grew up in Iowa, went to the University of Iowa, and then I
went to Boston for a year after school.
Nice. Awesome. And then what brought you to Austin? I think
it's amazing about Austin. I mean, let's
Yeah, what I will I originally was after school, I knew I
wanted to leave Iowa and I was like, I go to Raleigh, should I
go to Boston? Should I go to Austin? So landed on Boston as a
BDR HubSpot there. So loved it. They didn't. I liked it. I
didn't love it. It was cold there. It was expensive. I was
like, I don't really want to be here. So packed up and moved
down to Austin. And it's been awesome. I love Austin.
Good move. I love Austin, too. It's my San Antonio's born and
raised here. My heart is definitely in Austin, though. I'm
a big fan. We are catching up. And so it's it's a lot of fun
seeing the progression and change. But now I'm in New
Bromfields. So I get to claim both in both cities. And so
right now, because all you listening in right now, you're
probably moving here. If you haven't already, it seems like
the whole world is so that's fine. But Ryan, I gotta ask you
what what three books you're interested in three books or
three resources for visionaries who are listening in? What would
they be?
Three books? Definitely Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I have
his poster right behind me. But Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson,
if you're interested in entrepreneurship, to personal
development, there's actually a book called it's called like
Mindsets by Let me look it up. Mindset. That's a great book.
I'm not thinking I know what you're thinking of. But I'm
thinking of a different book. Dr. Nate Zinsser. It's super
actionable tips for on like, it's called the confident mind.
Super actual tips on how to like build confidence. And as an
entrepreneur, you obviously need confidence. So I'd say that
one. He's great. That book's great. Another one actually read
the Grubhub book by Mike Evans. And that's actually just a super
fun read. So those two on entrepreneurship and one on
personal development is what I would say.
Nice. Those are great. You came up with some new ones that
weren't on my on my list. So that's fun. All right, guys,
we're going to be talking about video explainers and, and how
to launch those we're going to be diving into Ryan's vision as
well. We're going to talk about the truth behind video
explainers and revenue growth and how many times I've done
that wrong. How many companies I've supported that did it even
worse. And my time at video power marketing is going to come
to life. We were the number one YouTube ad experts of the world
at the time doing ads. We had Nordic track Vivint Yahoo.com
Johnny Dumas of entrepreneur on fire Michael Hyatt, T Harv Ekkert
and beyond. And we got to see again, which campaigns crushed
it and which campaigns crushed the leaders that weren't
mentioned. History books, right, you got to make the history
books in order to be mentioned. So Ryan Atkinson is going to be
an awesome resource on that. We'll tag team this process.
We're going to run to a break real quick, be right back. And
looking forward to diving in with you, Ryan. All right,
welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Calame. I'm your
show host, we'll be doing interviews for visionary
entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic
visions out there.
Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome in to another episode of
the no pants podcast. Just kidding. Vision pros live. Don't
worry about the rest of what I said. One thing that's fun about
working from home is you can write a cool book like one of my
associates did the year with no pants. I'll leave it again,
right where it's at. I'm going to talk about some of these
sponsors. These sponsors are actual recommendations, things
that we have seen in the market and we've fallen in love with.
In one case, the law spot with Melissa Gray, the law spot is
actually an entity we work with, she became a client. And we are
very eagerly as well working on her being I say she's not my J
Lo, she's my C lo, the chief legal officer. One of the
things that so many entrepreneurs do, is they don't
put supply and demand in their favor and almost anything they
just go with like what's the nearest pick or what's the
cheapest pick or beyond I want the best picks. I've had a
$20,000 trademark lawsuit that we won. But did we as a startup?
I mean, we needed that funding for other things. I've seen
Apple patent my software. That's scary. It distracts you. You
don't know what to do when you're in that situation. You
don't have a chief legal advisor. What I love about
Melissa is that she is not the typical condescending type of
of legal representative, she actually cares about you. And
she actually cares enough about her subject. And she's so good
at it, that she makes it simple to understand for those who
aren't. And that's a great sign of a tremendous leader. She's
got a new podcast coming up, by the way, called Beyond the Goal,
where she'll be interviewing young superstar potential
superstar athletes about their vision beyond the game. Super
cool. Then we've got recovery unplugged. Andrew Sosin is not
a client of ours, we are definitely looking at different
relationships with each other, how we can move forward. What I
do love about what he's done is he's created this program for
addiction treatment, which ranges beyond drug and alcohol.
