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Roland Frazier
I was stunned that what you said, which obviously we'll share here in a second. It makes no sense to me why people would get emotional about that. It wasn't in any context negative. So it was funny that people like got all bristly about it, given that it was just a hey, here's the three step way to be a better manager, basically. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the business launch podcast with your hosts. Me, that's Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice, who is now one of the most hated people online.
Ryan Dice
I'm super hated. Yeah. According to a bunch of micromanagers. Yeah, I got my first like viral hate piece in a long time. Have you had a viral love piece yet? Yeah, I don't think love pieces ever go viral, so. No, no, never. Like never. I think you, you only go viral for if you say something that really pisses off a lot of people, which apparently I did.
Roland Frazier
I was stunned that what you said, which obviously we'll share here in a second. It makes no sense to me why people would get emotional about that. It wasn't in any context negative. So it was funny that people like got all bristly about it, given that it was just a, hey, here's the three step way to be a better manager, basically. But why don't you share first the virality and then we'll talk about what it was.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, well, I'll give some backstory on this. So I recently started publishing an email newsletter after it seems like everybody was doing it. And so I wanted to wait until the trend was basically over and then jump all the way into it. Like, that's kind of my, that's my strategy. I first wrote about email newsletters back in 2007. I don't know if you knew that, but in 2007 I put out a little e book called the Great Easing Experiment. So I was very early and now I'm super late. I want to miss, I want to miss the opportunity as much as possible. No, I decided I want to start like publishing a weekly newsletter. The idea is just, it's called the Accidental mba and it's just something that I've figured out accidentally, you know, running businesses for the past like 20 plus years. Kind of just a way for me to aggregate some of the knowledge that I've had, put it out there, see if I can share something with the world. And yeah, I'll be honest, when I published this particular issue and I was almost embarrassed by it because I'm like, this is the most kind of generic, like, obvious kind of thing. But it was the week before my kids spring break and so I just had to get something out there. And so I put it out there thinking like, this is not that big a deal. And when I published it to the subscriber list, I got this typical amount of feedback, like all positive. I published it on LinkedIn. Generally everybody was like, this makes a lot of sense. A couple of people were like, I disagree with this, but that's fine. But what I've had the team doing is anything I post on LinkedIn, they're cross posting it on Facebook and Instagram and other places. And holy crap, when this thing hit my Facebook page and I didn't even notice it because I was basically out of town, it went nuts. I mean, you know, if a normal, you know, if a normal post would get like 40, 50,000 reach, you know, it might get 100 comments or something like that. This one got over 2 million impressions so far and like, you know, thousand 1500 something comments, something crazy like that. And so yeah, I thought it'd be fun just to kind of talk about. I'd love to get your take and see like what in this do you think is controversial? If anything, did you look at who the comments?
Roland Frazier
Like, was there a significant influencer or somebody with a lot of reach that, that came in on it, that would have caused it or that shared it? Because I noticed it had, I think it had like 3 or 400 shares too, I think, didn't it?
Ryan Dice
Yeah, yeah, I didn't. Nothing that I noticed. So I guess I'm gonna, I'm gonna read the piece just like really quickly because it's not, it's not that long. I mean all these are designed to be read in like two minutes or less, but, but it's basically, hey, if you're bombarded with got a minute questions, you don't have a team, you have a swarm of problem messengers. To fix this once and for all, implement the 333 method. So this is pretty simple. Here's how it works. Tell your team step number one to spend three minutes. So it's the three minute Google first rule. Basically, before you bring me a problem, take three minutes to Google it or ChatGPT it. And I firmly believe that every manager should do this because I don't know about you. I feel like for the longest time I was essentially just googling stuff for the people who work for me and it drove me nuts. So I'm like, you know, rule number one, step number one, just take three minutes. See if you Can't Google it. Step number two is ask three peers. See if there's just three other people. Basically, if you're going to. Before you tap somebody on the shoulder, frankly, just tap a less expensive shoulder. Right? And so I said, you know, step two is the three peer rule. If they still need help, they must consult at least three peers before escalating the issue to a superior and definitely before kicking it up to the CEO. Doesn't matter if it's peers at the company or peers in a public forum. They just need to seek the advice of others at their level before engaging their bosses. There's wisdom in groups, especially when the number of these groups are in the trenches like they are. So I'm not trying to diminish the value of the peers. I'm saying they're in the trenches too. Oftentimes people bring me questions and I'm like, I don't know, give me some context. I don't know what you're talking about. And then step three, if you're going to bring it to me, then, you know, bring me at least three possible solutions. And so this goes back to the one, three, one rule that we teach, that we talked about. Have one clearly stated problem, three possible solutions to show that you've done some homework, and then one recommendation. And then based on that, we can have a conversation. And so, you know, why does this work? Most problems don't need you. They just need better filters. This system builds an autonomous team and frees you to focus. The result, fewer interruptions, smarter problem solvers, and a massive productivity boost. Now, that, to me, seems highly uncontroversial.
