Writing Quality Content for SaaS Startups w/ Ryan Farley

[00:00:00] Ryan: The plan was, I want to try and get work I have no idea how long that money will last me.

[00:00:05] Scott: Hi there and welcome to Made It In Thailand, the podcast where we learn how to thrive in Thailand from top performers who have found success in the Kingdom. I’m your host, Scott Pressimone. Today I am speaking with Ryan Farley. Ryan is a seasoned writer and a co founder of Pith & Pip, which specializes in producing written content for SaaS companies.

Ryan will explain his motivations for coming to Thailand and how he found his writing niche. Without further ado, let’s jump into the interview.

Ryan, I want to thank you for joining me today on Made It In Thailand. If you could start off, just, share a little bit about who you are and why you’re here in Thailand.

[00:00:51] Ryan: yeah, sure. I’m, my name’s Ryan and, I have been here, it will be 10 years in January. So coming up on. My 10 year anniversary and, I’m originally from Portland, Oregon area, suburbs of Oregon. And, after college, after university, I had studied political science and I went straight to Washington DC for five years.

I spent most of that time working for a lobbying firm, in the agriculture sector. And Yeah, actually, I usually don’t provide this much detail. Usually I just say, oh, I got jaded and I left. But,

[00:01:35] Scott: I was going to say you’re sounding very passionate as you’re describing this lobbying career. So, how was it?

[00:01:40] Ryan: it’s, it’s funny to think back on it now that it’s been so long. I was young. I was like first, 25, not fresh out of college, but I’d been there for about five years. And I felt like I had worked very hard.

And, as I think you have some experience with the rate of people getting master’s degrees and PhDs was just really high. And I was, felt quite passionately at the time. About not going back to school. was very against that.

[00:02:12] Scott: You just reached the crossroads, right?

How did that go into actually coming to Thailand then? was it an opt out or what?

[00:02:19] Ryan: so, there’s, that’s the influence. The decision was, I had these. Arguments with some friends, arguments is like a strong word, but I always, I had a lot of my friends were like, oh, we’re doing a gap year type of thing. once I get into the working world, that’s it. I’m done.

I can’t. I’m in the working world. I don’t have opportunities anymore. And I always took umbrage with that. I was always like, you can do whatever you want. You just have to make that choice. And maybe there’ll be sacrifices or something like that. But you can do that. And so I always wanted to have the money to go off and do things.

And friends were like, I have a mountain of loans. Why don’t I just take a little bit more loan? I go do my year of backpacking. And then I. Hit the ground running. these are the friends who like have PhDs and topics that I don’t remember. so when I was like, Hey, I’m, I’m done. and because, D.

C. is it wasn’t like I was going to stay in D. C. and switch career tracks. It was just, it’s not much there except for, policy work and, so I was like, Hey, I’m going to go do this adventure thing that I always said I would do, later. And I was fortunate financially for a couple of reasons.

And so I think I had this may be relevant for your, I think I had $5,500 in 2012. So adjust those numbers accordingly. But I, I had a lot of experience, I had a lot of experience hitchhiking. So like before I moved to DC, I had done four or five hitchhiking trips up and down the West coast and a couple other trips.

so there was like a bucket list item to do route 66, which. It’s famous for hitchhiking 30 years ago, 40 years ago. pack my bags. and I flew to New York, I saw some friends in New York, and then I hitchhiked from New York City to Chicago and did some couchsurfing with a friend there.

And Chicago’s where Route 66 starts. There’s a nice Instagram worthy sign that says Route 66 starts here. And I hitchhiked from there to the waterfront in LA. friends, I got to speed this up because it’s not about Thailand, but, it’s just fond memories. A friend has a grandmother who is like a snowbird in Mexico. So she had a place in Mexico and I got to, LA and like middle of October. So then I hitchhiked from LA down to San Felipe, Mexico, and I spent two months hanging out with my friend’s grandma, just running and reading.

And then, I went home for Christmas with my parents and then I said, Hey, I’ve been to Europe. I’ve been to South America. I still have $5,200 left or whatever it was after all that time. I’ll buy a one way ticket to. Asia, which was like next on the list, Australia, Australasia, Oceania didn’t seem foreign enough or challenging enough.

[00:05:52] Scott: I also don’t know how far the $5,500 would have gone in

[00:05:55] Ryan: Yeah, that too. and this is a funny thing that’s related there is yeah, that would have been one of the first things I thought. and I do think that’s, no, I’m sorry. That is true. But once I got to, Asia and you’re doing the like loop, which, there’s different versions, but for me it was essentially Bangkok to Chiang Mai to Northern Laos down through.

Luang Prabang, Luang Nguyen, and then down through Cambodia, looping back to Bangkok. it’s like the Backpacker Trail. You just, there’s, you start to see the same people, and everybody’s like doing this loop. And, a significant portion of them were all people who had gone to Australia and done the, there’s like a name for it, I don’t know, they all worked on it.

Yeah. Thank you. That’s wow. It’s been a while. Yeah. So they went and worked a year, two years on a farm, made 35 an hour and had meals provided and lodging and whatever, and then show up to Thailand with thousands of dollars, $10,000 in their account. And they live here for 10 years because, they’re all, hippies and they don’t want to splurge.

[00:07:17] Scott: so it sounds but, you had quite a background of adventure prior, to doing all this in Asia, And traveling around Asia, because the fact that you said you were hitchhiking down route 66, was that your, was that the first time that you did something like that, or were you in your teens, are already going on adventures like this?

[00:07:34] Ryan: Yeah. I was hitchhiking in my teens, my mom just about disowned me. I think I had always, I’d always had an interest. I always wanted to, it’s I want to collect stories and I want to do interesting things. I think I’m sometimes have a bit of a complex. about being average.

I think that kind of comes and goes and waves. There’s times in my life when I just feel like, Man, I’m so average. What am I going to do about this? And then I take up some hobby or something. And, hitchhiking was one of them. I traveled a little bit. I did a year couch surfing trip. One of the hop on hop off trains, you spent like 500 and you got two weeks of unlimited train rides and everywhere I stayed was, couch surfing. If anybody remembers that website, I don’t think it still exists. yeah. So it was, a trait that I wanted to cultivate, having adventures and. it was moderately successful. I, I certainly know people who are much more serious about it than me.

but it was a big part when I got here, I came to Thailand with a one way ticket and, I, I wanted to stay for a year.

I had this whole thing about is this, like when I was in DC, I had applied for the Peace Corps and I remember they accepted me for a position in Africa. And I was you had great, you have great experiences in Africa. I, should go. I think I have just like a bias there. I think it’s, it’s a different type of experience from all of my friends who’ve been, who said it changed their lives.

It’s just, I like, I didn’t my life to be changed because of confronting various things. and it was a two year commitment. That was the main thing that I wanted to get back to. Peace Corps was like, Hey, it’s a two year commitment. I was like, that’s insane. I’m not going to give you two years.

I’ll just go to

[00:09:58] Scott: Strictly, one year for Thailand. And here we are,

on your decade anniversary.

[00:10:04] Ryan: Yeah. It’s fine. Yeah. I really think about that a lot. I really think I like I Just balked at the two year commitment. And I had friends in the Peace Corps who were like, yeah, whatever. Two years, like I’ll do another two years. so came here.

[00:10:19] Scott: You said one year. Now it sounds like if we’re averaging this, almost 6, 000, then you’re estimating that you’re, are you going to estimate that you’re going to spend 500 a month? Or did you actually think that you would be working or making some income here? Whether that be some sort of farming thing, like you can do in Australia, or was there any plans for making income while you were traveling?

[00:10:37] Ryan: I was definitely trying to find, that wasn’t teaching. I knew that. Teaching was like, you could just, anybody could set that up. but I had no idea what that would be to your adventuring thing. I thought maybe there could be some sort of guiding opportunity that’s big. Like in the U S there’s like a, almost like a backpacker culture of just.