I mean, you might have an addiction to apps, you might
have to be spending a ton of time marathoning things on
Netflix, and not realize that you're hiding from life because
life's painful. I'm not trying to rub that in. What I'm hoping
will happen is if you have a loved one or family member, if
you're going through that, do you give their 24 seven hotline
the opportunity to show you what it is they do and how they go
about changing the world. He has been to the Tony Robbins event,
22 years in a row, he's taken more than 1000 people, there is
over 400 employees that work on his team. And the amount that
I've learned from him in a few sessions of just talking, having
him hosting him on the show, and talking to him about what he's
up to. And my general sense of, again, it's limited knowledge,
I don't know billions of people, but I have met thousands in
several different countries. And I've seen that so many people
are plagued by serious challenges that they don't know
how to talk about, they don't know how to address. And if we
could help people to address those and find a sense of
belonging and loving life, then more people would would would be
more awesome to hang out with. And you know, it would just it's
just the right thing to do. Okay. So recovery unplugged, I
highly recommend checking it out as a musician, myself. I'm also a
huge fan of the fact that they incorporate music into the healing
processes of what they do. We're gonna move into the water
project. I think I just saw Ryan take a drink. I forgot my
water bottle. The reason why I bring up the water project is
because it's a cause that I've never had to worry about myself.
And when I found out about it, I was like, man, there are
millions of people who don't have access to my basic luxury
of water. I don't want to forget about that. I want to make sure
that I'm doing everything I can to help inspire people to
realize that even a one to $5 contribution towards this could
be a massive benefit and cause a generational impact where these
kids will often have to leave school to go get water or these
mothers or fathers or grandmas or whatever you are that they're
going out to get water, three to four miles that might not even
be safe for their family. They're not able to go to work.
They're not able to study the effects would be catastrophic
on our societies. We have the opportunity to partner with the
water project, not me, I'm not partners with them, but you and
I as individual contributors, to make sure that we're bringing
water to people in the world who will celebrate it like it's
Christmas Day. That is humbling and amazing. If you don't have
the ability to give back, my hope is that you will share this
message, not mine, the water projects message, maybe with a
friend, maybe you do tag somebody on this opportunity to
hear this. You never know that person might give $100,000 and
find 100 or more of these projects. How awesome would that
be if you were the catalyst for that type of change? Don't worry
about the outcome is my advice. Worry about what you can do to
give back to others and you will likely live a longer, healthier,
happier, peaceful life. Ryan Atkinson, I'm excited to bring
you on stage, man. We are going to talk about your business
spacebar visuals and your vision and it is just an honor to have
you here today, man. Thanks for joining me with all the great
energy you brought to the table.
Yeah, super excited to have you. It sounds like you're doing some
awesome stuff as well. So excited to learn from you as
well. So yeah, excited for a lot of things today.
Feeling is mutual, my friend. These sessions are really my
cheat code to all you visionaries out there. This is
me getting personal therapy as a business owner for free from a
bunch of people like Ryan. So I love it. I appreciate it. We'll
dive right into the first question, which is, what is your
vision, Ryan, for the people that you serve?
Yeah, I would say the vision for those that I serve. It depends
on what context for like who those are. For obviously, like my
family, for that vertical, it's like, obviously, like treat
that last name like atkinson with respect and like be
something that like makes like the family proud. Someone that
they can like be a rock for be concrete for. For everyone that
works at spacebar visual is I mean, mine is to be the best
leader possible to them, give them the resources that they
need to succeed. And then just be there for them as much as
they need. And like really show them light of like what we're
doing. So from family to like employees, people that work at
space, I'd say those are two like areas that I focus on.
Huge. I love that both, you know, taking the time to honor
the reality that we have multiple visions, right? I'm on
a mountaintop, I might see a desert and oasis, I might see a
forest behind me, right? There's lots of opportunity to explore
that. And you you hit some of the ones that that I don't hear
talked about enough in life, you know, family, the team members
as well that you're supporting in addition to the brand. Has
anybody you might not know this reference, but has anybody ever
told you be a great impersonator Russell Brunson?
Russell Brunson? I don't know. But someone was just asked, asked
me who my celebrity impression is. And I didn't have it. So
it might be Russell Brunson. Now.
Now, Russell Brunson is the owner of click funnels. Okay. And
he Yeah, yeah, you should. Yeah, it's a good dude. charismatic.
You could easily impersonate him.
Oh, I'm blushing on camera now.
