AVOID THIS TRAP! Why You Should RAISE Your Prices, Not Lower Them

“I believe if you want to increase your sales, you should increase your price.” On this episode of The Small Business Show, host Swire Ho and I discuss the paradox of the “price trap.” So many small business owners think that the best way to compete is to lower prices, figuring they can raise their prices on referral business. But there’s a big problem with that strategy, as I reveal in the interview.

The counterintuitive, better approach is to be the premium solution in your niche - to describe your client’s problem even better than they can, to the point where they assume you have the solution. At that point, price becomes almost immaterial.

We also talk about:

• What McDonald’s and Ruth’s Chris have in common … at least, in terms of marketing.
• The types of businesses that actually don’t need to focus on marketing.
• Why the marketplace could produce a free car, and there would still be some people who won’t take it.
• The fastest way to failure in any business.
• Why we should be optimistic for 2021.

About the Show: Swire Ho is the host of the The Small Business Show.

Full Transcript

_{Swire Ho: Hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Swire from Garuda Promo. My guest today is Dylan Ogline. He is a digital marketing expert. And after growing his agency into seven figures, he’s generating over a million-dollar sales annually, Dylan has turned his focus to help others start growing and own their hyper profitable digital agency. How are you doing, Dylan?}

_{Dylan Ogline: I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.}

_{Swire Ho: So you are the expert of the expert of digital marketing.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You set the expectations high there. The short little bio there you said I was a digital marketing expert, and I’m like, “Oh no, he’s really setting it high.” So I guess so. I don’t call myself. I don’t think I have it in my bio anywhere. If I do, I need to get rid of that, I don’t like consider myself an expert, but hey.}

_{Swire Ho: Well, it’s nice to be the expert in you field. But for the viewer who is listening right now, can you give us a quick bio, and especially how you got started in your entrepreneur journey?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure. Sure. I’m going to try to keep this like under a minute. So I started my first business when I was 14 selling cellphones on eBay. This was pre-iPhone so this is when all the good cellphones were made in Europe and whatnot. And somehow, some way like a wholesaler approved my application so I could get these European cellphones at wholesale cost, ship them to the United States, flip them on eBay and make like $50 to $100 a phone or something like that. So that was when I was 14, then shortly after that I dropped out of high school, and spent the next 12 or so years kind of bouncing around from one project to the next, getting absolutely nowhere. A negative if anything.}

_{And eventually at the end of 2016 I scrapped everything and just focused on one single thing, which was my digital agency, and then I took it further and I just focused on one service, which was digital marketing management. And things quickly ramped up, 2018 I believe was the first seven-figure year. We’ve maintained seven figures since then.}

_{Swire Ho: Nice.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Did I do it in under a minute? I think that was under a minute. I’m going to give myself credit for that one.}

_{Swire Ho: And, obviously, with your background and then especially one other question that we want to focus on today is you said marketing is the number one thing that a business should be focusing on. Why is that important? Especially we are in this last week almost the end of December. Why is it important in a COVID world where everything seems like it’s done virtually?}

_{Dylan Ogline: So really it’s about being able to buy growth. A lot of folks, they kind of come into marketing and they’re thinking of like the old ways of doing marketing. You do a newspaper ad, or you have a billboard, or you do TV ads, and those things just aren’t trackable. It’s very difficult to track specifically how much of your growth came from those things. And it’s difficult to scale up in most case. But with digital market, you can track nearly perfectly. You can say, “I spent $872 and I got $1,600 back in sales.” Like you could track it very effectively.}

_{And then in most cases, you can scale up, basically infinitely. This is groundbreaking. I mean anybody in the digital marketing space has known this stuff for years, but there’s still a lot of business owners that just don’t grasp how important that stuff is. Once you get it figured out, whether it’s Facebook ads, Google ads, YouTube ads, once you get these things figured out, you remove the question of how can I get more growth, and then you can focus on things like delivering your services. How can I streamline operations and things like that.}

_{If I’m adding a new person to my team you’re not really worried about the revenue as much because, hey, I know I can just increase my marketing and I can double my sales or something like that. Again, it allows you to remove the question of where is growth coming from and you literally have the ability to just buy the growth. You’re not questioning like how are we going to put ourselves on the map? How are we going to grow? The question is answered.}