Hey, I’ll just go be a guide for rafting or for climbing or whatever. And I tried that a couple of times. On my loop, I, there were a couple places that I was like, Hey, can I just get some food and lodging, if I stay here and work in some capacity or another, the places that were owned by foreigners, were always maybe sure, like, why don’t we need, we’re here.

Like we don’t need more of the Western representation. So I got a couple like maybes come back later, which we’re probably just trying to filter out people who are transient. I did stay for I renewed my. Cambodian visa. And I stayed with a Cambodian family there for a few weeks. Just being their like face guy in front of the restaurant slash hostel. but that was like literally just greeting people, booking stuff, just like language. Not that I spoke a lick of Khmer, but it, yeah, there’s just not a lot of like jobs if you just show up here, which is now very relevant, I think, to this conversation, this podcast. did the backpacking thing, that was four months, I think, and I had no plan for the budget.

The plan was, I want to try and get work I have no idea how long that money will last me. I guess after I’d been here for a while, it was Oh, this will last me a while. if I was frugal and, but if visas were the biggest thing, honestly, I just started to I’m going to have to leave the country.

If I’m, if there’s going to be a visa issue. and so ended up taking a teaching gig, just for some kind of visa security, which

[00:13:11] Scott: to do.

[00:13:13] Ryan: yeah, I didn’t want to do it. I was like, yeah, but, they do make it easy, but for anybody who’s listening, I pretty quickly. exchange the teaching visa for a student visa, which if you’re coming here and trying to stay for a bit longer, think, at least 10 years ago was a very attractive option.

I studied Thai, I think four or five hours a week, which for me was, Something I was actually interested in. I wanted to actually be able to communicate, even though you can totally get by without knowing much Thai at all,, but, I went to all the classes and I have fond memories of that.

[00:14:00] Scott: You never know how long you’re going to stay here. And since you ended up here 10 years, I’m sure that you value that time that you actually went to class and learn some basic things, and built a bit of a foundation.

It sounds like, I guess another point to note is when you mentioned the visas, if you’re coming from the U S it’s, Quite easy to get the visa coming in, right? Cause it’s like visa on arrival. you can get, or you can get a tourist visa from the U S or Canada. I’m sure it’s the same. A lot of other countries that are the same.

You’re going to visa from, I think an embassy there, and then you would now have a longer stay. But, either way, getting in is good. It’s easy. Now, what people find is that then they get here and they either like it or they want to start something or they want to stay longer or whatever it may be.

And that’s where it’s challenging because you can renew your tourist visa. You can extend it a little bit, but then you start to get in the situation of visa runs and all these other things which get really challenging. so it sounds but student, the student one is another good option, like you said, just because I believe that’s a longer term and it’s certainly more convenient than, crossing the border constantly to try to renew your tourist visa.

Correct.

[00:15:01] Ryan: Yeah, no, I absolutely don’t know this, but I vaguely remember that the duration of the visa might change based on What you’re studying, which, again, for your target audience, might find super. Interesting or amusing. you can study Muay Thai, you can study Thai cooking, you can get a visa to study these things, but I vaguely remember, but that’s like a one month thing, so you have your visa on arrival or your extended visa, and then you can do like another month or maybe another couple of months.

Whereas the Thai language visa was six months, Now I did, even though nobody went to class, everybody did have to, you, go to the Thai culture ministry or something and you are supposed to say some sentences. And again, you can, it’s, you can, you don’t have to be a great speaker to get through those tests, but there are things where there they are gonna have you check.

Once a month or once every other month, but that was a, six month visa. which again was not very expensive. And, there’s a lot of places that are like tailored to somebody who’s not literally coming for the sake of learning Thai there. maybe they want to stay longer and Thailand, which is interesting

to them.

[00:16:37] Scott: so a lot of this that we’ve discussed so far is that the backpacker sort of way of going about it, where it’s come here, go around, go the loops around Asia, stuff like that. And, but still when I, see you, other than the fact you had that period of your life, as did I don’t see you as a backpacker today, right?

You fast forward a few years and you, in my mind are a very entrepreneurial professional, individual that really made a life here. I’m, curious to, to segue into that. when we met, which was, I assume, Quite a while after, those traveling days, it sounds like you made a transition into working, like working for a company, continuing your career.

So I want to know that what flipped in your mind from being this nomadic individual that was going to be maybe here for a year, right? living off $5,000, that sort of thing, maybe working at some hostels or working at some places to, to earn a little bit to get by to now saying, Oh, I’m actually gonna find a job and stay here longer term.

What was that switch for you?

[00:17:34] Ryan: yes, that’s a, this is a good job segmenting up the journey. so the next thing was that I, the company that placed me as a teacher, I worked for them for a short period of time. Is like what they would call, what they called a curriculum consultant

They wanted, a westerner to go out to some of these schools and say over, I’m checking John and Jane’s teaching ability because I am the western expert in this field or whatever.

So that job, that was my first, non teaching job. It was just for a teaching company. Was my introduction to certain aspects of Thai. Working culture, which is my wife and I were just talking about this the other day. It was funny. yeah, if you can, as a, pro tip, try to, if you’re, before you’re going to apply somewhere, if it’s a Thai company, really try to see if you can talk to somebody, or read reviews.

I don’t think you’re Glassdoor, but this was the type of place where you still had a. A time card that you would like click into the thing. And for every minute after 9am that you clocked in, you got charged like 10 baht off your paycheck and the same thing for lunch. but there was also the assumption that you didn’t go home until the CEO went home, which was often much longer than eight hours.

so I, I think. At the time, I was like, this is cool. I work for a Thai company and I’m part of this culture and things are, but like looking back, I really wouldn’t wish that on anybody. And I would, say that you should try and avoid that type of working environment because it’s not necessary.

It’s not very healthy. so I did

[00:19:41] Scott: how did it, compare? Sorry to interrupt, but how did it compare to then your lobbying job, if you had to do one more year at the, job in DC, or one

more

[00:19:48] Ryan: it’s,

[00:19:48] Scott: at,

[00:19:50] Ryan: as you get older and there’s certain things about that lobbying job that, it’s hard to, I like, I don’t think I would want to go back to that lobbying job, but at the same time, They paid really well, and it was just like so little work, it was like so little work, which would be very frustrating to not be challenged.

that was, essentially why I left, because I was trying to get more responsibility and I couldn’t, nobody wanted to responsibility. there is an element of you’re older and you’re like, ah, there’s some weeks when I wouldn’t mind getting paid, more. A good paycheck to just hang around and chat with the boys.

so like I

[00:20:33] Scott: say that, but I challenge you on that. I challenge you on that Ryan, because you and I have had long conversations in the past and, you’re not a lazy guy. You’re not, a guy that like, I think that you could say, I wish I didn’t do this, or I wish I didn’t have to do that, but then I think when you’re given those sort of positions or given those things, you, You’re not happy with it, right?

so I take you as someone that always has momentum and is always, building these are working hard and you might find some issues with some things, but it’s not going to change your nature of, you want to be working hard on

[00:21:02] Ryan: I wouldn’t want that job just all the time. I wouldn’t want that job all the time. I would absolutely answer your question. I would absolutely take that job over this, teaching curriculum consultant job. It was not a good working environment. And so Karn and I were just, my wife and I were just talking about this the other day, that she has a friend who’s still in a job like that.

And I don’t think it by any means represents the majority of Thai working culture. It’s a, it’s like a little bit of a subset. Of culture, I would say maybe I’m waiting for my wife to like storm in and disagree here. I would say like almost like a non Bangkok environment. So maybe somebody who comes from outside of Bangkok and maybe is a little bit less exposed to some of the norms and. international approaches to working culture and things like that. this still exists, it’s 2023 and my wife’s friend is still, clocking in with, a cardboard time stamp and it, prints it in little dot matrix, prints the time in little dot matrix, whatever, and she gets charged if she’s a minute late to work.

Yeah, the sheen wore off after a while, and I was like, this is the newness of it and the excitingness of oh, I work for a Thai company. I have a Thai boss. So I, it was, had always been a dream to do a, an Ironman triathlon.

