Business & Branding Lessons From My Podcast & TV Interviews
- Ryan White
- Aug 4
- 12 min read
Updated: 7 hours ago
I stumbled into social media almost by accident. I was a private baseball instructor managing social media for the business I worked for, and I figured if it worked for them, it could work for me. I started with 1,300 followers in March 2017. Nine years later, I've built an audience of 3,000,000+ on Instagram alone.
Over the years, I've had the opportunity to discuss entrepreneurship, branding, social media, authority, and business growth across dozens of podcast and television interviews.
This page brings together some of the most valuable lessons, strategies, and stories I've shared along the way, from building Social Revelation to growing audiences, strengthening brands, navigating setbacks, and becoming more intentional about how you show up online.
Looking for the complete archive of my press, podcast, television, and media appearances? Visit my Publicity page.
Podcast Conversations & Business Lessons
The Blueprint to Entrepreneur Branding, with Ty Crandall
The most current thinking I've shared on any show. Ty wanted the actual blueprint, so we covered the two sandboxes every business has to play in now, search and social, and why 92% of people never scroll past page one of Google. I explained the two paths to growing an audience and was honest that the organic route is usually a five- to ten-year commitment unless you're already famous for something else. We got into why 100,000 followers is the threshold where conversions spike, the three-pillar content structure I use, and the 80/20 rule for predictable versus off-the-wall posts. The part people seem to take the most from is the hook: pull the most compelling three seconds out of your video and put it at the front, the way Hollywood cuts a trailer.
What They Don't Tell You About Entrepreneurship, with Krista
Krista's audience is mostly people who want to build an online presence but feel late to it, so we started there. You don't have to be great at something to start, but you have to start to be great at something. I walked through the story-watching tactic my team runs at scale now, five thousand a day, and why intentional engagement beats mindless activity. But the part I'd point people to is near the end. I admitted I'd just come out of a few months of feeling behind, because at 32 you can look sideways and find someone your age doing twenty million a year. Direction over destination. Everyone's running on their own timeline, and the arrow has to be pulled back before it goes anywhere.
The Joe Pavone Show
Joe found me through Instagram and cold DM'd me, which is exactly how I tell people to do it, so of course I said yes. We talked about scaling the entrepreneur before you scale the business, because your prices only go up when your belief about what you're worth does. I was charging a hundred a month until a friend told me to make it five hundred minimum, and I remember thinking nobody would pay that. We also got into the math of a dream life, actually sitting down and calculating what yours costs per month, because it's almost always less than the number you're chasing. And something a very wealthy friend told me that stuck: prioritizing one thing always means sacrificing another, and he'd left tens of millions on the table for his marriage and his kids.
The Process with Jeff Sherman
A short, dense one. Jeff asked good questions about the mechanics of growth, so we got into engagement rates and why maintaining two to three percent matters more than the follower number itself, and why a DJ and a fitness coach need completely different growth strategies even though both want more followers. I also laid out the five phases I take clients through when we build a brand: getting intentional about how you want to be perceived, building the foundation, then attention, conversion, and retention. Most people skip straight to phase three and wonder why nothing converts.
Ecommerce Mastery with Ben Gothard
My second time on with Ben, and this one was entirely about branding. We broke it down into the pieces most people skip: keeping your profiles consistent across every platform so the story doesn't change depending on where someone finds you, building an email signature that sells for you while you sleep, getting a proper photo shoot done and putting those images on your site so they're what shows up when someone searches your name, and using press to shorten the sales conversation. I told him the truth about my business card, when someone flips it over and sees the Forbes logo, a twenty-minute pitch becomes a two-minute one. We also talked about having a persona you can step into, which I do. There's CEO Ryan White, and then there's whoever I am in the backyard with friends.
Future Millionaires with Gavin
My first interview in about a year, and the first time I talked publicly about the hard part. Instagram changed how their platform worked and most of my revenue disappeared inside of two months. I lost both of my accounts not long after, including the verified page with over six hundred thousand followers that had built my business and introduced me to my wife. Then I totaled the car. Gavin's audience is mostly young people just starting out, so I was honest with them about how I got there. I'd hit a goal and reset it before I'd even celebrated, over and over, until my own family told me I'd become unreachable. We covered the practical side too, how to vet a hire, how to build systems you can hand off, and how to price when you're new. But the part worth listening for is what happens after you lose it and have to decide what you're rebuilding for.
Growth Mindset University with Jordan Paris
Jordan pushed on the stuff most hosts don't ask about, including whether growth services are legitimate, so I walked him through how engagement pods evolved from fifteen-person Instagram DM groups into automated networks and why you have to be careful who you work with. We also got into social proof as leverage, how a conversation that used to take me an hour now takes ninety seconds because of the follower count and the Forbes credential. I gave up my actual screen time numbers too, which was uncomfortable, though only 53 minutes of it was Instagram because I don't scroll. And I told him something I've mostly kept quiet: I met my wife through an Instagram DM.
