How To Make Content SO Good People Hate You For It (Ryan Roi)
Ryan Roi built a 7-figure coaching business in one of the most skeptical niches imaginable: tattooing. And he did it by creating authentic content that his ideal clients loved.
In this interview, he shares what happened when strangers on Reddit tried to ruin his reputation (and why that didn’t stop the right clients from working with him).
We also talk about why polished content often gets ignored, how to create what Ryan calls “emotional residue,” and the less glamorous side of building a million-dollar business.
If you want content that attracts high-paying clients, watch the full interview here:
What We Cover (Timestamps)
00:00 Stronger content often attracts stronger criticism
00:25 Ryan’s most viral hook (humor + honesty beat formulaic content)
02:20 The tattoo industry’s tribal mentality and Ryan’s favorite response to trolls
04:29 A story-driven post that called out the dark side of his industry
06:38 Making 7 figures, three years in a row, wasn’t as satisfying as he expected
08:30 Hard lessons Ryan learned about overpaying himself, operating costs, and burnout
11:40 The Reddit post that attacked his character, and why it didn’t kill the business
18:45 How criticism actually increased trust with some of the right clients
22:51 Two rules Ryan uses to stay grounded when people misunderstand him
24:35 Most content is “safe noise” and how to say what’s true and not being said
27:06 Examples: The Squatty Potty, Wendy’s, Noah Kahan
31:09 Why the urge to delete something might be a sign it’s good
31:53 Authenticity as discovery, not performance
34:20 Why AI can help refine a message but can’t create the first pulse of it
37:30 The three questions Ryan asks before posting anything
38:44 The difference between content that goes broad and content that goes deep
40:40 The “hero” and “shadow” archetypes in marketing
46:04 Why Ryan started a new Instagram account and how to follow him
My 5 Biggest Takeaways
1) The better your content is, the more some people will hate you for it
One of the most useful parts of this conversation was Ryan describing what happens when you threaten people’s identity and worldview.
Ryan suggests asking three questions about your content:
Am I proud of this?
Did I learn something?
Did I have fun making it?
Sometimes criticism is useful feedback. Sometimes it’s just a sign that you touched a nerve.
Ryan’s not saying that hate should feel good. It clearly doesn’t. His point was that the right people still hired him. Some even trusted him more because of how he handled it.
2) Most content is “safe noise”
This was my favorite phrase in the interview.
Ryan defines safe noise as content designed to make you look good and avoid looking bad. It may be technically fine. It may even be useful. But it doesn’t leave much of an impression because it’s too polished.
A lot of business content is not bad because the creator lacks expertise. It’s bad because the creator is trying to protect themselves. They don’t want to sound too intense too opinionated. So the result is a post that says something true-ish in a way that no one remembers.
3) Branding is the emotional residue you leave behind
Ryan said something in this interview that goes against a lot of classic branding advice:
Branding is the emotional residue that’s left over after someone interacts with you or your business.
What does someone feel after reading, watching, or hearing this?
If the answer is “not much,” it probably won’t matter how optimized it was.
4) If your content doesn’t repel anyone, it doesn’t attract anyone either
Another line I loved: authentic content is like a magnet.
A strong magnet pulls some things in and pushes other things away. Weak content tries to avoid pushing anyone away - and ends up not pulling the right people in either.
That doesn’t mean being polarizing your content just to be a dick. It means saying something true in a way that reveals who you are, what you believe, and who your work is really for.
That’s what makes your content attractive to potential clients.
5) Chasing revenue can create a lot of problems
I also appreciated Ryan’s honesty about what success really requires.
He hit seven figures in revenue three years in a row. But that didn’t mean the business always felt satisfying. He talked about overpaying himself too early, carrying high monthly operating expenses, and realizing that a simpler one-on-one model could produce similar income with much less stress.
That part of the conversation felt especially valuable because it cut against the usual “bigger is better” narrative we all see online.
Sometimes growth is real progress. Sometimes it’s just more stress.
Memorable Quotes
“Most content is safe noise.”
“Branding is the emotional residue that is left over with someone after they interact with you or your business.”
“If your content doesn’t push anyone away, it is a weak magnet.”
“People don’t buy expensive shit from their friends. They buy from people that call them the fuck out.”
TL;DR
A lot of people do not have a content problem. They have a self-protection problem.
They sand off the edge that would make the content memorable because it feels dangerous.
Ryan’s story is a good reminder that being clearer, bolder, and more honest often comes with a cost.
But being generic has a cost too: your business dies a slow death.
If you want to create better content, ask yourself: What’s true that no one else is saying?
Useful Links
My first interview with Ryan:How Ryan Roi Became A Million Dollar Coach
The Artful Dollar IG:@ryanroitattoo
Ryan's New IG:@ryanroiofficial
Full Transcript
Greg Faxon (00:00):
The better your content is, the more people will hate you for it. My client, Ryan Roi, built a seven figure coaching business and his content was so good that random people posted on Reddit trying to destroy his reputation. In this interview, Ryan shares what he learned from that experience, why most marketing gets ignored, and how to create content that gets you high paying clients. Let's start with this. Okay.
