Ryan Levesque is the Founder of The ASK Method® Company, which helps companies understand their customers’ needs through strategic questioning techniques. He is a seven-time Inc. 5000 CEO and founder and a two-time national best-selling author, with his book Ask named the #1 Marketing Book of the Year by Inc. Magazine. Ryan also Co-founded Bucket.io®, a leading marketing automation platform used by over 80 million people globally. His work has been featured in major outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and NBC News.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [7:15] Ryan Levesque’s pivot from a failed $70 million deal to building his family’s dream life
- [12:16] The power of asking better questions for life-changing breakthroughs
- [13:35] The three questions Ryan uses to overcome feeling stuck or conflicted
- [15:18] The impact of doing the opposite of your competitors to stand out in a crowded market
- [16:30] Understanding marketing channel lifecycles to identify future opportunities
- [18:01] Why emerging platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT represent the next wave of digital marketing
- [19:47] How the shift from screen time to real-world engagement is creating new channels through audio and print
In this episode…
Have you ever followed the so-called “perfect” business playbook — only to watch your biggest deal fall apart? What happens when your vision of success doesn’t go according to plan, and the result forces you to question everything you thought you wanted? What if the solution isn’t to double down, but to step away and ask entirely different questions?
Ryan Levesque, author and expert in direct response marketing, shares the deeply personal story of a failed $70 million deal and how it led him to radically rethink his life and business. Ryan offers powerful, reflective questions designed to uncover blind spots, shift perspective, and inspire change. He explains how doing the opposite of your market, identifying underused marketing channels, and re-engaging with the physical world can unlock new opportunities for personal fulfillment and business growth.
In this episode of the Timeless Marketing Podcast, Brian Kurtz hosts Ryan Levesque, Founder of The ASK Method® Company, about redefining success and embracing a contrarian path in life and business. Ryan explores the value of self-inquiry, the marketing opportunity in audio and analog, and the unexpected lessons learned from starting a farm. He also discusses audience intimacy, market saturation, and the future of digital platforms.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Brian Kurtz
- Brian Kurtz on LinkedIn
- Chris Mason on LinkedIn
- Ryan Levesque on LinkedIn
- The ASK Method® Company
- Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy…Create a Mass of Raving Fans by Ryan Levesque
- Choose: The Single Most Important Decision Before Starting Your Business by Ryan Levesque
- Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene M. Schwartz
- The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks
Quotable moments:
- “When you change your questions, you change your life.”
- “How can you stand out by doing the opposite of everybody else in your market?”
- “The most competitive piece of real estate is the 14-inch square we hold in our hand.”
- “Screen time should come with a Surgeon General’s warning; the physical world is what we crave.”
- “It’s the closest we can get to putting our voice directly inside our prospect’s brain.”
Action steps:
- Ask yourself profound questions regularly: Regularly questioning your assumptions helps uncover blind spots, reveal opportunities, and lead to more informed decisions in both personal and professional realms.
- Embrace the power of being contrarian: Exploring unconventional paths can create unique opportunities and market differentiation by standing out and capturing under-exploited niches.
- Leverage less crowded marketing channels: Identifying and using less saturated marketing channels gives you a competitive edge by reaching potential customers more effectively with less competition.
- Integrate physical and digital experiences: Combining physical products with digital enhancements creates an engaging customer journey, blending tangible interactions with the strengths of digital platforms.
- Prioritize audio content for deeper engagement: Audio formats like podcasts and audiobooks offer an intimate, immersive way to connect with your audience, enhancing message retention and brand loyalty.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Titans Xcelerator.
Titans Xcelerator is a private mentorship program for direct response marketers.
It is one of the most giving communities and serves as the de facto board of advisors and marketing insurance policy for over 250 of the best and brightest direct response marketers, copywriters, media buyers, marketing agencies, senior executives, anyone in direct response marketing, who is committed to growing and scaling their business.
And you don’t need to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars either.
Titans Xcelerator is 1/10 of the price of most groups of its kind.
And with a private membership, you’ll receive access to the full presentation from today’s episode, along with the Q&A and discussion that followed.
As an added bonus, you’ll receive access to a vault filled with many more private calls just like this one.