_{Swire Ho: So let me ask you this question. And I think some of small business owners think of it this way. For example, I see my dentist, Dr. Ambley, and then being in marketing I ask her, “How do you market your business?” She kind of nervously laughed. “I never do that. I never place on any ads and people call me from Yelp. I never talk to them.” But then she gets really good business even with this time she’s able to plan out her agency. I think a lot of small business owners think like that. They’ve been in business for a long time, and they are known in the local area, so they don’t really focus on marketing at all, none, spend zero dollars. How would you suggest to them and how would we make the case to see even though you have decent success, you should still consider marketing?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well, first, I would say if you’re not necessarily interested in growth, then it shouldn’t be a priority. There are a ton of business owners out there who they do $200,000 a year in sales, $300,000, whatever. They don’t really want to grow. They’re a dentist office, as an example, they don’t want to have another location. They’re fully booked. They don’t want to scale the business up and take it any further. They just want to continue with the day to day, work on their operations, make things work more smoothly, and that’s it. And that’s totally fine.}

_{For those people, don’t focus on marketing. It should not be a focus at all because you don’t want to grow. But for those people who let’s say you have a dentist, and that dentist wants to add another location, or they’re sitting there thinking like, “Wow, like my one location does X amount of revenue, imagine if I had five locations, or ten locations.” In those situations, then yes, focusing on growth, focusing on the marketing is absolutely mission critical. Because then it allows you to make decisions with a clear head.}

_{I mentioned earlier like say you need to add a staff member. And this is especially critical for people that are really starting out. You need to add a staff member, well, that might double your expenses. Well, if you have no idea when the next meal’s coming in, when you’re going to get your next sale, you have no idea where people are coming from, it’s just random referrals, people randomly coming to you. Adding that person could be terrifying.}

_{If you’re that dentist, and maybe you’re fully booked, but you don’t know where all your customers are coming from. You don’t know how to add double your sales. The prospect of adding a second location will be terrifying because you don’t have control of it. But if you know that, hey, I can just add another zero to my Google ads, or simply double the budget, and I’ll be able to double my leads, it removes a lot of that fear factor and allows you to make better decisions.}

_{Swire Ho: I like your answer. Not a lot of marketing experts say you don’t need marketing if you don’t want to grow. And there are people who are happy with where they are.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely.}

_{Swire Ho: They have tons of business, or they want to scale down, or they are really just having a good time, having the amount of clients that they have. But then, like you said, if you are thinking about growing at least you know what kind of tool’s available. So in case maybe there’s certain months that are slower for whatever reason in your industry, then you can turn it up in the slow months, and then in your busy month then do whatever that you’re comfortable doing. So I think that’s really I don’t hear that a lot from marketing experts.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I just I believe in when it comes to sales, I never believe in convincing somebody. So I never want to convince somebody to use my service. Somebody should almost like flip it and they should almost be convincing you. So yeah, if somebody doesn’t want to grow, and they’re very happy with where their business is at, then no, there’s no reason to waste the resources, waste your time working on something that doesn’t fit up with you as the business owner, you set the schedule, you set the direction of where you want the business to go. If you have no interest in 10xing your revenue, that’s 100% fine. And there are a ton of people out there who are totally fine with where they’re at.}

_{Swire Ho: So that brings me to another question. Especially during COVID right now, some of us are forced to cut our revenue, and some just couldn’t open their door. And when we think about wanting more sales, the first thing to come to mind is lower our pricing. So I wanted to get your take on low price versus value, especially during the difficult times that we’re in right now.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So I don’t know where I want to go with that. So value-based pricing is simply charging what you’re worth. For some reason, especially those who have no marketing, they have no channel set up to bring in more leads, more customers, more clients, more patients, whatever. The first kind of thought that comes to mind is to lower your price. And there’s just numerous problems with that.}

_{You never want to be the low end solution provider. You want to be the high end solution provider. Typically, the customers or clients are easier to work with, there’s a higher profit margin, you deliver a better quality product or service. When you lower your pricing, you’re automatically lowering the expectations too. But naturally, the customer doesn’t understand that. If you were delivering $100 solution before, and you cut your price to $50, people still expect that $100 solution but now you’re getting half the revenue for it. So maybe you increase your sales, great, but now you’re not going to be able to deliver the same quality, and none of your customers or clients are going to be happy. So it’s a very slippery slope.}

_{Especially for those that are starting out. You can get in what I call a price trap situation. And basically, what this is, and I see this mostly with service providers. Whether you’re a web designer, or a graphics designer, something like that you’re doing some kind of creative service delivery. In the beginning people are like, “Well, I’ll just really cut my prices to get people in the door, and then I’ll get referrals.” Which logically makes sense, but what happens is…}