And I had been very frugal at that office job and I went, okay, I’ll quit. I’ll do this language visa. That’s when I did the language. The first time I did the language visa was after this curriculum consultant job. Do the language visa. I’ll freelance. then I can go train for this, triathlon, which, there’s like a whole other rabbit hole.

At the time, the only thing that made sense to me was trying to work, for a place that had their shit figured out, or was more institutionalized, or more formalized, and also wanted to make more obviously.

And so I started working at a marketing agency here in Bangkok. And that was a, it was overall a good experience. like now that I have, I’ve been away from that for two plus years, it’s, I certainly think like some of my personality traits made me start to feel like I had hit a ceiling or the company had hit a ceiling or something, and I was frustrated that I or the company or whatever wasn’t getting better wasn’t to your point like not being put in a lot of uncomfortable places it was just do this stuff month in and month out and then just keep doing that

[00:24:02] Scott: it seems like you go through chapters, right? going from the, I need an adventure chapter after work to, I need a backpacking chapter, two, so you were going through these chapters and it’s funny, I want to focus on one of these other things that you said, which was.

It really sounds like when you first came to Thailand, there was a honeymoon stage, right? So it’s Oh, I’m going to work for a Thai company. I’m doing this thing. I think you’ve told me you were like driving around in a truck in the countryside, visiting these, places, which can be enjoyable in a certain way too.

And, but then the honeymoon stage ends. And I think it’s really easy, especially as a tourist or anything like that, coming into Thailand. It’s that you really don’t know what you don’t know at that stage, right? I know that’s cliche, but it’s just, you’re seeing this, just this one sector of the country, yeah, country, which is either, it’s schools that are hiring foreigners, or it’s, this type of workplace, or whatever.

And you’re seeing that, and that’s what you assume it all is, but in reality, it’s just the people that have funneled you there. So the people that are accepting you for these jobs are going to be say, okay, you’re, you need to do this job, but you don’t know about the other professional Bangkok organizations.

You don’t know about the other foreigners that are doing these other things. You don’t know all these other factors that exist out there because you’re in this, micro bubble. And to your point that your wife’s friend can also be in that same bubble. Someone who’s, Maybe even Thai that’s coming from outside of the city into the city.

they can work for a factory for a while, work for a really difficult boss or whatever it may be. Cause they are in that bubble. They just not exposed to the outside, which is why I guess it’s so important to be exposed to some of these other companies. And then you got some new perspective. It sounds like when you joined a, American, led organization, based in Thailand.

[00:25:39] Ryan: But got to be talking to people for all of these reasons. there’s so many, it’s the work side of things was just one element. I would have. Known more about other job opportunities or working cultures. I would have probably also been able to learn at an earlier stage how to better, like market myself, find work, develop my skills.

Like those are all things that I would have been, I would have been Much further along today, if I had nurtured more of a Western network.

[00:26:20] Scott: There’s the other side of the spectrum too, right? So I think there are plenty of people that come here and only hang out in the expat bars, only hang out in these places. And it sounds like you were rebelling against that. And you went on the other end where you’re like, Oh, I’m going down these dirt roads, driving this truck with someone over, do they sing?

So you went full Thai culture thing, which is great, but it sounds like now you’ve hit more of a happy medium where you probably have a lot of Thai friends. You probably have a bigger network of both expats and Thais. Is that fair to say?

[00:26:48] Ryan: yeah. like working from home and having a kid has slid me pretty far back into the. Most of my friends are expats now. That was another nice thing, like about working for the marketing agency.

The Thai marketing agency is like, they hired a lot of young people. They had a high turnover. So I, I made a lot of, Met a lot of Thai friends that way. that was great. But yeah, now that I’m freelancing, my business partner is a expat. He’s an American guy and don’t have a ton of time, free time being a parent.

So it’s like hanging out with other Westerners, mostly, which is I think part of my more recent. Reflection of trying to get out more. I think it’s good, but

sorry to answer your question. Sure. Yeah. I, for the majority of my time here, it was like a decent split. I think once I went to the Thai marketing agency.

American owned Thai marketing agency. that was like some of the healthiest, I think, split of Western culture and Thai culture.

[00:28:14] Scott: Yeah. And that’s, where we met and that’s, it’s a good split of, there’s a mix of expats and Thais, like you said. So it sounds like you got that exposure or that balance, at least for that period of time. But then you also, you had mentioned that you didn’t have the skills that you needed.

When you were first doing some freelancing work with it’s Oh, can let me start this Wix website or whatever. And you didn’t have a lot of background in SEO and stuff like that. So it sounds like you picked that stuff up in order for you to have enough confidence to, jump off. and can you explain what you do now?

Because I’ve always known you as a writer. You explained a lot of these things of I did this random job over here. What But you have a lot of writing skills. essentially you’ve been a writer for all the time that I’ve known you, always expanding that. and yeah, share more about what you do today and what brought you to that path.

[00:29:02] Ryan: it was a big part of my time in DC was like editing and writing memos from this lobbying group, updates and what, so there was like a little element of that there and I got some, Exposure to style guides and, quality control processes for content that were like, it was like a tiny foothold.

When I went to freelance, I was like, oh, Thailand has a lot of needs in terms of, copy editing, proofreading, things like that, quality control for English language materials. yeah, so there’s a little bit of that and that was what I tried to dive into when I first started freelancing.

And then when I went to the work for the marketing agency, it shifted into not just, you like correct language or readable language to more towards convincing and interesting and engaging language.

When I was at the agency, I was like, it was before COVID. There were some talks about like remote work policies and things like that. I was in a managerial role. We were talking about remote work. Zapier, which is a big automation platform, had all these e books. They had one on remote work policies.

It was like very specific. I found it very helpful, very interesting. And by some very strange, succession of events. I looked up the author and noticed that he was a writer remote working for Zapier in Bangkok. It was such a strange, it was like, I don’t, look people up. It was like one of the only people I ever Googled.

And I guess it just felt like such a coincidence that I reached out to him. Thinking that he wasn’t going to respond. yeah, that was part of my just view of the expat community is if some rando expat reaches out to you, like, why would you respond? You’re not here to meet other expats.

You’re here to have Thai food and live on the beach and whatever. So he’s been here for 20 years. He’s like a. missionary kid. I think he came over when he was 12. His parents were missionaries or something like that. so he was like, yeah, that’s great. Let’s meet up. And, we were, we became friends while I was still at the agency. then when I left, he was hey, I always get these random requests from tech companies, to write for them. Blogs, emails. landing pages, copywriting, things like that. And, documentation is a big thing, like how to use the app, how to set things up or configure it however you want all of that pre GPT days.

And, it’s oh, I always get these random requests and sometimes I do them. Sometimes I don’t, but because of my name, people will pay me to write one of these things up. So it’s like worth it, but I’m also trying, he was trying to, he’s trying to do something else, launch his own app.

and so he was just I hate turning stuff down and I said, like I can help you organize it. I can write it. It’s not probably maybe not going to be as good as you and then you edit it. And so we just started experimenting with different arrangements. And that was a year ago. We read you and I’ve talked about this. We registered the company in the U. S. through a service called Stripe Atlas. So you can pay $500 and they’ll register a company for you in Delaware as an LLC and take care of a big chunk of the paperwork. So we felt like. Based on some of the early clients that we could get, we knew that the $500 was worth the test in the waters.

So we set that up and, I’ve just been trying to, now it’s all about trying to expand, trying to find more people because we have enough work that, we can’t do, it’s been a while, actually, we have enough work, the two of us can’t do it, No.

[00:33:42] Scott: let’s pull in a few of those threads there. one thing reaching out to a stranger, right? Who just, you’re looking at an article, you’re reading an article and saying, wow, this is a good article. And then you’re clicking on the author and saying, oh, wow. Based in Bangkok. And then unsure if he’s going to respond.

I, from my experience, not that I’ve reached out to a ton of authors, but it’s back to the, it’s a small. the expat community is large relative to a lot of other countries. but at the same time, it, I think a lot of people here are pretty approachable, right? you obviously found that from your experience.

