Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
Tue, 25 Mar 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 special episode, industry experts share key strategies for business success, focusing on category design, product development, company culture, and competitive advantage. Listeners will gain actionable insights into building strong brands, simplifying communication, and raising capital for new ventures.TAKEAWAYS Importance of category design in business success The "magic triangle" concept: company design, product design, and category design Clarity and honesty in communication for effective marketing Understanding customer problems and positioning products as solutions The significance of building a strong brand for long-term success Emotional connections in marketing and their impact on purchasing decisions Strategies for capital raising and understanding investor types The balance between profitability and revenue growth The role of social media in modern marketing and personal branding The necessity of planning and execution in achieving business goals 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 category design crucial for business success?
If you get category right, once people see something, they can't unsee it.
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 what's now. We're talking about business. We're talking about marketing. We're talking about life. What's the balance between, you know, when you think about category design and category development?
Chapter 2: What is the 'magic triangle' in entrepreneurship?
At a high level, the companies that really break through, the companies that change the future, the companies that are worth the most going forward, they really get three things right at the same time. We call it prosecute the magic triangle. And what that means is they get company design. business model, culture, distribution, all of those things. They get product design.
So do we have a truly breakthrough product that solves a unique problem in a completely differentiated way? And they get category design, right? So product, company, and category And if you get all three of those right at the right moment in time, that's how you get Airbnb. That's how you get Zoom. That's how you get, you know, pick your breakthrough company.
And, you know, based on our research, based on our experience, based on my experience of doing this for over 30 years, it really is equal parts of those three. The one addition I'd say there, Ryan, is of those three, there's one that is a single point of failure and that's category. Cause if there's no market, there's no marketing that you can get a, you can build a legendary product.
You can build a legendary company business model. Uh, but if you don't have a category, there is nobody that's going to buy it. So that's kind of problem one. Problem number two is if you look at most new, whether it's a startup or an innovative new product that is trying to pioneer an innovative new category from an existing company, the same dynamics are true.
If you get category right, once people see something, they can't unsee it.
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Chapter 3: How does clarity and honesty impact marketing strategies?
How do you filter? I always find this fascinating. I'm the same way. I breathe in a lot of the stuff. I'm looking, observing. Like you said, you've got a lot of touch points for talking with people, building relationships. Is it a natural instinct or do you test it? How do you know how to filter what to try yourself or what you then enact or use when there's so much stuff out there?
Well, again, I think if you just focus on telling the truth and being the truth, the truth resonates higher frequency than anything else. So it's like, I keep it real. I just tell you the truth. I don't beat around the bush. I don't use big words to try and prove that I'm smart. You know, I just talk. So like, you know, I think with that simplicity comes... you know, better information.
I think, I think like, you know, clarity in a world of chaos is gold, right? So like, I just need the light. Like someone just bring me the light so I can see. I bring the light.
I know you have the 10X platform. I know you've got seven of these and five of these and four of those, but like, have you boiled it down like to the, for both yourself and maybe others, like what, what that success formula truly is?
Yeah, well, you know, I did some of that on Undercover Billionaire, right? Well, one is show up, say yes to it. You got to show up. Like if you don't show up, you can't get lucky. You can't get lucky. Nothing good happens. Nobody's going to come to your home, your sofa, your bedroom and give you anything. It's just not going to happen. Like you have to show up.
And then once you show up, you got to show up, right? Like you got to be available for whatever you're doing, even if you don't want to do it. So I do stuff every day. I show up for stuff every day. I'm like, fuck, I don't want to do this, but I show up and then I act like I want to do it. Right.
So you've got to show up and then you've got to be willing to change your mind about it because something super cool might come out of the deal. So number one, you've got to show up. Number two, And while you're showing up, you got to drop your bad attitude. Like if you're negative, bad attitude, stuff's going wrong, you lost your mom, you got COVID, whatever the hell happened.
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Chapter 4: What are the keys to successful personal branding?
But nobody needs to know about that. You got to show up and be 100%. Number two, I would tell everybody, like, I'm always looking for a 10X target. Always. I wake up every day, never satisfied where I'm at because I'm always looking for the 10X. I'm looking for, I got 4,000 or 12,000 units. I'm going to get 120,000. 120,000 units, bro, I'd be like... I could run for president of the United States.