And you know, it's funny. The you know, when it comes to
acting, a lot of people think it's fake. But a lot of it is
just the ability to intuitively lock into those emotions, bring
them out and live them, right? You have the same leadership
vibe to me, that Russell Brunson does. And that's, that's a good
thing, even though a lot of people follow him. A lot of
people are cool, cool, a drinkers, because he's, you
know, he's a very good promoter. And yeah, he's a he's so
good at sales, that it's like, man, he could be blamed for
being manipulative. I haven't seen that. I've seen him lead
really, really well. And again, some of the dynamics of the way
you just described things the way you present yourself, like,
oh, man, he not only looks kind of like him, you got that
leadership demeanor to what good as what's your vision for you,
though? What do you see for yourself on the horizon? Yeah,
so I would say for the next like, however many years, like
I'm really focused on like spacebar visuals, like, I'm
like, I'm really focused on like spacebar visuals and like what
we're doing here. Like, we have an awesome team, we have an
awesome product, something that a year ago, I might have not
have been proud to show clients. But now like, I'm so confident,
like the videos that we do and like what we produce. And so
I'm like 100% in on spacebar visuals, and leading a team,
growing a team by doing it in a profitable matter, in a way that
we can scale. But, you know, you saw in 2020, it was all scale at
all costs, this is a little bit more do it more profitably. So
I think that's a great leader for our team. Leadership is
something that I is very fulfilling for me. I enjoy
leading, giving people guiding people serving people. But yeah,
for the next five years, I mean, we're all all in on spacebar
visuals, we do have a goal at some point to sell spacebar
visuals. Once that time comes, I joke, but I'm being very
serious, I want to go vacation on Antarctica and go travel the
world for a year. So that's kind of what we got going for like
focused on and some stuff that I'm tunnel visioned on, I'd say.
Dude, that's a cool vision. That's one I don't think I'll
ever hear again. If I do, then I will connect you guys you guys
can go conquer Antarctica together. That's
who would not want to go to Antarctica. That's that's like
Yeah, okay, fair.
Me. I'm in Texas. Remember, I know you are by like I choose to
live here.
Let's go like my heat.
Yeah, I don't want to live in Antarctica. But I think it'd be
so cool to like see like the penguins just like free roaming
out there and just I mean, it's Antarctica.
It'd be
Yep. That's true. I might maybe some of the polar punches and
that type of like mindset stuff will get me to the point where I
could imagine not suffering after the first three minutes.
But I don't do cold. Yeah. So I like that though. That's an
awesome vision. And then of course, the balance factor of
life and understand the value of living in you got, you know, it
would kind of be easy to look at younger people. How old are
you? You look really young, you might be deceptively.
I am a 25. I am a friend. You are your old. I am super. So
with that said, you know, it can be looked at as selfish, right?
Somebody who's going to explore the world for a year and go
after that. And at the same time, like, you're in one of the
prime times of your life to be able to gain all sorts of
insights that might empower you to serve the eight billion in an
even greater capacity beyond what your art with the massive
amazing thing that you're creating with space bar and
space for visuals and, and video animation, which again, we're
going to circle back to wholeheartedly those you listen
in, we are going to crush that subject in a great way. It's
going to be so fun to talk about. And before we do talk
about that, some of you are thinking like, I wish I had the
money to pay for a video animation. You know, I had the
money to do this or that or man, I bet this is going to be
expensive or cost a lot and all that. I'm not shopping
commercial, like shopping networking you into a cell, by
the way. Yeah, those of you who are listening. What I am teeing
up Ryan for those a new question we've started to ask our
leaders. And that is, it's a presumptive question, but one
that I've seen in 1000s and 1000s of entrepreneurs, why do
you think Ryan, leaders hide from funding their vision,
right? You said you're going all in, I might want you to find
out what that means. But why there's so many people who are
taking tiny gambles on their visions of $200 here or $2,000
there. Again, if you're in Africa, and you're spending 2000,
that might be the equivalent of 20,000 years. Oh, yeah. Okay,
there's context. But I see a lot of gamblers in the business
world. Yeah, I think that this is a really great question. I
feel like a lot of it comes back to like scarcity mindset. And
just how you're raised a lot of like what I'm understanding
recently is we are who we are because of like past experiences
and like how we're raised. And so some people might just were
raised in a frugal family where, you know, like, don't spend 25
bucks on this, don't spend 100 bucks on this. And so you're
getting into a business mindset where it's like, oh, I shouldn't
spend $2,000 on these ads, because like, I need to save,
save, save money. But I feel like if you're going to be a
business owner, start your own company, you need to have that
mindset shift when it comes to money from scarcity to like
abundance. If you want to, my stepdad says this, if you want
to make if you want to make money, you have to spend money.
And so it needs to be a mindset shift, take calculated risk.
Trust me, like I grew up with like a frugal family as well.
Like I 1000% get a trillion percent get it. But it's
shifting from a mindset of scarcity, like I'm just gonna
like, save this to actually, I'm going to spend this and actually
fund fund my vision. Because in the end, if you fund your vision,
if you spend a $2,000 test, who knows you could get $10,000 back.
And that could really be the propellant to get you going. So
I would say think about how you were raised. Was that from a
scarcity mindset when it comes to money and shift it to
abundance mindset and take that risk.
It's huge. There's shifts we can make on that. By the way, guys,
finances is just a resource. Same thing can apply to love. You
know, if you're born in an abusive family, learning to go
from the scarcity mindset to hey, there are people out there
who will take care of me. It's scary. It's a big shift. And you
can overdo it on both sides. So what would be some of your
advice on how how do leaders lean into funding their vision?
