#49 Radical Insights: Personal Branding with Ryan Alford
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Ryan: [00:00:00] people learn in different ways, they're educated in different ways, they're entertained in different ways.
Ryan: So there's different strokes for different folks, which means you can break through, but you can't just do what you want. You have to do what resonates and what shows, an authentic point of view and adds value and value comes in a lot of different forms. So I think we tend to do what we like instead of what we need.
Claire: Welcome to another episode of the Small Town Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Claire Beauvais, and today's episode is all about leveraging personal branding and being able to achieve an [00:01:00] incredible brand success anywhere, anywhere. Today, joining me is a marketing personal brand maverick, Ryan Alford, founder of the boutique ad agency Radical.
Claire: Born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Ryan has built a wildly impressive career. Working with major brands like Verizon, Google, Apple, and the NFL. After a decade of working in New York city, he returned to his home roots in Greenville, South Carolina, rebounding from a significant career setback to build a thriving agency.
Claire: Ryan now shares his expertise on his top rated expertise on his top ranked podcast right about now, and continues to inspire entrepreneurs
Claire: Welcome to the show. Ryan.
Ryan: Hey, Claire. Thanks for having me.
Claire: Thank you for being here. You're a busy man and it's really awesome to have you [00:02:00] on here for a couple of minutes to talk to the audience that we're trying to build our own wealth. Anywhere in the world, you've done it and you've not just done it.
Claire: You've done it very well. Let's kick it off. Do you think you need to be living in a huge urban center to achieve this 1% success? Everyone talks about,
Ryan: well, I'm in Greenville, South Carolina, so , I wouldn't call that a booming metropolis. I've definitely worked in booming metropolis as but made is probably much money in Greenville as I did in those other places.
Ryan: So look, we live in a technology driven world now. Like you and I, you're in Canada. I'm here in the States. I think it proves that you can be successful and drive the bus from wherever you are. It's really more about having the right, action plan in place, ideas in place. I'm kind of an idea guy, you can solve major problems from anywhere.
Ryan: And the bigger, the problem you solve, the more money you [00:03:00] make.
Claire: This is true. And this is a perfect segue because you worked with huge clients such as Verizon, the NFL, Google. Now this was something like you were working with these huge clients and not everyone listening will ever have that opportunity or has had that opportunity.
Claire: So if you. We're suggesting someone building their personal brand and you were starting at ground zero with not having that previous experience, where would you start today?
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think you have to have that resume. To make a dent in social media now, and either have the patients to kind of stick with what it takes.
Ryan: I mean, here's what happens with growing a personal brand. It's all about content structure and. You know, having the discipline to stick with it, [00:04:00] because I'll give the example, whether it's my podcast or my personal brand, if I had looked at the numbers every day, you know, for the first, year, myself crazy and I would have quit, you but I will say this.
Ryan: Claire, I think there is, I want to give good advice and I want to give real and authentic advice I do know some people that have stuck with it. They've done like four years. They've posted 4, 000 times and they have 300 followers and they can't figure out cause they go, well, I've done it. I've been disciplined.
Ryan: I've stuck with all that, but then you go look at the content. And they've refused to change. They've done and posted what they're comfortable posting. They've done and posted the content that they like versus adding value and sharing a true point of view. You know, we have a lot of regurgitation going on.
Ryan: AI has made [00:05:00] it really easy to share base level knowledge. And what really separates, I think the ones that break through that have success eventually are the people that share a creative point of view or someone that really reframes it in a way that their audience can absorb in a different way, because, you know, people learn in different ways, they're educated in different ways, they're entertained in different ways.
Ryan: So there's different strokes for different folks, which means you can break through, but you can't just do what you want. You have to do what resonates and what shows, an authentic point of view and adds value and value comes in a lot of different forms. So I think It's the discipline to stick with it because it takes time.
Ryan: You can sort of play the roulette game of tick tock, you know, go over there. You might get an organic blow up quickly, you know, good luck keeping it, but, or you can get on Instagram, Facebook. And start to build [00:06:00] more niche audience that really might ultimately buy a product or a service or your point of view over the long haul.
Claire: And it's interesting because I think I was talking to someone, TikTok to me is like someone jumping out of a bush, scaring you. And you take that information, you carry on. And then, which is so interesting because you are way ahead of. The curve way ahead of everyone jumping on the podcast scene.
