Carly Ries
Writing is hard, especially for busy solopreneurs who have limited time to not only get it done, but get it done in a way that resonates with their audience.
In this episode, we talk to Andrew Ryder, a content marketing strategist and copywriter who helps coaches and course creators grow and keep an engaged audience, create content faster, and help to ensure they never run out of ideas.
Looking for a way to be more productive in your business? The LifeStarr App is launching July '22 and is designed for solopreneurs like you. Click here to be the first to know when it gets released.
What You'll Learn In This Episode
- How solopreneurs can create content their audience actually wants to read
- What the most underrated aspect of content creation is that makes high-quality output feel effortless
- How solopreneurs can generate more content ideas than they have time to write
- A simple business principle that eliminates being overwhelmed and allows you to take a day off without feeling guilty
- The Ron Burgundy personal branding secret that Andrew loves to share
And so much more!
Resources Mentioned In The Show
- Visit Andrew Ryder's website.
Favorite quote about success:
" If information was the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs." - Derek Sivers
"Startups don't starve, they drown." - The Lean Startup
Episode Transcription
Andrew Ryder (00:00):
Writing is hard. I think a lot of people think that it should get to a point where it's easy, but it's always hard. I love writing and I still struggle to sit down and do it because it's constantly confronting me with the edge and the limitations of my knowledge and my ability to articulate the ideas that I have
Intro (00:20):
Bigger. Doesn't always mean better. Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast, where people who are flying solo in business come for specific tips and advice to find success. As a company of one, here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries.
Carly Ries (00:39):
Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries,
Joe Rando (00:44):
And I'm Joe Rando.
Carly Ries (00:45):
And we've had a couple of episodes recently surrounding content marketing. And that's why I love the topic. There are so many different angles to learn to help ensure you put the right strategy and tactics in place. Today. We're talking to Andrew Ryder, a content marketing strategist and copywriter who helps coaches and course creators grow and keep an engaged audience, create content faster and help to ensure they never run out of ideas, which is great. So Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew Ryder (01:10):
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Carly Ries (01:14):
Yeah. We're so excited for your angles and with that. So something that's funny with content marketing that we've kind of talked about in previous episodes is you can create all the content in the world, but who cares if your audience doesn't actually care. So how do you create content that your audience actually wants to read?
Andrew Ryder (01:30):
I really love this question because it sort of gets to the core of the issue. There are so many tips and tricks and tactics out there that it's really easy to lose sight of why you're doing what you're doing. It's easy to get caught up in writing the killer headlines or the highest converting tactics and things like that. Getting all the swipe files and trying to use all these gimmicks to get engagement. But at the end of the day, the simplest way to get engagement with your audience to get new people onto your audience is to create entertaining content, to create content that people actually want to read. It's really a difference between trying to build a relationship with the people in your audience, rather than just trying to use proven headlines or split tested bullets or whatever to get transactions. So let me give you an example.
Andrew Ryder (02:29):
When I open up my email inbox, it could be true for social media as well, but when I open up my email inbox, I'll have 10 or 15 different emails from a bunch of different marketers who I've bought from. And they're sending me an email trying to pitch me on something or sell me something. I think we all get these types of emails. <laugh> and when I look at my inbox, I don't look at the subject lines first. I look at the "From" line, I look at who the email is coming from and by looking at who the email's from, I know exactly which handful I'm just gonna immediately check off and delete. I know which ones I'm probably gonna save for later because they tend to write longer form emails and I don't really have the time as I'm organizing my inbox to get into them.
Andrew Ryder (03:18):
And I know who writes really short emails that I can just look at really quickly. Maybe get a little idea from, or save it for later if there's a resource there. But all of that comes from the, from line. None of it has to do with split tested headlines or proven curiosity type headlines, or by changing your name to get more engagement. It's completely irrespective of all of those tactics and it really has to do with the relationship that that person has taken the time to build with me. And they've done that by providing content that I enjoy reading that I get value from. It's entertaining, it's useful. So when I create content, I'm really thinking about in the simplest sense, what can I do to add value to this person? What can I do to build a relationship with them and not just, how do I get them to open it this one time?
Joe Rando (04:11):
Can I ask a question?
Andrew Ryder (04:12):
Sure.
