Ryan McLean : Slightly Unconventional

#1 Making A Decent Living Online

Welcome to the Instructions Not Included. A documentary style podcast following me (Ryan McLean) and my life as I try to make a decent living online.

Watch (or listen) over my shoulder and see what I am doing on a day-to-day basis to grow my business into a thriving and successful educational company.

life-lowresIn Today’s Episode

Today on instructions not included we talk about who I am, why created this podcasts and what exactly do I do?

Hi and welcome to Instructions Not Included, a podcast about me Ryan McLane and my life as I try and generate a decent living online. I quit my job in October 2013, a little over a year ago and I’ve been working online ever since earning just enough money to get by. I’ve also been a part of a government program in Australia that helps new businesses get off the ground and that runs out in about two weeks. But I achieved my goal of earning enough money to survive and not have to go back to work. And so this is me documenting my journey going from earning just enough money to get by to earning enough money to do successfully and hopefully growing a large and successful business in the future that has an impact on the world.

When people ask me: “What do you do with yourself?” or “What do you do for work?” It’s always a very hard question to answer. The go to for me is I’m an internet marketer but that always gets extremely puzzled looks and so then I go on to explain that I run my own websites and then I still get puzzled looks, people think that I do client work and I create web sites and do designed for people which I don’t do and I don’t like doing. So then explaining to them that I create videos and podcasts and articles and I sell information products, you know, that kind of creates a little bit more clarity but not really enough so that they know what I do. So how do you make money again? This is very common question that I get asked. It is really interesting to hear my wife’s take on the matter. “You run your own websites that you create content for, that’s probably what I would say now. The best of it is like in a [inaudible 1:55] well, you’d say you’re in internet marketing and they would go, what does he do though, like. And I would say, “Umm, he writes articles and makes podcasts about specific topics on his sites.”

It’s hard to explain. So my major website is www.onproperty.com.au which is an Australian property website and it’s slowly becoming one of the larger players in the property space online, thanks to all the work that I’ve been doing. For that website I make videos, podcasts and articles to market myself and I sell a premium membership that helps people find positive cash flow properties. There are properties that generate a passive income after all of their expenses.

On Property is a good gig. It is easy work. I’ve got a good boss. I can do some fun things. But it’s also starting to bore me. I love to learn and I love a challenge and I kind of feel like I’m just going through the motions which I’m guessing a lot of people feel like when they’re at work. Is any point just feeling like you’re going through the motions if you’ve left a high-paying job and going out on yourself so you didn’t have to feel like this? Well unfortunately that’s how I’m feeling at the moment. I love my customers. I love the growth that I’ve had. I love the topic of property and I love talking about property but I just feel a bit stale. I feel like maybe the videos I’m creating aren’t good enough or maybe I just need to outsource more things. I don’t know what the solution is but hopefully through this podcast I can document it to you and we can work our way forward so that yes I can begin to earn more money but also that I can begin to enjoy my job more and enjoy my life more because ultimately that’s why we want to earn money, we want to have a good life and so if I’m earning good money but not living a good life well then what’s the point?

I was speaking with my wife last night about these feelings that I have – feelings of discontentment, boredom, a bit of depression thrown in there and she was saying to me (and she is really great like this), she was just trying to brainstorm with me to give me ideas. She’s like, “Well, what do you have to do? Why is it so boring? Why is it the same thing?” And I told her about the daily activities that I do which you will hear more about in an upcoming episodes and then she’s like, “Well can you outsource or pay people to do it?” And the truth is there are definitely parts that I can outsource. She’s like, “Well, why don’t you go and do that?” I’m like, “It’s so much work to create all the training videos in order to hire a VA and get them to do the job right.” You see, I had some experience hiring Vas through platforms like oDesk and things like that in the past and I’ve done all these training videos, done all the work and then because I’m a start up, because my business is new, well then my systems change and the way I want to deliver content changes and so all the training videos I did have just been wasted and are no longer useful anymore so I’ve got to start again.

So I guess it’s that daunting task of starting again and doing those training videos is really holding back. I need to do that so I can begin to outsource some of the work and free up some of my head space do creative things and things that I love to do rather than spending my time sitting at my computer, punching numbers, editing transcriptions and the boring things that come with my job. So today that’s what I’m going to do – a mix of creating training videos for VAs in the future, as well as creating a couple videos for my website and getting those up and running.

Creating these videos and getting this automation I hope that I can free up my mind so that I can focus on more creative things but I also hope to find the way forward that is going to be more fun for me, more engaging for me, and I really want to create better content, more exciting, more engaging, educational content rather than what I’ve been doing which is just, you know, talking head in front of the camera. I want to become a better story teller. I want to become better at engaging people. I want to have high quality videos and high quality sound. At the moment I’m recording this on my iPhone headphones. I do have another microphone that’s coming in the mail so that should be here shortly. But I want to be excellent. If I’m going to do work like this I may as well do it well and do it to the best of my ability not some half half hodge podge job. And so I’m hoping that by creating these training videos, freeing up some of my time that I’ll have the time and the flexibility to be able to do that.

Before I go here are some scenes from an upcoming episode:

First I wanted to about email that I got last night that cost me $300 and it made me really pissed for a while but then I realized that I shouldn’t actually be angry about it. Here is the email: “Hi Ryan, could you please cancel my membership and refund the money to my account. Thanks.” I’ll leave the person anonymous just for their sake. Basically this email is from an annual subscriber to my On Property Plus Membership which is $300 per year and they signed up in mid to early October so it’s been two to three months of using the service and now they want a refund.

If you what to hear that episode or subscribe to the podcast then search for “Instructions Not Included” in iTunes or Stitcher or go to instructionsnotincluded.tv.

That’s my day today. Join me on this podcast journey about me and my life and what I’m doing to improve my business, to grow my income, to live my life with my family and to have fun along the way and hopefully help a couple of you, teach you some things about marketing and improve your life in the process.



One response to “#1 Making A Decent Living Online”

  1. Jocelyn says:

    Hi Ryan, love your blog posts on your journey to achieving financial freedom it is truly inspirational. I really believe you will get to where you want to be soon! I have also checked out your website onproperty.com.au, it is very insightful thank you.

    Btw, your podcast for this blog is missing.

    Keep up the good work!

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