Social Media is the Most Powerful Invention Since the Atom Bomb

“Don’t compare your ‘Chapter 3’ to someone else’s ‘Chapter 42.’” In this episode of Two-Party Podcast, Dean Tetter corners me with an article I wrote a while ago where I expound on five things I wish people had told me before I founded a company. We touch on all five points, but my favorite might be the first one—It doesn’t have to be perfect. Get stuff out. Get it out tonight.

We discuss the collective and individual traumas and tragedies the world faces right now, including the pandemic and political upheaval. We talk about how to stay sane, find our inner calm, and maybe even show a little compassion for those we don’t understand yet.

We also talk about:

• Why it’s not a scam to sell your product before you even create it.
• Why it’s okay—even necessary—to take an evening off.
• How I have maintained a 500+ day meditation streak.
• Why social media is the most powerful and disturbing human invention since the atom bomb.

About the Show: Dean Tedder is the host of the Two Party Podcast.

Full Transcript

_{Dean Tedder: Three, two, one. This is Dean Tedder with the “Two Party” podcast. I’m on here with Dylan Ogline, and he is in Orlando right now, but he came from Pennsylvania, if I’m reading the story right. Just a young entrepreneur, started from the ground up at 14 years old with his first little business going. And he’s here to kind of share some of those things with you, and then we’re just here to have a great discussion about him, his life. I might slip and throw some things in about me, myself, you never know. It’s kind of what we do on the show. So, Dylan, I’m going to hand it over to you and let you just kind of tell the audience who you are and what you’re about.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure thing. Hey, thanks for having me so much, Dean. It’s good to be here. So, yeah, man you called me a “young entrepreneur.” I’m not used to that anymore.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, I feel like at 45 my life’s half over, so everybody’s young now.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well, I’m 31, so I kind of feel like it’s all going downhill. Like I have trouble sleeping, it’s like aches and pains. I’m not used to this. So yeah, I’m founder of Ogline Digital. I own a digital marketing agency where we focus on direct response digital advertising solutions. And I also own an education company where I train and teach students how to start and grow their own digital marketing agency as well. That’s what I got going on now, and I guess, Dean, I’ll let you take it from there and ask me where do you want to go back to?}

_{Dean Tedder: Sure. I want to just touch a little bit, and I did do some searching. I always do stalking, I call it stalking on my guests.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, I heard. Pre-show we were talking, it seemed like you were doing a little bit of stalking there. That’s okay. I approve it.}

_{Dean Tedder: You’re in Florida, and in Florida it’s illegal to stalk, so there’s certain states that have laws again this. But I’m hoping, for the sake of sanity and law enforcement, that they understand I’m doing this for good nature. But I did, I ran through some Google searches. I found medium.com, “Dylan Ogline of Ogline Digital: Five Things I Wished Someone Would Have Told Me Before I Became A Founder.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Did I write that?}

_{Dean Tedder: That’s what I’m wondering. Did you write that?}

_{Dylan Ogline: There’s a lot of content out there. I don’t know which ones.}

_{Dean Tedder: There’s quite a bit. When I Googled, I was like wow, like he’s all over the place.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Does it say it’s by me?}

_{Dean Tedder: That’s what I’m looking at the bottom. It says, “Then connect with me, Dylan Ogline, Facebook.” This must be. It must be something. Actually, no, it says, “Written by ‘Authority’ magazine.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: I think that was written by me. Listen, I’ve written a lot of stuff. And then there’s also I have a PR company, and they get me in publications, they’re fantastic.}

_{Dean Tedder: Oh that’s good.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yeah.}

_{Dean Tedder: So tell me five things that you wished someone would have told you. Let’s go ahead and hit on this article.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh man, you’re putting me on the spot here. Let me pull up that article. Because when you write stuff like that, like you write like…}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, you can write specifics. I mean, I can go… let me see here… I’ve got it pulled up right here.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Was it even a list?}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh, okay, all right. Okay. “Things do not need to be perfect.” Okay, yeah, so this is good business advice.}

_{Dean Tedder: This is it. This is it. So and I’m going to run backwards down these articles so you might want to keep your page pulled up.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh no. Again, I don’t know what all… Now this one right here, I wrote this.}

_{Dean Tedder: Good.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But some of them it’s not even from my PR company. People will write an article, sometimes they just mention me, or it’s actually about me, which is weird. It’s a weird feeling. But no, so, number one is things do not need to be perfect. And I think, for me personally, this is probably number one. I’m naturally a perfectionist.}

_{Dean Tedder: Perfectionist. Yes.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. And I spent so much of my time, so many years, suffering, getting absolutely nowhere with my business, getting nowhere with my life in general it felt like because everything had to be perfect. So now, now I teach people like be lean, mean, and scrappy with your business. Like just throw stuff up, get stuff out into the marketplace. Not just if you’re doing a digital marketing agency. It could be you have a podcast. You start a podcast, it doesn’t need to be perfect. What matters is getting it out. It doesn’t matter if it’s a YouTube video, you’re starting a YouTube channel. It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer, get stuff out, get it out tonight. Don’t waste six months, a year writing the perfect version getting your podcast just right, getting your YouTube videos just right. Because the truth is, is that it’s going to be shit.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Your first version is going to be terrible no matter what.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I find a lot of times you waste even more time on certain things that you just you want it to manifest and it won’t. There’s just certain things you want to be perfect and you’re like, “I’m going to get this story out, or this topic, and I need it to go out, and this is what I want, but it never seems to be just right.” And you keep working on it, keep working on it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s never going to be perfect.}

_{Dean Tedder: And there comes a time where you got to say to yourself, “This is not meant to be. Scrap it. Get rid of it.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Another thing that causes the perfection is a lot of people-- let's use that podcast example. Who is the number one podcast? Is Joe Rogan number one?}

_{Dean Tedder: I think Rogan, Bongino keeps bumping up. I can’t keep up anymore. There’s thousands.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So look at Joe Rogan, I think he’s on show 1,500, or 1,600, or something. People will compare their beginner podcasts to that and they’ll be like, “I want the same audio quality. I want the same video quality. I want the same background.”}

_{Dean Tedder: And you’re never going to go. Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: They’ll focus on all those things and what they don’t realize is that that’s iteration 1,500. Like and it’s not the background, or the mic, or the video quality that matters. It’s actually the conversation.}

_{Dean Tedder: Correct.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And the way he asks questions and the questions that he asks. He got better and better and better at his skill set of asking questions, of being-- what would it be? Interviewer? Interview? Being the person giving the interview.}