Roland Frazier
But why are you calling all workers stupid, Ryan?
Ryan Dice
My God. Right? I mean, I guess the way that people took this is that it's so funny because, like, half of the comments were like, yeah, obviously, like, my favorite somebody who was a teacher was like, this is. I basically have my students do something similar.
Roland Frazier
Like.
Ryan Dice
And I don't. I don't know if you remember this, like, when you were in school, but I would ask the teacher how to spell something and, like, go look it up in the dictionary.
Roland Frazier
I think you're just digging your own grave because you're. Now you're saying that basically workers are no smarter than elementary school children.
Ryan Dice
It's exactly what I'm saying, and I'm going to double down on it. And the other thing that I'll say is, you, you know, having now parented four children, this is, this is what I do with my own kids. You know, they'll Ask me a question. I'm like, well, what do you think? Like, let's try to figure this out for myself. And what cracked me up is people were basically saying, oh, you think they're dumb? You think they're not smart? It's like, no, it's actually the opposite. It's. I think that they actually are smart. I think that they have the ability to solve the problems themselves. I want them to believe that too.
Roland Frazier
Yeah, so I liked the ones that said, well, what are managers for then?
Ryan Dice
Yeah, yeah. So there were the people who thought that I was like insulting the employees. And I'm like, I kind of think you are. And then, yeah, people who are like, well, what do you think that managers are for? And it's like, dude, this mentality is exactly why this little, like this middle layer of management just gets cut and they're never missed.
Roland Frazier
I think it's interesting though, because I didn't have the context of where you had released it before. I think you rule out the newsletter because those are people that generally probably like you, but not LinkedIn, which I think is a more professional crowd. And so the fact that you didn't receive this kind of response on LinkedIn, but you did on the, you know, on the social network, that is, that is now Facebook. And that's where it blew up. And that just feels to me like a place where nobody I know is on Facebook anymore. That it is a place for people who have way more time than they have, you know, anything else. And so those people are there. Maybe it's lower level management, people that saw you as a, you know, taking a superior position of, you know, well, the way that you do that is three, three, three. And you know, I don't respect frameworks or, you know, they were just looking for something to hate on. But yeah, it doesn't make any sense because everything that is in there is positive and everything is about building a team that is smarter, that will have the opportunity to advance. It is actually enriching for the people who are being asked to participate in this program. So it's, it's funny that I would. I mean, from what I read, and I only read maybe 150 of the comments, but they seem to lean extremely negative, you know, the bulk of them. More than positive.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, and that was exactly it. Yeah, way more negative than, you know, than positive. And it was interesting because I did see some of it on LinkedIn. Like there was some kind of negativity towards it, but not the vat, like the gross preponderance that you know, that you see here. So, so I guess the question is like now what? Right? What, like what does this, what does this mean? And you know, kind of what, what should we do when, you know, when something, when something like this happens? Because what I know is that there would have been a time when had this happened, I would have felt the need to go in there and respond to basically every single one of these people who had said that I was wrong. And I can tell you right now, I did not do that. I haven't responded. I haven't responded to any of them because I was busy and didn't have time. But I mean, what do you think, what do you think is the appropriate response when you put something out there and people are just like, you're an idiot and you get a ton of hate?
Roland Frazier
It depends on what your desired outcome is, what you're doing.
Ryan Dice
So walk me through, what do you think I should do on this?
