If you’re not pissing people off, you’re not working hard enough
The Tingle Zone
November 11, 2020
“The world is changing faster and faster, and a lot of people are scared of that. But if people can see how quickly they can adapt, and how quickly they can get something new going … they don’t have to spend four years at school and ten years in an entry-level job.” In this episode of The Tingle Zone, Andrew Miller and I discuss the ripple effects of a purpose-filled life. I talk extensively about my coaching program, where I discovered how much more fulfilling it could be to help students than to help clients. Doubling a company’s revenue from $1 million to $2 million is cool, but changing someone’s monthly income from $3,000 to $6,000 changes their life.
We devote a rare amount of breath to online haters — those glorious, well-adjusted people who see my ads and assume I’m a scammer. People who have never met me or taken my program, and yet they leave random comments like “I knew you were a fraud from Day One!” Um … who even are you? It goes to show — if you aren’t stirring up some controversy, your product or service isn’t disruptive enough. Kick it up a notch!
We also discuss:
- The one change that shot my business to six figures in four months, after twelve years of spinning my wheels.
- Why I will be forever grateful for my mentor telling me what an idiot I was being.
- How I have no idea which cultural references translate to Andrew as a Briton.
- Another kick to the teeth to Boomers, and why Millenials are happier than they are despite less income.
About the Show: Andrew Miller is the host of The Tingle Zone.
Full Transcript
Andrew Miller: Hi, this is Andrew Miller from Business Enjoyment, and this is another episode of The Tingle Zone. In this episode, I’m talking with Dylan Ogline, who as well as running his own successful digital marketing agency, also teaches others how to do exactly the same. Dylan’s a long-term entrepreneur, starting his first business at the age of 15. Things were going so well for him he dropped out of high school, which meant that he didn’t have much to fall back on when almost overnight he was forced to stop trading.
From there he bounced around doing whatever he could to pay the bills. And due to a combination of shiny object syndrome and the curse of perfectionism, nothing else really got off the ground. Dylan found himself overworked, overstressed, and at the same time, utterly broke making nothing, going nowhere. All of a sudden, the right person came along, gave him a metaphorical slap around the face, and told him the one thing he needed to hear. Overnight Dylan changed, found his focus, and within two years his agency was making seven figures.
And now knowing what it’s like to be in that position, Dylan’s mission is to help as many people avoid the traps that he fell into. He helps people to get out of the jobs they don’t enjoy, gives them the confidence and the tools to realize that they can start a new business, get that business up and running, and actually start making decent money. And they in turn help other companies to grow bigger, to grow faster, to grow better. He’s creating a tribe of people who now realize that whatever happens in the world, they know they can ride through it, and find a way to move forward without being impacted by those external factors. Because it doesn’t matter what happens out there, it’s what happens inside that counts.
Before we get our discussion underway, I would like to present you with a gift. If you go to my website, businessenjoyment.com, you will be able to download a free copy of my latest book More Than Just Money. In this book you find an explanation of the Business Enjoyment Model, learn how you can use it to find a solution to pretty much any problem you’re facing, and discover what I really mean when I say that I want you to enjoy your business so much it makes your bits tingle. Do check that out, but for now, sit back, relax, count your own blessings, and most of all, enjoy.
Dylan Ogline: Dylan Ogline’s the name, obviously, and I own a digital marketing agency called Ogline Digital, and we specialize in direct response digital marketing. And I’ve been doing that for several years, but over the last year or so, my focus has now shifted to my education company where I have a program called Agency 2.0 where I teach pretty much anybody. The goal is not specifically people in the marketing space, but soccer moms, new college students, all sorts of things, teach pretty much anybody how to start and grow their own digital marketing agency.
Andrew Miller: Brilliant. And how did you get to this point now? What’s your journey? Start where you want to start.
Dylan Ogline: Sure. Yeah, I’ll condense 12 years into hopefully two minutes or so.
Andrew Miller: 12 years? Wow.
Dylan Ogline: I’m only 31, but I’ve been “self-employed” since it’ll be 17 years because I started my first business when I was 14. That’s the first time I’ve like really grasped that it’s been 17. Has it really been 17 years? Wow, that really makes me feel old. I was not prepared for that. I’m going to be off balance for the rest of the show now.
Andrew Miller: You’ve been an entrepreneur longer than you weren’t.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. Wow, man, I need to go sign up for like AARP and all these retirement benefits.
Andrew Miller: I want to know about 14-year-old Dylan setting up his own business.
Dylan Ogline: Yes, yes. Started my first business when I was 14 selling cellphones. To give context, this was back pre-iPhone. iPhone wasn’t a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye yet. And in the United States all we had were like the clunky Nokia phones, and all the good phones were in Europe. Europe and Asia too, but I think like the really good stuff was coming from Europe. And I got my first cellphone when I was like 13 or whatever, and I like saw online. I wanted like the coolest tech.
And I just started looking into it, I think I bought my first one on eBay, and then like I got the package and it said like who it came from, and I just looked it up. And long story short, I ended up signing up to be a wholesaler with this like European company, right? And I don’t even know how they approved me, but what it was is I could simply buy these European cellphones at wholesale cost, ship them to the United States, pay the tariffs or whatever, and then flip them on eBay, and make like $100, $150 a phone.
That was the first business. And I did that for probably less than a year. I was making like $2,000 a month or so, which when you’re like 14, 15 is all the money in the world. Bill Gates was asking me for financial advice at the time. And so that eventually got shut down, not the business, but my credit card processor shut me down because they found out I was under the age of 18. I was like, “Oh, I can’t accept payments anymore,” and that becomes a problem.
Andrew Miller: The fact that they were actually making something out of it, the fact that everybody was happy, the fact that it was running is neither here nor there.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, that didn’t matter. It was probably around like tax time or something because like credit card processors, they have to send you a tax form. And I was like, “What do you mean taxes?” I had hired an accountant, but I was like I gave him my like social, and my date of birth, and I think they flagged that, so they shut me down.