Yeah, I would say before you even even fund it, like you had
to have like an idea about like what you can do. And you have to
be going back to my book resource I gave, I guess we
confident that you can actually you don't have to be 100%
confident, but you have to have enough confidence to put
yourself out there to actually lean into this business idea.
And basically, from there, once you have the idea, I mean, you
can do this depending on what type of service you're offering,
offering what you're building, you can find pretty cheap ways
to get started. If it's a service offering, maybe go on
upwork, and start freelancing for like a paid paid ad gig or
something that costs $0 to set up. And if you land your first
gig, I mean, the ROI is incredible. So I would say find
ways where you can you where you can test, be confident in what
you're going to do, it all comes back to just confidence.
What about the confident one? Let's shift gears. Those people
have lots of articles they can find on cheap, easy tricks to
build their business. And I'm not putting down what you said
and what people need to grab. Yeah, but shifting to the
visionaries who are fully active, they're in it, they're
two to five years into the process. What can they do to
lean into funding their vision?
To lean into funding their vision? Yeah, I would say if you
are like two to five years in the process, like at some
stage, you have to know like what what works and what doesn't
work for you. And if you don't have that attribution in place,
like definitely get it in place now, because that's how you're
going to be able to double down, let's just say, LinkedIn
Outreach is ways that you can generate your first clients, and
you're getting five 10 minutes a month, you're going to want to
double down on that. So find way find ways to attribute as early
as possible to the success of like booking meetings, and
getting people actually to have conversations with you. So test
stuff, try it out.
I appreciate the humility of not diving into the video animation.
Right?
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Dive into that. And, you know, that's also one of those
elements, right? Test and try that too, right? It depends on
where you're at. So I would say, one of the greatest things I did
along the way was I would rely on and build relationships with
mentors who didn't have a bias. How do you do that? A mentor,
you don't know, a mentor who's a stranger, who has no reason to
guide you one way or the other. And you literally like don't give
them your contact information, somebody on an airplane, right?
To test your idea against that you're just going to part ways
on that can teach you so many things about life, versus the
mentor who's waiting for you to make money. So they get rich,
which is not a bad thing. It's just a different relationship,
right? Or the mentor who you bought into their program, and
they want you to win and be a poster child. So they necessarily
care about your true results. They care about your immediate
results, because it makes them look good, right? There's there's
all sorts of twists and turns with that. So finding mentors
that you can trust, and that you can gravitate towards who can
guide you towards, like Ryan said, trial fiber, right? Going,
you know, investing in and then video animation, I'll put that
one out there going into and trying that. But I'm not suggesting
you who are listening, do that you have an evaluation process,
you need to let people know what your vulnerabilities are, what
your weaknesses are, what you're scared of. And then if you're
talking to somebody who's healthy, that will guide you
towards the resources you need, I highly recommend angel
investing, I highly recommend promissory notes, I highly
recommend, you know, getting the capital from the people around
you might support you, if you are truly committed to your
vision, if it's not a pipe dream, that's a great way to
test it. If you're scared to talk to people about investing
in you, you may not actually be on the vision that is right for
you. And that's okay. You know, you can still discover that too.
So you want to hit that before we go into the worst leadership
experience ever?
The worst leadership experience I've had, you want to hit that
first, anything you want to add to that? Or you want to jump
right into I say we jump into the worst leadership experience.
Let's do that. So can this be either? I'll give one, an
example of whatever is most helpful to the audience for
sure. Yeah, I would say the worst leadership experience I've
had, I was talking about this last Saturday with somebody.
When I was a senior in college, I worked for an AI startup. And
I worked very, it was a small team, there was like six of us.
And I worked directly with the CEO and chief operating officer.
They had experiences like Google, EY, like all these great
companies. And I remember I just always was so I was just filled
with anxiety, like working from them. I never, I never had that
comfortability of being like, oh my god, like, I might get fired
on the spot. Like, I don't, I feel like I don't have the
freedom to make mistakes here. And reflecting on that now,
like, that impacted my experience, and the results that
I could actually give because I was working out of fear instead
of working out of like, I can make a mistake and not get fired
here. So the lesson learned there is you have to develop
some sort of relationship with people that you're working with
to give them the freedom, let them know that they can make
mistakes that they can try stuff that if you don't succeed, we're
not just going to fire you. I think that's what makes a super
healthy relationship. And that's why I try to do a spacebar here
is like, we can talk about anything you guys can test
anything you want to test within a very wide box that you have
here, but you're not going to get fired. And I want to give
them the room that they can be themselves bring themselves
every day instead of just being this anxious self that I was
working for that company.
