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The eighth episode of the Outfoxed podcast by Hunter.io features Ryan Rogers, inventor and founder of multiple product lines, including Well Stated Clothing.
Ryan shares his journey from theoretical chemistry PhD to product inventor, explaining why he believes customers define themselves through purchasing behavior rather than predetermined personas, and how he validates new sales channels by testing everything simultaneously. His approach proves that scientific methodology can create competitive advantages in business, even when starting with zero industry experience.
This episode delivers practical insights for inventors, product developers, and anyone building physical products — filled with validation strategies, channel testing approaches, and honest advice from someone who's learned to embrace both the art and science of selling.
Podcast Episode Highlights:
- Why trying everything simultaneously beats picking one "perfect" sales channel
- How face-to-face selling still drives most business in a digital world
- The translation between business jargon and practical reality for inventors
- Why customers tell you who they are through purchasing behavior
- His manual approach to cold email focused on response rather than immediate sales
About Ryan Rogers:
Ryan Rogers is an inventor and product developer who transitioned from academia to entrepreneurship after earning his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Arkansas. With degrees in both physics and theoretical chemistry, he applies scientific methodology to product development and business building, creating what he describes as "unique, innovative, and interesting" products across multiple industries.
Currently developing several product lines including Well Stated Clothing (featuring tees with state-shaped pockets), Ryan focuses on bringing truly original products to market. His philosophy centers on creating items that matter to people and make life "more efficient, fun, and beautiful" rather than just solving obvious problems.
Learn more about Ryan Rogers via:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-rogers-24653a1b6/
- https://www.wellstatedclothing.com/
- https://www.trrdesigns.net/
Credits: Podcast theme music by Transistor.fm.
Creators and Guests
Host
What is Outfoxed?
The GTM podcast for founders, marketers, and builders wanting the truth about growth, not the gloss.
[00:00:00]
[00:00:23] James: We've been talking back and forth a little bit over the last couple of months and, with Outfoxed, I really wanted to get you onto the show because I feel like you are a very pragmatic and realistic person.
[00:00:34] James: And I think there's no better sort of person to speak to our audience than someone like yourself who goes through the highs, goes through the lows of what it is that you are doing, and that's building something that you care deeply about. So thank you for joining us today. Before we get into sort of talking about what's going on in your world and how you, you know, you're building things,
[00:00:55] James: could you just quickly tell our listeners who you are and really sort of [00:01:00] what it is that you are trying to achieve with your business?
[00:01:03] Ryan: Sure. so like, my name's Ryan. I graduated with degrees in physics and theoretical chemistry. And that was, that's a really exciting intellectual academic endeavor,
[00:01:19] Ryan: but I've always wanted to be an inventor. And so once I graduated, I thought, you know, this is a good time in life to try to take a risk and, you know, aim for the stars. And if I could do anything in life, it would be to make money inventing and to be able to feed a family, provide for myself, because what better to do?
[00:01:39] Ryan: You get to do whatever you want. All the time, and follow your own passions, your own projects, and then ideally, if you can make money from it, that's the best thing. So what I've been doing is just exactly that, trying to develop my inventions to a point that someone else would pay for them and figure out how [00:02:00] to sell, which has been the hard part for me, is figuring out exactly how to sell an invention.
[00:02:04] Ryan: There's a variety of ways you can do it, which I'm sure we'll get into, but that's been the big thing and it's been a process of learning what's valuable to people, what's needed to get an invention off the ground, where are the hurdles? Each invention has its own hurdle. Maybe manufacturing is difficult for one.
[00:02:22] Ryan: Maybe marketing is difficult for a different one. And so you sort of navigate that to try to figure out where the money is in a given product or service or business idea.
[00:02:31] James: That is really, it's courageous to want to be able to take something that is an idea and turn it into a product and turn it into something that can help, to help people.
[00:02:42] James: That is quite a journey that you've been on. How do you feel that this desire to be, you know, an inventor of sorts came about as you were going through college and going through your education. Where do you think it kind of took, to growth?
[00:02:58] Ryan: Well, I've always, [00:03:00] I've always wanted to do inventions.
[00:03:01] Ryan: I mean, ever since I was a kid building with Legos and, you know, lashing sticks together in my backyard, like, everything was thinking about, I would just have these ideas all the time. Oh, I could make a little gizmo that does this or make a widget for that. But I never really thought that that was a practical way to make a living.
[00:03:22] Ryan: And so, I love math, I love science, and that's where I started going in, you know, my formal education. But there's always this, like, there's always this thing in the back of your head going in the back of my head, going, okay, but does this matter to anyone? How do you make a difference in life? And of course, science matters a whole lot.
[00:03:46] Ryan: I still love science. There's, you know, the modern world is given to us by science, but there's a whole lot of science out there that, that no one will ever know about. And there is a proliferation of, you know, [00:04:00] research and fundamental research and new PhDs who are doing things that, I applaud them for it because I think it's foundational to our understanding of the world.
[00:04:10] Ryan: But the world will never know, or it may be a hundred years or it may be such a minor drop in the bucket. And I want someone to care that I was here. You know, I want to be able to, impact people with something that I've developed and, I think that sometimes it's easier to do that with a product or something that they can buy than some esoteric science that they may not understand or very, very few people may ever read or learn about.
[00:04:42] Ryan: So that sort of spurred me. I hope that answers the question. I mean, that sort of spurred me,
[00:04:46] James: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:47] Ryan: to try something else, you know, and sort of take a risk. But it was a risk to hopefully, make my existence matter to a greater number of people.