Andrew Miller: Your problem then would be doing things properly, you see. Was following the rules.
Dylan Ogline: Following the rules got caught up with me.
Andrew Miller: I’m intrigued because there’s not that many people that sort of at 14 do these sort of things. I mean what’s your family thinking, what’s your friends’ thinking. I’m presuming that you obviously you didn’t need to pay because of credit cards, so funding was done through that, I guess.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah.
Andrew Miller: But what were people thinking when you did this and what made you the person to say, “Hey, I’m going to set your own business up,” even though given the opportunity they won’t do it.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, so nobody was negative. Well, actually, let me correct myself. My teachers like in school, they were really negative. Once it started to get some traction, and like I had all this work to do, I ended up like skipping school every Friday. I don’t even know how I convinced my parents to let me do this, but I started skipping school every Friday to get caught up on work. And obviously I would tell the teachers, I’d be like, “I’m not coming in tomorrow.” They’d be like, “What?” And I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to be sick.” They knew.
They were really negative about it, but my family was supportive. Other than teachers, nobody was negative. And I think it was because at the time, I was looking to college, even though I was 14 or 15, I was looking towards college, and I was looking to get into business, get a business degree, maybe some day get an MBA, which is in case you don’t know because you’re in the UK is a master's in business administration.
Andrew Miller: We have MBA, by the way, but yeah.
Dylan Ogline: Oh, you do. I ended up not going to college and I ended up dropping out of high school, so like I don’t know what other countries do they know what MBAs are? I don’t even know the answer to that. Yeah, so my family was like, “Oh, he’s starting his own business now. He’s getting traction.”
Andrew Miller: Were they business owners? Did they have entrepreneurial--
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah. My brother’s self-employed, my parents were at the time as well.
Andrew Miller: You’re set up in a context where this is actually more the norm.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, I was surrounded by business owners. I also at the same time was dating a girl and her dad was the president or like vice-president of a big company in the area, so I was just surrounded with people who owned their own business or were in business, and it sparked the entrepreneurial bug, I guess.
Andrew Miller: I get it. It makes sense. Okay, so that shuts down.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, so that shuts down actually after I had dropped out of high school. Because what happened was so I was like, “Okay, I really like business.” It was tenth grade, I went to start taking all these business classes, and at the time I had probably read like three or four business books. It’s not like I have a huge amount of business education. But I remember like they would just be talking about the most basic concepts like you need to pay attention to how much money you’re making. And then it was just like so basic.
And I’m sitting there and I’m like, “Why am I wasting my time? I already know this stuff and I’ve read one or two books about this.” And then it really hit me whenever the teachers would be talking about something, and I would raise my hand, and I’d be like, “Actually, what you’re talking about is like ten years ago. They’ve completely changed the laws.” I don’t know if you have limited liability companies in the UK, but here in the States there’s multiple different types of limited liability companies, and they were basically teaching that there’s only corporations. This is a really silly example, but I remember it was like, “What about like an LLC? Or an LLP? Or like a series LLC? Or all this stuff,” and they were like, “What?”
Andrew Miller: Geez.
Dylan Ogline: I was also very rebellious, so yeah. I convinced my parents. I was like, “Listen, I’m not getting a good education here. Let me take homeschooling.” And I had to pay for it, and everything, cost me like $2,000 or $3,000, and sure enough, they let me do the homeschooling, I had to buy all the books. And I’m like, “Look, I can get all this work done, and then I can go at my own pace with education.” And they’re like, “Oh, okay, Dylan. Yeah, sure, sure, go ahead and do that.” And I never opened any of the books, never took any of the tests, none of it. It sat in a box. I don’t even think I ever even opened the box. I think I eventually just threw the box away with all the books.
Eventually the cellphone business gets shut down, but during that time I kind of picked up some “web design skills.” I kind of transitioned to kind of doing that. And yeah, so fast forward 12 years, and during that 12 years between say 15 and 2016 or whatever, I bounced around doing basically whatever it was that I could to pay the bills. It was always kind of like in the background. It was a lot of web design, or if you needed a logo, it was doing digital agency work, even though I didn’t own a digital agency. Like I was just this creative guy doing stuff.
And I had way too many business projects. I certainly had shiny object syndrome. I was constantly chasing the newest thing, which is a bad idea. And, yeah, ended up having like ten-plus projects that I was working on that were going absolutely nowhere, up to my eyeballs in debt, didn’t know what a vacation was, overstressed. And I had a conversation with a long-term mentor, just he gave me the advice to scrap everything and just focus on one thing, and within two years, the one thing I focused on was the digital agency, and within two years, the agency hit seven figures. I just really condensed 12 years of just absolute pain and terribleness into 30 seconds.
Andrew Miller: Not really getting the fullness there. There’s a couple of questions that come out of that. Let’s delve into the pain a little bit.
Dylan Ogline: Sure.
Andrew Miller: Were you aware of it, if that makes sense? Because we’re good at tolerating being in that sort of pain, if you know what I mean. Obviously, we’re aware aware, but you know how we sort of just put up with it?
Dylan Ogline: To me the pain was that I felt like I was spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere. And that’s what I would describe it as, which is a very common feeling that people can relate to. And it’s now I look back on it and hindsight’s 20/20 obviously, and I can say, it was because I was doing too many things, I wasn’t getting actually good at anything, I wasn’t focused. I always talk about focus, focus, focus. And it was one of those things here like the solution was right in front of my face. But because it was right in front of my face, I couldn’t see it.
I was very well aware of it. And I knew at the time too, I also knew like dude, no wonder you’re not getting anywhere because you never actually get anything off the ground because you’re bouncing around from all these different projects. And it was just simply desperation, and I was so desperate that it blinded me. And then I just needed somebody to slap me in the face, call me an idiot, and be like, “Hello, the solution’s right in front of you. Do this.” And that was it.
Andrew Miller: You said you had a long-term mentor, so you were frequently having conversations with this person?
