Why You Should Work For Free | Vlog #53

And we did not even come close to hitting it. It's not funny. Oh, but we hit $200,000. Good morning, Wagoners! What is popping? I hope everyone out there is having a good day. I am future Ryan right now. I recorded a video yesterday where I was talking about how, like, you know, I have some personal issues going on. It was a little clickbaity, not too clickbaity, but that was real though. Me and my buddy, who's actually in New York right now— I'm actually in Sag Harbor right now, so the video from today you'll be able to to see in a couple days. It's gonna be pretty cool. We got Kane coming out here. Cool thing, by the way, is we're getting a ton of interest right now to invest into Phone Wagon. Initially I wasn't raising, so I was telling everyone I'm not raising, I'm not raising, I'm self-funding it. I'm getting so much interest right now that we are actually going to raise, and we'll talk about that in, uh, in a couple days. But yeah, so I mean, it's super interesting. Um, again, I'm literally like driving. I think I'm in park. I guess park, park is a good thing to be in. But anyway, smash that subscribe button, like the video, comment, let us know your thoughts. Okay, I hope you guys are out there. Oh, by the way, I forgot If you guys are new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building Phone Wagon from the ground up. I take you guys with us every single day, 7 days a week. We don't take days off even when we're in the car. Awkward. So I hope you guys are out there grinding, working hard, being pioneers, being wagoners.

Peace!

That's his like cell phone number or what? But I'm saying, can we forward it back to like his one of his other cell phone numbers right now? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like we just take this number and forward it to whatever else is one of those phones. Here he is.

I'm sorry, John. Sorry, I'm really sorry. I had a client, so he just ported just as Ryan Shank went up his door. So you have like 5 or 6 clients. You usually have like 50 or 60 numbers right now, right? Hey, Shawna. $8 to $10 to port? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm happy to do anything. Again, a lot of times the port is on the person who's bringing it in. That's really—

People and emotions, you know, it's crazy. Humans!

I also went to Jerusalem and to the Dead Sea.

Good, good.

Thanks for coming in.

How was the meeting?

It was good.

Is that your guy in South Carolina?

They have like deals. Like they play, for example, I was looking on Google.

Oh, so like call tracking.

Yeah.

Vlogs and stuff.

I'll subscribe.

Yeah, subscribe. Look, 7 days a week. Like, one week ago.

And I like that you like this type of stuff.

Yeah, the thumbnail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're just, you're like not even really here, you're just passing through.

Yeah, exactly. Spending time here at the eComMarketer Festival.

Freelancer or whatever?

Yeah.

So he's from, he lives in South Carolina.

I found PhoneWagon looking for a solution to my problem. I have a direct-to-consumer company in Mexico and people are always calling on the phone, no other company. It helped me track my phone calls. I wanted to know which keywords, which landing pages, which AdWords were giving me those calls, those clicks.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, thanks for coming in, man. I really appreciate it.

Of course. No, thank you, dude. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. It's not just the camera.

Um, so our big rock was $1,500 in net new MRR, and we did not even come close to hitting it. It's not funny. Um, but we hit $200. We had like $200 in net new MRR. Demos were down for the past week and a half because we're just doing some personnel changes, things like that. But we're ramping new personnel up, so I think it'll, it'll come back.

I mean, it's gonna come back.

Today we did 6 doubles. Oh, shoutouts to Alex for my one-on-one turned into like a therapy session.

I think that's the same for everyone. Alex is the in-house therapist these days. Rename one-on-ones to therapy. Hey, what's up?

What's up, guys?

So one of the things that I want to talk about today, this is going to be like the daily table, by the way.

