't pay people twice what the market is. You can't, you know, your benefits can be as good as the benefits can be. So like, where can you really compete for the A players? And I think it's in the culture and it's in the norms of the workplace.

Yeah. Nick Saban has a quote. Extraordinary performers dislike Working with average performers. And average performers dislike working with extraordinary performers. So it is. If you're looking at your team and you're like, geez, I got three, three great great performers. And then I got this one that's. You have to call the herd. Unfortunately, in reality, right? Underperformance means you don't get to work here. It just doesn't not right, you know, I mean, for you, this just means it's not a great opportunity for you, right? If you're not hitting your numbers and you're making the money that you should be making, then this might not be the right place for you. Additionally, the impact on the other individuals in our organization when they have to tolerate someone who is not putting in the work, who's not coming up with ideas. You know, we all know those individuals who show up at meetings and they have all the problems and none of the solutions, right? And everyone looks at them and it's like, great, you're awesome at seeing all the things that we all already see, but how would you solve them? And they have no answer to that. Right? Those kind of conversations just drag a team down. And so in my, in my, I have an entrepreneur mastermind. And whenever employee related issues come up, the very first question is an exercise that I think everyone should do if they're a leader of an organization. Just simply ask yourself, would you want to work for your company? Like honestly, would you want to work there? If you're, if you're the leader, that's saying, you know, you don't get to punch out till 4 and they're done at 350 and that extra 10 minutes would mean the world to them because they can stop at the store real quick and pick up milk and eggs before they go home, but you're going to make them stay till 4. Is that a place you want to work? Like, is it. Are you really like a driven, ambitious, like, well, they can make one more call, man, I guess maybe, but like really could they? And is it more important that they make one more call or they have that peace of mind to know that they're going to be able to get the life things done that they need to do before they get home, right? Because if they've gotten all their work done, they've made their calls and they're hitting their numbers and they're doing a good job and by all metrics, they're a quality player on your team. What do those 10 minutes mean to you? Honestly, as the leader, do you actually care that they're there? For 10 more minutes? Or do you think that that's just what leaders do, is hold people to the thing? It's like, no, you know what a players do? A players kick ass and then they get back to their life because their life is what's important. They're kicking ass so that they can live a life that they want to live. And if you're denying that to them because of some arbitrary time rule, then that's a cultural problem that you're creating. And they might not be voicing it to you, but I promise you, they're having that conversation on the side. So really do an examination of your culture, of your code of conduct, of your communication, right? Like, would you want to work for your company? And, and that could go as far as how good are you at telling the story? And are you repeating the story? Are you repeating the mission? Are you repeating the vision over and over and over to them? Because that gets people jacked up. I want to work places where I feel like amazing new is getting done, that we're going to win awards and I can someday say I was part of that company that did that thing. That's where the, that's where a players want to be. And if you're not telling that story, if you're holding them to these arbitrary rules, if, if, if you're not living the life that you expect them to live, right? If you're checking out at 3:30, but you're like, you got to stay till 4, that's not being a leader. That's not being a leader does not mean you get all the benefit and these other people pick up the slack for you. Being a leader is you tell them they can leave at 350 and you're there till 5. Because as leaders, our job is to support the excellence of the people that work in our organization. It is not about us. And if that business is about us, that is not a place anybody wants to work. And that's why you're having cultural issues.

Yeah, I like that. Our job as leaders is to support the excellence of the people that are working there. I was walking through the o' Hare airport a couple of weeks ago and this guy had this T shirt on and it said like some comment of indifference, right? Like it doesn't matter what it was. I can't remember what the quote was, but it was like a quote, like a philosopher quote. And then underneath it had a dash and it said mediocrity. And so now I want to do a series of T shirts, right, that says hey, that's not my job. Mediocrities, like all the things that mediocre employees do. I want to create a, a group of T shirts. HR said, no, I can't put these on people. I can't put them on people because. Oh, here, I got this is. Can you wear this Friday after somebody's, you know, clearly, you know, phones it in on something and then they have to wear a T shirt. I don't think that'll work. Yeah, but, but, you know, if anybody out there wants to run with it, go with it.

