In this vlog, Ryan Shank of PhoneWagon explains why the scheduled daily video didn’t get posted—he and his teammate Kane were locked out of their Techstars co‑working space on Sunday, leaving essential equipment inside, and a failed Dropbox upload forced a replacement video. While recording the new vlog, Ryan shares practical advice for founders: stay hands‑on across all company functions, set the work‑ethic tone by being the first in and last out, focus on output rather than hours, eliminate unproductive meetings, and be willing to do low‑level tasks like cold‑calling, product feedback, marketing emails, and video creation. He highlights their bootstrapped status, daily customer wins, recent cold‑call success, and a sales workshop with a Techstars mentor, urging entrepreneurs to stay in the trenches, build repeatable systems, and continuously engage with their team.
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What up guys, it's Ryan from Phone Wagon. Here we are today. We don't do that anymore. That's the old intro. You guys are probably wondering, Ryan, why are you doing this video? This is why we're doing the video. So the video today, we're always 2 days behind because we record, then we put a video out every single day, 7 days a week. But this is what happened. So the video today that is supposed to go out, that's not gonna go out, but this video is gonna go up. So by the time you're watching this video, this video is out. Meta as fuck. So we're in a co-working space. We're in Techstars. This is our journey going through Techstars. As you guys know, you're following along, we do the video every single day. So what happened was we couldn't get into the office office on Sunday. All of our equipment was in the office. Literally, my charger to my computer was in the office because I was in the office on Saturday and I was like, oh, I'll just go on Sunday. The office was closed on Sunday. We couldn't get into the office. Kane like left the office, which he doesn't usually leave the office, so we couldn't get into the office to get his equipment. So what I originally did was I recorded this video and I was going to send it to Kane, but as it was uploading to the Dropbox link, my computer died. The video never completely uploaded. That's what's going on. This is why we're recording this video. We're gonna do a bunch of jump cuts, uh, we're gonna make it engaging for you. Here's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how you as the business owner as the person who's starting the company. As you guys know, we're building this company from the ground up, no outside funding, completely bootstrapped, by the way. And we're doing it, we're winning a customer. By the way, we've won a customer every single day this week, although they've been small customers, but we've still got a customer every single day so far, which is really, really cool. So by the way, the thing that I want to talk about is you as the business owner, you should still be able to do and still be doing every single thing in the company. You shouldn't be doing that every single day, but you should one, be able to, and be able to like strap in and actually do those things because you want one, you want to know like how it's going, but also you want your employees to be able to look up to you and be like, yo, our like, you know, owner, CEO, whatever. And at this stage, you should be doing it anyway, but even once you get to larger stages, it's almost like impressive because, you know, you really are going to set the tone for like how your company works, how your employees work, the work ethic, all that stuff. Literally, if I'm gonna be like completely honest with you guys, I came into work, um, probably like, probably like after 9, maybe like twice because of XYZ, it doesn't matter. I felt like that trickled off, and then I started to notice that like our team was coming in like after 9. It's like, yo, that's like not unacceptable. Like, we don't do that. So, but ultimately it's all on me, you know. I, I set the tone. You got to set the tone. So whether you're setting the tone by like, you know, being the first one in the office, the last one out the office, which like I think I could argue both sides to that, but I kind of think it's like arbitrary if you're just going to be like in the office. Because at the end of the day, you need to like be in the office and then have like incredible output. Like, you should be like super productive when you're in the office. Like, either whether you're in product and you're like pushing out like designs and you're working with like the developers so that you're actually getting stuff shipped, or whether you're in sales and you're like making dials and doing demos or you're in video production and you're the videographer but also the editor and you're shipping out videos and the edit quality is high. So it doesn't matter necessarily where your physical location is. This is what I would argue. So it's like first one in, last one out. Yeah, it sets the tone, um, but it's really about the output also of when you are working, like in between those, uh, those hours. So that's the other, that's like a really important thing, but it all starts at the top. And you as the business owner, if you guys are watching this, hopefully you're like one to be like entrepreneurs or you are an entrepreneur or you're like a business owner or you're just like I don't know, like, I don't know, you probably either want to be, you are, or you're not. You don't want to be and you just follow this because you like are like my random friend from high school. Anyway, those are like probably the people that are like watching this. We only get like 60 views, although we do natively post to Facebook and we get like another 100 over there. No big deal. Always be down to like literally like do like the low— I can't even— I— if there was a lower job, I would do it. But it's like you should be able to like cold call, you should be able to, you know, give product feedback, you should be able to do like marketing emails, you should be able to do content, you should be able to like, you know, create videos on YouTube and it has nothing to do with your business but you're trying to trying to engage and create this community and this following and like do all of that stuff. So you should be doing all of these things like tactically, like every single day, like willing to do it. Um, the thing is you're probably gonna get like stretched thin because you have to like do all these other things. But the, the other, the other important thing is like strip out all that noise, like all this stuff that people like think is cool, like meetings and stuff. Like it's not cool. Like we don't want to do that. That stuff is like, it's not really productive. The productive thing is like once you're actually like doing sales and like in the trenches and you're doing all this, because what is going to happen, one, you're gonna like, you're gonna figure it out. And then once you figure it out, you're gonna be able to build a system around it, you're gonna be able to make it repeatable, you're gonna be able to hire people and train those people to do those things. So we're gonna do all of that stuff, but you need to consistently like go back in and then like do it even more, be around your team as you're doing it, okay? So that's the daily takeaway today. I'm sorry this video wasn't following us around, but like we're in here, we're grinding. I'm about to hit some more cold calls 'cause yesterday we did cold calls at the end of the day, we called Pacific time zone and we had a lot of success with it. I just did some like sales workshop with a mentor from Techstars. 6:36 right now, so it's not even that late. It's 6:36 right now, recording the video. Gonna get it to Kane, he's gonna chop it up, edit it, and we're gonna upload today. So peace. If you guys are new here, again, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building PhoneWagon from the ground up. We're a bootstrap startup going through Techstars in New York City. I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being wagonaires. Peace!