Roland Frazier
I think it depends on your desired outcome. If the desired outcome is more reach and attention to the, you know, to the newsletter, then I would double down and polarize and I would basically, you know, find a creative way to challenge the poke and poke at the people who are poking at you because then they'll become even more stirred up and frenetic and feel like they've got to tell a thousand people and post again. And that'll get you more reach because the algorithms will, will reward the activity. And that's not a bad way to go. And we know that, that you're not going to make everybody happy and most of those people are not your audience. But if it helps you reach more people that are, then that's probably a net positive. I think the worst thing you could do would be to apologize and say, you know, no, I didn't really mean to offend what I was trying to do. You know, I think that, that justifying, explaining or apologizing isn't helpful at all and is a weaker response and backs off of a solid thing that you had. And then the middle road is probably a continuation piece that refines what you were saying. You know, the, the polarizing piece is to, is to pick at the things they do. You know, it's, it's like, you know, a bad non thought out thing would be something along the lines of, you know, employees are like children and need to be told, need to be given a framework or need to be told what to do or you know, work is like a playground. Here's how to handle your kids. You know, Something like that. Yeah, they would just go nuts over. They hate it, hate it, hate it. But then people like you and me would be like, that's kind of funny, you know, and also I love all the hate that he's getting. And he's right. Even though he's taken kind of a, you know, because you would deliver it in a humorous, tongue in cheek kind of way, that's probably the one I would choose, honestly.
Ryan Dice
So kick. So basically the options are apologize, run away and hide. Option two is to seek to kind of reframe and kind of clarify what you meant. Not apologize, but at least try to. And option three, it sounds like it's just to kick the hornet's nest.
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I like kicking the hornet's nest on this one. I really do. What do you think?
Ryan Dice
Yeah, I agree because number one, I would not apologize because there's nothing I said that I disagree with. And I think that's really important. I don't think whether you're, whether you define yourself as a creator or you're a CEO and you're just out there communicating, don't apologize for saying something that you feel is true simply because it offends somebody. Yeah. And I think that's so important. Now if you say something in a.
Roland Frazier
Way, even if you go to explain, to say, you, you know, poke and then, you know, it's poke and clarify. But I would just say, you know, it's this. The response to the last post I made is overwhelming evidence of what's wrong with management and employees, that the relationship is misunderstood to be parental. And it's not supposed to be parental. It's supposed to be peer coaching. Like, it's to encourage growth and nurture and support and build your replacements. Not to have an army of drones who are mindlessly going about the 1984, you know, commercial from Apple doing exactly what they're told and being stamped. That, that's, that, that's, to me a great way to bring that home. Like, you know, and, and lean into the controversy with, with this is what's wrong. Right? That's. Yeah, like this is. And I, and I actually believe that to be the case too. What were you going to say? I'm sorry I talked over you.
Ryan Dice
No, I was going to say exactly that. Like, don't, I mean, so don't apologize for something that you believe to be true. And also don't miss the, like, what I kind of. One of the things that, that bothers me a little bit is that this happened days. Look, I don't Go on Facebook. I didn't know this was happening. And so I wasn't able to kind of like respond and kick the hornet's nest in real time. Because I completely agree with you what they're saying. It's like they're self satirizing. That's the thing that is so comical to me. It's like, oh my God, you're absolutely just making my point for me. And anybody who disagrees with me is not my audience. And anybody who does is going to see through and be like, okay, yeah, I think I found my person.
Roland Frazier
Anybody that disagrees with you on that point is not your audience. I don't know if I agree with that because I think they are. Because they need your help. They need to hear what you have to say. They need to be open to. I mean, if they believe that, if they're managers, because. Because that's who you're after more than the, the employees. If they're managers or better yet, business owners, a lot of them are living in the misinformed state or more likely the comfort state of it's easier for me to do it because if I do it, it's going to be right. If you want a job done, do it yourself, then they are to actually create better thinking employees. And so I think like you hit the nail on the head of how to reach the audience that you absolutely do want of managers that are thinking. Like to me, even calling them out and saying, if you're a manager or an owner and you disagreed with this or this gets you to feel angry. You should. But what you're angry about is the fact that you have not created a team and that you have built yourself a job you will never escape from in a business that's not exitable. Right. That and on and on. That, that to me, so, so I, that's the only place I would slightly disagree with you. I think that like that's the best way to reach those people. They're living in pain. That's why they're lashing out. Not because you're wrong or, you know, you said something terrible. Because there's no way, you know, there's no way any logical human could read what you had to say and get mad about it. Right. You could disagree with it, but not, not what they were. Not the hating that was going on in that, you know.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, disagree is the wrong word. Somebody who's so close minded to it because somebody who's like, I'm not so sure about this. And then they read it, they're like, oh, well, maybe, yeah, that's exactly who I would want to talk to. But somebody who's going to read it, just be like, I'm mad now and this is a day ruiner. Those are not. They're likely not who I'm going to be. Want to hang out with. Let's. Let's just say.