[00:04:56] James: I think that's really noble. I do have to ask though, what was the, [00:05:00] what was your first invention?
[00:05:03] Ryan: My very first invention that hasn't gone anywhere. I started working on this conical drinking straw. That's what I called it. It'd be a drinking straw that was skinnier at one end than the other end. The idea was that this would sort of take the place of like those little coffee stir sticks and regular drinking straws.
[00:05:21] Ryan: You collapse those into one product. So if you wanted to stir, you would put the skinny end up. If you wanted to drink, you put the fat end up and get both. But, it doesn't make sense to produce them because it's so incredibly cheap and efficient to produce cylindrical straws. So I don't think that one's gonna go anywhere.
[00:05:41] James: Well, you never know. I really liked what you said, Ryan, about, you wanted to. Make the world know about who you were and care about who you are. When we talk about the world, obviously that's huge. And when we have to think about going to market, we have to think about an ideal [00:06:00] buyer.
[00:06:00] James: We have to think about someone that we've built something for or we have a solution for that we think will resonate. Who is your ideal buyer in terms of maybe not, and I think it might be a broad statement to say all of your products and your inventions, but if we could give an example to our audience, who is your ideal buyer and how did you come up with them?
[00:06:20] Ryan: So that's kind of interesting because I could give an ideal buyer for all of my products, and it would be an intellectual property licensee. So that may sound weird. I would, I didn't even think of that a few years ago. But my ideal buyer would be a big company who's already in the field of whatever I'm inventing.
[00:06:42] Ryan: If it's drinking straws, if it's, you know, a line of ceramic home goods, if it's a novelty, joke gift, if it's a line of clothing or, consumer electronics, any of those things. It would be a company that's already [00:07:00] positioned there that wants the type of intellectual property to the inventions that I'm coming up with that would take this and just sort of give you a royalty, for the sales and then they would run with it and brand it.
[00:07:12] Ryan: That would be ideal. So, and because that would give me the ability to keep working on other things. Essentially, someone big would just come in and say, Hey, this is cool. Why don't you leave this to the big boys? Go away. Here's some money for your time. You know? Right. And you go do other inventing. That would be the dream.
[00:07:33] Ryan: that's. Really hard to come by.
[00:07:37] James: So do you exclusively focus on that IP licensee or is it the case of I need to get traction by making some sales with vendors with direct to consumer to be able to build up some noise to attract those people?
[00:07:52] Ryan: I think it's more intelligently the latter
[00:07:56] Ryan: that you mentioned. Okay. initially I started and I thought, [00:08:00] okay, this is great. I'm gonna come up with some intellectual, I would call it an intellectual property package. Maybe I've filed a patent application, maybe I've developed a logo and filed a copyright or a trademark application. Maybe I've found manufacturers and even gotten quotes from them, but never really done the legwork.
[00:08:17] Ryan: I mean, you could call that legwork in a sense. I mean, it's a lot of research upfront, but you're just gonna take this to a company and say, look, this is, you should do this thing. And I've already figured out how to do it. That was the goal and just only focus on those people. Well, what I found out was, a lot of those people that you want these ideal licensees, they're not just gonna bite on an idea.
[00:08:40] Ryan: They wanna see the traction. And so I sort of started falling back to, okay, maybe I do have to make this myself or sell this myself. Get a few hundred or a few thousand produced, or get a few hundred or a few thousand sales. And that starts to make your product look so much better. And you can start [00:09:00] to say to these licensees or potential licensees, this has been going really well for me.
[00:09:05] Ryan: I've been getting a lot of traction with product X, Y, Z. Is it something you guys would like to look at? You know.
[00:09:13] James: Can you define your total addressable market?
[00:09:17] Ryan: I don't know. No, I don't know. I suppose somebody could, and maybe this is a point of, market research. I did this exercise, the beginning of last year where I was looking into 2024 specifically going, okay, what are some different projects I want to attack?
[00:09:41] Ryan: What are some new products I wanna develop and what's a valuable way to prioritize my projects and to use my time? And so I actually built this equation that would be too long to share verbally or something. But I built an equation to try to factor in the priority of different products and things [00:10:00] like how difficult it would be to get them out, how much time and upfront money it would cost.
[00:10:04] Ryan: Well, I thought the total addressable market and possible return on that is, what was the latency? What's the time between inception or launching the product to making some revenue, to making some profit? And it's highly parameterized and lots of speculation, but I suppose that formula took something like addressable market.
[00:10:24] Ryan: And partly the way I looked at it there is by looking at similar products, and you can use some of these tools to look at like Amazon products and say, if this, if you have a similar product on Amazon, how much is it selling per month or per year? And that's, I understand that's not total addressable market as a technical term, but that's something like what I might call, realistic, achievable market.
[00:10:50] Ryan: I just made that up. But, you know, you can look at some competitors and then not be too, not be too prideful and go down the list to [00:11:00] like who's the hundredth ranking person on Amazon? Right. And maybe I can get a fraction of their sales. And so is that market sufficient for me to think? I wanna take the risk with a given product or a thing.
[00:11:14] James: I think that's absolutely fair because you know there, and we'll talk about this a little bit later on in the episode, but, you know it, it's very easy to use acronyms. It's very easy to use frameworks. But the whole point of us wanting to get onto this episode with you, Ryan, is to hear about the reality of getting these things done.
