Lifestyle is a Plan podcast is for agency founders who are done with the growth hustle, and want profitability over pressure instead.

In this episode of Lifestyle is a Plan, Kelly Molson is joined by Ryan Hall, founder of Friday Solved.

Ryan is the founder of Friday Solved, a two-time founder with two successful exits under his belt and 20+ years of experience building revenue engines and sales strategy.

He’s worked with global brands like Channel 4, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Vodafone, and UBS, as well as high-growth businesses, to scale sales in a way that actually sticks.

He’s also the voice behind the Don’t Sell philosophy, a straight-talking approach that challenges traditional sales thinking and focuses on building scalable, predictable, and sustainable revenue engines, without the usual noise or gimmicks.

Today, through Friday Solved, businesses fix sales by building modern revenue engines that sharpen positioning, create consistency, and drive real growth..

Whether you’re growing to exit or building an agency for legacy - we all have to sell something to make that happen. Or do we?

Ryan Hall founded Friday Solved to help agencies build scalable, predictable and sustainable sales engines inside your business

His book Don’t Sell sets out his ethos of selling by adding value, and not actually selling at all.

You’ll discover:

• Why outsourcing sales rarely works and why the "Build It, Don't Buy It" model is better
• How to sell without actually selling
• Systemising your content - how to maintain visibility without burnout
• How to embed a culture of ‘value’ helps team members get involved without feeling like "salespeople".
• How to build your sales engine
• Why consistent activity paired with the resilience is critical for agency survival
• Sales for the small agency that’s manageable
• The one piece of sales advice agency founders need to take onboard this year

Guest details

Website: www.fridaysolved.co.uk

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ryanghall

Don't Sell Insta: www.instagram.com/_dontsell

Podcast recommendations:

2bobs.com

Brought to you by:

Lifestyle is a Plan is brought to you by me, Kelly Molson - an agency advisor on a mission to support solo founders build the agency they want. I’m here to show the agency world that ‘lifestyle agency’ is not a cop out. It’s the future of our industry’s sustainable growth.

You can join my Lifestyle is a Plan newsletter at kellymolson.co.uk

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave a glowing review and share it with your founder friends.

Edited by Steve Folland. stevefolland.com

Kelly Molson

Hey, I'm Kelly. How are you doing? Welcome to Lifestyle is a Plan, a podcast for founders who are done with the growth hustle.

Kelly Molson

I'll be chatting to creative founders, agency advisors, and all kinds of brilliant people, sharing real stories and practical tools to help you design an agency that supports your life, not takes it over. You'll learn about unconventional agency models, incredible lifestyle agencies, and the choices that you have to build your agency exactly on your terms.

Kelly Molson

Whether you're growing to exit or building an agency for legacy, we all have to sell something to make that happen. Or do we? Ryan Hall founded Friday Solved to help agencies build scalable, predictable, and sustainable sales engines inside your business. His book, "Don't Sell," sets out his ethos of selling by adding value and not actually selling at all. Ryan joins me on the podcast today, and I think you're going to really enjoy this session. So let's go.

Kelly Molson

Ryan, welcome to the podcast.

Ryan Hall

Thanks for having me, Kelly.

Kelly Molson

An absolute pleasure. We're going to kick off with some icebreakers. I want to know, what is the worst pitch experience that you've ever had?

Ryan Hall

I've been doing this for 23, 24 years. I've had a few. laughs

Kelly Molson

I can imagine.

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

Kelly Molson

Oh.

Ryan Hall

And for whatever reason, we were driving down the motorway, and we opened the convertible lid top, and it just turned into this like massive sail laughs

Kelly Molson

laughs Oh my God.

Ryan Hall

Ryan Hall

We're young and dumb at that point, but that's not the worst because that happened before the pitch.

Kelly Molson

That's not even at the pitch. Wow.

Ryan Hall

No, I know. I don't know what we were playing at. We were just clotting on the car.

Ryan Hall

Not the worst, but possibly the funniest was I, as far as the attendees of the meeting was concerned, I was naked on a call. And I wasn't naked. I was clothed from the waist down, but I also wasn't prepared for it to be a video call. laughs

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

Kelly Molson

Way pre-pandemic, guys.

Ryan Hall

Pre-video call, and it was for a major film studio. The CMO, she was like, "I'll take the call," because it was a prospective pitch. "I'll take the call. I'll take it, but I can only do this day at this time. That's it. That's all you're getting." I was like, "I'm in Florida seeing my dad." And I was like, "Well, can we do a call? And I'll do it over a call." And she was like, "Yes, that's fine." So got up, went for a run, came back, had a swim, and I was like, "Oh, God, I better get ready." And I'm very rarely late, and I ended up being a little bit run out of time.

