In this fourth vlog entry, Ryan Shank walks viewers through his evolving daily routine as a founder juggling content creation, startup operations, and personal logistics. He explains the challenges of establishing a new vlog format—managing multiple cameras, SIM cards, and learning film production—while emphasizing that the vlog serves both his audience and his own archival purpose. Ryan announces the launch of a weekly interview podcast, describing his ambition to bring on high‑profile guests (humorously noting the realistic caliber of interviewees) and outlining the behind‑the‑scenes integration with his video content. He details a financial and logistical maneuver: renting out his two‑bedroom apartment on Airbnb, which led to the entire unit being booked by travelers from France, forcing him to relocate to a nearby Techstars‑affiliated hotel for two weeks. He breaks down the cost‑benefit analysis, noting the hotel’s $100/night cost versus the $250/night Airbnb revenue, resulting in a net positive cash flow. Finally, Ryan recounts a sales lead interaction, explaining his strategy of requiring prospects to become paying customers before engaging in deeper marketing discussions, and shares a recent instance where a lead signed up for a free trial despite his instructions. Throughout, he intersperses casual observations about his environment, such as visiting Bryant Park, and reflects on the fast‑paced nature of startup life.
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No recording? Sorry. Won't let us record the Louis Vuitton bags. Good morning guys, it's Ryan Shank. Today is, I believe, day 4 of the new vlog format. I hope you guys are enjoying it. Thank you so much for tuning in, for watching it. Quick update, I don't have my vlog camera right now. We're really trying to get into a cadence of filming because now that we have multiple cameras, multiple SIM cards, I've never even really done film production or anything like that. So it's actually fun to learn about it and it's cool. And that's kind of one of the reasons why I'm doing this. The other reason is obviously I want to share the journey honestly, like with you, but also just for me to be able to look back on it if I don't remember anything. Because, you know, it's like in life sometimes you just go so fast that you don't really stop and really appreciate it. So really I'm doing it for me just to document everything. Document through so I can go back in a couple of years and be like, oh wow, man, that was awesome. And I was actually going to go play tennis this morning out in Long Island. And then I realized that it's Monday, so you can't just go play tennis on Long Island. We're not taking today off. I actually have a call now in 1 hour. They said they're gonna sign up for one of our largest packages, so that's pretty dope. Just finally got our t-shirts ordered for Techstars, so we have a pretty dope t-shirt. Oh yeah, we're starting a podcast. So basically with all of this filming and everything, we're gonna do audio filming and then we're gonna do behind the scenes in the vlog of the podcast. So that's gonna be super sick. But every single week we're gonna interview someone, and to be honest, what I want to do is just have like massive famous or super successful people, and you guys are gonna be like, what the fuck, how did he get like Bill Gates? Or like, you know, someone like— probably not Bill Gates Bill Gates, realistically. It's probably gonna be like Bill Gates's cousin's daughter's friend's neighbor, that kind of caliber people on the podcast. And what we're going to be doing is just interviewing them about, look, yo, how'd you do it? Tell me about what you did. How did you actually, you know, build a company, make a brand, make a fuck ton of money? Tell my people so my people can do it, and then I want to do it too. Kane's about to come over in a little bit. He edited the vlog all day yesterday and then the file got corrupt, so he has to re-edit the whole thing. We're supposed to go out at 11 every single day. It's already day— it's only like day 3 and he's already getting corrupt files coming out an hour late. But we actually haven't announced that we're going out at 11 yet, so no one really knows what the schedule was supposed to be. So that's why I think it's maybe okay right now. Vlog is life. Now we're gonna go start the day. Welcome to the vlog, day 3. Let's go! Oh, whoa, whoa, look at this place! This is gonna be our home. Going up? Yeah. Oh, I'm vlogging. Huh? I'm vlogging. Vlogging? Yeah. What does that mean? It's just like videoing. That was floor 14. Now we're going to floor 18 and we're gonna see how the room is for the next 2 weeks. Here we go. 1803. Alright, so we had to change location. So I rent a room in my apartment out on Airbnb and I do it just because I have a 2-bedroom apartment and it subsidizes my rent. So it basically makes my effective rent like $1,000 a month. So I usually rent one room out and I was traveling a lot this winter, so I would rent the entire apartment out. So I just looked the other day and I was like, oh shit, I rented the entire apartment out and these people were coming from France. So a couple things. One, I don't want to cancel on them because I don't want to be a dick and them not have a place to stay after they've been expecting to be able to stay there for months and months and months. So I am literally be staying in a hotel in New York City for the next 2 weeks, and I rented my entire apartment out. I know you're thinking like, why? That doesn't make sense. Well, I'm doing it for 2 reasons. One, again, I don't want them to not have a place to stay. Plus, I'm still going to be making money because, you know, this hotel room is probably like $100 a night. They're paying $250 a night, so I'm still kind of netting, you know, anywhere from $125 to $150 depending on cleaning fees and stuff like that. So, and I'm just staying in this random hotel which is actually by Techstars, so it's gonna be tight because it's really, really close. I can just walk there, it's a couple blocks away. I don't mind it, whatever. So It's not for everyone, but this is what we're doing. So now we're just like randomly posted up. If you see, there's a lot of gear on the bed. We're vlogging. We're talking to customers and things like that. What's happening here? I'm at the park and I don't know what's happening. We can't go onto the grass, so we're just sitting here listening to some music because we're stuck in the city on July 4th. The 25th HBO Bryant Park Summer Film Festival. Oh, film. We're filming. We're filmers. We're producers. We're producing because we're producers and filmmakers, filmographers. Videoogpers. Octas. I wish I knew how to zoom. It's a beautiful park, by the way. I don't know if you guys have ever been here. It's Bryant Park, New York City. So this guy had been emailing me. I think he found me either on LinkedIn or somewhere like that, but he literally had emailed me like 5 or 6 different times. He wants to do like marketing or lead gen or something for us. And I was just ignoring him and then he kept following up. I don't know if he has something on his email that he sees that I open his email, but he just kept following up, following up, following up, and I was kind of annoyed. The best way to get my attention is to sign up as a paying customer and then use the product and then have a conversation based on how you would attack a sales and marketing strategy. So I was basically like, look, you want to get my attention, sign up as a paying customer, use the product, and then come at me on how you think we can work together. So I said that just not thinking he was actually going to sign up. And then I just got an email like 20 minutes ago that he signs up. But I sent him, by the way, I sent him a link to sign up directly as a paying customer and he must not use that link because he just signed up for the free trial. It's kind of cool that he signed up, but he didn't sign up as a paying customer. I was like, told him that's how you can get my attention is to sign up as a paying customer.