That's amazing. So would you describe yourself as more of a
fight or flight person if you had to put yourself in that
psychology box, somebody who fights when there's a challenge
or somebody who avoids the conflict? You know, I can tell
you're more you're you're very assertive at this point. Yeah, I
would say back then it was definitely flight. Like if there
was a conflict, I would just like avoid it. Like I would not
be able to speak my mind up about something. And I try to
do that. Bring because I just know that experience and the
people that we're working with are all like around 20 year
olds that are doing some sales work for us. Like, I try to
tell them that like guys, if there's something you want to
say or anything, just like please bring it up. Like, I'm
trying to
get that from that.
Oh, gosh, right. What you felt on that I was the opposite. You
know, I was totally wrong. I still have the same fear. But
not the fear of the mistake. I was going to make the mistake no
matter what, but I was totally intimidated and anxiety
stricken like man, I don't carve my name out for myself here. And
I was about to fight like hell to make it known that I was
supposed to be here. And that's not. So that's that's really
neat that it led to you. Really, it sounds like it led to a very
prominent portion of y'all's company culture. Yeah,
definitely. Let's hit best leadership experience. I'm going
to come back to what you're doing, because I see a lot of
best in what you're doing. Yeah, what's your best leadership
experience ever? Um, you know, I've had two really great leaders
in my life when I worked at HubSpot under Sam Jacobson. He
was my direct manager. He was just awesome. Like, like, shout
out to you, Sam, if you're listening, he he provided so
many learning opportunities for us. He was always there to hear
us out, like very transparently, like I've cried in front of him.
Because it's a BTR role, it is really tough. But he he gave us
that room to he gave us that room and opportunities to
actually succeed in the role. And he was just always there for
us. All is provided opportunities. I speak with him
still to this day about challenges that I run into just
because I know he has so much sales experience. So those career
opportunities, the opportunities gave us was huge. And then my
last job blew me on Cindy gains was her name. She was awesome.
She just provided so much room. And she was very much of a
servant leader, like, what can I do for you? Like, what resources
do you need from me? Those were some of those she was always
asking me that question. And like, that is just like very
uplifting to hear that from your leader where it's not like,
she's looking down on me. It's more like, she's definitely
higher than me, but like, we're equal. She's like, how can I
help you and like best serve you. So I think those two, they
were both like awesome to be able to learn under.
That's huge. That's, that's really cool. And the to be a
leader, and to come to your team with a struggle or a problem,
you know, in the right, right setting, right type of people
involved in that and say, Hey, what do you think about this?
You know, how can I handle this? Or here's how I handled this
situation. And, you know, what do you think I could have done
better? That relationship? It is a very, it's a practice that I'm
learning myself to try to start implementing. So good Sam
Jacobson, excited to have the actual reference to have the
person who knows cross paths in the future. Hopefully we get him
tagged so we can hear how much you honored him. Now I'm going
to point out towards you what I see built you building in your
culture, what I hear you talking about. The way you talk about
your team reminds me of this amazing book, probably the one
of the best leadership books I've ever read tribal
leadership. Okay. And then tribal leadership. When they're
talking about building a company culture, they talk about
shifting the language. And the language they talk about shifting
to is how you talk about your team, and your leadership
opportunities like you emulate exactly what they're trying to
teach 2030 4050 60 year old executives to learn. You started
to unlock that at 25. That's amazing. You're how many do you
mind if I ask how many team members you have? Yeah, we have
12. But I've been Yeah, we have 12 team members. But fortunately,
I've led a bunch of other teams, I managed to pull one time. So
that was 37 people, I was like 19 years old directly
supervising them. So it's been a lot of trial and error to get
the best out of people. Sure. Of course, all trial and error
leads to leads to easier paths down the road. All right, we're
going to circle back again to video animation. But first, the
most important thing that Ryan Atkinson could share with us, if
this is your last opportunity to give advice to a visionary, what
powerful lesson kind of the visionaries learn from your
experience? I would say from my experience, if you guys could
take like anything away, I would say like, really just just take
action. That's the biggest thing that will set you apart from
your peers. For a lot of times, I was filled with like, Oh, I
don't know what I want to do. I don't know what I want to do. I
don't know how to do this. But it's just taking a small step
in the right direction will ultimately lead to like big
steps. I was looking yesterday at like, revenue we were doing a
year ago. And it's like crazy to see like the difference in it
now. And it's so cool to see like how far we've come. So if
you can do anything, just take small steps each day for yourself
or your team in the direction that you want to go in.
That's awesome. One rep at a time. Exactly. muscles built.
That's so cool. Very neat. Well, we're going to dive in. Now to
what we talked about the truth about explainer videos, revenue
growth. I'm going to put a little banner on here. And I'm
hoping that Cynthia pulls up some of your website, we'll talk
a little about those videos. The thing that turned me on to video
animated videos was when I was I was I was probably there around
online. And I come across this video of this drummer he goes.