Ryan Roi (00:25):
Yeah. My most viral piece of content ever
Greg Faxon (00:29):
Over a hundred thousand likes. I just want to listen to the hook.
Ryan Roi (00:35):
Being that I'm covered in tattoos, how much cancer do I have?
Greg Faxon (00:40):
So good. I think that's one of the best hooks.
Ryan Roi (00:46):
Being raw and real. Yeah. This is one of the best hooks I've ever had.
Greg Faxon (00:51):
Tell me how that came to be, that moment in particular, because I'm curious about how this got created.
Ryan Roi (00:58):
It was just a conversation with a colleague, someone that I served on the board of the A PT, the Association of Professional Tattooers, and Selena is one of the most brilliant tattoo artists. She's a biologist, she's a degree in biology and I don't know what her degrees are in, but she's a scientist. She's a brilliant human being. And so I wanted to talk to her about tattoo inks and all this drama online that you hear about people talking about tattoos causing cancer. And so that's just my sense of humor coming out. I've been covered in tattoos for most of my life. How much cancer are we talking here? A little bit. A lot of bit. Where are we at?
Greg Faxon (01:42):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a great example. Today we're going to talk about how to be authentic in your content and not scared of offending people and just letting that humor come out. Let's look at another one here. I thought this was pretty good.
Ryan Roi (02:08):
Yeah.
Greg Faxon (02:13):
What was your thought process with this? Did you see something that you sort of emulated or did this just come through?
Ryan Roi (02:20):
No, so in the tattoo industry, so there's this weird, it's a very tribal kind of mentality. I even said that one time and someone was offended thinking I was speaking about Native American tribe. No, I'm not. No. Tribal mentality is a whole psychological thing of where we are very skeptical of people outside of the tattoo, outside the tribe. And I get slack sometimes from people that are like, well, you don't do tattoos. I'm like, well, I did for 13 years, but for some reason because I don't tattoo anymore, my advice is no longer valid because I'm not in the trenches every day doing tattoos. And then people will find, I've seen this on Reddit and we'll get into Reddit and all that other stuff. People will find really old pictures of tattoos and be like, look, this guy's work sucks. I'm like, people, they just want to find anything they can to hate on me. And so I was just like, all right, well this is a tattoo. And doing a freehand tattoo like that where you're literally drawing it on the skin is way more challenging than pre-drawing it and then doing it. I'm like, all right. To everyone that thinks my tattoos suck, bless your heart. And that's one of my favorite responses to trolls in general in the comments is I just say, bless your heart. Bless your heart. And I just leave it at that. They want a reaction.
(03:48):
They get their serotonin, their dopamine from getting your, hooking you in, getting your attention. And when you just say, bless your heart, they have nothing to work with. And so that's one of my favorite ways to respond to troll comments online.
Greg Faxon (04:03):
That's a good one. Awesome. I've got one more and then I want to dive into some questions.
Ryan Roi (04:11):
And then I had to throw the song in there to just.
Greg Faxon (04:14):
It was the perfect song. Talk to me about this one.
Ryan Roi (04:22):
Okay. When did I post this one? In 2013, I quit tattooing
Greg Faxon (04:27):
January, 2026.
Ryan Roi (04:29):
So this, I love that you brought this up because this story about being at a tattoo shop where I'm just trying to tattoo this girl who at the time I think she was a friend of a girl I was dating. Anyway, I'm just trying to do, I remember it was like a neuron inspired science, tattoos really cool. And the other tattooers were not busy tattooing, they were just sitting around. It was cold winter and they decided to watch the movie saw and it was horrible to tattoo to people just literally gutterly screaming in the background. And the way I was treated when I very respectfully asked, Hey, could we listen to literally anything else right now? This is just a lot was so shitty. The response to it. And this story is a, I dunno what the word, a fractal, a piece that is replicated a infinium inside of the tattoo industry where there is such a lack of respect for other human beings.
(05:35):
And again, I'm not speaking about the whole, there are so many beautiful elements. Tattooing saved my life. I feel like I have to justify it, but I don't, there is so much fucking garbage in the tattoo industry is the fucking truth, and I'm not the only one that's sick of it. And so I wanted to share that story. And the reason it got so many likes is because so many other people know and they've been holding their story inside of them for a long time and just shoving it down and just being like, well, that's just the way it is. I want to show people, you shouldn't have to tolerate that. No one should have to tolerate being treated that way. And it stirred a lot of shit up. And it also people related to the raw experience of it, then they could relate to me and then therefore they trust me. They're like, oh, Ryan's saying the shit that no one in the fucking tattoo industry is talking about. And that's kind of what I always did. That's how I built the business, was saying the thing that is not being said.
Greg Faxon (06:38):
Yeah. So that's kind of the perfect thing I think to rewind the clock on because when we were prepping for this interview, one of the things you wrote was you did a million dollars a year in the artful dollar. Three in a row wasn't as satisfying as you expected it to be.