Claire: You've been doing it for five years and I can tell you I'm only in my second year. And it's a lonely planet, the podcasting world. It's kind of, well, not for you now, but that first year it is crickets. It's quiet. You don't get the same type of metrics like YouTube or other different platforms. So I'm really curious a, why did you choose podcasting?
Claire: And. You must be a little crazy because you stuck with it for five [00:07:00] years. , and why? Yeah. You know why? And how did you stick with it?
Ryan: Well, it's actually been 10, so let me, I'm gonna back you up a little.
Claire: Okay.
Ryan: In late 2013, my
Claire: apologies, ,
Ryan: I did a startup in the car business and I started a car show. And I did probably 50 or 60 episodes.
Ryan: They're not out there anymore. And, but I, saw this podcast wave coming 10 year plus years ago. Now I put that to bed to did other ventures but dabbled my feet in it, but I always kind of had it in my back pocket. Cause I believed in the medium. knew that it was growing.
Ryan: I knew sort of this intersection with the smartphone and having access to these apps. Okay. I don't want to listen to terrestrial radio in my car as much. I can play what I want. I saw this sort of intersection happening where audio branding and audio content was expanding. So when I started my ad agency radical, you know, I started the [00:08:00] Radcast.
Ryan: And that was six and a half years ago and 400 plus episodes. But I saw that as a few different things. One building relationships, having dialogue like this, you can't, you can't recreate, you know, like I will know Claire forever now, you know, you'll know me, you can text me, you can do whatever. Like we've, we've, we've broken bread together here on the podcast.
Ryan: And so I saw that I also saw it as a way to sort of keep my knowledge sharp in the industry by having industry people on doing some of the topical things that we do. And then back to what you said, like personal branding, do I need to have all these brands that I work with to grow or to start? I knew I was not going to be, you know, Gary V from 15 years ago, following me around with the camera guy.
Ryan: Like, I'm just not that guy. I'm comfortable on the camera. I don't mind talking. It's easy. I can be the extrovert. But I don't want a camera following around. So the podcast created [00:09:00] content for me. It gave me a platform to say things that I maybe I thought were smart. Some of them were have guests on that said things smarter than me.
Ryan: But I knew that it sort of became that. Source of content for me and my personal brand and what we were doing while also building my authority in the marketing space. So I saw that, you know, 10 plus years ago, but as this proliferation of social media has come along and the need for, staying relevant with content sharing the podcast checks so many boxes and then quite frankly, I did think we'd be able to monetize from it.
Ryan: I did see that, but that's become sort of icing on the cake.
Claire: first of all, apologies. I was thinking it was five years at 10 years out
Ryan: there. That's insider information or your audience only. I don't think I've even told that 10 year story. So there you go.
Claire: Well, okay. I was like, I thought I did my [00:10:00] research.
Ryan: It wouldn't have been out there. Yeah.
Claire: Wow. Well, it's interesting because, I always, I love talking to early adopters and then there's early, early adopters. I had another guest and we were talking about Bitcoin. He's been in for like, since the beginning of time. People like you fascinate me.
Claire: You have this, birdie in your ear to telling you, Hey, this is what's coming. Where do you get these intuitions, how do you know this? you're ahead of it. And now people are jumping on. Is it too late to jump onto the podcasting scene?
Ryan: Well, I'll start where you began.
Ryan: Like, I don't know if I'm an innovator as much as I don't give a shit what people think. So I'm not scared to try things. So that's more of, I think the innovators are the people don't Get inhibited by the worry of failure or the worry of, because look, you have to try it to know it works or you have to, you have [00:11:00] intuition.
Ryan: And I'll say, that's just me is I'm a creative person. Like some people, they can create 17, 000 processes and all that. And I can play that role. But mine is more of an idea guy. And so, like, I can see, you know, Disparate parts and create and bring it together in a creative way.
Ryan: So that's the way my brain works. And I think that's what maybe drives the, okay. I think I can see where that's going. Like that's the way my mind works, but at the end of the day, I don't know that that makes me special. I think my superpower is I don't give a damn what anybody thinks if I fall on my face, because I'll do enough and I'm driven enough that something will stick.
Ryan: And then look, we're still going up on the bell curve for podcasting what we're still doing is this evolution of what podcasting really is. And isn't posted, this morning, like LinkedIn, probably about least, Use platform. I'm terrible on LinkedIn, even though I should be better.
