Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 'Best of' The Radcast for first half of 2021

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Welcome to this week’s episode on The Radcast! Get ready to digest a TON of value and insights from The Category King Christopher Lochhead, Professional Chef Noah Sims, The Bachelor Alum Ben Higgins, ESPN Sports Journalist Reporter Marty Smith and more...In this episode on The Radcast, we’ve compiled the best episodes from the first half of 2021 where host Ryan Alford talks with guests who brought a ton of value about mindset shifts, building your brand, how your attitude determines how you dominate the market, and a LOT more...If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, let us know by visiting our website www.theradcast.com or leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Be sure to keep up with all that’s radical from @ryanalford @radical_results @the.rad.cast If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

The hottest part of ending is starting again. You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Rad, Radcast. The key principles of marketing though really have not changed, The key principles of marketing, though, really have not changed. Right. And so some of the tactics, some of the technologies, that's changed. But the reality of how you design categories is still the same. The reality of how you create demand and capture demand is still the same. The reality around how you build legendary breakthrough products is still the same.

And some of the approaches of how we get there are very different. But at a principal level, a lot of the stuff's the same. And then in certain cases, you know, new technologies have opened up, if you will, new principles. And that's cool, too. But yes, shit has changed a lot in the last 30 years or so. I used to call what we do a company factory. Likewise, old fashioned. So we are now a venture collective. in the last 30 years or so? I used to call what we do a company factory, likewise old-fashioned, so we are now a venture collective.

So if you want to think about it, what we do is combine several elements that are discrete in most of the world. And those elements are the ideas, the entrepreneurs, the executional know-how, and the capital. And we put that all together. And we believe that by putting that all together, you are much more efficient and seamless and that the opportunity for success is greater. And so we're always trying to think about like, you know, at the end of the day, if we're going to market a product, it has to solve a need of

the customer. And there are probably product features and benefits that make those, uh, that actually solve those problems. So those need to be communicated, but the way you communicate them can be really, really irreverent. And the more irreverent we've made things, the more it tends to stand out from 99.9% of other advertisers out there that are pitching their products in like boring generic ways. We had to figure out what the root cause of a bad commute was, right? And it's not just because there are tons of cars on the road, but it's why are there tons of cars on the road? And so we found it in economic development and urban planning actually. And we kind of understand the problem a little bit more. We look at what their needs are, right? What their needs,

the needs of their tenants are. And we kind of work around that and get clients that way, I guess. Even taking one step further, why do you assume that I am coming here for a mission-based shop? Like, why is the search part of the first thing I see? What if you changed it completely? What if you started off with, I'm just looking and you go from there. You know, what's interesting about that thought is, you know, we actually have been thinking about that a lot with fourth ave and the fact that we have over 7,000 items and the, the shopper that's coming is more often than not somebody who's trying to figure out what's the right product that I use for my hair or skin anyway. So before I, I'm not

coming in and saying, I want this particular product. Sure. Maybe about 40% do, but still about 60% are trying to discover. And so we're trying to do a better job of how do you lead that discovery? How do you make that experience? Something that's exciting, something they want to come back to something that's enjoyable because that's what you get when you go into the store. Actually, that's the alternative. What a lot of these consumers think they don't get in the store is a good quality shopping experience. So they go online, but they're just shopping online, but they don't know what's out there. You have to think about if I were to be picking up a product in store and looking at it, those are pretty much the same exact angles I would need when I'm on a website.

It's not just front and back, but think about all the things that happen in that one moment when you hold a product. You're understanding not just the basic dimensions, but weight. How big is it? How will it fit? Does this actually fit in my, if it's shampoo, will it fit in my bathroom? Is it going to be too big? All these things are questions that are getting answered very implicitly in the shopping journey.

Now you have to think about how you're going to do that online. You can literally see the Instagram ads in your head, right? It's nightmarishly boring. And so I decided to just do something totally crazy and different in the space. And I incorporated three weeks after I got laid off because I was so taken with the business model. And then I discovered eucalyptus Lyle cell as an incredibly sustainable luxury material in the space that was not heavily adopted yet. And now we've kind of become the de facto eucalyptus sheet brand in the United States.

A lot to unpack there. I think the biggest. No, it wasn't even that long as much as there was a lot of insight there for anyone at any stage of their brand or development. And it's so many people get so emotionally tied to, you know, a product. And, you know, to hear that you had no emotional tie to a eucalyptic sheet, it warms my heart that you actually did this from a smart perspective. The point of the matter is that once you're pushed up against the wall, you really figure things out. Either you figure things out or you just crumble. But we opt to, you know, figure things out and help other small businesses figure things out as well, especially the small ones.

