Ryan Shank accidentally rented out his entire apartment and spent two weeks in a hotel while launching a Google AdWords integration and onboarding new hires. He rents his NYC apartment nightly to live in Manhattan for under $1,000 a month, a strategy inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk's advice to sacrifice comfort for business growth.
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What up guys, it's Ryan coming back at ya. Uh, day 4 of the vlog. I accidentally rented my entire apartment out, so I can't stay there for the next 2 weeks. So I am literally living in a hotel for the next 2 weeks. Today is July 4th, so later today we're gonna go onto my friend's rooftop in East Village. We're gonna watch the fireworks, but that's probably gonna be, I'm assuming, around 8 or 9 o'clock. If you're new here, like and subscribe to the vlog. You can follow us on our journey and as we hopefully build a $100 million company, as we are building a $100 million company, but hopefully you're gonna join us for that journey. I really, really, really today have to just complete every single thing that we need for the new hires because everyone is starting tomorrow. So without further ado, welcome to the vlog! Just left the hotel and we're going to a coffee shop on 29th and Broadway so that we can actually post up there for the day. Kind of beautiful outside right now, which is great, but we're gonna be inside all day. One thing I forgot to tell you guys is I was talking with my developer this morning. One of the awesome things that he just finally completed, it's our biggest feature right now, biggest feature request that a lot of our larger customers need, is the integration with Google AdWords. Finally got everything shipped out today, and so what I'm gonna have to do at this coffee shop when I go there is I'm actually gonna test it out. This is a random thought, but are you ever listening to Spotify, your playlist ends, and then it just rolls over into random music that's not even good? I just got coffee at Stumptown Roasters in the Ace Hotel. First of all, there's no lights on in there. It was absolutely mobbed, so there was not a single seat I couldn't even sit on the floor. I think even the floor space was taken. That was tight B-roll, right? You saw that, you saw that. That was hot, that was me. That was me, I did that. I did it with a camera. Alright guys, we are back on the West Side Highway in New York City. What we're doing right now is we're actually— I'm about to meet up with Kane. We're gonna film a little bit more today and then we're gonna go to my friend's place. In, on the east side, in East Village, because that's where the fireworks are in New York, and we're gonna go onto his rooftop. Sun's all the way up there, so we got a lot of sunlight left for today. It is July 4th, so it's actually a really good day to just get a bunch of work done that I've been meaning to do, because since not a lot of people are working today, I don't have to worry about getting phone calls and doing all of this other stuff. I can actually sit down. I was just working a little bit earlier, and me and Mike were hitting up some stuff. He actually sent me a mockup of another logo, or of a logo design, so that's gonna be be pretty sweet. And what else? What else? Oh, the sun is peeking! Do you feel that? You feel that? So yeah, so let's, let's take a walk down the West Side Highway. Look how gross the water is, by the way. So I'm from Maryland, and there's in the— oh, what the fuck? Like, that's mad gross. That's fucked up. Who eats Ruffles these days? I haven't eaten Ruffles since middle school. Like a Ruffle in litter? That's fucked. And by the way, so there's not a lot of grass in New York or places to lay out, so anytime New York workers see grass, they like flock to it. They put their blankets down and then they just use it as if it's a beach, but it's not a beach. Um, but it's kind of cool, I guess, because they just know that they're really good at posting up in places. So that's what's happening over here. All right, cool. So I just got back from the gym. Uh, we are about to go to my friend's place in East Village and we're gonna go on his rooftop and we're gonna watch fireworks from there because it's July 4th. So the fireworks start at around 8:30. It's 7:40 right now, so we're We're literally about to get into an Uber right now and get to his place around 8. Anyway, something that's fucking crazy to me is that people aren't willing to do whatever it takes to, for instance, to like live in New York City or to, you know, and just to kind of scrap it and ground or like, you know, live shitty for a little while. Gary Vaynerchuk always talks about it. He's like, man, like sell your house and live in a shitty apartment for so long. Do you know how many people I think here should quit their job, take another job that pays them less, sell their home, go rent an apartment that's shittier? 'Cause nobody walks outside and be like, yo, Soul, my fucking house. Going to rent an apartment now. And I feel like I'm still doing that. I'm still like, just going back to the fact that I'm literally staying in a hotel right now and that I literally have different Airbnb guests in my apartment every single night. I tell people that I do it and they're like, ah, you know, that sounds like it'd be a pain in the ass. But it's like, yeah, but you don't have to watch like 15 episodes of Netflix every single day. You don't have to hang out and chill with your friends for like 6 hours every single day. Like, you could just rent out a bedroom and like have to figure out like cleaning it and washing the sheets. It's not that big of a deal, but that'll at least then let you live in New York City. I literally live in New York City in a very good place for less than $1,000 a month. I have friends that live in shittier cities— not shittier cities, but just different places that aren't as expensive on paper— and they pay more money than that. And I live like fine, right? But it's just, you know, I have to— yeah, I have to manage it. And but you have to just put systems in place so that you can deal with those things, right? Yes, I have to have the cleaning lady and give her the schedule and make sure that it gets turned over every single time, but it still lets me, you know, live there for cheap. And then so then I'm able to allocate that kind of money into doing something else and creating like a business or doing something that's gonna like help, you know, propel me versus like just sitting there and being comfy and sitting in like a $2,000 a month place, you know, paying $2,000 a month rent. I'd rather, you know, pay $1,000, take the extra K, and then, you know, allocate that and parlay that into something else. But it's just, it baffles my mind that, you know, I talk to people all the time and they're not willing to, to do that. Alright guys, so we are going up to the rooftop. It's not one of those rooftops where you're supposed to to go up. It's one of the rooftops in a walk-up building that literally says— I'll show you guys when we get up there, but it says, do not go onto the roof, alarm will sound. Like, literally, we're going. Check it out, check it out. Wow, it's the door that we just came out. Matty, what up, man? Woo, this is so sick. So here's the setup. Woo!