Ryan: It's a business platform,
Claire: but [00:12:00] yeah,
Ryan: it's cool. But I'm just bad at staying active there. I posted like, if your podcast isn't generating a business outcome, let's call it what it really is a hobby. And so, you know, because the hobbyist podcast gets called a podcast and Joe Rogan over here and make a 200 million a year is called a podcast.
Ryan: there's a big Delta. Those are two different things. And so I think that to make the point that it's not too late, but we have this intersection of audio and video. That's going to, it's happening in the, in the space combined with the proliferation and the changing dynamics of social media that are really redefining.
Ryan: You're going to have different stages of podcasts. You'll have the, Legacy audio version, you know, where a lot of my audience was built from. And then sort of this content entertainment channel, the video portion, and what we're doing with my show right about now is really coming to the intersection of that.
Ryan: Cause we're gonna have a daily show. That's [00:13:00] going to feel more like a show than a podcast. you're getting a taste of it here. Some of the studio, we've got some stuff coming behind us in our new space. But
Claire: I'm loving it. I feel like you're on a podium and everyone I'm in my garage.
Claire: I love it.
Ryan: Yeah. So, but that's intentional. Like, you know, a lot of those maybe beginning digested audio, but I encourage people to consider podcasting, but think about it less about podcasting and more about. Becoming their own media and TV station. That's it's really more thinking of through that light.
Ryan: you're a content channel and my show is a content channel on a number of, you know, it's no longer CNN, ABC, Fox, those still exist. Don't get me wrong. They're still there, but now, but the Ryan offered channel. it can comes to your TV station, which is your phone. [00:14:00] Cause that's, what's in your face all day.
Ryan: And then you also can listen to me on the radio. Yeah,
Claire: well, it's, it's neat. Cause it's this now this personalized streaming accessibility that we have access to whatever we want, we can curate a little bit and this whole movement of decentralization, we're owning our own real estate on the online, which is really, really cool.
Claire: And I wasn't. Planning on going this direction, but I gotta ask you Ryan, because this is something I know I work with tons of creatives. my whole life have been a creative, but I would say one thing, talking to creatives and hearing you, you're highly creative. But your output is incredible. You're able to consistently show up in a very processed, structured, driven way.
Claire: And yes, now you're at a point in your career, you have the wonderful people behind the camera helping you and whatnot. But when you were starting out, [00:15:00] let's, let's, let's Think that maybe you were in your garage. but as a creative, how did you keep the, you know, the right brain and the left brain in some sort of equilibrium?
Ryan: Well, I was a hybrid like coming up to the agency world. I started as the account guy. Count guys are supposed to be hyper detailed. So I think I learned that skill because of the channel I kind of came through and then I became the strategy guy, the new business guy, and then I had to start my own agency to really probably spread my wings on creative.
Ryan: Even though I did some at other places with ideas none of the creators want to give me credit for that, but all that to say, I think I have a little bit of both and look, you bring up the garage quote. I literally was going through some of my old photos, Claire, and like, I'm in our space.
Ryan: It's a 6, 000 square foot space. It's co work lounge that I own called social house that we've kind of created different like rooms for, well, the room [00:16:00] behind me is a small, like 10 by 10 office rooms got a glass wall. We used to have just a couch and two chairs and there was kind of a quasi meeting room and I've went through my pictures.
Ryan: I had a picture, I had the, I'll call it the four track play. It was the mixer on the table. I had a mic on there and a guy there, no one else is in the room. I'm like fit, like someone, I think on my team at the time, there's a really small team made this, he started like three people I like I'm fiddling with like switches doing whatever.
Ryan: But look, Claire, I mean, so I've just figured it out. Like you have to. And have been disciplined and stuck with producing two shows a week without break for five plus years. And I didn't, for more than half of that, I didn't have anyone but me doing it. So, I talk what I talk because I walked it. You know, as my good friend Migos say, Walk it, talk it, talk it, walk it.
Ryan: [00:17:00] I did it. I went through that snow with no shoes.
Claire: And I think it's so important, right? Like you really can't eventually teach these things until you feel the pain points and are in those shoes. And this is where, you know, the journey is sometimes I would say as exciting to a certain point. You don't want to be the person though, sitting at year four and there hasn't been any movement.
Claire: I was listening to an Alex Hermosi podcast and someone else that I find fascinating is this idea that you're just constantly building in public. You're putting out there, you're moving the dial, you keep going. Now how do you set up your days?