Ryan Hall

So as I was opening my laptop for this Skype call, that's how long ago this was-

Kelly Molson

Retro

Ryan Hall

... they were already ringing me. So I answered it, assuming it would just be a call because no one did video calls. And it was a video, and there's like, I don't know, 10 female marketeers there. And here's me, with my bloody nipples out.

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

I'm like, "Oh, God."

Ryan Hall

No one needs to see that ever, right? laughs

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

So I slammed my laptop closed to kill the call, opened it up quickly, message her and go, "Oh, the Wi-Fi's a bit glitchy. Could we just do audio rather than video?" Suffice to say, I didn't get it. laughs

Kelly Molson

laughs Sorry, my nipples are a bit glitchy this morning. I'm going to need to put a T-shirt on. laughs

Ryan Hall

Yeah.

Kelly Molson

Wow.

Ryan Hall

Yeah. Not ideal.

Kelly Molson

I was not expecting nakedness in a pitch. I'm not going to lie.

Ryan Hall

Didn't get it.

Kelly Molson

Your nipples ruined it for everybody. Sad little story. laughs

Ryan Hall

Yeah. No. I wouldn't have picked me either if I'd seen me naked.

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

Yeah. There we go.

Kelly Molson

Okay. I want to know what you thought that you would end up doing when you were at school. What did you want your job to be when you was a kid?

Ryan Hall

So preschool, like very young, I thought I was going to be an architect. Loved drawing. It was always kind of very precise. So I thought I was going to be an architect. I loved the idea of creating an idea for something. Then at school, fully thought I was going to join the army for a very long time.

Ryan Hall

Wanted to be a helicopter pilot and started through Air Cadets, all that kind of stuff, and went through the various channels to join. And they were like, as soon as they saw my report, they're like, "Oh, you've had asthma. You can't be a pilot." I was like, "Oh." And they're like, "You could join. We'd love you to join, but do what do you want to do?" And I'm like, "Oh, God, I don't know." They're just like, "Do you want to be like an MP, Military Police?" I'm like, "Absolutely not. That's not me."

Ryan Hall

And then didn't know what I wanted to do. Hated education. Came to finish my GCSEs, which I just scraped through. And then it was like A levels. What am I going to pick? I'm like, "God, what am I going to do? I'm just not academic." Fortunately, my school had a GNVQ business. Well, technically it's General National Vocational Qualification, but at my school, it was Generally Not Very Quick. laughs

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

And I did that, and it was amazing. And it was a GNVQ in business, and the tutors were unbelievable. And then I just got this massive passion for business.

Kelly Molson

You've grown and sold two agencies, right? Haven't you? Grown and exited, grown and exited, and then you've come on to do what we're going to talk about today. So you're the only person so far that's come on the pod that hasn't gone in with a skill, as in like a creative skill. I know that you're a creative person.

Ryan Hall

I've got no skill.

Kelly Molson

But you- laughs But you didn't train as a designer, you didn't train as a thing that you took, the skill that you took into your agency.

Ryan Hall

No. Definitely. And I've worn a lot of hats. So like when we were doing Nice Agency for a disturbingly long time, I wore the UX director hat, the creative director hat. Not that I was necessarily doing the work, but I was looking at it, overseeing it, making sure that it was of quality and it was the right thing. Even Channel 4, the first version of 4oD, very involved in the design execution of that.

Ryan Hall

So I can do a lot of things, but no, I've got no skills. I'm not a specialist. I'm not a practitioner.

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

I haven't trained, I don't deserve any credibility. laughs

Kelly Molson

laughs Ryan has no skills. This podcast episode will be over extremely quickly.

Kelly Molson

So tell us about your agency. So you build, exit, build, exit, and now you've Friday Solved. What was that kind of journey? What did that look like?

Ryan Hall

It was good. First agency experience was in a sandwich year with a brand and point-of-sale business in Newcastle. Stretched that out as long as I could. Had to go back to uni for my final year, which I hated, by the way.

Ryan Hall

Ryan Hall

Kelly Molson

Did you just call me a cliché? How rude. laughs

Ryan Hall

It is a cliché.

Kelly Molson

It's the natural progression, Ryan. Come on.

Ryan Hall

Oh, yeah, natural progression. Yeah. But it is a cliché. Oh, yeah, so I managed to become an advisor. But some people are good at it, some people aren't good at it. You're good at it.

Kelly Molson

Thanks, mate.

Ryan Hall

I loved the people, and I kind of loved the work, but it wasn't enough for me. I like making something.

Kelly Molson

Mm.