Joe Rando (04:13):
How do you weigh the difference between this concept of trying to be regular and continuous in terms of producing? If you're producing one blog a week and it gets released on Tuesday, make sure that you have a blog about every Tuesday versus having something to actually say and be valuable. And I mean, sometimes there's writers' block or whatever and sometimes you've gotta put out content, if you try to keep a schedule that might not be up to your standards. Do you have any thoughts about that and how to handle that?
Andrew Ryder (04:48):
I think a lot of that is mental. It's definitely a real concern and a lot of people struggle with this. But a lot of it is mental. I think that if you're in business, if you're passionate about what you're doing, if you are consuming and engaging with high quality content and we can dig into all of these things individually, if you'd like, but if you get your system built to the point where you're generating ideas separately from your writing process. You're separating your writing process from your editing process. That's gonna really help with writer's block. If you're getting good quality sleep, if you're sitting down, you're energized, you're ready to go, and you're writing. Just getting that uninterrupted writing time. That is going to help you create significantly higher quality content.
Andrew Ryder (05:47):
I don't really think about it in terms of the way you frame the question, which is sort of getting at the idea, maybe I don't have something to say today, but I made a commitment to being consistent. Consistency is really important, but I'm not thrilled with the quality of what I produce. Maybe I went through the motions or maybe I didn't have a great idea. I was rushed. Something happened this week. Things obviously come up. The way I think about it is just being consistent. Consistency is going to be more important than creating the best piece of content that you've ever created, every time. You can see how if you're always trying to one up yourself, it gets harder and harder. And that's something that a lot of authors struggle with as well. They write a really awesome book, which then makes their next book that much harder because they feel like they have to beat their previous book.
Andrew Ryder (06:51):
The other thing that I would say on this is that you don't actually know whether or not it's good. You can write from a grammatical from a structural perspective, you can write a high quality article and maybe you're not super thrilled about it. Maybe you didn't spend the most time researching it, or maybe the stories aren't quite as good as you would've liked them to be, but you'll find that a lot of the content you create that you are sort of lukewarm on tends to be the things that really resonate with your audience. So I think it comes down a lot to sort of a mindset of, I don't wanna bother my audience with something that isn't the highest quality or isn't the best I could possibly do. But I think you'll find that if you just share authentically and just create something. Put it out there, say, "Hey, this is what I'm thinking about today." This is where I'm at and it's okay to make mistakes. We all grow, we all improve. That's part of building that relationship with your audience, taking them on that journey with you.
Joe Rando (07:56):
Yeah. What you said at the beginning of that, the idea of putting together, kind of separating your writing from your ideas. I'm not sure exactly how you phrased it, but having kind of a structure that you're working from. I gotta be honest. That was something we did here that I haven't done at previous companies that I've produced content for and it has made a huge difference. It's just this well, to go to all the time to say, oh, we can talk about this. We can do that. And that's a really powerful idea. Thanks.
Andrew Ryder (08:28):
Yeah. That the number one cure for writer's block, to separate these things out. Writing is hard. I think a lot of people think that you should get to a point where it's easy, but it's always hard. I love writing and I still struggle to sit down and do it. <laugh> because it's constantly confronting me with the edge and the limitations of my knowledge and my ability to articulate the ideas that I have. So it's one of those love hate relationships, but by just creating
Joe Rando (09:01):
My wife is a children's book author, and one of her rules is, butt in chair. <Laugh> Just sit down and write no matter what.
Andrew Ryder (09:10):
That's exactly right.
Joe Rando (09:11):
It's so painful sometimes because, nothing's coming out. But creative, writing's really hard. <laugh> Blogging's a lot easier to me.
Andrew Ryder (09:19):
Just making that list and having maybe 10 or 20 or however many ideas you can have just written down. Set it aside so when you sit down to write, all you have to do is start reading that list and think, oh, this topic is really inspiring me today. You get that little bit of momentum going and then just write and just explore those thoughts. Try not to edit because editing again is gonna slow you down. It's going to bog you down. You want to separate your writing from your editing as well. That'll also really help with the writer's block.
Joe Rando (09:51):
What did Hemingway say? Write drunk, edit sober.
Andrew Ryder (09:54):
<laugh> Exactly. Get those creative juices going while you're writing and then really dial in on the focus on the editing.
Carly Ries (10:03):
I'm really glad you guys are having this conversation. It just points to how much brain power it takes to produce this kind of content. So Andrew question for you, what do you think is most underrated aspect of content creation that makes high quality output feel effortless?