Yeah, and that's a big topic. We're a digital agency, and we work with getting more into medium- it's a really underserved category because they typically do not have the budgets, the sophistication, or the ability to kind of leverage what has become a democratized internet, but they don't have all of the assets or quite all of it put together. So I love anything that's getting and working towards that, which really seems like what Hello Wolfie's doing. One strong point of view I had around the product was that it needed to be able to be good enough such that a famous person,

a professional athlete, someone who wanted to improve would wear whoop uh and we weren't going to pay them like essentially we didn't need to sponsor everyone who wore the product and i i said that if the product delivered on its value proposition was which was that it could measure recovery it could tell you how hard to work out it should tell you when to go to bed. It could make you a better athlete, person, you name it. Then people should pay us for that. And by the way, if it didn't deliver on those things, there was no amount of money we could pay someone to wear something 24-7 that they weren't getting value out of. I mean, ask yourself, how many things in your life do you wear 24-7? If you look at the best of anybody in your space, whatever, plumbing, I don't care if you own a boating company.

I don't care if you've got a painting. I don't care if it's pizza. There is a peak and there are people who are at that peak. They are managing their social media well. They are investing in it. They're spending time on it. They're making it clean, clear and under control. They are investing in it. They're spending time on it. They're making it clean, clear, and under control. They're building it up.

So my first step is always to get you to 100,000 followers. For the local businesses, you go maybe 10, 20, 30. You know what I mean? But really, the main identity here is how can we get a lot of people buzzing about this business? How do we do that? A lot of people, a lot of people on every, I want every view I can get. And then we start to look for, okay, credibility. It comes back down to fame engineering. How do you position your brand to the point where people want to come to you and eventually where you're so big. Sometimes my clients, like they're so big after a

while of just working with me that it's just like they don't need like who why do they need me you don't need me to to you know to get introduced to big guys anymore you're you're a big guy people i've had that like we're clients like we're paying for podcast placements we're paying for tv slots they're paying for forbes an They're paying for Forbes and entrepreneur. And we've done the fame engineering. We've built their content infrastructure and I helped them with the brand, the media. And I, and I don't know how scalable it is. I don't even know if I want to scale it. You know, I like the fact that it's super boutique and that everybody I work with gets best friend customer service. That's huge on an agency scale.

It's like you could text your best friend at 11 p.m. on Sunday, a brand new idea or something. We'll work it out. We're going to work it out together. You know, I'm your best friend. You know what I mean? I got your back. It's like that.

So keep that door open when I'm working with a client. It's like best friend customer service. You can talk to me at any time. We're going to consult. I am rocking with you on this. I took all the different commonalities from the times that I pitched, whether it's email or cold call. And at this point, it's thousands of them. And I started to notice patterns of when an editor would actually respond and when it kind of just went into the trash.

And so after years of doing this, I mean, now I've gained over 100, 1 billion organic views for like all of my clients, most of them whom are super early stage. Some of them don't even have a website. Um, I noticed that there were some key elements to a pitch that usually gets noticed. And so that is how I came up with my CPR method. That is kind of the tangible part of it. But I think a bigger part of it is the mindset part. And I think, you know, in a saturated market, we know that traffic alone is not enough, right? So if I see an ad, like whatever, but if I'm debating between, let's say, you know, two companies, and I see that you've lent your expertise to a podcast or to an entrepreneur, I'm probably going to go with

you, even if it's more expensive and marketing just doesn't get you there, right? You know that because you're in branding. So PR is the only way to both get authority and traffic. So that's kind of what I'm talking about here is that earned media. And so how do you have a conversation with a journalist who you've never met and you probably never will and get them to feel like your pitch is value driven enough that they want to share it with their audience i have viewed successes as over the last few years as like really like four basic tentpoles and i ran through them a little bit earlier but happiness health growth and purpose um and when you know you you can be in really good shape on on the side of that, but still be depressed.

And so there's an alignment with the things that you and the same token. Somebody can give, if what's your passion in life, like surfing, and all you want to do all day is surf and you don't care, um, you know, that you live in like an efficiency apartment and, and all it takes to afford that lifestyle is to give like two hours of surfing lessons a day. And then you can surf for the rest of the day. If that's success for you, then it's for nobody else to define it for you. That's, that's all that you need. And that's all that matters. And so I think as I've gotten older and matured and been around a lot of people who define success for themselves, it really is up to us individually to determine what we're after.

But then I knew that I wanted to scale fast. And so I have a business partner, Jr Jr helps me a ton on the kitchen side of things. I do another side of the growth side of things. And then it became, let's scale this thing. Let's make it to where other people can open their own. And we became the first meal prep franchise to teach people how to open up their own commissary kitchen, if you will,

and distribute to their satellite stores. And it took off me. I mean, granted, I'm totally fast forwarding past all the shit you go through and whatever, but it took off. And so now fast forwarding a lot, here we are with 50 locations sold, 27 currently open and everywhere from Greenville, South Carolina, all the way to Spokane, Washington. This morning, I was talking with all of your associates, five of them, and I was explaining to them about like marketing strategy and about how so many of these influencers have no concept of how ridiculous they sound when they come up to a business.