I think you like this, dude. We had, we had a rule at, at Rogue Risk that and we, we shared this up front with every person we hired. If you ever say, I have a case of the Mondays, thank. You know, thank God it's Friday hump day, you are going to be fired. Because. And the reason was not. The reason was because if, if you, if you like, had a case of the Mondays, that means you didn't want to be there. If thank God it's Friday and you're just living for the weekend, that means you didn't want to be there. And maybe that's, that's something we need to self reflect on as a company. But it means you're not a good fit. And I'm not saying we'd fire you immediately, but it was like culturally insider organization. It's like, no, if something's going on that you show up to work on Monday and you hate the idea of working here, we need to have a conversation because no one should ever feel like they have a case of the Mondays or, you know, TGIF or whatever. Like, that means you don't really want to be here and you don't enjoy what you're doing, which means you're culturally not a great fit for us. Also to your T shirt story. I created these T shirts just for myself. In big bold letters right across the front, it said the word discipline, and then underneath it said, your motivation or your mediocrity. Right. Was what it said underneath it. And I would wear them mostly as a reminder to myself. Right. There's just a white T shirt that I made on like one of the T shirt shops. And I would wear them as, as a reminder to myself and I. And my son, who's 10, he wanted one. And I was like, I'll be something wrong with me. I didn't think twice about it. I was like, awesome. He wants to discipline, whatever, right? So I get him one of the T shirts and he's just wearing around the house and salt and whatever. And then he wore it out of the house one day. It was like. Everyone was like, that's completely inappropriate. And I was like, ah, I'm bad dadding right now. That's probably bad dadding. But. But I love that he had like, that. He, like, completely. He saw that and he was like, yeah, no, I don't. I don't want to be mediocre. He's like, let's go. But I probably missed as a dad there.

Yeah. How did it go with social services?

Exactly. Exactly.

Awesome. Well, look, this has been kind of a white hot start to this conversation, and, man, I don't want to go out of here without talking about content. Yeah. Because content's a strength for you. So for like, look, you're a speaker. You've been speaking for 15 years. I've watched some of your stuff. It's great. Very accomplished speaker. You know, you were an inch. You were working that insurance job. You were sitting in a cubicle. I think you were in New York possibly. And all of a sudden you're just, you know, you're up against it and you're like, man, I got to do something. I got to differentiate. So you started, I think, blogging at the time and creating content. So, I mean, your whole book, Content Warfare 2015 book, fundamentally still relevant. You know, we've launched this podcast a little bit over a year ago. We've had great success with it. But, man, our conversations about what makes quality content. You have a concept in your book about crap free content, and I read that and I'm like, crap, free content? Like, yeah, that's what we've been talking about here for six months. Like, that's. That was an AI generated clip. It makes us look bad. It doesn't even make sense. It's sitting there like a turd in the punch bowl on our YouTube channel. Nobody's looking at it, but it just creates this. This confusion about, like, is this even. If I'm looking. Is this even somewhere I need to be? Do these people have anything to say? Or they just throwing crap up against the wall there? So talk to me. Let's talk in broad terms about content. If I'm. If I'm somebody and I'm. It doesn't matter. I work for somebody. I'm. I'm an individual contributor. I'm an agent or I have a small business, like, and they're not doing content now, what is your advice or experience to share with them how they.