And then he starts showing me it was a Spotify announcement of
Spotify coming to the United States to compete against
Pandora. And it was an animation I was I was a business at the
time. And I was like, holy crap, we need a video like that. That
was amazing. You know, how do you do that? So you've been
working on video animation for a while. What are the benefits
you've seen? What are some of the obstacles people should be
aware of? And I'll probably double down on both.
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the obstacles that we see, we'll
start we'll start the con first or the bad sides. First, I would
say the con are like the obstacles we see when people
come to us is our ICP ideal customer profile is typically 10
to 250 employees. And a lot of times people have one person on
their marketing one to like three and they're just like, we
don't have the resources we don't have the time to do the
script writing to do the video creation to do the voiceover. So
we handle all of that. So a lot of times when it comes to
animation is just like, we don't know how to do it and we don't
have the time or resources to do it. And some of the benefits
they're seeing with this, I mean, this one piece of asset
can be used on social media, a website, email, collateral,
YouTube, anywhere you can imagine this one piece of
asset, you can spread across like four or five different
channels to really bring your to bring your company to life to
bring your software product to life with product screenshots,
make it so it's not just a boring put together video, it
just makes you more engaging and makes your company a little bit
more notable when you guys are putting effort into your product
through animated videos.
Absolutely. One one thing I appreciate about your brand is
we're looking at it is that you transparently you have that
pricing out there too. Yeah, we've worked on breaking down
some of the components that go with that. Visionaries who are
listening, just know that that's an iterative process. I mean,
if you're in the process of doing that, too, you're not
going to get it right the first time. And you're always able to
adjust and change. You don't necessarily want to be boxed in
by those components until you're at scale. Now, to dive into some
of the I think the deeper darker things and passion about with
this, we launched our first video at restaurant connect as
inspired by that at Spotify video. And we spent 2300 on it.
Our quote from them was 9800 I believe we were beasts when it
came to sales and negotiations. So we ate them. We totally ate
them alive as a tag team duo of we know how we're gonna get this
right. So they did great on the video. And we launched the
video, knowing that yes, there was a bad leader for anybody who
wants to comment that was not good leadership for vendor
relations. So we take that video knowing we're going to be viral
all the restaurants who could buy our software, you know, would
would come in droves. And we launched that campaign. And we
woke up the next day. And there was 17 views. Oh, no, there was
17 views. Wait, I anticipated at least our restaurants would have
watched it. Right? I thought for sure, at least you know, we
sent an email campaign behind this we the primary founder of
the company, we were junior co founders, finally had the
opportunity to say, now stop messing around and go back to
work. It put the nail in the coffin of any attempt we ever
made for digital marketing, we completely shut down all
digital marketing stuff and decided, all right, we're just
gonna call restaurants and stuff from here on out, we're just
going to go about a road warrior business the way we were
together. Oh, man, that was a total kick, you know, yeah,
Keith, I'll call it and then you know, we, we end up, I end up
seeing that happen over and over for businesses, till I found
myself a video power marketing, where we had campaigns where we
had 30 plus 30 to one returns on direct click through
attribution videos $15,000 spent $450,000 and sells from
treadmill spot, you know, wire, who buys $1,000 product or two?
Well, everybody watched our ads. You know, that was insane. And
there's so much room in between those realities, so many so many
bridge gaps to bridge in that, that all you visionaries
listening in, please be careful. Like, please be wise about
bridging the gaps, because it is a painful reality when you've
thrown everything in the kitchen sink at an opportunity. And then
what do you do? You turn around and you blame Facebook, Facebook
ads don't work, email campaigns don't work, you justify your
dumb mistake to go to go grab an asset, right? This you're gonna
put a board across San Francisco canal, and call it a bridge. And
it floats away and you're like, well, bridges don't work. That's
not the case. So Ryan, what what what qualifies somebody, in your
opinion to be ready for you guys to build their script to move
their brand forward. And I'm going to nitpick it probably
just so you know,
that's it. That's okay. I'd love to hear the feedback you have.
But yeah, but what qualifies who we work best with, as I said, is
like a one person two person marketing team. And if we go on
their website, what we want to really see from our best clients
is, have you created white papers in the past? Do you have case
studies? Do you have ebooks? Do you have guides? Do you have
multiple products or solutions? Because we really can create top
of the funnel videos, middle bottom of the funnel videos. So
let's just say if you have a customer testimonial video, we
see that typically, it's going to be some super high produced
video where it's like, someone talking to a camera wearing a
suit, like no one actually wants to watch that. So what we could
do with that, for example, is take that and create like an
animated video with them in like the bottom right corner, but
just make it way more engaging. So our best clients we see they
have a well built out resource section, they have multiple
products and solutions, and they want to be forward thinking in
their marketing efforts, they know the value of video just
inherently, they know the trends in video. So when you get on a
call, and we see that we are very thrilled because they've
been they've invested in marketing in the past, and they
want to continue to invest in marketing. So those are some of
our best clients that we work with.