The bottom line: you don’t have to grow your business alone.
If you want to see how Titans Xcelerator can help you grow and scale your specific business, go to BrianKurtz.net/help
Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:02
Welcome to the Timeless Marketing Podcast with Brian Kurtz. Your connection to insights from some of the top direct response marketing minds on the planet.
Brian Kurtz: 00:16
Hey, it’s Brian Kurtz here host of the Timeless Marketing Podcast. Today’s episode is a clip from one of the two-hour calls inside Titans Xcelerator, my private mentorship program for direct response marketers. Before we get to that, I have one question for you. Do you have a marketing insurance policy? If you don’t, you need one. And that’s why I created Titans Xcelerator, which is one of the most giving communities and serves as the de facto board of advisors and marketing insurance policy for over 250 of the best and brightest direct response marketers, copywriters, media buyers, marketing agencies, senior executives, anyone in direct response marketing, who is committed to growing and scaling their business. The bottom line, you don’t have to grow your business alone. And you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars either. Titans Xcelerator is 1/10 of the price of most groups of its kind. I know because I hosted a group that was over $20,000 a year. If you want to see how Titans Xcelerator can help you grow and scale your specific business, go to BrianKurtz.net/help. That’s B-R-I-A-N-K-U-R-T-Z.net/help. And with a private membership, you’ll receive access to the full presentation from today’s episode, along with the Q&A and discussion that followed. As an added bonus, you’ll receive access to a vault filled with many more private calls just like this one. Again, if you want to see if Titans Xcelerator is a fit for you with no obligation, go to BrianKurtz.net/help. That’s B-R-I-A-N-K-U-R-T-Z.net/help. And feel free to email me directly. I respond to every email with questions about this episode or just to say hi, at Brian@BrianKurtz.net. Now onto today’s episode. Ryan, I know you’re on.
Ryan Levesque: 02:29
I am here, my friend.
Brian Kurtz: 02:31
Hey, how are you? Hopefully we haven’t bored you too much.
Ryan Levesque: 02:35
No, this is amazing. This is a nice little unadvertised bonus as they say in the biz.
Brian Kurtz: 02:42
So for those of you who don’t know Ryan Levesque, basically you’re missing out. But you won’t miss out after today because you’ll get a good feel for who Ryan is and what he means to not only the direct response marketing industry but to me personally, whether you care about that or not. Ryan and I met a little over ten years ago. I knew of him before that, through Will Hamilton. He is somebody I’ve admired. I’ve kind of like, I’m not going to say I watched him grow up, but I kind of feel like I did in a way. And I’ve been watching his rise, his influence. Those of you who don’t know, he’s written two books, Ask and Choose. Ask was an amazing book. Kind of didn’t just put him on the map. I think, you know, he had a mastermind and he did a lot of other things. He developed the ask funnels. The idea of, you know, getting your audience to tell you what they want to do, which is something that goes back to Breakthrough Advertising. I think in my blurb on ask, I said, you know, Ask is a Breakthrough Advertising for today as opposed to 1966. And I thought that was the best compliment I could pay it, since Breakthrough Advertising for me is the most important book ever written on the topic of markets and creating a market and, you know, mass desire. So anyway, Ryan is in a new phase of his career in life. He just sold one of his companies. He still has his original company. He’s going to talk about this transformation he’s gone through. It’s not just the beard, but he’s become a farmer. And it’s an amazing journey. And there’s I guess two parts to it. I guess you’ll do it in at least two parts. And I may interject with some questions, but I really want you to share basically what you shared at the plat meeting and what you’re sharing now internationally. I know you were on a huge trip to the UK and you’ve been sharing this story and then you’re adding to it. I just realized you were on the Stu McLaren predictions call, and you’ve added to it even since like a month ago when I saw you, or two months ago when I saw you. So he’s basically transforming himself and he’s still the same guy, which is what the best thing about him is. So anyway, Ryan, I just want you to share your genius with this group. I just want to tell you how much I admire you, how much I value your friendship. And that you were. I didn’t even have to get the sentence out to say, would you come on this call? You were like, yes, before I even asked, and so I did ask, but not like your book. I didn’t do a quiz funnel to get you here, but I just appreciate you so much and I’m so glad you’re here.