Can start in 2024 if you're not creating content, people aren't going to know who you are and they're not going to do business with you. We, we, there's so much content out there from so many different companies that how we all start our journey with a product or a service is we go to their website or their social media, right? We check them out. Is this someone who thinks like me? Is this someone who relates to who I am? Is this product fit my lifestyle? Do their value structures? Do their, do their disciplines? Do their ideas, their standards? Is it who I am? Right. We purchase products as a way to showcase who we are, that that's what we do. So that goes for boring, horrible services that everyone hates like insurance all the way down to coffee companies and T shirt companies. Right? It's across the board. It doesn't matter what the product is. I want to do business just like a hundred years ago, just like 400 years ago when the insurance industry started. I want to do business with someone who relates to me and if I share with someone else why I do business with them, I feel confident that my value structure is mirrored in what they do. And so coming back to the idea of, of not creating crap content, crap content is what you described. I feel like I have to get something out today. So I'm just going to, you know, and I've tested all this stuff so you guys know, if you look back through my history in any social media channel, you'll see stuff that I think is really good. You'll see stuff that's terrible because I'm constantly testing what is what relates to people and in the construct of what I believe always. But, but what relates to people, what do they grab onto and how do I, how do I tell a story to the people I want to do business with that that engages them and draws them into me. Because the reason for creating content is it's a filtering mechanism. And this is something that I tried to push through. Content warfare over and over again is that when, when we create content, what we're doing is filtering the, the entire pool of potential customers that we could have to the customers who we actually want to do business with. Right. I tend to be a more, I mean, I guess I'd be a moderate politically for most of my life. Today I'm probably a right wing crazy per the current ecosystem. But you know, I tend to be a more conservative, call it traditional value, original American Constitution and declaration ideals type of person. Right. Like that tends to be where I come from. I don't want people to do business with me whose value structure is different, not because I don't like them or that I think their value structure is wrong, but simply because they're not going to enjoy the way I do business, the way I talk, how I operate. They're not going to enjoy that. I'm not going to enjoy having them as a customer because there's going to be constant friction. Right. The problem for so many companies, especially those who are not creating content today, is, is they still believe everyone is their customer. Everyone is not your customer. Right. You have a specific type of person. And, and what I really believe today is we've moved, we should be moving beyond demographics and thinking about mindset. What is the mindset of the customer that you want? Right. So how we differentiated ourselves in the insurance industry was that we didn't, we didn't market on demographics, we didn't market on type of business or size of business or, or, you know, what geographical region they were in. We wanted a, we wanted a certain mindset of customer. And by marketing to that mindset, people were already sold when they came to us. This is the core idea. And I, and I talk about this in content warfare, this idea of being already sold. Right. The reason we are able to grow so fast and to the point where we were acquired within two years of founding the business was that customers who filled out a form or texted us or called us were already sold when they did. So they weren't, they weren't calling to go, you know, who are you? What are you about? They already knew all that. We were just fulfilling an order. All they were doing was validating. Does what I'm hearing on the phone match what I got online? Yes, done. I want to purchase, you know, in my case, you know, workers comp. Or professional liability or general liability, whatever. That was the product we sold, right? So I don't want to have to convince people to do business with me. That's, that's a waste of time. If you're looking to scale your business, convincing people to do business with you is how you destroy scalability. Because now you're spending exponential amount of time. You know, here's our product features and here's the benefits. All that shit should be online told through a series of stories and case studies and examples. And, you know, you can use quotes, you can use vignettes from, from the office and off collar or off the cuff moments and, you know, little ditties from the CEO or the CFO or the head of sales or, or your receptionist or whatever, right? You can use all these different formats to allow a customer to know exactly who you are, what you sell and what they're going to get. So then when they call you, all they're doing is validating that and you're just taking an order. Now I know here's where people get, here's where people push back on me about this usually is they go, well you know, it's, it's, it's an ego thing. They're like, well you know, I, we have this 10 step sales process and we're not order takers. Why don't you want to be an order taker? I don't, I don't understand that from an ego perspective. I, if I want, if my goal is to grow the business, why do I want to have to sell somebody? You know how much easier it is to have someone already be sold and just go hey man, I really want to buy workers comp from you or I really want ten a hundred T shirt order or I'd like to purchase a home. You know, I want you to be my, my, my real estate agent or whatever it is that you do. That is, that conversation is so much different because now I can dig into what you're really trying to achieve versus trying to sell you and convince you on who I conversation is how you cross sell more, you get more value per customer, right? So when we're thinking about, right, so someone may come in with workers comp. But if I'm not having, again, I'm speaking through my insurance example again guys, I apologize. I know that is not relevant to everyone, but if someone's coming in for a particular product that's their need, we solve that need for them. And yes, we're taking an order from them in that scenario. But because we're able to have a deeper conversation up front, I now have, you know, a number of different ways in which I can pull them deeper into my business and pull out more value per customer. So our revenue per customer was incredibly high because Instead of selling 1, 2 or the industry average of 3 policies per customer, we were selling 4, 5, 6. Because we weren't spending all our time convincing them to do business with us. That trust had already been built. We were going deeper into what their actually needs were and able to solve those needs and be a true value provider.