Roland Frazier
So how many signups, if any, did that drive to the newsletter? Was there a spike?
Ryan Dice
I mean, we definite. We definitely saw a spike. I mean, we saw about a 10% increase in. In the overall signups. Yeah. So I'm not. I mean, I am not in the. It's funny because I was sitting at my kitchen island. I didn't. I saw this, you know, so we're recording this on a Monday. I saw this on Saturday. And so you were on kitchen island.
Roland Frazier
On your throne, telling your family to go think of three things before they come back to you with all their crap. Right?
Ryan Dice
Yeah, exactly. Bratty little kids come to me with all their problems, and I'm like, you figured out yourself, brat. No, it was the morning, so they were all still asleep because I'm a bunch of teenagers. But no, I'm sitting there, and I was kind of chuckling, reading through this, and Emily, my wife, she sees it. She's like, what are you looking at? And I was like, check this out. And she was like, oh, no. Are you okay?
Roland Frazier
Are you canceled? Yeah.
Ryan Dice
And it just struck me, and there would have been a time when I would have had an emotional response to it. And the filter that I always try to run it through is going back and reading it again. Do I believe what I said? And do I still think that it's true? Was it said in a way where I intended, you know, to offend? And was it said in a way where I believe that a reasonable person who I know like and trust would be offended by this? If the answer to all of those things is, like, you know, yes, it's true. You know, obviously, I didn't intend to offend. And no, I don't believe a reasonable person. Then I feel no energy towards it whatsoever. And now my brain just shifts into, okay, well, how can we be strategic, you know, with this? Because any time the marketplace gives you strong opinions, you got to look closely at that and figure out, okay, what, you know, what is it here that. That we can potentially double down on? Because it's not something that I thought would be particularly offensive, but obviously it was. So I intend to kick this hornet's nest over and over and over again. I'll give you another example. I posted something on, and this one I did get hate for on LinkedIn. I posted on LinkedIn and I was talking about how, like, our system for creating company scorecards. And I said, you know, we don't use fancy business intelligence tools. We use this, you know, crazy tool called Google Sheets. And I want all of my people to manually enter their numbers in every single week. And everybody's like, oh, my gosh, what a giant waste of time. And I got so much hate for suggesting manual entry, which I know takes our people about 20 or 30 minutes once a week. And in that 20 or 30 minutes of actually looking at the numbers and manually entering it, they know their numbers. They become accountable to their numbers. Now I can say, hey, you know, Matt, just out of curiosity, you know, what's our, you know, what's our return on ad spend for this thing? And he knows it because every single week, he's looking at it and putting it over. They're showing up to the meetings, knowing what the numbers are and having ideas for how to improve them, as opposed to in the past, showing up to the meetings and being just as surprised as everybody else when the numbers are off because they're not looking at them. But, oh, my God, man, you would have thought that when I suggested that these precious little snowflake employees have to waste their valuable time taking 15, 20, 30 minutes to manually enter their numbers, I mean, it's like I was asking them to give vials of their, you know, blood to be sacrificed to, you know, my own general awesomeness. Like, it just was.
Roland Frazier
You're the math teacher that's not allowing them to use calculators.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, exactly. Like, don't you know that that could just be brought in? That's such a terrible use of, like, everybody's time. But those are the things. Now I file that away and I'm like, okay, this is something I want to return to again and again and again. You know, AI is something that we talk about a lot here. AI is really great for content ideas. AI is almost never going to serve up a counterintuitive idea. It's almost never going to serve up something that is a little bit controversial almost by definition. It's going to kind of serve up what the masses believe to be true.
Roland Frazier
Which is why it does. It does. Okay. When you ask for it, it really does.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, yeah, you're right. If you. If you ask. But most people don't ask for it because they don't want to be that, because they don't want to deal with the hate, which means they kind of have no reason to exist in a post AI content world. And so I just think that, that, yeah, like, that's, I was hoping that's what you would say I should do because I've kind of been waiting to like take action until we had this conversation. But that's. I'm going to kick it not once, but twice. Three times. I'm, I'm going, I'm going ham on this thing.