Like, I'd be a major player on planet Earth if I could get there. I don't know if I can get there. Today, I probably doubt that I can get there. I mean, to be honest with you, I don't, like... I don't think I can do it. I don't think... I don't know that I have enough time. I don't have enough money. But...
it's cool to think about it. At the end of the day, the substance is what matters. The, the expertise. And then, and that, and we're talking about like one-to-one information sharing, but even as a brand, you know, you've got to stand for more than just a feature set of your product. It's got to be, you know, stickier than that. And that takes time.
You build brand over time and hope for sales overnight. And so.
It's, I'll give you this. I learned this. I did this. I'm a, I'm a, byproduct of it that which you build fast will crumble even faster and that which takes a long time to build will last you a lifetime yeah so a brand will take you a long time to build but it'll feed you forever yep it just and i'm i'm a i'm standing before you today
How many people in our internet marketing circle have made it 20 plus years? I can count on probably two hands. I mean, I mean it, really, right? And every single one of them has a strong brand. But at the same time, Learn, as a company, we built it as a rocket ship.
You know, there was no slow and steady 10% a month increase, optimize and, you know, do the CRO work and do the split testing and focus on one funnel and painstakingly obsessed over every part of your product delivery process. That ain't me. I didn't do that. We were, you know, and look how fast it crumbled. Look how weak the foundation ended up being.
Even though I was doing 40 million, it was super profitable and I was about to sell. What I'm doing today, what I'm doing now, for our software company, it's taking us anywhere from three to six months to close contracts. with big enterprise companies. But those companies are closing a contract after giving two to three week demo periods. They're reviewing it.
They're having meetings with their C-levels. They're fully buying in or saying no. But when the ones that were buying in they're going to be with us for years and they're going to pay big fees.
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Chapter 5: How do emotional connections influence consumer decisions?
So what most marketers, unfortunately, Ryan, are not trained towards and it's been kind of my thing now, I call it change the timeline, right? And that is flip it over. So many of us want to make the million in 30 days. And now me today, any opportunity that can make me a million in 30 days, I almost always know it's the wrong opportunity.
I'd rather make it over the course of a year, but then know that next year it'll make me 1.3, 1.4. And the year after that, it'll make me, you know, two. And then I want that because I know that whatever that is, it's going to grow much, much stronger and much better. So brand is the exact same way. You can't get brand in 30 days. You just can't.
It is amazing sometimes. I've worked with a lot of companies, good, bad, and ugly, over the years in marketing. And it's real hard to take a... You can't make bad companies good. It's really difficult. You can make the good companies great, but it's really difficult to make bad. And I do think...
you know, there's a lot of truth to be had and a lot of mirror to be looking in, you know, to really determining if your product service or what you do differentiates and stands out and can be made to be again, profitable. It seems like there's a lot of people that, you know, do things that a lot of other people do.
And they just assume that like, I mean, success will be guaranteed, but it just doesn't happen that way.
Yeah, no, that's why it's important early on. Like, I think it's tough because a lot of times people give up too early. So it is really, really tough to say, you know, if it's not working, you got to tweak this. But I guess you should always be tweaking. But too many people, I would say it's a bigger error is to give up early. So you can't do that.
But it's like at the beginning, you have to be smart and you got to look at your product and, you know, have some way to measure your competitive advantage over what the market is offering. I guess I'd say it like that. Think deeper about your competitive advantage and even use things. I mean, there's all kinds of online tools. You can use SurveyMonkey. You can use your friends.
You could use LinkedIn. There's ways where you can... vet that. But often what happens is as, you know, you're growing your business, you kind of naturally do that. You know what I mean? The good leaders are naturally, like you're probably not even thinking about it, but you're learning. You're like, oh, okay, I got the sale here. What copy did I use? Or what pitch was I using?
Oh, okay, this is what they wanted. I thought they wanted this, but they actually wanted this, right? And you're sort of iterating along the way. But if you can do that without making it accidental, like from the beginning, if you could do your basic market research. And if this is basic branding, right? So it's like, what is your position in the market? Okay.