_{Let’s choose the web designer as a specific example. So you cut your price in half and you deliver somebody a website for $1,000 that you would typically do for $2,000. So you do a great job, awesome, fantastic. So then other people see that person’s website and they contact them. First question is always, “Who did it for you?” The second question is always, “How much did they charge?” So now you have these referrals that you’re relying on to grow your business because you don’t have any marketing set up, you’re just focusing on referrals and word of mouth. You have these people that are coming to you with a certain price point in mind. So then you end up trapped in that price because everybody’s coming thinking, “Oh, they charge $1,000 for a website,” in this specific example.}

_{This can also work for photographers, plumbers, any kind of home improvement service providers, any kind of service type business I see this all the time where they get trapped in these low prices. And you can’t double your pricing, your can’t increase your pricing because the person’s coming in with a certain price point in mind. So it’s very slippery slope, don’t do it. It’s very tempting. It’s counterintuitive. I actually believe if you want to increase your sales you should actually increase your price, which sounds crazy, but it works.}

_{Swire Ho: Yeah, I think that’s a really true statement. Sometimes it’s scary to do though.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s absolutely terrifying.}

_{Swire Ho: Yeah, when you think about it, like you said if you’re expecting a certain type of price, then you get people from all those groups. But then it’s scarier you might get less clients, but then if you charge what you’re really worth, you’re working with projects that you actually engage, right? They’re a meaningful client. They have the right expectations. And if you have to throw in maybe an extra hour or maybe an extra freebie, you can afford to. If you have razor thin margins, then you can’t really afford to do anything.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely.}

_{Swire Ho: So I hate to have people come back to us because, initially on paper, we are a little bit more than other clients. But then every single thing that you wanted to do in addition, they charge you. So end up the bill is being added up, so reversing to the consumer level too, you’ve got to get into someone really cheap, but then the industry standard you all have the same thing.}

_{For example, let’s say buying a car. The car is there, there’s a base price, why is it so low from one person? Is it because every single thing-- the carpet, the headlights-- or whatever it is that they add up end up you walking out sticker price is like $15,000 more than if you were someone starting at a higher price. Could be, like you said, the website too. These are industry standard. Things that you got to have. If I stripped out all from it, it would be a lot cheaper than my competitor. But then every little thing that I know that you’re going to need are going to be $500 more, $500 more.}

_{Because when we are buying, me too, I want to focus on the bottom price, but then at the end I don’t want the cheapest guy out there and I know what I can expect for the cheaper. Unless it’s I’m buying something at a supermarket, then I’ll go for the cheaper one maybe, that’s me.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I would also argue this is the importance of niching down and getting specific in your market. Ideally, you’re not competing with anybody. The worst thing to do is compete with people on price, but ideally, you have a very specific solution, a very specific product or service that solves the end customer’s problem. And if you have that, and it’s very specific, and you’re the only one in the marketplace, then the price doesn’t particularly… It’s not that the price doesn’t matter, but you don’t want the price to be the determining factor.}

_{So it’s better to get very specific with your product or service and solve a very specific problem. And then charge a premium price for it that is value-based. And if you’re not competing and you can describe the problem that the customer’s having better than they can, they will automatically assume that you have the solution. You put all of those things together you’re in a much better position than somebody that’s competing with ten other companies all providing the same product or service and customers are just looking for the cheapest price.}

_{And more thing on prices. The truth is, is that it’s a race to the bottom, and there is no bottom. Because you were talking about cars as an example. You could create a car that you give away for free. A free car. And there will still be a certain percentage of the market that doesn’t want your solution. That the money doesn’t matter and they’re willing to pay for a Rolls Royce or a Lamborghini. So your car being free being a $300,000 car, that doesn’t matter to them.}

_{Whereas so many people they come in, they think, “Well, the price is the only thing that matters, and if I’m the lowest cost option, 100% of people will want my solution, my product, or my service.” That’s not true. You will never, ever get 100% market. And the fastest way to failure is to try and appease 100% of the market, but you absolutely can’t. It’s better to focus on maybe 3%, 4%, 5% of the market that is looking to pay for the premium service, the premium product, the premium solution and just focus on those people. They’re typically much better to work with, they know they have a problem, they’re looking for a solution to it, and then you have high margins. It’s a much better way to do it than the race to the bottom. 100% of the time.}