It's like, imagine friends. It's like, take yourself out of a business. Imagine I just met you and was like, hey, listen, uh, we can be friends, uh, for like a thousand dollars. I can give you an unquantifiable result that I have really no idea what it is. But if you do this and pay me, then I can do this. And then you do that to a business and say that to business. Hey, listen, you know, I know you don't know me from Adam, but for a thousand dollars, because I have these numbers, I can give you another unquantifiable, youantifiable thing. That's a great ROI. It's like you, you're never going to establish a foundation with that company. They're going to look at you being like, what's going on?

Will some companies pay? Yeah. Thousands of companies pay tons and tons, but they're pulling back away from that. And I, I got news for people, not a lot of people talking about this, but like influencers and all that stuff, that money is going to be starting to get drawn back because you got people like me, got people like you, people like the constellation union that we'll get to the see you later. Um, I like that to see you later. Um, but understanding that you can get so much substantially ROI better with real deal people. It's like, why do you want to pay somebody that clearly is not invested in your company to be able to get a incredible result that you can't tell me the result? As a reporter and as a host as well, I do a lot more hosting now. Yeah,

especially well, Marty and McGee. I mean, you guys are sharing thoughts there. And that's an opinionated platform. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you straight up, brother, when it comes to something that we are passionate about, you're going to get every ounce of our real. And that's what's expected of us from our employer, and that's a standard that we hold ourselves to as journalists and men. But so much of what we get to do on that platform is fun.

And I hate the word brand, but I'm sure it's a word that gets used often on your platform and in your ad agency there. The brand that we've built is one that is fun, but it's very honest, and people enjoy spending time with us in an open interview platform, not because our questions are easy, but because our questions are fair and open-ended. This is the first Super Bowl where a lot of people can't get together like they used to. Back in the day when we were consulting on Super Bowl ads, it was all about like, look, you got to tell a visual story. You got to tell something that doesn't require audio because 90% of the time people are going to be at a party probably drinking and probably you know just with a bunch of friends and you're you're you're going to be

drowned out this is the first time that attention was very important and i think the super bowl advertising in this context actually failed at taking advantage of that opportunity to have people's attention because you can actually like take a message and run with it i think the best the best version of that was like some of the social stuff that that happened on the side and and i think that was the coolest part of the super bowl that i want to talk about as well as the social networking that the twitter ads that were released like during during this time that people were retweeting and talking about because people had more time to go on Twitter.

People had more time to go on social. And those were the things that were trending on Twitter last night was the things that were social-based, things that people weren't served during the Super Bowl itself. I think I've gotten to see uniquely both sides, the pre-influencer side of it and then the post. And I kind of walked the line in the middle and saw it from both ends. It is a big business now.

There's a lot of money that gets poured into it. I think probably rightfully so. Social media is a very engaged audience. You get a lot of people following people for reasons. But I think it's a really scary proposition, too, to some of these contestants that come on the show and they go from zero to hero overnight and they don't know, like immediate fame is, can be like suffocating, paralyzing, confusing. You can wake up one morning and have a million followers and lose yourself in the process because it goes from you just highlighting your life and sharing it with family and friends to now asking yourself the question, how do I stay more relevant and how do I get engaged with my followers?

And so your lifestyle starts to turn into that. You start to become a character. And I think that's scary. I think it gets really, really hard for a lot of these people in all aspects. TikTok. The next YouTube? Or always somewhat niche? Oh, no. Not niche.

Whether it's the next YouTuber or not, it's a monster. Yeah. it's a monster yeah and the funny part is um it's not like tiktok was uh a leader by leaps and bounds over other platforms when we looked we've looked at instagram we've looked at pinterest we've looked at all the different social media sites when you combine all those scores together tiktok wasn't different it wasn't the best but what was different about tiktok was the speed at which it was doing it so if an average curve was you know every couple or three or four minutes you're getting a high from a platform a subconscious high tiktok was doing it almost four times faster and when it's doing it that quick, you just spend more time.

To your point of the vortex, that's basically it. So what you're saying is TikTok is the cocaine of social media. Is that what we're saying? I would say TikTok is the Gatorade that allows you to keep playing the game. The reason I am so passionate about this idea of an online presence is because if you don't control your online narrative in today's digital first world, something or someone else will. And you know where to find us at the.rad.cast on Instagram. I'm at Ryan Alford on Instagram and everywhere across the web. Instagram, and everywhere across the web. And please find us, the new and improved, theradcast.com,

where you can search for any of the topics we cover and find all of the content, all the highlights, all of the badassery that is. You'll know where to find us, and we'll see you next time.