Roland Frazier
So what's the strategy of it? What. What's the desired outcome from the kicking and what are some of the ways that you think you might go about angles of approach for the, for the kick?
Ryan Dice
So, number one, that this, this, the version of this piece is something where I will probably now look to write a version of this message and repost it at least every 90 days. So just now this piece is going to get recycled because it's a winner. And so anytime you have a winning anything in business, certainly if it's messaging, if it's a marketing campaign, if it's a post, make sure that you add that to your. We call it our proven promo vault. So if you have a winning promotional campaign, put that in the vault and literally go onto your calendar and make a note 90 days from now, run it again. Okay, do it again. Because if it worked once, it'll work in 90 days. We just found that just you can basically repeat the same stuff every 90 days, definitely every six months. So that's the first thing is some version of this will get repeated every 90 days until for whatever reason, it stops working. And as you build up a repository of these things, that's when you're just always interesting to somebody. Just in the hay, for what it's worth category, figuring out what these things are. So that's the first tactically for this one. My plan is to go and do a repost of it with a comment on there. Exactly what you were saying. Can you believe this happened? To try to bring it back up to the top of my feed and now to get my followers, you know, the people are in my audience to have them go in there and do the responding. I think anytime you can get your audience to defend you, not only is it far more efficient, not only does it get, I think, a better message out there and kind of balance some of the hate, but it really galvanizes an audience, you know, and draws them much more, you know, closely to one another. Then I'm also going to use this as a marketing piece to Go out to other folks and be like, this is probably why you want to subscribe to the newsletter because it's, you know, controversial ideas like this that you're going to be getting every single week. So those are, that's kind of what I have in mind right now. Anything else you think I should do?
Roland Frazier
I just like it. I like it, you know, I like it aggressive too. I like, you know, three reasons or five reasons your team sucks. You know, things, things like that I think are, are cool. And even to respond to this, the way that you're analyzing it and thinking about it, of how do you handle difficult, how do you handle communicating difficult ideas, you know, and how do you respond to that? That alone is interesting. Along with the stats of how many people signed up, we received a 72% spike in our newsletter signups, which is primarily my ideal target because not a lot of people that hate you sign up for a newsletter. They block you or, you know, unsubscribe instead. And so if you're looking to reach a broader audience, maybe it's time for you to take a stand, you know, or that like all of those things are, are spin off ideas of content that I think can come from it. So I like it a lot.
Ryan Dice
I can tell you what not to do. So if you're fortunate enough to have something like this happen to you, and I mean that intentionally, if you're fortunate enough to put something out there that people notice, right? And especially if it's something that you still do believe to be true. We don't simply want to be noticed for saying just off the wall stupid stuff for the purpose of clickbank and getting noticed. There's plenty of people doing that. I'm not suggesting that at all. But if you actually have a unique point of view, that is what the world is lacking. The world is lacking people with a truly unique point of view who are willing to defend their unique point of view. So if you have a unique point of view, you have a reason to exist, then you have a reason to go out there and you know, and start speaking. So if that happens, and if your unique point of view catches some heat, you know, and if it goes what you don't want to do, and we talked about this, don't apologize for anything that you believe to be true. And number two, don't go and engage individuals in conversation. I think that this is really, really, really important. When it's an open forum like this, don't go through and start talking to individuals because number one, you don't really have the time or the bandwidth to respond to individuals. What you want to do is respond in your own terms, which looks like making a follow up post or something like that, and then let them go and chirp and speak and then hopefully deploy and deputize the people who follow you, who believe in what you're saying, who share your unique point of view. Let them go in and do it. It's far more efficient and it's just a better, a better look overall. I've seen a lot of people get sucked into really stupid Internet arguments with trolls.
Roland Frazier
Yeah, I was just saying because they'll definitely troll you individually. And the other thing, you know, which, you know, we didn't have this as an option, but don't do nothing. Don't just be like, okay, well that was interesting. I think I'm going to stay away from that topic. It is your opportunity to leverage and capitalize on an actual net positive event because attention is what everyone wants and you have gotten attention so lucky you, you know, be careful what you wish for sometimes. But you know there's, there's going to be a positive for. And just the people that signed up for your newsletter, you got that many more people, you know that that's, that's a win.