Ryan Hall

I didn't feel, and maybe it was just on my own head, I wasn't effective enough on the other side of the boardroom table. Built lots of frameworks to appease my own need for satisfaction and moving things forwards fast. And then I was like, "Oh, hang on a second. What have I got here?" And I kind of had a look at what I built and realized I'd, after lots of many, many, many mistakes, but some successes, had modeled a systemized framework-based approach to solving modern-day consultative B2B sales and marketing. So that's where Friday Solved came from. It was like, "Oh, hang on a second. This might be a thing. Is it a thing?" Went to market to five people that I'd never sold to before. Closed five deals, and I was like, "Okay, this is interesting." And then I was like, "How do I deliver it?" So then had to work out a delivery model, not just the proposition. And then everyone loved the delivery model. It was very different, very unique. It was very, very different to the way that anyone else was kind of doing those sorts of services. And I was like, "Okay, great. That was five successes. Can I do it again?" So I closed 10 more deals, and then started to improve the delivery model off the back of that. And then the whole journey's just been iterative. Never satisfied with the previous version. The next version's always going to be better and three and a bit years later, here we are.

Kelly Molson

Wow. Three and a bit years. I think I met you, it must've been a couple of years ago now. You'd launched a little bit before that, and it was such an interesting concept. I want to know what problem did you see from the agency experience that you've had that prompted you to start Friday Solved? What was it that got you from there to there?

Ryan Hall

It was all of the mistakes and also pinch points that I'd experienced from the previous career. Sales is hard. No one seems to be able to crack it, therefore, you default into some kind of poor behaviors. You outsource it thinking it's a silver bullet, and it rarely works. And that's not to dismiss the outsourced services. Partly, they're not set up for success to give you success because the way they kind of manage their models. But also, the agencies never set them up for success either. So it's always kind of six of one, half a dozen of another.

Ryan Hall

The other pitfalls are, I need more sales, I'll hire more salespeople. Now, that rarely works because frankly, the talent pool for business development and sales, certainly in the UK, it's slightly different in the US because it's seen differently. It's weak. It's a very, very weak pool. And then it's like you try and do the expensive unicorn hire, and it never works out. Then you go, "Oh, we'll hire loads of less expensive people, have an army of salespeople." It never works out. Now, there's a quality problem in the candidate pool, but also again, the agencies never set them up for success. The first problem is they go, "Oh, we need more sales. We'll hire this business development person."

Ryan Hall

And you wrap them around top of funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of funnel, which you can't do. No one person, other than a founder, up to a certain size, no one can do that. So immediately they're set up for failure. And also, unless you happen to have found one of the few good people out there, they then can't support it anyway. They can't weather the storm and actually get even close.

Ryan Hall

So it all ends in tears. And then you're not connecting sales and marketing, they're two kind of completely disparate things. And the list goes on. But they're the major problems.

Kelly Molson

I got two questions. I want to come back and just ask you about specifically what is it that Friday Solved solves, but there was something that you said there around the talent pool, and the talent pool for business development being pretty low. Why do you think that is?

Ryan Hall

There's this slogan from many, many years ago, it's like, "Those who can't... teach." I think it's those who can't go into sales or recruitment, to be honest. both laughing It just seems to be this thing that people fall into. There's a period where everyone needs salespeople. If you're personable, you can get a job. But then no one's investing in anyone. There's no investment at any point in proper training, in proper support, in proper systems. So then time marches on, and these people never collect any skills, and it just creates a poor talent pool, unfortunately. Now, I'm not saying everyone is like that. As always, there are really good people in this space. But there's just not enough of them is the problem.

Kelly Molson

Yeah. I think that the training is really key. So we'll, again, we'll come back to your book in a minute, but it is actually behind me. It's on the shelf behind me.

Ryan Hall

Yep. I can see it, yeah.

Kelly Molson

It's being guarded by my Ossie Ardiles signed spoon, which-

Ryan Hall

laughs Nice

Kelly Molson

... it's a good place to be, except that we don't talk about football anymore coughs as a Tottenham fan.

Kelly Molson

What I found when I read your book is, though, I could recognize some of the kind of processes that I went through, I could recognize, but I had never, ever been taught them, and I'd never seen it laid out in the framework that you talk about. And it was really interesting to be able to identify bits that I go, "Oh, yeah, I do that, but I didn't realize I was doing that." And to see it all kind of laid out made absolute sense to me. So it's a cracking book. It's called "Don't Sell," and we'll talk about it a little bit later. So tell me about what Friday Solved solves then. What's the key problem it solves?

Ryan Hall

We solve sales.

Kelly Molson

Solve sales.

Ryan Hall

Simple as that. That's what we're here to solve. But we do it through different means. So when we're working with agencies specifically, we have this model, which we call... It's a terrible name, we need to think about it better. It's Build It, Don't Buy It.

Ryan Hall

So we're not the next retainer that you're going to get hooked on. We're not the next kind of hire you're going to get hooked on. We're building for long-term sustainability, long-term ownership, and importantly, empowerment of the business and the people to run it themselves. Because when you're in control and when you're in the driving seat, and this is kind of the psychological problem, like if you're paying for a big retainer to outsource, there's an expectation like, "Where's my leads?" And you're not really putting enough into it because it's like, "Oh, God, I'm paying this massive retainer. They should be doing the legwork." And no one cares enough about it. Like, it doesn't become this beating heart of the business.