[00:11:31] James: It's all well and good to talk about TAM, SAM, SOM and anything else under the sun, but you have to be able to get your idea in front of the right people. As you, as you were kind of trying to figure out that as you call a sufficient addressable market, did you have to pivot at any point?
[00:11:50] Ryan: The pivoting? Absolutely.
[00:11:52] Ryan: The pivoting was coming down from this idea of, oh, I'm just gonna come up with an idea and someone's gonna [00:12:00] write me a check and, you know, so I had to pivot because if you just have an idea, if you think that someone's just going to pay you or if they are just going to pay you for an idea. You don't need to produce the thing.
[00:12:12] Ryan: Well, I wasn't having near as much luck as I hoped, licensing some of my early ideas and even better ideas than the drinking straw. Okay. So, but I wasn't having a lot of good luck getting potential licensees. And so a big pivot was if I wanna sell this thing wholesale or retail, now you have to get some produced.
[00:12:39] Ryan: And if you're the producer, that's, you gotta take, you gotta bite off a big chunk. Now you gotta put up a ton of money upfront, relatively speaking, a ton of money, you know, and get a few and get the minimum order quantity from a manufacturer. And that may be hundreds, thousands, 10 thousands of units [00:13:00] of your thing.
[00:13:02] Ryan: And you can mitigate that a little bit if you can find a retail partner who already wants your good, you know, and you can sort of know that you have a customer in line. But otherwise you have to come up with a plan to sell your thing. And, so then that was a big pivot and I thought, okay, I'll just, I'll buy these things in bulk, whatever it is, and I'll sell them wholesale.
[00:13:26] Ryan: Well, what happens if that doesn't work out that well? The good news is in this, you know, century, there's a million ways to sell something. So you've got retail, you can build your own website and go direct to consumer. You can use little PayPal, you know, you can build a PayPal, checkout and plug it onto any website.
[00:13:49] Ryan: You can literally sell things on Facebook and you know, TikTok and stuff, right? And then there's eBay and Etsy. So there are a million ways to sell something. And so that's [00:14:00] been sort of the latest iteration of my pivoting, I would say, is experimenting with all those different avenues and looking for what's really gonna work.
[00:14:10] James: Do you not find the number of options, the number of channels, overwhelming? Like how did you go about validating those channels? Like, and I'm sure there's a very obvious answer that's about to hit us across the face, but how did you go about validating those pivots?
[00:14:23] Ryan: Yeah, it is overwhelming. I thought initially, okay, there's, you know, 8 billion people in the world and there's like
[00:14:34] Ryan: 10,000 different sales channels. So I'll just pick one and be really good at it. Good luck. So now I'm just trying everything. And I don't know, I don't know the answer to how you validate something other than just get on there and sell something. And so that's how I'm validating. That's how I'm attempting to validate is now my method looks like this. Put my product on as many [00:15:00] platforms as I can see where I'm getting sales, and then try to double down there.
[00:15:05] Ryan: And I'm just, it's, everything is just sales driven. I'm just looking at the numbers, you know, where's the money coming from? And like that's gonna be the loudest voice.
[00:15:15] James: That's a really interesting way to look at it. And I think, again, it's pragmatic, right? It's all well and good saying here's my strategy and here's, I'm gonna go about executing it.
[00:15:25] James: But where the rubber hits meets the road is when you actually make that sale, when you actually get people to consume what it is that you have created.
[00:15:33] Ryan: Right.
[00:15:34] James: And I guess it sort of puts you on that path towards, you know, from zero to a hundred in terms of your customers and, you know, really kind of getting that warm feeling inside of when you get that first win.
[00:15:48] James: So, how did it, how are you going about getting your first customers? Also, you talked about loads of different channels there, but, what sort of, if we could bucket it in terms of digital, [00:16:00] advertising, cold calling, cold emailing, marketplaces, networking. What goes into going from zero to your first couple of customers and beyond for you?
[00:16:11] Ryan: For me, my very first couple of customers were, you know, friends and family. I think probably not surprising, but that runs out really fast. There's this saying I heard, and it might become more appropriate later, but I'm thinking of it right now. There's this saying I heard that says,
[00:16:27] Ryan: a customer will become your friend faster than a friend will become your customer. You know, your friends don't wanna buy stuff from you. Because they're your friend. They think they get everything about you for free. And so that bucket dries up really fast in my experience. You know, your mom might buy one of your t-shirts and like show support, but
[00:16:47] James: you mean, you mean your mom's not supporting every single invention and buying tens of thousands of units, I mean?
[00:16:52] Ryan: Right, right.
[00:16:53] Ryan: She's not buy, yeah, she's not buying the tens of thousands of units. And then you also have this guilt thing where like you [00:17:00] feel like you're supposed to give your friends and family, you know, a sample of your new cool thing. And so, you know, something that is, I think it was definitely overlooked by me.
[00:17:09] Ryan: I think it was pride initially that kept me away from like in-person events, farmers and makers markets. Every town has a little farmer's market that meets early as Saturday morning, and a lot of those are doing, they're adding like a maker component. And I'm a little bit different from that in the sense of I'm producing these like manufactured goods that are, not like one-off highly artisanal, you know, but that's a great way to actually get some customers because people are walking around looking to kill time, find something to buy
[00:17:51] Ryan: and talk to somebody local. So I really overlooked that, initially, and I think that's a fantastic way to get a dozen [00:18:00] customers or a couple hundred customers participating in local pop-up shops. It's a total pain in the butt to do, to lug all your crap and go set it up.