_{Dean Tedder: Hosting away.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. And the only way he got that good is by doing it over and over and over again, and beating on his craft. This is true in so many different. Doesn’t matter, like I said, YouTube channel, podcast, doesn’t matter. So your first version is going to suck.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It does not need to be perfect. Just get it out there. And the only way you can get to your 50th, or your 100th, or your 500th iteration and get better and better and better is by putting the first out there, and the first is always the hardest. So step one of that article was, “things do not need to be perfect.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Right. And so number two is figure out product market fit as quickly as possible.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes.}

_{Dean Tedder: And explain a little bit of that. Because to me that makes sense, but maybe for the audience they need to understand that a little differently.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. So this is definitely just in regards to the article is mostly about business, but this could apply with a podcast. So product market fit is simply is there a need, a want, a desire in the market for my product or service, and am I solving that problem? Is there a problem and am I solving it? That’s basically it.}

_{Dean Tedder: Plain and simple. Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And you want to prove that as fast as possible. This plays hand in hand with “things don’t need to be perfect.”}

_{Dean Tedder: And time is money. Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. And you could get back money, but you could never get back time. And everybody’s aware of this, but you just need to be beaten into your head. Like don’t do that shit.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Don’t spend 6 months, 12 months, a year building out a training program as an example. I actually, I talked to a writer two days ago. I just was talking to her and I gave her this advice. She had spent like eight months, ten months building out a training program, it was I think like a copywriting course to help fiction writers.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And then she realized that there was no market fit. So, yeah, you want to figure that out as quickly as possible. And, tip, cheat code, a hack to this is go to people-- this is specifically of a product or service that you can sell-- go to random people and see if they’re willing to give you money. Go to your ideal client and see if they’re willing to actually give you a credit card.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Don’t ask people, “Do you need this?” Actually get their money.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: They give you money, you have product market fit.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup. That makes a lot of sense. And a lot of people may just think you’re robbing them, but at the end of the day, as long as you don’t use the gun when you’re asking them for their money, it’s okay. It’s okay.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Because I know you want to jump to number three here.}

_{Dean Tedder: Oh, you’re good.}

_{Dylan Ogline: In regards to that is I’ve heard people come back to me and say, “Well, that’s kind of scammy.”}

_{Dean Tedder: No. Not at all.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You want to be upfront with people.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yes.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So let’s use that training program example. She should have gone to potential fiction writers and say, “This is the course I have. Blah blah blah. Will you give me your money?” Basically. And if they say yes, say, “Okay, awesome. The course starts in 30 days.”}

_{Dean Tedder: I look at it like research and development. For say you’re building a product, or say you’re trying to patent a product, research and development. And in business, that is exactly what you’re talking about. There’s nothing scammy about it. You need to know who your clients are, you need to know who your investors are, you need to know where your profit is going to come from. And if you don’t have a market niche for that, you’re a failure.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. And if you don’t deliver, just refund their money, and apologize. Be like, “Hey, I’m so sorry. Blah blah blah. This happened. Here’s your money back.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And it’s more popular now than I ever remember growing up is these turn key markets. Where people are just like you can buy in, and people there’s new ideas. Let’s say it’s a new electric bike comes out, and everybody’s like, “Well, we need this much money. You could be the first to order one.” We hear about these all the time and people put their money up, and they’re like, “I want the first bike.” And so people put their money upfront, and people are like, “This has got to be a scam.” And next thing you know, when all the research and development’s done, the bike hits the market, and you have your first bike, and it’s like that’s becoming more popular now.}

_{I see that day in and day out with these new products coming out. I think that’s a really cool thing. It’s a very easy, quick way to get investments and get things off the ground is by using other people’s money. And I think at the end of the day it’s kind of like real estate. Who doesn’t want to use someone else’s money to purchase real estate?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. Yeah. Especially if you have a product that you need to develop. If you have some kind of service, not necessarily buy as much because there’s not typically a cost barrier to entry, but if you’re developing a product, literally have your potential customers fund the development is a fantastic idea. And it’s not scammy. You are solving a problem in the marketplace that obviously doesn’t exist. If people are willing to buy your product or service, it’s because there isn’t a solution elsewhere or they haven’t found it.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So if you have a solution, and you have the idea, and they’re helping you develop it, that’s a win-win for everybody}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And they also get to be the first to test the products. So they get to be the first to give feedback and say, “Hey, I don’t know, this product sucked. Let’s go to the round two. Let’s move to the next one. This one wasn’t as great as we thought it would be.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely.}

_{Dean Tedder: But, yeah, and that to me makes a lot of sense. And again, let’s see, focus on high profit margin businesses.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s number three. Yes.}

_{Dean Tedder: Man, that to me again, that’s a no-brainer. Like I say this to my clients a lot, and I’ve had clients look at me like sideways like what? But I’ve gotten to the habit after 27 years in construction, somebody will come to me, I’ll bid a job, $40,000, $50,000. I’ll say, “Look, here’s the deal, this is what it’s going to cost me to do it.” I always encourage every client, “Go get more bids. I’m the first guy bidding, I’m not telling you my experience is going to be the one for you, the fit for you. Go get three more bids, then call me if my number fits.” And I’ll have clients go, “Well, that just seems a little high.” And I’m like, “Okay, so there it is: I have been doing construction 27 years. I’m not in this for practice I’m in this for profit.” And they look at me and they’re like, “He’s dead serious. He just said that to me.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s good. I’m in this for profit, not practice. I like that.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. If I wanted to practice I’d go back to when I was 18, 19, a young stud with good muscles and strength, and a good back, and I’d go to those days where I didn’t mind swinging a sledgehammer all day. But if I’m going to come to your job for $40,000 at 27 years experience and 44 years old, and I’m physically fit, but let’s be real, I in no way shape or form want to go swinging a sledgehammer all day today. So if I’m going to go do it, I dang sure better be making profit on it. All my bills should be paid for the day for my company, my employees, paychecks should be paid for that day, and I should make some extra money for me and my family.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely.}

_{Dean Tedder: And that’s kind of how I see number three there.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. The people that are looking for the cheapest solution tend to not be the best clients.}

_{Dean Tedder: Exactly.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I have every, very little experience where…}

_{Dean Tedder: They seem to be more problematic.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. They seem to be more demanding. No matter what they’re never going to be happy.}