I have for mine as well. if there is a person who started a restaurant or whatever, and they’re from, your home state and you like basically write them an email, chances are they will say, yeah, let’s meet for coffee. I think that’s certainly what I found here. So I would challenge everyone else to do that sort of thing and try to make those connections.

cause that turned into you into an entrepreneurial venture with, I assume now not professional, but also a friend, that you all grew into, all because you cold outreach to someone. so that’s a big deal. the other thing is that you had mentioned being more, Results focused.

So when you started that business, as you said, there are a lot of companies out there and there’s tons of agencies that offer execution based things and, but it can be a big challenge because it’s very commoditized. It’s the way I put it. it’s very similar to what you said before, if you were doing copy editing or just making sure that someone’s, I’m not saying you did this, but there’s a lot of Thai menus that are, have silly, English translations to them.

And if you’re fixing things, if your job is to fix things, then you’re a commodity. It’s let me find someone in Fiverr. Let me find some random foreigner to make sure I can. Get a, a check done. but, you would also dabbled in there in the, mentioned making something convincing, Figuring out how to write a good subject line, figuring out how to, how, do you convince someone to take an action? the marketing, side of things, the persuasive. And when you build that skill set, which I think probably uniquely positioned you to be able to offer more and, offer more value, meaning get a non commoditized price.

is that, fair to say? cause you’re, selling yourself short a little bit by saying, Oh, I was not as good as this, business partner of mine, but I can do this. But I’d argue that over that period of time. Probably a few years that you had worked at a marketing agency, you had built up some skillset to actually be able to properly write copy that gets someone to take an action.

And I’d assume when you know how to do that, you don’t just want to just turn out or you don’t just want to produce copy for the sake of copy. You want to produce it for the sake of getting someone to take an action. Is that fair to say?

[00:36:10] Ryan: Yeah. I yeah, there’s a certain amount of impostor syndrome, but also the reason that I’m not. Matt was clearly better than me in the early stages, if not still today. It’s just that he had spent his entire writing career in a, various, it’s not that specific, in the, startup world.

And whereas I was writing for the tech world, but in a very, in a different, very different part of the tech world. I remember him and I still argue about this sometimes, which comes back a little bit to your performance thing, like in the startup world, specifically the startup world, not I’m talking about like writing for Slack, they’re Slack, it’s owned by Salesforce, they’re a billion dollar company, tens of hundreds of billions.

but in the startup world of like me and these three guys launched this app, there is a little bit of a tone and voice. That was not the tone of voice that I had practiced. And so it’s a very conversational tone. It’s a very conversational tone, which at times can be a little bit wordier. you’re writing a blog and You’re writing it more like you would talk and you’re throwing in stuff like, say as an interjection, you wanna build a, you wanna build X say you wanna add this and maybe you wanna do this other thing.

So you might, like I, that to me that would be like one sentence. I would cut out a bunch of stuff there. I would cut out interjections, I would cut out question, I would just say, do this thing. but that’s a. We were just getting a little bit in the weeds, but like in the startup world, that’s just much more of a thing and to the performance stuff, we were pitching clients on, hey, give us access to, Google, your Google search console, your Google ads, your Google analytics.

your MailChimp, your HubSpot, whatever. And, and we’ll write stuff and we’ll look at it. And I think a lot of clients realize when we promise to look at it, that’s something that a lot of agencies may not do. just because it, adds like a surprising amount of time and complexity. and so a lot of people don’t do it.

They just go, Oh, we’re going to write you the thing. We’re gonna write you the thing, and then we give you the thing, and then we write you the next thing. And the problem with stopping to take a look at things is, first of all, it takes time to look at how it’s performing in different channels and whatever, but then you can’t really start writing the next thing until you maybe have some insight on what worked or what didn’t from the first thing.

So you can’t, Get five pages ahead of schedule or you can’t go. Oh, let’s go do these four things while we wait for results from this thing. think a lot of clients that took more time and more complexity and whatever. And that also gave us a chance for, Matt to write his blogs with his author byline and for me to write my blogs with my author byline.

And in the startup world, like we did see just, for certain apps, we just saw more engagement with communities like Hacker News. Hacker News is really big in the Silicon Valley startup world. it’s like a Reddit for startup apps or something like that. And they just don’t like.

They don’t respond to this more succinct, concise blog writing because it just feels more manufactured, it feels more polished, they don’t think it’s Joe Blow working out of his garage, and therefore they’re maybe a little bit less interested in it. So less maybe from an SEO perspective, but from just an engagement, sharing, social channels, aspect. Being able to see those numbers. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Hotjar, whatever, you’re looking at, was just a very different experience and it’s just a far more, so far more enriching experience than just write the thing and then write the next thing and then write the next thing.

[00:40:53] Scott: So to, to reinforce that, To your point about what are the incentives of an agency, or you could say even a lot of freelancers. and oftentimes it’s to get the job done and to get the spec. And they want to know that they might ask you questions where they might say, how long, they might say, I want it to be this long, how much is it going to cost?

I wanted this meant be this many words. How much is it going to cost? And, an agency or a freelancer will say, oh, I’ll get that done and, this is how much I cost. And, but that doesn’t take into account the nuance to this. And I know everyone, no customer really wants to hear, Oh, it depends.

But the reality of performance based marketing is it depends, right? So as in you should never really be selling, for 800 word blog articles, right? Because the details matter in the sense that number one, It might seem like you’re adding fluff by being conversational, but it might take more conversational, longer words, as you had said before, in order to make it compelling.

And so some people will play that game and make it longer and fluffy, but sometimes it literally does have to be long for the reasons that you said about being more convincing and being more conversational. And then the second thing is, if you’re trying to rank for a certain keyword or whatever, it’s like, it depends on what you’re doing.

So if you’re artificially capping it off at a certain number of words and you’re saying, I’m just getting this stuff done, that can’t be performance based. it is, it’s counter to it. So it’s very, I think it’s very unique as you just said. I think a lot of even performance based agencies probably won’t do some of the things that you’re doing with Pith & Pip because what you’re doing is, You’re logging into a search console.

You’re looking at how things are performing. You’re revisiting articles and seeing how they can be better. I, think there are agencies that do that, but my, point is that stuff matters, that stuff really matters. And so are you seeing, is it now more rewarding for you that you’re more invested in the companies that you’re working with and you’re, Caring enough to want them to be successful as opposed to getting something out the door.

[00:42:46] Ryan: oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. yeah, it’s it’s more exciting when it works. it’s more exciting when those companies like ship features and things. I just can’t imagine being excited one of the clients that I would have worked with at the agency.

[00:43:11] Scott: Yeah. and, summarize this, it would be, let’s assume that you were tasked with, with helping 25 different massage companies, create a website and promote their services. And then you were told that. they’re all unique, but then you’re given no information about any of them, right?

So you have to, you have to change the address, of the company website. You have to do all these other things, but then you’re selling the same thing over and over again. And then you’re not giving the information. And this is actually where I challenge you a little bit is like you said that it’s more rewarding working with, maybe some of these startups that you’re working with now are SaaS companies, right?

I would argue that it’s, that’s probably an element of it. But another key element is, of it is that you were living in a bit of a silo, in the type of information that you were getting. Because, there are companies, no matter which industry, that can be humanized. And you had mentioned that you’re not getting any information to go off of.

So if you’re given, write this sentence, but write it 100 different ways. I would argue in any industry, can be interesting. But it can’t be interesting if someone’s tasked with outsourcing and given no information. So the way it’s interesting is either if it’s founder, motivated, if it’s, if there’s stories to tell, if there’s new people, if there’s events that they’re doing, if there’s all these other things going on, you can humanize anything to the point that I can’t think of something off the top of my head, but I know there are some very boring companies out there that have managed to stand out because they have a story because they have things to share because they actually do have uniqueness.

They’re not going and knocking on the door of an agency and say, make me something go And then you ask them a question, they say they don’t have time that is not going to result in good for anything for anyone.