Ryan Roi (07:01):
Not at all.
Greg Faxon (07:01):
What you mean by that.
Ryan Roi (07:03):
If tattoo artists hear me say, and they've brought it up like, oh, you made it. You took a million dollars from tattoo artists. Like, no, I didn't take a million dollars from anyone. I also didn't make a million dollars. My business did. I'm so proud of what we accomplished because it was not an easy feat, particularly in an industry that is so skeptical. Coaching doesn't really exist in tattooing. I was easily one of the first, if not the first person, to actually bring coaching as it exists in other industries to tattooing. And every fear that I had of being called a scam artist, a grifter, a snake oil salesman of whatever it was that I was afraid of people accusing me of, I've been accused of all of those things. I've had viral Reddit posts, I've had other tattoo artists make dozens, not one or two dozens of pieces of content just ripping me apart, telling me how.
(08:02):
And of course, none of that content is ever created by anyone that I've actually worked with. It's people on the sidelines seeing it not understanding me. And that's a whole thing. I can talk on giving up the need to be understood. That's a whole thing I've had to work through, but I did it. I did the thing that when I started working with you, Greg, when I made $300 and I had this goal in mind of hitting a million dollars, then I did it. I did it three years in a row and it wasn't, there's a lot of lessons. I'll be completely like one, I overpaid myself. I thought your business makes a million dollars. Well sure you could pay yourself $200,000 a year. No, if you start making 500,000, 600,000, I might have even talked about this in the last time we did this podcast.
(08:56):
Pay yourself a hundred thousand dollars a year for 10 years. Build the roots of the business before you give yourself that payday. And that's a lesson that I heard other people say. I'd hear Alex Hormozi say, just live on $100k a year. But it wasn't until I did it and I learned the lesson the hard way that I was like, oh, this is hard to pay myself this much and the business, it hurts the business and the team, the payroll, we had about a $50,000 a month payroll, or not just payroll, like operating expenses in total, that's including payroll, my payroll and everything.
(09:40):
It was exciting. It was fun. I learned a whole lot. And I also learned that I could work with two or three, one-on-one clients a month and actually make basically the same amount of money that I was making with way less stress. And I did feel this responsibility to save people. There's that savior complex I have to help. These people are struggling. So many tattoos are struggling. And the thing I hear all the time, literally last group call, I was on Tuesday with my tattoo artist course, multiple people are like, this course saved my life, changed my life. My whole life is different after this, the impact we make. And that to me is the thing I'm the most proud of, not the millions of dollars or whatever that we generated. That's the thing that drives me is hearing people say, my life is forever different because of the experience that I had here. And so I kept feeling like, well, I have to help more people and help more people. And we had to maintain roughly 15 to 20 new clients every single month just to make the business model of group coaching, high ticket group coaching worth it.
(10:56):
But I've, in the past couple months just realized I was burning out. There's been a lot of changes in marketing and the tattoo industry and the way ads work in the tattoo industry. Hiring sales reps is a fucking challenge. And I just came to the conclusion that I like doing. I might do group again in another industry or something like that, but like I was saying when we first got on this call, I love tattooing and I also hate a lot of elements of it, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I think there are a lot of tattooers that feel that way. And so I'm not afraid to say that someone will take that clip and they'll just post that and then they'll talk about it. I am like, okay, I don't care anymore. Totally.
Greg Faxon (11:40):
It's so true that you're clients become your business, your experience of the business, and so the industry you're in, even when you work within that industry with people who are very aligned, that becomes your experience. Can you take us deeper into that specific moment of the main Reddit post when you saw that, how you heard about it, and then kind of the short-term and long-term impact of seeing it?
Ryan Roi (12:10):
Yeah, so up until that point, I had had people throwing rocks and sticks at me online and stuff and the trolls and stuff like that. And then someone, I think I know who it was and it's just whatever. I'm not even going to get into that part. But not anyone I've ever worked with, someone that kind of knew me, didn't like me and wrote this really long Reddit post that if you Google the artful dollar, it's one of the first things that comes up because that's how Reddit works. If it gets a lot of up votes or you Google my name even, it's one of the first things that comes up. And I actually spoke to a company about, they remove these types of things and I was like, you know what? I don't fucking care. Leave it up. Because if you read it, first of all, it reads like a wild fantasy novel. It reads according to this post, I run a queer ayahuasca money cult that preys on young queer tattoo artists and force feeds them ayahuasca and takes their money. That's the summary. If you were to take the transplant,
(13:18):
That's not what you do? I thought that was the whole business.
(13:20):
So, I was thinking about it. It's an interesting business model. It has pros and cons like any other niche. Yeah, I dunno if you saw, I actually did a podcast about the Reddit post. Did you see that?
Greg Faxon (13:32):
No.