There is so much inside of that and I agree with all of it. I've, I've been working with a couple marketing masterminds lately and there's this concept of building a vending machine right so, you know, there. There is a way to go into a certain customer set and to make invisible customers visible, meaning, you know, whatever the product is, you know, you can. You can figure out what they'd be thinking about before they go to buy the product. And, you know, these are not customers. Like when you. When you place an online ad, it's like a slot machine. You're pulling it and you're hoping that the ad you placed, somebody has the need today. And then they see the ad and they say, oh, I need that today. And they react to it. So that's a slot machine. So you might be. It might be 100 or maybe in your business, $500 a lead or whatever it is, because you're throwing these ads out there and you're hoping that somebody just lands on it. In the vending machine model, you're giving people a piece of content that says, you know, I'm not. I don't need to buy today, but I know that I'm going to buy. Let's say I'm going to. I know that I'm going to be putting in a pool this fall, so I know that I need a fence to go around that pool. We have a fence franchise. So we might have a download of a catalog that says, this is the fence and gate catalog. And you download it today. You're not ready today, but they're going to be educating about it, you know, very cheap lead. Now, we put that into a big vending machine, and we know that every month that, you know, some certain number of those people are going to fall from the little squirrely thing in the vending machine and fall down in there, and they're going to be ready, connect. But once we know who they are and we've identified them, to your point, as a subset of now they get to consume the content. So we are, the way we do use the word convincing, like our content, our podcast, these things are not for compelling people to buy. But once we know who they are, we can convince them that we are like them and they want to do business with us. And that's the content strategy, whether it's the podcast or whether it's, you know, the drip ads that we have or the drip content that we send to them. And, and you're right, everybody's not your customer. So in our vending machine model, you know, it's like, okay, well, we're gonna. I. Out of the hundred thousand people in this town, you know, we're gonna identify the. The. The hundred couples that have gotten engaged this year that are going to be looking for a wedding venue they're not willing to buy today. They know they have to pick a date and all that. But we're. We can put a piece of content in front of them that says they're going to raise their hand, they're going to jump into our vending machine, and now it's up to us to be able to convince them that we are the type of people they want to do business with.

Well, I think from a content perspective, that's where you're doing the convincing. So you're right on it. Right. I. What I wanted to try to remove. I don't want my sales rep convincing. I want my content convincing.

That's right.

So how we did that. Our primary method for attracting business to rogue risk was through YouTube. So if anyone wants to see the work in Progress, go to YouTube and look up the insurance channel. Right. I've. I don't manage the channel anymore since I sold the company. However, you'll find over 400 videos answering very basic questions about business insurance. What is workers comp. How does general liability work for a bakery? What's the best professional liability for an accountant, et cetera? Very basic questions. They're templated, you know, and the template was super easy. And this allowed us to do, you know, I would wake up in the morning, I. On a Monday, I'd record, you know, in the first two hours of the day, eight to 10 videos, then send them off to an editor. They'd all be pushed out and scheduled. And what that did was it gave people the opportunity to learn everything they needed to know while also getting a feel for us as a company before they contacted us. Right. So now they, you know, we're not having a conversation about what workers comp is. They already know what it is. They watch the video. Right. And so we got a lot of people. Workers comp was one of our specialties. That's why I keep bringing it up. And that what that allowed us, again, what that allowed them to do is they were convinced that they. That this was a product they needed, that we were the company they wanted to work with before they contacted us. That's. That's what we're trying to do and what you just described. And I love the vending machine model. You know, I think there's so many different ways in my content brain starts to spin up when you talk about what you're doing. You know, you can do things like write a series of white papers that write. Write a series of White papers that describe. You're using the fencing example, right? Like this type of fence or when this type of fence is appropriate. Or here's three common mistakes with a fiberglass fence or fiberglass fences versus. Versus wood fences, whatever, right? So you have a series of white papers or series of videos that then drop you into a drip campaign that tells you the founder story. You know, here's, here's three of our most successful case studies. Here's a client testimonial, right? And then these are dripped out over a period, you know, knowing whatever your buying cycle is, say for fence, it might be 90 days, 120 days, maybe six months. I don't know, I've never been in the fence business. But whatever your buying cycle is, time, time that, that drip campaign out over that period of time. Because, you know, if, if the average person looking to purchase a fence purchases, you know, starts researching six months before, well capture them and set up a campaign that now they're getting these emails and they're just keep going, geez, you know, this, this fence company, how can you choose anyone else, right? Like if you've, if you've read a white paper from them that, that explains and gives you a solution to the problem. You've, you've now been, you've now heard the founder story, you've seen three successful case study examples, you've heard a client testimonial video from people who've been successful, and you've sent out pricing guides and maybe if they make it to the end of the drip campaign, you're like, hey, you've watched four of the six videos that we sent out over this drip campaign. Here's a 10% discount. Because we know if you've made it this far, you're the type of customer that we love to work with. How could they possibly choose to work with anyone else? You've given them everything that no one else gives them. You.

That's right.

You've. I've literally made. You've taken all the potential objections they could have for working with you, and you've taken them right off the table. They don't have another option. And from like a behavioral psychology standpoint, that person is so invested in you now, they literally can't even contemplate another option.