[00:18:13] James: But how did you land on that?
[00:18:14] James: How did you, was it just a light bulb moment that you realized, oh, I should be going to a local farmer's market?
[00:18:21] Ryan: No, it was, I got beat down over time. Okay. Yeah, so you know, you hear about these things, you know, around, you hear your friends are going to the farmer's market, you get an ad for, oh, you can apply to the farmer's market or whatever, and I avoided them.
[00:18:38] Ryan: So I knew these things were around and I avoided them for a long time because I thought, ah, that's just, those are crafty, or those are, you know, I don't need to do that. I'll just have a company pay me, you know, millions of dollars for my ideas. No, you won't. And so it's like finally got to a point where I go, let's see if I can get one person to pay me for my ideas.
[00:18:59] Ryan: Let's see [00:19:00] if I can get 10 people to actually do this. Or let's see if I can get real people to tell me why this is a horrible idea, which would be equally valuable. You know, let's see if I can go talk to real people. And get them to say, I'm not gonna buy that and explain why. Right. Yeah. So that was a big one, is getting out in front of, in front of real people.
[00:19:23] James: Yeah, one of the things that gets overlooked a lot for founders really is getting in front of, like you said, the buyer. And obviously in your instance, Ryan, it's a case of just you need to get in front of any sort of buyer. For others, if they had their ICP, tightly defined, then it may be a case if you get onto a discovery call and if someone gives you good feedback or bad feedback, it's really important to actually ask why it's not enough to be like, oh, you know, Ryan said that this solution that I've developed is great.
[00:19:53] James: Okay, but why? Or he said he wasn't really interested right now. Why? Should always be asking why. With that [00:20:00] sort of mentality. Is there anything that someone's ever said to you in terms of feedback, good or bad, that has made you think, yeah, great. I'm gonna take that on board and I'm gonna make a significant change to whatever it is that's going on in terms of my go to market?
[00:20:14] Ryan: A pseudo mentor of mine, who had a long successful career in sales, we were talking about this and he goes, yeah, there's no substitute for blowing your hot stinking breath in their face and
[00:20:27] Ryan: Lovely.
[00:20:29] Ryan: It was sort of this like blunt and crude wake up of sales are still done face to face. You know, when we're recording this, we are on a sort of a Zoom, you know, call. We're still going face to face and in my experience, that's where the majority of my business has taken place. Yes, I'm online, but my biggest paying customers have been people that,
[00:20:59] Ryan: [00:21:00] even if they placed their order online, I met them in person, or I followed up with them in person or over Zoom or, there's a lot of this face to face. I wish it was simpler. I wish you just put a website out there with a link that says "buy now" and you just got people dumping money in your lap. And, but that's never happened so far for me, it's still come back to
[00:21:22] Ryan: face to face. Blow your hot stinking breath in their face, you know? And that's also how you can figure out it's really easy to ignore an email. And it's much harder to ignore you if you're standing face to face. If I send you an email and say, what was bad about my proposal? It's really easy for you just to ignore that email and never respond.
[00:21:42] Ryan: But if we're standing face to face, you're gonna make it really awkward if you try not to respond to me. So, I think that the advice, back to your question, I mean, the advice is like getting out in front of people and really doing the face-to-face work. Taking sales as a, I'm sort of transitioning to [00:22:00] thinking more maybe old fashioned, if you wanna call it with sales.
[00:22:03] Ryan: Being a person to person, sort of door to door, hand to hand, activity.
[00:22:08] Zach: Today's episode is brought to you by Hunter.io, the B2B lead generation platform made for every professional. Whether it's prospecting, fundraising, recruiting, link building, or just trying to connect with the right people, Hunter is brought to you by Hunter.io, the B2B lead generation platform made for every professional. Whether it's prospecting, fundraising, recruiting, link building, or just trying to connect with the right
[00:22:35] James: So before I ask you a question that's related to what you just said there about sort of classical traditional sales, if you could use one word to describe how it felt when you won your first customer, when you won that first customer, how did it feel?
[00:22:50] Ryan: Okay, this is a lazy word. It was exciting. Let me maybe try to come up with, some better words for it.
[00:22:58] Ryan: It was a [00:23:00] proof of concept, you know, it was something that, it was a signal to me that said, Hey, you can actually do this. I had developed, after graduating, after finishing, my PhD, my first customer was actually the university I graduated from. And I had produced this, science educational teaching tool, and they purchased a kit from me.
[00:23:28] Ryan: And so that was pretty cool to graduate and then come back selling to them something that was gonna influence future batches of students. And it was, it was, to me it was a lot of proof that, okay, I've been developing this product for over a year and had precisely zero revenue. And then, hey, there's actually something here that people will pay for.
[00:23:50] Ryan: So, I don't know, maybe the, maybe the one word is proof or something.
[00:23:55] James: I mean, it just sounds like you were, you felt satisfaction from this. You're [00:24:00] using a lot of, terminology there that I would probably associate with a particular sort of role. And I love getting to ask our guests this. Would you consider yourself a salesperson?
[00:24:12] Ryan: I didn't initially. But yes, now I absolutely would. Like I said, my initial idea was I'm just gonna license these things. And I didn't think I needed to much be a salesman, like, yeah maybe convince somebody a little bit to pay me millions of dollars for ideas. But now I absolutely consider myself a salesperson, and it's become the case that as I focus more and more on wholesale, direct to consumer and other types of sales avenues.