Ryan Roi (13:33):
When I posted a clip on it, and I said that in the clip I posted on Instagram, according to this Reddit post, I run a queer ayahuasca money cult. And all these tattoos came into the comments were like, "Yo, that sounds sick. Sign me up. Like, yeah, let's do it." And it was so savagely attacking my character, attacking the coaching world in general. And now I've been taking coaching programs since I was 19 years old, and I have been in and worked with so many mentors and it's had the biggest impact in my life. And I always knew I was going to be a coach. I am built, it's in my DNA, it's not a nice idea to make money online for me. It is who I am at my core. Then to have people who don't understand you go out of their way to write this very in depth and then the comments, it was like everyone that's ever seen me online, and really the reason that people would hate me or hate you or anyone is because something you're saying is threatening them. Something about whatever is you're saying is threatening some part of their identity.
(14:46):
And so that's why people attack. People wouldn't attack if they didn't feel threatened. And something that Barrett Brooks, who another incredible coach in the coaching space, one of the goats in my opinion said to me when I was working with him is he said, hurt people, hurt people. And it really reminded me there, they're hurting, they're human beings. They wouldn't write these things about you if they themselves weren't hurting in some way, shape, or form. Did I cause that pain? No. But that's how pain and resentment works is something my dad says, we don't have a lot of resentments. We have a few resentments that we project onto a lot of people or things.
(15:33):
So whatever I was doing was a great canvas to project their resentment, their pain onto. And that's like Nietzsche's definition of a resentment is I'm in pain. And so someone or something is to blame for my pain. That's the definition of a resentment or at least niche's definition. They're in pain. Someone or something must be to blame. Well, look, here's this guy telling tattoo artists that you can do something about the fact that your business has slowed down. You can actually market yourself, and this is wild, but the topic of marketing is a controversial taboo topic in tattooing. It's seen as gimmicky. It's seen as being salesy, sleazy salesman. I literally, I went to post a client testimonial today, I've recorded a testimonial with a client that had amazing results and this has never happened to me before. I posted this testimonial today, and he immediately dmd me and he's like, if you could remove it, I'd appreciate that.
(16:36):
And I was like, oh my God, is everything okay? I sent him a voice message, Hey, just making sure everything. And he's like, no, everything's awesome. He's like, I just don't want to be seen as a salesman. I was like, you're not selling anything. But also, so what if you're selling something? And that was something I had to work through when we worked together was the whole identity. I felt weird about selling and sales and that identity stuff from tattooing. So back to the Reddit post and all the stuff, the short-term impact of it was I had so many people flooding to my Instagram page who read it and then just wanted to leave their nasty comments and not hundreds, maybe dozens of people DMing me and commenting. I had a few clients actually just defending me in the comments, just saying, Hey, actually Ryan doesn't do any of those things. He actually really saved my life and helped me and it was great. And then the long-term impact was nothing.
(17:47):
I was so afraid in that moment that this is it. This is going to go viral. And everyone in the tattoo space is so close knit that everyone's going to now perceive me as whatever image this is portraying of me, it's done. The artful dollar's done. All the work I put in, it felt very unfair. I was very angry. And the people that are meant to work with me who did read it, and I talked to a lot of tattoos literally on sales calls, they're like, Hey, I saw this thing. What's up with that? And I was like, yeah, someone doesn't like me, but I never worked with 'em, so they still worked with me. They didn't believe it. You have to trust that the people that are meant to work with you, it doesn't matter what anyone else says. If what you're saying is honest and real and resonates with them, they're going to work with you.
(18:45):
There's no amount of objection handling or anything that is going to stop that. And I've even had a client, I was talking to a client about it and she said, "You know what, Ryan? I actually worked with you because I saw all these other tattoo artists basically just talking shit about you, and I saw that you never responded." Or if there was a response, it was like, bless your heart, or some I'll jujitsu the energy into another direction, but most of the time I just don't respond. I don't make content back about it. And she was like, I wanted that level of confidence in myself to know, because that's what people are afraid of. Tattooers are so afraid of being judged online that it feels safer to not market myself and make less money that feels safer than trying and being judged by someone else.
(19:39):
And she's like, I want that level of confidence that you have that people could say literally anything about you online in a public way, and it doesn't phase you. Now, the reality is it totally affects me. I will cry about it. I will feel all types of ways about it. I'm not going to pretend like I don't. But the even longer term effect or impact of all of that is going through the inner work to recognize that my value does not come from the work that I do. It doesn't come from the impact that I make. It doesn't come from the courses. People were stealing parts of courses and sharing it for free online. And it was weird. It wasn't even the real, I don't know, it was notes. I don't know what it was. It wasn't transforming anyone's lives. That's for sure.
(20:32):
I am the value, it's who I am. I don't have to prove it, I don't have to explain it. I don't have to justify it. My being is valuable in and of itself and in that I cannot be invalidated nor can I actually be validated. I don't need the validation that people say, you're worked in my life and the invalidation. It's all just noise. And it actually gave me this tremendous amount of peace in being myself and showing up online exactly as I am because people attacked me and I worked through it, and it liberated me in a way, and I'm grateful now to the people that have written these things because I wouldn't have had that breakthrough liberation worrying around what people, I've literally been called every horrible thing you could possibly be called, and I'm still here, I'm still alive. I still have value to offer, and that was worth it.