There are some buying decisions that I personally make, and when I'm making them, I think, man, I hope I can get these people out or I hope I can get these people to do business with me. Ferrari is an extreme example, right, where like, you can't you're not allowed to modify the car or they'll come and take it back from you. Like, like I can, like, you know, you get in line for your Ferrari and it might be years to get it. And if you get it and if you screw with it, we'll actually show up at your driveway and we'll take it. And it's in the contract. So it's like the exclusive. Nate, you're hoping you can get the Ferrari, but there's other things too. Like I'm hoping I can get this tree company out here because I know that they're the best and I know that they're going to whatever it is. So, yeah, a hundred percent there.

Jeff, can I give you one more example for maybe the individuals who are out there going, you know, I just, I'm not good in front of camera or I don't like inbound marketing or I don't like creating content. There is another way to do this if you're more of that outbound person. And I, I found it to be. And statistically for our business, it was a much more effective way of, than doing, of doing cold calling. We used cold video email. So what we would do. So say you're not a content creator. Here's another way that you can start to get people to be already sold if you're uncomfortable or you need a step before you get there. What we would do is we would pull up a company that we wanted to work with website and we would use loom. So, you know, on screen would be their website and my face or the producer's face, the producers, what we call salesperson insurance industry would face would be in the bottom left hand corner in a little circle. And I would. And we would just do, you know, so we're on their, their homepage, say they're a landscaping company, right? And I'd pull it up and I'd say, Jeff, my name's Ryan. I'm a specialist in the landscape industry. I have your website up and I was looking through it. I see that you have a couple trucks. I see that you work in the greater Albany area. And there's a couple things on here that I just want to make sure in your insurance program you have covered and bup, bup, bup. Here's what those things are. If those haven't been addressed, I would love to have a conversation with you. You do not have to work with me 10, 15 minutes. I'll be able to explain how you can fix this in your current insurance program. If you're up for a call, let me know. Right? Bam. Now you one. If someone sees the cool thing about Loom is, and I know I'm being hyper tactical, but I like to give people the out if they're not super into or uncomfortable with inbound. If you Loom puts a little thumbnail of the video in your email. So if you open an email and there's a video thumbnail with your website on it, you can't not click it. I mean you cannot click. I don't know if you've ever received these. I do. You know, I. You can't not click. You're like this person was on my website. They obviously took a little time to personalize this to me, right. And if you can keep it relatively short and bang on good points, that person's gonna watch it. And even if they don't choose to do business with you in that moment, you're, you're in their brain. You did something for them that no one's ever done. You're providing value and giving them an out to say, you don't have to work with me 10, 15 minutes, I can explain to you how to fix this on your current program, whether you work with me or not. Right. And then, and now you're getting, you're, you're, you're starting to break those barriers down. You're starting to get past those objections up front specialized and personalized to that particular individual. So that's another way to use, to use content without having to engage in a full blown kind of content or inbound marketing campaign.

No, that's brilliant. We just have an I do an owners only for 90 minutes every second Tuesday of the month in the evening where we get all of our franchise owners agnostic to brand and we actually demonstrated how to use loom to create SOPs for specific things in their business and then to be able to outsource those things to like a VA or you know, somebody else and basically to help them delegate things. First time business owners and rent and Loom's a great tool for it. I want to talk about this concept of building, building your content on your land or on rented land, right. So you go to these platform arms, man. I've got a friend who's got, had a developed over a year like a massive Instagram following. Pretty aggressive guy, very assertive and I guess he must have crossed some line somewhere and his account got, is gone. Like it's, it was, it was emptied out one day and the next day you can't even find It, So there's, and there was a lot of value in that. I mean, he was 6 to 10 million accounts. He was touching a month. He was really going well. But you know, somebody taketh away. Right? So email lists are yours. I've heard many people say the most valuable thing that I have from my podcast or from My newsletter on LinkedIn is my email list. How do you think about building on other people's land like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube versus things that you can build on your land that will be yours forever?

Yeah, this is a really hard one because I do not think today, if you're doing content and looking to do inbound, get inbound opportunities that you can avoid being on other people's property. And there are inherent risks to that, which is kind of just the nature of life. There's always risk to everything that we do.

Sure.