Dylan Ogline: No. No. It was just somebody who I hadn’t heard from him in several years. He was like one of my first. And I hate using that term mentor, he’s just like a person in my area who I met who also owned businesses, was older than me, and was successful. And he was just like an early person who I would bounce ideas off of. When he called me end of 2016, October, November-ish 2016, it was out of the blue, and we caught up with each other, and I lied to him. I was like, “Oh yeah, things are great, working on all this stuff.” Eventually I admitted that that was BS, that wasn’t true, and I was like, “I’m miserable. My life is terrible. I don’t know what sleep is. I don’t know what a vacation is. I’m making nothing. I’m getting nowhere.”
And yeah, literally that night, I remember where I was. I was walking on the sidewalk in front of my house, it was cold, and I remember what I was looking at when I was having that conversation with him. Like it’s right in front of me what I was looking at. And because it was that life changing. And such simple silly advice: focus on one thing. Don’t do ten different things. The man who chases many rabbits catches none. It’s such simple advice, but it was just what I needed, it was a slap in the face.
And literally that night I went downstairs to my freezing basement office where I didn’t have a chair. This is so embarrassing, I had a five-gallon bucket of dry wall compound. It’s a construction supply. Like you put it on drywall, right? And that was what my chair was, and I just I went downstairs, sat on that chair, and just deleted everything that night. If it wasn’t making like a couple hundred bucks a month, I just deleted it.
And then I started to work on the agency. But then I took it even further. It was okay, I’m just going to focus on the agency. I’m also just going to focus on one particular service. The high-margin, profitable service, which was digital ad management. And then of course like perfectionist me, I’m like, “Oh, I need to get a logo, and I need to get a website, and then I need to get a professional voiceover for my phone system.” Like all these things crept in and I was like, “No.” Like I ruthlessly fought that perfectionism to keep it lean, mean, and scrappy. I didn’t even have a website. I hit seven figures in 2018, 2019 we did seven figures as well. I think we’re already over seven figures this year. I didn’t have a website until the beginning of this year.
Andrew Miller: Wow.
Dylan Ogline: Because I just ruthlessly was like, “No.” Like that was my problem before. Now I’m probably oversimplify things, but yeah, that was it, it was just focus on one single high-profit margin business.
Andrew Miller: And you had that one conversation, which was the slap in the face, which sort of gave you the wake-up call at that point. But how were you able to retain the discipline of keeping that focus? Because obviously the distractions were still coming in, but you were able to bring yourself back.
Dylan Ogline: I think the conversation was almost serendipity. And I consider myself blessed to have that conversation when I had it. Because I had reached the tipping point where I was like I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep grinding in a way. What was I? 26, 25, at the time, I don’t remember. And I was like, “I just can’t keep doing this. I’m miserable. I’m not making anything. I have no idea how I paid all my bills. I have absolutely no idea.” But somehow, I was able to keep it going. Like I said, it was sitting there right in front of my face. And I just needed somebody to slap me in the face and be like, “Do you not see the answer’s right in front of you, you idiot?” That’s literally what he said. He’s like, “you’re being an idiot right now. Like stop doing what you’re doing.”
And I also think so his advice was you need to just do it now. This can’t be something where like, “Oh okay, I’ll get to it.” It needs to be like literally tonight you need to go do this. It’s like somebody who’s smoking, and they need to quit smoking. Like you can’t finish your pack of cigarettes. No, you need to throw that pack away. And so I did that, and my goal for years had just been to have a six-figure business. I wanted to hit six figures, which is $1,923 a week. And it was in March, March-ish give or take, so within four months I hit six figures. I took ruthless action, I was relentless about it, and because of that, I started to see results quickly. And once you start to see results, it’s a snowball effect, it feeds on itself.
Andrew Miller: Then the combination of the memory of the pain of being in the wrong position and getting the benefits of doing things right keeps you on the track on the straight and narrow.
Dylan Ogline: Exactly. 100%.
Andrew Miller: Yeah. And as you say, you’ve been very blessed to have that conversation, but it came out of the blue, it came from absolutely nowhere, unexpected, wasn’t looked for, wasn’t sought. What’s your thoughts on that?
Dylan Ogline: Well, I think I know I had conversations with other people, I had thought of it myself. Like, “Man, I’m not getting anywhere because I keep going in too many different directions.” The information was there. There’s no doubt about that. What I was so lucky about was the context of it. Like it felt like somebody slapped me in the face. Literally that is what it felt like. And he looked at me, he was like, “You’re being an idiot.” Some people like that’s their style of coaching or mentorship or teaching and they’re like, “Oh, come on, Dylan. This is the problem is you’re moving in too many different directions.” And he was like, “No, you’re being a moron right now. Like duh, like how do you not see that this is the problem? You are going in so many different directions. You’re not getting anything done. Why do you think that is? And then you’re focusing on all these projects that might make you a couple hundred dollars a month, or maybe $1,000 a month when you want to make $10,000 a month.”
And I was like, “Well yeah, but if I have like five of them, and they make $1,000 a month, and then I also have my agency work going on, like I’ll hit six figures.” And he’s like, “No, you need to aim for something where like if you get really good at it, you’ll make like $50,000 a month. So that if you end up being okay at it, you still hit your goal.” The specific quote he gave me was, “Stop trying to build an airline and instead focus on drilling for oil.” Which is kind of silly, but what the context of the lesson was is like airlines are incredibly different to make money in, like that industry. And I wasn’t building an airline, obviously, but…
Andrew Miller: I know.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, but the context was is like you’re trying to do all these different things where it is extremely difficult to make money in those industries or the projects you’re working on. You want to focus on the project or the business where not that it’s easy, but you can end up just being okay at it. Not the best in the world, or whatever, and still make your six-figure goal.
And for me, that particular business and that particular product or service was the digital ad management for the digital agency. It’s something where it’s high margin, it’s scalable, and if I just focus on that and I end up just doing okay with it, I’m probably still going to hit my goal of six figures. But then if I end up doing really good at it and becoming better and better, seven figures within two years. That was it.