_{Dean Tedder: Can’t satisfy them. Yup.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You cannot satisfy them. And the truth is, like so many people they get caught in thinking, “I need to go lower my prices.” No matter what, you’re not going to get 100% of the marketplace. So even if your solution was free. I’ve used this example before. If you sold vehicles, you’re GM and you sell vehicles, even if you gave away a free vehicle, there will still be a certain percentage of the market that is not interested. That certain percentage of the market wants the Rolls Royce, wants the Bentley, wants the Lamborghini.}

_{Dean Tedder: And that’s all they’re focused on.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And that’s all they’re focused on and the money doesn’t matter. So no matter what, you’re not going to get 100% of the market. Nobody gets 100% of the market. So it’s much better to focus on where you can get the highest profit margin. And very, very rarely is that at the low end of the market. It’s better to be at the medium to high end of the market. Those people are looking to pay to solve a problem.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And nine times out of time they’re much better to deal with.}

_{Dean Tedder: I’ve had clients literally tell me like, “Hey, you’re here, you have the tools, can you just do this real quick?” And I’m like, “Sure. I can. What’s the incentive for me to pull these tools out of my truck, and physically hop over here, and risk my general liability insurance on your property to do the job? What is it worth it to me?” “Oh, well I’m going to throw you all kinds of work in the future. You’re going to get all kinds of work.” And back in the day, in my younger days of doing construction…}

_{Dylan Ogline: You probably did it.}

_{Dean Tedder: I did it. I was like, “Man, I’m going to seal the deal. This is like a sale for me. I’m going to get this if I just go over here and do this project real quick.” And at the end of the day, maybe 50/50. You got that client to call you back, or it became a problem even doing them the favor. And so it’s kind of one of those like I’ve learned over the years it’s just not worth it. If it’s not for profit, and it doesn’t profit the business, it doesn’t further my business and help the advancement of my business. Then again, like you just mentioned, that client’s probably not the fit for my company.}

_{Dylan Ogline: 100%.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s probably not worth it. Right now, we work with about a dozen property management teams across Tulsa. So we get everything from a small shower remodel all the way from other clients that we have we do more ground up builds. But with the property management teams it could be anything from a door knob change out for a service call, all the way up to like gut this kitchen and redo it because we got to get this rented. Just one of 12 companies we deal with is 200 homes across Tulsa. So, I mean, there’s 200 homes that we’re maintaining at all times, and that’s one company.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s a lot of work.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and that’s one company. So it’s one of those, like you said, I mean if that client’s not a fit for us, and we have some property management teams that have stepped to us and we’re like, “We’re not going to work with you.” Because they’re just A: they don’t want to pay the money out. B: there’s always a problem. It’s always never good enough or they have projects that they don’t want to invest enough money in. They want these rentals, but these rentals are in bad areas, so they just don’t want to fix them. Because they know the next tenant’s going to destroy it. And unfortunately, we won’t put our company name on it. It’s like I’m not going to come in and Band-Aid or do a handy man job.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Do the cheap stuff.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, I’m not doing the handy man job when you need an actual contractor like us to do it right. And then they’re like, “Well, can you just do it for $150? Maybe patch those tiles?” No, we don’t. That’s just not something we want our company name on.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You also find, especially in contractor type work-- and I don’t mean just construction, I mean it can be graphics design or web design, like you’re doing contract type work-- you can find that you end up getting price trapped.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So you go to that client, in the beginning you’re trying to get work, and that person’s like, “Just do this job for me real quick,” and you do it for ten dollars an hour, but your rate’s actually $20 an hour. You’re never going to get $20 an hour from that customer.}

_{Dean Tedder: They’re never even going to meet you halfway.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Because you already did something for ten dollars an hour.}

_{Dean Tedder: And that’s where they value you at.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Exactly. And then you’re sitting there in your head you’re thinking, “Well, maybe they’ll refer me to other people, and my network will grow this way.” Nine times out of ten, the case is when somebody’s referring a contractor, if they see somebody put in a kitchen, or built their website, the first question is, “Who did it?” The second question is, “How much did they charge you?”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, was it affordable?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Was it affordable? How much did they charge? And if the say “It was $150. Took them about ten, 15 hours, so he charged me ten bucks an hour,” all your referrals from that client are now going to be thinking in terms of $10 to $15 an hour, or whatever your rate is. So you end up in what I call price trap situation where you can’t get out of your price. Especially if you really undercut yourself, it’s really difficult to raise your rates.}

_{Dean Tedder: And we get it, I see it time and time again, we’ll have subcontractors that’ll work for us, they’ll come in, and they’ll bid jobs. I even say to myself sometimes like they’ll come in and they’ll bid really low on a job, and the client’s like, “Yeah, we want him to do it.” And I know the quality of that sub’s work because I’ve used him and I’m like, “I’ve got a guy that’s a little better than that. He’s going to charge a little more, but you’re going to get the quality product you want. This guy does a cheaper job but you’re also getting what you paid for.” And I’ll tell them that.}

_{And sometimes when they get the bid, I’ll tell them, I’ll say, “Okay, they want you to do the job. Why don’t you raise your price a little? Tell them another $100 because I think it’s worth it. Because I, after 27 years of doing construction, I’ve done their work, and I know the scope of work they’re fixing to get their butts into. And I’ll say it, I’ll be like, “Hey, you need to mark that up a little bit because I’m telling you right now, by Friday, you’re going to be cussing that you bid it for this price.” And we do, and we’ll adjust things like that.}

_{So again, I try to lead by example and try to help some of these guys that are maybe not as experienced in the sales end of it, or just experienced in bidding it. And I do, I try to tell them like, “This is what it’s worth.” Because if you undercut our industry, then everybody across the board’s going to be making no money. So I try to keep them at the same level. And that’s hard to do because everyday you have a new construction guy or handyman coming out who’s going to underscore everything because he wants work.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Well, but the truth is, is those people that are the cheap end solution. Sure, they might get a bunch of work, but then their quality’s going to be shady, and everybody’s going to be like, “I don’t want to work with that person.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And I would still argue the customer, the client who is looking for the cheapest solution you probably don’t want to be working for them.}

_{Dean Tedder: No. That’s a disservice to themselves really.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes. 100%. So number four.}

_{Dean Tedder: So then you’ve got four is “say no.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Say no. We just talked about that.}

_{Dean Tedder: Hey, there you go. Slide right into it. Who wrote this? This is great.}

_{Dylan Ogline: This is a really good article. Wow. Yeah, he needs to like win an award for this.}

