Ep85 Eric Ryan - How to Break Free from Boring Marketing (especially on LinkedIn)

Jason Croft [00:00:00]:

Today on the show, strategy plus action equals creating content that isn't boring. Great coaches and consultants like you have the ability to change people's lives and transform entire organizations, and your impact can often go far beyond the clients you work with. One of the reasons I love working with coaches and consultants is because of that ripple effect. This show is here to highlight your expertise and empower you with resources and new ideas to grow your business. Welcome to strategy. In action. Eric Ryan is on the show today, and we have a blast talking about this idea of creating content that actually has some meat to it a little bit, some creativity, some fun, some life, really just some humanness to it that doesn't look like everything else that's out there, especially on LinkedIn. He and I both are growing our businesses, putting out content there, and he's got this fantastic approach and wonderful couple of shows that he does that are amazingly hilarious and creative. But he's also helping his clients do that for themselves because we know that not everyone needs to have a five bourbon lunch show like he has for his interview shows. But he keeps encountering people that he talks to about helping him with their business, with his digital agency. And he can feel their personality, their humor, just who they really are on these calls. And then he goes and looks at their content that's out there, whether it's video or written or anything else, and it's just flat. It's just like everything else. It's not like them. It's not like the person that he just had a conversation with, right? And that's what's kind of baffling to us both. But it's understandable as well if marketing isn't your thing, right? Even though you respond to the humorous stuff or the fun stuff or whatever that may be, when it comes to creating it yourself, it's tough to go, okay, where do I start? How do I do this thing? And that's really where he's helping folks, is create that so there isn't just a blank page with that. And then it's also to really nurture again who they are and letting that come to life through video content specifically, and guiding through that process and turning that into a whole bunch of content for the month. So that's what we get into. The fact that this idea of marketing is so accessible now that we really should be taking more chances doing more with it because we have the opportunity to get in front of so many more eyeballs than we ever could in the past. All right, let's jump in. America's, sweetheart. The Eric Ryan. Welcome to the show.

Eric Ryan [00:03:05]:

Thank you. It's been a pleasure, honestly. Greatest thing I've ever done.

Jason Croft [00:03:12]:

Obviously. But let's wait till the end of the episode and see what you say.

Eric Ryan [00:03:16]:

Then with our hairs in the same two boxes, you know what I mean?

Jason Croft [00:03:22]:

I don't think we even need to say anything. I think we can just sit here for an hour, make a promotional clip out of that, and this show will take off.

Eric Ryan [00:03:29]:

Yeah. I think we've discussed this before, but do you blow dry?

Jason Croft [00:03:34]:

Little just a tiny bit. It needs to air dry. If I blow dry, then it's just like interesting white man's fro. It's not good.

Eric Ryan [00:03:42]:

Yeah. People always assume mistakes a long time, but it's 90% blow dryer and hairspray nice.

Jason Croft [00:03:48]:

Like industrial strength, I imagine.

Eric Ryan [00:03:50]:

You know what? The cheaper the shit, the better I found. If you buy stuff at a salon because they don't want to do what I'm doing, they don't want 16ft of height. Right. So I'm going against the grain. They want to look normal.

Jason Croft [00:04:02]:

That's right. I dig it. Well, as much as everyone's just fascinating with our hair, I'm glad that we addressed that right away because otherwise they're going to be distracted. They're going to have questions through the whole thing.

Eric Ryan [00:04:14]:

Any of the room. We just got to acknowledge it right off the bat.

Jason Croft [00:04:17]:

Exactly. Well, I'm glad you're here because I want to talk non boring content specifically on LinkedIn. If anybody has come across your videos that are out there, they know exactly what I'm talking about, and I hope anyone who hasn't, they rush out very quickly.

Eric Ryan [00:04:37]:

People that have seen live videos, please.

Jason Croft [00:04:40]:

Just absolute magnificence in humor and craft and all of that, and thank you. I think it baffles both of us that that is such an anomaly. Not because those are good, but because anything humorous, anything original, creative of seems to not exist much on LinkedIn, especially in terms of video.