Andrew Miller: Nice. And out of interest, what did you do to mark the six-figure stage, the seven figure stage?
Dylan Ogline: It was just relief, man. Just I remember hitting seven figures didn’t hit me nearly… I cried. The way I did my bookkeeping at the time is I didn’t want to tricky myself. I didn’t want to be stupid about it and be like, “Oh, I did $2,000 in revenue this week, so that’s six figures.” I kept a spreadsheet that had my rolling 23-week average of revenue. And 23 weeks because it’s almost six months and I’m obsessed with the number 23, that’s it.
Andrew Miller: Oh.
Dylan Ogline: I had this spreadsheet, and like every week I would go in, and I would put in my revenue. And at the bottom it would say what my rolling 23-week average revenue was. And if I have one week where I do $5,000, but the next three weeks I do nothing, I don’t get any checks, it averages out. And it was March-ish, March or so of 2017 where I put that number in, and it went above $1,923, and I cried. Because just the amount of like Earth-shattering relief was undescribable. Yeah. But then eventually when I hit seven figures…
Andrew Miller: That’s how you celebrated it.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, it was just like, wow.
Andrew Miller: Just taking that moment and…
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, I didn’t go buy a watch or something. It was just wow, after all this time, God damn I did it. It was only six figures. I mean that’s like that’s not setting the world on fire or anything. I remember where I was, I remember I’ll never forget that feeling of hitting that six figures. Yeah. And I think a couple like two or three months later eventually took like my first vacation. The 4-Hour Workweek was a huge inspiration for me, so that like kind of digital nomad lifestyle was something I had always wanted to live. It was a couple months later, a couple weeks later that I eventually took like my actual first vacation. That felt really good.
Andrew Miller: I can take the time off and I can afford it as well. Woohoo!
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah. That was a very odd feeling. That was a very odd feeling for sure.
Andrew Miller: Was it just you at this point?
Dylan Ogline: Like did I have team members?
Andrew Miller: Yeah.
Dylan Ogline: I have had some form of at least virtual assistants or virtual people probably since I was 20 or so.
Andrew Miller: It’s you primarily doing the stuff, but you got other people sort of helping you with some of the admin-y things.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah. Now it’s evolved to the point where I pretty much do nothing with my agency. Which was the goal. That was the eventual goal was so I could live that digital nomad lifestyle and everything. Now I got an incredible team in place. But at the time, at the time I think I was mostly doing everything, and it was probably shortly after that, within like six months, I hit like $250,000. I hit six figures, and it was like, “Okay, well next goal is now $250,000.” And then it was probably like $500,000 or whatever. And then of course eventually get to seven figures. But I think at the time I might have had one or two people who were just helping me with silly things.
Andrew Miller: These are the income goals or turnover goals sound like more like benchmarks to move towards. Your actual goal, as you say, to create a business where you don’t have to be in it on a day-to-day basis and free yourselves up.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Absolutely. I got into business. My main drive has never been to own a Lamborghini, or to have a Rolex, or whatever. I have like the $200 Apple watch. That stuff doesn’t matter to me. To me it was I just didn’t want to be poor. My parents, I came from like a middle-income family, and Pennsylvania, it gets cold there. This is no joke, my drive was simply I wanted to be able to turn on the damn heat whenever I wanted. I remember like my parents were, for better or for worse, they taught me a lot of good things, and were hardworking people. But I remember winters it being 50 degrees in my bedroom. And laying under all these covers, and freezing my ass off, and just being like, “God, I just don’t want to be poor. I want to be able to turn the heat on.”
That six-figure level was just to get to a point where like now I live in Florida, but at the time I still lived in Pennsylvania, it was just to be able to like, “Oh, I’m cold, I’m just going to turn the heat up,” and like that’s okay. Like the world’s not going to end, I can do that, that was just all the drive was for. But yeah, once I hit six figures, it was like, “Oh.” When you get to just probably $230,000 because I’m obsessed with 23, but it was like, “Do you think we can get to $230,000?” And then I got there, and I was probably like, “What about $500,000?” And I got there, and then it was seven figures. That wow, and then hit seven figures, and I’m like, “Okay, listen, like you’re just going to keep going higher. You got to kind of re-evaluate things.” That’s when I really shifted my focus to the education.
Andrew Miller: As part of that strategy or that’s what your passion was, so we kind of need to park the agency business in itself so you can step away for you to create those.
Dylan Ogline: When I hit seven figures like shortly after there is like when I was able to put everything in place to have the team in place and kind of take myself out of it. And then it was like, “Okay, now I have the lifestyle I want, what’s next?” And like subconsciously I’m like, “Do you think we can hit $5 million in revenue?” And I had to stop myself and be like, “Yo, listen. Like look how lucky you are, and look how great the business is, and how great it’s ran, and how great your team is. Like your lifestyle didn’t really change that much between, say, $200,000 and seven figures, so like it’s probably not going to change much between a million and $5 million.”
And I looked back at like that mentor, having that conversation, and I’ve also just been blessed to have incredible luck. And even though I suffered for all that time, like I would have never got into business had my brother not left the book Rich Dad Poor Dad just lying around. That book changed my life. And that, and I’ve had hockey coaches who were huge parts of my life, like they just changed my life, and made me who I am. I always kind of had this desire to do some kind of coaching or mentoring or teaching. And I was like, “Okay, I think now is a good point where I can shift my focus away from the agency, away from growing the agency to the next, taking it further and further, and instead focus on this passion project.”
Andrew Miller: We’re probably quite familiar with the concept, but we have the two drives: the away from and the towards thing. That really powerful drive to get away from being cold, away from being poor is a big motivator, but it can run out unless it’s sustained either by a pathological fear that we’re going to lose everything. Which some people have, and “I need more, I need more, I need more, I need more,” and it never ends. Or it switches into a towards goal, and the motivation is actually what I want to get, and I want to be in this space doing this thing or whatever it might be. And as you say, the passion project that you’re moving towards is very much that towards goal.
