Ryan Lee 6:10
We’re all a little messy. We are otherwise we wouldn’t be here on Zoom, like a big Brady Bunch thing. Yeah, so I don’t even know what was it? What was the question? The question is,
Brian Kurtz 6:21
I want to talk about your transition over the years since I’ve known you. And how that has, I mean, basically how you’ve grown up in this business, the the, we’ll call it the internet marketing business, and then got into a different kind of business. And you already had a supplement business for a time. And now you have your rewind business, but just talk about that, that, that, that rise, and where you found where you had problems, where you’ve crushed it, and why. All right, well, obviously, like I
Ryan Lee 7:01
now, at the very beginning, I said, I want to just talk about myself, ” But truly everything I talked about today, I want to give specific practical takeaways that all of you can use. Because that’s the point like, I want you to walk away with at least a couple of big aha, it’s like, alright, I get it. And I know we were talking about the idea that this guy would be like the pivot. And I know, that’s what everyone’s been talking about since the pandemic. Although I don’t know if I necessarily call it a pivot. I look at it as if all of us think of ourselves as almost like a superhero, and like, what’s your what’s your backstory?
Right? Like, there’s, you just have to know from the beginning, no matter where you are, no matter where you are actually on your journey right now, because I see some of you. And I know some people here that I’ve known for like a decade, and some people are new, no matter where you are, like, life’s gonna be a journey. So when I first started, I set up my first website. So I was working full time at a children’s hospital, children’s rehab hospital, and I was there for six years. And I worked in the pool, I did fitness adapted aquatics. And on the side I was a trainer.
So this was like 1994 to 2000. And the very, very beginning of the internet. So on the side, I was a strength conditioning coach and I trained young athletes. I went to their house, I would go to gyms, I started a strength conditioning clinic for hockey players. Although I still can’t skate, which is ironic. I trained elite level figure skaters, I can’t figure skate, I can’t even go forward on the damn things. So it’s all off ice conditioning. So I said, let me start a website. And this was 9899. To promote my training business. I didn’t know how to do it. And just started writing articles online. I had my neighbor, Jonathan, who was 12 years old at the time I paid him 20 bucks. Does anyone remember from page 98?
Chris Mason probably remembers that one. Oh, that’s where I built it from page 98. I just wrote articles just because I was captain of my college track team. I always like staying in shape and running. And as a sprinter. I talked about improving your 40 jumping higher, running faster, lifting more. And it just started to grow from there. But I think with us on a journey, the core of us doesn’t change. Like back then in 1998. I was in my late 20s You know, those 28 or something like that and I’m about to be 48. So my core, my essence hasn’t changed. Although I was different. Right back then. My wife and I were just about to get married. I didn’t have any kids.
Now here I am over 20 years later after being married 20 years and I have four kids. So I’m on a journey. So I’m a different person than I was 20 years ago. But I don’t think my core has changed to who I am and what’s important. And I think no matter what business we’re doing, especially The, if we’re doing like a personality based business there’s going to be that backstory and there’s that thing that continues to fall through. And if you’re doing it the right way, people are going to follow you on that journey, no matter which way you go. And I think that’s where we get stuck.
That’s why a lot of us don’t even get started. Is because we overthink, we overthink, we’re like, Well, if I start talking about, I don’t know, copywriting for firefighters, all of a sudden, I’m going to be put in that box. And I’m never gonna be able to do anything else. Right? You think I can’t do it because I don’t want to be the firefighting copywriting guy forever. And here’s the thing I say. And I don’t mean this to be mean, or rude or insensitive. But here’s the truth. How do I say this nicely? No one gives a shit about you. And what I mean by that is, they’re not what no one’s waking up every day and saying, man, what is Ryan Skelly going to say today? Right?
But his wife and think about that, but Jack or Tom or Virginia or Karl I’m going through all the names. Oh, there’s day what’s going on day, but they’re not like obsessed with what we’re doing? We’re worried about their own shit, right? So we think we harp on everything. We’re like, well, if I send that email, are they going to hate me? What are they going to think about me, they’re not gonna, most people aren’t going to remember it, they’re not going to think about it. You give yourself a lot more latitude to do stuff. Like, I was known as the online fitness guy for a couple years and strength conditioning.
