receiving brutal feedback on vlog (unedited) | Vlog #60

Cain, nice to meet you.

Cain?

Yeah.

Wow, like Cain slew Abel?

Sup guys, it is Ryan from Phone Wagon if you didn't know, but if you're on the vlog channel you already knew, you already knew what it is. We got fire alarms up here, we got chandeliers, it's gonna be a good day today. You guys are about to watch— this was the day actually that all that crazy shit went down. We actually just cut out a lot of the footage and we just repackaged it for you because we wanted to get out the rest of the stuff, but I wanted to make a separate video of just that incident. So like, this is the same day that all that went down. This is like the actual day and the rest of the stuff like this. Uh, my boy Garlic was in this video, so you're gonna see his feedback. He's giving the vlog feedback. He watches all the videos.

What's up?

He was just giving us a lot of feedback at the end of the day on like stuff that he likes about it and stuff that he doesn't, which is kind of cool to actually like get feedback and him to be able to say like, hey, you know, this is like what you're doing that I like, this is like what I don't like, this is where I'm getting value out of. So if you guys are new here, I'm gonna go into this random room right here with horrible audio, but if you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building Phone Wagon from the ground up, no outside funding. We're going through Techstars in New York City. We do this 7 days a week. Proud and happy that you guys are following along. Yeah, so I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being Wagoneers. Welcome to the vlog. I'm— give me the list. Let's go, let's do it. Close the deal.

We'll get it done later.

All right, cash will be in the bank today. Follow up with you and see if you had any additional questions. Because I was looking at it on the app and I saw that it was right there, but I saw that it wasn't plugged in. But like, what just happened just now though? Yes, Ryan Shank. This is Aya. I got your message this morning. And she's like interested.

Oh man, I'm on Candid Camera. What's up? What's your name, man? Kane.

Nice to meet you.

Kane?

Yeah.

Wow, like Kane slew Abel? Okay, I'm not suggesting that. I want to get feedback on what I really like. I'm a dedicated viewer. Hold on one second, my girlfriend's about to join. She doesn't know this is happening.

Are you a Wagoneer?

Are you a Wagoneer?

Wait, can I—

I'm a Pioneer, bro! Yeah, that's mine.

I like that one. Say what's up to the vlog.

Wait, or Kane. Kane, you're the one who does—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's me. It's really his vlog.

Yeah, it's your vlog. Ryan's just the talent. Ryan's just the talent.

Ryan, I like your goatee.

Wait, so here's the thing. I'm a loyal viewer of the vlog.

You can say what you want.

I think I would watch it, you know, even if I didn't know Ryan. Here's what I love about the vlog. Things I think you're doing right. So I am in B2B software. And like trying to hustle and like do business and stuff. He raised $200,000 for his company. Something I value is seeing other guys going through the same stuff as me and then seeing what's working for them or not working, but it's way more fun to like be in the room, right? To be a fly on the wall and see like what Ryan's up to, getting to hear like when he gets to have a sit-down with a higher-up at another company, if that guy's willing to be on the vlog, I want to hear everything that guy has to say. In the room for actual business meetings to get feedback from other experts that I otherwise wouldn't be talking to.

Yeah, super valuable. Yeah, that's a good point.

You know, what I'm really looking for is something valuable, right? I'm not saying anything that you don't already know, but it's like anytime Ryan does something that might be something other, you know, startup entrepreneurs are doing but actually figured out, that's like the real stuff. That's the stuff I'm interested in.

What's up, Wagoneers? Okay, so my car is in Florida. So the guy who's like managing it called me because it was about to hurricane down there and they're trying to figure out how to move it, but it's electric and it died, so he couldn't get it to the charger. I had to call Tesla to get authorization, but then once we got him on the phone, they were like, oh, it's only $300 to like move your car 10 feet. So then I was like, okay, well, what's a workaround? And then they're basically saying how you have to like pop the hood or like the front of the car off of it and then you can sort of like then manually charge it. So like, I was trying to deal with all that before Hurricane Irma came and I was trying to look at it from the app, but since it's dead, you can't see it in the app because he was like, hey, I can't get into it. I was gonna try to unlock it today and like for the rest of this week is trying to get back on track with our metrics and everything. The thing that I always tell myself is like, you can't just continue doing what you've been doing if you expect different results. Although that said, what you guys saw in two videos ago was that We figured out that, you know, the reason some of our numbers are down or the reason that our numbers are down is because the demos weren't showing because they were fraudulent demos on the calendar by one of this like scam, you know, like sales rep who was faking using a voice changer like he was a demo. So the thing is that it's actually good that it explains like what was happening with the numbers and it wasn't, you know, the lead quality or product or anything like that. It was literally like it's a fixable issue, which is, which is important. But the other thing is like, you know, we want more, right? We want to how can we increase and tenfold what we're doing. So things I was telling myself that we can be doing, that we should be doing, that we weren't doing was, you know, for instance, like we need to be doing, you know, sequenced, structured outbound emails on a regular basis, like daily. Okay. So we finally set up, kind of got that going where we can send out, you know, 1,000 emails a day to different lead lists using, you know, we can test different, you know, subject lines and copy, kind of see what's working. And then we can, we can do all that. You know, I had done stuff in the past, but it was literally like just mail merges or like I would just randomly blast and there was no like system behind it. And like things like that, you know, you always need to systematize stuff that you're doing because you want it to be repeatable. You don't want to just do something— and I always talk— I talked about this in the past, it's like you don't want to do something that's just like a one-time sale. Or, you know, I would almost argue that that's in the same category as a quick buck because it's like, okay, you know, you made it one time, but it's like, how do you, you know, tenfold that? How do you deploy capital towards that? And it's like you can't do it if there's not systems behind it. So that's what we did. The other thing that we do that we're doing this week is setting up a referral referral program and we're using Get Ambassador. I'm actually super excited about that. So we pulled the trigger last week. We did our kickoff call today and our goal is to get it up and live by Friday because we have a bunch of customers that have been asking for it. So we think those two things can add incremental deals, plus getting the bad sales rep out. Our new sales rep is on his third week, so he's going to be ramping. He's actually going to be doing demos this week. So those three things combined, I'm confident, are going to get us back to where we need to be of adding, you know, $1,000 and then kind of beating that $1,000 net new MRR per week. So those are the things that we've been doing this week in addition to, you know, today also. And then in addition to like talking to a bunch of like investors because we're getting a bunch of like inbound stuff. I had a guy talk to me today that has this like thesis on inbound call tracking. I had another call today with another VC and they were saying how like calls and phone calls is like this sleeping giant because people are starting to get conditioned like, hey, I don't want to just fill out this field, this form, because one, you think that like it's rolling the dice. It's like, is anyone going to call me back? Is this real? Plus you sort of know that you're going to get added to marketing automation and drips and stuff. So it's like people don't want to just like fill out stuff with their actual information anymore. But 70% of searches are on mobile. So we're seeing that, you know, people are starting to call into local businesses at a crazy high rate. So anyway, this company like had this thesis. They're reaching out, they reach out to me just like talk about the space. I hope you guys are having a good week. Um, and I will see you tomorrow because it's every day. We do it every day. If you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey. I don't have the the shirt on, but this is our journey. We're building PhoneWagon from the ground up. No outside funding. We do it every single day, 7 days a week. We're going through Techstars in New York City. I have a mic here, that's why I'm telling that. And I hope you guys are out there working hard. Being pioneers, being wagoners. Peace.