Yeah, absolutely. Having having qualified funnels. Yeah. I want
I want to highlight two realities. I'll pull back a
little bit. If I had told JK Rowling, hey, you probably
shouldn't write that book on a napkin. Like here's a here's a
framework you can follow. Yeah, I would have destroyed her
billion dollar opportunity. Yeah. So anybody who's listening
to Ryan, I talked about this or anybody else having the shows,
know that our circumstances and realities do not represent your
reality, you are the vision of what you need to do. And your
heart and mind has the ability to guide you to what you need to
do based on your perspective. And we're to facilitate and give
better options sometimes, but those better options are not the
full control factor of your success. So again, I'm not
going to be able to do that. So again, I would not, I would
miss that book had some stupid coach derailed her on her, you
know, confidence and you're not doing this right. So moving over
towards entrepreneurship and the growth strategies that we talk
about right now, if you're hearing this, and you haven't
launched a video yet, I hope you take that as a sign that this
is probably very helpful information for you to have, I'm
going to turn to the revenue growth workbook that we use the
most. What I've done with it since then. This is almost 10
years ago. So let me see here, I'm gonna try to get some of the
stuff out of the way so that we can see it easier. This is so
helpful. My job, my primary job was to grow revenues, that was
easy at video power, because they were already super
successful. So that was not hard. My secondary job was to
help the executives help the interns become executives, or
let them go if they couldn't. Three weeks later, the perfect
job was to help the executives. They're the exception to the
rule. They were phenomenal. Then, in addition to that, it was
to disqualify all of the people who are coming to us for business
growth that were not possible to scale. Yeah, Jake did not want
testimonials of brands who could not scale because it's mediocre
testimonial or next thing you know, they say they have bad
leads and have a great experience. We only wanted people
who talk to us. So we would go through who would talk great
people. So I didn't total down the fact here as anybody is
and I thought, there are other labels that tell people what
you've done with our phone, and they gave me a Singapore状
and they gave me more lit seating so I could have returned
the balance. I have just taken the two days off the bridge of
enterprise. Now Take the only facial face, but I must say I
room for it. And so that was, I again, a really hard phall检
it.orns flip screen. And then my Periodic
process, that's because you need to do it on the front end. You've got to figure that out as a wise
steward of your venture. What are my results possibly going to look like with that asset?
Ryan has too much to learn about your business. He doesn't know how many people you have answering
the phones. He doesn't know how many people, what your close ratios are. He doesn't know what your
average order value is, what your profit margins are. All of those aspects, they might dive into
and ask about. So I'll give you that. If you're not, now you can add those to your list. But
the point being, when we spend $500 on ads and we end up, let's just look at the simple version of
this calculator from 500 to 500. If you lose $500, 99% of business owners say,
I wasted money. Facebook stole $500 from me. I lost. That's perfectly justifiable and normal.
And it's completely short-sighted and immature. You have these views. I'm not going to talk and
defend branding. If you want to look at branding, you can go watch your TV and you'll see that all
the major companies in the world are almost all featured on TV. There's something about branding
and it's a complicated formula and it's easy for a cheap conversion expert who knows you're addicted
to cocaine. I mean, addicted to conversions, whatever one of the two, they know that you will
buy from them if they can just get you a couple of quick victories, but they will probably hurt
and crush your brand long-term. So in addition to that learning, well, how do you control your cost
per view? But more importantly, this formula for all the mathematicians are way ahead of me. You're
like, Oh my gosh, that is a winning formula. Why? Cause they know math. Had you just spent $40 more
on that campaign and you'd not been cheap with your launch, you would have had your first
uh-huh. Isn't that fun? It's like, Whoa, but since the hoes, just like when you fire a cell
drop out for three weeks because they're not as good at you as you are. What? Like they need more
than three weeks of training. IBM gives you a year of training before you're even allowed to talk to
anybody like, okay, all right. So that's one tiny aspect. You spend a little bit more. What happens
to your return on that spend? It starts to go down a little bit. Why? Cause you've now invested more,
but you haven't had any new gains and your new customers come through. So this stuff, again,
if this scares you, please don't let it take the time to take one bite at a time of the elephant,
one step at a time to understand it. But I will teach one final trick on this. And this will help
Ryan you with all of your customers. And I, this is a mission I'm on. We have got to help.
They billion people understand how to be wise stewards. Ryan, 99% of people do not know that
they have 90% control over their cost per view on Facebook. Have you ever heard that before?
I've not heard that before. Actually, I've never met somebody who has Facebook will block your ad.