Greg Faxon (21:39):
When the greatest fear comes true, you're free of that fear in a way. One of the things that I saw too that just as I was looking at your comment, it was under a random post, was this, I mean I'm sure you have gotten a lot of these, was this comment from someone who's taken your program. And it's interesting because no matter what we do in life, there's going to be people who approve of it and people who don't approve of it. And so the key is we want the right people to approve of it. We want our clients who are really the right fit for our program to be like, yes, I approve of what you're doing. That approval is valuable, that's who we're trying to please, is the people we're helping.
(22:32):
Your wife, your family, your friends, but trying to get the approval of the people who you didn't want the approval of in the first place. You could actually alienate your wife, your core clients, your friends to get approval from people that you don't
Ryan Roi (22:48):
Really
Greg Faxon (22:49):
Want approval in the first place from.
Ryan Roi (22:51):
And so I've come up with a couple rules for myself in situations. One is I don't explain myself to people that aren't interested in understanding me because every time I've tried didn't work. I had a guy DM me once, seemingly genuinely curious as to why I quit tattooing and now do this coaching thing. But I could tell there was something behind it. He had seen something online and I was like, you can watch my YouTube videos to learn more about me or something. And he's like, yeah, but I want to have a call with you. I really want to understand how could someone do? And he was saying some things that just were kind of negative, and I said it as him. I was like, I'm just be honest. I don't really, I'm not interested in explaining myself to people that aren't interested in understanding me.
(23:39):
And he hooked me though. He got me to message him and stuff like that. And in the end, he wasn't interested in hearing a word I had to say he had a particular point that he wanted to make and make sure that I know that he disapproved of what I was doing. And so don't explain yourself to people that are not interested in understanding you. And the other rule is there are only two people's approval that I need and that is my 8-year-old self and my 80-year-old self. And that's it obviously would be nice to have my wife's approval. And I do thank God, and I do take her opinion very highly, but even deeper than that, it's like, yeah, if my 8-year-old self, my 80-year-old self could look at what I'm doing now and they would approve, that's it. Everyone else, they can think whatever they want.
Greg Faxon (24:35):
That's beautiful. I like those rules. You go through this experience, you shed some of that fear of judgment that you had before, and I am assuming it unlocks a new level of authentic content creation. That's one of the things we wanted to talk about because you told me most content is safe noise. What do you mean by that
Ryan Roi (25:02):
There? There's so much more content now than there ever was. And when I say content, I mean everything. I mean blogs and websites and AI and social media and YouTube and 99.9999% of it is safe noise, meaning it is sort of just regurgitating something that's probably already said that maybe you have your own spin on it, but I'm doing it to get you to like me. I think that's a big driver for human beings is I want to look good and I want to avoid looking bad. Those are easily two of the greatest drivers of human behavior. If you look throughout history and safe noise is anything that is designed to look good and avoid looking bad, in my opinion. I think what branding is is the emotional residue that is left over with someone after they interact with you or your business, whether they work with you or they just see some content or something like that. And safe noise doesn't leave much emotional residue. And it could be bad emotional. It could be, oh God, fuck that guy. Or it can be like, oh my God, this guy is speaking to my soul right now.
(26:22):
I think people are so afraid of actually saying something that actually means something that is actually worth saying, and so they play it safe and they share tips and tricks or something like that. I don't think people need tips and tricks. I think people need to be called out on their shit. I need to be called out on my shit and I get the most value. That's why I worked with you, Greg. You called me out of my shit and you did it in the most loving and genuine way. And I think that's what a coach's job is. And I think your content should do that as well. And I think most content doesn't actually do that.
Greg Faxon (26:58):
How do you create content that sticks with people that leaves that emotional residue?
Ryan Roi (27:06):
What can you say that is true that is not being said, and just keep looking for that? What can you say that is true that is not being said? So a weird example of this, but I think it's a good one that proves the point, is the Squatty Potty. You familiar with the product Squatty Potty? Of course. Are you familiar with the commercial for the Squatty Potty?
Greg Faxon (27:26):
Vaguely. It's been a while.