Andrew Ryder (10:20):
I briefly mentioned this a couple minutes ago, but I'm glad that you asked this cause we can dive a little deeper. To me it's really evident when you ask the inverse question, which is, "What would make quality output just feel absolutely miserable?" So maybe I go out, have a few drinks, stay up really late, sleep in a little bit, wake up I'm dehydrated, I'm groggy. I hit snooze a couple of times, but eventually roll out bed. Just kind of drag myself to my desk, fire up the computer. Mentally this whole time I'm berating myself for sleeping in, I'm regretting that I didn't hold my routine. I'm starting to think negatively about sitting down and writing. I don't have any good ideas and it just makes the whole morning difficult. It makes it harder than it needs to be. Like I was saying, you need to do yourself as many favors as you possibly can because writing is really hard.
Andrew Ryder (11:18):
So the answer to the question, What makes high quality output feel effortless?, Is really focusing on your health and fitness. I think it's super underrated. Because when you sit down to work, you really need to be able to focus. You need to have stamina. You need to really be able to get in there, block out distractions and work hard. It's hard work. It's not glamorous. It's not easy. You need to eat healthy, you need to sleep well, you need to exercise. Those are really the foundational building blocks of focus and of energy. The more that you do those things, the more energy you'll have, and the more you'll be able to pour out into the content that you're creating. A lot of people feel like they're pouring themselves out into an empty or an endless ocean where they just keep pouring and pouring and pouring.
Andrew Ryder (12:15):
And they're draining themselves down to near zero. And yet they're not seeing the level of the ocean rise at all. They're creating all this content, just continuing to put themselves out there, but they're not seeing the results. They're not getting to that level of impact or influence that they would like to achieve. These building blocks, the health, the fitness, the energy that you have, if you think of yourself as a battery, all those things that you do, getting sleep, getting exercise, eating right, they're going to increase the amount of energy you have in your battery. So at the end of the day, you can get through the things that you want to get through and accomplish the things you want to accomplish without just feeling totally wiped out.
Carly Ries (12:59):
That was a completely different answer than what I thought you were gonna say. And an even better answer than what I thought you were gonna say. I so appreciate you shedding light on that because people do not think about it really. Especially solopreneurs. That actually brings me to my next question. Solopreneurs have limited time. So they get stressed really easily. Body gets run down. How can they generate more content ideas than they have time to write?
Andrew Ryder (13:23):
Before I jump into this, I'm curious, what did you think my answer was gonna be?
Carly Ries (13:27):
I actually have no idea, but the health and wellness path wasn't where I thought it was going. I'm so happy that's where it went because it is so important. We actually had a nutrition coach on whose podcast we release next week. If you don't focus on yourself, then forget about the rest. I'm just so happy you reiterated that in a content marketing conversation.
Joe Rando (13:48):
What I love is that, I've done this getting up and working out in the morning. And a lot of times I feel like, "Oh, I should be working. I should be working." And now after this conversation and the one last week, it's like, "No, I am working. This is work because I'm gonna do better the rest of the day."
Andrew Ryder (14:03):
That's absolutely right. If you can't take care of yourself, you're not gonna be able to sustain your business. I think of it in three tiers. So my first tier is my personal health, mental and physical. Second tier is my relationships with my wife, family, friends. If I have a big fight with my wife, or whatever happens, something bad happens in my personal life, I'm not gonna be able to show up and focus at work. That stuff just needs to be dealt with. It needs to be taken care of so that I can sit down and focus for three, four hours and really get high quality work done. Those things just need to be taken care of as a baseline, to even start thinking about work.
Carly Ries (14:49):
Andrew, I could fly out to Washington and hug you right now because <laugh> the solopreneurs that we focus on, we want them to focus on their whole life. Solopreneurship, your business can overcome you. It can take over completely. We want people to remember there's more to your business that will make your business better.
Andrew Ryder (15:06):
Yeah. I like to say that you are the business. This is something that, I think comes from Dan Kennedy. His line is like "be in the business of being yourself" and for a lot of solopreneurs, people are buying you before they're buying your products and services. Especially for a lot of the folks that I work with who are coaches and course creators. Your audience is looking up to you as someone who has solved this problem, as their leader. If they're following you, you by default, are their leader and they're looking to solve that problem. They're looking to become more like you. To get the results that you got. To have the confidence and the charisma that you have, or the health that you have if you're in a health or fitness niche. They're looking to become more like you. So if your personal life is in shambles, that might be an easy or a low hanging fruit that you can start to work on to improve not just your ability to work in your business, but your ability to live that lifestyle and be that person that your audience is aspiring to be.
