Ryan Shank confirms the vlog is staying, explains a holiday pause, and shares how he landed a Florida client through genuine conversation instead of sales pitch. His editor Kane started his own company, and Ryan is focused on rebuilding a consistent content habit.
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We're back, baby! I know we haven't made a video in a really long time, and I just got a question on our live chat, and they said, Ryan, are the vlogs dead? Look, by the way, anytime you get a call from a number that looks like your phone number, it's always, always, always a spam call. No, this is Patrick! Because they do this thing, it's called localization, where it's like it calls you and not only uses your area code, which is 4— mine's 410, but my phone number starts with 726, and it makes it look like it's a local call her, it's always a junk call. But anyway, got a question today on live chat. They're like, Ryan, uh, did your investors make you like, uh, stop the vlog? And the answer is no, we're continuing to do the vlog. The vlog is going to live on. The show goes on! We're in a transition period right now. Basically, the month of December is weird, and from Thanksgiving to New Year's is kind of weird anyway. But basically what we're doing is we're focusing really, really hard right now on like recruiting. My man Kane, who is editing this video and chopping it up, he is back in Arizona for the time being. He started his own company. That's what happens when you join PhoneWagon. Learn a lot, then can take those learnings and then you can apply them in your own life. So not only, you know, are you gonna get exposed to it here, you're gonna learn how to do it, and then boom, you blossom. So now we are his client. He was working for us, now he is— we're his client. And that's happening in something else where one of our other clients, Owen, who's managing our AdWords right there. That's Owen. He's cool. That's the update on what's happening. By the way, today we have a few interns starting. Nick from this summer, I was telling him how I used to go to lacrosse camp, and his friend from University of Delaware are working for us this winter. And right now I have them shipping 25 shirts out to people. I did like an Instagram story and I said, yo, does anyone want a shirt? And then like a bunch of people slid in the DMs. So we're shipping shirts right now, which is like a great first thing for someone to do on their first day, right? Uh, ship a bunch of shirts in the wintertime in December in New York City. I was like— and he just texted me, he's like, man, the post office is packed. I was like, uh, yeah. Anyway, Anyway, the other thing that I want to talk about is I went to dinner this past weekend in Florida with a potential customer. So we've been working this lead for a really long time. He's kind of with two of our competitors and he's like not budging, not budging. And I was like, look, let me just take you out to dinner. So we went out to dinner in Wellington, Florida at this restaurant, Ollie's. Ollie's will pop— Ollie's are up right there. Boom, that's Ollie's. But anyway, we just like talk shop. I wasn't trying to sell him at all because I was just trying to figure out like what his requirements were, like why he's using these other guys, what he likes about these other guys and things like that. Thing is, once you get really like natural with someone and you're just like being like super organic and you're just talking to them and you're not like coming across with this like agenda, then what's going to happen is then they see that you're like being real and authentic and then they want to get involved. You know, I can give you feedback or, you know, eventually I can come on board once you have like X, Y, and Z features. He has a couple feature requirements or integration requirements that we don't have. So those are the things that we are going to do to be able to win his business over the long term. And I told him, I was like, look, we're in this for the long run. This is a 10-year play for me. Like, I don't care if we work with you today or in like 6 months or in 1 year. Like, I just want to work together eventually and I want to pull you off of those competitors. Creditors. So we're just being like super real with people and authentic. Like, look, we want to build the best system possible. Like, tell me what you like about these other systems. Like, tell me how I can win your business. And like, usually people will tell you. They're not going to be like, I'm not going to tell you, you know, like, I'm so loyal. No one's loyal to these other guys. And that's where I think we can kind of win because we can be like human. They can follow along the story. They can follow along the videos. Like, see, look, that's like behind the scenes, behind the scenes stuff. Look at this. Check this out. My lawyer sent us a Christmas card. Adorable, right? His little family. Oh, by the way, he also sent a mug. Anyway, that's what's going on. That's the update for today. I'll give you guys more of an update. We're gonna have more scheduled videos soon. I'm back, baby. This summer we had a really good system, like Kane, we were videoing, boom boom boom. Once you got in that habit, that's where the power of habit really comes in. I'm starting to learn this is like once you fall out of that, it's like it's really, really difficult to like do these things that, you know, were once just part of your every single day routine. Again, the book The Power of Habit and just the idea of the power of habit is so powerful because it's like once you're in a habit, boom, you just do these things. Like you go to the gym, you do your work or whatever, you create the content, you edit the content. You're just like on this schedule and you're just like a machine. And that's where I want to get back to being a machine. I'll be back. That said, this was the update video. Sorry for the break. And our investors did not make us stop the vlog. People who are asking that, peace.