_{Swire Ho: Yeah. 100% agree. And I think a lot of people will buy for price, but a lot of people will also buy from the best, from the experts. So that’s how marketing comes in. So you’ve got to know, like you said, you can’t target everyone. Everyone needs to go to a dentist at some point. But then there are different requests. And maybe you’re scared of the dentist, would you go for the cheapest dentist or a dentist that knows and treats their clients, patients delicately? If you can afford it then… Let’s put it this way, I’ll go to the one that’s the best that I can afford. I won’t go to the cheapest ever, right, because you are cheap.}

_{Even if you’re a restaurant, if you’re a supermarket, there are supermarkets that I go to that are higher prices, but then they have the best seafood, they have the best organic produce, or whatever that [inaudible 19:14] your business. There are always places for being the best. And, like you, being the expert, people like to go to an expert as much as they can. Free, right, there are people online right now on Facebook or Craigslist, they will do your project or free just to build on the portfolio. But then when you have free…}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s probably not going to be a good situation. Not going to be happy at the end.}

_{Swire Ho: Where would you go to? It depends. And, obviously, you’ve got to know who your markets are, and if you’re marketing to the right people that can afford your product and then they have the right expectations of what you’re offering, then it won’t be a mess and that’s how marketing will come in.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. And there’s so many examples out there. You could look at restaurants, you could look at like a Ruth’s Chris versus McDonald’s. It’s a meal, you’re going to get the same amount of calories. Like that’s what we eat for, so why would you go to Ruth’s Chris and spend $100 when you can go to McDonald’s and spend $2? Why would you do that? Because you want an experience, you want a certain high quality. Why would you go to Starbucks and spend $4 when you can go to McDonald’s here again and spend $1.25 on a cup of coffee? Why do you do that? Because you’re wanting a certain quality, you’re looking for the best, you also could add an experience as well, but the customer experience.}

_{Cars, I used the example you could have a free car and there will still be a percentage of the market that is not interested in your solution that is looking for the absolute best. I mean, obviously, there is no free car, but look at like a Chevy, I think they still make the Chevy Cruze, which is like a $12,000 car. Well, that does the exact same thing as a Mercedes S Class. It goes forward, it goes back, it turns left, it goes right, it has four wheels, it has four doors, like it can hold the same number of people. Why would somebody spend ten times as much on the Mercedes versus the Chevy? It’s experience. You like the experience of the interaction of the dealership. You were looking for quality, you want the absolute best. And Mercedes is making a lot more per vehicle than Chevy is.}

_{It’s a lot easier to be the high end better and the best solution provider than it is to be the cheapest. And it also it forces you to provide a better quality service. You’re not hiding behind those low prices. I’ve talked about hits before where when you are the cheap solution, you almost are subconsciously you’re like, “Well, what did you expect? You went with the cheapest option.” But if you’re more expensive, you’re holding yourself accountable to delivering high quality products or services, which always delivers a happier client, and just a better way to do things 100% of the time.}

_{Swire Ho: I think you also brought up a good point, you brought up McDonald’s and Ruth’s Chris. Both companies know who hey are targeting to. McDonald’s is easy meal, anywhere in the world you can expect the same thing from a McDonald’s.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Quick and cheap. Yup.}

_{Swire Ho: Ruth’s Chris, if you want a luxury experience, fine dining, then you go to Ruth’s Chris. I think for a small business owner it’s the business do not know who they want to target and they try to target, like you said, everybody. McDonald’s and Ruth’s Chris don’t target everyone. They’re really specific in reaching out their demographics. And that brings me to the next point, and you mentioned that if you want to be successful, you have to narrow your focus.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes.}

_{Swire Ho: So coming back to marketing, thinking in terms of a small business, knowing what we talked about the past 20 minutes, how would they develop that focus? If they haven’t thought about it and they wanted to get into marketing, obviously they need to focus. In small business we have limited budget, right? If we decided to do a marketing campaign we don’t have the capability or the financial to do a full-blown marketing. So how would they develop that focus and how would you suggest that they reach out to those target markets?}

_{Dylan Ogline: So a few things there. First is I’m going to presume this is a small business that’s already been a business for a few years. In that case, kind of just like look back on previous clients, previous customers, and say like, “Who were the best ones?” It was just a seamless transaction. I enjoyed working with them. If you’re a photographer, look back and you’ve done a bunch of different, all kinds of different photography services, look back and say, “Weddings, I really enjoyed doing weddings.” There was a high profit margin, the people were great to work with. Or maybe it’s senior photos. I don’t know a lot about photography here so I’m struggling, but it could be senior photos. You look back and you say, “Aw, I’ve done a lot of senior photos, and the parents are great to work with, there was a high profit margin,” things like that.}