Claire: How are they? Because people like you, it's like, well, you know, when you sit down to a blank canvas, Brin's for a two month or is it day or is it week? It's fascinating to understand the behind the scenes.
Ryan: Yeah, so like it's probably less organized [00:18:00] than you think, but it's organized around goals. Like I said, goals like for the macro, but I don't get too caught up in the micro for how they get done.
Ryan: As long as there's progress happening to them. Don't get me wrong. I've got a lot going on. I have to like, you know, create moments you live and die by your calendar, you know? And so that's certainly the case. But, you know, I think people get a little too caught up in it's going to be messy and I don't think you can't have chaos or you'll never get anything done.
Ryan: But I think what happens is people like to get caught up in the minutia or making that as a crutch for when they weren't really focused on the macro goal. You know, like you have to go, okay, this is, I'm going to get from this place to this place. Like, okay, I'm going to grow, like right now we're growing.
Ryan: I'll be real specific. The Radcast is now called Right About Now with Ryan Alford. We've changed the name [00:19:00] because we have the Radcast network. So we're growing our podcast network. Our goal, you know, I threw the BHAG out there, okay, 50 to a hundred shows this year. So we're not going to get to 50 to a hundred, but if we get to 25 or 30, that is success.
Ryan: And so my activities in any given week, and that's just one. But let's say I have three or four, I own multiple businesses. We have different goals for each one. My activities throughout the week have to ladder back to that goal. And I prioritize primarily through the lens of my physical being in body, being in shape and mind being in shape as much as possible.
Ryan: Priority one priority to family that I take care of and take care of me, my wife and four boys and then those three or four goals for the businesses. And so any given week, there's meetings and stuff to get to those goals. And I'll [00:20:00] judge or critique the week by, did we advance those goals? You know, do I feel good about myself?
Ryan: Is my family in a good place? Did we advance the podcast network? Did we advance social, like, Did we do these things? And that will, and then if it didn't, I don't go create 17 notebooks of things. I'm real realistic than that, but I take learnings and apply them in the next week, you know, it's one foot in front of the other.
Ryan: But you get paralysis from analysis sometimes in how something happens versus the actions to get the goal done. Analysis,
Claire: the analysis. Okay. I'm going to save that one. And then while you're saying that, I was like Pat Flynn's always the riches are in the niches, even though I say niche
Ryan: I
Claire: know.
Claire: So I'm always like, Okay. Riches in the niches doesn't sound as good, but along that line [00:21:00] is when you're building out this personal brand, you're setting your goals. Most creative people I work with, I talk to, and like you're a prime example, you have three very different businesses that you're operating.
Claire: Now it didn't always start like that. And I think I'm going to kind of rewind and we're going to go back a bit because a lot of our listeners are thinking, maybe I'm going to start supplementing. My income, and there is a huge, a mass accident and a paradigm shift the way we work now. And people, especially, I was just looking at, as a, as a new mom, I'm invested in the statistics of like you know, moms are being entrepreneurs and what that looks like. And it's really interesting. It was something like 62 percent of mothers leaving corporate jobs, executive positions, starting to build their own brands. But what I find with personal branding, do [00:22:00] you focus?
Claire: A very specific niche. What's your take on that? Or do you let, you know, your audience guide as you share things? Where did you start from?
Ryan: Yeah. I'm going to answer the way I did it and the way I counsel people to do it. They're not always the same.
Claire: This is what I wanted. Okay.
Ryan: I started my personal brand and like, I done a lot, I'd worked on all the brands that you mentioned.
Ryan: I had the who's who. I wouldn't say I was set for life. I would never say that because I have a lot of ambition and a lot of goals, but I was not in a early frame of life or, I was comfortable enough. When I started my personal brand journey seven plus years ago, and and I had a lot of stories and things that I had done that needed to be told because I'd done all this stuff, but I was a ghost town online.
Ryan: but a lot of people are sort of living their experience now and today they didn't, they don't [00:23:00] have all that in the can. Like you thought, you know, they don't have all that, that they've already done and can draw from. and so I was sort of leveraging personal brand and even the podcast, the reason I didn't look at my data every day is because I didn't need it to generate money that day.
Ryan: I was playing the long brand game and trying to build mass. Broader awareness and audience for bigger plays for me down the road. Cause I didn't need it to generate, I didn't need to become a coach, you know, or do this like immediately from it. But most certainly the more immediate riches are in the niches of staying in your lane of what you know, look, I think a lot of what happens is people forget if you're wanting a business outcome from something, then you've got to have a business plan in place.