Ryan Hall

So what we're trying to do is put strategy, process, technology, the right people in the right place, and also culture around this kind of sales and marketing problem to change the way the business thinks, runs, operates, and frankly, behaves, and that's the bit that makes sales work.

Ryan Hall

Now, the stuff in the book, you might read that and go, "That's so obvious." It is. It's not rocket science. But actually solving sales and solving marketing isn't rocket science. Actually, it just requires some basic fundamentals. The ability to then go deliver something in a consistent way that you can layer, layer, layer, layer, layer on without trying to build this ivory tower on day one. And getting the people working behind it, and then just going out to market in the right way. Because I know we use the word sales, and it's all over our kind of website propaganda positioning, but we're not really trying to help people sell more in the sense of actively selling. Because everyone's got this preconception of what sales is, especially in this kind of creative consultative area. No one can go out. I couldn't go out to him and go, "Shit, I need more sales. I'm going to go and get another sale, guys." And at the end of the day, it's like, "Cool, I got the sale." Because you can't force a sale.

Ryan Hall

So what we're trying to create is a system that creates buyability. Yeah, it turns into revenue, and yes, it is technically sales. But the first thing that we're trying to do is make sure everyone really understands what sales is, because sales isn't like, "Whey, do you want to use car off the dealership, fore court?" Like, it's none of that. You can't force someone to buy a brand strategy, a mobile application. There's such a big consideration process behind that, and that's kind of buried inside the change that we deliver.

Kelly Molson

Do you feel like there's still this resistance from agencies to do that internally? It's almost like a sticking plaster, isn't it? They'd look at their pipeline and go, "Oh my God, this is looking shit. We're going to need to fill it. I know what we'll do. We'll outsource that part of it, and we'll just get someone to do that for us because we're really, really, really busy."

Ryan Hall

Mm-hmm.

Kelly Molson

Are you still seeing that happening and people not taking ownership of it themselves?

Ryan Hall

Yeah, and there's a few reasons, and they're all good reasons. You don't know how to do sales, so it's immediately a scary, horrible, hairy problem. You're like, "Oh God, I just can't face doing this. I don't like doing it. I don't like the idea of going, 'Hey, do you need a new website?'" Which also is not how you do it, right? But again, this preconceived idea. It looks time-consuming, and it is, but you can kind of gear it differently, so actually it starts to become kind of embedded in the business. So everyone's just like terrified of it. You've only ever seen it done badly, and you're terrified of being that person, so therefore you just don't do it rather than finding a better way.

Ryan Hall

And most people that we're talking to, like you said with the guests of this show, they've come from a practitioner background. They're more bothered about the craft, the work, the quality, which they should be, and they hate the concept of selling.

Kelly Molson

Yeah, I would agree. If you haven't had training for it, and you're still in that kind of creative delivery role as well as running the agency, it just becomes another thing that you've got to think about. You know that you need to do it, but it is a really hard thing to kind of get your head around.

Kelly Molson

That's something that I want to talk about actually, because you talk about building a sustainable sales engine, which I totally agree with. But like you said, some of the listeners, they're going to be quite small. They might be nano, micro agencies. They're probably thinking all of this just sounds like "an engine" sounds quite robust, doesn't it? It's going to take me a lot of work to do. I might not have an excessive amount of team members that can support me on this as well. How am I going to run it with maybe me and a couple, or maybe it's just me and one.

Kelly Molson

So what does a typical sales engine look like if you are a smaller agency? Are there any bare minimums that you have to think about?

Ryan Hall

Getting it working, it's not having this one monster, and that's it. You either get this monster in your business or you don't. It's all appropriate to the size, the scale, the capacity of the individual business. The whole idea of systemizing, it costs you time to run it, but the time that it costs you versus the output, the output should be exponentially bigger than the time you put into it, if you've got the right systems, process, strategy, technology, and also your people working the right way.

Ryan Hall

So for example, if you're a five-person agency, you can absolutely get something working that's appropriate for your business. At a five-person agency, you might only have one go-to-market facing persona, and by that I don't mean your ICP. If I was a five-person business, it might be my face going to market. If you're a web agency, it might be the founder of that agency. Don't worry about putting the other guys or girls to face the market. So then you're kind of immediately cutting your cloth accordingly to the size of your business. If you're a 50-person business, you might look at your team of specialists and go, "I've probably got 10 faces I could face out to market if I really want to." So immediately there's a component around that.

Ryan Hall

Then from a tooling perspective, even if you think the very top of funnel, getting the right tooling, processes, systems, it means you can run demand generation pretty much while you sleep if it's organized the right way. You don't have to be sat there constantly pressing buttons and clicking buttons.