Ryan Dice
Heck yeah. I'm going to go through. It's a lot of comments. I didn't have time to do it because I was busy this weekend doing like fun stuff. But you know, now that we're into the week, one of the things on my to do list is to go through and read the different comments and see what are the specific things that really got under people's skin. So I want to know the specific nuanced things that go to people's skin. I'm also going to pull that out, you know, figure out how to copy, paste it, export it, whatever I got to do, load it up into ChatGPT and have it tell me, you know, hey, give me some feedback.
Roland Frazier
Analysis would be, would be really, really helpful.
Ryan Dice
So, you know, I, you know, I'm pretty good at it, but I got nothing on you. So what, what specific kind of prompting should I do to get good data from.
Roland Frazier
I honestly don't know because of the gating of the, of the Facebook content. I don't know if I don't know and I don't know what, you know, what they've got. There are content scrapers that you could use, so that might be, you might, I might look at apify or something like that and see if there's Somebody that's got a Facebook comment scraper and then use that to scrape the content so that you could then put it into a PDF or a text format that you could put into GPT or one of the other engines that. That's probably what I would do.
Ryan Dice
Once I do that though. Yeah. Because I can figure that out. Even if it's just, you know, hiring somebody on upwork to go and copy and paste a bunch of stuff. Like I can figure that out. But once I have it in a format that is readable by ChatGPT, what's the prompting that you think I should do to get the most?
Roland Frazier
I never can remember the, the acronym, but it, but it's basically the, you know, the first thing for me is always to assign the role. What is the role of the person or the agent that you would want to be conducting the analysis, what's the job description and the experience that they would have and then let it know what that is and then give it the analysis of what the problem is that you're looking to solve for and then the form of response that you're looking for, which with actual examples I find to be the most. And then there's, you know, like eight or 10 different things that I'll always put in from the. Even though they might say it does step by step thought, I'll say think through this step by step. This is important, you know, all of those kinds of things. And then, and then when it gives me my response, I ask it to grade it self on a, on a, you know, A through F scale of how well it answered the request that I gave it. And almost always that is where I get the most dramatic improvement. When it's basically I say grade yourself on this and then rewrite your answer such that each part that you graded is not less than an A. And that's dramatic improvement that I get. Always, always, always. And then I'll also very often run it through Claude, Chat GPT and Gemini and then I'll get different answers or I'll run the answer and the pri, the preliminary query. And then the answer that I got from Chat GPT, let's say into Claude and see what it thinks about that and have it grade the answer that was given. And that's very, very enlightening too. They definitely each have their strengths and I'll very often get really cool things from doing that.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, that's great. I'll definitely do that. And one of the things you mentioned about telling it its role, there have been times when I Didn't know what it was. So I was like, I need an expert who does something like this. What is. What are these experts called?
Roland Frazier
Yeah, and it'll give.
Ryan Dice
It's like, well, there's. He's. These are the things they might be called. It'll give definitions of them. And it's like, oh, it seems like it could be this one. And I'll have a conversation. It's like, yep, that's probably the close. Like, great. You are that. And so I'll have it tell me the kind of expert that I need for this job and then assign them that expert status. Like, got it.
Roland Frazier
I love it.
Ryan Dice
So if you don't know the expert that you think you need for this, describe the type of work that you want done and then say, who are the experts? What's an expert called? Who does this kind of thing? It'll give you a number of options and definitions of all of them, and you pick the one that's closest to.
Roland Frazier
It's pretty cool. And what you're doing here is like the initial part is sentiment. You actually have several roles. So that's the other thing is thinking about if you're using relevance or something that allows you to create agents that can have conversations with each other, it'll go a lot faster. But you can also basically break down the different roles and you can ask ChatGPT to help you with this. Who are the roles that I would ideally have to analyze a significant number of comments on a viral Facebook post to determine the overall sentiment. And then who would I have analyzed the sentiment in to interpret it to determine how I might use that to advance the following agenda, you know, which might be more signups, more reach, more, you know, whatever. And then. And then the final one in that case might be, so now you're a marketing director with, you know, this many years of experience in. In earned media and. And I'm looking to capitalize on this in a marketing way. To drive newsletter subscriptions, to drive ads, to drive customers to my program, whatever the three or four things are. How would I go about that and create a plan for doing that? That. That I think is a really interesting way to go about it too.