Eric Ryan [00:05:07]:

Yeah, it's shocking because I say this all the time, but I thought marketing was going to be a lot more like Mad Men. We come up with great ideas and then have some drinks and go sleep with the secretaries, and then somebody else executes on it and calls us geniuses. But marketing online is spreadsheets and AdWords ads that don't get clicked on and blogs and white papers. And it's fascinating because I think if you get into marketing and advertising, you kind of want to be creative. Like, are we doing our best work here? Is anyone doing their best work? Because it's trash, right? It's really bad. Everything's really bad. Yeah.

Jason Croft [00:05:39]:

And I think it's so interesting to go and even the people who say, yes, I'm on board 100%, like, yeah, it should be better. Then we go in and it's the safest approach possible. Don't want to offend when we're talking about being funny and all this stuff, it isn't just to try to offend people. I think people's mind just goes that way. If you think speak your mind and be original and creative, people's minds just go that way.

Eric Ryan [00:06:11]:

Instantly.

Jason Croft [00:06:12]:

It's like, well, it doesn't have to be that way.

Eric Ryan [00:06:15]:

I think we're solving for average, and in our head, the average is this person we've never met that's offended by everything, that doesn't like contraptions, doesn't like laughing, doesn't like sex appeal or humor or wit. We think that this invisible third party that we've never met is the person that we're advertising to, and it's just simply not the case. And it never has been. So I don't know why I mean, I know why you're afraid. Cancel culture and everything else. Everyone to some degree when I say everyone, five people say they don't like it. You're like, oh my God. It's not everybody. It's very small amount of people that might be offended by something. We're not doing anything wild. Just in attempt at humor, in attempt at having a personality is out of the question. Which is really strange.

Jason Croft [00:06:53]:

Yeah. And it's kind of like the same dynamic I've seen working with video and events and all that kind of stuff. It's like the CEO or whoever's running the organization, it's their little crowd of people around them keeping you or anyone else away from them on their behalf. Like giving you the no's, giving you like, well, we can't do that. We can't do that. Did you ask the CEO? You can't do that. And if you just happen to go like, hey, CEO, you want to do this thing? You're like, yeah, sure, that'd be awesome. It's that same dynamic. It's like, on behalf of the Internet, or at least all of we're we're getting offended or worried ahead of time.

Eric Ryan [00:07:40]:

Well, I think you know, too. So committee kills, right? Like, all great art, I think for the most part is a singular vision. And that's really weird in marketing. Like, if I was to come up with a huge idea and go to the CEO of Coke and he's like, yep, that's amazing. We're going to print that's something that would never, ever happen.

Jason Croft [00:07:55]:

Right?

Eric Ryan [00:07:55]:

It has to go through a million different things, and that's Coke. What shocks me, though, is like, small to mid sized businesses are not restrained necessarily by anything. They don't really have a brand. They might think they have a brand, but they don't. You could do something that's creative and just test it. It doesn't have to be your entire campaign. It doesn't have to define who you are, but just do some interesting things. Experiment, don't be afraid to fail. And I think they'd be happy with the results. All of the great ads that you can think of are entertaining. They make you cry. Like the Budweiser ads with the dogs and the horses had nothing to do with beer, but you walked away. Ah, teared up. Because the little pony has a friend now. Whatever. It doesn't know, but it made you feel something. The stuff now is like almost it has to be created to blend in, to be wide noise. It must because it's not possible that people think that this shit that's on LinkedIn is clickable or I don't get.

Jason Croft [00:08:49]:

It, but I think it is. I think it's a weird dynamic that happens that I don't know what shifts. And it's not just video, it's not just LinkedIn. This thing happens where we know what we respond to as audience members, what we really like and all that. But then as soon as we sit down at that blank page or whatever, what comes out is the safest blandest. And I think maybe part of the answer is the folks who aren't marketers, right? They're trying to do this for their business, especially smaller business. Right? They don't have the constraints, but they also don't have the creative just experience. That's not their job, right? But they're trying to market themselves.

Eric Ryan [00:09:35]:

It's multifactorial. There's a million issues that go into why marketing sucks. I think part of it is like, I always equate, and this is probably a stupid analogy, but it's like the 2008 mortgage cris. Like, all right, there was predatory lending, but there was dumb, dumb borrowing, too. Like, no income, no asset verification loans. It's dumb to take those, but it's dumb to sign up for one knowing you can't pay the mortgage. Right? So they're dumb. You're dumb. Everyone's dumb is terrible. I feel like with marketing, okay, agencies aren't doing the best work internal creatives or even through creatives, because that's really weird online. No one's really a creative. That's a marketer. But it's not as if the marketing team's putting out great work and the client's shutting it down or the client's demanding great creative work and the agency can't do it. I just don't think it's creativity is being considered anymore. I just think it's sort of like you get a shutterstock image, you put, like, a blue filter over it. Oh, relay some text and put click here. And that's what I but it's in our heads now. Like, nobody goes back to Ogilvy or George Lois and goes, this is what we should be doing. Wildly creative shit that gets people's attention. I think it's on us. I think it's on them. I think it's on the industry as a whole. It's like, we forgot what it should be, which is you can't get anyone to do anything until you get their attention first. And everyone skipped that step button. Color doesn't matter. Ultimately, we went really Granular and we forgot the big picture. Which has got to stand out somehow.

Jason Croft [00:11:00]:

Yeah. Just because we can get that granular and discover the nuance, it's just like our brains go right to that nuance. Right.

Eric Ryan [00:11:10]:

As soon as you could measure marketing, which is really, I think, the ad once the Internet got involved, we forgot we threw the baby out with the bed. We're like, no, you know what? We don't create to just get them out of here. They don't matter. We can measure everything now. We don't need you. And I think maybe, hopefully the tide's turning.

Jason Croft [00:11:25]:

Yeah, because that's an interesting dynamic, too, that you bring up, is that the other difference is in testing and stuff. Like, a lot of times the lack of maybe production value and budget spent still generates this amazing result. And then we hear that result and we think, oh, I don't really have to make any effort at all. And again, they make that giant leap. Whereas, yeah, it's lower production quality. Maybe it's somebody holding their phone. But it was really creative. There was a genius idea in that moment.

Eric Ryan [00:12:06]:

And this is why, too. I think we're sort of hopefully in the beginning of some sort of golden age of video. Because here's the thing. 50 years ago, if you told the guy down the street that he could have commercials and people would watch them, you go, yeah, for 50 grand a commercial, I got to go to ABC. I got to buy time, the whole dynamic. But we understand that these talkies, these little movies we're making, making one right now, get people's attention. But they used to be cost prohibitive time or whatever. It was a huge now we can all do them. Plus, we're used to low production value, like with the zoom thing and people doing it. Vaynerchuks always has his phone. It doesn't have to be polished. It's almost better if it isn't, because the thing, one $500,000 commercial isn't going to do as much as you with your phone every day just by the nature of the Internet. Right. Because you got to put out shit constantly and always be there and have brand salience. It's much easier and smarter and better, I think, to have low production. I mean, not trash, don't do it on a razor from 15 years ago, but everyone has a pretty good camera in their pocket now. It's just that personality.

Jason Croft [00:13:06]:

Oh, yeah. It's just that effort and intentionality going into it. Talk to me about the agencies you have and your approach and what you're kind of doing right now. But even before then, what got you into this crazy, wild marketing biz?

Eric Ryan [00:13:23]:

I was unemployed, I think is that everybody's I get laid off at some thing, selling something. And then I had a hookup, and he introduced me to a friend, and the guy owned a digital marketing agency. And this was like in 2011 when all this shit was new and exciting. I didn't know it was all going to be spreadsheets, but he was an interesting guy. And that was his first full time employee. We got up to like 13, but the second guy that joined full time, eventually the original owner decided to move away from digital marketing and buy a bonsai nursery, a Bonsai tree nursery, which sounds ridiculous, and it is, but he took off like five years ago, sold the company to us. So I think what hurts my soul is I have an agency that does boring shit like SEO and PPC and marketing automation and everything that digital marketing is, and it pays the bills really well. So it kind of hurts my soul that the boring stuff works really well. But eventually, like I said, I want to be here's the other thing. If I was the greatest marketer in the world, it's not like being the greatest guitar player in the world. I don't have to deal with Jimi Hendrix, you know what I mean? Or any of the Beatles. Like, if I'm the greatest marketer in the world, I got to be David Ogil. Nobody even knows that, know, but the Ogilvy and the Lois's and the I. That's what I think we as marketers should be. We should do art that gets people to buy stuff. And it should be really exciting. We should get nervous. It should be fun, should be ambitious. And I don't think traditional digital marketing is any of those. Um, so I started offensively creative as an offshoot to try to find people that want to do interesting shit and do interesting shit. Yeah.

Jason Croft [00:15:02]:

And you have been, too, which is great. You've been doing your own stuff. That's the thing. Before we get into some of that, I want to hammer that point home, too. It isn't that the SEO, the PPC, the stuff that's paying the bill, it doesn't mean that's bad. But when you can combine that with stuff somebody actually wants to look at, if it wasn't an ad they would love to enjoy, they would enjoy it. Right? You can combine those things.

Eric Ryan [00:15:31]:

Yeah. It's style and substance. Like, my favorite baseball player is Manny Ramirez. I'm a Red Sox fan. Manny was out of his mind. He also happens to be one of the greatest hitters of all time, with the long baggy pants, the hair, or the pissing inside the Green Monster. He had an allure about him, you know what I mean? There was a lot of style, but at the same time, he's the first guy to show up and the last guy to leave. So, like, he had style and substance, and that's what makes a great brand and profitability. And I think everyone has just forgotten the style piece, which is, as humans weird. I think we know we like that kind of stuff. Look at our hairs right now.

Jason Croft [00:16:04]:

Callback exactly. But it is it's so funny because we do we disconnect our own human experience of what we respond to. And I think there's a level of, oh, I could never do that.

Eric Ryan [00:16:21]:

Right?

Jason Croft [00:16:22]:

So I'm just going to be in this safe little box. I encountered it when Know made movies back in the know, independent movies in Dallas, Texas. There was that crowd of folks who were just, you know, we couldn't ever make anything that looks professional in Hollywood. So we're not even going to try. We're going to go so far the other way. It was just like, well, here's six examples of what we just did last week, so let's have this conversation. Because you can you can do so much more. Right to your point that you were just making. We have this technology in our pocket. We can make these things that it's.

Eric Ryan [00:16:56]:

Exciting because it's new, too. You could show your brand and your personality right now, today, because it's affordable and it's eucalyptus. You could have done it 50 years ago, but for all the problems that we talked about time, money, now you can and you should. Here's the other thing, too, and we've talked about this, but we're not talking because we're talking about LinkedIn, about listen, we don't need to get on Saturday Night Live even though it's terrible these days, you need to be ten degrees off center, be vaguely entertaining on LinkedIn, and you will be the most entertaining thing on LinkedIn. But since we're talking about business, it's like as soon as you walk through that door or your office at home, you shove a stick up your ass and you become Johnny Business guy. Which is so weird, because I talk to these people every time I talk to a prospect, I'll go see if they have YouTube videos, if they've done interviews. I just want to get a feel of who they are. The person I talk to is not the person who they are on camera, which is the person they present. To be on camera is always boring and terrible, exactly like everybody else. But that's not who they actually are. Why do we hide who we are in the B two B world? It's shocking. Unless you like, a raging drunk and an asshole. Like you obviously hide that. But most of us have some semblance of a personality, go a long way.

Jason Croft [00:18:06]:

Yeah, keep that stuff to yourself. But not everybody's great.

Eric Ryan [00:18:09]:

A lot of people suck, and a lot of people are naturally boring. But there's a certain segment of people in business who have personalities they should show them. I mean, personal brands are huge. Look at Ronald McDonald, the average clown until he invented a cheeseburger. I don't watch the movie, but I assume that's it.

Jason Croft [00:18:27]:

Yeah, I read that review on Rotten Tomatoes or something. I think that's what it is. That's great. So let's walk through because I think that's a great aspect of it, too, is that when people think of creating this content, getting creative and all that, that it is this, I've got to go be this other person or come up with some wild idea and jump out of a plane or something. No, it really is just a purposeful representation of yourself. Get that help if you need, on not having a blank page or whatever it is. Jump in there and create some videos. But this is great. So for those who haven't seen it, five Bourbon Lunch. Show those things.

Eric Ryan [00:19:17]:

The biggest thing on the Internet.

Jason Croft [00:19:19]:

Exactly. For the few people who haven't people.

Eric Ryan [00:19:21]:

That haven't seen Titanic.

Jason Croft [00:19:23]:

Right. Talk to me about that dynamic. Because at least in all of this too. You are walking your talk, right? You are creating this content, right?

Eric Ryan [00:19:36]:

I'm sober now, but yeah. So the thing with fiber, Bella show, it's a clear rip off of hot ones, which is, I think is ingenious. Like, you should have a gimmick. There's a billion interview shows, but this guy decided to do something that's been done a billion times and add hot sauce. And right off the bat, it skews the way that your guests, they don't have the rote memorized answers that they gave out Larry King, whatever else they're eating, hot sauce, it's fuck with them. It's jarring. It's shaking the structure of the average day, right? So all of a sudden, they become somebody else. They become who they really probably are, a couple hot wings in. They're sweating, they're laughing, they're having a good time. And that's a great interview because it was mildly different, right? So I send people bourbon samples in the mail, which I probably shouldn't do, but then we drink them together, I'd read the pretentious tasting notes, and then I ask them questions that they probably haven't been asked for before in a business setting. Know the five favorite bands, five favorite movies, death Row Meal. And I think the whole thing is humanizing corporate America through the magic and power of brown booze and stupid questions. But it's dumb. And I'm getting people a little buzzed, but it's fun and it's entertaining. They can't wait to see the clips, and they can't wait to share. Just, you know, slightly twisting the structure of the average interview changes the dynamic incredibly. So when I tell people that they should be on video, an interview show is a really easy thing to do, but just don't do the same shit everyone else is doing. Do something else. I do little goofy pop ups. I think it keeps them moving. That's another, like, pop up video. I ripped off that idea. But I think everybody should have a little gimmick, a little talk about ability. So I'm not saying you have to be a stand up in your videos, but interview somebody, steal their audiences. Because if you hashtag and ad correctly, the algorithm likes it and then do something a little weird. Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Croft [00:21:29]:

And you've done that, too. So that's the other piece that I've watched, that evolution a little bit, too, from what you're doing and then what you're doing for your clients, because that's another bucket that people get into a little bit, is like, I couldn't do that. I couldn't host a five bourbon lunch show or be hilarious like sweetheart.

Eric Ryan [00:21:51]:

But here's the thing. I think the beauty of video is it's living, breathing content. So you're not hiring an agency to write your blogs. Right? We don't know what a thing we were just googling. We're chad GP. What you're doing is you're going to do a show, and then you're going to see yourself and go, I should have done this you're going to get better. And then if you're funny, the funny is going to naturally come out. Or if you're super passionate about what you're asking about, that passion is going to come out. It's just a more organic form of content and it's I said just great across the board. It's more engaging for your audience. It shows your passion, your brand. So, yeah, you don't have to do the five bourbon lunch show. You can do a traditional thing. We could do a little bit of pop ups to make it funny. We could do a straight interview show, and you can grow into whatever it needs to be. But you should be on camera. You the we know we're here.

Jason Croft [00:22:34]:

Exactly like you're.

Eric Ryan [00:22:37]:

Right?

Jason Croft [00:22:37]:

I should be on camera. I got to go.

Eric Ryan [00:22:39]:

Yeah, we should interview each other.

Jason Croft [00:22:42]:

And I've watched a couple of examples that you've done for your clients, too, which is great because it's not this giant craziness that you do for your own that, again, they're magnificent, but you're kind of holding their hand in terms of being there to yes, your clients interviewing a guest of theirs, but you're there. You got the safety net for them a little bit, and then it is just sort of bringing those to life at the end. Right. So it's not just this question answer, question answer number one. A little bit creative on the question asking. So they aren't just tell me about when you were a child. Why did you do just going into.

Eric Ryan [00:23:26]:

That, you got to make like a fart noise or something. The Mad production. That's what I want to lean on with everybody, because we talked about this live is horrifying. I don't want to do that at all. I want to make us look as good as possible afterwards.

Jason Croft [00:23:38]:

Yeah. So you're enjoying this. We know you are. You're loving this interview right now. It's because there's editing going. This is a seven hour interview.

Eric Ryan [00:23:49]:

I know your hands are soft and tender at the end of this.

Jason Croft [00:23:51]:

I'm going to that's, right? So we get screamed at by people like us, right, saying Video. Video. But it really is the thing, and I think we are in a time where, too bad if you don't like it, let's figure this thing out. But what's that bigger? Take that leap. Why do they really need to do this right now? And what's that opportunity?

Eric Ryan [00:24:17]:

Well, I mean, just YouTube, for example, is the world's second largest search engine, right? We love videos. At this point, if you had to fix your dryer whatever, would you read something or you watch a video? We all know, like, a video is just permeating every aspect of life, right? All the time. All the time. So you should do it as a business owner, particularly small and medium sized businesses. A lot of people still aren't doing it. Like, it's scary somehow. Listen, 18 year old storm the beaches of Normandy to fight Nazis with guns. You can get in front of a camera. Right? I know it's scary. It's relatively scary. Right. But a lot of people are afraid of it. I think a lot of people think it's still probably expensive, which it's not free, but it's cheap. The production value can be pretty high, and you don't have to spend a lot of money. So I just think because you can and your competition isn't, you should be. Again, one of those things like, we know we like humor and stuff. We know we like sex appeal and magic. Video affords you the opportunity to do some of that, but even if you don't do anything, it's still engaging. It's a really engaging medium. More so than a blog, more so than a white paper, more so than an ad. You will show some personality, even by accident, the way you could hide it in an email. Eventually, you talk on camera enough, you're going to say something interesting or funny. It's going to happen by accident, which is another just good.

Jason Croft [00:25:40]:

Oh, yeah, well, and that's the fun part, too. I've been trying to get myself to do just an audio podcast for a while, just whatever reason. But I keep coming back to every show I start. I make sure I do it on video. Just because you can create every other piece of media that you want.

Eric Ryan [00:25:59]:

Obvious answer. Yes, it's also right. You do the transcript, and it's a blog. You can do the audio, and it's a pock. I mean, it gives you a lot.

Jason Croft [00:26:06]:

Of yeah, for sure. So I want to dig into some of the fun stuff that's coming. So I know you've been doing the interviews for Folks. You've been doing your own content, you've been doing interviews for folks, where then you take that, cut that up, bring it to life. Kind of like what we talked about. Then you and I are jumping in with sort of a hybrid version, a little bit of what I've done for folks in terms of interviewing people for 60 to 90 minutes and creating 48 pieces of content right out of that.

Eric Ryan [00:26:41]:

Which I got to say, the most genius idea anyone has ever had, ever.

Jason Croft [00:26:46]:

Completely my idea. No one else has ever weren't inspired by anybody. That's right. And that's what it's been out there. Kind of put all that together. But now teaming up with you to sort of bring this stuff to life again, just a little sauce on there, a little bit of, oh, make this thing alive.

Eric Ryan [00:27:07]:

Yeah. Little salt, a little heat, a little something just you have to be just ten degrees different. And I think it'll make a huge difference. And I think something like this is, here's what I've learned about life, too. A lot of times you're attracted by the big, shiny lore thing, but you don't really want that thing. Like cars, right? Car commercials. You're. Always driving these closed circuit things through the mounts. It's snowing. You're never going to do that. You want 50 degrees left of that, right? You just want to make sure you kind of look cool in your new car. It gets you to A to B. But you were attracted by all that goofy shit, by the illogical shit, the stuff that's funny or exciting. So, yes, I think we should be doing this. And I think the thing that you've made is perfect. It's a perfect vehicle to get in because you interview, you're very professional, right? So I get them with the big goofy stuff with the pop ups and the curtain jokes, and then they go, all right, but is he out of his mind? Yes, but my guy here, he's way better. He's a professional. He's going to make his stuff look incredible. It's going to be entertaining, and it's going to get likes and views and more importantly, money. Right? We're in advertising and marketing to get attention. It eventually becomes revenue. Yeah.

Jason Croft [00:28:15]:

And that's the biggest thing. You said that earlier in the interview. But if there's anything to scream out there to everybody from the rafters, it is that idea that you can't do anything until you've got their right. You've got to figure out this way to separate yourself, get past know, oh, I'm going to just put my post out on LinkedIn today and check the box and do all of this. I guess that's better than nothing, but sometimes not. I try to shake people into getting away from this horrible sameness, right? Sometimes that's worse than obscurity. If nobody knows you but you haven't done anything, well, at least you didn't waste any time. If you're going through all this effort and you just look like the beige Camry of LinkedIn, then what are you doing?

Eric Ryan [00:29:12]:

Right? And so here's the thing. It's possible. Beige Camrys, they've sold a ton, right? But the other thing hasn't. So try the other thing. I know creativity can be hard and it can be scary, but Jesus, how many beige Camrys do we need? To your point? Like, the opportunity, the lower hanging fruit is not to be a beige Camry. Now everything else. So don't do the obvious logical thing. Your problems were solved by logic. You would have been able to solve them by now, right? Something a little illogical to have a show that's a little bit funny or something.

Jason Croft [00:29:50]:

Yeah. And I want to assure people, too, that's the thing that I like, I like from your approach when you did the interview stuff, and I like this new combined version, too, because they're sort of checking the box of content they need to create for the month. All that's great, but we're actually bringing this thing to life. And number one, you don't have to start from a blank page. You've got us to be there and go, okay, here's what we're going to talk about. And kind of guide through that process, kind of pull out that and hold you a little accountable of like, okay, is that really what you want to talk about?

Eric Ryan [00:30:26]:

Come on. Their hands you're in the hands of a professional, right? So you go and you ask questions that make sense and maybe that they've seen beforehand, and they can do multiple takes. They don't have to be afraid. It's not live. We all hate live, right? So at the end of it, they're going to get 48 pieces of professionally produced content, and that's a ton, especially when they've been able to hide probably behind agencies writing their blogs, and they're like, Get out there. Just get out there. It's going to be exciting, too, something you can show your kids. No one's going to read what you wrote. You don't write that anyway. We did, but you could show people, have you seen my show? I do that all the time. I send it in DMs. It's exciting, different.

Jason Croft [00:31:03]:

And that's the other part of it, too, that people get it, right? They get, okay, I can talk for an hour or so, and you guys are going to go make this stuff, then it's okay. I got all this stuff. Like, what do I do with it? And that's the other part of it that we can help with, too, is.

Eric Ryan [00:31:21]:

That if we thought the whole thing through yes, almost. If they show up for an hour, we got everything else. Right? We professionally produce everything. And if you'd like, we can professionally post everything as well. The right times, the right hashtags, the right ads, the right blurbs. Genius. I got to tell you, we're a couple of geniuses.

Jason Croft [00:31:43]:

Yes. That's really all you need to know. I don't know why we didn't just start the interview off with that. Just Subliminal. If you pause this at just the right time, you'll see that Subliminal message in there in between frames, and we could do that for you.

Eric Ryan [00:31:59]:

We are not beige cameras, ladies and gentlemen.

Jason Croft [00:32:01]:

That's right. That's what the Subliminal message says. We're not beige. All right, so where do people go? Who needs this Eric Ryan? And where do they go to find out about it?

Eric Ryan [00:32:15]:

Here's what I like. I like to go after founders and CEOs, because they're not going anywhere. I want the face of the franchise to be somebody who's really invested, right? And usually those people are great, because if you're a founder, there was some rebel in you at some point. I know a lot of times it gets stomped out from years ago, and you shit you didn't expect to or want to when you started a business, you thought it was going to be all martinis and smart ideas, but it's not. It's payroll and other awful shit. But there's a rebel in there somewhere. Like, no one starts a business to do things the same way that everybody else does, right? That just gets snuffed out over time. So I like owners and I like owners because of that. And also they'll say yes to things, right. So they're going to do it. They're going to make the decision to do it. There's fire and passion. They're the best. I don't want to see them. Oh, they're going to be gone in three years. So I think small to medium sized businesses because listen, again, we're not going to get coke or Red Bull or Apple. I think they're doing their own thing. But if you're reasonably successful and reasonably smart and passionate and a little bit rebellious and you capable of having a personal brand that moves the needle and makes you money, then you should be doing know.

Jason Croft [00:33:25]:

I love it. Where do they go to find out more? Find out more about you. Agency, all that fun stuff.

Eric Ryan [00:33:29]:

I think you should pop it up on the screen. But it's offensivelycreative.com that's the agency. It's a good name, right? I came up with it. Love it.

Jason Croft [00:33:38]:

Yeah. Awesome, man. Thanks so much for being on.

Eric Ryan [00:33:43]:

I'm excited. Thank you.

Jason Croft [00:33:44]:

I'm excited. You're out there fighting the good fight.

Eric Ryan [00:33:47]:

We're going to win it together.

Jason Croft [00:33:49]:

That's right. We'll see you all next time. Thanks so much for tuning in and being a part of this show. If you want help creating authority, building video content or even a client generating show of your own, go to medialeadsco.com and let's connect. I'll talk to you soon on the next strategy. And action.