_{Look back on previous clients that you’ve worked with and try to figure out like what are the similarities there. Typically if you’re doing say, I mentioned web design, maybe look back and say, “I’ve done a bunch of websites for dentists’ offices and those clients tended to be the best.” Typically you should be able to narrow it down to some kind of industry, or vertical, or niche. Dentist office, senior photos, weddings, something like that. Just look for those common similarities there and then take it one step further and say like what was the solution that they were specifically looking for? Or how could I define the problem that that person was looking to solve?}

_{So, again, I don’t know a lot about photographers here, but I kind of already went with that example. Photographers, you could reach out to couples that they want memories to last a lifetime. That’s probably a good headline for you right there. So your ideal client is couples getting married who are looking to make a very memorable day. There are some people looking just for like the cheapest solution to get married in, and then there’s some people who are looking to spend money that I want this to be the best day of my life. So they’re looking for memories that last a lifetime.}

_{Just looking for similarities there is definitely the best thing to do. And the more specific, the more niched down, the more narrow you can get the better. I had mentioned earlier when you can define the problem better than the end customer can, they will automatically presume that you have the solution. I’m going to give one other example here and then I want to jump back to something you said about cost. For me, my agency, we work with a lot of like home service providers. Plumbing and heating companies is an example I always use. If I’m looking to onboard new clients, if I’m looking for client attraction, I don’t have on my landing page, I don’t reach out to plumbing and heating companies and say, “We help businesses with their marketing.” Nobody cares about that. A landing page would say something like, “We specifically help plumbing and heating companies grow and get more install projects with direct response digital marketing solutions.”}

_{So a few things there. I’m talking I specifically help you. Imagine if you’re a plumbing and heating company, and you’re reading that. This landing page is speaking directly to me. It’s saying that this company specifically helps my industry. And then I go even further. I talk about they’re looking to get more install projects. Well, I figured that out because I looked at previous clients that I worked with, I noticed a lot of plumbing and heating companies, and I had industry insight to know that plumbing and heating companies they make more money off of install projects. So that marketing is extremely targeted and extremely specific. And I’m defining the problem better than they can. They don’t want just more clients, they want more install projects. So they just automatically assume that I have the solution for them.}

_{That’s a perfect example. One other thing you mentioned, especially with small businesses, they have a limited budget. And you talked about like full-blown marketing and whatnot. A lot of folks get the misconception or have the misconception that they think they need $10,000 to start doing Facebook ads or $10,000 to start doing Google ads. You could start with just like ten bucks a day. You’re probably not going to turn a profit your first time, but just getting your feet wet, and starting, and investing in it, and starting to learn it, and get better and better, you don’t want to wait until you have $10,000 in cash sitting around.}

_{And most of the time if you just get a few fundamentals right, you’re probably going to be able to at least break even or come close to breaking even. So maybe you spend $1,000 your first month. Which, I know, this might sounds like a lot. Let’s go with $500. You spend $500 your first month. You might only get back $400 in sales. That’s still really good. Like you only lost $100 and it was your first at bat. You’re not going to hit a homerun your first at bat. So maybe you spent $500 and you got back $400 in sales. So then the next month you spend $500 and maybe you get back $450 and then the month after that you spend $500 and you get back $500 and you break even.}

_{Like if you just continue to do that and get better and better and better, eventually you’ll get to the point where you spend $500 and you get $5,000 in sales. You don’t start at the top, but you don’t want to sit on your hands not doing anything, investing in your business, trying to get growth and let ten years go by until you randomly stumble upon $10,000. Because if you spend $10,000 your first month you’re probably still going to lose money. Does that makes sense?}

_{Swire Ho: Yeah, and I think in the beginning you mentioned something really correctly. If you’re trying to develop where your focuses are, look at your client list, look at your accounting system who have purchased from you for the past year. Which job or project you made the most money on? Who bought from you? What kind of industry that they’re in? Who was your point of contact? Are there anything that you did that were able to contribute to that profitable project?}

_{So once you figure it out and you have to do some work, right, to find your narrowing your focus. Try to call on those people. If they are buying from you, chances are if they’re in a similar industry, have similar problems, or maybe you solve for certain things that they couldn’t find anyone else to do, right? A service industry, if you can fix the teeth with no pain. If you are a construction company, you’re focusing on certain things that no one in your industry can do, then you’re the number one.}