[00:24:43] Ryan: Even if it's putting something on, you know, Etsy or Amazon, you are still crafting the listing and the images and the text. So now, yeah, sales takes up, I don't know, 80% of my thoughts in the week, you know.
[00:24:59] James: That's [00:25:00] so interesting to me. So we've had quite a few guests who have that same reaction, and I love hearing their answer to this, but,
[00:25:07] James: what is it about the term salesperson that kind of turns you off?
[00:25:12] Ryan: It's this whole, ah, I'm gonna have to spend money for something. I don't want, ah, this guy's gonna pressure me in. I'm gonna have to, now I'm gonna have to buy something. Oh, he is just gonna take up time. Oh, they're sleazy. This car's a lemon.
[00:25:30] Ryan: I think we have this mentality that like when somebody's selling you something, you just intrinsically can't trust them. That because someone wants to sell you something, they're untrustworthy. You know, I think there's that kind of mentality and I think it's sort of, from a variety of factors.
[00:25:50] Ryan: I wish it wasn't, but I think that's partly why I am sort of hesitant to admit that I do so much sales.
[00:25:57] James: If you kind of got over that mental hurdle, Ryan, [00:26:00] with, seeing yourself really as doing sales, I like to play the word translation game.
[00:26:06] James: So I'm gonna shoot out some words that we would typically use. Within our industry, and I think that they don't do a good job at perhaps translating the reality of what other people may call these things. So if I say one word, I would love to hear what you would translate that to. Okay. Sound good?
[00:26:22] James: Sure. All right. Cold email. Crafting.
[00:26:28] James: List building. Website scraping. Finding leads. Googling, reading websites.
[00:26:40] James: Ideal customer profile.
[00:26:42] Ryan: Any paying customer.
[00:26:45] James: Buyer persona?
[00:26:49] Ryan: No clue.
[00:26:53] James: That was fun.
[00:26:54] Ryan: How did, what's my score? Did I get it?
[00:26:57] James: Oh, you got a perfect score. Absolutely. [00:27:00] Awesome. Even for the, I don't know about buyer persona.
[00:27:04] Ryan: Well, you know, if I can comment on those, it's sort of. The buyer thing, I mean, I've seen the, I've been through these little sort of pseudo business accelerator workshop,
[00:27:18] Ryan: you know, we're gonna build your ideal customer profile, your buyer persona. But something that was a harsh reality for me after attending a few of those sorts of workshops was I've sort of developed, I don't know if it's a different view, and, but it's that your customer tells you who they are. Now this might, I might preface this by saying like, maybe it's different.
[00:27:44] Ryan: I believe it's different for every product, and in that sentence, I'm using product very broadly to mean tangible product, hard, good. It's probably different for consumables like foods and candies and stuff. It's probably [00:28:00] different for services where, it's not a tangible item, but you know, maybe it's software that a person's buying. Different for
[00:28:08] Ryan: something where somebody's paying you on an ongoing basis, they need to pay you on retainer. So I imagine , this is different for all of those categories. But in my experience, I'm developing tangible goods. That's just my ideas. Almost all my ideas are a product that you would hold and use in your life.
[00:28:27] Ryan: And in those cases, I can write down who I think would buy this thing. Okay, so I'm making a T-shirt brand. And I can tell you who I think would be interested in these T-shirts. 'cause I don't think that it's particularly old people. I don't think they're particularly trendy prints that Gen Z might be interested in, but I don't really know until I get those sales and I might be horribly wrong.
[00:28:54] Ryan: And so my idea is more about producing the item, [00:29:00] getting it out to as broad of an audience as I can, and then letting the sales tell me who my customer is. And then focusing down on that and going, okay, let me cater to this audience. Or if I'm not getting the audience that I, for some reason, really think that I need, can I retroactively, retrospectively look at my product and figure out was I positioning it wrong?
[00:29:24] Ryan: Do I need to update something about the branding? Do I need to add features if I want to move to a different customer or audience or whatever?
[00:29:32] James: I'm gonna be the devil's advocate here, not that he needs one. Surely in what you've just said there, you must have had someone in mind when you were coming up with this idea, like, this idea could be valuable because of, I can imagine this sort of person may use it.
[00:29:47] James: I can understand when you're just trying to get traction, it's like, Hey, anyone that can put dollars into my bank account, you know, that's the way to go. We need to figure out then after the fact, who is that person that's. You know, [00:30:00] quite prevalent in our demographics of our purchases.
[00:30:03] James: But surely when you're, when you're coming up with these ideas, there has to be someone in mind.
[00:30:07] Ryan: Yeah. I couldn't deny that. I mean, let's think of, let's say you have, and I'm toying with this pet invention right now, okay? And it's gonna be this, the world's best litter box, all right?
[00:30:20] Ryan: So it's probably not gonna be for dog owners. You know, and so yeah, we could drop it down and we could say, it's definitely for cat owners, maybe the occasional, you know, potbelly pig owner, if they're litter box training their pigs, but I really don't know about those. It's so, it's probably cat owners.
[00:30:38] Ryan: And so now you've dropped your whole audience from the world to pet owners and from pet owners down to cat pet owners, and then from cat owners to specifically indoor cat owners. So yeah, I mean I guess we could play those games and you could get down to, and then within that you could try to think, [00:31:00] is this gonna be an older person or a younger person?