Carly Ries (16:23):
Love it. I do really quick want to circle back on that question that I wanted to get to, but I'm happy we took a turn a little bit, cuz I think that's fantastic. But just in terms of getting in writer's rut and everything that we were talking about, How can solopreneurs generate more content ideas than they have time to write?
Andrew Ryder (16:40):
The ideas I think are really there. Most people just miss them. They just run right past them because we're busy, we're focused on other stuff, we're distracted. There are endless opportunities for distraction. Really, to get started is just to be intentional with it. Something I did a couple weeks ago that I've really loved is I bought this waterproof notebook and a pen that writes. I find that I have some of my best ideas when I'm in the shower, which used to result in me running out of the shower to get to my phone where I take all of my content ideas, take my notes. What would happen is I'd be in the shower just having a little bit of decompression time. Like I don't bring my phone with me. There's no distractions in there.
Andrew Ryder (17:34):
So I'll think of an idea. I think, oh, that's interesting. I'll start to play it out in my head. I'll start to write the subject line and write the first couple of lines and pretend like I'm writing this as an email or as a blog post. Then I realize that I've got half a blog post written in my head and there's no way I'm gonna remember it. So I race out of the shower and try to write down as much as I can. I bought this waterproof notebook that's really been helping me out. Now I can just grab it and just immediately jot down three or four lines or whatever I'm thinking about so that I can save that for later. I couldn't tell you how many ideas that I've had that at the time I thought were so good that I could never forget them, that I immediately forgot as soon as I got distracted by something else.
Joe Rando (18:22):
Ugh, I had a blog idea in my head two days ago. I said, this is so good I'll never forget it. And it's gone. I gotta get that notebook.
Andrew Ryder (18:32):
You have to write your ideas down immediately, even if they're too good to forget, because they're never too good to forget. <laugh> Ben Franklin would do this similar kind of thing, not in the shower, but he would take a nap in the afternoon and he would have a handful of marbles in his hand. And as he started to doze off into sleep, his muscles would relax and he would drop the marbles. When the marbles hit the hard floor, it would make a loud noise and it would wake him up. And in that sort of space between waking and sleeping is where your brain state changes and you start to connect ideas that you might not have otherwise connected. So he would do that, he would wake himself up and immediately write down exactly what he was thinking about.
Andrew Ryder (19:29):
This is how he got many of his ideas for how to create or how to solve a lot of the problems that he was facing. How to invent many of the inventions that he came up with. I don't know that that's necessarily a practical thing for people to do in today's world. Maybe you could do it, but I don't think a lot of people would be willing to do that or willing to block out enough time in the afternoon to try to take a nap. But Hey, maybe you can spin that as a bonus. You get to take a nap on the job and be productive <laugh> I think what is reasonable for people to do is to just sit down at the end of the day, take maybe five or 10 minutes and think back through everything that you did that day.
Andrew Ryder (20:11):
Just ask yourself the question, "what can I write about this that would be relevant or valuable to my audience?" You go to the gym. Did anything interesting happen on the drive to the gym, while you were at the gym? Did you see something? Did you experience something? Did you drop a weight on your foot? You can tell a story about that. I really focus a lot on storytelling because it gives you the opportunity to turn that story into a lesson in ways where just seemingly regular, everyday stuff might not seem interesting or relevant. An example that I like to give is with my dog. I tend to get irritated with my dog because she will do things that sometimes irritate me. She likes to bark and <laugh> luckily we haven't had any barking on the recording here, but a lot of times when I'm on the phone, she will torpedo into the door. Sometimes it doesn't shut all the way so she knows that if she hits it hard enough, she can open it. So by observing my dog, I find a lot of interesting ideas that reflect on my own personality and my own tendencies. She's very purpose driven. She has to have a way to contribute value to the family, a way to do good work and to feel responsible for something. She is always listening, always intent on being involved in everything that's going on. She's very purposeful.
Joe Rando (21:59):
What breed?
Andrew Ryder (22:00):
Sheltie
Joe Rando (22:01):
Okay.