_{Dean Tedder: Say no is pretty common sense. I mean it’s literally there’s times in business, and I know for a prime example. I’m really good, and I’m open, and I love people, and I love helping people. But there comes a point where I am very stern about, “Nope, not interested.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: And I also, I teach people niche down, get very specific so that you get better and better at what you do. So if I was giving advice to a contractor, like general construction contractors, I’d be like focus on one specific thing. Like just do roofs, or just do driveways, or just do kitchens, or just do bathroom remodels. And the people who come in, and say you do driveways and they’re like, “Hey, can you do a pole for me?” The answer should be no.}

_{Dean Tedder: No.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Because if you only do kitchens you’re going to get better and better at doing kitchens. You’re going to deliver better quality. You’re going to be able to increase your rates. Your systems, your processes get better and better. I know construction’s a little bit more complicated and a little bit more difficult, but in my industry, digital marketing…}

_{Dean Tedder: The framework is all the same at the end of the day.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I mean, it’s all the same. If you’re reinventing the wheel every time, you don’t really know what you’re doing, you don’t get better at what you’re doing. If you’re teaching your team to one day pour a driveway, the next day to do a kitchen, the next day to do a pool…}

_{Dean Tedder: Nobody’s being productive. Yeah, it’s not very productive.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes. Think of like Chipotle. I’m a big Chipotle fan boy.}

_{Dean Tedder: I love them. I love them.}

_{Dylan Ogline: If you went in there and you were like, “I need a lobster.”}

_{Dean Tedder: They don’t sell lobster. They’re going to be like, “Well then you need to go down the road.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, go to Red Lobster, or go to one of these other restaurants. If you were like, “Hey, I want a salmon in my burrito.” They’d be like, “We don’t sell salmon.”}

_{Dean Tedder: “Yeah, can I get a grilled cheese?”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. They don’t sell that.}

_{Dean Tedder: They’ll be like, “What? You want me to wrap that up?”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. But so many small business owners, they get in this mindset. Which is understandable in the beginning whenever you’re trying to make end’s meet, you’re trying to take all the work. But in the end it’s a disservice for you.}

_{Dean Tedder: It is.}

_{Dylan Ogline: If you could just stick to one or two main things, one service.}

_{Dean Tedder: The one you can produce the most quality. I mean especially in construction, if whatever it is that you can specialize in that you can do the best quality. If you’re a trim carpenter and you do the best trim and crown molding, that’s all you should be doing.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But I think go back to what was that guy’s rule number three? Focus on high profit margin. Yeah, don’t do driveways if driveways-- I don’t know anything about driveways, but if they’re a low profit margin business, you probably don’t want to be the best at that. You want to focus on the blend of what is something that I feel like I would be good at, or I have an interest in, and something that’s high profit margin. If you can combine those two things, you got gold, and you’ve got a successful business. No doubt about it.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. For sure. And then we’ve got “it’s okay to take an evening off.” And this one, every business I’ve built, and like I told you we talked before the show, I have a landscaping business, three of them, built them up from the ground up, built them up, sold them. I think the last one I sold was $270,000, came with the trucks, trailers, the whole nine, sold the whole business, got out of it. I was sick of weed-eating, sick of mowing, sick of looking at grass. And I just got rid of that last one. And so every business I’ve been involved in that I’ve started from ground up, there’s a process. And I always know when I jump right in head first to a business and want to start a new business, and I’ve done it so many times, and I don’t know why. I think I just do it like self-induced torture, but I do.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And you like the pain.}

_{Dean Tedder: I do it and I’m like, “You know what? I need some self-induced torture. I should go start a business in an industry I have no knowledge in,” and I will just jump into stuff. And so literally the one thing I’ve learned at this point in life is that every business I’ve built there is that beginning hardship where you literally got to work, you have to build the business, which means you have to do the work. You can hire everybody you want to hire to do the work, and implement different jobs and positions, each person to handle things, but there will always be a point where your vision of your business will still be your baby. And you sill have to do the work, which means sometimes late night, after 5:00. I’ve had my wife tell me multiple times, “You tell everybody not to call after 5:00!” And it’s like they’re going to call me at 8:00, they’re going to call me at 9:00, they’re going to call me at 11:00 when some other subcontractor decides to work at night. It’s just part of the business.}

_{And when you get a business up and growing, what I’ve learned is that I like to call it now I’ve scaled it back from two years to one year. And there’s usually that one year period where you just know everything and all of your time day in and day out is going to be consumed by building the business. And you’re going to have to put that work in, and it’s going to be an around the clock thing and it is hard to take an evening off}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. The reason that I think this guy put this in this article…}

_{Dean Tedder: This guy is a genius, I’m telling you.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s a really good article. Let me tell you mean.}

_{Dean Tedder: He’s a genius.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. It’s really well-written. Let me tell you.}

_{Dean Tedder: I’d say he’s got some experience in the business world.}

_{Dylan Ogline: In writing or something, yeah.}

_{Dean Tedder: And writing.}

_{Dylan Ogline: He must write really good copy. Really good landing pages and sales pages. For me, a lot of people are getting more into creative work. And when you’re doing creative work, you need to be 100%. You can’t be 50% and deliver good quality. There are certain businesses-- sales comes to mind-- where you can just beat it, like work a hundred hours a week, and just ruthlessly work your way to success. But there are some industries, some professions-- writing comes to mind-- where, yes, you need to put in the work but just sometimes you just need to take that day off. You need to take that evening off to let your mind recuperate. It’s not about putting in your brutal body effort, it’s more about your mental effort. Which is it’s just becoming more and more common as we become more of a digital society. I think it’s your generation-- what are you, Generation X I think?}

_{Dean Tedder: I gave up. I gave up.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You’re before Millennials.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yeah. I’m X, or Z, or something. I don’t know. They don’t know what we are.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I think Z’s after Millennial.}

_{Dean Tedder: Are we X? Are we Y? I don’t know. We’re somebody.}

_{Dylan Ogline: No, I think Y got skipped. Y is the Millennial generation, which is me.}

_{Dean Tedder: I don’t know. I know I’m not the Baby Boomer guy.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, you’re between Baby Boomers and Millennials.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, we’re like those guys.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. So my brother’s in that same generation, and he has the same mindset of like just work a thousand hours a week, and that’s how you make a business work. And that’s certainly admirable, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. I just think it’s more for those types of businesses that were built during that generation, during the Baby Boomer generation. Now that with my generation…}

_{Dean Tedder: They mostly delegate things.}

_{Dylan Ogline: There’s way to delegate things. It’s more mental.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, so you have to have a reset time.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You have to. And when I say mental I don’t mean like we’re smarter or something.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right. Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s just it changed. If you’re an artist, you need to do things differently than somebody who’s building kitchens or a truck driver. It doesn’t mean one’s smarter than the other, it’s just a different way of doing work. And, for me, my family and everybody surrounding me was from that generation.}