[00:31:03] Ryan: Is it electronics? And there's really fancy litter boxes these days, you know, that, have all these cool features of Bluetooth accessibility and all this stuff. And with those, you might think, okay, well an older person's not gonna use this 'cause they don't wanna get all techy with a litter box. And not to put the conversation down such a stinky trajectory, but, you know, here's my point with, once you realize that you are targeting, okay, cat owners and indoor cat owners. Within that, I think you really don't know until you sell them. Maybe I think, hey, this is gonna be great for apartment owners who have, you know, a confined space, but maybe they're not who actually, latches onto it. For my clothing brand, I thought, this is gonna be really popular with college kids.
[00:31:57] Ryan: Okay. And I, so I had dropped it [00:32:00] down from, you know, all people to people who like to wear t-shirts. So it's a casual brand. And then I thought within that, it's gonna be a specific type of college. I thought the fraternity, the Greek segment and I don't know if I've gotten a single one of those customers, you know, and it turned out to be, a very different, person than I anticipated was my customer.
[00:32:27] James: And that's absolutely okay. Right? Like, that's just part of the experience of going through growing a business and trying to get your product into the hands of someone. Right?
[00:32:36] Ryan: Yeah. I think if you, and again, this is back to, I think every product is probably different, and so I think there's probably some, specifically services.
[00:32:45] Ryan: It just crosses my mind as maybe you're able to pick more. Like if you've developed a cool software, you know, that does something, maybe it's much easier to target, but maybe I'm wrong. But I think it might be easier to say. [00:33:00] Okay, all these people are never gonna get any use out of it. Where if it's something really broad, like, developing a clothing brand, there's all kinds of people who wear clothes.
[00:33:09] Ryan: In fact, there's very few people who don't. So, you know, you may not know who's gonna pick up your t-shirt, but if you're developing a super fancy software to analyze a specific type of data, maybe you can hone in much more closely on, on your target audience.
[00:33:26] James: So, Ryan, you're talking a lot about technology there and being more specific with who you're targeting, and obviously there's an element of that that you are having to go through with your different products.
[00:33:37] James: I want to address the elephant in the room. I think everyone has an opinion on this, but it's always good to hear more opinions because it can help refine our own. How do you feel about using AI in your outreach?
[00:33:49] Ryan: I feel great about it. I don't use AI maybe as much as I could. I think people are always coming up with very creative ways to [00:34:00] apply this stuff, but I don't have any problem with it.
[00:34:03] Ryan: I did some, I did a little exercise the other day and I was coming up with a business description, so I just dumped in everything I could possibly think of. It was, and, you know, okay, pare this down. And so I think it's good for, I think it's good for stuff like that where you've got an idea and you need to sort of sharpen it up.
[00:34:23] Ryan: And you just need to make sure that it's natural before you go and use it on somebody. make sure that it's actually what you wanna say and you take out variables. I've been seeing these, like horror stories of, you know, AI put, insert company name in brackets and the person left it in their email or whatever.
[00:34:42] Ryan: So you can't do that.
[00:34:44] James: Do you think that when you use AI, do you think that for cold emailing to be very specific, do you think recipients would care?
[00:34:52] Ryan: I don't think so. And I think about me. I usually, I get, it's kind of weird because
[00:35:00] I'm on both sides, both as a business owner and as a salesperson.
[00:35:04] Ryan: So I both am sending out cold emails and receiving cold emails, and my first thought is not, is this AI? Because if so, I'm gonna ignore it. You know, my first thought is, do I care about this? Now I might start to worry if it's AI, if it's, too weird if something, you know, if there's these like standout features that I really think, Ooh, where's this coming from?
[00:35:28] Ryan: But in today's world of automation and mass marketing and big numbers, I still read some of those. I mean, to me, even if I know that, hey, this message was automated, or I get these messages on LinkedIn, a lot that I know weren't crafted for me, it was triggered. I clicked on something and then boom, I get this inbox message.
[00:35:52] Ryan: But it still might be valuable. Somebody has some sort of targeting algorithm and maybe AI or a pre-written message, [00:36:00] but that doesn't mean it's not valuable, so I'll still sort of read some of those.
[00:36:05] James: What are the telltale signs for you outside of sort of the horror stories of placeholder copy when it comes to AI?
[00:36:11] James: Is there anything that's like, oh, if that shows up?
[00:36:15] Ryan: Well, I've wonder, I don't know if it's a template that people are just using or if it's AI, but there's this very generic, email, solicitation email that I get a lot and it always goes something like this. Hey, I noticed, your website, you have such an insightful view on X.
[00:36:36] Ryan: I wonder if we could dive into that more deeply. I also noticed some errors with your website. Would you like me to send you a free SEO report? And it's always the same. It starts out with this generic, you know, thing, this generic sentence. Like, wow, what a great, and I don't know if that's AI or a template.
[00:36:55] Ryan: Because I think there was also some, you know, in the last several years, some advice
[00:37:00] on how to catch people's attention over email. So maybe that's a little pre AI.
[00:37:04] James: It's a natural thing to talk about. Right? AI is infiltrating so much of what we do. It should be, in my opinion, it should be there to act as a role player. It should be something that help, it's almost like it's a pantomime.
[00:37:15] James: If you can be very clear in prompting AI to help you to be effective in brainstorming, in revising copy, and, you know, those sort of ways, that's a good use of AI. It's when you kind of let it go on autopilot where you run into trouble. And I think autopilot is a lot of the cause behind bad cold emailing.
[00:37:36] James: So I would love to just hear, Ryan. What goes into a good cold email for you? And then what is your process for writing one?