Dylan Ogline: You mentioned the people who want more, and more, and more. They just keep going and going and going. I had just observed other people who lived their entire life doing that. And sure, maybe they retired at 55, 60, with $10 million in cash or something like that, and like that’s cool, and that’s awesome. But then I also saw other people who kind of made that shift, or who had given back, or who had done things a different way. And maybe they didn’t have as much money, but they seemed a whole hell of a lot happier than that guy who retires at 60 and has $10 million in cash.
Like sure, that’s cools, that’s really nice to have all that cash, but those people always seem to end up being miserable. And it’s the people who kind of internalize gratitude and realize how lucky they are and then give back. Those people just seem to be a hell of a lot happier. Which like really, what’s the whole goal of this life thing if you’re miserable at the end? Why would you do that? Sure, you have $10 million, but like if you’re miserable and you hate your life, I’d much rather be happy and show some gratitude, and give back.
Andrew Miller: We’re trained to think that that will give us happiness.
Dylan Ogline: Oh absolutely. Yeah. How old are you?
Andrew Miller: Fifty, 49 rather.
Dylan Ogline: I think that’s maybe a Boomer thing. I think Millennials, my generation, I think I’m like at the cutoff of Millennial, I think. We’re really see that money doesn’t buy happiness. Which we were talking about this before the show. There’s a certain amount of money where adding more to it doesn’t buy you more happiness.
Andrew Miller: And we all kind of know that. Everybody gets it.
Dylan Ogline: Subconsciously we know it.
Andrew Miller: But I think if you ask people that, they will say it, but actually subconsciously a lot of people still run the pattern of norm.
Dylan Ogline: More. Norm.
Andrew Miller: Go to school, get your education, go and get a job, do as best as you can, retire, make as much money as you can, and then quit.
Dylan Ogline: Yes.
Andrew Miller: In whatever shape or form it is. And we might dress it up in other things, and you’re right, it has shifted a generation. But as a society as a whole it’s still the overriding message that gets filtered through. Even on social media it’s sort of like it might be shifting into celebrity and fame, and influence, and that kind of thing. But underlying it, surely they’re making money off it.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. No, I think happiness is becoming. I 100% agree that there’s still this underlying thing that more is the answer. But I do think it is promising, hopefully, that the younger generations are prioritizing happiness a little bit. Just a little bit more.
Andrew Miller: Oh no, I agree, I actually agree. I’m not disagreeing. And I think the younger generation are much more purpose-focused and thinking about how this impacts the wider [inaudible 35: 56] and so there’s much more interest in sustainability, and environmental practices, and all these sort of things. Because obviously they’ve been brought up with all the danger signals of what goes wrong from the generation before, thank you very much. Again, I’m not sure where call is to the Millennials and the whatevers, Z next or whatever we are. Whichever the next one after you is.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, what’s now? Are they now on Gen Z? I don’t know. I don’t know.
Andrew Miller: X, Y, Z, and then there’s Millennials somewhere, but we know what I mean.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Miller: No, there’s definitely an evading culture moving in that direction. It can be sustained and keep that going is the key thing. For you, shifting away from business, build business to give back, different business. How have you felt the shift from one to the other? How’s that been for you in terms of…
Dylan Ogline: It has certainly been very fulfilling, which is such a cliché answer. With the agency, typically working with businesses that they’re already doing $500,000, a million a year in business. And they come on and we help them grow their online presence, we get direct response ads going. And maybe they go from a million to $2 million a year in revenue. Like that’s cool, that’s awesome. But that really doesn’t change anybody’s life. Just the business owner’s just making more money.
And with students that I’ve had in my program, I remember one, I think this would have been the beginning of last year, end of last year, beginning of this year. She joins the program, and I play around with different price points, and I think she joined for like $500 or whatever. And she joins, and within like a couple weeks or whatever, she gets like her first consultation with a potential client, she ends up closing that client, and she onboards her first client.
It’s like two months later, we’re having this conversation on a group call, and she comes out, and she’s like you can hear the tears in her voice. Like that $500 that she paid was like the last $500 that her and her husband had. I think she was like a stay-at-home mom or whatever, and like her husband’s hours had been cut back. And then things with COVID, like this probably accelerated things, but because of that first client, she was able to buy her kids birthday presents for like the first time in like two years or something like that. Like they just could not afford it.
That’s a lot more fulfilling than just helping some business owner go from a million to two million. I mean working with that lady, we were literally able to change her life. It’s hard to put into words just how different that is than just helping existing businesses. And that one’s probably like the most pull on the heartstrings one, but there’s other ones where people had jobs where they weren’t happy with their lives, and COVID happens, and like people got fired, they lost their jobs or whatever, and like they had joined just at the right time. And because of that they were able to get their business going. That’s really cool.
That’s a lot more fulfilling and a lot better, and yeah, just it’s really hard to put into words. But obviously there’s a big difference between helping a business and helping somebody go from $3,000 a month in income to $6,000 a month. You do that and you change that person’s life.
Andrew Miller: The relative weight, E-I-G-H-T, of that impacts so much more, isn’t it?
Dylan Ogline: Undeniable. Yeah. It’s a lot more stressful, I got to admit.
Andrew Miller: For them or for you?
Dylan Ogline: For me. Dealing with consumers. I’m used to dealing with existing businesses. With the agency, if somebody sends in an email, which most of the time I don’t answer, the team answers it. But if somebody sends in an email, like it’s pretty coherent, and it makes sense, and it’s a very clear question. And dealing people who aren’t business owners, like they’ll send just the most random emails. And we’re like, “What does that mean?” That has been challenging to deal with. But it’s worth it in the end, I guess.
Andrew Miller: It’s your responsibility to basically learn a different language, isn’t it?
Dylan Ogline: Yes.
Andrew Miller: As in people speaking a different way, you’re used to speaking in a certain way, with certain people, and certain things.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah.
Andrew Miller: Not everybody speaks that way.