Andrew Ryder (22:02):
The more I reflect on that, I feel like that's how humans are as well. We need to have a purpose. We need to have work that's meaningful. We need to have things that we do that add value to the world, to our families, to our audiences. So there's a lot of insights that I can take just from taking my dog for a walk and seeing the funny things that she does that can be spun into a good personal development lesson. The ideas are there. You really just need to sit down and intentionally dig through your day and find them. Once you do that enough, they'll start to just pop out at you. I get ideas all the time watching movies on Netflix, or just going about my day and doing what I'm normally doing.
Carly Ries (22:48):
Andrew, the fact that you were able to rope open a dog into all of this immediately put you in "my favorite people list". Just know, that was very well played on your part. <laugh>
Joe Rando (22:58):
Dogs and coffee. That's our two
Carly Ries (23:01):
Dogs and coffee. That should actually be the name of our podcast.
Joe Rando (23:07):
I love it.
Sponsor (23:09):
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Carly Ries (23:38):
Andrew, actually, you got me on the whole wellness journey. Now I can't get my brain off of it. For people that are overwhelmed, what would you say is a simple business principle that eliminates being overwhelmed and allows you to take a day off without feeling guilty? That goes back to the whole health and wellness thing, but I'm just curious your thoughts.
Andrew Ryder (23:57):
When I wrote these topics, I may have had something different in mind from what I'm gonna share. I'm not a hundred percent sure what I intended to say when I originally wrote this, but I think my answer now is going to be better. It's sort of health and health and fitness related, but not directly. I'm publishing a book this summer and it's called "Entrepreneurship Ruined My Life". It's about this constant anxiety of never enough. Never enough clients, never good enough quality, never enough income, never enough success. There's just no amount of more will ever be enough. This is a disease that has plagued me for years and years and years. And it plagues everyone who I talk to in the online business space, especially solo entrepreneurs. The tendency to just reach for more and more and more, and to keep up with There's always gonna be someone who's more successful than you, and you're always going to be directly connected to them through the internet.
Andrew Ryder (25:10):
So you're always going to be confronted with how little you've accomplished compared to the next person who's higher up on the totem pole than you. That causes just so much anxiety. You just feel like you're constantly overwhelmed. You're constantly working. You can never take a day off. Even if on your best days, you created five blog posts and you were focused all day, but then you have dinner and you sit down and maybe you're reading a book or watching TV relaxing. And you think, man, I totally could have written seven blog posts, like, so and so who does 10 articles per day or whatever it might be. Maybe you write one article a day or one email a day and that's good, but you're never going to be able to do enough.
Andrew Ryder (26:03):
One of the concepts I talk about in the book is about pace. Pace is a concept from the running world where it's really your strategy to how you're going to run the race. We were talking about big Spokane events before we got on the recording. Another big Spokane event is called Blooms Day. It's one of the largest road races in the country. Something like 50,000 people show up from all over the world. Everybody from walkers to parents with strollers to casual runners, to Olympic athletes. The whole spectrum of athletes are there and they're running this race. It's about seven and a half miles. It happens every summer in Spokane. And, one of the things that happens during this race is the first first mile or so is just slightly downhill.
Andrew Ryder (27:02):
When the gun goes off, you get the shot of adrenaline. There's all these fast runners going out. The tendency is to go out really fast to stick with this crowd. You've got weekend warriors who are sprinting out of the gates. You've got the Olympic athletes who are going to be running 4 minute 32 second miles and they're just going at their pace. The tendency is to go out too fast. But what happens when you do that is about mile five, five and a half. There's a grueling hill. And by the time you get to this hill, the sun is up. It's a Spokane summer. It's dry, it's hot. The hill will just destroy you. I know this from personal experience that you go out too fast, you get to the hill, you'll make it to the top of the hill and you will be completely done.
Andrew Ryder (27:48):
Then the last couple of miles are downhill. As you're going into downtown Spokane, you go across this bridge and into the finish line. As you go down that hill, you can see the finish line, but it feels like one of those nightmares where your legs are turning to jelly and the road in front of you is elongating as you're racing as hard as you can, but you're not making any progress because it just continues on and on and on. So to contrast that, I ran this race twice and the second time I ran it, I went out too fast and I completely died. The first time I ran it, I stuck to my pace. I stuck to my strategy. I went slow. I intentionally went slower than everyone else in those first couple of miles downhill. I ran a competitive race and I probably passed at least a thousand people from the top of that hill in the last mile of the race, down to the finish line, I was just cruising.