Ryan Hall

Now, of course, as soon as you say LinkedIn automation, email automation, everyone's going like, "Ooh, God." Because most of us have only ever seen it done badly, and we've got a Slack channel in the business called Bad Outreach, and we catalog everything that we receive ourselves, because it's great to bring up in presentations. Like, this is what it looks like, this is the stuff that we know you're getting, but it could look like this.

Ryan Hall

But again, actually you can get that working really easily, and as a smaller business, your content requirements are smaller. As a smaller business, your pipeline's naturally going to be a bit smaller than, or needs to be smaller than a bigger business. So therefore, your middle of funnel can be geared around, again, thinking about the processes, like making this really mean and lean. You only need to do so much because the business is only so big. But again, leverage solid automation tools in the middle of funnel. And again, lots of people get put off by that, but it's not the tools that are writing bad words, it's the people who are writing the bad words and putting them in the tools. So actually, you can do middle-of-funnel automation really well, and you don't then need a lot of support to get that working. So everyone goes, "Oh God, I've got to hire a marketing manager. I've got to hire a business development manager. That's like two more people and I'm only five. I can't have seven people."

Ryan Hall

You actually don't need to think about that. You could actually just hire a grad with the right processes behind them, and they could have a wild impact across the whole funnel without it being a big cost or loads of people or whatever it may be. You might even just not even hire that person and go, "I've got a junior who's a designer. They could do a little bit of this. I'm going to give myself a little bit of this time. I'm going to get my account manager to help a little bit here." And you just cannibalize proportions of resource of people that you've already got. That's the getting the right people in the right place with the right responsibilities, with the right structure and systemization.

Ryan Hall

Even very basic stuff like for the founder, in this block in my diary, which is immovable, I'm going to perform this task, this task here, this task here, this task here. You don't need to think too much about it. You just turn up, and because most founders probably live their lives by their diary anyway, right? As soon as you get to the site, it's like, oh yeah, and you open it and go, "What have I got to do? Oh yeah, there's the steps again. Going to do that. Going to do that. Going to do that." And you then prioritize those activities the right way around in the week. So higher priority ones first, surprise, surprise, and the lower ones towards the week and then end of the week. And if you don't happen to get to ones at the end of the week, it's not the end of the world. You've just got to go, right, I'll do better next week and I'll make sure I get to it. Or you move it and you try and get to it at the start of next week, whatever it may be.

Ryan Hall

So it's about kind of creating this flexible system that just chunks the problem up rather than going, oh God, I've got to eat this whole elephant. Sales feels so big.

Kelly Molson

I like that idea of people taking a small part of ownership of it as well. Because if I think back to my own agency times, I had a co-founder, so we had a level of responsibility for sales each, but trying to get the team engaged in that process was really hard.

Kelly Molson

And it is something that I think a lot of my clients talk to me about as well. It's like, how do we embed a culture of sales? How do we get everybody to take a responsibility for new business? And the hardest part of that is as soon as you say new business or sales, they're like, "Ugh, it's not my job. That's not what you hired me for. That's not my responsibility."

Kelly Molson

Do you reframe it to people as supporting with visibility more than sales? I know you talk a lot about Don't Sell. So I just wondered, is the terminology quite important when you're trying to kind of get the team involved in that?

Ryan Hall

I think it's more about showing them what the job is. Because if you talk about middle of funnel and you've got an account manager or two, and you turn around to them and go, "I need some help nurturing some sales opportunities," because you will naturally say the word sales, and they go, "Oh, God."But then when you describe it to them, and it's like, look, think about the middle of the funnel. I've already met them, they are qualified. They're the right business, the right person, the right this, the right this, the right ICP, whatever. I know their problems are probably this and this. We've solved that problem in loads of different places with some of the other clients, and actually, if we were to win this potential new client, you'd be the person to work on it. Can you get excited about that business? And they go, "Oh, yeah, totally could." And you go, "Great. So have I got to go and sell to them?" "No, just turn up and be useful." "What do you mean?" "Well, turn up and give them stuff. Go, look, we've seen this, your competitive landscape are doing this. There's been an insight in your market. We found a report that's probably relevant to your sector. By the way, we wrote this bit of thought leadership that answers this problem." They go, "Well, hang on, that's my problem. Hang on a second. Let me read that."

Ryan Hall

And all of a sudden, you become really useful to them, and you haven't sold a sausage. You don't need to. And when you paint that picture, they go, "Oh, yeah, could totally do that." And then when they see it working, it becomes hyper addictive because it's like, well, I didn't compromise myself because I haven't become a salesperson. I've actually just done relationship management, which I do already. Just they're not a paying client yet. And actually, it was a real buzz bringing them through and winning their hearts over and showing that we're amazing at what we do, and they bought something. I'd like more of that, please.

Kelly Molson

Yeah. I love that approach.

Ryan Hall

And then it rolls.

Kelly Molson

That's one of the things that I took from your book. So your book is called "Don't Sell," and it gives founders the framework to build out their own engine. So essentially, you can take that book, and you could build this out yourself. What's your definition of don't sell, though? Explain what that concept means.