Young Smart Money with Apple Crider
Apple's audience skews young, a lot of listeners still in school trying to figure out what they want to do, so we spent real time on that. I gave four questions for anyone who's stuck: what would you do if you didn't have to work, what do people compliment you on, what do your enemies say about you, and what does a personality test tell you. The rest was the Instagram foundation, why your bio is your resume, and how I finally got over hiring people. That was the hardest part for me, believing anyone would care about the business as much as I did.
The Millennial Movement with Ricky
Ricky and I are close in age and he'd dropped out of college himself, so we spent a lot of this on whether the degree was worth it. Mine was in accounting, cost me forty to fifty thousand in loans, and I hated the work. I don't tell people not to go, some paths require it, but I'd have started earlier if I could do it again. We also went through the partner-agency model in detail, and I explained the name: revelation means making known an unknown truth, which is exactly what we do for brands nobody's heard of yet. Then Ricky asked whether money buys happiness and I gave him the marginal utility answer.
Impact My City
This one went deeper into identity than any other interview I've done. We talked about how you actually build the image you want people to see, and I was honest about how deliberate it was. I changed my haircut. I bought my first suit ever, two of them actually, because I had back-to-back interviews and couldn't wear the same one twice. I started reaching out to every show that would have me and did over forty interviews in five months. None of that was accidental. We also covered the two businesses that failed before this one, the axe rule, the 33% rule, and my wife talking me off the ledge when I was convinced Social Revelation was going to be failure number three.
Manos Accelerator with Juan Felipe Campos
The shortest interview I've done and probably the most practical. Juan wanted the actual playbook for founders and startups, so we skipped the backstory and went straight into it. Get clear on what you want to be known for and make your bio read like a resume. Break your feed into columns so posting stays consistent instead of waiting for inspiration. Then figure out whose followers you'd steal if you could, and go spend your time in that community. Juan also made a point I liked: most people are consumers on the platform when they need to be creators.
The Project Egg Show with Ben Gothard
Ben asks questions nobody else does, starting with what my childhood smelled like, which took me a second. Pine straw, for the record. He was more interested in where I came from than what I've built, so we spent real time on my parents both being educators, why everyone in a town of 3,300 assumed we were the rich family, and what my dad drilled into me as a coach's son. Then he had me walk through my actual growth strategy live, using his own podcast as the example, and we got into the partner-agency model that let me run 600 clients with two assistants.
Underdog Empowerment with Zachary Babcock
Zach's whole show is built around people with the odds against them, so he wanted the messy parts. I told him about my first two business ideas, both terrible. One was an Instagram account called Live Dream Inspire where I posted motivational quotes over images so bad they were never going to work, and the other was three months selling doTERRA oils out of a local boutique. We also covered why your bio is your resume, why Instagram was the platform to be on, and the advice I'd give my younger self: reach out to the people way above you, but do it properly, with something of value, not "hey bro, can I get a shoutout."
Respect the Grind with Stefan Aarnio
Stefan's show is about what it actually takes, and he pushed harder than most. We went deep on the numbers behind the baseball job, thirty-seven thousand in merchandise revenue before I took over the social accounts and a hundred and twenty thousand after. I told him about the nights researching until one or two in the morning after finishing lessons, and how I started the company with twenty-five hundred dollars and clients paying five and ten bucks because I needed testimonials more than I needed money. We also got into the part I care most about, positioning, and why if someone lands on your page and can't tell who you are in three seconds you've already lost them.
The Millionaire's Hot Seat with Melissa Kvatek
The format here is ten questions in thirty minutes, so Melissa moved fast and asked things most hosts don't. We covered how I vet people before letting them into my inner circle, why I'd rather focus on what my partners and I agree on than argue over what we don't, and how I split my time between work and the weekends I keep for family. She also got me talking about fear, which I don't usually admit to. Before my first TV appearance I sat in the house blasting Grant Cardone for an hour just to get myself in the car. Public speaking is the next thing I have to push through.
The Success Journey Show with Ricky Venters and Marlin Madden
Ricky and Marlin wanted the part of the story people skip. They pointed out that everyone sees the car and the clean-cut photos and assumes I've had a golden life, so I took them back to being 21, making eleven dollars an hour as a bank teller with forty grand in student debt, genuinely wondering if my best days were behind me. From there we got into what actually changed things: the axe analogy for effort and consistency, the 33% rule for who you spend your time with, and why entrepreneurship gets lonely when you veer off the path everyone else is on. We also talked storytelling, which is the thing most people miss about social media.