That being said, pulling people to an email list that you control. Now again, here's the other thing too. Like during some of the, the, the nonsense with the Zombie Apocalypse of 2020, there were people on certain platform, certain email platforms that had problems. Right. So nothing, nothing is owned. Nothing. Your website, you don't. We don't own our website. Google can, Google can just downrank you and no one could ever find you. Right. There are all kinds of ways that, that, that, that can be taken away from us. However, I think two things in particular. If you can get people to a Text list or WhatsApp list, put people on a text app or a WhatsApp list, or get them to email and then just make sure you're periodically exporting that email and just have that in case something does happen. Now you own those contacts. Those are much more personalized communication methods. Right. Instagram is amazing, but it's broadcast. I know there's DMs, but it's still broadcast. It's still owned by Meta. Same thing with, with all the other. I mean, think about how many people who've built incredible YouTube channels have had those channels either downranked or just completely taken away from them or locked. I think we have to be careful and we have to understand the risks in what we're saying, what we're doing. We have to. And that. I hate that because I'm a huge free speech proponent. I do not like that this is part of our society today, how we just have to be smart. So the reason that I said, hey, write some white papers, get people into an email drip campaign is if your text message inbox and your email inbox in that Order are the two most effective ways of getting any single individual to take a single action. There's no better way to get someone to take a single action. You can advertise, you can post on any social media platform a thousand times. Doesn't matter. The most effective way of getting any individual to take a specific action is through either text message or email. And everything we do should be driving people to those platforms and then giving them real value in those places. So that when you want, when you launch a new product or you launch a new course, or you have an exciting piece of content that's going viral that you want your entire audience to engage with, you have the ability to reach out to them and say, here's what I want you to do right now. And if they're active and engaged in those things, they will take that action with a very high click through rate.

Ryan, this is awesome. Who are your clients that you work with today? I'm not exactly sure you know how you're time slicing with all the things that you've got going on because you're building companies, you're selling them, you're doing your speaking, you're obviously writing books like who are people that work with you today and what do you do for them?

So I work with entrepreneurs between launch and escape velocity. So where I come into the equation and where I add value to entrepreneurs in particular or business owners, owners and entrepreneurs is when they are stuck or stagnated in growth, they've got the business off the ground. They're through that first season of just absolutely killing themselves and they want to get to the point where they can now start scaling. Where I help them get from stuck to scaling. I have a mastermind called F3. You can go to ryanhanley.com F3 if you want to apply. It's, it is a community of individuals who are trying to solve the problems that get them to scale. And I take, you know, the 20 years of experience that I have from everything, you know, it's funny, you know, you know, dude, I, I got criticized one time by criticized. I got a piece of feedback from someone one time. You know, if I look into your history, you know, on your YouTube channel, I see these crappy videos that you did 15 years ago and I'm like, yeah, yeah. Because so many people sculpt their image to be the best version of themselves right now. Right? Like if I wanted to, I could put this founder with an exit, you know, international keynote speaker best I could put this face on which, which I do have Those things in my, in my. I do have those feathers in my cap. However, I've also been fired. I've also been a boots on the ground producer who was absolutely freaking terrible at hand to hand combat selling. Right. Like, I've had those experiences too. And what I try to bring to the entrepreneurs that I work with is reality, right? This, this shit is hard and you're gonna mess up and you're gonna fail, and you can go into my history and you can see, see it, you can see all the places that I messed up and. But out of that also came my biggest successes. So by taking that approach, I think I would like to believe what it does is create an environment for people to be open and honest and transparent about the things that are holding them back. And regardless if you ever work with me or not, find groups, find creators like you, Jeff, who are telling the real stories that got them to where they are. Not the fancy, you know, dressed up Instagram story that's got the flash and the moving letters that makes it look like your Maserati just happened in the last. You know, that some action you took six months ago because you're so brilliant is how you got your Maserati or whatever you're driving, right? Like, I want to, I want find places with real people who are able to say, you know what? I, I got this great idea for a business and we got it off the ground, but I suck at selling and I have no idea how to close people. Right. Like, I've just lucked into the victories we've had so far, but I know this product is good. Okay? We can solve that problem. I have this incredible story to tell. I have no idea how to tell it, and I know we're not getting enough business. Okay, let's figure out how to tell that, because in those environments are where we really grow. So I try to cultivate that in mind. But whether you ever reach out to me or not, I highly recommend find creators and find groups of people that you can surround yourself with where you can feel safe and comfortable in being 100% honest about your failings. Because that's how we figure out how to solve those problems.

As you look across the platforms for content today, which ones do you believe are dead, dying, or difficult to work with? And then where are the opportunities of the future? You know, what's where? Where's some easier ground to gain on some new platforms? Do you have any sense of that?

