Engagement is the holy grail | Vlog #70

Yo, that could be the strategy. Like, we don't have a completed deck, so then everyone feels like engaged and they're like helping us. Wagoners! Alright, so just got done reviewing the vlog. First of all, good morning. How's everyone out there doing? I hope you guys are out there grinding, working hard, being pioneers, being wagoners, killing it, doing everything that you need to do. We're still in the Techstars office even though Techstars is over. So lots of things that we are doing. So one of the things that we're trying to do is we're balancing creating like pitch decks and like talking to like investors and all of that stuff. With running the business, getting new customers, figuring out why our product is like not, you know, some of the things that we, like shipping features as fast as we should be. We just had a call with Amazon. All of these like things that are happening while, you know, doing all these like outside conversations. Usually I try to strip out all of the like excess noise and I stay like super, super focused, but now it's a balance of like running the business plus we're having to like talk to investors, which I feel like is like a completely separate task and it's like not related but it's related and it's also healthy to like be able to create this pitch deck because I'm looking at like more macro data, like market size, guys and competitors and things like that, it's good but it's like a distraction at the same time. So like, in today's vlog, you guys will see it, Mike and I were going over like creating this pitch deck and one of the things that I like to just personally do is like engage people that, you know, I'm in conversations with, 'cause then it's like one, it's really good feedback because they're ultimately the ones that are gonna be looking at it, so they give you feedback on how to create it, so then you create it and then you give it to them to look at it, so like it should be what they wanna see, right? That's kinda what we were doing. The other thing, by the way, this week is like one of our like biggest weeks that we've had in a really long time. Like on Sunday we had this beautiful $250 a month auto convert Plus we got 2 $99 a month sales that came in. And then we got a couple $25 a month sales. Like, this is the biggest week probably since like early August. So super pumped about that. I figured out exactly what outbound sales reps can produce and I'm ready to scale that. So I'm hiring. If you guys know anyone in New York City who's an amazing, just super hungry like hustler that just wants to get it, wants to like just, you know, sell transactional sales, high volume, high dollars, high dials, send them my way, ryan@phonewagon.com. Would love to chat with them. Or if you yourself, you want to come to an awesome startup that's just like making waves, you can do that as well. So anyway, uh, that's what we're doing today. I hope you guys enjoy the vlog. Payton's about to run the vlog. Without further ado, welcome to the vlog. So instead of saying Phase 1 Plus, like, do you think it should be like SMBs, digital agencies, freelancing? Basically like have 3 and then have like 5. Okay, and also like we should be putting the deck onto that slide share thing, right? Not just sending a PDF. What was that thing that he said to send it on? So it's basically saying like not to send around a PDF. You're saying to like— do we have our CAC anywhere? Sure. Where are we putting the CAC? Maybe we should use the customer testimonials as like the transition between— Did you just sign up for PhoneWagon? It showed that it's gonna increase from like $8K a month to $25K a month. I don't know, going through like— Proven channels is what's working. That's like, that means what's working. Maybe not like scale and scale, but something else like this is like accelerate roadmap and then it's still like an action. It's not just new features, integrations, teaming. You think it's gonna be done today? I'm excited to be done with this project. Huh? I'm excited to be done with this project. I just anchored him. Anchored him at 6.5. Great! Oh, did you text it to him? No, I emailed him and told him. He just goes, okay, raise it 1.5. Fuck, I undershot. I should have said 7. I want to like engage them and like get his feedback. Do not use that picture of Kane. What is Kane doing in the picture? Why is he modeling? I've tried to give my Mike more options. Mike wasn't into it. Like, team, and then advisors. I'm actually gonna put Darko in there too. Like, all those are pretty good to have him up there, like the main core team. It's like over here. I was looking down here, I was like, wait, what? Yeah, it's weird to put like, bored people up there. It's like, fish, why is there a fish? Ryan, how's Bitcoin doing? Everything's up, man. Everything's up. So I have a bunch of like, Angie's List stock through Robinhood, and they just went through this like, HomeAdvisor and Angie's List just like, merged and they spun out into like, its own company. But it like, froze from my Robinhood app, and it took the amount that I had in there like, from the balance. So I like, logged in yesterday, and it was like, as if it wasn't there, and the balance was like, was like $25,000 less, and I was like, what the fuck just happened? Did I just lose it? Yo, that could be the strategy. Like, we don't have a completed deck, so then everyone feels like engaged and they're like helping us, and then we never complete it. We never complete it. Yeah. Wait, I don't know if this is a dumb question, but are there leaves in the city in New York? They are, right? All right guys, that was the vlog for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Lots of stuff that we, we went through. You saw us, we were building the pitch deck, and the thing is like, you want to put a lot of thought into it, right? Because these are going to be like looked at and people are going to invest millions millions of dollars like into the company based on the story that you tell. And startups and business, everything in life is, is really like storytelling. So you're going to want to be, you know, we want to tell the story so that people can one, like, understand it and that they see that, oh wow, this is like an investable business. This is going to be, you know, a $50, $100, $200, $300 million company in like 5 years, you know. So it's like we want to, you know, tell that story and it's like using data and it's using kind of like what we've done and now and then the vision of what we're going to do. So really, really excited that, you know, it's kind of like what we were focused on today. Yeah, so I hope you guys are out there. If you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building PhoneWagon from the ground up. We don't have any outside funding. We're completely bootstrapped right now. We're just doing it all. We're just getting paying customers. Techstars is over. We went through that this summer. It was an amazing experience. So that is the vlog for today. Hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being Wagonaires. Peace! And I'm back. And I'm back.