If it breaks the policies, regulations, that's the only thing they will block your ad for. They're
not out to get you small business owner. They are not out. They want your money. They want you to
spend. Trust me. They're very happy with the profits that come in from ads, but you do have
control of your cost. And here's why. If you launch an ad that is awful, that drives people away from
their platform, your ad says, sign up for my really boring newsletter. It's not very inspiring. And I
don't even know if it's worthwhile, but just sign up for this newsletter. What is going to happen to
your cost? Ryan, do you know? I do not know. It's going to go up because Mark's not going to come
and tell you, Hey dude, your ad sucks. Take it off my platform. He's going to drive your cost way up.
And when he drives, he's not, the system is. Because if people are complaining about the ad
or uninspired by it, what are those people going to do? Are they going to stay on Facebook or are
they going to go to a different platform? They'll go to a different platform if it drives it up.
I'm saying if, yeah, exactly. So the audience, if the audience sees a bunch of ads they can't relate
to and they see a bunch of noise, remember then you don't remember this because you're young.
In the nineties, you used to see all these, all these ads of belly fat and gold teeth,
like your disgusting teeth. Let's try to convince you to go to the dentist. They block that stuff.
Nobody wants to see it. Right. They started to curate content and people, I don't want to talk
about curation and, and you know, whether we're getting into the siphoned situations like niche
marketing and all that. Not the point. The point is they're going to block your ad if it sucks,
but they're going to do so by just driving your cost up. And then what they're trying to do is
tell you your ad sucks. Please fix it. Please change it. We will reward you if you do. When you
launch an ad that people love, how do we know this? When they like it, when they comment,
when they share it, that is an absurd thing to happen with an ad. People hate ads. What happens
all the time when you see a good ad. If we did an ad for a restaurant, Ryan, I opened a restaurant
in New Braunfels, Texas. I loved you. Free dessert, no strings attached. Our cost per view goes way,
way down. Facebook gets excited and says, Ooh, we can reward our members with that. Oh, everybody's
liking this. Let's make it happen. Wow. Yeah. Now we're crushing it. Why? Because we shifted gears
from selfish advertising of me, me, me, look at what we do and how cool we are at it to giving
something of value to the market. And when you shift gears to give something super valuable to
the market, it's going to draw noise. It's going to draw attention. And a free dessert is easy to
come up with. Yeah. Your vision has to do with legal or business, you know, or something else.
It's super boring. Like this type of podcast, you know, not as fun as watching, I don't know,
cat videos on YouTube, right? You're going to have a harder time getting traction in the market.
So make sure that you know how to gain traction, your distribution, you know, how to distribute the
app, the video itself. And then, you know, maybe talk and maybe talk to companies like Spacebar
visuals in the process of doing that. But I just hope that more visionaries take the time to look
at the strategy of getting that asset out there, because what you're building, Ryan, is one of the
hottest commodities in the market period right now. And whether you didn't have the great team or not,
like you were in such demand, right? To get these videos that it's a very easy thing to kind of win
in. But I love the principles of leadership that you've also showcased today. Like I want to,
I can't wait to see your brand just take off and succeed. And it's like, dude, you impressed me
today. It was, that was awesome. I would call you out. I think my, anybody who's listened to a lot
of episodes, I know I would call you out. I appreciate that. So anything else you'd like
to add today before we wrap up? Nothing that comes to mind. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. It
was great to chat with you. And yeah, if you guys have any questions regarding Spacebar visuals,
please feel free to reach out. We are providing value to you guys as well. If you guys do reach
out, we'll give you a free video on any package. So, um, just comment that you were listening in
and yeah, we're happy to do that. Free video if you buy a package, right? Yep. So we'll bring out
that price for you anymore. Oh, got it. I'm gonna call it out. And at the same time, what we're going
to do is we're going to be putting on the landing page for those who are listening, the action steps
that we pre-approve as well for, for Ryan's programs. And so Ryan, if you have episodes
that you've been on where you talk about the dynamics of how to build these videos from other
podcasts, happy to put that on there. Anything that helps anybody who gravitated towards what you,
what you've provided today in terms of this interview, if you've got a portfolio of videos
that make sense to put on there or a specific video explainer that you want listed there, like
we want to make sure that everybody is able to go and put into action all the things that you may
have just learned from this experience. And if you got feedback for us, all of us, like hit us with
the comments, give us the feedback. If you want to be on the show to visionaries, I don't want to
forget that. My favorite call to action on the page is be our guest. Click on the be our guest
button, apply to be on the show. If you've got a vision that you feel matters because you're serving
people with your heart and like you're giving to others, we want to host you on the show. We want
to get it out there and help the world see what you're capable of. And, and we'll root for your
success as well. So thank you guys for joining us today and we will see you on the next episode of
Vision Pros Live. Take care everybody. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you
tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as
well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and
attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision.