What steps can we take to bring our marketing skills to the next level?

Despite all the bells and whistles that we have available to us these days, marketing really hasn’t changed. We’re just using different platforms. But studying and learning from those with years of experience is paramount to growing our skills.

Ryan Withrow from Awesome Communication joins us on the podcast. Ryan has more than 10 years’ experience in marketing, $500,000,000+ in direct sales, customer experience, inbound and outbound campaign implementation, call center management, and supervision.

Learn more about:

- Studying from the masters will give us a leg up over the competitio

- How activating your creative brain through the arts can increase your ability to market

- Why the increase demand for 1-1 guidance and expertise has become more imperative as automation has taken over the industry

- How proactively reaching out to your tribe through outbound calls will lead to more sales and a competitive edge

- Understanding the personality of a sales person will help you create the systems that will enable their success

Ryan is a wealth of information that’s worked with some legends in this industry. Hearing the tactical details of his methods is incredibly interesting and gives me some amazing ideas for my own marketing.

Enjoy this deep dive into sales!

Learn more from Ryan: https://ryanwithrow.com/

Follow Ryan on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryandxp

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

Transcript

Adam Liette
What's up smooth operators welcome to today's episode, you know what day it is. It's Friday, and I got a really awesome episode here for y'all. Today, we're gonna go into one of my absolute favorite topics, which is marketing, and all the things that we have to do to grow our business man, we know we got to do it. And we know there's like a million gurus out there telling us what to do. But what actually works, what actually makes a difference what will bring us to the next level, that's really all I'm interested in. And I got a guy with me today I've known this guy now for several years, we've worked together on multiple different fronts. And I've really gotten to know and like him and, and just seeing what he's been able to do for the companies he's worked for, for his own brand. And he's quite the Rockstar literally on Tiktok has a great video series going. So if you're a guitar player like me, you got to check out his Tiktok it's really cool. But I have Ryan with row from awesome communications on the podcast. Ryan has more than 10 years experience in marketing with over $500 million. That's right million indirect sales. So is that like, I don't know what comma club that is. But that's a lot. A lot of experience with customer experience inbound and outbound campaign implement implementation, call center management, the whole nine yards. So I've personally done joint campaigns with him in the past. I'm always impressed by the level of thought and professionalism that he brings to the table. And I'm geeking out about this opportunity to dive in deep with Ryan, thank you so much for joining us. How are you today?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, thanks for having me as high intensity intro. That was good. Yeah. And also it makes me feel old because I think now it's over 15 years. And seven 750 million, which is insane. But yeah, I'm doing well, man. I'm in the spaceship here as you can kind of see. I think every time somebody sees my desk setup with like, all the cameras, all the lights, I have to tell them at some point that yes, I do marketing, I do sales, but also I do the TIC tock thing. So that's the only time that like, it makes sense. That that I'm just in this like this is gotta be doing some serious damage to my eyes all of these LEDs. But you know, we're good. We're here. I'm pumped to be here. Thanks for having me, man.

Adam Liette
Absolutely, brother. So, like, give us some of your background. How did you come to this space? I mean, to be able to get those kinds of numbers, man, like, that's huge. Like, what brought you here?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah. Oh, man. It's gonna be the whole the whole episode. Yeah, man. It's a long story. It's a weird one. I think. And I think a lot of us in like, the internet marketing EECOM space. I don't know that a lot of people like wake up being like, that's the space. But I think they all kind of have like this ambition and certain drive that kind of leads them to realize that's the right place to be for their creativity and their style. So yeah, I come from Ohio. So fellow, Ohio native there. I was born and raised in a Randolph, Ohio, which sounds as boring as it is, which is great. I think there was one light, one bank, one convenience store one gas station. And that was it. Right? So I come from there. And I remember when I was young, I first got a guitar when I was like 12. And my parents divorced when I was 13. So the tie into guitar is that I kind of obsessed over guitar as I was getting older. And going through that that broken home situation later found that parents were both addicts, and had really, really bad habits in life. So I was really grateful to find something like guitar and not a bad habit. But you know, at the same time, sitting at home eight hours a day, in your room by yourself doesn't really improve your social dynamics or your social skills. So I really started noticing that I could I could really play music while but man I like I didn't know how to like make really new friends or like have conversations or really add to conversations. But in any event, I went to school for music theory composition. Classical guitar was the primary instrument so you could see like the gross nails here as well. And I did that for many years. I taught for many years and If you know anything about Ohio, not the most technologically advanced in some of those towns and YouTube came around, that's how old I am. YouTube came around while I was in a career is the age I was. And it took all my students away, like all of my students left in a matter of six months, because they realized they could get free education by watching some videos. And Ohio couldn't compete with it. So they didn't know what they were doing. I mean, I was working for a man that I think was 92 years old, and was a specialized dealer of organ organs, like literally like pianos and organs. So I found myself in a situation where I was severely broke, I remember not being able to afford rent, I remember eating like canned spinach that was in the back of the cabinet. Because it's all I had, I couldn't afford anything, I had to sell my car. So I had no means of transportation. So I had that realization that I think a lot of musicians do, sometimes, which is like, I gotta get a big boy job. Like, I actually have to like, take the gauges out of my ear, I have to cover all of my tattoos up and try to like get a normal nine to five, but it had to be in walking distance. So the only place that was in walking distance was a call center. And I just like I mentioned in the beginning, I don't think anybody that wakes up, man, I don't think anybody wakes up one day and it's like, Man, I cannot wait to be a telemarketer. Like it doesn't happen that way. It just doesn't. But I had to. So I went and got the job right off the bat. And didn't know at the time who was working for really didn't know how large and well known the company was. I got a job working for a guy named Rodney Napier. Rodney Napier is the guy behind heat surge. And those Amish built fireplaces and mantle's, and it was a sales floor of about 150 to 200 agents. And for those of you that don't know, rod has a big history because he was once married to Ben Suarez, daughter as well. So Suarez is like a huge marketing name out there. But yeah, I worked for rod. And it was one of those times where my first day on the phones, Adam was I beat the entire floor, I beat everybody. And I didn't understand why or how but that like child in me that didn't know how to communicate, realize there was a way to make money, while also learning how to communicate, and how to have conversations and how to engage with human beings and and really build solid relationships with people. So it became very addicting, very fast. I'd say within the first six months, I was managing a sales team of 12. We were in the top three, always on the floor. And then I went from there to following my mentor at that job going and working to open places with people like Vinny Fisher and Mark Jenny. And here at this time, I had no idea that I was working for like these internet marketing, e commerce marketing like titans in the world and geniuses in the world. Because I was just kind of going with the flow and going everywhere. So I went from working with Vinny to then working with the other side working with Ben Suarez and actually directing his call centers, and building call centers. And through the work that I had done, I started getting scalped by a lot of internet marketing guys out there to build sales teams, and really helped grow their sales side of the business. And that's kind of where I'm at man, I'm still riding that wonderful wave of being a go to guy that comes from call center education, and sales, education and being able to implement that into the I M space and the E commerce space. But there you go. There's the long winded rant man.

Adam Liette
I love it, man. I don't know if I've ever shared this with you. But my job in college, I was getting a classical music degree as well. But I worked for a tech support company where we were getting inbound calls for people that are having trouble with their internet. And oh my gosh, that was the craziest job ever. The I mean, this was back in like 2003. So like people, like what? Literally one guy said my beer holder broke. It was his CD ROM drive. Like, real story of things that happened.

Ryan Withrow
That's a small beer. I don't know, man. That seems like you know, it's yeah, that are an obscenely large CD ROM drive one of the two.

Adam Liette
Right. I think it's so cool. Just the one thing I've noticed in marketing is for all the new gurus are the web, whatever, like I got this new method, like these old school methods of marketing from these legends. They keep coming back and just slapping us right in the face because they worked the Those guys have just a way of approaching the market and approaching sales that I think really, it's still true to this day. I mean, using shorts is still on my desk. And I still read it all the time. Because this stuff still works, doesn't it?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think, you know, when you look at the legend of Gary Halbert, right, and you look at all of those people, I mean, copywriters, still to this day are opening all of all of his content, right. And I think it's because I don't know, it was different times. So I think especially being somebody that's on like the tiktoks, and such. Now you see all of these people that claim to know, and it's, it's really allowed a lot more people to share what they think works and how it works. And if they're persuasive enough, which is kind of like that evil side of sales that people have a really gross stigma about. But if they're persuasive enough, you might believe it. But I think 95% of the work is always already been done. It's just really implementing what we know works, instead of reinventing the wheel time and time again, and making sure that you do so I mean, even though technology changes the way we reach audiences change, or changes, I should say. It's, it's still down to psychology. And we're still the same humans, right, that we were as far as how our brains work and link things together. So you know, if you boil it down to those core principles of psychological behavior, it works, man. So yeah, and it's, it's funny, again, I worked for Ben Suarez and I had no idea that he was as big as he was. So you know, as I'm literally creating creatives to go into direct mail packages for people. I am seeing all notes from everybody that Ben has hired and all the incredible copywriters that he trusts and, and taught, and little did I know that you're just absorbing all of that information as you go through and you go through? Yeah, now I'd be like, yeah, Heck, yeah, that's crazy. I can't imagine working for that guy. At that time. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna make some money. I need to support my family. That's great. But little did I know, but yeah, totally true. I mean, I still, let me tell you SPIN Selling. Neil Rackham. Like that is still like the Bible to me and sales. And that was in like, at an early 80s, mid 80s. So it's, it still stands, man.

Adam Liette
I still reach out Dinis influence at least once a year, like I review it just it's one of those seminal works. He just for all the new content we have I find myself reading like four books every year like clockwork, I'm going to read that book again, because I'm getting something new out of it every time and I think it's a circular thing where we just you're never going to get everything the first time. It's about that continued education and continued curiosity. And I think that's probably what really what, what got you when you're working for Ben was that curiosity and being exposed to and just like, soaking it up like a sponge?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, but I didn't know, right? It's the funniest part, like I, I was never back then I was never interested in the actual marketing side of it. I was always just focused and hyper focused on the brain paths that that are going to happen, which in turn is marketing. But I didn't know at the time. I was just always so intrigued by somebody can talk to me or read something, and be completely convinced that they are not spending money at all. And just by me navigating a conversation or having a conversation or them reading something specific. You could change that. Like it's such an insane thing to me that you can talk to somebody in a matter of five minutes, and have a conversation and convince people and be persuasive and get get a yes. From a very big no. So for me, it was always about that, like how can I ethically and I mean that like everything I tried to do in sales is highly ethical. I can't stand the unethical salespeople. But how can I ethically change somebody's perspective in mind, so that they pull out a credit card? Like it's as simple as that, like, how can I do that? So that was always the fascinating part. It wasn't really until I started having relationships where I was able to work with teams that that were right there with Tony Robbins, and Jordan Belfort and all of these other Titans that I started understanding. Oh, okay, so Ben's a big name. i Okay, I get it. Now. I see why. And I really started getting into that but yeah, totally.

Adam Liette
I found navigating this The world of online entrepreneurs and copywriters and man, there's like a ton of us musicians out here. It's crazy. I think there is something to be said about having part of your life and the creative arts and like that part of your brain being activated, that definitely contributes to success in this business to just being able to free ourselves of the self shackles that we put on ourselves, if that makes sense.

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, yeah. And I say that a lot, too. Because it's very true. I think, at the core, for me, at least, and I'm sure it resonates with a lot of other people. I think I've pinpointed that. It's that I can make something and I can see it out there. So example would be, I still sit down and write songs, and I record songs. And I make sure that, you know, I listened to it back. And at the end of the day, even if nobody listens to it, or I don't share it anywhere, I still have that like that dopamine hit of man, I did some I built that today, it took me eight hours of like, nobody's gonna see it, I did that thing that I think really translates to just doing your own thing in business as well. I think sitting there and being like, I started with literally nothing. So like, did this I spent eight hours building this thing, I spent eight hours building that thing, and it turned into something. I just think that just it doesn't matter if you're a musician. If you paint, if you write, I think a lot of that creative brain is highly necessary for for creating period, even business. So yeah, it is a funny correlation that I've seen so many times as well. And and I'm still shocked to this day, sometimes when I'm like you play music, or I see like an easel in the background with some of my clients. And I'm like you paint. And it's just, it's really cool. It's a really cool correlation.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. And I know for me, it's it's a constant reminder that you need to put that creative energy into your daily routine, because that feeds into everything. And like you said, it doesn't have to be music, it can be anything that just gets that creative juice in our brain going. Because it's all the same part of our brain. If I'm not mistaken, I'm not a neuroscience, but scientists. But I know enough about the brain to know that there's that creative part that gets activated. So if you're not doing anything creative listeners, get on it. Just something anything. It's so much fun to

Ryan Withrow
origami, let's just do some origami or something. I don't know. I don't know, what is that even works. It's a science, I can't understand. So there you go.

Adam Liette
Yeah, for sure. I can barely follow the YouTube videos on that my kids have tried. And they just laugh at me at the end. I think it's so cool. What you said about the idea that you get on a phone call, you have an actual human to human conversation. And it results in this end state, like you get a sale, you move someone ethically into the right place where they're able to buy, and it's something you know, we get so caught up in the different channels that we have available to us, like what is it about the actual conversation? person or person that makes the difference in your mind? So

Ryan Withrow
it's good question. I think there are a couple of different things. So I think, modern times like now, we find ourselves in this constant state of technology, AI, and all of these things that are happening very fast, which I love, and I nerd out on way too much. But I feel like while all of those things are intended to help mankind and humankind, right. I also feel like at least for the next generation to three generations, there's still going to be this need, and desire and like internal need for communication for one to one connection. And a lot of times, especially now, you'd be amazed how many people are just grateful to speak to a person rather than going through, you know, an IVR that leads nowhere or, you know, texting a bot. I mean, we example, we've got a here in Austin, we've got a delivery service, because you know, I can't get packages at my apartment for some reason. So I have to send them to a third party, that third party collects them and brings them to my apartment. And so many times I'll have packages that are lost in the process. And then you can't talk to anybody. Right? So what does that do that makes me have to text this automated bot all the time to have them research and look into it. But there's that frustration of like, if I could just talk to a person right now. I'd feel better. I'd feel good about it. And that exists for everybody. So I think currently we have that one to one desire outside Out of that, it depends on the salesperson. But as long as you are an ethical salesperson and you're doing things, right, you're there as the expert. And I don't say that as like a jerk kind of move. I don't say that as coming to every conversation being like, let me tell you what, no come into every conversation, realizing that they're talking to you for a reason. Or even if it's an outbound cold call, they're on the phone still with you for a reason. And you need to be perceived as an expert. human psychology tells us that, and marketing tells us that you want to eliminate as many decisions as possible for the person you're talking to. They want to be guided human beings, including you and may want a step by step, just just take me through the thing, like just do it like just just go, don't have me try to think about what I have to do next. Don't make me have to figure this process out. Make it easy for me. And I think there's an element of that in sales that somebody's just like, good. You're an expert. I'm not, it's why we're talking. So helped me understand what I need to be doing here. So I think there's a massive desire for one to one connection, for human connection still. And I think outside of that everybody that you're on the phone with, at least that stays on the phone and doesn't hang up, wants to talk to a subject matter expert and a product expert. Because they don't know you're the expert. They don't work at the company. So they want to make sure that they have that person to guide them through the process. But yeah, it's it's a crazy thing it is. But yeah, I think those are the big ones. For me. There's, of course, tons of other psychology pieces that go into it. But I think the biggest one being that one to one connection, they just want a person does it?

Adam Liette
For sure, man, we're dealing with like a satellite TV issue right now. I'm like, it's the same thing. It's like, Can I just talk to a real person and not a bot? Like this is insane.

Ryan Withrow
Screaming representative into the phone into the IVR? Yes.

Adam Liette
With maybe some like, other colorful language around representative,

Ryan Withrow
representative, kind, loving representative. That's what Yes,

Adam Liette
it turns out certain four letter words don't get a representative faster. That's what I found out the other day. So go figure. The AI We'll fix that next time. Yeah, yeah, just be sure you get labeled like bad customer or something in their CRM. So

Ryan Withrow
yeah, it'll get escalated to like the serious ones. So that's what it'll do. It'll just navigate them in the IVR to like the big, the heavy hitters. That's where you'll go.

Adam Liette
For sure. And when I think about all this, like, looking at the landscape, and now we got AI, like coming on, like crazy, and everyone's talking about it, every single, every other ad I see is about AI now. All I see right, all you see in front of me is like opportunity. Because everyone if everyone's moving to this more fake, more surreal, more what people actually hate, but might be easier for us. Theoretically, like, I see this as a great opportunity for more outbound for more phone calls for actually establishing that one to one communication and that personalization. Right?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, again, I say that I nerd out on AI, because I do think it completely has its place. And I love it. I really do you even in the sales process? Absolutely. If you know, you're testing against an actual person, taking calls or interacting with somebody to try to sell them test against, absolutely test against somebody, you don't have to pay 100% of the time. But there are going to be certain occasions that it just the test results don't give you what you want. And I think my best advice that kind of comes from that question is to always look at what you would deem your competitors as doing. I never think of competitors. Competitors, by the way, it's always just like education, and super helpful stuff for me to have somebody in a similar space that I could just watch and be like, what's working, what's not working. So if you look at what the competition is doing in your niche, your niche, your niche, whatever you want to say if you're from Ohio. So if you look in there, and you start to see, you know, what's the correlation, what are the majority of them doing? And you test against that and start to say, well, how can we do that different so we stand out so we stand apart? You know, small things that exist out there that I see work so well are just like you're talking about outbound calls, but calling active customers that you know, aren't at the full extent of their lifetime value that you either have more products to offer, or you have more lifetime value in terms of subscription or whatever you may be talking about, and just doing something as simple as a check in call, and just saying, Hey, it's me from the company, how are you? How are things going? How do you like that new thing you got great. And taking five minutes to do that? I guarantee you, by the way, 80% of the time, they always segue into like, Yeah, well, I saw this other thing that what's that about? And it opens the door for another sale, another opportunity. But the biggest thing I see when we implement something that's small, as an example, is people then writing in or doing reviews or interacting with other students or other clients, to where they are starting to say like, Man, I actually got a call from the company today. It was great. I love this company, I could talk to a person, it's wonderful they check in. So yeah, I think competitive edge. Absolutely. And also with that, always look at what the landscape looks like and test against what's working just like any marketing, and see if you could get a better result compared to what's working as well.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. And full transparency. Ryan gave me that exact advice, like six months ago. And I implemented it checking calls. And we did like 100 grand in two weeks in extra sales, just from checking calls, it was absolutely insane. It works so well. And it was just like he said, like people like Well, you're the people from the company, the guys, the email guy said I mean emails from like, yeah. And it's it's crazy, like how much impact you can make with a simple phone call, because people do want that connection.

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, and I still do those personally, because I think that I should never stop. So I'm just a big believer in, you know, somebody being on the other end being like you, I'm talking to you. I think that it's like yeah, I'm just like some nerd in Austin, Texas right now playing guitar that I just want to say hi. It's no big deal. But yeah, I think also, you know, if you're hesitant about that process, or something that's simple. The other benefit that that brings to a lot of clients is that we're able to segue those if needed, if it's not a sales call, always have it, always have your salespeople do it. You know, have the check in don't make it feel like a sales call, make it feel like a check in to make sure it is a check in. But you know, persuasive conversation to see if there's an opportunity in there. And if not, I asked three questions, usually on those calls. I asked one, what's your story? How'd you find me? How, you know, why are you here? And I just kind of let them go and talk to me. I want to get to know them on a human level like what how can I help like you? What, why? How can I get more of you? Where are the rest of you at? And then I always ask, What's one thing that should never change about the process? What's one thing we should always keep the same? You just love it so much that you never want to see it go. And then I lean in and I ask what's the one thing that you wish we did different way like helped me out? Help me understand. And it gives me really good information to implement into the company. But then even further, yet, chop up that first part. Yeah, chop up that second part, you got great social proof and testimonials all day to just be pushing through the system. So it's a checking call, so your people feel loved, you can potentially sell them more. You can learn about your company and what you want to test and implement based on direct feedback from customers. And it also gives you really solid testimonials from those initial questions.

Adam Liette
I love it man. Says Winner winner all around. I mean, it really is. Now I'm gonna play devil's advocate here though. All right. What if I don't have a salesperson? Question? Is that going to be me doing the calls? Or I'm thinking for the listeners out there? Is this one of those like, it's going to be okay, just to dive into it yourself? Or like what would you say to the solopreneur small team that's wanting to get into this?

Ryan Withrow
I still like the shrug his shoulders and I was like any of those. So I would say if you're a solopreneur I hate the term man. But it's grind and hustle, man. I really, I mean, that's what we do. But it's just synonymous now with like, you know, the grant cardones of the world. But yeah, for me, you should never feel above that. I don't care if you're, you know, a triple coma person, like, it should be something that you're never out of touch on. You should always at least be willing to dive in and get your hands dirty every now and then. If not for your own sake. But also I would say if not for your own sake. Then also keep in mind who you eventually hire who you are currently having work underneath of you and what they then see from an owner and they can get buy in from an owner at that point being like he actually made like 100 sales calls this week. That's incredible. It really, really helps. But I would say if you want an actual process, you know, Daniel Marcos is like one of my favorite people in the world, I love him to pieces, works with Vern Harnish all the time. And he's just like one of the best human beings in the entire world. So if you don't know, Daniel, you got to look him up. He's wonderful. But he describes all of these tiers of growth and business. And he describes like that first one, exactly kind of where you're talking about, it's the solopreneur, where you're everything, you were doing everything at that point. And then the next stage is, you know, the small business area where you can hire, but you can't afford to pay much. So you just kind of hire whoever you can hire to do the job and get it done. It might not get done great, but you have to do it. And a lot of times, it's family or friends, and all of those people that come to help out, then there's that medium business where you realize they're probably not the best fits long term. And he says that when he found that out, he went to a massive, like fortune 100 company, and interviewed a bunch of employees and staff that had been there since the beginning. So he went to the staff that had been there since the beginning. They were family members, they were friends, they were like, are you really do you like this job. And they were like, not really, man, it's, I'm just here because I'm here to support him. He's a family member, he's a friend, I love him. And then they talk to the owner. And they're like, I can't get rid of him, though he doesn't really do well, but I can't get rid of him. He's been with me since the beginning. So I think at that point is like the point you have to shift into making the right hires for the right stuff that you have to be able to afford at that point to move the business to the last phase, which is like that exponential growth phase and massive company, which is when the CEO and owner becomes just like the king of culture or the queen of culture, right? It's, it's what they're focused on, everybody else is doing their jobs, I'm here to really focus on the culture and growing the culture and making sure that we grow the business. So in that solopreneur, area, it is you, you're going to have to do it. But you should be really trying to get to a point where you can make a hire, knowing that they're not going to be optimal. They're not going to be like your your billion dollar earners coming in, but it's enough to start getting your test data. It's enough to start getting you used to a certain process, seeing what works, what doesn't work. It'll really help with your sales ability as a sales leader, because it's a very different skill, salesperson to sales leader, very different. But it'll develop that skill for you. It'll help you understand the systems and technology that are highly necessary for an effective sales team as well. So yeah, I think that, you know, when I first started my own thing, I was on sales calls, half the day, I was running the business half the day. And then it got to a point where I was like, Okay, the next sale, I make 100% of that cash every month, go into a sales guy. And I hired my first sales team member, and it all went to him and I just trained him used him to build up all of the processes and systems, you know, told him like, do this thing, but in the process, do me a favor and like record it, and like chop it up as if I was going to replace you ever. And like just so we can have my SOPs in place and figure everything out. It's just a part of that growth experience. But yeah, do it on your own. At first, it's fine. If you can't find somebody knowing that it's probably not ultimately who will be with you for the next 20 years. But you can learn a lot from having somebody and just throwing them into the process and throwing them into the mix. Have them read through some stuff. I talked about SPIN Selling, I still have every single person that I hire, read through that book because it's killer. I have everybody watch and listen to and read everything Chris Voss because I hate just super fanboy of Chris Voss over here. But yeah, there you go. That's, I don't know if I answered you. But hopefully,

Adam Liette
yeah, there was one particular nugget that I absolutely loved. And it was when you hired your first sales guy, you had him record everything, chopped it up building your SOPs out on the fly, which is what I teach everyone, like, if you go into mindset, like I'm going to make an SOP, you're doing it wrong already. Like because you're not in the flow of what you're actually doing. It's like letting him know that upfront, like hey, we're gonna SOP this, just, you know, just so we can build it out. I think it was brilliant. That's yeah,

Ryan Withrow
and, and I think a lot of people are hesitant to do that, because they're like, I'm gonna scare him. He's gonna be like, you're, you're gonna fire me, this is terrifying. It's not the case. Most of the time, when you frame it in a way of when I want somebody else to do what you're doing, because you're doing so well then I need to put you somewhere else. I don't want you to have to train them for two months. I just want you to go into that role. I want you to do that if it makes sense. So when they get this idea of like, Ah, all right, I can be promoted. It's it's a little different in the framing, and that's where again, also, you know, AI really helpful. I mean, when you're talking about having somebody just cut a screen cast video, have their process what's going through AI can transcribe that you can put that in a learning management system really easily so that people that you hire have to go through each of those very simple modules, you can make it better later. Absolutely. But you know, you start to build out these very easy processes to where instead of you training somebody for eight hours, somebody trained themselves for eight hours, and you hop on with him for an hour for q&a, and trying to guide them through the process. And you're able to really shrink your commitment down and get people trained up. And you can monitor that stuff like learning management systems and everything. I gotta make sure they're checking and signing off that they've done everything. So and if they do it wrong, I can yell at him for it. Because like you said, you did it, you'd send you did it? Did you not do it? But yeah, that's the we talked about AI, but it's very easy to document that stuff and grow that stuff.

Adam Liette
For sure. Absolutely. Man. I think that's there's so much to take from that, because it's it's not rocket surgery. It really isn't. It's, it's all these things we already know how to do we know about systems, like, wait. And what I often hear is, Well, sales is just different. No sales, no different business is a series of systems, its processes, it's repeatable things that happen over and over again. So and when we can find ways to put those in place, man, we're just enabling success from our people. And yeah, really, that's what our job as leaders is to do, from my perspective, is what can I do to set my people up for success so that they're able to just take this ball I gave them and run with it, right?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, yeah. And I think if we're talking specifically about, you know, that growth stage beyond solopreneur, as well, or those, like getting ready to make that move, I think there's there needs to be a solid understanding in your leadership that certain people that you need to hire need to be really good at certain things, and need to be need to have very different personalities than each other. But with that, you have to also understand what you should never expect of them 100% of the time, a salesperson, they should only be selling the end, you should never be trusting a salesperson to update spreadsheets, you should never be trusting a salesperson to have a clean, organized calendar, you should never expect to go into a salespersons email inbox for the business and see that it was completely clean and it's down to zero. It's just, you have to understand the things that you're looking for. And the things that don't come with that when you're looking for that. And it's your job as a leader to fill that gap. It's not theirs. I remember one time I had a client specifically that I had to leave ultimately, as somebody that came in and tried to help, because we differed on the opinion of what the expectation of the sales person was so much that it ultimately hurt the business. Because, you know, I know for a fact, I am a sales guy, I know the psychology of me, and everybody liked me. And, you know, it was a demand of beyond these calls, generate leads by yourself. And, you know, really update all of the CRM database, we're not going to automate any of that we need you to do it every single day after every call, making sure you notate things, making sure you do things. And you can force somebody to do that for six months. But at some point, it breaks if it's not in their personality, if it's if it's not something that works. So that's where you have to understand, okay, I know the personality of a salesperson, which by the way, I'll give it to you. Now, here's here's the cheat code. If you're in the Colby index, that's what I use all the time for salespeople, hi, factfinding, high follow through, they should have like a mid tier Quickstart. So they can kind of jump into like that, okay, I'm taking risk, but I don't want them to be too risky. And they are super low implementers. super low. So they don't like to do like the getting the hands dirty. So that's what I mean when just get them on a call. They're going to research the call and they know their facts, because they need those to sell. And then the follow through which I always found interesting because I actually got the ability to work for, or I should say one of the companies I was part of worked for the Kobe company, the actual Kobe index, the Kobe, and we asked them one time like what is follow through? What is that like? Everybody wonders, like what is what is follow through? Is it like I told you, I'm going to do something, and then I do it. And it was a realization that No, it's the ability to stick to systems versus create systems. So you need somebody that's willing to follow a system salespeople suck at creating systems. They're terrible at it. But if you give them a system that they just go in, and they know what to do, they can follow it, it feels valuable, they'll stick to it 100%. So when I say like that one client said they gotta do, they got to find leads, they got to update this, they got to do this manually, they got to do this manually. That's not a system, like they have to create their own system to make sure they do that stuff every day. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a nerdy conversation, but you have to know their strengths. And you have to know and accept the weaknesses and build around it.

Adam Liette
For sure, because it's definitely a trade off, right? If you look for that jack of all trades, you're not going to get the guy you really want, which is the person you know, they get on a phone call. And they're, they can they can do stuff I can do. I'll be perfectly honest. I can hold my own on a sales call. I am not a salesman. But guess what? I also like to build systems. So go figure, no wonder I'm not a salesman.

Ryan Withrow
Yeah. I was gonna say you do not want a back end web developer to take sales calls. You do not want that. Alright, if

Adam Liette
you don't want to check in web developers to talk to anyone, do you? They don't.

Ryan Withrow
They don't in general. So it's okay. I'll put them on the call. And they won't say anything. So it's all right.

Adam Liette
Oh, my gosh, I love it. And that's where I mean, there are as far as like with KPIs that come with sales with outbound inbound sales. That's where using systems and like different telephonic systems really help us out because it's tracking a lot of that for us, isn't it?

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, yeah, so highly necessary. So the key performance indicators, for a sales team very different, obviously, every department has their own KPIs that should ultimately feed into another system that shows leadership, their KPIs that they need to see. And I'm sure you say it a million times. But remember that different people are motivated by different KPIs. So there's like motivational KPIs, and then there's like health of the business KPIs as well. And they should all talk to each other like, but all of those KPIs should be related, in a way. So the big things that really help not just you as an owner in the sales team, but the sales team themselves, see what they need to do or what they need to change. First and foremost, real time, data points. It's it's a pain in the butt sometimes to implement systems that will give you real time data. But when you're talking about a salesperson, who is very fast, very tell me what I need to do next, give me the next call. Give me the next call, give me the next call. You don't want somebody to say like, Okay, I saw my data from last week, let me take another week's worth of calls, doing something different. And then the next week, they find that it didn't work, right, you want to have real time data, if possible, so that they can look at that call that just happened? How did that stack against things? Okay, let me change the next call. You want to make sure that's happening. But the big things I make sure I look at our dollar per call. That's one big metric that is super critical for for sales floors and sales teams, how much is this person making me on average for every single call they take? Just that metric alone allows you to see like, who should I route the highest likely buyers too? And do that? dollar per hour is also a big one. But that's internal. That's for leadership. Mostly, we want to know how much am I having to pay somebody for the results, they're giving me on an hourly basis that they're making me right. So if this person is only making me $80 an hour, and I'm paying him the same person is the same amount as this person that's making me $280 an hour? Hmm, maybe I know no to that other one. So you have to be really resourceful in that dollar per call. The other really big ones are handle time. So that's money to me, I'm paying for you to be on the phone, if you're on the phone with one customer for an hour as a problem. So I need to know length the call and you need to figure out as an owner, what is that average length, that average happy place. And typically, when we see it for like inbound calls that are coming in, you know, products like up to a grand or two grand, or like down to the 200, that four to seven minute. Still Sands is like a very sweet spot. You build enough rapport to sell an upsell. You don't build too much report where you're just dragging the call on as well. But you need to know those metrics for your for your organization, they're probably going to vary. And then you know, all the typical things you need to know how many calls are they taking, what is their downtime? How efficient are they in between calls that we call that utilization? Right. So if an agent is only working 60% of the time, 40% of the time they're doing like entering notes as a problem. We need to start understanding that because your job is to be on the phone making calls having calls so either I need to make the systems better so that you can make more calls or you need to To change how you're doing things because that person next to you has a 95% utilization. So yeah, there are a lot of different things that you need to be looking at. But ultimately, if you just sit back, and you look at utilization, dollar per call, dollar per hour, those are really big indicators track the amount of upsells as well. And then here's the other thing, if you have multiple programs, or multiple products, track each individual sales person's performance on each individual product, or campaign, and then use the old school understanding of skill based routing, which is if if this person sells this program really well, but really can't sell the other ones, I only want them taking those calls, it's the only call I want them on is the one they do well. So let's route all of those calls you 100% of them to there and maybe 20% of the others to that person. So being really intelligent in that knowing that if if somebody fails a campaign, it might not be that campaign, it might be that they're not connected in certain way to the product, they might kill it at another product. We just discovered in one of my one of my clients, that we had somebody selling $150 products, $250 products in it, okay. But the moment I had him sell $7,500 product, outsold everything sold 16 of them in a week, right? So it's the understanding of, oh, he's a high ticket salesperson, he likes the high ticket program, he's really good at that. I'm not gonna give him that low leverage stuff anymore. Now hire somebody else that's good at that. So there's a lot that goes into it. But I think as long as you have the data, shocker, you can really make intelligent decisions based on the all of those data points that come through.