Ryan Roi (27:28):
It's on YouTube. It's the most ridiculous commercial of a unicorn like unicorns
Greg Faxon (27:34):
And the,
Ryan Roi (27:34):
Okay, so it did
Greg Faxon (27:35):
Stick with
Ryan Roi (27:37):
Rainbow glitter ice cream, and
(27:43):
Now you could be like, well, what's true about that? What's true about that is that the Squatty Potty is not a dignified product. They're not selling. So they could go about marketing their product from, we had this great thing, and I actually found another on Amazon, a similar product, and they were like, it tucks under your toilet. There was a feature button, a sticker, and it tucks under your toilet too. No one fucking cares that the Squatty potty tucks under your fucking toilet. What they said that was true, that was not being said was, this is kind of a ridiculous thing to talk about online, so let's just talk about it in a ridiculous way. And it resonated with people and it stuck with them. And I bought a Squatty Potty and it's one of my favorite purchases that I've ever made in my entire life. I
Greg Faxon (28:34):
Have one too. That's
Ryan Roi (28:35):
Good. They're great. Another example of this would be Wendy's and their Twitter account. Basically what happened was, so when you think of Wendy's, there's McDonald's Burger King, and then there's, it's kind of the redheaded stepchild of the fast food industry, and it literally is a redheaded girls the mascot. So it's never held up of fast food. I don't think you hold it in some high regardless, but it was always kind of like a step down and a little bit scrappy, you could say. But no one was saying that. No one was calling that out. It's just Wendy's. And so they handed the one day their social media manager, not one day she was pregnant, she had a kid and she had to hand the login account to an intern, and this intern just went ham on their account and started saying all this wild off the handle shit that you would never expect a corporate publicly traded company to say online.
(29:39):
But it was funny and it was real, and it was honest and it blew up. And now to this day, they still hold that. This is years later, it was honest and it wasn't being said about Wendy's and it stood out. They weren't being unruly just to stir some shit up just to be polarizing or something like that. You can't just be polarizing just to be, it has to be true. It has to be honest about who you are, your identity as a brand or a person, whatever it is. And it has to be the thing that is not being said that is true about you, and that's how you make content that is authentic.
Greg Faxon (30:21):
I love those examples. It makes me think of a third one. Do you know who Noah Khan is? The artist?
Ryan Roi (30:27):
No. No.
Greg Faxon (30:28):
So he grew up in Vermont and he spent years living in la I think, trying to make more pop songs, and he did okay, so he was sort of on the cusp, successful artist. And then one day on TikTok, he had been recording a song that was much more gritty, Vermont rural country, not his pop stuff called Stick Season. He tells a story about how he posted a little clip of him singing it, working on an album, and then he almost deleted it 30 minutes later, almost deleted it.
Ryan Roi (31:09):
If you write something where you're about to hit post, if you feel a little bit, I don't know if I should post this or if you want to delete it, 30. That's how it's good. So I love that you pointed that out. Yeah,
Greg Faxon (31:22):
James Altucher talks about that if you're not scared to post the thing, don't even post it at all.
(31:28):
So he almost takes it down. The thing goes viral. You have people singing their own versions of it. He goes from selling out little tiny shows to doing Fenway Park World Tour, one of the most streamed artists of the year, and that became a whole album in that style, but it started with Stick Season.
Ryan Roi (31:53):
It's a great example. And so you could say, oh, well that's simple. Go say the thing that's not, we said, but it's not that simple. I think what's really missing in the content space, in the marketing space is the artistic discovery of authenticity. So you take famous painters like Picasso or Michelangelo or whoever, they had so many canvases that they painted something, they hated it, and they painted over it and they did it again. They made a lot. They produced a lot. That wasn't the authentic thing that they wanted to get out, and maybe the thing that they were commissioned for that, sometimes it's the dusty old thing in the corner that you don't think it is. You kind of just got to get it all out there. And through that process, not all of my content is super authentic. In fact, most of it isn't, but there's a thread of authenticity through it that is discovered, that is felt with people. And so I don't think you should ask yourself, is this piece of content the most authentic thing that I could post right now? No, it's a discovery. I literally take my camera, I go out, I walk and I just talk and I'll record 10 to 30 minutes of content and I'll find three minutes of that max that's actually worth posting, and then I post it and a mile at a time. It doesn't do well, but I have to keep that creative flow going. And sometimes I literally, I just do this. I go
(33:33):
To get myself out of the stiff overthinking trying to find the perfect hook, and what if I put the words this way and there's a time and a place for that, but I think it's just oversaturated with that kind of stuff, and it gets lost in the other safe noise. It could even be good. And it's still going to get lost in the safe noise because it's not speaking to the thing that's not being said that is true that no one else is saying, and they're not saying it that way, and you can't formulate it. You can't process it. It's a discovery.
Greg Faxon (34:09):
Yeah, it makes me think about the kind of marketing thought different is better than better.
Ryan Roi (34:18):
Different is better than better.
Greg Faxon (34:20):
It's like find to have good content and great content. If it doesn't stand out, you don't really get credit for it. I think this is one of the ways that ChatGPT has sneakily been really an issue for folks. It's not just people having ChatGPT write the whole post and posting it. Of course, you're not going to create good content that way. Anyone can do that. So
Ryan Roi (34:42):
Let's
Greg Faxon (34:42):
Just put that group aside. You're going to suck at content if you do that. Good writers and people who are good at scripting videos and good at developing ideas. I started early on when ChatGPT was coming up. I was like, can I use this to make my writing even better as a partnership? I'm not just going to have it write the post because I know it won't be good. It always took me out of the flow. So it always, it's not that you can't use it for editing and bounce stuff off, but for me it gave me that sense of, okay, time to sit down. It made me second guess myself. It never allowed me to just let the authenticity flow out. Someone else might have a different experience, but that's been my experience with trying to,
Ryan Roi (35:25):
No, I a hundred percent agree. And I have as many people have switched from ChatGPT to Claude. Have you made the jump?
