The first couple years of creating content are the hardest | Vlog #62

Oh, by the way, I had a sick dinner last night with a bunch of marketers. So this guy Eric Hsu, I'll put a link to him in the description. He does a podcast. Yo, this is future Ryan coming at you. So that's why I'm wearing a different shirt. The video you guys are about to see, we've been going heads down recently. I've been basically doing like every single one of the demos, talking to a lot of the customers, and I think it's really good to just jump back into the trenches and make sure that I'm not removed. I'm listening to customers, I'm figuring out exactly what they're doing with our software, with our tool, and you're gonna see that there. And I think it's really important, especially as the like founder of the company, and you need to be like super super, super, super close to not only product but also customers and then also channels of those customers because customers are going to vary based on how they found you. So just staying really, really close to it, listening to it. I'm trying to not get distracted by a lot of other things, trying to focus on just growing revenue right now, which is directly correlated to talking to customers, doing demos and doing that. So check it out. If you guys are new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey. We're building PhoneWagon from the ground up. There's no out— whoa, no outside funding. We're going through Techstars in New York City. We do this every single day, 7 days a week. We're making videos, we're making vlogs. Vlogs. We're doing it for you. Um, I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being Wagoneers. Welcome to the vlog. tried to acquire us. It's like a big public fleet management company. But like, I think that's a little different because fleet, if you think about it, like just zooming out, fleet management, you're tracking what, and this was actually their thesis as well, fleet management, you're tracking vehicles and like looking for like efficiencies and like it's helping the owner basically say, are the vehicles and everything, are they keeping them running, are they driving, are they— I don't know if that answers your question. I just like randomly was thinking about that. That's what I Um, one of the things that I've basically been doing a lot recently, and I told you earlier in the like intro to the video that I've been like trying to stay super, super focused, but it's really looking at metrics. And I basically have been every single week— I think I told you we have in our financial model, it's, uh, updatable. So I basically just dump in some data and then I look at the metrics and I say like, all right, where are we spending money and what are we getting for that? I think I told you in that one video where I was basically like, you can't, you know, just say like, all right, I'm spending this money now and I need to get, whoa, I need to get revenue. Whoa, what is that? I need a trash can by the way for like my desk. Cause I literally just put trash like on the floor, like on the floor, like no trash can. It's like as if a trash can was there, but there's just no trash can. Being able to like look at like metrics. So I've been trying to focus on like how do we grow inbound leads and like where are we spending money on marketing? And how are we gonna do that? I think content is a long-term play. Oh, by the way, I had this sick dinner last night. It was at a restaurant called Bagatelle. It's one of my favorite restaurants in New York. It was with like a team of— it was like just with a bunch of marketers. So this guy Eric Hsu, I'll put a link to him in the description, he does a podcast with Neil Patel actually from Kissmetrics. And we were just talking about like how like actually vlogging and video content is exploding, but how you have to like— when you put out content, how it's a long-term play. Like this isn't a short, you know, short win. This is like you got to grind it for like years before you can expect to get that huge like win and start those huge numbers. And what he was saying is like when he first started his podcast, he was getting 9 downloads per episode literally for like the first year or two, and now he's getting 500,000 downloads. So it's insane. But the thing is, it's like it's just a grind. It's like you just putting out that constant contact— constant content— and then it's like it'll just like grow over time. And if you look at like even our own metrics, when I look at like vlog and when I look at content and I look at stuff, like it's just slowly growing. But so a lot of people will give up, they'll say, oh, it's not growing fast enough, or like, it's not doing what I need for it to do now. But like, that's such the wrong and like short-sighted move. It's like, you gotta just slow grind it for like so long. Some videos will be a hit, some, you know, some will get you more subscribers in the door. Like our video about the, the sales rep stealing, right, employee fraud, that brought a lot of like, uh, brought a lot of eyeballs, a lot of views, 10x more views than we normally get. So it's just about like staying on top of, uh, on top of the grind and just pushing it out even when it's like it doesn't feel like it's worth it. But it's like, it's all about that, getting those repetitions in there and that consistency. And that's it. So those are the things that I'm like thinking about right now as I'm like diving into the business and looking at the metrics and I'm talking to customers all day. So one, I told you earlier this week I set up like a super structured outbound, cold outbound email campaign to different verticals and stuff. That's awesome. It's uploaded and now we'll be able to go in in a few days after we have some data under our belt and start to optimize for like open rates and things like that. Second thing is we're about to— we're gonna hit our deadline of Friday to launch this like reseller campaign. So we're doing things that we weren't previously doing because we want results that we weren't previously getting. Like that, we're doing all that. And then at the same time, I'm kind of— I'm like continuing to put out the content and just stay really, really close to customers. So like, it feels like it's working. Like, this is our biggest week so far. It's only Wednesday, by the way. Biggest week we've had in 4 weeks. So I'm actually super pumped. I have a bunch of other deals that like are probably gonna close soon. So this could be a massive week for us, but Other than that, like, just staying like super heads down and grinding. So I'll see you guys tomorrow. Peace.