[00:37:44] Ryan: My cold emails are very manual. So I'm starting out with, you know, research on the company and because I want to find out, okay, who's the person I'm supposed to contact in this company?[00:38:00]
[00:38:00] Ryan: And again, we're thinking and I'll sort of set the stage, maybe I'm trying to show them an idea that I want them to buy from me or I want them to take a new product as wholesale, you know, depending on what kind of company it is. And so I'm always looking, who's the person who reviews this type of idea?
[00:38:17] Ryan: And maybe they have a company profile on the website, or maybe the company has an about section and they're saying, oh, we love these types of ideas, or we don't do this, and you stay away from these people. Or it helps guide, I've had some success with companies that mentioned something in their about page.
[00:38:37] Ryan: Something about their ethos as a company or their goals. And sometimes those are really fluffy and the company actually doesn't care about the things that they wrote. But sometimes if you sort of mention some of those, Hey, I think this fits with what you said you wanted, because you know, we're doing the same thing, or whatever.
[00:38:55] Ryan: So it usually starts off with research in that way. Even before that, I could say I find the companies with a [00:39:00] simple Google search a lot of times.
[00:39:01] James: Right.
[00:39:01] Ryan: You know, florists near me. And you're then getting the list of websites. And then I'm thinking, okay, what is it that I'm trying to do? Am I trying to sell them something?
[00:39:19] Ryan: And the answer should probably be no. I think you're trying to get a response. And so then I think, how do I get a response? In fact, my first email to you. You know, I had missed a deadline to participate in a Hunter cold email contest. And I said, I wanna see if I can get them to talk to me, even without being able to submit this application.
[00:39:42] Ryan: And that was my whole thought to you is how do I get this guy just to read this and respond? Doesn't really matter what the response is, if there's a response. There's something there. And so then that goes into how long should this be? And I typically start my email. I erase the send [00:40:00] to, I erase the sender so that I can't accidentally send it, and I just dump everything in there, you know, and I wanna, I wanna craft it in the email, 'cause I wanna see on this screen, how's it gonna look
[00:40:11] Ryan: size wise? It helps me learn, am I writing too much? And I typically dump out everything and then start saying, okay, here's all my ideas. What was unnecessary, what was repetitive? What can I delete and try to probably delete as much as possible. And then sometimes the last step is like actually strategically rearranging sections.
[00:40:31] Ryan: Does this paragraph make more sense here? Would this help drag them along? 'cause it's every sentence is just to get to the next sentence. I want you to read the next line. I want you to read the next sentence. I want you to, and then try to make it dummy proof. You have to make your outreach so dummy proof where if you're asking something that needs to be very obvious, if I have a question, I want that question mark to probably be the last thing they see.
[00:40:57] Ryan: You know? I don't wanna put an [00:41:00] explanation sentence, Hey, would you be interested in this? I'm really hoping you'll respond to me because it would be great. I don't wanna put that, because then my final sentence didn't have a question mark on it. And if they're just skimming over this. They probably missed it and just go, huh, I don't know what that email's about.
[00:41:13] Ryan: Just ignore it.
[00:41:15] James: So have you ever bought anything from a cold email?
[00:41:19] Ryan: I have. I have. I, the thing that comes to mind recently, somebody actually got me on, I don't know if it's exactly SEO, but this company reached out to me and they're helping revise one of my Amazon listings right now. Okay. And I mean, they got me, you know, they reached out and said, Hey, you know, we found your Amazon listing. It sucks. you need some help. They didn't exactly say that, but they made the case that, Hey, I think there's some opportunity here that you're not capitalizing on. And I think we're the right people to be able to help you with that.
[00:41:56] Ryan: Long story short, I paid them money and we're trying [00:42:00] to make more money together now, you know?
[00:42:02] James: Well, that is great. I mean, I personally set aside time every Friday afternoon. If you can send me a good cold email, I will open up my diary to anyone that sends me a good cold email. I think it's just,
[00:42:15] James: I think it is. I mean, I'm British, right? So we're polite. First of all, it's polite. If someone's done a good job, it's polite to actually have a conversation. But more importantly, if it's something that I think is worth to myself or to Hunter, then I'm, it's part of my job to listen to these people, to actually give them the time of day.
[00:42:31] James: I see cold email and I would love to know what you think. I see cold email, not a spam. I see cold email as a delivery channel. It's someone's, low-cost opportunity to get right in front of me, when I check my emails, and to actually get my attention. If you get my attention, that's because you've been personal, relevant and you've made it worth my time.
[00:42:53] James: Nothing to do with timing. I think timing is, it's this magical silver bullet. That's not a real thing. But all this to [00:43:00] say, do you think cold email is spam?
[00:43:02] Ryan: No, I don't think it's spam. I absolutely agree with your assessment. It's just the channel. You know, used to, you might've done sales calls by actually picking up the phone and calling, you know, and or going door to door.
[00:43:17] Ryan: I sold Boy Scout popcorn and that's how you did it, you know? Right, right. You just literally walked down the neighborhood and knocked on the doors and most of those people weren't offended. Just rarely now and then, I think cold email becomes spam when it's blind. And what I mean by that is you're not targeting your people at all.
[00:43:37] Ryan: You don't know who you're emailing. You just got some list of emails or you randomly typed in an email. I get these emails where people. And I guess it says something about my websites and stuff 'cause they're found on like the 10th page of Google. So what these companies, I actually asked some of them and what they'll do is these SEO companies will search for some keyword, go to the 10th page of Google and find out who's there and then [00:44:00] like click on the websites, you know, WHOIS data and email you.
