In this vlog, Ryan Shank documents a day in the life of his bootstrap startup, Bone Wagon. He announces a visit from a DigitalOcean co‑founder, shares snippets of cold‑calling practice with contacts named Melissa and Susan, and discusses a positioning exercise to differentiate the company from competitors. The core of the episode is Ryan’s advice to stay "laser‑focused" on a single marketing or sales channel that shows traction, run it intensively for 1‑3 months to gather statistically significant data, and then build a repeatable system around it rather than spreading effort thin across many tactics. He wraps up by encouraging viewers to subscribe and engage with the journey.
Chapters
Just like, just find out something that is working and then figure out how to, how to be the LeBron of that area. Good morning, Wagoners! July 25th, we're back out here every single day. Uh, we're at the office right now. Today's gonna be a big day. We got DigitalOcean, by the way, the co-founder's gonna come in. Not many times in life do you get the opportunity to sit down and do a hands-on one-on-one— I guess it's one-on-many, uh, with the co-founder of like a pretty much billion-dollar company. So that's really, really cool. Welcome to the vlog. If you guys new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building Bone Wagon, bootstrap startup from the ground up, no outside funding. Hope you guys are out there working hard. Hope you're out there being pioneers, being wagonaires. Welcome to the vlog.
Another package.
What if this is just a package of packages? I wrote that my drink of choice was rosé.
Oh, Cologny?
I need to work more.
Alright. Oh yo, the work is mad though.
Hey Melissa, this is Ryan over at Phone Line. How's it going? Hey Susan, this is Ryan Shank. Thanks Susan.
How are you different? How are you telling your story differently than your competitors? So, have half the positioning map here. I'll try to recreate it.
Damn it, CJ!
And position in a unique way, because that's the only way you're gonna break through the noise when you invest in channels, when you invest in marketing campaigns. Spend the next kind of 5 minutes just mapping out where you fit inside this positioning map, and then try to list out 3 to 5 competitors in your space.
Yeah, don't film right now. Oh, I thought that was pretty good. What's up guys? Gonna go for the daily takeaway today. I have something that's on my mind that I want to talk about with you guys that I think a lot of people, they don't do. They don't do, especially in early stage companies or in like larger stage companies, is the fact that you have to stay laser, laser focused. And I know I've like kind of dabbled on it before, but I think it's more important now than ever to just really, really go in, get really, really good at one specific thing. So there's so many things that to do, right? Like even with us, we're building out different landing pages, we're testing out different marketing campaigns and channels, we're testing out doing like email stuff, we're testing out doing content. But at the end of the day, it's like if we kind of go really, really broad and we're not able to get enough data in one particular area, we're actually not gonna know if something is effective or it's not effective because we're only gonna try it a little bit. You know, the data set that we're gonna get in that little area isn't gonna be statistically significant. And then you're gonna wanna be able to get that thing and you're gonna be able to increase the output of that particular area. For instance, If it's sales, right, just go all in on one sales channel that you know is working, or if one marketing channel is working that you can deploy more money to, go all in on that. Test the landing page, test the different audiences. If you know it works, just go all in on that one thing for a little bit, right, for 1 to 3 months, because then you're gonna get good at it, and then you're gonna create an entire system around that. Don't like half-ass this over here with the interior designer relationship where you know you're gonna be able to get referrals and stuff, and if it's working, don't half-ass that so that you can dabble in 3, 4, 5 different other areas, because then again, everything is gonna be half-assed. You're gonna be spread thin. In and nothing is going to work versus like just find out something that is working and then figure out how to, how to be the LeBron of that area. Thank you guys again for joining us. I hope you guys are getting value here, by the way. I really appreciate you like joining the journey. It's really fun actually. So we're doing, being able to just document, talk to you guys, talk to like everyone who's kind of like following us. But if you could, if you're interested, if you like it, hit subscribe. I think it's going to be down there, somewhere down there. Hit subscribe, hit us in the comments with what you think. Appreciate you guys.