Ryan: So you have to be intentional. And intentionality usually comes with a specific direction and a specific niche or [00:24:00] layer. if you're an accountant, you know, you're talking about accountant stuff, you know, if you're a lawyer talking about lawyer stuff, you can do it through the lens of entertainment and education and make it interesting.
Ryan: But I do think if you're wanting to train other accountants or, you know, make a buck being an accountant coach, or, you know, Whatever that might be, you're most certainly the fastest path for that is a clear lane of who your target is and what they can expect from being in your community. And I think community building is typically built around niches and specific things.
Ryan: And so, I think my counsel is depends on what game you're playing, but for most it's get a niche. And I look, I'm taking my own medicine a little bit. I'll be honest. Like I was a little too all over the place, which probably served me well as getting different followers. But I didn't have the most, like if I wanted to [00:25:00] activate like my following to buy something, you know, three or four years ago.
Ryan: That was not an easy exercise that had kind of people all over the map, right? Because I had kind of been all over the map. I think I'm a little more, yeah, it is common because we tend to do what we like instead of what we need.
Claire: I think this episode is also for me here too. And I [00:26:00] agree. so where was that shift that you were like, okay, I'm going to lock into my lane here.
Claire: What did you see a little bit of success by trying it or just, what was it that activated the focusing in?
Ryan: I think there was a more direct, you know, with especially the podcast network, what we're doing there, I think locking in to, okay, I have done this for 10 plus years. I'm definitely a leader in the space.
Ryan: I have a number one show on Apple. And we're trying to grow out the network. That felt like a lane and a proposition that could be centralized. Even if some of my other stories come out, that was a central play in, you know, being a marketing guy, but niched to podcasting in some way, that was a more central lane for me for a business outcome.
Ryan: Look, my agency works with medium sized companies, 150 million and higher. Most of those aren't hiring us on Instagram. but there's a lot of people, small [00:27:00] businesses, solopreneurs, otherwise starting podcasts that might want to leverage our network. And so that's where I've gotten a little more centralized in that channel.
Ryan: And I am seeing more direct payback from that for the types of people following us. The, and the types of sort of outreach that we get.
Claire: And it's interesting because you've noticed that there's obviously, there's the audience that's sitting in the social media spaces, and then you have this entire medium business sector when you.
Claire: Are sitting down talking on the podcast. Who are you intending to speak to? Who is that audience?
Ryan: Yeah. Right now I would say a 25 to 45 business skews males, you know, like business audience, like sort of your wannabe founders to early founders. And I would [00:28:00] say that gravitate towards sort of an irreverent.
Ryan: And direct style, you know, our tagline is we're taking the BS out of business. So, our audience to date with the marketing show had been, you know, a lot of marketing professionals, but now moving towards more of a mainline business show that still has a marketing dust on top but as a daily business show.
Ryan: You know, our audience targeting is shifting a bit, but again, the people that want to hear the business news, but don't want the politics and don't want the slant, you know, they don't want to watch business news on Fox, CNN, or headline news. Cause they're going to get the bullshit political leanings.
Ryan: That even the business news gets told through now. And so we're going to take the BS out of that, cut it down. And look, I'm a Southern guy from South Carolina, and I think if you listen to me long enough, there's a simplicity that comes across. Combined with, okay, but this guy knows what he's [00:29:00] talking about.
Ryan: And so that's what we're trying to do.
Claire: And I love it because I think that's the future, right? Is having you sign up for the people you want to hear the information you want to hear now, Ryan, we'd be totally remiss not to mention AI in marketing and the way we do our work now you've been in business for so long and you've worked with some of the biggest brands in the world.
Claire: And you probably think if I know for me, I think back, Oh my gosh, if only I had AI 10 years ago, where, you know, where would things look now? But let's not look back. Let's look at moving forward. How has AI really transformed the strategies that you're day to day working with your business, with your personal brand?
Claire: How are you keeping that authenticity? Because you said earlier in the show, that medium level knowledge base. Information, and you got to break through that noise, that mediocrity. How do you do that with AI?
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, [00:30:00] you got to be yourself, but look, people need to be using the tools.