[00:44:04] Ryan: And, but that's very blind 'cause they really haven't investigated my company. They don't actually know if they believe that they can be a fit for me. But assuming you're doing some due diligence, no, I don't think it's, spam at all. And I've gotten some valuable things from it because these people believe that they can help me.
[00:44:23] Ryan: They're, Hey, we all have to sell something. We all have to make money. They're trying it this way. So I take an approach more like yours, which is, Hey, there's a reason that they're reaching out. Usually the blind ones, you can tell and you can ignore and delete those pretty easily. But for something that's in field, hey.
[00:44:41] Ryan: I'm developing a clothing company and you tell me you're a clothing manufacturer. Maybe there's something I should look at there. You reached out to me for a reason. Maybe there's no fit, but maybe there is.
[00:44:53] James: I like the open-mindedness that you have towards the channel. I think that is, and that's [00:45:00] something we saw in our state of cold email 2025 research, is that there's a heck of a lot of optimism around cold email, but actually.
[00:45:09] James: Not enough people are delivering on it. And that's sort of something that's inspiring me every day with Hunter is how can I help our users? How can I help people beyond our user base? Just anyone that wants to do outreach to get better. And as part of that, I know that we are both bookworms. I would love to ask before we wrap up, Brian, what is in your reading list right now?
[00:45:29] James: Your podcast queue, you know, any webinars you signed up? What's going on right now in terms of, your learning?
[00:45:36] Ryan: Well, there's a little bit in everything. I try to keep my reading list. I've got way more books on my shelf than I can read. I don't read fast and I've got 'em in every category. I mean, I've got
[00:45:47] Ryan: sort of the classics of fiction, philosophy, classical philosophy from a thousand years ago. You know, books on religion and of course business. A lot of the podcasts and audio books that
[00:46:00] I'm listening to are business related, so you know how to do business, sales.
[00:46:06] Ryan: Just anything that I can learn how to do sales. Those are a lot. Somebody recently gave me a book that I had never heard of and I don't think I ever would've come across, and it's called The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, but he's something of maybe a modern day, I don't know what the, I forget the word,
[00:46:29] Ryan: Benjamin Franklin type. You know, I mean, dabbled in a lot of different things. Yeah, yeah. He's done some investing. He's done some, he's had his own company's entrepreneur, but also a deep thinker and a free thinker and sort of not afraid to have his own ideas. And his book has been really interesting.
[00:46:46] Ryan: It's actually not even written by him. Somebody sort of collected a bunch of his sayings and just put them together in a book. So you're sort of supposed to read this and understand who this person is. And what their philosophies are, and [00:47:00] it's been a very interesting read. Okay. Well, what is the, what's the main takeaway from that, by the way, so far, the interesting takeaway from that book was he says that attention, not time, not money, is your real currency.
[00:47:15] Ryan: So there's this idea that of course money is money, money is currency. But then some people will think, oh, no, time is the real currency, you know, because you can't buy time and so what you give your time to, but this guy says it's actually attention because attention is something that you can actually control.
[00:47:32] Ryan: You can't control time, you can't choose how much time you get or don't get, but you can with your attention. I think that's an interesting concept. So my wife and I have been ruminating on that one lately. What are we giving our attention to?
[00:47:44] James: Yeah. Yeah, that's really deep. That's really, really deep.
[00:47:50] James: And speaking of takeaways though, natural segue. Speaking of takeaways, I would love to just kind of, as we wrap up today's episode, if there [00:48:00] are three things that you could give advice on to our listeners about your journey, your experiences, and your path ahead, what would those takeaways and pieces of advice be?
[00:48:11] Ryan: Try everything. That's something that I wish I would've had a bolder mindset on to begin with. Try everything. You may not know what sales channel is gonna stick. You may not know what network is gonna be valuable. Try everything. Go to every event, network with every person. email every person.
[00:48:32] Ryan: You don't know who's gonna become your customer. You know, I hope that people will take cold outreach more like you and I do. Both in terms of getting and receiving. I hope that they'll take a more open mindset and be more polite like you, James, and actually read some of those and evaluate them honestly.
[00:48:52] Ryan: Yeah. I don't want a response to every email. I don't even fault people for giving a response for not giving a response to lots of my cold emails. [00:49:00] But if you have responded, if you did open up the email, you might as well just drop a line that says. Hey, this is or isn't a fit for me.
[00:49:08] Ryan: Or, you know, go away, or let's talk more.
[00:49:11] Ryan: If you do respond and you go back and forth, don't just ghost somebody. You know. Right. If you set up a Calendly meeting, show up to the meeting, you know, those sorts of things.
[00:49:22] James: Basics. Basics.
[00:49:23] Ryan: Yeah.
[00:49:24] James: Well, you would hope the basics. You would hope. Right. Right. Well, Ryan, I've had a great time talking to you today.
[00:49:30] James: I think that everything that you've shared really goes back to this idea of, you know, it isn't about frameworks, it isn't about acronyms, it isn't about theory really, when it comes to growing your business, it's all about being realistic. Being pragmatic and a lot of what you shared today, I hope inspires our listeners.
[00:49:48] James: I hope that our listeners do feel encouraged to reach out to you on your LinkedIn and obviously we'll link to that in the show notes. But the only thing left to say to you Ryan is thank you for your time and, [00:50:00] thanks for being part of Outfoxed.
[00:50:01] Ryan: Yeah, thank you for inviting me.
[00:50:03]