I'm sitting at—

it's like a beach that's on like a bay in Sag Harbor. So that is location update. We'll pop the location right here. So a little update. Got you. Anyway, the thing that I want to talk about today is basically like doing things for free. Okay. And I know what you're thinking, like, why would I ever do I don't give things for free. Like, my time is valuable. If you're good at something, never do it for free. Things like that. But what I've started to notice is that people, for instance, I got hit up the other day, was like, hey, can you, you know, speak to these people? I think you guys are actually going to watch it on the vlog today, or you might have watched on the vlog today. I forget, we're getting days confused and everything. But, you know, of course I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Absolutely. Like, I never even thought potentially about asking for money, right? I don't even think these are things that you could ask for money, but that's not really the point. The point is that I have started to see a bunch of people, you know, they'll get like opportunities and stuff like, hey, can you help me out with this? Can you help me out with this? And they want to be like, you should pay me. Right? And I think that, uh, you should always want to just like, one, show your work, basically like prove to them and do it. Because one, then like the universe will return that, that to you in the form of, you know, in the form of either additional work, or your name's going to get out there, or the fact that you helped them when they needed some, some help and things like that. So that's always awesome. And then the other thing is that that's going to be able to parlay that into something else, right? And if you kind of go back to the Gary Vaynerchuk mantra of like give, give, give, or jab, jab, jab, right hook, you want to just give value, give value, give value. I actually have one of my friends, this girl, so she keeps You know, every time I ask her to do something like, hey, do you want to like collab on this? You want to like help me with this? You know, and I have a lot of stuff going on. She's always like, yeah, but like, how much are you going to pay me? And it always comes to that at first. Like, you haven't even proven yourself. Why would someone want to like pay you upfront? It's like, you should want to just engage with them, start to like prove your value and be basically like make yourself defensible. Be like, look, I'm providing such valuable work that it's like that person is going to want to then continue to work with you and then going to want to pay you money. I actually visited. I went out on my own dime to Pittsburgh to meet with a startup that I'm an investor in, and I didn't have to do that, right? But I went out there, I literally paid for my own flight, my own hotel, everything, went out there and I just like rolled up my— and my time, by the way, it was like 2 or 3 days, full days, like rolled up my sleeves, like literally hitting the phones on sales calls. I actually made a sale while I was there, which is pretty tight. But it's like I did that 100% for free because I wanted the company to do well. Also personally, just like passionate and like interested in it. But also it's like, you know, you want to be able to provide that kind of value so that then they're like, holy shit, like I have to work with Ryan. You know, Ryan comes out here, he's able to do all this. And then, you know, maybe, maybe they'll like increase my advice or shares, or maybe they'll like, you know, let me invest on like better terms. Who knows what it is? I don't, I don't know. I don't, I 100% don't expect that or anything else. But point is like, don't always try to just get money up front. You should want to do things and just like put into the universe all of these like value adds to other people, and that's going to come back to you. You know, I think a lot of people fall into that trap. It's like literally it's like if you're helping someone out, you know, granted, like don't get used or anything, but it's like if you're doing something and it's so valuable, one, just help, help them realize that you, you know, your time is finite and everything, and that, you know, the prioritization has to happen. But don't, don't look for the money up front, honestly, especially if you're like early in your career. It's like, just provide that value, get them to want to work with you. And then, you know, and I have a bunch of people that did that to me actually. I have a designer, hopefully he watches this, Nick, he was awesome. He was like, hey, I want to do stuff for you for free. Cool, yeah, I need like a designer. And then I ended up like paying him for some work later. Same thing with, uh, with Will, who, who manages some marketing and some Facebook stuff. He just did basically everything, all this stuff for free. It's like, I wouldn't have hired them initially anyway, but they provided all this value, they became engaged engaged, they got me hooked, right? And then it's like boom, then it turns into a paying gig. It's actually happened now that I think about it a lot of times. So, you know, doing things like that without expecting, you know, payment up front, showing your value, it's almost like a free trial if you think about it. It's like, hey, I'm gonna like do all this stuff for you for free, I'm gonna engage with you, and then, you know, we'll see how it works from there. So anyway, that's kind of what, uh, what I've been thinking about recently, just in terms like when people try to get like paid up front for like unproven things. It's like, no, absolutely not. And, uh, and even when I do it myself I found that myself, I personally do a lot of stuff 100%, don't ask for like money for it, and then it always comes back to helping me like either make money or engage with something later, or like get a referral or something else. So it's actually like a pretty cool concept. Maybe it's karma, I don't know, maybe it's just the universe, maybe it's just like, you know, you're just kind of getting paid back from good things that you're putting out there. But you guys should try it, stop asking for money up front for like unproven things and see what happens.