Greg Faxon (35:33):
I've experimented with Claude. I have heard it's better for writing.
Ryan Roi (35:36):
Oh, it's not even comparable. It's so much better writing. But yeah, it's on a whole other fucking level. And I was so resistant because, but ChatGPT knows me. I was like downloaded all the shit that ChatGPT knew about me, dropped into the Claude, and then it was fine. I will write and I've been writing a little bit more on Substack, but I will use Claude for that and I will write, I write, I'll write a lot, and then I will drop it in there and I'll be like, Hey, what am I not seeing about this? What feedback can you give me? And then it'll give me feedback on it and then I'll say, okay, that point makes sense. That point makes sense. If you were to rewrite that section, how would you do it based on this feedback? Then I get that, but it has to start with the flow that you feed it, and then it can be incredibly helpful and powerful, but you can't ask it to get into the flow for you. It will never be able to do that.
Greg Faxon (36:33):
That raw material needs to be there, which unfortunately is the hardest part for most people is that
Ryan Roi (36:38):
First
Greg Faxon (36:38):
Draft. It's what you want to use it for. But I think that that makes a lot of sense.
Ryan Roi (36:44):
And again, not like I'm posting every fucking day because I'm not. I built a million dollar company posting four to five times a week, and I know so many people will tell you, I got to post so much more than that. I just couldn't do it. And also I felt like it was going to be safe noise if I just tried to hit that number. So four to five times a week plus running paid ads, that was really, we did the first million without paid ads, which I'm surprised that we were even capable of doing that, but running paid ads just relieved some of the pressure to have to produce content all the time.
Greg Faxon (37:17):
Yeah, so there's only so many pieces of content you can put out that are going to be high quality. So you got to find how do we put
Ryan Roi (37:25):
Out the
Greg Faxon (37:25):
Most piece of content I can, but that are all really high quality?
Ryan Roi (37:30):
And I always ask myself three questions. Am I proud of this piece? Did I learn something and did I have fun making it? I think that's the most important one. If I can say yes to one of those things, then I consider it worth the time, energy, effort to make it and post it. I really don't think follower count or view count. Again, that one clip of me talking about how much cancer do I have, that was the only thing I've ever posted that hit a million views. Everything else, I generally hit under 10,000. My carousels tend to do 30, 40 to 60,000 if they're doing well. But if you write for virality, you will end up making safe noise that no one, it hits that dopamine thing, but it's not, probably not going to be really authentic because authenticity is not meant to resonate with millions of people. It's meant to resonate. It's like a magnet and it's going to attract the people that it's meant to attract, but it's going to push away the people that it's meant to push away. And we're so afraid of pushing people away that we end up making a really weak magnet that it kind of attracts a couple people, but it doesn't really push many people away. And that's safe noise.
Greg Faxon (38:44):
I love that analogy. And it makes me think too, there's a huge difference between getting likes and getting leads because we're not media companies. We want clients who pay us a lot of money. If you're going after likes or views, you'll create mass content, which actually could also be polarizing. It's just that the topic will attract so many different types of people. It's not going to speak directly to a niche client that typically is going to fuel a higher end service business.
Ryan Roi (39:12):
That post is a great example of that because I wasn't actually talking about my business or the solution or anything. It was a hook that anyone with a tattoo is not just tattoo artists would want to hear more about and engage with all the time. It'll constantly surprise me that I'll be talking to someone in the dms or on a sales call and they will bring up something I said on a post that got a thousand views. And it's like, for me, that's not a ton of views, all but on my lowest performing posts, the things that I sit on, those will be the lines that get repeated back to me by people that I'm talking to about working together. So I just started to put that together and I was like, oh, okay, great. This post got seen by a thousand people, and that probably means it went deep. It didn't go broad. It's really difficult to go deep and broad. Maybe some people do it, but I'd rather go deep a few times a week than constantly trying to go broad and never go deep with anyone.
Greg Faxon (40:12):
And a lot of these platforms give you a clear scoreboard, which incentivizes some of the more mass appeal posts. How many calls did you book? How many clients did you get too from it? And sometimes those are the things that don't get as many likes, but they made a big impact. I want to ask you about these two archetypes. How do we work with these two archetypes to be more authentic? You were telling me about the shadow side and then this aspirational side. Yeah,
Ryan Roi (40:40):
The hero side, the ideal side, and then the shadow side. And I just could see this in my own marketing or approach to business that, so we could talk about the ideal. The ideal one's really easy, right? Again, I'm a big Alex Hormozi fan. I saw what he was doing. I've flown out to Vegas, I've taken workshops with him. I was in his school group. I have derived so much value from the guy that I would compare myself to him, and then I would try to be more like, and there is some value in that of emulating the aspects of what people do, but you still can never find that authentic thing, that thing that makes you that thing that is not being said, that is true about you. If you're holding this archetype, you're attached to this and you want to be more like this, and it's a subconscious thing. It's not like I every day woke up, how do I be more like Alex Mosey? But then the even more insidious one is the shadow archetype that you don't want to be. And for a lot of us, it's like the sleazy salesman. For me, it was like Saul Goodman, I love Breaking Bad and he did such a good job of being that archetype, and I don't want anyone to think that I am just some marketing guru salesman. God, that would be horrible. So you know what?