Andrew Ryder (28:46):
The reason why I shared that analogy is a couple reasons. There are people who you compare yourself to, who have teams in place. They go ahead and maybe they'll create 10 articles or they'll record 10 videos in one day. Then they'll send all those videos over to their team who does all the editing, pulls all the quotes, does all the infographics and produces all the content for all their platforms. It's easy to think, oh, I have to keep up with this Olympic athlete. If I'm gonna grow my business, this is the pace I have to keep up with. But you have to realize that they have a team in place. You're probably not going to be able to do all of those things on your own and keep a pace. Similarly, you have to realize that there are weekend warrior types who are just grinding themselves into nothing.
Andrew Ryder (29:39):
They are way overworking. They're working way too hard. They're gonna burn out. They're gonna fail. They're gonna give up and they're gonna move on to the next shiny object. Instead of coaching, they're gonna go into some kind of eCommerce thing, or they're gonna try to resell textbooks on Amazon or something like that. You have to let those people go and let them go out too fast. Let them burn out. Let them come back to you in the second half of the race. The reality is that this is a marathon. This is the where the health and fitness comes in. You have to be taking care of your health and fitness and relationships so that you can continue to run this race at your pace consistently over the long term. That being said, your pace is very individual.
Andrew Ryder (30:26):
Maybe you can write five emails a day and not feel burnt out, not feel tired. You feel like you've got enough topics in the tank for tomorrow and the next day and the next month. But maybe you're working at a job and you're busy all day and all you can do is you can commit to 30 minutes in the morning and an hour in the evening and that's all you've got. So it's like, can you write one piece of content that you can publish to your audience? You can build rapport with them. You can get your offer in front of them. You can add value to their lives. Can you do that one little thing? And then maybe you have more time on Saturday to spend a little bit more time trying to grow your audience or doing other things, engaging with people directly, whatever it may be. But it's just finding what is the one or two things that you can do today and tomorrow and every single day that aren't going to burn you out. That are going to keep you able to grow your business without just driving you completely into the ground and causing you to fail, to burn out, to give up.
Carly Ries (31:36):
Well, I don't know what your original answer was, but I think that was a pretty darn great one.
Andrew Ryder (31:41):
<laugh> thank you. <laugh>
Carly Ries (31:43):
Andrew, the last question I have for you is, I'm just so intrigued by it because I'm such a comedy person, as we discussed, you made a note that you have a Ron Burgundy, personal branding secret. And I'm so curious as to what that is.
Andrew Ryder (32:00):
You know, I haven't watched Anchorman in a really long time, but I always loved that movie. It's just such a great film. But when you watch that movie and you look at the way that Ron Burgundy acts, everything that he does is so unique to him and his personality and his style. Whether it's the weird suits that he wears or the language that he uses or, even his famous catchphrase. "You stay classy San Diego" <laugh> So in the film, hopefully everyone has seen it, but Veronica Corningstone, She tries to sabotage him. She knows he reads exactly what he writes on the teleprompter. And so she sabotages him by changing his catchphrase.
Andrew Ryder (32:53):
And when he says it wrong, everyone in the city freaks out and people are extremely angry with him, irrationally angry with him because he got his catch phrase wrong. That is how strong his personal brand is. The fact that he's an icon in the city. Everything that he does is so unique. You look at Brian or Brick, they just wanna be more like Ron, they want to dress like him. They wanna act like him. They want their mustaches to be like his. His brand is so contagious. To me, this is just a reminder of the value in, like we talked about before, you're in the business of being yourself. You want to develop your own personality instead of trying to be like someone else, It's easy to see, "oh, this person's being successful because they use these things".
Andrew Ryder (33:49):
It's easy for the other anchors in the city to say, "oh, Ron Burgundy's so successful because of his famous catch phrase" or because of his blue suits. An actual example of this is... I don't know if you're aware of Sam Ovens, he's a big course creator. He teaches consulting businesses, how to create courses, sell courses and he has a couple of videos where he's living in this high rise in New York City. They're pretty old now. He's wearing a blueberry colored suit. I don't know if it has anything to do with Anchorman, but I once saw this video ended up getting many millions of views. Then shortly after it came out, I saw another consulting expert come out with a video. He was in a New York high rise.