_{Dean Tedder: “You got to get out there and work, Dylan!”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Exactly. Yeah.}

_{Dean Tedder: You’re like, “But wait, I can really do this.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well, for me what happened was I got burnt out, and I wasn’t getting better at the things I wanted to get better at. And for years people were like, “Dude, you just need to like take a night off. Like get some sleep.” And I was like, “No, no, man. I just got to work long hours.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Keep on going, yeah, keep on going.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Keep on going. And there’s a certain element. I mean this is an art, not a science, by all means. There’s a certain element of you have to have the work ethic, you have to put in the time.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, there’s a balance. A good balance.}

_{Dylan Ogline: There is a balance, but there’s a lot to be said of like if you want to produce good quality creative work, you’ve got to be well-rested, you got to have your mind in the right space. And if you don’t you’re not going to deliver quality.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I would 100% agree with that. And it’s another one of those things like when you do a physical job you need a lot of rest. Your body needs to recoup. And that’s to be said for even on a physical job, that’s to be said for the mental. But when you work like you said, the creative stuff, you do a lot of media stuff. I mean, your brain, that’s all you’re doing is just tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak all day long on your brain. You got to rest your mind too. And sometimes that’s a matter, for me, resting my brain is I wake up every morning, faithfully, and I go immediately and start working out. And I do a two-hour workout, no matter what body part.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oof.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yesterday my wife left to take my son to jiu-jitsu, and she left, and then two and a half hours later they came back and I had started with shoulder, and then she comes back and I’m finishing up on arms. And it’s just two and a half hours later. And I’m kind of talking to one of my friends down in Florida, down in Tampa, and he’s kind of giving me some advice on some stuff. And so we’re literally like two and a half hours, and that’s my morning. And then I go from that to my work, and then I start my day off working like that. And that, to me, that’s become a good schedule for me that gets me on a good plane.}

_{But when I just want to like take a break from everything, I do. I take the phone, everything, everything’s got to be put on hold, and I don’t want to think about things. And I’m building like a little VW Baja Bug, so when I want to get away from the world, I’ll just go out in the driveway and start tweaking and working on my Bug. And then I don’t have to think about work. I don’t have to think about stress. I don’t have to think about all the nonsense. I can literally just be in a moment. And so I always encourage like with things like this, it could be take an evening off, it could be half a hobby, have something that’s healthy to do that is not related to your work, that’s not related to the things that are going to mentally wear you.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. I like what you said about like you working on your VW. Because my entire working world is on this computer, and a lot more people are becoming that way, having something physical is hugely important. Like I really discourage people who they’re like me their entire world is digital, and then they go game or something.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And they’re like because you’re still in that digital world. So like me, I’m building a coffee table right now out of my old hockey sticks.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, now that’s cool.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. And it’s physical. I mean, sure, you’re using your mind on it a little bit, but I’m touching it. That’s different.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and when you’re doing it you’re physically envisioning and thinking about the project, which takes you away from I guess the projects of life. It takes you away from business.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Not thinking about work.}

_{Dean Tedder: Family. My wife’s like, “You can’t forget about us!” And I’m like, “I’m not.” But at that moment when I’m working out here doing the hobby stuff, like of course I’m thinking about you guys, but at the end of the day, I’m really focusing on picturing myself in this Baja Bug off-roading this spring, and jumping this thing over some dunes and stuff. So it’s one of those things it’s healthy to have a hobby. It’s healthy to to step outside of where our comfort zone is. And if our comfort zone, I know for me for many years I’ve burnt myself out working and businesswise because that was my comfort zone. That was all I knew is I had to work, I had to make money this is who I was, what I was, and I got burnt out on it.}

_{And so it took me a minute to step out of that comfort zone and say, “Look, work’s not your comfort. Even though you’re comfortable in it, and that’s your zone, get out of it, and slack off a little bit.” And there’s a few years there that’s what I did, I just said, “I’m going to slack off a little bit. I probably won’t make a lot of money this year, but you know what, I’m going to have fun.” And I did that for a while, and while I don’t always encourage everybody, some people just aren’t wired that way, I did it, it was good for me. I took a break from everything.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, if you do the same thing over and over and over again, you’re going to get burnt out. It could be working out. If you work out 12 hours a day, you’re going to get burnt out, and your body’s going to fall apart.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Same thing for your mind. If you do the same thing, you sit in front of that computer 15 hours day, seven days a week, nonstop. Sure, you might think it’s a badge of honor, but you will fall apart. And long before you even fall apart, your quality is going to dip. So find that sweet spot. I’m really big into 80/20 method. Focusing on the 20% of your efforts that are going to give you 80% of the results. So you reach a certain point where you get diminishing rates of return. In the beginning your rates of return are good and then they start to drop. And you need to just figure out what that sweet spot is in every area of your life. It could be working out, it could be family time, it could be work, it could be your hobby. If you do your hobby 12 hours a day, you’re going to get bored at it.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yeah. It’s one of those like how many Bugs can I fix and buy and crash?}

_{Dylan Ogline: You need to find that balance.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And hobbies I used to build bikes, and motorcycles, stuff like that. I love wrenching, I love just doing gearhead stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s like no matter what point in life I’ve been, and what portion of my life I was going through ups and downs, there was always an outlet. I always try to have an outlet. Lately, the past two years, it’s literally been I’ve been doing a lot more weightlifting than I’ve ever done in my life. And so that’s become my newest, I guess, addiction. But it’s really like I’ve always had a hobby, there’s always been whether I was building V-twin bikes, or I was building Bugs, or back in the day I’ve forgot how many cars I’ve owned. I mean that’s back in the day I was just really into cars and I buy them I sold them, I’ve crashed them, I’ve raced them, I’ve traded them title for title in races.}

_{It just became a thing where like I’ve always had a hobby. It’s always been something. When I was into computers, when I got my computer engineer degree, I opened my computer repair business. I did that for many years, I was smart enough that when I saw tablets and the new technology coming out, I saw the market changed to where people weren’t repairing anymore. And I was a little bit ahead of the curve and I saw it, and I said, “Man, these tablets come out, they’re a danger to our industry. I need to sell.” And at that time I had a friend of mine that was working for me, he’s a retired Tampa police officer. And I told him, I stepped to him that morning I said, “Look, man, I see a market trend. I’m going to get out of this before I lose my ass.” And he goes, “What do you mean?” I was like, “I’m going to sell, I’m closing down.” He goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m retired, I’m not going back to work, and I can’t sit home.” He said, “Could you please sell it to me?”}