Then I started having success. And other fitness pros and a lot of people who’ve become big names of fitness where my original students were feel old, but they call me the godfather of fitness, online marketing, which drives me crazy. But they’ve, you know, they’ve seen me be the fitness marketing guy to a general entrepreneurial one. And back. I’m back in the health space where I where I started, like, come full circle, but that’s okay. Right? You’re like, you take the journey, and no one’s sitting around, like all the 1000s of customers, we’re getting our month 1000 new customers, then I say, wasn’t Ryan, a marketing guy, you know, 18 years ago, they’re waking up saying, Man, I’m like, you know, I feel a little bloated, I feel a little crappy.
Remind This is a cool company. Let me go see what they got going on. So, you know, drop the excuses, drop the bullshit, stop thinking that everyone is obsessed with what we’re doing. And just, if you can breathe a little bit, you’re like, let me fucking play. And that’s what, that’s how I look at business. As you could see, this is actually my office, this isn’t like a fake background. Those are actually video games. I have hundreds of records and cassettes and this is kind of like the 80s fun theme. But when I look at it, I don’t get up and say I have to work. I look at it, and say I get to play. And I think when you have that sense of like, I’m just gonna go for it.
And we’re going to screw up and you’re gonna make you’re gonna have wins, you’re gonna have losses, and you just get up and you keep rolling with the punches. Because the end of the day is on your deathbed. Are you really going to say, oh, shit, that Facebook post only got six likes? You know? No, you’re not. You’re really not like that, it’s really not the most important thing. And I was really blessed to spend six years working in the children’s hospital to see so many amazing kids.
And unfortunately, I’ve known I know more children that have passed away than probably all of you combined. I’ve seen it in kids with things like sclera, Derma, and cancer and all this type of stuff. So it gave me perspective on what’s really important, and a lot of this stuff doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. So get out there. And just friggin play and have fun and try shit. Like just trying things. And don’t be afraid to make a shift and don’t be afraid to make a pivot. Some things are gonna work some aren’t and if they don’t work, you dust yourself off and get the fuck up and you go again.
Brian Kurtz 13:48
No, Goodbye everybody.
Ryan Lee 13:49
I feel like I feel like Tony Robbins Jr. Yeah, exactly. And I don’t like it. I don’t know why I’m cursing. I’m getting excited.
Brian Kurtz 13:58
I usually don’t curse but I should rewrite lean on me by the way. This is a private coaching call again and you guys can just follow along. What’s going on buddy?
Ryan Lee 14:06
Well, I think everyone wants to know this like what’s what are a couple examples the ads you’re writing and then in terms of like a pattern that I’m seeing with the free one day micro cleanse looks like the pattern is shrinking down the like if there was a if there is a commitment to say yes threshold you got 90 Day weight loss detox for like 90 days okay, but then like one day micro cleanse the commitment to say yes to that the threshold is so low. It’s like you pick the lowest threshold offer you could think of to lead with free or free plus shipping is a one day micro Glenn so I was just thinking about what the other gentleman they said how does this apply to me?
I was just thinking about okay, so how could this apply to me with the easiest thing that someone could say yes to? It seems like you found it with a one day microphone but never seen any offers with such a low commitment to say yes threshold I guess I would call Yeah, yeah. i am Absolutely. You’re right. I mean, I can’t verbalize it as well as you can. I just thought I always put myself in their shoes. And I, the question I asked myself to get there to get that is, why would they say no? Right? What’s going to stop them from saying yes to this offer?
And why wouldn’t they get the greens? Why wouldn’t they buy a full container? Well, they don’t know how it’s gonna make them feel, they don’t know if they’re gonna like it, they know what they’re gonna taste of it, they don’t want to spend that much money. They want the benefit of a cleanse, but they don’t want to spend seven days. They don’t want to spend $200. So what’s like the easiest lowest threshold I can get them to? And that’s why I came up with this.
Brian Kurtz 15:36
This is our ad.
Ryan Lee 15:41
This is this is I mean, this is how crazy we go, huh? That’s all the copy we’re doing. Need a fresh start? The one day micro cleanse, get your free juice. This is it.
Brian Kurtz 15:56
You know, Ryan, it’s interesting, you know, when we were talking about the, you know, and again, pivot is a ridiculous word now that it’s been overused, like crazy the last six months. But the thing that that I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed this in everything you’ve done, that, you know, your your skill, and this is the through line for you.
This is a skill that you develop in online marketing, in, you know, when the idea of treating, you’re serving your, your online family, not your list, your online family, with special, you know, humility actually permeates your entire career even into a product’s business. Now, which before you were just you know, you were the guru, giving people advice, doing little masterminds, doing personal hot seats for people. And this is just a an extension into the business that you’re in now using the same skill set, isn’t it? Pretty much. Yeah.