I think it's incredibly difficult to grow today on Instagram unless you're going to be polarizing.

So right.

Take that into account. Tick tock. You have to be silly and play to the platform. Again, not a problem, it's just a reality. I think for most business owners, entrepreneurs driven executives, people who are trying to grow in their career. I think LinkedIn is an incredible opportunity. But you have to play to what LinkedIn wants. The hard part about LinkedIn is that right now they are looking for very specific forms of content and they will absolutely down throttle and kill the forms that don't work. So what that looks like is if you post vertical video and I've tested the hell out of this, you can go back and look at my feedback. It doesn't do well. However, long form text only posts that tell a story, that share an experience, a case study, maybe a business teardown that's in your industry work incredibly well. I think YouTube is still huge opportunity. It takes a ton of work to build a YouTube audience. But people who follow you and consistently engage with your content on YouTube are going to be with you for a long time. I think podcasting is a great place to be. Although I think broad form podcasts are very difficult. Niching down solving a specific problem or serializing a podcast. And by serializing I mean just eight create a show that's eight episodes that takes someone through a journey to solve a single problem and just end it right there. Right? You can do another one. There's no reason you can't have 10 podcasts. They could all just be six serialized versions of, of some problem that you solve associated with your business and then you can just share that, that playlist with somebody. Right. So there's all these different ways that we can engage, but I think it starts with understanding who you're trying to reach and what form of content you're good at and then matching that to the platform. The worst thing you can do today is try to be amazing on every single platform. It absolutely will not work.

You said vertical video doesn't work on LinkedIn. What do you mean by that?

So if you. I see a lot of people repurposing YouTube shorts, reels, TikToks into LinkedIn.

Got it.

Does not work. It just LinkedIn will absolutely down throttle that content. You might see an exception here or there, but for the vast majority of people that's not going to work there. They I will say standard landscape format video that is maybe specific to an issue related to something that is appropriate for LinkedIn that can work. But what is working best today? You can see it from the biggest creators on the platform is long form text based content that tells a story, case study, example, teardown, etc.

Yeah, that's what we're doing. And then we've also launched a newsletter on there and we've got a lot of text in the front of it, a lot of thought type leadership and then we are embedding certain videos into that into to try to pull people out and back to it. And then YouTube, man, I'll tell you, it's my son who's an engineering student at Virginia Tech. Like he's, he grew up on YouTube, he's a YouTube native, he's, he's not watched anything more than YouTube. The analytics available on that, they will tell you what you need to do. You can't game it, you can't cheat it, you put up bad content it, they're not going to like it, they're going to penalize you for it. So you just, you, you actually just have to do the work and create good stuff. And it's a very honest platform. I've found that to be where if you create good stuff that people want to watch, like share, comment on and it's valuable, then like sky's the limit. But if you try to, you know, like you said, bing bang boom, here's some shiny stuff get to like, it's just, it doesn't do well there. You can't, you can't game that.

Yeah, we've reached a point in, we'll call it social media content. The consumers are becoming more sophisticated. The, the tricks and hacks and algorithm gimmick stuff. You might get a bump for a minute. It doesn't work long form or long term.

Well, bots giveth and bots taketh away.

Yeah, it's you, you nailed it, man. It's what does your audience want and can you deliver it to them? And all the flash, I mean there's tons of examples on YouTube of individuals who have almost no flash and pizzazz and moving letters and motion gr. But they solve a very specific problem for a very specific audience. And people come and watch their content and it's dialing in on value and spending relatively no time on algorithm hacks and stuff like that. Obviously we have to know like we Talked about with LinkedIn, the format in which that platform wants to consume content. But once you know what that is, just add value and just look at your analytics, watch what happens, talk to your audience, ask for feedback, ask for comments. These are things that, you know, ask for people to subscribe. Here's a here's a novel idea. Ask for people to buy your product. If you go, we go back, you talk about the channel that I created for my insurance business, which I've actually done twice by the way. Back in 2012, I did this for the first time and then I did it again. So this works 100%. I've twice had YouTube channels about insurance doing near 500, 000 views a year about insurance. So just to be clear for everybody what the scale can be, if you go to those videos, you will see that at the end of every video I say the same exact thing. If this is the type of relationship that you would like to have with your insurance professional, we would love to work with you. There's a link or a button somewhere around this video that you can use to contact us. You can call us at insert number, you can email us here. Whichever way you choose, we look forward to working with you because we so often when I see especially small businesses or new businesses when they create content, they forget to tell people what they want them to do. Right. You just watch this seven minute video about workers compensation insurance and I'm not going to tell you that at the end. What I really want is for you to work with me. Like ask for what you want. If you want feedback, ask for it. If you want comments and thoughts on a topic, ask for it. If you want someone to click the link in the description to purchase the product that you discussed, ask for that. And if you do, you will start to see transactions happening.