Business All Stars with Sean Kelly
Sean was launching his show and had me on as his first guest, which meant we got into the operator side more than usual. He runs Jersey Champs, so we compared notes on the same mistake: I ran everything myself for a year and a half because I didn't think anyone would care about the business the way I did. That was the real bottleneck, not sales. We talked about what changed when I finally hired, the automate-eliminate-delegate framework, why we keep an 87% retention rate by staying premium instead of chasing volume, and what a normal day actually looks like for me.
The Daily Grind with Colin Morgan
Colin's show runs five days a week for people who are actually putting in the work, so we spent most of it on the doing rather than the theory. I walked through the nights I spent from nine to midnight researching after finishing instruction at eight, and why my first two months produced almost nothing because I had no clear target. The part I liked best was the axe analogy: effort gets you swinging, consistency means you hit the same spot every day, sharpening the axe is the reading and the podcasts, and then you still have to accept that the tree takes as long as it takes.
Business Blast with Tyler Wagner
Tyler opened by asking for the best story from my life, and I went with how my fiancée and I met, which is really a story about persistence. She stood me up on our first date. Three or four weeks of me not taking the hint later, she finally agreed to LongHorn Steakhouse in Warner Robins. From there we got into the stuff that actually runs parallel to that: taking massive action, why I built the whole company through partnerships instead of going it alone, and the false security of a paycheck someone else controls. I also talked about pick one mentor and stick with them, and why going a thousand miles wide keeps you an inch deep.
The No Excuses Show with John Danes
John and I got into personal branding and why so few people treat it seriously. We talked about Instagram as the platform I built everything on, how Social Revelation came together, and the mindset side of it, investing in yourself, the people you keep around you, and why consistency beats intensity every time.
Wisdom Square with David
A completely different kind of interview. David's show is about how entrepreneurs actually eat, and he walked me through my day, which is mostly coffee, no breakfast, and whatever I can get delivered while I'm buried in client work. I was honest about it. My business is thriving and my nutrition is the thing I've let slide. We got into why healthy food never seems to taste good, what happens to your body when you go back to pizza after cutting it out, and where I want to be by 30.
Entrepreneurs on Fire with John Lee Dumas
John had me on for an audio master class on Instagram, and we covered a lot of ground. We started with the basics, how to write a bio that actually converts and the email mistake that gets people hacked, then got into my three-tier hashtag system and how posting frequency should change depending on your follower count. I shared the Stories trick I stumbled onto where you hide hashtags behind a poll, talked about why IGTV was wide open at the time, and closed with the five ways I've actually made money on the platform.
Blast the BS with Heather Christian, Episode 41
Heather asked how the agency grew so fast, and I told her the part most people don't expect: I ran all 600 clients by myself, out of a two-bedroom apartment in Warner Robins, until about four months before we recorded. We got into why I stayed focused on Instagram instead of chasing every platform, the advice from my mentor Andy Burris that I still follow, and how a musician I met at the gym went from 4,000 followers to 35,000 and landed his first brand deal off the back of it.
TV Interviews & Media Conversations
Park City TV, The Mountain Morning Show
A morning show segment filmed in Park City. We covered how I got into social media marketing in the first place, running the accounts for a baseball company and realizing I could do the same thing for myself. I explained the targeting approach that actually made it work: figuring out where my audience already was, engaging with people who followed accounts like MLB, and pulling that traffic back to my page. We also talked about the first month or two when nothing happened and I started doubting whether I was the right face for any of it, and why zero to ten thousand followers is the hardest stretch you'll ever do.
Design Talk Live with Joseph Hacker
I came on this one with my cousin Jennifer Cheek to talk about building personal brands in the influencer space. Fair warning, the tech gave us trouble and the audio is rough in places, but the conversation is worth sticking with. Jennifer broke down the unglamorous side nobody talks about, that landing brand deals is really just sales and repetition, sending DMs and hunting down media contacts until someone says yes. We also got into the follower milestones that actually change things and where public speaking fits into all of it.
Good Morning LaLa Land, Wealth Wednesday
A quick studio interview about how the agency actually got built. I talked about the partner model, nine agencies collaborating under one umbrella in 18 months, and what I look for before I'll work with anyone. We also went back to the beginning, leaving my job as a private baseball instructor in 2017, and why I think clients need to know where they're going before they hire anyone to get them there.
Speaking & Summits
Re-Write Your Narrative Summit
This is the one where I told the part I'd never told on air before. Everyone sees the private baseball instructor who built a seven-figure company in two years, so Christian asked about the journey and I took it further back than usual. I graduated in 2012 with an accounting degree I didn't want, hated both internships, and ended up working a bank drive-thru in Jefferson City, Tennessee for eleven dollars an hour. Six months of coloring books between customers, wondering if the best part of my life was already behind me at 22. I moved back in with my parents. We got into how I climbed out of that, the 33% rule I use for who I spend time around, and why the snowball only moves if you give it that first push.
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