Ryan Lee 16:59
I mean, you know, I look, I come from a nonprofit world. So I just use that same feeling of actually caring about people and bring it online. I know, it’s, it’s tough, because there’s that balance. And I’ve come up with this phrase, it’s the heart and the smart. A lot of us focus on the smart, which is the conversions, the A OVS, the pixels, the copy that headlines, all the stuff we need to know, because you need to know that stuff. But there’s also the heart stuff, there’s actually caring about people , telling the truth is doing it with integrity, honesty, and humility.
And sometimes that kind of gets pushed to the side, because we’re looking only at the numbers. And I think the intersection is when you combine both, is when you really win and you succeed. And again, like even just showing real world examples like this was someone wrote this yesterday, do you lose weight with?
Brian Kurtz 18:01
What do you need to know? I don’t even know if the question was,
Ryan Lee 18:05
I replied to this one. She said, Do you want to lose weight? That’s a great question. Because it’s just one day, it’s not meant as a complete weight loss program. I was telling the truth. I’m not saying Oh, yeah, you’re gonna lose 20 pounds. However, people do lose a few pounds of water weight, right. And then when I do, instead of trying to make the sale, I say, You know what, go to our Breakfast Club, go meet a few 1000 people that are in there, get some social proof and become part of the community.
And when you’re ready, come back and give it a try. It’s working really well for us, as opposed to saying, oh, yeah, you’re gonna lose three pounds or five pounds. Here’s all the testimonials go by. It’s a little bit of a slower sale. But I think that’s why your conversions are high, because people do come and they look at all the responses.
Brian Kurtz 18:47
Right? Yeah. And I think one thing you’ve always done no, is you do a great job responding to I saw somebody called you and asked bagger on there,
Ryan Lee 18:57
I just saw that, that I guess these could get them right now. But you do a good job of diffusing those people and kinda sometimes you’re able to turn them around. And then sometimes you know, people buy because they like your attitude and your gifts and kind of like how you respond and interact with people from a brand perspective. I think it really works well and endears yourself to people that are scrolling through the comments section. Yeah, so you know what I’m gonna do? Give him a little bit of this
so normally, I’ll be like, oh, you know, blah, blah, blah, but whatever. So I’ll get back to the other comments, but yeah, me or my staff we try to answer be I’m going to have some fun with this person. Let’s see what happens. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s, but it’s, it’s being human and just responding to them in a real way. This is, you know, like I said that the ad is Working, it’s just it’s just really, really, it’s really simple. And a lot of the people are, are having good reviews, and we just aren’t we.
And this was great like, we, every single person is positive, this process the most disgusting juice I’ve ever had in my life.I said, Hey, I’m really sorry. Email us, we’ll give you a full refund. Like I didn’t delete it. I want to keep showing them that not everyone loves it. And we’re not perfect, although this person was showing a lot of negativity. But, again, well, this helped me lose weight. And what happens is, when you run the ads, you know, people start asking, they keep asking the same questions, which helps you with your copy? Because now you know what questions to ask, is this gonna help me lose weight? So this is yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, this is kind of what this is what we’re doing now, this is the front end that’s working.
The goal is to get to break even. I somehow, you know, with, it took us like three days to realize the upsell wasn’t gonna work and made the shift. So it kind of was like out of the gate, a winner. But, and we’re gonna keep scaling this up. Now. The biggest challenge we have with an e-comm company is inventory. It’s cash flow, and managing, you know, if it’s eight weeks to get the juice, and how much inventory do you need? And how many of those new customers are going to be regular customers? So how much inventory do we save for them? So there’s a balancing act.
Brian Kurtz 21:27
Yeah, but I mean, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been watching, you know, we’ve been talking a lot over the last, you know, couple of years since you launched rewind. And, you know, the idea of, you know, knowing that you were going to do bars, that bars had a definitely a lot shorter lifespan and inventory, that the that the cacao chips were melting in the mail, you learn things, and then you know, but you knew where, you know, it wasn’t like you made a pivot, because it was just the next best thing.
You knew the whole range of things that you wanted to do with rewind, you started with bars, but then you’ve been thinking about supplements, vitamins, greens, all these other things. And you knew which ones would solve the problems that you were having with bars, right?
Ryan Lee 22:19
Yeah, yeah, I see, I saw what was working, what wasn’t working the whole thing when I when I launched, rewind, was my idea which most of the sub the two other companies, I started in the past to supplement companies, the whole thing is start with one product, start with one really good product, test it, see how you can get get customers see what the customer acquisition cost is. See what the lifetime customer value is. And then as you start going, and one of the greatest business books I’ve ever read in my life, ready, fire aim, buy, or think for Yeah, or Michael Masterson is known back then had one of his chapters and it’s, it’s like a five minute thing.