Adam Liette
Man, I love that. And that's, that's so funky to hear, like, a guy who was struggling at the 250 and then crushed it at 7500. That's, it blows my mind that. I mean, you could have from a managerial perspective been like, well, what's wrong with you? You can't sell less than said, you just said, Well, that's what you're good at. I know what you're doing.

Ryan Withrow
Yeah. And, you know, I think that's, again, we talked about the distinction of salesperson versus sales leader, you have to genuinely get to know your people. And I knew he had skill. He's a comedian, on the on the side gig. He's a comedian in New York, as well as an actor in New York. So I'm like, he can be persuasive. Like he could teach him how to absorb it.

Adam Liette
So that's another creative person.

Ryan Withrow
Exactly. Yeah. And that's number one, but also getting to know those people to know what matters to them. So for me, with every new person I hire, I ask specific questions. I had them do the love languages, of course, because I want to know how to really trigger their emotional responses to giving positive recognition. But also on top of that, I asked one big question, what's the motivator? What motivates you? Like right now, if money wasn't a problem? Like, is it the money? Is it me coming over and just like giving you a pat on the back and in front of everybody saying, Good job? Is it you know, your family? What, like, what's the motivator? And I think his specific one was that he had just moved. It was a forced move he had to, and he had to make a ton of money, because he you know, is looking towards potentially getting engaged and all of this stuff, and it's just life is starting to add up. So he needs money to support a family. And of course, when I'm like, would you rather have commission from $200? Or would you rather have the commission from $7,500 It's an easy like, give me the 7500 Give me the 7500. And the first week, we rolled that out, we paid him more than we ever have. And, you know, as a sales leader, that's like the good stuff. That's one I found what he loves to do, and he can do really well for us and make us a ton of money. But also, at the end of the day, he saw that hid his bank account and is grateful for us and that process and making sure we're connected. Listen to your people, I think is also like a big thing. Just talk to your people. Listen to them, find out what they like, find out what they love in life and do more of that facilitate it. And they they won't leave you I remember I can't remember the name right now it's it escapes me there's a guy owns call center, a lot of call centers in Mexico. He's lives in the states though. And he trains people to quit this whole thing. When he builds these call centers, he teaches them like, I want you to quit if you don't like it. I'm going to do my best to make you fall in love with this job and never want to leave it. But if at any point you don't like it, quit. I just want you to like feel free. Like don't feel like it's a negative leave, I understand. So his whole thing is like I train people to quit. If I'm not doing what I need to do to fulfill them. They can find another job anytime it's on us to like, do what fulfills them. person and give them what they need, if it makes sense, right? If they're the right fire, and, and we need to get them that so that there you go.

Adam Liette
There's so much to take away from just that last little bit about leadership and what it really means to run a team to run an organization to be an effective leader. That it's our responsibility. And that's something i i Never take lightly. I know Ryan doesn't. And if you're listening this, this is what you do is why you get paid what you get paid. And lean into it, man, like there's so it's so rewarding when you find that part of yourself. Okay, I, I genuinely get off on the fact that I've made systems and it's the dorkiest thing in the world. But like, if I make something that someone has success with, like, that genuinely brings a smile on my face. It's an awesome experience and awesome responsibility to have.