_{Solution! I said, “Yeah, you can have it.” And I think I sold it to him, I think I gave everything, equipment and all to him. There’s like five separate repair benches with all the equipment and I was like, “$175,000, it’s yours.” And he paid me, and he was so happy, and he was the happiest guy I ever saw in my life. He just didn’t want to go home, and sit at home with his wife in retirement, and have nothing to do but stare at the wall. He’s like, “I’ll probably drink myself to death before I can make it through retirement that way.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Is the business still running?}

_{Dean Tedder: It is still running. Yeah. I forget what he changed the name to now. He’s changed the name several times. The funny thing is when I sold it to him, all the clients, everybody that ever brought computers to me they hated him. He was a retired sheriff, he did homicide, he’s very, very cold. Like the guy just has no real personality, he’s a very analytical thinker. And so people would come drop stuff off and he was just like, “Yeah, just set it on the counter.” Just no customer service whatsoever. So everybody would tell me, “Is he okay? Like what’s wrong with that guy?” You might need to find someone else because he’s a little gruff. And he always had his gun on his hip, so people were all kind of a little intimidating when they come in. And I’m like, “I know, I know, he’s just an ex-cop, that’s just his mindset, that’s who he is.” He’s John Wayne, okay? Just picture he’s John Wayne hanging out with computers.}

_{Dylan Ogline: John Wayne.}

_{Dean Tedder: And that was just his thing. And so when I sold it, I made the announcement to all the clients. I said, “Look, we’re selling the shop.” It’s going to go right over to the guy who’s been working with me, basically my partner at this time. I said, “I’m going to go ahead and sell out to him, and you guys same quality repair because he’s the one that’s been doing your work anyhow.” Every one of them is like, “I got to find another shop. I can’t. I can't.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: They didn’t like that.}

_{Dean Tedder: And so I told him upfront, I said, “You’re probably going to lose a bunch of business.” And even after I handed it over to him, I still had customers calling me directly saying, “Look, can you just do mine at home? Can you just repair mine at home?” And it’s not that they didn’t trust him, they just didn’t like his attitude and his personality. But yeah, he ended up having some problems, and he changed the name once, and then he had some more problems, and changed the name again. But he’s still operating it, I think he’s like 71 now, 72.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s a tough business now.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s still going. Yeah. And that’s what I told him, I said, “It’s not going to get easier. You’re going to lose money.” And I think the first round of troubles he had was when tablets and everything, there was a period like I want to say about a two-year period where nobody would repair a computer because it was cheaper to buy one. And then everybody got into tablets, so it was like if you don’t have a tablet, who are you? And I told him that, and I think that was around that two-year period that he just lost his butt and made no money.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Now the screen repair, I see those like iFix It.}

_{Dean Tedder: Everywhere. Yeah, you go on Craigslist, people are fixing screens.}

_{Dylan Ogline: All over the place.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. It’s scary. But I got out of it. But I’ll tell you, what I did, I got into that because it was really a hobby of mine. I loved messing with electronics, I’ve always since a young age, I’d take stuff apart, put it back together, try to think I was making it better.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So now your next business is going to be VW Baja Bug dealership.}

_{Dean Tedder: Like I was telling you earlier, my resume is crazy. I’ve actually owned an automotive shop.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Not surprised.}

_{Dean Tedder: As much as I would love to go just focus on VWs because I love them, I don’t think I want to go down the mechanic road anymore. I’m just kind of burnt out. I love it as a hobby.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well, do a dealership.}

_{Dean Tedder: Oh yeah. Yeah. For sure.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You’re not a repair shop. You’re just the dealership.}

_{Dean Tedder: I could do that. I could fix them up, customize them, put them for sale and just do it that way.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Boom. There you go. That’s the next business right there.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s one of those like I don’t know, it’s just again, hobby and outlet for me. And it’s probably the things that have kept me sane, to be honest with you. Having that outlet outside of business, having just something to do where my mind can just rest. And in my mind, I’m one of these people that I’m a thinker, and so my mind never stops. I mean I feel like sometimes when I’m sleeping, I don’t dream a lot. My wife’s always like, “Yeah, you must have been dreaming last night.” Sometimes I’ll literally there’s been times I’ll be laying in bed, and I’ll be thinking about one of our projects and a problem on the project and I’ll wake up the next day with the solution. And I’m like my brain never stopped. I went to sleep, and I was still thinking the project, and I woke up, and the problem was solved. It’s horrible.}

_{Dylan Ogline: There’s a book I started, it’s similar to like lucid dreaming, where you think about the problem really specific, and then you go to sleep, and then boom you have the solution in the morning.}

_{Dean Tedder: When people say sleep on it, it’s like it’s worked for me because my mind never shuts off.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Literally you can do that. Yes.}

_{Dean Tedder: It just keeps going.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Do you meditate at all?}

_{Dean Tedder: Meditation to me is no. I need to. I do try. I do take moments in the morning, whether it’s before I workout or even during my workout sometimes, I will take moments to myself and stop and reflect on what’s going on in just silence and just peace.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s why your workouts take so long. I’m thinking you’re hitting the weights for like two hours. You’re meditating for an hour.}

_{Dean Tedder: No, I’m laying on the bench, I’m laying on the bench just, “Ohm.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes, that’s what’s going on, okay.}

_{Dean Tedder: But I do take reflective moments throughout the day. Whether it’s in the morning, during workout, or even after workout. I do take time for myself. That’s just something I’ve always encouraged everybody. But for me, it took me a long time to reach that point. Probably I started doing that in the past like maybe year and a half, two years, where I’ve really made it a dedicated thing where I need to stop, step back, focus, and then have peace and quiet to really just enjoy that moment.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah.}

_{Dean Tedder: And so I have. But as far as like actual like dedicating this is 15 minutes of time I need to meditate I have not done that. Because I think I’m just like adult ADD or something sometimes.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Credit to whoever said this quote. If you can’t meditate for, I think it’s like five minutes.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: The quote’s like if you can’t meditate for five minutes, that means you need to meditate for 20 minutes.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. It’s so true. It’s so true.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Tim Ferriss calls it “the monkey mind.” Like your mind’s always bouncing around. And I could 100% relate to that. Meditation, I absolutely cannot recommend it enough. Like it made a huge impact on that constantly bouncing around thinking about different things.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So I do like 15 to 20 minutes every morning.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s a good thing. You’re probably at least the eighth or ninth that I’ve interviewed that said the same thing. Like they literally focus on meditation now and it’s changed their lives. It’s just having that moment to reflect has really changed them.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yup. And I highly recommend it. For me, I had trouble like sticking to it, building that habit. So I downloaded the Calm app, so I just have the free version, I didn’t pay for it or anything yet. But I just use like the self-guided, so I’m not using the guided ones. But the whole reason I recommend it is it tracks it so you get a streak.}