(42:13):
I'm just going to keep posting tips and tricks and make sure that you like me and helpful and you find, but all I'm doing is saving you a Google search or an AI search. You could get any of those tips and tricks easily. And all I'm doing people, your followers or the people that subscribe or whatever it is, they're not your friends. Don't try to make them your friends because people don't buy expensive shit from their friends. They buy expensive shit from people that call them the fuck out that are not, don't be nice to them, be kind enough to be honest with them. But if you're just trying to be nice to everyone, and so I just wanted people to like me, and if I was perceived as that sleazy, so I was resisting selling my thing, it felt weird to sell. I had a total block, a total blind spot around it.
(43:03):
I tell people, let yourself be the sleazy salesman. Just be like, I'm going to be a sleazy fucking salesman. I'm going to be so sleazy. The truth is you're probably not capable of it. If you're a good person and you run an honest business, you're probably not capable of being that gross salesy marketing guy. Someone on one of the troll accounts or whatever compared me to the sham wow guy, and he put up a picture of me and the picture of the sham wow guy. And I'm like, great. And I get it. You see me that way, and I am like, I'm not afraid to be perceived that way because that's not who I am. And I'm also not attached to having the career of someone else because I don't want fucking Alex from Ozzie's career or his life. There's value that I derived from him. I want Ryan's life, I want Ryan's business, and I can't compare that to anyone else. And it was through that process of really leaning into the shadow and UNT attaching myself from the ideal that again brought this liberation freedom in my soul and in my business.
Greg Faxon (44:10):
So it's like people might be so far to one end of the spectrum polarized against. I don't want to be the salesperson that just letting yourself go towards it a little bit more. You could reach actually a more integrated place. There's no risk that you're going to go all the way to where it's detrimental for a lot of people.
Ryan Roi (44:29):
Yeah, I don't think there is, because again, you can look at people in media or politics who are that archetype that you don't want to be. They're not worried about it, and so they're just fully becoming it, I guess. I don't know. I'm a big Carl Young subconscious. Again, these terms are the shadow archetypes, but it required a lot of trust in myself, Ryan, something my wife says to me, she's like, you know who you are. You know who are, so you're not going to become this guy that takes, I mean, that's what Saul Goodman was doing. He is taking advantage of people. He is doing this thing in this weird scammy way. Maybe if I sort of allowed myself to be, it's more I think about allowing yourself to be perceived as that. It's not like go do something a little bit sketchy. That's not what I'm telling people to do, but just don't resist people perceiving.
(45:28):
It was okay, I get it. You think I'm the sham wow guy. That's great. It's not who I am. I know who I am. And by letting people see me that way, I resonated with so many more people. It's almost like a sign that you're doing it right? If people call you a scam artist or if people call you the sham wow. Or the whatever shadow thing that you don't want to be. Yeah, it's a weird paradox, but embracing the paradox, I've found more freedom in that in every area of my life, including my business.
Greg Faxon (46:00):
Where should people go if they want to follow you?
Ryan Roi (46:04):
I started a new Instagram after our conversation, so we decided to do this podcast. We were just catching up. You emailed me. I was like, oh, I'd love to catch up with Greg. And I was lit up after that conversation that we had. Dude, I just want you to know, I so appreciate you, your energy, what you bring. And when I said I want to help people that are building stuff that are afraid they can't seem to get past that block, just say the thing. It's like, it's right there. I know I dealt with it for years. I still deal with it. I'd love to help serve people in liberating themselves from that, because I think the most valuable asset that you or anyone will ever own is that authentic expression. You'll never own a house or a fucking brick of gold. That will be worth more than that.
(46:54):
I want to help people discover that. And so I started a new Instagram account a day or two after we talked: @RyanRoiOfficial because that was the only thing I could think of, and there's a couple posts there. But yeah, I'm having fun leading by example as well. The content that I posts there is I might only post once or twice a week there, but I want it to be the fucking real shit. And I don't need thousands of followers. I don't need it. I just want to put out stuff that I have fun making that I'm proud of, that I learned something, and that is not safe noise. I do not want safe noise on there. All your tips and tricks, hunters, you're not going to get a single tipping trick on that social media page, so don't follow it.
Greg Faxon (47:42):
Oh, beautiful. All right, brother. I love you. Thanks for taking the time. I
Ryan Roi (47:46):
Love you too, man. Thank you so much.