Ryan Hall

There's a few kind of orbiting moons, right? One is just be valuable, but the real thing around it is creating buyability, which is a concept I've lived my whole career by. Make yourself the solution to the problem. That doesn't require you trying to force a sale. It means that you turn up, you're consistent, you add value, and you're positioning yourself as an expert for solving a problem or problem set that the potential buyer goes, well, as soon as I'm ready, my natural choice is going to be these guys because they've demonstrated everything that I need to know on how to solve the problem. In fact, they've given me all the answers, but I just don't have time to do it myself. I'd love to, and they might even have a go, but the reality is they can't go fast enough, which is why agencies exist.

Ryan Hall

And then, it's about getting to the point where every time your name pops up, it's not like, oh, my God, what does this guy want again? He just keeps asking me for a meeting. For what? I don't know why. That's on one end, selling end. On the buyability end, when you turn up, it's like, oh, Ryan sent me a message. I wonder what he's giving me today. What is it? And if you think about that, it's a completely different psychological state, and you want everyone to be in that second state where it's like, oh, what's he got? What's he going to give me? Of course, I'll reply. Because you've conditioned them to... You're not threatening, and it comes from a good place. I'm not saying we're faking this or anything. But you are just generally turning up going, at some point, I think we can solve a problem for you. So therefore, I'm just going to give you everything that you need, and if the time comes where you want to buy from us, please buy from us because we'd love to work with you. But I'm not going to try and force a sale.

Ryan Hall

So it's trying to get you into that space. So that's the don't sell bit. You don't need to forcibly sell something because you can't. So why try?

Kelly Molson

So a big part of that, and I guess probably one of the big parts of the piece of the puzzle that you come in and support founders and support agencies with doing is preparing those things that you can be really useful with. Because agencies will naturally, some are better than others at preparing case studies and kind of bringing all the stuff, the proof bank stuff that I call it, together, that shows the expertise you've got, shows you can solve those problems. But I guess that is a huge part of what you come in and support on.

Ryan Hall

Yeah. So we have a content library inside Notion, and I don't know where we're at exactly, but I think it's like 170 weeks consistently without breaking the streak of-

Kelly Molson

Wow

Ryan Hall

... publishing a bit of thought leadership, minimum 1,000 words. Though actually, most of them are coming out more like 1,800, 2,000 words kind of thing. Now that, again, immediately that sounds really daunting. But actually, especially with AI, and I've got mixed views on AI, you can actually produce really good quality content as long as you have the right workflow. But then as soon as you write something, stick it in a library and tag it back to the problems that you solve.

Ryan Hall

So every time we're following up or what we teach our clients to do, wherever it is, there's an asset bank where you go, right, what should I send Kelly today? Well, our problem's this, and you immediately just go in and filter and go, what's new? What's new? Oh, I haven't sent her that one yet. Okay, I'm going to send her that article because that's really useful. We've also got a separate nurture toolkit, which is more meaningful things like scorecards and on-demand webinars and all this kind of stuff, which are weightier. And it's like, am I going to send them content? Or should I just pick this from the nurture toolkit? It's like, oh, you can just immediately... So the speed of it, kind of systemization. You're not scrabbling around LinkedIn going, coming back through that horrible UI going, which article should I send? It's all in one place, and that's the most basic level of systemization ever. But it's really, really easy to do.

Ryan Hall

And okay, first couple of weeks, it's going to look a bit bare while you're starting to build your library up, but you'll turn around and go, oh God, hang on a second. All of a sudden, I got loads of content here.

Ryan Hall

And then it's the mindset behind leveraging and sweating content. So few people make the time and the effort to write the big thing. They rely on posts, and the problem is posts can be very thin at that point, and you haven't got a character count long enough to make your point and all this kind of stuff. But if you start with a long-form piece, minimum 750 words, you can then very quickly turn that into, as a minimum, a text-based version. So like article, text-based with a nice image.And then you could very quickly record a 60-second video because you know exactly what you're saying because you wrote the article anyway. And then that's three slots out of six in a week. Not seven, because I recommend normally don't posting on a Saturday, although only because you're not going to get as much engagement. So immediately, then you've got three bumps in the course of the week sweating the algorithm differently because the algorithm goes, "Oh, you gave me an article. Thanks. I like it, but I don't love it, but kind of thanks." So you get a little bit of kind of algo kudos. Then you come out and do a text-based post with a nice human image, and it goes, "Oh, cool. I like that. Thanks." Like boom, boom, boom, riding the algorithm, riding the feed. Then you do a video or a carousel. It's like, "Oh, you're spoiling me, Ryan. I love the video."

Kelly Molson

laughing

Ryan Hall

And you're constantly getting reach and kind of different levels of clout inside the algo on a regular basis. And once you do that consistently, you'll see the stats rise. And it might sound difficult, but actually, it's very easy to get to that one article that can then turn into loads of things in a snap.