But it was, it’s, it’s the most important thing for marketing. We know we’re all advanced marketers. The front end is customer acquisition, and the profits on the back end, right. But if we can’t get that front end working, then there’s no profit on the back end. So we focused on the bar, and we tried to sell it. I did it for about a year and a half different iterations, different flavors, the margins were too tight, we weren’t getting enough lifetime customer value was too much to get a customer ships were melting, it was much more expensive to ship because the box is bigger, it would cost eight to $10 to ship versus just a couple bucks now for juice. And I made a tough decision a couple of months ago to say, we have to pause the bars because it’s just not working.
And I told my customers, we’re gonna pause the bars and people were upset. Some of them, but everyone’s but because we’ve been building relationships. We weren’t just transactional. We weren’t just a product. They’re like, You know what? I’m a little disappointed because I love the bars. However, we love rewind, we love your brand. We love everything you stand for. We’re going to try the greens, we’re going to ride with you.
And we made the shift. And now we have the front end offer that’s working. Right now all the new customers are the 1000s of customers that are coming in every week. They didn’t even know we had bars. That’s why I’m saying people have a short memory. They don’t, it’s like a month. It’s almost like it never existed. I mean, think about what happened last time you said I’m going to Well, most of us probably don’t eat us anyway. But it was us and we didn’t go to Kentucky Fried Chicken as a KFC when we were kids. It was called Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right? No one ever said I’m going to KFC. And that’s cool. Look, Uncle bands are changing to just original bands. And they’ve been around for 100 something years. Yeah. One
Brian Kurtz 24:52
thing one thing that you glossed over which when you were in bars, one thing that you said you have to get the first product out. And put I think what you did, which I thought was great is that you chose the super bar, which was like the one bar, which wasn’t a, it wasn’t a real flavor. It was just like a, we’ll call it up a unit bar, if so it was like an all in one type one, right. And so you are assuming at that point, this is the product I’m going out with, this will be my hero product.
And what you did was, which is really important, is that you have to let your audience tell you, is this the best product, it might be good enough to start the business. But then when you started adding some flavors, I think you realize that the cinnamon coffee cake was much better. And I think before you moved away from bars, you had already decided that the original bar was taking a hike and you were getting rid of it. Yeah. And you were focusing on the others. I mean, that’s a big, that’s a big, it’s not a big shift. But you’re shifting with the audience. Not sure we’re listening for which one you like the best? Yeah,
Ryan Lee 26:01
I mean, Ryan Skelly was there from the beginning, he was behind the scenes with me. And he saw and we both saw the ads, we were running at the beginning, almost every single negative wire, because this is two years ago when everyone was keto, right? At keto, you can’t even have one gram of sugar or carb. And our bar had I believe it had nine grams of sugar, which I got down to. I’m like, nine grams is nothing in a bar, nothing. People would have thought I was trying to kill their babies. Like you’re poisoning us with sugar. It’s more addictive than cocaine, you know, you must be keto. So I’m like, alright, we need to lower sugar more.
And that’s where we went off in the direction and flavors. And then yeah, we launched the four or five new flavors, and then we phased out the original. So that was pivot one, we phased out the original, we got a little bit of blowback, then we phased out the bars and got a little more blowback, but that’s okay. You’re just kind of listening to the market and just continuing to provide. And as long as we still have that brand, and that flow through if we’re here we care, we’re going to be transparent. And we’re always telling them the truth of why we’re doing things and how it works and the process behind it.
And here’s why it’s taking eight weeks or 10 weeks, or here’s why we’re sold out. And here’s what we’re going to do about it. And here’s why we’re reducing this bar. Yeah, but it’s it. People are like, well, how that, you know, you’re kind of ballsy to make these changes. One of my friends, a big finance guy, said, Never get rid of a product. If you have customers. And I support we’re gonna get new customers and I think the ones who like us are gonna stick with us. He’s acknowledged they’re just there for the product and like, I don’t think so. Not always.
Outro 27:50
Thanks for listening to the timeless marketing podcast with Brian Kurtz. Visit BrianKurtz.net and click the podcast at the top of the page for a full transcript and show notes. If you’re interested in working with Brian personally inside of Titans Xcelerator, go to Briankurtz.net/help to see how Titans can help you grow and scale your business. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [forward slash] help.