The whole reason I started this podcast was my wife kept telling me that I needed to have a marketing blog.
I didn’t want to start a marketing blog (bad past experience) but every time I would talk about my business my passion for marketing would shine through.
In this episode we get feedback from my wife and my friends Jesse and Ross about what they think about the first episode of Instructions Not Included.
In Today’s Episode
- Why my wife kept encouraging me to talk about marketing
- Why Ross thinks this podcast won’t appeal to many people
- What Jesse wants to see on this podcast
Transcription
I’m the same as you are. I really want to and working towards it and getting closer and closer towards having an awesome lifestyle or a pretty good income that I can just maintain a great lifestyle by just working online and working from home and working with my family and stuff like that close by rather than going to an office. That’s Jesse Milani one of my friends and another online entrepreneur. We hear feedback from Jesse and my other friend Ross about what they think about the first episode of the podcast. So as I am recording this the podcast hasn’t gone live yet but I have shared it with these close friends of mine and I wanted to get some feedback and then share that feedback with you. We also talk about the name how did I come up with “Instructions Not Included” cause the fact is I came up with a few names before I got to this. So we talk about the naming process and the things that I went through to choose this name.
Hey and welcome to Instructions Not Included a start-up story about me Ryan McLane as I try and generate a decent living online. Follow my journey the highs and the lows the successes and the mistakes that I make as I try and generate significant income online and build a business basically from scratch. I’ve been running it for about a year so I’m coming midway the story but I’m hoping by following my journey you can learn a thing or two.
So what is the question is why did you keep encouraging me to pursue a website or something or to talk about marketing rather than the websites I was doing? It was I think that in the past whenever you had someone come to you and ask for advice or you were to go open a new product it’s like marketing always came through. No matter what website it was or if it was your mates business it was always about marketing. For you it became a love more than just a subject I don’t think you even noticed. I think you do even realised when people would ask you for advice they would normally pay for you would give advice based on your experience. I don’t think you would ever realise that would have been a topic and it probably wouldn’t have been a topic you that you would have ever studied it wouldn’t have been something you would have thought you would love or enjoyed but its turned out to be part of all the different sides it’s just come through the mold.
It’s kind of all I talk about really. Whenever I talk about websites it’s all I talk about. Yeah, I think without knowing it has become a passion with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I was really scared of being less creative and making money online so I wasn’t making money online. What do you think about that? I think you have always been up front about that you’ve never pretended to be a billionaire and you’ve never pretended to own businesses and properties you just offered up information at a price that normal people could afford. So I mean most people don’t want to google and they don’t want to search for themselves but if you’ll offer them information that’s exactly what they want what does it really matter if you’re not a billionaire yourself? If you’re a billionaire you’d charge a billion dollars for it. Do you actually think I have something different to offer than what everyone else out there is already talking about marketing?
I think you have a potential product in you that’s for normal people, the regular people, your mates people like you that don’t know where to start. I think you probably have an entry level product exactly like you’ve always made. An entry level product for normal people who run their own business and they need help marketing it.
So I decided to start this podcast mainly because of my wife Kelly. She’s been pestering me no pestering is the wrong word she’s been encouraging me to talk about marketing to create something that will help people around the topic of marketing which is one of my passions. I’ve always been hesitant to talk about the topic of marketing cause in another life 6 or 7 years ago I started to make money online. Well I wasn’t making any money online I felt like such a hypocrite and so I didn’t want to enter this space again. However she kept encouraging me and I knew this is something I could talk about and that if I shared it in a way that wasn’t me trying to give you advice on exactly what to do then I might be able to help people while avoiding that guru status or being a hypocrite or something like that so I think this is a really engaging way to share my story and to share lessons about marketing.
First I asked my best mate Ross to listen to episode number 1 and to give me his feedback on the podcast and whether he thinks people will listen to it and basically his feedback was yeah it’s alright but I just don’t think you’re successful enough that people will want to follow you was kind of his feedback.
Here’s what he said. That’s difficult given {} in one episode. However at this stage I don’t think it would appeal to mass market but as your profile continues to grow and your business continues to grow I think it would be a really cool tool to actually direct people to and say here’s my journey I really hope it helps you.
I did like what he said about documenting my journey as a good thing to look back upon. I think it would be a good thing not just for me to look back upon my journey and see how far I’ve come and what I was like but also for other people who in a years’ time or two years’ time can actually go back to episode 1 and can listen through and see how my business changed and progressed over the years. And even though specific tactics might change over time, seeing that process of someone working it out as they go along I think it’s going to be really helpful to a couple of people.
I then asked Jesse to give me some feedback as well. I’ve known Jesse for a couple years and he is an online marketer. I actually met him at church and him and his wife run a daily devotional called Pocket Fuel, which you can find on instagram @POCKETFUEL and he’s also just started an inspirational feed which is called Empwrco. You can check him out on instagram and basically they do awesome art works every single day that inspires you and also some text below that encourage you throughout the day. So definitely encourage you guys to go ahead and check that out.