_{Maybe you have such a niche that you didn’t know about but then you won’t know about it unless you really dig deep from your top ten. Everyone look at the top ten from 2020 who gave you the most business. If you can clone those people, even if you clone like top ten, you clone one of each of the top ten then you have top 20 that then you’re growing your business. And then once you have that information, then you can contact Dylan and let them know exactly who they are. Then your job will be a lot easier than if you would go to Dylan and say, “I want to start marketing. Where do I go?” Wouldn’t you agree with that statement?}

_{Dylan Ogline: 100%. Two things further. You are the business owner, you want to enjoy your business. So if you looked back at-- I used the photographer earlier-- don't look back and say, “Who did I make the most money from?” Because it might be wedding, but you absolutely hate doing weddings. So you don’t want to build your business around doing wedding photography if you absolutely hate weddings. Or senior photos, or newborn photos, like you want to look back and say, “Who were my top ten best clients? Who did I make the most money off of and who did I enjoy to work with?” And look for those similarities.}

_{And if you’re really struggling finding those similarities, it does not hurt to just pick up the phone, schedule a call with that person, or just send them an email and just say, “Hey, why did you go with me? What was it that stuck out?” And maybe you find that all of your clients liked just a style that you did with your website design, or if you’re a photographer, they all found you on Instagram, or something like that. Were like, “I loved your work on Instagram and that’s why I went with you.” Or you mentioned the dentist, which is funny, because the only dental ad I ever remember seeing was a billboard that talked about like people who were being scared. I don’t even remember how they did it, but it was for people who were scared of the dentist’s office.}

_{So probably what happened was is that dentist reached out to previous clients or just noticed that all of their patients kept mentioning like, “I saw your TV ad and it just made me feel so comfortable.” Or “Previous patients kept telling me how you made them feel so comfortable and so safe.” Things like that. So that can give you a little bit of guidance to say, “Hey, I noticed this similarity that like all of my good patients, patients that are happy with my service, they all mentioned that I made them feel safe.” And I don’t know what other adjectives to use here because I know nothing about the dental industry. But you made them feel comfortable, and maybe that’s what you run with.}

_{So, yeah, it does not hurt to reach out to previous people if you’re struggling a little bit. Send them a quick email. Give them a call. Most people are not going to have a problem just jumping on a five, ten minute phone call with you and just telling you why they ended up going wit your service or solution.}

_{Swire Ho: Yeah, and it’s always nice to check in with your current client too. People want that relationship. So it brings me to my final question for the show. We have had a very difficult year. I wish 2020 would be gone already. So what would you suggest? Any idea for us planning for next year in terms of marketing?}

_{Dylan Ogline: In terms of marketing. I’m going to kind of go at this in a different direction and I would say that for those of you out there who struggled, had a terrible year and whatnot, realize that the best companies, the best of times typically come after. It’s the changes that you make now that lead those people to have the best times afterwards. Like fantastic companies, the only ones that I can think of is like Campbell’s Soups because I just remember reading that story once. It was started during the Great Depression. Like you think 2020 was terrible, go back to the Great Depression, like study some history. And people saw the changes in the world were happening and they created great products or services.}

_{So don’t lose hope. Realize that when things are bad, it’s almost a good thing in the end, because it makes us better. So, yeah, just be optimistic I think is probably the most important thing. Realize that things will get better. They could always be worth. 2020 was bad but it wasn’t the worst year in the history of humanity. It was a dumpster fire, but things could always be worse.}

_{As far as marketing specifically, I really think just people need to focus on it. And I’m not even suggesting use a company like mine. Even if you’re just realizing the importance of it and realize that it is your responsibility to manage the growth of your company. Sure, that might sound scary, but it’s a whole heck of a lot better than just feeling like I don’t really know where people are coming from. So, but again it’s scary, but if you just accept that responsibility going into the new year, and you take the reigns with that, and you start to invest in it-- both your time and your resources no matter how limited-- in the end two years from now, next year, three years from now, you will be much better off. So stay positive and take control of your situation. That would be my advice going into 2021.}

_{Swire Ho: Great, Dylan. Thanks for all the great advice. So if you’re a listener wanted to reach out to you, what would be the best way?}

_{Dylan Ogline: My personal website: dylanogline.com.}

_{Swire Ho: Okay. I’ll put the show notes there, for anyone who want to reach out to Dylan, go ahead. And, Dylan, thank you so much for the information. I loved our topic and then I felt like that we could go on forever.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. It was great being here. Thanks so much for having me, man.}

_{Swire Ho: Take care. Bye.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Bye.}