Ryan Dice
I like that. I'm going to give that. I'm going to give that a shot. Because yeah, I think if you find something like this, one of the greatest gifts that we can have is when. When the market speaks back to you. And it's one of the reasons. And it's a mistake that I made. It was a buddy of Mine told me, he's like, you know, you've been doing this newsletter now for about a month and a half. Have you published any of the issues on social? I was like, no, I haven't done. He's like, you got to do that. Like, the newsletter is an enclosed ecosystem. I mean, even if you ask for feedback, even if you ask, you know, people to grade it, you're going to get a handful. And it's all, like you said, it's all people who already like you, so it's not all that helpful. Publish it out on social and get that real time feedback. This is when you're going to find what, what actually works. And so this was the first one that I did. And I'm not even kidding, man. The reason I did it first is because I thought it was the tamest out of them. So, dude, I can't wait to see what happens when I drop some of the other ones because there's some other ones that I think are actual zingers out there. So this could get, this could be fun, could get fun. We'll see. But then to take the data to put it through, like you said, run, run the AI process that you said to find out, okay, why do people really like this or why, why don't they? To further refine the thought, refine the ideas, to really, if you're going to kick the hornet's nest, kick it hard. Yeah, not just a little tap.
Roland Frazier
Yeah, kick it hard. Lean in. Absolutely. I love it. That's awesome. So I guess the, we've talked about, as far as takeaways for everybody, what, you know, what happens when you get attention and, and how do you go about it? What are some of the options? We talked about those and we kind of told you where we stand. And I think, I think those are, those are pretty good takeaways. Anything else that you can think of.
Ryan Dice
I would just say have a unique point of view and don't. And know that, that if you have a unique point of view, which should be the goal, that by definition most of the people aren't going to like it because that's what makes it unique. And so at this, where we live right now, in this, in this time, in whatever business that you are in, you've got to be, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a business owner, then you are your company's best spokesperson, period. End of story. And so you need to be communicating the unique points of view that you share that ideally align with your brand. And so if you're out there doing that, which is your job, I think, in many cases the highest leverage, highest and best use of an owner, CEO that any company can have, then it's also your job to take the arrows. But when you do, do it with a smile on your face, because it is a gift. It's a gift from the marketplace when they pay attention because love me, hate me, both are fine. Just pay attention in some way, shape or form. Ambivalence is the ultimate hate.
Roland Frazier
And to speak to those of you who are thinking, well, yeah, but I don't want to piss people off or I don't want to lose subscribers. Those are people that you never had. And so I would look at the, these, these types of events and that type of content that we're talking about almost in the way that you would look at a call out in an ad where you say, hey, bankers. Or, you know, hey, heartburn sufferers, or those kinds of things. You're calling out your audience so that everybody else will go away and you can speak to the people you actually want to reach. And that's what this type of content does. It's fine that it repels other people. It's fine that they're like, I never suffered from heartburn. How dare you say that? I might be. Why am I. I see this still to this day, why am I seeing this ad? Because you're targeted by the fricking social network that you're getting free access to, you idiot. Now, I mean, you know, sorry, but that's like, that person is not my person. I don't care that that person is disappointed that they have to see ads from me that Facebook thinks is relevant to them, because that's how Facebook makes its money. Right? So you guys have to get over that and be okay with, we are going to repel the people that we don't want. But here's what's cool. Those people can serve a purpose and actually unwittingly help you by retaliating with their thoughts and comments and dislikes that cause the algorithms that are out there that give you greater reach to say, hey, this matters. This is something that matters to people. So let's show it to more people to get more reaction to advance the interests of our social media platform. Right? So you're actually winning across the board when you upset the people that are upset. Not that you're going to try to make them feel bad or anything like that. Because Ryan's post had nothing in it that could cause somebody to feel attacked by him with Any kind of logic at all. Yet people are going to project. So it's okay for you to do this. So it's not like, don't try to insult people. But kicking the hornet's nest in a positive way of doubling down on what you said and standing behind it only makes you more appealing to the people that like you, who are the customers that you actually want. So I think that's. Those are some things for people to think about, too.
Ryan Dice
Totally agree. I love that Ricky Gervais bit where he said, you know, you gotta think about. The people who get mad when you post stuff online are like, it's the equivalent of somebody walking into the middle of a city and, like, seeing one of those, you know, one of those pieces of paper hanging on where it's like, guitar lessons and you can peel off those things. So he's like, I don't want guitar lessons.