[00:44:41] Ryan: I actually didn’t do a great job, maybe of explaining that I don’t, I didn’t mean to say it was specific because of our tech companies. It, it’s just, there’s just more connection. Like at the agency, you’re working with a project manager or support representative or something, somebody who’s funneling a task to you.

And maybe you even do have access to the request, but it’s probably email based and. It’s, very much like I need this thing, and so what I was trying to get at is now I’m maybe some element is the small team element, but to your point, that may not be, but I’m like, I have calls with clients now,

[00:45:30] Scott: Yeah. I want

[00:45:30] Ryan: I like, I know them.

I think that’s, I think that’s the thing is that’s part of I’m trying to think. Oh, I, okay. Here I have had a client that I just. Was not a good fit client. and just, they were so set on their approach to the way they wanted to do things and it just felt like so unrealistic and crazy that, this is with Pith & Pip, this is with the new, more rewarding situation.

I hated calls with that client. I hated doing their projects because. I just knew they didn’t believe in my advice and their ideas were bizarre, so yeah, one element, one puzzle piece is just being more connected and having more of a back and forth, more of a conversation about what you’re doing rather than the commoditization that you mentioned.

[00:46:30] Scott: So it sounds like they’re not a good fit because they said, I want you to do it my way, this way, In which case now you they’re forcing commoditization. They’re forcing you to fit into it. It’s if someone’s posting a job and saying, I want exactly these credentials to come in.

It’s then there’s not a back and forth. There’s not a good negotiation. There’s not a discussion. There’s not a, I’m hiring an expert to help me with this area and I need to converse with them. so I’m understandably that may not have been a good fit. I’m curious though, what is your, if you can share, With, with the company now and with, Pith and Pip, it’s that what is your ideal client?

What does that relationship look like? How does someone on board, how do they interact with you? And then what happens after, if it’s determined that they are a good fit again, what happens with that relationship? How do you engage with them on a regular basis? Can you share a little bit more of maybe an ideal client situation for you?

[00:47:18] Ryan: I think we’re still trying to figure out what the best fit is. which is like an interesting conversation because two right now, two clients come to mind specifically. I think we have six clients right now, but there’s two clients that I really enjoy working with and they’re both.

different in like how we onboarded them and how we interact with them and everything like that. And so I think we’re still trying to figure out like what the best fit is. so I would say maybe the client that’s not as good of a fit, but it’s still like fun to work with is a client who’s very responsive.

they, responsive, like When we ask them things, they’re very much Oh, we’re not marketers. So we’re here to talk into BS and to brainstorm, but like you guys just do your thing. And so we’ve gotten to a point in. The relationship where that client doesn’t really even look over topics of what we’re going to write about or target audiences or anything, they just say, just, go do it.

and that gives us the chance to, again, like experiment a little bit. It’s an older domain, so if we’re gonna get a bit technical, like it’s not a lot of volatility, there’s not as much volatility with their traffic and they have a ton of pages, arguably too many pages and blogs and whatever.

But the point is that as we add new stuff, it’s, it’s, a little bit like in a scientific experiment where you want your kind of environment to stay relatively the same so that you know that it wasn’t like a freak accident that made something go off the charts. So when we post something for that client, and we do, they’re one of our higher volume clients.

So we do, let’s say 10 posts a month for them do 10 posts and maybe we’re trying to two different kind of approaches across those 10 posts. We can see if, If there’s any noticeable difference, maybe there isn’t maybe there is and then we try to double down on that experiment to see if we can replicate that again.

So there’s a certain element of they’re fun because they respond to us, and they trust us to run experiments, and we don’t feel like their site or their reputation or their domain authority is fragile enough. That this experiment is really going to trash whatever they’ve created over the last several years.

the converse of that is we’re working with another app called, That’s very young and a team of three people. they have more of an idea around what they want to talk about, what their brand voice is, or their story, things like that. and that’s more challenging. It’s more challenging because we’re more limited and we can’t, or experimenting is a little bit, if you’re more careful about experimenting, it’s a younger website with much fewer pages and you don’t want to send bad signals by experimenting with something that doesn’t ultimately work.

so that one feels more fragile, but also now that they’re building up traffic and it’s we worked a little bit harder for some of those wins. by being careful and more methodical and slower, that’s probably like more rewarding, for whatever reason they’re paying like less per hour, we don’t charge per hour, but we’ll just, the client that’s more, we have to move slower with and be more careful with, they’re paying less.

So that’s always like a consideration is, you have like easier work over here. It’s maybe a little bit less rewarding and less fulfilling in terms of Are we doing a truly helpful thing? that’s a much bigger site. It’s much harder to move the needle on some of their traffic when they have several hundred blog posts and we’re doing.

10 a month. that one, maybe that’s a good question for you. Maybe since I’ve been talking this whole time, are there, are there do you, are there some days where you’re just like, oh, I am fulfilled by the fact that client X is paying me more? And then there’s other days when you’re like, he’s, I feel like you don’t, the whole, what’s the best client fit could, is a little bit hard to answer just because on different days, there’s days when I get excited about the money.

There’s days when I, the money really is not, doesn’t enter the equation at all. And it’s more I love spending an hour and in search console and looking at, So it’s

[00:52:28] Scott: I like that you shared two examples of good clients from different, ways. And I think that’s always the case. It’s like there’s the very proactive individual or there’s the really picky one that has a lot of good information or there’s the really technical one that has a lot of good information, right?

It’s like there, there’s not just one, when I say ideal client or ideal client profile, I’m not talking about to like, just one individual. Particular type of person exactly, because as you said, it varies. But what I think was also interesting that you pointed out before was the bad fit clients. And I think the bigger, thing is being able to identify bad fit clients and weed them out because, cause yeah, it’s okay to have variants between clients.

It’s okay to, define your ideal client in multiple ways. It’s just, but it’s more important to just make sure that you are able to say no to clients that, you’re not gonna be able to solve their problem, right? Cause the better you identify that, Everyone is right.

[00:53:17] Ryan: thing, there’s a little bit of a full circle thing here. I don’t think this is too forced because I genuinely believe this. but, it is trying to bring it back to the Thailand thing. The, there’s just, it happens very often. and I learned this a lot working at the agency. Also the time zone difference really creates opportunities. To just go take a walk and let something sit for a bit. especially as a writer, I’m sure that maybe you experience this too. It’s maybe different per se, but like you just get a lot of feedback.

You get a lot of feedback and there is there’s no writer who just makes everybody happy. That’s not how writing works. Some things work for some people and some things don’t work for other people. It doesn’t always have to do with the quality of the writing that’s one element of it, but each reader, audience member has their own backstory and their context can inform what they like and don’t like.

And that’s hard. It’s very hard for your job to be taking feedback all the time. the best. Thing that you can do in my opinion, one of the more important lessons I’ve learned is just the ability to just compartmentalize things and come back to them later. And so being in Thailand, that was a bit it’s like it’s very often that we’ll Yeah, I’ll see an email at 9:00AM and it’ll be like, it’s you know, it’s either 10:00PM or 7:00PM there So I don’t have to respond to this now Because I’m not going to get it in by the end of their close of business, their end of their day. And so then I can go, I’m going to go do something else and I’m going to go whatever and, you stew on it.

You just let that information sit. And I just can’t tell you how many times that’s saved my ass for being able to say, I think this is going to be a bad client. I think this is going to be a good client, or I think I should push back on this feedback, or I think I should just humbly agree and, just take their, direction or something like that.

I can’t remember what triggered that, but that’s a big thing about living here as an expat. If you’re going to work with people in the West,

[00:56:01] Scott: and are, all or most of your clients us based then?

[00:56:06] Ryan: one of them’s UK and the, all the rest, two are UK based and the other four are US based.

[00:56:19] Scott: that’s well, it’s a really good point. And I would also draw it to the benefit. To clients as well. So as you said, I hadn’t thought about this. It’s like the time to say I’m gonna step away and there’s not this thing of someone’s knocking on your door, assuming you’re in office or something like that at 4 30 trying to get some deadline.