Kelly Molson

When you say it, it sounds so simple to do that, but I think that it just feels when someone says, "You've got to start feeding the machine, you've got to start putting out your stuff," it just feels like such an overwhelmingly big task for founders. But that strategy is just so simplified. It's brilliant. The one thing that I set up on your advice, because I read one of your articles on LinkedIn, was a content library, and it has served me well, Ryan. Served me very well this year because we're all busy, right? You can't keep creating, recreating, recreating. Being able to have that there and go, "You know what? That's great. That can go to that person, but actually, I'm probably going to repost that as well," because someone would've read that three or six months ago. It's still relevant now. They're going to have forgotten.

Ryan Hall

Totally. Especially with the long form, they are evergreen. I think there's going to be some long-term kind of SEO-style benefits inside the LinkedIn walled garden for having the evergreen content. It does kind of disappear a bit from search listings a little bit right now.

Ryan Hall

But to your point, if it's six months ago, dust it off, repurpose it, just post it as is, or do an update to it based on six months later, what's new, what's fresh. Or just atomize it into different assets again. Just keep sweating the assets that you've got. As long as they're value-based, you can keep doing that forever.

Kelly Molson

It's brilliant advice. Ryan's book, "Don't Sell," is the book that I've most recommended last year. I think I sent it to four or five of my clients. I was like, "You all just need to read this."

Ryan Hall

Thank you.

Kelly Molson

Just read this book. I want to know, for this year, what's the one piece of sales advice that you want founders to take on board?

Ryan Hall

The one bit is, I'm going to say consistency, but inside the consistency, there's a bit of resilience required, right?

Ryan Hall

I think this year is going to be okay. I don't think we're going to have an easy ride to get to okay, would be my prediction. The WOW Bench Press came out a couple of weeks ago, and the stats point at the chances of it being an okay year, and I think the data is always very good when it comes from the Bench Press Report.

Ryan Hall

But this kind of consistency and resilience element, we're not back to the glory days where stuff just happens. If you aren't 3X-ing, 4X-ing, 5X-ing, 6X-ing, or more, your effort, your output, maintaining the consistency of like, and I mean like follow-ups, content, like the whole thing, you're going to get left behind. So this kind of concept of consistency plus resilience, then that's kind of where you've really got to double down. If you can do that, I think you'll have an all right year, genuinely. If you don't do that, you're going to struggle. It's going to be another very difficult year.

Kelly Molson

Okay. I think shoots of positivity from the WOW Bench Press report, I felt quite optimistic having watched that. Good advice. Okay. And the book is out, but I believe there is a second version of the book.

Ryan Hall

Kelly Molson

Were you writing it on your honeymoon, Ryan? Please tell me...

Ryan Hall

I wrote the first version on my honeymoon, yeah.

Kelly Molson

laughing Jesus Christ.

Ryan Hall

Got a very understanding wife.

Kelly Molson

Haven't you just?

Ryan Hall

No, I'm setting the expectations early, right?

Kelly Molson

Yeah. laughing This is what you signed up for, the magic.

Ryan Hall

And-

Kelly Molson

Wow

Ryan Hall

... it never really was anything meaningful, which is why it took so long. I just couldn't work out where I wanted it to be. Where was its soul? Where was the value? And then when we landed on the Friday Solved proposition, I was like, "Ah, perfect."

Kelly Molson

Why Friday Solved? Because you have a knack of choosing some weird and wonderful names for your stuff, like the Monkey Fingers meetup. Amazing.

Ryan Hall

laughing

Kelly Molson

Absolutely amazing. laughing

Ryan Hall

We're just a factory for shit ideas, to be honest.

Kelly Molson

laughing I love them all. Bring them on. Yeah, why Friday Solved? What was the reason?

Ryan Hall

There's obviously two answers, right? There's two answers. So the real answer, well, the proper brand answer, should I say, is, honestly, who wants to worry about sales on a Friday?

Kelly Molson

Yep.

Ryan Hall

If you get to Friday and you're still freaking out about your pipeline, then you're going to have a horrific weekend. So why worry about it? So we want to get to Friday and it's solved, and our culture is all about being problem solvers.

Ryan Hall

Bar myself and Ben Potter, there's no genuine career salespeople in the business. They're all just really, really, really smart people that we train, help them understand our frameworks, and they go and help solve client problems. So, we're born to be solvers. There's nothing we can't solve.

Ryan Hall

The genuine answer in terms of why we got there... I already owned the domain name.

Kelly Molson

laughing

Ryan Hall

Why did I own the domain? I am a bit of a domain hoarder, and I've got a very choice collection of domain names. I'm not going to mention some of them because some of them are very bad.

Kelly Molson

I can only imagine.