Roland Frazier
Right, yeah.
Ryan Dice
You know, and being, like, offended that somebody would be offering guitar lessons and that somebody else would want guitar lessons. These are not reasonable, rational people that we need to appeal to. So they're not who I'm talking to.
Roland Frazier
I love it. Awesome. Well, hopefully you guys enjoyed that. If you did, please share, please review. Please tell people that this is wonderful and then go and tell Ryan how much you're upset by that article that he wrote. That's what he.
Ryan Dice
Yeah, give me a comment. Yeah, just. Just be like, you're an idiot. Hurts my feelings.
Roland Frazier
See you guys next time.
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Ryan Dice
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Podcast Summary: "Kicking the Hornet's Nest: Controversial Business Advice"
Business Lunch Episode Release Date: April 17, 2025
Host: Roland Frasier
Guest: Ryan Dice
In this episode of Business Lunch, host Roland Frasier engages in a candid discussion with Ryan Dice, a serial entrepreneur and business strategist. The conversation centers around a controversial piece Ryan recently published, which unexpectedly went viral and sparked significant backlash on social media platforms, particularly Facebook.
Ryan Dice initiated an email newsletter titled "Accidental MBA," aiming to share his two decades of business experience. However, his attempt to join the trending wave of email newsletters backfired when his initial post garnered over 2 million impressions and approximately 1,500 comments on Facebook, contrasting sharply with the more modest reactions on LinkedIn.
The contentious post outlined the "333 Method"—a three-step approach designed to streamline managerial processes and enhance team efficiency.
Three-Minute Rule: Employees are encouraged to spend three minutes researching solutions via Google or ChatGPT before approaching their manager with a problem.
Three-Peer Rule: Before escalating an issue to a superior, employees should consult at least three peers for input.
Three-Solution Rule: When bringing a problem to management, employees must present three potential solutions alongside the issue.
Despite the method's intent to foster autonomy and reduce unnecessary interruptions, the post was perceived by many as belittling employees' intelligence, drawing parallels to treating workers like elementary school children.
Roland Frasier [06:12]: "But why are you calling all workers stupid, Ryan?"
Ryan Dice [07:21]: "I think they actually are smart. I think that they have the ability to solve the problems themselves."
Roland and Ryan delve into effective responses to such negative feedback, emphasizing strategic engagement over emotional reactions.
Both agree that apologizing for content one firmly believes in can undermine the message's strength.
They advocate for embracing the controversy to amplify reach and engage with the target audience more effectively.
This approach involves actively engaging with the controversy to stimulate discussion and attract like-minded individuals.
The unexpected attention led to a 10% spike in newsletter sign-ups, demonstrating that controversy can be a catalyst for growth when managed correctly.
Ryan discusses plans to utilize AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to dissect and understand the nuanced feedback from the comments. This analysis aims to refine future content strategies and enhance the effectiveness of controversial posts.
Roland Frasier [28:27]: "Think through this step by step. This is important."
Ryan Dice [29:26]: "Who are the experts? What's an expert called? Who does this kind of thing? It'll give you a number of options and definitions of all of them."
The episode culminates with key insights on embracing a unique point of view and leveraging both positive and negative feedback to foster business growth.
Ryan Dice [35:24]: "Have a unique point of view and don't. And know that, that if you have a unique point of view, which should be the goal, that by definition most of the people aren't going to like it because that's what makes it unique."
Roland Frasier [36:27]: "If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a business owner, then you are your company's best spokesperson, period."
Ryan Dice [07:21]: "It's actually the opposite. I think that they actually are smart. I think that they have the ability to solve the problems themselves."
Roland Frasier [25:33]: "We received a 72% spike in our newsletter signups, which is primarily my ideal target because not a lot of people that hate you sign up for a newsletter."
Ryan Dice [35:24]: "Have a unique point of view and don't. And know that, that if you have a unique point of view, which should be the goal, that by definition most of the people aren't going to like it because that's what makes it unique."
"Kicking the Hornet's Nest: Controversial Business Advice" offers a deep dive into the dynamics of provocative business strategies and their potential to either alienate or engage an audience. Ryan Dice and Roland Frasier provide actionable strategies for entrepreneurs to harness controversy, emphasizing the importance of a unique perspective and strategic communication in driving business success.