Ryan Shank and Mike walk through PhoneWagon's bootstrapped startup week: their cold-call script landed five $2K-per-month customers after 300 dials, they're tracking cost-per-acquisition and lifetime value in QuickBooks and Stripe, and a new SDR just arrived from Ohio. They're scaling without outside funding.
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I just made like, just—
you should be recording this because like, this is cool.
I am.
Good morning, Wagoners! That was a little aggressive, but I'm super excited for today. Today's Saturday and we're at the office, which is awesome. It gets really exciting. My friends are at the beach and I'm not, but we're out here grinding, we're out here building, we're out here being Wagoneers, hopping on the wagon, always on the wagon, 7 days a week. Wagon is running. A couple things I want One, we're actually gonna focus this week on a lot of content. So we got Mike cooking up some blog posts that we're gonna be pushing out on Medium and some other like just content strategies.
Woo!
Got an Airbnb guest. Creating videos, I just did like all of our books, like the P&L update with QuickBooks and Stripe. Really fun stuff, but it was actually really cool to see our like snowball, our revenue build up over time, month after month, 'cause it's cool looking at actuals and then looking at projections going into the future. The other thing, by the way, recording additional videos. So I just recorded 2 videos. And we're gonna put those out on our blog, and we're gonna push them out on like Medium and try to just like get content out there into the universe, 'cause I actually think that it's super helpful for businesses to just have that kind of thought process of going through and looking at, you know, like your funnel metrics and what it takes to like acquire a customer. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? And then how much do you get from that customer? And then if the money that you get is more than the money that you pay, do it all day. Anyway guys, it's Saturday. I hope you guys are out there working hard. If you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey. Building PhoneWagon from the ground up. No outside funding, completely bootstrapped. We're going through Techstars in New York City. We do this 7 days a week. I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being Wagoneers. Welcome to the vlog. Pretty good, pretty good. I just wanted to give you a call and just like confirm that we're all good to go with everything. Are you excited to come to New York? Hell yeah. I'm excited, yeah, I'm pumped to get you into the office.
Hey, where do I get headphones?
I'm trying to go to the gym. Be back, guys. Don't miss me too much.
That's a joke, that's a joke, sorry.
So is Angela just like good now? It's so funny, these people, there's like such urgent issues and that's all we want to hear about. You know you can just throw shit at me if I'm sleeping, right? You just take a pillow. We're letting the man sleep. Hey, who is this guy?
I don't know.
He was like— I have no idea. The guy that was like— he's like a little dude.
I don't know.
Kevin King. The fuck is Kevin King?
I'm sure you were. Uh-huh. It's cool, man. You can tell me you don't like my idea. I just made like, just—
you should be recording this because this is cool.
I am. GIF recaps of a lot of things that happen, and just like watching this like recap of this soup episode is really funny. Like, just like watch.
But like the one guest blog post pitch list is like pretty I like— give them a script and then prove the script out with like 300 dials, right? Boom, we did 300 dials, we got this many people on the phone, we got this many customers. Took us 3 days, we got 5 customers. 5 customers are paying us $2K a month. We made $10,000 a month from, you know, this script right here.
Like that—
I know the script that actually works and that I would go after these guys. I think a lot of agencies talk to like marketing lingo, it's about cost per click and ad spend. It's like, look, at the end of the day, the customers don't give a shit about any of that. They only want customers, and to get customers, they want leads.
So it's like, even like how a dynamic number works, why they need a dynamic keyword pool, like all this shit is just like, they don't want to have to think about figuring it out. All they care about is, just like you said, like getting leads. I mean, I like the idea. I like the reasoning behind it. Trying to simplify dynamic numbers. It doesn't have to do with agencies or sales or marketing or anything. It's just something like— But that's a huge question here.
Yeah, the wagoners.
Like, it's just—
Alright guys, leaving the office. It was a great day, it was a great Saturday. It's 11 o'clock. Mike and Kane still at the office grinding. I don't like the way people are like grinding hustle, they're just like doing shit. You don't have to glorify it, but it was actually a really good day. I feel great and gonna go back, going to like just chill actually. I'm not gonna lie, I'm just gonna chill for like, like an hour or two, then we're I'm gonna go to sleep and then I'm gonna wake up, work out and have an amazing Sunday, get ready for Brett, our new SDR is coming into town. He's flying in from Columbus, Ohio. He's super hungry. He followed up with me so bad. I actually kinda ghosted him 'cause I didn't want a remote SDR but his follow-up game was so strong and he's so hungry that I actually am like really, really, really excited for him to start tomorrow. So he flies in in the afternoon so I'm gonna work out tomorrow morning and then just kinda like meet up with him, maybe go out to dinner or something and then just like get him ready to start on Monday, hit the ground running and go for training. I also have to do, payroll and all this other stuff tomorrow that's like not that fun, but it's gonna still be a good time. So still blessed. Already did the outro, but that's it for tonight. So I'm out of here, Wagoneers.