Things naturally have to be a little more organized. They have to be a little more planned out. And there always has to, you have to have a gap or you’re going to have this time difference because, and you have to adapt accordingly, right? So the fact that you’re getting an email and saying, I don’t need to reply right away, then you have, you can think over it.

If you’re really frustrated, you can calm down and maybe you understand where they’re coming from a little bit more. You sleep on it, right? You wake up the following morning, then you can work on it. So that’s really good. But then also, I want to turn this around to the benefit to the, company as well, that’s, that’s hiring, you or Pith and Pip or any other, individual that might be based on in another country.

Is that, you do get to wake up sometimes to a new piece. You, do get to wake up and it’s, ta da, the thing is there. And, I found as a client, I’ve sometimes gotten that with people I’ve worked with and it’s just oh wow, the design is done. Or, oh wow, that, that new thing is done.

And it just popped up out of nowhere. And it restricts you from, as a client, it restricts you from focusing on unimportant things. And it all, and not only is there ta-da moment feel good, but, you have to operate differently when you’re working with people in different time zones. And I would say a lot of that’s for the better.

Now, sometimes you want to be able to collaborate and the fact that you. Take calls and you’re able to sync up with people. I’m not sure if you do that on a monthly or whatever that basis, but you still need touch points. You still need human connection. You still need to understand their business. You still need that, but every day you need to be in an office where there’s distractions and where people are overreacting to a little micro aggression type things.

Or is it better to, as you said, had that space, be able to walk off things and whatever. I think it’s better for both parties, to be honest.

[00:58:09] Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Which, kind of segues to another broader topic, just around like the contractor relationship. When a startup company says we’re three people and we want to start blogging and doing email newsletters and creating app documentation, we can hire somebody in America here in Northern California or whatever.

Pay them $90,000 a year they’re going to have a contract and we’re going to have to do reviews and, we’re gonna have to pay some taxes because they’re full time employees and everything like that. So I think a lot of time contractors, freelancers, whatever, go, Hey, you don’t have to do that.

You just, pay me for the work. You just pay me for what you get. And what I’m saying is like that argument gets thrown around a lot, but I think I’ve only, I’m just thinking out loud. I think I’ve only seen the argument made from the seller side. And I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen the buyer go.

Yeah, that is attractive to me. That is more attractive or more interesting. which, makes me hesitate about, is that as valuable of a pitch as I think it is? I would assume so. Have you ever like had somebody actually go? Yeah. especially with the fractional you’re with a fractional Deal.

I think that’s an even more important

[00:59:51] Scott: in between.

[00:59:52] Speaker 3: Yeah,

[00:59:52] Scott: right? So I agree with you. I, give my opinion on this in that there’s There is, I do think businesses think in terms of headcount, right? And there are times where you can’t really deal with hiring that employee for $90,000 or so. And, so I think that goes into account.

I think by time they’re having a discussion, by time they’re having a phone call, they don’t really need to be convinced on the fact that they don’t have to pay that because essentially they’re only talking to you because they’ve already, they already know that. So I think it’s, I think it’s so common sense that they’re already thinking that.

However, I think that something they might not be thinking about is that when you go to the freelance basis. There are the downsides of that, right? And the downsides of that are the stuff that you talked about with agency type work, right? Which is, or just freelancer work where someone’s just churning out content.

It’s that you, don’t have to pay the healthcare and you don’t have to do these other things, but, you also then get a person that’s not really invested in your company and is working for 70 other companies and just churning out content at a certain clip. So I, think I try to end up at somewhere in the between and I think you do too.

Anytime you’re working on a more performance based thing, I think that there’s a closer relationship. There’s times where you might say, Hey, I’m not gonna be able to get to this cause I’m going to be off on vacation with my family for a week or we have to plan ahead and plan around that. So you’re a semi employee by that stage because there’s a balance there to where.

You’re not just, let me buy this commodity off the shelf, right? And you’re not a full time employee. I think you have to be somewhere in between. And I think you can strike a good balance there where you have someone like yourself that’s writing. And you’re not, it’s not the 70th client you worked for today.

You actually were thinking about it. You were thinking, how do I write this blog article in a good way? How do I make this convincing? How do I, right? You’re thinking about that stuff. That takes more time. Meaning just like a full time employee, there’s a balance of the hours that you’re spending. Part of the hours are thinking, part of the hours are writing.

But not, you can’t really hire someone like yourself and say, I’m only going to pay Ryan for the time that he’s writing pens to the paper, and, and writing this many words. Because if you’re quoting it that way, You’re not getting the results focused. you’re not getting the person that’s connected to your business.

like I said, that’s just where I end up right in between. I think, both sides need to understand they’re making a balance there.

[01:01:56] Ryan: and another thing that I think enters into the equation is this depends on the specific use case, but often, often the people that I mean, startups, some of them are we actually do have one client. That’s Very corporate, large, stiff, and I just keep wondering, they seem to love working with us.

We have a good relationship with them. but I keep wondering, like, why they’ve hired us. they have a, very large staff and they’re located in, around New York City, I think. But it’s I’m sure they can fi So anyways, sorry I went down that rabbit hole because I think often the people who hire Piff and PIP are maybe somebody who are as fractional, are people who are like at an awkward stage in the, in their growth.

And so one of the things that you and I have talked about. Before that can be an issue is, if they’re looking to hire a fractional CMO or some writers, there may be an issue of they don’t have the management structure in place to properly deal with, and so, they, if they’re small enough that they’re not like having to, they don’t, they haven’t encountered problems with Hey, I need to be coaching and guiding and reviewing me.

a writer in house. so they may I think sometimes that’s why things get a little bit quantitized is because they go, Oh I’m just going to hire somebody and I don’t want to manage them, I don’t want to talk to them I just want Pith & Pip to create stuff for me. Because we’re a team of three and we’re doing a million other things.

Now thankfully we haven’t really had that. The Badfit client did, they were just like Go do your, you just, we just pay you, you do your thing. But that wasn’t because like they were small or didn’t know what they were doing. They just were unfortunately very techie and they just thought everything could be boiled down to ones and zeros and SEO is just equations and you guys know the equation, so go do that.

but the relationship thing, cause as we’ve talked about, like you often don’t want to be talking to the CEO cause CEO is going to cancel on you. He’s going to be busy. He’s not going to be available. But those are also the type of people who hire people like you and I, or somebody who’s, not got manager in house that they can delegate, managing the project to, or somebody in house that can

[01:04:42] Scott: Yeah, I think you nailed it. I think, it’s a really. It doesn’t even matter if they’re a three person business or a 50 person business. I still think that there’s always those stages of growth that are really tough to take to the next level. So you either haven’t grown out of content marketing team or you haven’t grown out of whatever team and you don’t know how to, right?

And that’s a big cliff to get over. So it’s I know we need this thing. I’ve read this book telling me I need, A lot of content or whatever it is. And it’s I don’t even know where to start. And I think that Pith & Pip is a great option just because they can run into okay, I can work with a person.

I can talk to one of the founders of this company that are going to care about me and going to help get, and then help hire the writers, even if they’re not doing all the writing, they’re going to be overseeing it. Similar to what a middle manager might do in my organization, but I can’t even imagine taking on a middle manager.

and only briefly talk about the fractional CMO thing, Is that, yeah, what I do as a fractional CMO is coming into a business and, and helping them build out an internal team. And that’s because I think that’s such a painful process. I think oftentimes companies need to get to that process and they need to reach that because, you can’t always be a three person business.

Eventually you are going to have to build an in house team, as all successful businesses have over time. But there’s a tough intermediate period where you have to figure out how to do that. And that’s where I think, Pith and Pip come in, really. cause, cause someone like me, I’m not a writer, But can I help to start to form out the internal, team organizational structure, and then start to see where we can freelance with individuals or work with a content based agencies that. Are going to pay attention to details and then am I going to know enough about how to select that person so you’re starting to grow to, you’re helping them, you’re invested in their company and helping them reach that next level that would be really hard for them to do on their own.

But I do want to segue that to one final question to you on the business side and then I want to jump back to something else you had said, but it was around. you’ve talked separately to me about the challenge of writers, right? And you said, why would they hire us versus someone else?