Dylan Ogline: There’s also a lot of like when you run Facebook ads, which right now I’m not for the education company. I’m building out a new version of the program. But when I do run Facebook ads, like you’ll have people who will write comments, and they’re like, “This is a total scam.” Or like, “Who is this guy? He’s just trying to rip people off.” And it’s that’s very difficult to deal with. But at the end, it’s definitely rewarding. But like with the agency, for years, or anything else like I never dealt with that. And now like I have to deal with that all the time. It’s a little bit different.
Andrew Miller: Is it something you just battle through and get on with it, or does it actually hit you inside?
Dylan Ogline: Ooh. That is an interesting question. You told me we were going to get into personal in this show. Does it hit me? It is something that I certainly need to battle through. But it does, it just makes me feel uncomfortable. I think it’s probably the best answer to that. Because I think it’s just because people on social media are just stupid in general.
Andrew Miller: Not everybody by the way.
Dylan Ogline: Not everybody.
Andrew Miller: If any lawyers are listening.
Dylan Ogline: There is a certain segment of people on social media who, because they can be anonymous, in many cases that they will just shout stuff. There’s a lot of walking internet comments. And with the agency, like I just never dealt with that, or I never had people who were unhappy, like an unhappy client. And it’s difficult whenever you have people who have never used your product or service, you never signed up for my training program, never worked with my agency. And they write in emails and they’re like, “I knew you were a scammer from day one.” It is difficult to deal with that.
It bothers me because I’m like, “Dude, I’m doing this because I consider myself just stupid blessed.” Like an obnoxious level of luck. I wouldn’t have had mentors or coaches I don’t think I would be where I am today. I’m doing this because I am so grateful to be in the position where I am, and you’re just ripping me apart because of it. But listen, haters gonna hate.
Andrew Miller: Yeah. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what you do, people are going to criticize it. There’s always somebody. It’s an infinite market, effectively, so there’s always someone. And people aren’t going to trust it, they aren’t going to believe it, all that kind of thing. And it isn’t quite the critical thing, but it’s certainly the way the mindset works. But if you go downtown, and stand in the high street, and pull out a wad of $20 bills, and pick one out, and offer it to people as they go by, they won’t take it. “Here you go, have a $20.” And people will go, “Oh, ah, hey, what’s the catch,” whatever.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah.
Andrew Miller: And it would take a while until somebody actually takes it out of your hand and goes, “Is that okay?” And said, “Yeah, yeah.” I’m not recommending you do this unless you do actually have a big wad of $20 to spare, but hey. And then world will spread, and it’ll come through. But the natural reaction is to…
Dylan Ogline: Have doubt.
Andrew Miller: Have doubt. And you can’t argue about the value of a $20 note, bill, but people are still going to resist it.
Dylan Ogline: People still question it. Yeah. I get that. And I do think there’s something to be said if you’re not pissing people off, you’re not working hard enough.
Andrew Miller: Absolutely.
Dylan Ogline: If your product or service isn’t stirring up controversy and pissing people off, like it’s not innovative enough. Like you want that.
Andrew Miller: In which case, you now have to own the trolls. Here’s a thought, on your testimonial page, get the trolling comments, stick them up there.
Dylan Ogline: I should. I have seen that before. Like some companies, they’ll take like the comments of like, “This is the worst coffee I’ve ever had,” and like, “Listen tow hat some of our customers are saying.” That would actually be really good. Yeah, I could put on something like, “Listen to what our students say,” and it’s like good stuff, right? Get some good testimonial. I hate that word, testimonial. But get some like good comments and some good videos, and then be like, “And listen to what all the non-customers are saying.”
There was some coffee brand, I think, where I saw that. Where like they literally they would put out like Yelp reviews or whatever that were like, “This is the worst coffee shop I’ve ever been to in my life.” And they would print them out on t-shirts, and that’s what they would wear at the store or something. That’s brilliant, I absolutely love that. Own the trolls.
Andrew Miller: Yeah. When I first launched Business Enjoyment, and I did a launch event, and the Secret of Business Enjoyment it was called the thing, and I was putting it out on social media, and getting people on and all that kind of stuff. But similar response, somebody I never met before, never looked at my profile, didn’t know who I was, just said, “All I need to do enjoy business is to make sure that when I spoke to the bank manager at the end of the month, he looked at my accounts, he gave me a big thumbs up. That’s all I care about,” and all that sort of stuff.
And then I looked at the profile, and you actually look at his story, and it was so sorry. It got to the point where he’s stressed and whatever and changed direction because he’d been stressed. And I’m thinking, “That doesn’t fit what you just said. That’s the total opposite of what you just said.” I invited him to be interviewed.
Dylan Ogline: Oh, did he? Did he do it?
Andrew Miller: Oh, total silence.
Dylan Ogline: Aw… damn.
Andrew Miller: I got back in touch with him, I said, “I’m really interested in the story you’ve got. I’d love to find out more about what you’re up to, and would you be up for the interview?”
Dylan Ogline: Nothing. That’s good. I like that. It’s just it’s difficult. But I guess everybody who has to deal with it, you just have to put the blinders on, and keep. It came to me as a shock almost because I was coming from a different perspective. But it was like, “Oh, I mean I should have known this was coming.” It hasn’t stopped or anything. I don’t even know how we got on this topic, but it is what it is, man. As they say, haters gonna hate.
Andrew Miller: Absolutely. And we all know actually it’s something going on inside their lives.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, that’s absolutely true.
Andrew Miller: They’re just exploding, and you happen to be in the crossfire.
Dylan Ogline: In the blast radius.
Andrew Miller: Blast radius, that’s it, yeah. With the coaching side, moving that forward, working with these people that’s you’re going to make a massive difference to what they can do. Where’s that going to go? What could it be?
Dylan Ogline: This is actually an interesting question. Because I was doing a show the other day and they asked me something. We were talking about like hat the world’s going to be like after COVID. And one of the things we talked about, and I mentioned was I feel that education as a whole is going to drastically change. The world is changing faster and faster everyday. The definition of work is changing every single day.