Yeah. Your introduction to this type of strategy was when you went to your boss and you said, hey, we need to build a blog or we need to build some content strategies. They're like, like, no, Ryan, we just need work. We just need sales. Go back to your, just give me sales. I don't want to hear about all that stuff. So you took that as an opportunity to go create your own personal channels and start investing in these types of strategies to get more sales back to you.

Yeah.

How would you advise somebody who's sitting inside of a company right now to. And, and they're like, okay, I'm good, I'm, I'm making ends meet. I'm, you know, upper middle of my sales team. I'm in this company. How would you advise people, things that they could do to get started to get unstuck and maybe it could do something. Like you could pull them out of that company and you could have a great season of life like you're having with your, with all the businesses that you've created.

So if you want to create for your own personal brand, associated or inside of a larger company, have that conversation with leadership, with whoever your boss is or leadership in general. It can cause a lot of friction if you just go off and go rogue and start doing this yourself. And the way that you have this conversation is I see an opportunity in the market to attack this certain type of person or business and I think I have a unique voice and expertise to do so. And I would like to start creating content online. What I propose is that I do that in conjunction with this business where I brand all the videos that I work for you. I'll put the logo in every single one. I'll make sure there's a link back to the company in every single description. But I want to do it on my own personal channels so that I can grow it and have the flexibility to test different things, etc. Make it about them, right? So when you approach leadership, make it all about how this is going to help promote the business, how this is going to expand the brand. You know, be willing to work with the marketing team. And it. There may be some inflexibility, there may be some, some guidelines that you have to, to, to work in, but especially in the early days, play, play by the rules. Then once you start to have success now, you can start to come back to them and go, hey, I really want to X. Or I'd like to do a live event or I'd like to create an Instagram channel specific to the work that I'm doing so I can add value to these type of people and build an audience and draw them out as clients. Right. Like, but start small, start all about the company. Because if you just go in, you know, we need to start creating content. And my personal brand's not out there, but they, they will bucket that. It will create friction and it won't work. So play the slow game. Get your foot in the door. You know, get that first. Yes. On being able to create content for yourself, okay. If they are completely and utterly against that, you are unhappy in your job and you feel like you can make more going out on your own. That's a decision you have to make. But understand that you then are operating without a safety net. And this I'm just going to start my own thing is wonderful and I love that idea and I love the energy behind it, but we have to be smart about that decision.

Well, it's very difficult to make money for the sake of making money, just creating content. It's gotten very difficult to monetize ads, sponsorships. Okay. But like the, the best use of content is when you already have a product that you are trying to sell. So you really got to have something that you're promoting because you're just not going to, you're just not going to make a lot of money on these channels just because you're getting a bunch of views. It just doesn't happen like that anymore from what I understand. Maybe it does in certain things, people going wildly viral, but ultimately there's got to be some way to monetize this and doing it, if you're going to do it authentically, then it's got to be something what you do every day. Like what, who, who are your customers? What problems do you solve? What do you, what are you the best in the world at? That's what you need to focus on. So if you're going to leave your company, you better find another one that can provide these services if you can't provide them yourself. 100 yeah. Awesome. Ryan, this has been so great. I know that we're a little bit over time right now but man this has been so valuable. We jumped right in. I did want to talk about you as a young child collecting recycled cans and all that but you know, we'll leave that to another time because this thing has just been chock full of value for all the listeners. I, I, I would think that we're gonna have a great view duration on this and so super excited and thank, thank you for being on. How can people get in touch with you?

Yeah, so you can go to my website Ryan hanley.com I'm on all the social medias which you can go to most active probably on Instagram in terms of just kind of daily use but LinkedIn you can check me out on YouTube and I have podcast as well the Ryan Hanley show. So you know I'm all over the place. But probably best place to start is Ryan hanley.com.

Awesome. Fantastic. Last question. Ryan, if you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

Screw it, let's do it.

All right, Perfect. Can't improve on that. All right. Mediocrities would, would not agree but you know that is fine. Awesome Ryan, thanks for being on.

My pleasure.

I am Jeff Duden. This has been Ryan Hanley and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.