And I wouldn’t underestimate that. It’s really hard to find number one, good people. I’ve done recruitment, for companies based in the U S right. And it’s really hard. we go through tons of interviews with marketing coordinators and other things, and it’s really tough. And I’d assume it’s very tough to find a good writer as well.

And I think you’ve probably experienced that too. So I’m curious of your take on as you’re. You’re getting more and more successful. You have clients knocking on the door saying, we want to work with Pith and Pip. You have a quality control structure in place and you’re not just hiring some cheap, cheap writer for the sake of Oh, I’ll just make big margins.

You guys care about the work that you’re doing. In which case you want to hire good writers that you’re not going to have to either throw out content. It’s going to be bad. And you’d also probably don’t want to do hours and hours of editing or overseeing something that’s not good. So you need someone, you need good team members.

So how are you finding that process of Finding good writers to help you expand a successful business. That’s expanding.

[01:07:24] Ryan: you asked at the wrong time. because a couple of months ago, we had We were doing okay. but one thing we’re learning is that, at the, agency, when I interviewed a lot of writers and hired a lot of writers, it was like, much as I wanted the work to be about quality work, it was really just about getting things out the door. And whether I consciously realized it or not, that kind of just became what the hiring process was, just getting people in who could reliably get stuff out the door.

And then hopefully trying to also find people who cared or were smart or whatever. And I think just subconsciously was focusing on the former. And, at Pith & Pip, we’re, I’m just, There’s just so much more to it than that. we had found a couple of people who were doing like, okay, work, but that was a very specific type of work, specific type of writing that we were giving to those people. then we gave them something else and what we got back from them was Not usable. We, we have buyout fees and we had to use them if, something is, if we just can’t use it, then we’re going to pay a much smaller rate than if you had finished the piece altogether. We’ll still pay you.

Cause that’s what we found as freelancers is it’s not always the freelancer’s fault or, whatever, so pay him like a hundred bucks for. Whatever their time is, and just say Hey, this is the end of the relationship. so I think that’s been the hard thing is. We’re trying to find people that are adaptable and flexible to work with different clients. and we haven’t really had any luck there recently, but also it’s like a little bit of a, it’s a little bit of an “E-myth Revisited” thing. we’re just, I don’t, we’re not giving that problem 100 percent of our attention and that’s not, so it’s not going to get solved.

because we’re not. We’re not like really deep. We’re not, ideally we would just spend a month not doing any client work and just recruiting writers and providing feedback and weeding out good from bad and whatever, but, we’ve got six clients on the, roster. So that’s, it’s actually been a very active conversation this week.

and yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, hard. Like writers, It’s almost like I now need to solve the problem that, we solve for clients. I need writers who care about the relationship with Pip and Pip. And that’s not really what we’re finding so far. is, I think people just, there’s a, there’s like a weird amount of work right now for writers. I think everybody thought that, GPT would just, Destroy the writer’s market.

But I feel like it’s never been this easy before to get work. of that might be circumstantial or contextual, but I feel like a lot of people are more willing to invest in like content right now. And so that can be hard with writers because writers are just like, like we had one guy, who was pretty good, but he, he was like, I can get double what you guys pay me because, we got to, we want to try and charge it.

At least like 30 percent on top of whatever we’re paying the writer. So then it’s who are you getting? And, we don’t worry about it too much, but we do have conversations about like, how much do we share with writer X, Y, Z, because we don’t want them going off and like poaching work or clients, because they could just come in and say that, Hey, I’ll do the same thing for you for, Maybe less money, but they would get significantly more if they went direct.

So it’s, yeah, it’s,

[01:11:46] Scott: I think that answers your question as to why people go outsourced because, or work with companies like yours. It’s just that, it’s really hard to find the good writers just as you’re finding. It’s really hard to find the good writers. and I don’t know what it is. in the U. S.

I’m certainly seeing this a lot is that there’s the job market is very interesting because There’s kind of help wanted signs everywhere. According to the people that I, that are in the U S that I’m, I know, speaking with my parents and others and, help wanted signs, more work than go around and then, the prices are really tough because everyone’s demanding these really high salaries.

So everyone’s dealing with that around the board and it’s a really tough, challenge to solve.

[01:12:23] Ryan: I would love, and this is I have to go soon, so let’s not go down this rabbit hole. But these teaching agencies, I don’t, I don’t know what the situation is post COVID and it’s been 10 years, but like, when I was at a teaching agency, you had all kinds of people coming in. You had, app developers and you had writers and you had musicians and you had all kinds of people come in to do six months of teaching or maybe they ended up saying two years of teaching or whatever.

I, yeah, I’ve always been like, how do I want to, I just want a social network of This is my gap year, blah, blah, blah. And I just want, it’s like a little LinkedIn. I want a little LinkedIn of all these people on gap year and just go, Hey, did you study marketing and you are good at writing because.

You do your teaching thing and I’ll pay you to, like maybe you can only do one article per week. But if you’re like a legitimate writer or something like that and you’re out in BFE Thailand teaching, you’re the only expat in your city, maybe you don’t have a lot to do. I was in a town of 5, 000.

We had one streetlight. I was the only person there, wasn’t doing a whole lot of stuff. I would just love if there was like a little LinkedIn for those, And I could just, it was like a Fiverr, LinkedIn thing for,

[01:13:52] Scott: Yeah. two, two quick shout outs. And before I have my last bit of question for you, is, Number one, you mentioned in passing a book, the “E-myth Revisited”. So great book recommendation. You said the name of it. I’m not sure if people know that it was a book, but a great book for anyone that’s entrepreneurial and looking to systematize their process a little bit, because it might seem cliche to say, become more like McDonald’s.

McDonald’s kind of has a negative connotation, but if you start to think everything is a system, the most successful businesses, even creative businesses, need to be, Somewhat, systematized, to work effectively and profitably. the other thing is a shout out to a local company here, Web Courses Bangkok, when you mention attracting people that are in their gap year doing the something, Web Courses Bangkok is one that attracts more of the marketer web type focus people.

but something like that in terms of, for the copywriting, it’s like someone who has interest not in creating a website, but interest in, in, or marketing, but interest in marketing and, writing. that, it’s like that’s the type of way to pull people in that otherwise might have gone into the whole, Oh, I guess I have to teach for a while sort of situation.

now the last line of questioning that I have for you is just around the personal side. Cause I heard you say this and obviously I know this about you, but you have a wife. You have a daughter, right? And I want to quickly touch on that is that I actually went down the rabbit hole of some YouTube channels and stuff here.

And there are a ton of YouTube channels on, on some people that are on holiday and, have some stakes and buy some, bulls and land for, for someone in need and run down all these, terrible paths when it comes to relationships in Thailand. and you didn’t do that. You, have a very successful marriage.

and I’m curious if you have any tips or recommendations around that of how you had a successful lifestyle with, obviously people that are culturally different and have different backgrounds, as well as how you found raising, your daughter, who’s,

[01:15:49] Ryan: man. So I met my wife, on Tinder. I’m a big opponent of dating apps. but I think, that’s like a, that’s a person to person thing. I just feel like. I enjoyed dating. I enjoyed the mystery and the surprise of dating for dating’s sake, not for finding a lifetime partner’s sake. and I just genuinely believe As, I don’t know, cliche or maybe some people somehow take issue with this or think it’s problematic, but just, just like being able to say who you are and filter out somebody based on who they said they are, was helpful for me being in Bangkok.

dating in Thailand can be weird and, and exciting and fun, but like I was at a stage in my life when I started dating my wife, I was at that point like 30, I think, and I was like, I did not want to do casual dating. I did not want to spend 6 months trying to, get answers to very simple questions.

so I was just like very forthright. I came right out and said, what, who I was and what I was looking for. probably a lot of people weren’t interested in that forthrightness. and yeah, I just look for somebody who had, said some things that I thought were good signs or whatever.