Just go back a year ago. Like it was still kind of like this it was almost taboo if you worked at home, and now everybody works at home. Like you were considered like you weren’t getting as much done if you worked at home. Now everybody works at home. And so COVID just really accelerated the change, and I think education is also changing because it used to be that you would go to school for four years, and then you would work the same job for 30 years. But the world’s changing faster and faster, and people have to evolve faster and faster.
Now there’s all kinds of training programs where people can spend--outside of mine where you start a digital agency. I know one guy who’s really successful, he sells a program that teaches you how to start a bookkeeping business. Like a bookkeeping and I think like tax advisory service. It’s like $3,000 or $4,000 for that program. And he has a ton of students who are making six figures, seven figures, really successful business owners. And that completely goes against the grain of like well, you got to go to school, and you got to spend $100,000 on a degree so you can go get a job where you make $40,000 a year. Like everything is changing with education and work overall.
Me in particular, I think I definitely think the education company can grow. What I am working on in particular is trying to figure out everything that somebody needs to know. And I want that soccer mom, I use that as an example, I want the soccer mom who isn’t working a job, knows nothing about marketing. I want them to be able to come into the program and have success. What I have been really focusing on the last year is figuring out all the things, all the base level knowledge that I have when it comes to business, that they may not have, how do I teach them all the necessary stuff?
Andrew Miller: And this is specifically to become a digital agency or is this to help them do their own thing if they want to do their own thing?
Dylan Ogline: I mean, sure, because of everything I’m teaching them they can certainly take it in different directions. But the program that I have is specifically to help people start and grow their own six figure digital marketing agency.
Andrew Miller: The soccer mom comes in, and learns that, and then she’s got her own digital agency.
Dylan Ogline: Yes. The goal is within the six weeks of the program, teach them everything they need to know to start the business, get it growing, get their first couple clients, and eventually grow it to six figures. I don’t know where that’s going. I mean I love it, I’m extremely passionate about it. I think more and more people are going to go that kind of route taking online training programs to start their own business, to start a photography business, to learn how to do graphics design instead of spending four years in college. And I believe that’s a huge shift that is already taking place right now.
Andrew Miller: Back to you, because I agree with you, we’re seeing a revolution. And that sounds a bigger word actually because the seeds are already there, the technology was already there, people were already moving to that space. It’s just moves a lot faster as you say as people are starting to go, “Oh, I’m going to do that.” But for you, so if you were to take what you’re doing and every soccer mom, and I don’t know what the male equivalent of a soccer mom is. Soccer dad, I don’t know.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, soccer dad, yeah.
Andrew Miller: That’s just a dad over here. There you go. But you can help these people to do what they need to do to get their six-figure business. What will that mean and what will the consequences be of that?
Dylan Ogline: What will the consequences be of that? I did not expect that question. That’s a curveball for me. Wait, the consequences for me, or like the consequences to the marketplace? Flipping that question back on you.
Andrew Miller: All of the above. But less about you, but the marketplace, all the people that you’re helping, the knock-on effect, the ripple effect of all of that.
Dylan Ogline: The ripple effect will hopefully be that as my life has been changed by my mentors, and coaches, and teachers and whatnot, I hope to take that luck and kind of sprinkle it around a little bit, and I hope that the students that come in are able to. They’re all kinds of people. Able to quit their job that they have that they hate, and live a digital nomad lifestyle, whenever we’re allowed to travel again, whenever the world stops ending. And I hope that there’s a lot of people that I can help do that, and people are happier, and they see that, “Hey, I can actually start my own business, and do my own thing, and not be scared of…”
The world’s changing faster and faster, as I mentioned, and a lot of people are scared of that. But if they see how quickly they can adapt and how quickly they can get something new going, they don’t have to spend four years going to school and then spend ten years at an entry level job before they have a good job, or going, or whatever. Where they can take a six-week course, and start their own agency, and boom, they’re good to go, they’re okay. Yeah, my goal is to help a lot of people.
What do I think it’s going to do to the marketplace? I’d have to have a lot of students for it to impact the marketplace. But you know what? That’s an interesting question, and I haven’t really thought of this. But my particular students are also helping the business owners that they’re working with. They might work with a restaurant or whatever. I teach people to niche down and not help everybody and anybody, but instead to specifically work on a specific vertical.
But say a student is helping restaurants, and that’s their clients, and they’re helping that client get more customers through direct response digital marketing. That’s helping that business grow. It kind of does have this snowball effect and a compounding factor where as I help more students, hopefully I’m helping their lives, but then hopefully if they have a successful agency, they’re also helping their customers too. That’s the ripple effect.
Andrew Miller: You help more people to get out of the jobs that they don’t enjoy, give them the confidence and the tools to actually realize that they can start a new business, get that business up and running, actually start making decent money for that business, help other companies their clients to grow bigger, grow faster, to grow better hopefully. What happens after that?
Dylan Ogline: What happens after that? I don’t have an answer for that.
Andrew Miller: Carry on with the ripple effect. What’s the next ripple?
Dylan Ogline: I do not have an answer for that. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for that one. I know that’s not the answer you want. But you know, I would say this. The reason I don’t have an answer for that is because I never really thought of it. I used to be the type where I would try to, “Okay, so I build this, then I do this, then I do this.” If you were to tell me ten years ago that I would be where I am doing what I’m doing, there’s absolutely no way. Where are things going to be five years from now? I have not the slightest idea. I focus on the immediate what I’m passionate about right now, and what I can do to help people right now. And beyond that, I try and not to even think about it, because I know I’m going to be very, very, very wrong.
Andrew Miller: I think the question wasn’t about what you per se, it’s that’s bigger impact you’re having on that world, the change it will make.
Dylan Ogline: Well yeah. That’s what I’m saying. I have no idea. I try not to even. I can’t even imagine what the impact will be. If I’m able to get a couple hundred, a couple thousand students to start their own businesses and grow their own businesses and quit their jobs maybe. Or maybe that soccer mom, use that example again, and now she has a business that’s successful. What the impact of that will be, what the ripple effect will be, I don’t know. But if I could help a thousand people do that, that would be absolutely incredible.