He listened to episode number 1 and here’s what he had to say. The part that he’s talking about at the start is how in the first episode I actually talk about it’s very daunting to try and make videos to train people to do what I do. Hey Ryan this is Jesse just giving you those few comments on your new podcasts. For starters it’s fantastic you know I love you and think everything you do is awesome. Like I love the dilemma that you brought up about outsourcing and I know online one of the things I struggle with doing an online business and generating money online and dealing with stuff online is that actually outsourcing you know can be a heaven sent but can be a pain to set up even for myself. I’ve just felt like my mind struggles with the idea of just getting something put together like a training video and realizing that process needs to change and having to rework all the training that I set up. So in some ways it’s like I want to outsource the outsource training video and I think that’s a problem need solving so you know there is a potential business idea just in that cause as you know business is all about solving problems whether it’s online or in bricks and mortar. I think for your podcast I’d really love to see somethings that you try and test and test over time and tell us your results and if they succeed or fail. I’d really love to see some income reports and stuff like that as well like what kind of money you generate and what your expenses are and a breakdown of the areas you generate money in and a breakdown of the areas where the expenses come from. I’m just really excited for you man and I think it’s going to be an awesome journey and excited to listen along and hear what eventuates.
So the initial feedback is pretty good but obviously we have to take it with a bit of bias because these are people who are actually close to me but a bit of mixed feedback in there Ross saying that it might not appeal to the mass market and Jesse saying he’s excited to follow my journey and my wife encouraging me along so it’s worth doing and it’s worth trying this as an experiment and seeing what happens.
So “Instructions Not Included” how did we come up with that name? Because truthfully originally I wanted to call this “The Life of Ryan” or “Life of Ryan” and I actually launched the first three episodes with that name Life of Ryan. Life of Ryan was in the recordings and everything until I got a text from my sister Life of Ryan is a TV show about Ryan Sheckler who is a pro skateboarder. So I googled it and it turns out that Life of Ryan is a TV show on MTV about a pro skateboarder just as my sister had said so that kinda put a spanner in the works because I wasn’t happy naming my program after another program. I just didn’t want to deal with the conflicts that may arise in the future.
So I started thinking about other names and I just started brainstorming I just started writing things down and most of then we’re pretty bad some of them I thought were alright but they weren’t awesome . I got “Life and Business” “Business Life” “Starting small” “This is my life” “On Ryan” “The Ryan podcast” which I actually bought Ryanpodcast.com because I thought yeah that was going to be good the Ryan podcast but after you listen to that name for the it starts to sound pretty tacky. Launchpad, on starting, on business, my business podcast, real business, my life and business, my online business, be the boss, running a business, my life, and I had texted these names to Jesse and Ross again and Jesse said nah they’re all crap they’re too generic and boring you need something interesting and something edgy and thus started the day of me trying to think of a name.
I literally spent the day texting Jesse and Ross just with name ideas whenever they came to me in a free-flow I would just send them on or text them on just as a way of putting them out there to see what they sounded like and to get their feedback. I got a call from Ross and he brainstorm some things with me Jesse kept on saying that it just was not interesting enough and Jesse came up with the idea to call it “Oh Ryan” with a play on the constellation Orion but he wanted to call it “Oh Ryan a startup story”. I really like that part the startup story and found it very interesting the think about that then I started thinking about things that I had learned from Seth Godin who is a marketing sort of Guru. He always talks about this concept of choosing yourself are picking yourself don’t wait on to someone else chooses you by creating a life that you actually have the ability to choose yourself. So I thought maybe I should call the podcast “Pick yourself” because I’m picking myself and creating the life that I want and I said that to my wife and she said it sounds that you’re picking boogers out of your nose I’m so picking yourself definitely went into the waste bin.
So then I went down the path of well there’s actually no instruction manual for what I’m doing there is no guide for how to start a successful business and so I was thinking about not having instructions and then I thought about when you purchase kids toys it says on the packet batteries not included then I thought you know what could be a good name “instructions not included”. Sent a text through to Jesse and through to Ross and Jesse responded saying I like that last one and basically that was good enough for me and so instructions not included was born. I did a quick google search to find out what I was competing with and there was one Spanish speaking movie that is called instructions not included but its Spanish speaking and I feel like I’m not imposing on them in anyway or I’m not trying to offer a similar offering with life of Ryan that was a TV show about a guy called Ryan I was doing a podcast about a guy called Ryan it’s a bit too close for comfort but instructions not included comparing that Spanish movie I think that’s something ok.
So now we have a name we have some feedback and it all seems positive it’s time to go ahead and get this podcast up on the air and in iTunes so you guys can start listening to it.
That concludes today’s episode here some scenes from tomorrow’s episode where I start to flesh out what my product is going to start to look like in 2015 as well as me raising the prices for my product. Well just writing out that flow that way they need to progress and the things they need to learn to achieve financial freedom. I realize I’m trying to solve two problems in one go and maybe just maybe I should just be focused solving just one problem how to find positive cash flow properties helping people find positive cash flow properties if you want to get access to that episode or the back catalogue of all the episodes just search for instructions not included in iTunes or go to instructions not included. TV
And if you’ve got feedback I would love love love to hear it go to instructionsnotincluded.tv/contact to contact me and leave some feedback let me know what you think or if you’re really into it go into iTunes and leave a review for this podcast which will help it rise in the rankings and help more people to see it you can go and leave a 5-star review I would be much appreciative of that
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