_{Dean Tedder: Okay.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And, let me tell you man, I have like a 570-day streak going.}

_{Dean Tedder: You’re like, “Yes!”}

_{Dylan Ogline: I’m addicted to like I will not let that streak end. And that is simply what it was.}

_{Dean Tedder: But if that’s all it is, and you get that streak, and that’s what you’re shooting for, that is even more of a reason to have that health, to have that sanity, that’s cool.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But some days I’m like, “Ah, I really don’t have time.” But I’m like, “Man, I’m not going to break my streak, so I will go upstairs, sit there because I don’t want to, yeah.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Keep it going.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So that’s what built the habit for me.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I had a guy on, a guest I want to say about a month ago, and he made a very good point. He said, “Meditation looks different for everybody.” He goes, “The formal way that everybody thinks of meditation is like, kind of like a yogi and stuff, and you’re just kind of doing your thing.” He goes, “Meditation’s different for everybody. It can be.” He’s like, “You can meditate, you can be meditating in the middle of a business meeting, you could be at your desk working and take a moment.” He explained it like, “Taking time to meditate can be something as much as just shutting out the world around you and even when you’re focusing the things you’re doing.” He said, “You’re not getting that complete piece of meditation.” You could be like we were talking about with weights, and he goes, “You could be working out and that can be your meditation. That can be your peace.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: And it was really interesting the perspective he put on meditation because I guess a lot of people the cliché, “Oh, it’s meditation, this guy must be sitting around, Indian style on the floor, singing songs or something,” and to each their own. And for me, it really is just a couple moments of piece and quiet, couple moments to reflect. I do sometimes when I’m traveling to and from jobs or projects, if I’m on the highway or something, like that’s my moment. Always keep my eyes open, of course.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Hey man, if that works.}

_{Dean Tedder: But I’ll turn off the music, and I’ll just be cruising, and that’s my moment to reflect. I get peace and quiet, I’m alone, and I can really reflect on the vision of what the day is going to be, what the day should be, where I want to go.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Just hitting that like pause button for a little bit, huge mental health benefits, man. 100%.}

_{Dean Tedder: So we were talking a little bit earlier about so small town in Pennsylvania, what town in Pennsylvania where you from?}

_{Dylan Ogline: A small little farming town called Somerset.}

_{Dean Tedder: Somerset. How far is that from Allentown or what’s the other one right there? There’s Allentown… Emmaus.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I don’t know where Emmaus is, and I’m really messing up my Pennsylvania geography here. It’s Eastern Pennsylvania, correct?}

_{Dean Tedder: I believe so.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Aw man. I think there’s Allentown and there’s a farmer’s market that me and my girlfriend went to once in that area. I think it’s like two hours. About two hours.}

_{Dean Tedder: I mention it because when I was younger I had a friend that stayed out there, my buddy Brad Kingston, him and his family lived out there, and they moved out there from Florida, and I went to visit them one time. And same thing as my Oregon story, man. I went out there, and it was wintertime, snow and miserable. I don’t know, I always pick like the worst times to go visit and travel some place. And so yeah, I end up in like Emmaus and Allentown, and I come to find out that I’m like, “Brad, what do we do here?” It’s wintertime and like what do you do? Everybody lives in basements. I was like this is weird, like everybody in Pennsylvania live in basements? He’s like, “Well, every house has a basement.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Florida doesn’t have basements.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right. And I’m like, “This isn’t normal.” And he’s like, “Oh, all we do, we just go to the pub. We go to work, we go to the pub.” And I’m like, “That’s it?” I was like, “That’s what we do up here?” And he goes, “Yeah, you watch sports, and you go to the pub.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s it. Yup.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I stayed with him for like two or three weeks up there, and that’s all we did. It was go to the pub, drink, go to work with his dad, and then we come back and crash in the basement. And then we’d wake up and do it all over again, and I’m like, “This is ridiculous. This is like I couldn’t do this.” Pennsylvania’s just not the place for me.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Where I’m from, I’m trying to think if Allentown…}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s a little different.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well, where I’m from it’s like farming and hunting. If you’re not hunting, or farming, or working in the coal mines, you’re looked down upon.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So I stuck out as like a sore thumb. Like people really thought there was something wrong with me or I was lazy.}

_{Dean Tedder: You’re like, “I just want out of here.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Or I was a drug dealer because I worked at home. How do you make money at home? You’re selling drugs.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s what it is.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s like, “Well, is anybody coming over? No.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Like the only thing I’m growing in my house is like organic kale.}

_{Dean Tedder: See, guys, I am a farmer.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I am growing those greens.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup. That’s funny.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But, yeah, you don’t work at home. Yeah, I stuck out like a sore thumb. My brother still makes fun of me, he doesn’t consider me a working man.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Which is I don’t think I put that in an article but an article that was written about me. I did an interview and I mentioned the working man thing.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But that’s just the mentality there.}

_{Dean Tedder: But it’s a huge contrast from traditionally what we picture how the work and business has gone over the years. Like our parents, our grandparents, traditionally work was it was all physically. Like you had to be a man, and this is what you had to do to provide.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You had to tend to the field or work in a factory, that’s what it was.}

_{Dean Tedder: And nowadays, technology, and just innovation has just changed the dynamics of the workforce to where there’s just so many alternatives to doing that. I mean, yeah, there’s still a need for those industries. Obviously these things don’t get produced and made but without somebody’s hands. Machinery can only do so much. But at the end of the day, our innovation, or business innovation and industries have changed so much to where there’s big dynamic shift of the physical nature of business and work in general. My dad was a huge work ethic guy. He was the physical guy. I’ll put it this way, my dad, we would get off school, you had to have your homework done. As soon as your homework was done, my dad would drop you at a job site with one of his friends and tell them to work you to death. And when they were done with you, he would come get you.}

_{So I’d go, sometimes I’d get my homework done right after school, 3:00, 4:00, my dad would drop me at a job site, and I’d work till 9:00 doing drywall or whatever it was. And he’d come pick me up, and then I’d go shower and go to sleep, go to school, start it all over again. And my mom and dad were divorced, so I always hated staying at my dad’s because that’s what it was. My dad was, “You have to work to stay under my roof.” That was just the guy he was.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But now you have good work ethic, right?}