Ryan: Like you're going to get left behind if you aren't using the tools because it's going to take you too long and you're going to try to charge too much for services or things that can be done cheaper. So this is not something you can ignore. Look, I panned the metaverse for as long as I could pan it when that came out because I knew that bullshit wasn't actually going to be a business changer in the short term.
Ryan: While everyone jumped on that NFT, you know, all that stuff that I sort of panned. And when everyone else was talking about it, it's now you don't hear anything about but AI is not that it's too smart. It's too fast. It's too powerful. So you need to be embracing it to knock out tasks and things.
Ryan: That you do to empower you to be more effective, but look, it still can't add the human intuition because if you just throw out and do everything that it says, it all starts down, you know, some of these blog posts all start sounding the same, a lot of knowledge, [00:31:00] but you have to still have perspective and you still have to craft and hone.
Ryan: You know what you're bringing to the table I think you have to embrace it while also recognizing that certain jobs and certain things are not going to be what they were and looking for the opportunities in and around it. you know, What people sort of forget there's a lot of 55 to 70 year olds who thanks to modern medicine are in great shape and controlling and running a lot of businesses and doing a lot of things that aren't using AI, but they need people that are to leverage it in their businesses and do things. So you need to be in, you know, part of what we'll be doing is empowering people like on our show, talking about those innovations and what it means and how to leverage it in the right ways of business.
Claire: I love it. I love it. I could ask you a million more questions, but we got to wrap up here, but we're going to finish this [00:32:00] amazing session, Ryan, with you just asking, because I always find this very Interesting. What's a skill or maybe an ability that's not directly related to your work, but has been so crucial into the success of your work and the value of your work by some sort of skill or something that you bring to the table that is unrelated to work.
Ryan: I think it's like this combination of grit and resourcefulness, like, and I don't know if that's a skill I'm not smart enough.
Ryan: I wrote another show called vibe science. We can go down that whole route, but like, there's a, there's a, Nature or nurture of whether that was learned or absorbed or taught. I do think I'm a very curious person. I see successful people. I see things that work and I go, I want to know how that gets done.
Ryan: it's like you asking these questions, you're a curious person. We're asking, we're having this dialogue because we want to learn. but I think we've gotten conditioned where a lot of people don't have that. We have so many [00:33:00] conveniences. Yeah, sometimes we don't ask enough of the right questions and or aren't curious.
Ryan: I think this combination of curiosity, resourcefulness and grit to just figure something out and get things done. And that has served me very well. because I'll say this, like, I remember, like, coming up 25 years old, Watching, I learned the ad agency. Like I saw how the money got made, got to have clients, got to get more business from clients and solve their problems.
Ryan: 27, I'm at the C suite of Verizon, they're asking me, big level questions, because for five years, my early career, I asked questions I was learning and I was like, Not afraid to kind of voice my opinion, but I was really resourceful.
Ryan: Like I'd hear them say they had a problem. I'd go, well, we know how to do that. And you know what, do you think we actually knew how to do it?
Ryan: no, but you know what? We would fucking figure it out. And we, and we did, and you know what? I've made a lot of fucking money writing bets [00:34:00] that I had no idea how to do, but you know what?
Ryan: I believe in my ability to figure it out.
Claire: Yeah, I will.
Ryan: Nothing will stop me from figuring out how to get that shit done. If I tell you I can do it, I will do it. Yeah. I'm not saying it's gonna be perfect, but. And you build credibility by, by cashing those checks that you write, even if you didn't have the money in the bank when you wrote them before it cashed, you did.
Ryan: And so I'm not using that as a, don't go do that by the way, but I'm using it as a, as a metaphor, you know, and so, but too many people are afraid to do that. I've never been afraid to do that. So I think that's a combination of curiosity, resourcefulness, and grit.
Claire: And
Ryan: a little bit of stupidity. I don't know.
Claire: Yeah. Stubbornness confidence that just like, yeah, there's, you can always solve the next problem. And I love that. And I think the curiosity, I always say it's still, it's a muscle that can be strengthened and it's people like you that we got to learn from, we got to understand how to do that. Ryan, this was awesome.
Claire: You are. [00:35:00] Really interesting to talk to you, to share how journey has really impacted the way that marketing's going in the world today. And so grateful that you could share a little piece of your awesome here on the small town entrepreneur podcast.
Ryan: Hey, my pleasure, Claire. Thanks for having me and happy to do it again sometime.
Claire: I would love that. We got to follow up on year 25 of your podcast.
Ryan: Yes.