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think you have to be so open to that stuff. I have another name drop. It's funny. Again, I had no idea of these names until like, after, but Jamie Weil. He's, he's really big with Steven Kotler. And like when I met Jamie, he was mapping the flow genome in binary code, so that we could tap into the flow state through binary code, like, way more intelligent than I'll ever be able to be 100% I'm just a guitarist sitting in Austin. But yeah. So I remember I was we were trying to do a deal together. And it just wasn't coming together. And finally came together. I met him for coffee. And he was like, let's go, let's do it. And I remember on the drive home, I was like, some doesn't feel right, some feels off. Like, I don't know, something in me tells me this project is a bust. This isn't going to be good. So I remember I went home called me didn't answer. Call them again, he didn't answer. So I left a voicemail. My voicemail was like, Jamie, listen, your friendship matters way more to me. And I have to honestly say that something feels off about the potential project that I don't think there's going to be a big enough win, to where it might impact the friendship. And because of that, I don't know that I want to do it. So I could guide you somewhere else I can help you find somebody else. But it just, it doesn't feel like a win. It doesn't feel like we're gonna we're gonna win it. And he called me back within like one minute and didn't even say hi, and I picked up and he just said, Let's lean into the friction. And that phrase has stuck with me years. And I don't even think he knows, I think I've told him once or twice, but he probably didn't retain the fact that like, a lot of my business practices are focused on lean into the friction. And it was that idea of we're not getting off the phone until I lean into the friction with you right now. And we get rid of that friction. And at the end of the call, I'm gonna ask you, is there still friction, and if there's not cool, we'll move on. So I had this beautiful conversation with him. And we felt good, we move forward, the project didn't work. So well. Like I wanted to win for him. But you know, the team couldn't do it. So I knew it. I knew it. But I've never, I've never stopped thinking of that in every aspect of business. So I think so often, owners avoid certain things that could lead to friction, the check in calls with customers, asking them what is wrong with our company? What's not working? Like? That's a hard question to ask, especially being like an owner and asking the question of somebody that's paying you money, and just being like, what's broken? What sucks in my company, and just being open to just getting like punched in the chest at times and one call on what's going wrong, let alone for your people, the people, you're managing your sales team, your marketing team, just everybody on your team, just being open to conversations on like, what are you pissed about? Like, what's wrong? Let me hear you out. If it's, if it's something you shouldn't be pissed about. I'll tell you. Okay, I'll be very honest that like, Hey, listen, sorry, your work here. Like you got to be better about this. Or it's an opportunity for you to be a human being that one to one connection, and go herd. I agree. We shouldn't have done that. We shouldn't be doing it that way. I absolutely agree. And then empower them to be part of that change of like, Would you be willing to help us over the next month to fix it, to change it to help out in the process? Because they also feel like they own it more when you do that. But outside of that, yeah, just be open to leaning into friction. You will be amazed at how long people stick with you. And you don't have to rehire how much harder there was there. They're willing to work for you. Because they know that that's rare. Not everywhere, does that and then your customers on the other side, they stick with you too. I just had a call with a customer that was like, for one of my clients. That's is saying like, Oh, I don't like this, I don't like that I don't like this, I don't like that. And he was like, I gotta tell you, I'm about to quit the process, I'm about to quit because I don't like it. And after having a full conversation, doing what I needed to do fixing the good ideas that that customer had their back, they're fine, they're happy. It's all about finding I think in leadership a problem when it's this big for those of you just listening my hands, my hands very small. Finding a problem when it's this big for grows and grows and grows and grows and becomes a massive problem on either the customer side of the business side, and squashing it when it's that makes its way easier. And it really helps.

Adam Liette
Do that was knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb? Man, it's been a packed episode. I got all sorts of notes of like authors, and people have to look up now. Because I had half of some of those big hitters.

Ryan Withrow
If you tap into the flow genome, the flow state with binary code, let me know. Because yeah, that's it's it's crazy, man. That's so

Adam Liette
let's plan on doing it on my break today. Yeah, my whole life has prepared me for this moment to to find that genome.

Ryan Withrow
Yeah, just you know, just type in maybe maybe just like, hold onto a USB cord and just like type zeros and ones over and over. Maybe that'll do something. I don't know. I can't tell.

Adam Liette
It's like reverse osmosis or osmosis for idiots. I like that one better? Yes. Awesome, did it Ryan, it has been an absolute pleasure. Always enjoy our conversations and just nerding out and getting getting to hear more about your experiences and all this. Some of your ideas really on, there's so much to take away on management and being a leader in this episode. Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is about sales. It's about marketing. It's about all this stuff. But there's so much of what you've said, that comes down to just being a leader and being a good person and being what your people need you to be. And I think your own success is just an indicator of when you do that, is what you get. So

Ryan Withrow
yeah, yeah. And I think to like before, you know, we cut like, to correlate what everybody's used to hearing from you, you measure all of it, I understand that I'm like, come from the heart, like, just be a good human. Now you measure it. So always make sure that in your operations, if you're like, Okay, you know what, I'm going to meet with every employee every quarter, and I'm going to ask them questions, measure their performance, before that happens, measure the performance after, you always have to have those measurements in place, and find what works, what moves the needle, and start to really move toward that. So it's not just this idea of like, be a good human, which you should just be doing. It's also understanding where those levers are, how to track that stuff. And starting to test just like you test your marketing stuff, test the process of Alright, I'm going to talk to these people. Great. All right, I'm going to do call reviews with people, they're going to be positive and negative. Let's try another one. Let's try just positive focus call reviews. How does that work? All these things, just measure performance, measure data, and do keep doing what works? Scrap? What doesn't work test a new thing. It all comes down still, even if it's like the human factor stuff.

Adam Liette
Do your data. Love it, man. Did this been an absolute pleasure? And where can the audience find out more about you and learn from you? Right?

Ryan Withrow
There's too many places. I think that you know, there's there's way too much stuff moving. Do you understand how many how long it takes to manage a tick tock, a YouTube of Facebook and Instagram and a business?

Adam Liette
I it's, it's a mess, because we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, it's

Ryan Withrow
a lot. If you want to watch Fun, fun guitar things. It's the tiktoks Ryan D XP is the tic tac. But if you're interested in business stuff, you know, feel free to go to Ryan with red.com or you know, I'm I'm always open and available for Conversations. I'm one of those people that always make sure the inbox is available to anybody. And if I can't handle it, if I'm too overwhelmed, one of the team members will but more than likely you'll get me so just Ryan at Ryan withrow.com Doesn't matter I don't care what it is. I can help I'm there to help.

Adam Liette
Awesome thank you so much. Ryan been an absolute pleasure and we will see you on the flip side.

Ryan Withrow
Perfect pleasure is all mine and enjoy that Ohio cold without me please.