I don’t know what that, I think like Tinder wasn’t, Tinder had just started when I was here. Now it’s much bigger. So I don’t know if Tinder is your best option or if there’s other apps or whatever. the expat community thing comes back into play, friends of friends. If you’re friends with expats who have extensive Thai networks, that’s, I think, a really great way to meet people.

but in terms of like cultural norms or communication stuff, I don’t know. I feel a little bit on the spot. I’m trying to think if there’s any. Yeah, it was, it was, it’s, I think, I don’t know if this is specific to dating or courting in a foreign culture, but it felt like there were a lot less problems or arguments until there were. it’s almost like the zero to a hundred miles an hour versus like maybe being in the States, it was just like a 30 miles an hour all the time of conflict was just like always at a certain level. Whereas, I think that in Thailand sometimes it’s like, there’s a culture of everything is fine and everything is okay and we’re just in the moment.

and then maybe you hit like a speed bump once every whatever period that is six months or a year. And then all of a sudden it’s just like the sky is falling. And maybe as a Westerner, you’re just. It’s that’s a, yeah, again, I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing. That was a little bit my Experience and is overall something that I’m still coming to terms with is I’m just, like, I always want to be improving and dealing and confronting.

And I just always want to be talking about what’s optimized, what’s fixed and what’s whatever. And definitely being in Thailand, that’s, that can be difficult. Thai people are not super pumped about that. Why can’t you just be happy with what you have? Why can’t you just be content and satisfied?

[01:19:45] Scott: Yeah.

[01:19:45] Ryan: I would love that. That would be great, but I wasn’t raised that way for 20 years. That was not the way I was raised. I can’t just change. I can’t just flip that switch. so that was one thing. Kids, I don’t know. There’s some, yeah, there’s some ups and downs and, School stuff can be hard.

God, we could do a whole podcast about schooling, just cause, at home I would just send my daughter to, the school that my house, that’s a hundred meters from my house, my parents house, and and that would be that. I, May not love everything about that school, but in terms of like really what they’re getting You know, I would just address that in family dinners and trying to say maybe you don’t have to Accept X and Y and Z or whatever and that would be the end of it.

But here it’s like I’m it’s You have fantastic schools, but then you have to pay for them. and I don’t mean, these ridiculous, $50,000 a year international schools. For anybody who’s listening, I think that’s a crock of shit. I don’t, think those places, are really providing you much other than a name on a resume or a reputation or something like that.

There are places. But again, you have to pay for what you don’t have to do in the West, that are more like, a few thousand. Dollars per year or something like that, to get a better education, that’s school stuff I’m talking about that. Cause we’re there like right now we had, to decide what school we want to send Ezra to, like literally this week or last week.

but, I don’t know if you and I have ever talked too much about Thai healthcare. I think Thai healthcare is fantastic. So like the pregnancy speak of the devil. I feel like all that stuff was. Fantastic. In terms of pricing and service and what we got. What’s this?

[01:21:59] Scott: You remember

[01:22:00] Ryan: Can you say hello? Hello?

[01:22:04] Scott: do you remember me? Hello,

[01:22:07] Ryan: very shy. Are you gonna, are you gonna shoot Scott with a squirt gun? Smell nice. oh, you want to stay here. Okay. yeah, like the, healthcare side of things I thought was fantastic about having kids. Whether it’s this pregnancy and birth or pediatrician follow ups and we’ve had some health issues and it was like we actually had to go to the emergency room a few weeks ago and like the emergency room was empty, like we went straight in and got help and immediately and I think we paid nothing, if we had zero insurance, it would have been like a thousand dollars for a five day stay, but we had insurance, and we paid zero.

So that’s fantastic about, being a parent and having a kid in Thailand. I don’t know. What are some other things? What are some things that come up for you other than schooling and like healthcare?

[01:23:10] Scott: just to summarize a few of the things that you said before. So relationship wise, right? I think there’s a tendency And I have a tendency for this too. There’s the white knighting thing, right? There’s the kind of Oh, I’m going to come rescue or help someone. And that’s, something to be aware of that you obviously didn’t do.

You, mentioned you could do this in a dating profile. It’s I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to provide that whatever. And if you’re honest with all that stuff, just, but people get into trouble when they end up

and me, since I know your wife and I’m not going to speak personally about her, but it’s that she doesn’t need rescuing.

The point is that she’s a professional that, that can fend for herself and do stuff. So she, she doesn’t. need to be rescued by anyone, which I think probably puts you in a great position, to have a healthy relationship here. and then let’s see the confrontation stuff, no matter how amazing a wife can be, that is something everyone has to know is that there’s.

There’s a volume control where it’s like it, it could be a one or two or a zero, and then it could be a 10. And, I’m not trying to overgeneralize, but I hear that from every single friend that I have is that if you have a relationship with someone in Thailand, just be know that there, there might be a bit of a fluctuation in, in, in moods that goes a little bit higher than you’d imagine.

[01:24:28] Ryan: I think

[01:24:29] Scott: so you just have to get used to that and you have to step away. And I’ve heard you from other again, places, people say. Thai men will talk about Thai ladies. And again, I’m not trying to offend any Thai ladies listening to this, but it’s to say, you got to walk away from it. Just walk away from it.

[01:24:43] Ryan: yeah, I, for the, Thai and Thai relationships, I have less experience there, but I don’t think it’s any sort of problematic statement to just say that Westerners have a certain operation. Again, I would say, maybe we’re just always at a certain stress or anxiety level that’s higher than the Thai average, and we’re just here.

and, the Thai standard, I think just in general is much, much lower, but then when you mix those two, all of a sudden it just, it’s harder to say, Oh, I’m just always going to be at a zero, even though I now live with this person who’s way higher. stress or anxiety levels than I’m used to, of course that’s going to push some buttons and be difficult for them.

And

[01:25:34] Scott: for sure. That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. It’s a huge stressor when it’s, everything is so by everything, we can be okay. And if you’re saying, oh, there’s this loud noise, there’s this thing. There’s this, that, If that’s not what they’re used to, then that’s going to be a stressor on them.

that’s a really good way to put it. is that. it’s just the mix of the two cultures. Everyone has to be aware of that. But, you’ve been incredibly kind with your time, Ryan. I really appreciate the conversation we talked about. We talked about family, but also a lot of business, a lot about, even the fact that you started off as this backpacker,

[01:26:05] Ryan: yeah, I’ve

[01:26:06] Scott: and then you, end up with a fan.

Now, you’re a family man, you’re a family man, living a good life here. 10 years and running a business and, and working with clients around the world. you’ve accomplished a lot in the 10 years and I’m sure you’ve learned a lot and you’ve shared a lot of your stories with us.

So thank you so much for, taking the time.

[01:26:25] Ryan: I I like, the story side of things. So there was a lot of stories about some of those Non starting a business years. but yeah, I think that’s, it’s, again, it’s an interesting part of being a, an expat here is everybody’s stories. There may be some similarities in the backpacking loop and the teaching and whatever, but there’s always little nuggets of everybody’s experience was different.

[01:26:52] Scott: Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a learning curve, but once you, get it, and get on the other side, you can make a good life here. but it’s important to not be green. I think that’s a term for that, right? When you’re, when you cut fresh off the boat or green or whatever else is that you can get really burned in that first year or two.

Until you like catch your grounding and feel comfortable and meet the right people and get exposed to whether it’s the right YouTube channels, the right podcast, whatever it is, then you can start to get it. And when you start to get it, things make more sense. But is the longer that you avoid understanding the difference between Thai and Western culture, the longer you avoid not confronting relationship differences and things like that, the longer you avoid Not looking and better understanding the job and marketplace, the harder it’s going to be.

but it’s been great, Ryan. Thank you again. thank you for sharing yourself and, and all the stories with you and your family and Ezra there. and, I’m sure we’ll chat soon.

[01:27:41] Ryan: All right. I’ll talk to you soon, man.

[01:27:43] Scott: Well, there you have it. Ryan shared how he overcame imposter syndrome and how he adapted his writing style for the startup world. He highlighted the significance of making connections and networking within the expat community, which in his case led him to

launching a new business. I hope you learned something today and I’ll catch you on the next one.