Andrew Ryder (34:38):
He was wearing a blue suit. And he was saying, you know, "I'm the real consulting expert. This is really how you do consulting." He just completely missed the point. The point is not that you need to wear a blue suit in order to be attractive, or that famous catch phrases are going to earn you respect or interest from your audience. You need to be yourself. You need to accentuate the personality elements that you can use to build a relationship with the people in your audience. You need to do things that are unique and interesting. That's not to say that when you're getting started out, you shouldn't mimic people. We learn everything as human beings through mimicking. That's how you first learned as a child to crawl, then to eventually stand up and walk is by looking at how your parents move around the house. Same with talking. You hear all these noises that are coming out of your parents' mouth and you start to formulate those into sounds and then into words, and then into sentences,. We learn by mimicking. But then you have to go beyond just mimicking what other people are doing and create your own unique, personal brand, your own personality, your own relationship with your audience.
Carly Ries (35:58):
All right. Well, I will definitely start doing the What would Ron Burgundy do approach when it comes to personal branding? So thanks for that new tagline. <laugh> Andrew, do you have any content marketing resources you'd recommend for solopreneurs who are looking for additional information?
Andrew Ryder (36:16):
I'm not gonna direct to any specific resources for, I think a couple of reasons. There's this training from Ben Settle, who's a legendary email marketer. He got this stuck in my head that his idea of swiping is not about swiping funnels or headlines or tactics, but it's about swiping your market. And by that, he means all of the right questions to ask all of the answers to those questions, all of the stories, all of the language and the messaging that you need, is contained within your market. If you're looking for resources for how to create better content, how to improve the messaging on your website, how to connect better with your audience, all of that is contained within the social media posts, the comments on posts, the forums, the places where your audience is gathering to discuss their problems and to try to solve them.
Andrew Ryder (37:20):
So it's just a matter of digging into that material, finding different stories, questions, answers, testing them out in your own content. You don't just copy them, but you take the essence of the story, or you take the question and you answer it in your own words. You take the language and you turn it into something that is really written by the audience. It's coming from their mind state, their concerns, their problems, their insecurities. That, I think is a really great resource. The reason for sharing it like that is because I think people have too many resources. There are enough resources for how to do things. Honestly, if you want to create better content, you need to be reading better quality writing and writing higher quality writing. I would recommend getting off social media and curating a list of good writers that you can read their work, read books, read high quality writing, fill your brain with high quality information and see where that takes you. Take those ideas and add your own spin on them. Combine different ideas from different places into something new. Tell stories like we talked about. Whether it's taking your dog for a walk or whatever that might be. Maybe a slightly different answer from what you were getting at, but those would be my recommendations.
Carly Ries (38:52):
No, I think that's great. And that is such good advice. Speaking of advice, aside from what would Ron Burgundy do, what is your favorite quote about success?
Andrew Ryder (39:02):
I have a lot of quotes that I really return to often, but I think my favorite one right now is from Derek Sivers. He writes, "if information was the problem, we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs". This kind of goes back to what I was just saying. People have too many resources, there's too much information. There's another quote. I really like from The Lean Startup, which says that "startups don't starve, they drown" We're just drowning in information. So it's not really about what more can I do, but it's, how can I get rid of all this information so I can at least tread water. How can I focus on the important things, stay consistent with the essentials and at least keep my head above water. I think about this in the context of content creation, because all of our audiences are overwhelmed. There's more information out there than they can handle as well. Your job as a marketer is really to tell a story that changes the way your audience thinks about their problem and inspires them to take action on it.
Carly Ries (40:13):
Love, love, love it. Well, Andrew, this has been so great. We have so enjoyed having you on the show and can't thank you enough for joining us today. If people want to learn more about you and your book and everything, where can they find you?
Andrew Ryder (40:26):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad to be able to come and join you on the show here. If anyone in the audience wants to learn more about me or check out some of the content creation resources I have, you can find it all at my website, AndrewBRyder.com. There will be more information on my book coming out this summer. I always felt like it was easy to write a lot of content and pull it together into a book. Maybe editing it was difficult, but publishing a book is very difficult <laugh> and very time consuming. So more on that this summer.
Carly Ries (41:04):
Awesome. Well, like I said, thank you for coming on this show and listeners. That wraps up another episode of the One-Person Business podcast. To listen to more episodes and subscribe, visit Lifestarr.com/podcast, or you can find us anywhere you listen to your shows. We'll see you next time.
Closing (41:24):
You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a One-Person Business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures. At Lifestarr we are creating a One-Person Business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com