Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers
Tue, 18 Feb 2025
Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of "Right About Now," host Ryan Alford speaks with Steve Pratt, author of "Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers." They discuss the critical need for brands to earn attention in a saturated content landscape. Pratt emphasizes the importance of creating valuable, engaging content that builds trust and long-term relationships with consumers. He advocates for "creative bravery" in marketing, urging brands to set high standards for their content. The conversation highlights the pitfalls of short-term marketing strategies and the necessity of understanding and genuinely connecting with the audience to achieve lasting business success.TAKEAWAYS Importance of earning attention in marketing Challenges of a saturated content landscape Evolution of marketing strategies from interruptive advertising to content-driven approaches The significance of authenticity and value in marketing Building trust and relationships with consumers The pitfalls of short-term marketing strategies The concept of "sampling" in content engagement Creative bravery in content creation Understanding audience needs and preferences Differentiation through innovative content formats If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE. Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Why is earning attention crucial in marketing?
I start with attention because if you don't have any attention, you have nothing. You have no audience. You have no time. You have no engagement. You have no trust, no relationships. No one's even hearing you. No one's sampling.
This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about now, not about yesterday, not about the future. Because look, it's about what works today in business, in marketing, and in life. We cover the gamut. And look... I get to choose who I want on this show. And that's what I love. Steve and I were just talking about this. And our next guest is someone that I've admired from afar.
I don't know Steve. You're going to get to know Steve today. So am I. But I've been reading his book and going through it. And a lot of people I know pointed him my direction. And I'm like, This guy knows his shit. And you know what? You're going to know his shit, too, because he is Steve Pratt. He is the author of Earn It, Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers. I hope I'm brave.
I'm going to learn today if I really am. Steve, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me. I feel like I'm going to be like a shit distributor today. This is good. We're all going to know our shit.
We're giving the shit to business. And look, we take the bullshit out of business. That's our tagline. No BS. No, there you go.
I'm full of it. I'm going to empty it all out today. It's great.
No, yes. No, it's not. This is the business you need to know. And Steve is not going to drop anything but knowledge on us. But Steve, where are we today?
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Chapter 2: What is 'Right About Now' and who is Ryan Alford?
It is not warm here now. It's come in the summer. It's like the nicest place on earth. Uh, right now there's, it's cold and dark. And this is, unless you're a skier, uh, Don't come right now.
We're like 78 today. It's actually warm for us for February. We had the four seasons, but it's a beautiful day in South Carolina. But it's a beautiful day for everybody listening, wherever you are, whenever you are, however you're listening. I'm pumped because we talk about my favorite subject. Having a business show that is marketing-centered, I don't always talk about marketing.
But now I get to geek out a little bit. Steve, I mean, let's set the table for everybody. You wrote the book. You've got opinions on marketing. What the hell formed Steve Pratt's opinion on marketing? And what's been the lineage here for you, Steve?
I'll give you the short version is I come at it from a little bit of an unusual places. I come at it from the media background. So I did about 10 years of television. I worked in music television and children's television and journalism and things for about 10 years. And then I went and ran a digital music service for about 10 years at Canada's public broadcast.
It was kind of like NPR Music, but in Canada. And started podcasting in 2005, which is super early in this innovation lab thing. And I guess around 2014, I left. And it was a mix of different reasons. But part of it was because... the media business model seemed pretty broken where so many
advertisers were leaving for the digital space and so many audiences had tools to just bypass interruptive things that they didn't want. And I saw all these companies like Red Bull who were acting like their own media companies that they realized pretty early on, we don't need a media company. We don't need broadcast towers or licenses with the internet.
We could just decide to make awesome stuff and build our own audiences. And I, I had this moment where I was like, you know what? I know how to do that. My whole career in media is I know how to make great shows and engage audiences. What if we went and helped teach a bunch of marketers how to do that and help companies build their own audiences and turn this into a business? And
So I left, and then very shortly after, Serial, this huge podcast came out. And podcasts were big in 2005, 2006, and they kind of dipped as YouTube and Facebook came up. And then they came roaring back with Serial. And we were like, let's make the weirdest business ever and double down on helping brands learn how to make podcasts. Yep.
And we were the first people on the planet, I think, to actually have a company that only did that. And a bunch of people almost had interventions with us because they thought we were going to go bankrupt and lose our houses and all that sort of stuff. I think we got really lucky. We picked something at the right time, and it turned into a really, really...
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Chapter 3: Who is Steve Pratt and what led to his marketing insights?
And to be able to get to that point where people know that about you and look forward to you like appointment viewing or listening is, That's really hard. Also, you have to be pretty awesome or pretty valuable to a very specific group of people to get in there. I'm fascinated by all of it.
18 to 34-year-olds listen and watch podcasts more than they do linear TV.
Yeah, that checks. That checks.
I mean, they're choosing what they want, when they want. And brands and people and anyone that's trying to market or get scale has to ultimately earn it. Steve, talk to me about the book. Talk to me about the tenets of really the fundamentals that you've put in this and what it takes to be brave.
Well, I guess the premise of the book is that you have to earn attention, that if you actually want to get the business results you're looking for as a marketer, there are not any shortcuts that are going to deliver the real deal. Consumers have too many defense mechanisms to keep messages that they don't want out of their lives.
And if you think like a consumer or like an audience member yourself – you know how picky you are about the things that you actually give your attention to. Our level of time and attention that we have every day is finite. There's a maximum number of things that we can possibly give our attention to. And there's more and more and more things competing with it every day.
So we can afford to be really picky. And I think it just means that the quality bar is higher for everybody who's trying to earn someone's attention. And The things you were talking about before, in the past, we just kind of had this deal where we would suffer through things we didn't want in the middle of our shows because that was the only way we could get them.
And that doesn't really apply anymore. And so I think as marketers and brands thinking about how we want to connect with people... it puts us in a different mindset of having to make things that people genuinely want to spend time with and setting a really high bar for creating value first for the audience rather than things that are primarily about us.
And I think that there's, you know, there's a nice intersection, like there's a Venn diagram intersection between the job that we're hiring our marketing to do, like the business outcomes that we want to achieve and the value that we're creating for audiences, you know, which I kind of like framing as a gift and,
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