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Chapter 6: What role does optimism play in achieving business goals?
You know, you've got to believe to achieve. It's really fucking easy to be a hater and to not believe and to doubt and to critique. It brings me back to that statement.
It might sound cliche, but we all hear, you know, no one who's getting shit done at a higher level than you is sitting around, you know, talking shit about you or where you are or how you do it, you know, because they're too busy believing in what they're doing themselves. And optimism, belief, I put all that into the same thing. I think it's just, they've got a vision.
They got a belief in something, you know, like whether it's investing in something, whether it's doing their own thing, whether it's taking it forward. Like if you're a believer, you just, you ain't got time.
For the bullshit. I always say, to make this understandable for people, I put this out on Twitter a few times, X. I never met a wildly successful pessimist. And people will say, oh, what about short sellers? I was like, that person's optimistic. They think they're more optimistic than anybody. They're like...
They're going against the grain and they're willing to risk everything with unlimited downside because they believe that they're right. That's pretty optimistic. Pessimism is somebody who thinks the deck is stacked against them. The system is rigged, all that crap. Like, please, like some of that may be true from time to time.
But at the end of the day, we all have the power to change our circumstances. And the reason I love why we're drilling down on this is. I talk about this in this book, this one phrase to always anchor me to what I believe in and what I'm doing. Opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence. Right. And that's a simple way of saying like lightning and thunder.
You know, you always see the flash of light first. That's the opportunity. It travels. Light travels many times faster than the speed of sound. And evidence is thunder. It's unmistakable, but everybody hears it. And so if you want to be wildly successful, you first have to be an optimist or else you won't even believe you saw the light. You'd be like, ah, it's in my head.
And then the ability to act on it is the thing that sets winners apart. And back to your point about belief, it's why burn the boats is so important because the time to burn the boats is when the opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence. When you burn the boats, when everybody knows about it, it's like... Well, it's, you know, it's too late.
You know, that being said, if you're an innovative and dynamic and optimistic person, when you think it's too late, it's still OK.
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Chapter 7: How can you effectively solve customer problems?
So, uh, that's really big, bro. Yeah. Cause I mean, then they like people, I think a lot of people struggle with selling products and they do that because of the thing that you just said, right. They're out here trying to sell their products. They don't understand that people don't care about their products. Like, listen to me right now, guys, everybody listening. No one cares about your product.
No one cares about your service either, right? You think anyone comes to us and they care about Facebook ads or they care about like our logo and what RF, no one cares at all. The only thing they care about is can you help me get more customers? Yes or no. Can you help me streamline my business and automate it more so I'm not pulling my hair out every single day, right?
Can you help me with those problems? And so like the whole thing about, you know, sell the hole, not the drill. And the too many people are out here selling the drill, selling the drill. And the wonder why no one's buying their stuff. Well, they don't want the drill. The only thing they care about is the hole that the drill produces. So understand that that is, and then, and sell that instead.
And everything will change.
Stop worrying about yourself and how cool you are and how you look and how amazing this product is and all the little trinkets that it has and all of that stuff. And start focusing on why these people actually want that product and add that to your messaging. You got to tie them in emotionally. It's funny. We both recently bought new homes and I was dead set on a price. Right.
I told I told my wife, I was like, yeah, we're not going above this price for the house. I don't care what this lady says when we go in here. I am not spending more than this. Right. And I told her that I get in there and she's trying to get me to do an add on and add some brick to the front. And get a lake view.
And I would like literally before I went in there, I'm like, I'm not doing this, babe. I'm telling you right now. No. Right. And she comes in and she's like, well, you know, it's going to look so nice on the lake when you can watch your kids just play on the lake. And, you know, it's going to be all nice and breezy. And then when you walk up to the front of the house, that's such a homey.
But she literally didn't even talk about. the feature of just having the Lake view. She talked about the emotions that I would have by acquiring that thing. And guess what I did? I bought it. I went above my price just because she got me emotionally tied to, to the product or to, to, to the product and service. Right. So yeah, it's true.
So be careful. Like, by the way, this stuff, be careful, like who you share this insight with, right. You start sharing this insight on how to sell with your wife or with your husband. He wants that.
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