Ryan Hall

I already had the domain name because a while back, I was going to have a second go at doing a virtual EA, PA business. Because I originally had the idea before Money Pennies, Miss Money Pennies, kind of the big... I had that idea way before they did it, and I was going to call it Money Pennies, and I didn't do anything about it. So there's a lesson. Then I was going to have another go, but much more of a virtual style thing.

Ryan Hall

And we were going to call it Friday Solved. Why was I going to call it Friday Solved? Massive Marvel fan, a true massive geek in many ways, and Iron Man's second virtual assistant, when his Jarvis goes and becomes the Vision, was called Friday. This lovely Irishy female voice. And I was like, oh, Friday, Friday Solved. Solve the problem, EA, PA. I was like, wicked, so bought the domain name and never did anything with it. laughs

Kelly Molson

Brilliant. laughs So now this idea comes along. Round two. That's perfect. We'll build out a story around it. Nailed it.

Ryan Hall

Yeah.

Kelly Molson

Okay, great. Right. I always ask my guests to leave us with a podcast recommendation. So something that keeps your attention, can be fun, can be work-related. What have you got for us today?

Ryan Hall

Ooh. I quite like the Two Bobs.

Kelly Molson

Yeah.

Ryan Hall

Probably everyone knows about it. I just think that's such a good podcast, and I like the guys, I like the tone. The content's always good, and it's kind of the antithesis of Diary of a CEO, which I really, really hate.

Kelly Molson

I'm with you on that. I'm not a fan. Yeah.

Ryan Hall

I really do not like that. Anyone who knows me, I'm not going to go any further than that. I'm just really not a fan of that. And I think the Two Bobs is everything that it should be. They're packed with value. It's got a great tone. I'd go and check that out for sure.

Kelly Molson

Two Bobs, great podcast. Yeah, that is going to go top of the list for everybody. But you've got a podcast coming as well, haven't you? Which relates back to the silly icebreaker that I asked you at the beginning of the show. It's about pitching.

Ryan Hall

I don't know if it's going to be a podcast per se yet.

Kelly Molson

Okay.

Ryan Hall

I think we're just going to turn it into little mini episodes on YouTube. By the time everyone listens to this, it'll be out there. It will be on YouTube. It'll be on the Friday Solved YouTube. It's currently called Smack My Pitch Up. I think we'll probably keep that name.

Kelly Molson

Please keep that name. Please. laughs

Ryan Hall

Well, the only hesitation was I'm like, I'm sure someone's been there before with it.

Kelly Molson

laughs

Ryan Hall

But then I've done loads of Googles, and I can't find anything, so I'm like, well, I'm going to have it. And it is basically, we take everyone to the pub beforehand, get a few pints or glasses of wine down them. Then we take them to the recording studio, and then we record for an hour and a half, two hours, and it's basically just random chatting and banter and stories of pitches gone wrong.

Ryan Hall

But also, what I found really interesting, and again, by the time people see this, we probably will have recorded the second, maybe even the third session, as it were. It wasn't as jam-packed with pure horror stories as I thought it was going to be, which it actually ended up being really cool because we just let it be organic. What we ended up getting to was just discussing the highs, the lows, the things that should change, of what it means to pitch and sell and be in this environment. So, we talked about procurement processes, whether you should or shouldn't pitch. So there's a really good dialogue going. One of our guests will not pitch. They're like, "If you want to work with us, pay us some money." Doesn't have to be a big amount of money, but pay some money and decide whether we're any good together. I'm like, really cool, bold.

Ryan Hall

And then, we were talking about procurement, so appropriate procurement. If there's 10 people on the list, should you do it? clears throat We've just done one, and there was four people. There was no dropouts at any point. It's like you're in, you pitch, you present, you win or you lose kind of thing. And I was like, that's quite cool. But you see these horror shows where there's 10 people, then you get shortlisted, and it costs you 60 grand and-

Kelly Molson

Oh, it's awful.

Ryan Hall

It's awful, right? And it's like, are buyers being respectful enough of our time? So there's a really good debate around that. And there's some horrors in there, but there were some interesting insights as well. So I think it's ended up just being a bit of a cathartic process for everyone to go, "Oh God, yeah. Oh, I'm going to take that little nugget away. I'll take that little nugget away," and hopefully it'll be useful.

Kelly Molson

Nice. I have no doubt it'll be useful. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on today, Ryan. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat. You've given us loads of insight, and we will put all of Ryan's contact details, et cetera, in the show notes. But Friday Solved, Don't Sell, add those two onto your list and go and search them out. So thank you.

Ryan Hall

Thank you very much, Kelly.

Kelly Molson

outro music Thanks for listening. I'd really love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this episode, then there's a few ways that you can support it. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave a glowing review, and share it with your founder friends. You can even sign up for my Lifestyle Is a Plan newsletter at kellymolson.co.uk. This podcast is hosted by me, Kelly Molson, and edited by the excellent Steve Folland. Have a brilliant week.