Andrew Miller: One of the things that you said that hit for me was always an important thing when I think about it is that flexibility. And what came for me when you were talking was actually, you’re setting these more and more people out to a position so it doesn’t matter what happens in the world. Let’s have another virus coming along. Let’s have another contentious political debate going on. Let’s have whatever it might be, economic things. People can ride through that and find a way to move forward without being impacted by these major things because it’s not what happens out there it’s what happens in here inside you that makes the difference.
Dylan Ogline: 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I look at my business went up this year. How stupidly privileged am I for that?
Andrew Miller: It also makes sort of sense. The world’s gone digital, you’re in the digital space, of course it went up.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Miller: If it hadn’t gone up then somebody will have to come and give you a slap again, wouldn’t they? I mean… You shouldn’t be embarrassed about that.
Dylan Ogline: No, I’m not embarrassed. I look at that and it inspires me to work faster and harder to try to get more students and then help them even further. To make my training program better and better. Because I look at people who lost their job, and they’re feeling hopeless, and I remember what that feels like. I remember how much that sucks. I believe the purpose of life is to take the luck that you’ve been given, the luck, the blessings, you want to get religious about it, whatever. Whatever you want to call it, take that as far as you possibly can, and then kind of as much as you can, sprinkle around that luck. And, yeah man, that’s just what inspires me right now.
And I hope the ripple effect is, is that there’s students that I impact are able to adapt with changing times. When COVID-24 comes out, then… Watch that actually be a thing and five years from now I’m going to be an internet meme where they’re like, “This Dylan guy, he’s part of the deep state, and he knew it was coming.” I guarantee you. God forbid that there’s COVID-24. Yup. I’m part of the deep state and I saw it coming.
Andrew Miller: You’re fine. It’s you involved it’s going to be 23.
Dylan Ogline: COVID-23. Oh, how do you know about that?
Andrew Miller: Because you mentioned three times…
Dylan Ogline: Did they tell you? Are you in on it? Oh man. That would be an internet meme. Oh boy. And I hope I can get more people. I kind of feel bad because my business evolves around Facebook and Google ads. And I’m always telling people like, “You need to get off of Facebook. Please get off of Facebook. It’s destroying your mind.” But I guess that’s a different topic.
Andrew Miller: Get into it in the right way. That’s the key thing. Yeah.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, get in it to make money off of it. Don’t just sit there mindlessly scrolling on your phone. That’s probably not good for you.
Andrew Miller: Yeah. Exactly. Steer the conversation rather than be led by the conversation.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. That’s for sure.
Andrew Miller: No, it sounds good. As they say, it’s paying that luck forward, giving people that opportunity to spot the positives that exist in their life, and taking responsibility and control of it to Andrew Miller: look after themselves. And then B: pass it on to someone else as well.
Dylan Ogline: Absolutely, man. Yeah. If I could do that, that’d be a-okay to me, I’d be happy with that, yeah. Help those people, realize that they can take control of their lives, and do what they want, and be flexible, and not be scared. Not be scared whenever COVID-23 comes out, and whatnot, yeah. I’d be happy with that ripple effect.
Andrew Miller: Key question, Dylan, what makes your bits tingle?
Dylan Ogline: As clichéd as this sounds.
Andrew Miller: You have a cliché.
Dylan Ogline: Love a cliché. Absolutely. It is helping people. We’ve talked about it at length. I am in a very privileged and lucky position in my life, and I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for other people. Nobody gave me money. A lot of people think that that’s luck, and for me that’s the only version of luck. For me, I mention my brother leaving Rich Dad Poor Dad laying around. If that had not happened, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. The mentors that I’ve had, that mentor slapping me upside the face, calling me a moron and an idiot. And giving back and helping people be less scared, that’s a good way of putting it, I like that. People be less scared, and change with the times, and take control of their own lives, and live a better, happier life, that makes my bits tingle. And makes me happy, gets me up in the morning, I’m very passionate about it. And, yeah, that is my answer.
Andrew Miller: Beautiful. Thank you very much, Dylan. If anybody’s interested in setting up a digital agency, where would they find you, where would they track you down?
Dylan Ogline: Sure. Yeah. My website’s just dylanogline.com. You probably have it in the show notes. Ogline’s O-G-L-I-N-E. Because it’s a weird, weird last name.
Andrew Miller: Not everybody bothers with show notes, it’s always best if you spell it out for people.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you just Google Dylan Ogline, you’ll find my website. I did mention that I am building the new version of my program. You’d have to join the waiting list. And I’m hoping, some time at the beginning of December I should be able to get that new version live, and start to accept new students.
Andrew Miller: By the time this actually comes out, back in December it launched.
Dylan Ogline: Back, yeah, yeah. I didn’t ask when we’re going live.
Andrew Miller: It’s going to be next year.
Dylan Ogline: I do apologize. Oh, next year, then yeah, yeah, hopefully. If you to my website and I still haven’t launched yet.
Andrew Miller: You have permission to go down to Orlando and give you a slap.
Dylan Ogline: Well hopefully COVID-20, hopefully they didn’t release that yet.
Andrew Miller: But Dylan, it’s been a pleasure to speak to you. I loved hearing it, and I love what you’re doing, and I wish you all the best of luck with the continuation of the adventure.
Dylan Ogline: Absolutely, Andrew. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure, man, thank you.
Andrew Miller: Brilliant. Thank you very much. These podcasts are not necessarily here to give you all the answers. I want you to think about what’s been said, what’s come up, and how you might apply that to your own situation. And if you’ve enjoyed it, then please subscribe to the podcast, and of course share it on the social media platforms, and so more people get a chance to hear what’s going on. Thanks very much for listening. My name’s Andrew Miller from Business Enjoyment, and I want you to enjoy your business so much it makes your bits tingle.