_{Dean Tedder: Right. Right. But he didn’t care about age, 13, 14, you’re going to work, and that was just my dad. There was no like, “Well, there’s laws that say at 15.” My dad was like, “13, get up, get out of the house, and go to work.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: He’s like, “Get the hell to work.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and if not, you need to go mow lawns in the neighborhood. That was just him. My dad did not allow laziness, he was very gruff. First off, he was a very dysfunctional man, but he was very aggressive. To the point where you don’t come in dad’s house with your shoes on, you didn’t come in change the channel. If you changed the channel on my dad, you’d find yourself out front, laid out on the driveway. It was his way, his household, that’s how he was raised. And I’ve got half and step-brothers, and we have a couple adopted, but about 11 brothers and sisters total in our family growing up.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Whoo, that’s a big family.}

_{Dean Tedder: From different dynamics, and different dysfunctional backgrounds, so really chaotic. But my dad always did instill that work ethic.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s important, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and when they divorced, my mom she went as a single mother she went back to school, put herself back to school for nursing, she became the first woman firefighter of Veneta, Oregon. She pushed herself beyond limits, which set another example for me and my sister directly. And so it’s very interesting to see how things have shifted and changed when you look at just overall business and industry.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And I think it’s going to continue.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: The only thing that doesn’t stop changing is change.}

_{Dean Tedder: Complacency.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Complacency. Yeah. People are worried about the future, and I’m like, “Listen, things are going to continue to change and the pace is going to change more and more and more.” COVID just ramped everything up to a ten.}

_{Dean Tedder: As far as like virtual industry, your industry, creative industries, I think what we’re going to see at the end of this pandemic is that these industries are going to peak, these industries are really going to do good because of the pandemic.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh, 100%. We had our best year ever.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And there’s a lot of people who are suffering, but it’s like we just so happen to be in the type of industry…}

_{Dean Tedder: That thrives under this.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That thrived under this kind of stuff. And I hear a lot of people, they’re scared of the changes, and I’m like, “Listen, it’s not changing to this certain thing. It’s going to continue to change. I don’t know what the future’s going to hold. I think it’s going to become more and more digital.” I was talking to my neighbor the other day about commercial real estate. I’m like people go into office spaces, strip malls, stuff like that.}

_{Dean Tedder: Like do people still do that?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Like small businesses, shops, and a strip mall, like that’s done.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I’ve been saying that for probably the past year is brick and mortar has really gone. We do a lot of commercial build outs, and we have business owners step to us. And every time I’m trying to keep a straight face when they’re like explaining their vision and their business plan, and what they want to build, and how they want us to construct it. And I’m literally sitting there trying to like not show my expression on my face of like, “You’re going to be here for six months to a year and you’re going to fail.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yup.}

_{Dean Tedder: And it’s sad to have to be that way and think that way. And but each person has their dream, and their vision, and they want to build something, and that’s how they want to do it. And even like here in South Tulsa there’s a little community, which is where my house is, is Bixby, Oklahoma. It’s a predominantly used to be like kind of a farmland sod area. It’s one of the fastest developing communities in Oklahoma. And it’s all money, everybody here it’s money. There’s people from all kinds of backgrounds. And since they legalize medical marijuana, it’s even bigger industry now there. But Bixby, as a whole, there’s so many businesses here but they’re not brick and mortar. There’s so many people that have deep, deep pockets and not one of them has a storefront or an office.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yup.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I’ve seen that trend just continue. And if you watch down the major highway, like you said, all the strip malls you see them emptying out. They have “for lease” signs all the way down the highway. And then the closer you get to this one community it’s like where are the businesses? Why is this such a thriving community but there’s no businesses?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Everybody works at home.}

_{Dean Tedder: Everybody’s digital.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We are still social creatures.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, so there’s some that will outperform, yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well like right now, restaurants are hurting, and you have like food delivery and stuff like that. But I still see if everybody’s working from home, we’re still going to have the desire to see other people.}

_{Dean Tedder: Correct.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It used to be you would go to work and be surrounded by people. And then you’d want to go home and be alone. Everybody wants that balance.}

_{Dean Tedder: Now it’s kind of a reverse.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Now it’s going to be reversing. And so I think gyms, people, like fitness classes, restaurants, those sorts of businesses right now with COVID might be particularly hurting.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But I think if more people were working at home, they’re going to want some kind of social interaction so I see those businesses thriving going forward. Like why would you have a shop selling shoes when the most you can do is serve your immediate area whenever you can have an online store, and you can sell to the entire planet.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Is that more difficult? Hell yeah, it’s more difficult. But why would somebody shop at your store where you’re going to have a very limited capacity when they can shop online at an unlimited capacity.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. I’m one of those old school. Again, being the old guy that I am, I’m the old school guy. I love to just go in and touch-feel. Like I do a lot of online shopping, but I don’t like it because I really like to physically see what I’m buying. I think that’s just us old people. I think it’s just us old people.}

_{Dylan Ogline: No, that’s 100%. I mean, I’m the same way, and I think everybody’s that way. But if you’ve noticed, especially with clothing. I just got a new pair of glasses. Warby Parker I think is how you pronounce the brand? You have to give them your credit card, but I don’t think they charge you, and they send you like five or six frames.}

_{Dean Tedder: To try out.}

_{Dylan Ogline: To try on.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And then you pick whichever one you like, you get to touch it, you get to feel it, you get to put it on your face, see how it looks. You’re like, “This is what I want,” you send it back, it’s totally free, and then they make the glasses for you.}

_{Dean Tedder: Very cool.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Amazon, you buy it, like especially with clothes, they have I think it’s just free returns, and we all know about free turns on Amazon Prime. But you buy it, you try it on, you don’t like it, you send it back, they’ll send you a new one. Like that stuff is becoming more and more common, and I think a lot of people are just going to order it.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, online commerce has come a long way. It really has.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Remember the days of like ordering something and it would take like two to three weeks to get to you?}

_{Dean Tedder: Oh yeah, two to three weeks, and it was like when it got there if you hated it, it was yours, you owned it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, you’re screwed, where you had to like fill out this form.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’d cost you the amount of the item to return it. It’s like, “Oh, I bought a microwave online, and it cost me $200 to ship it back.” So I’m going to keep it. I’m just going to keep it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Might as well. Yeah, I remember the very first online order I ever placed was with Nike.com.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah?}

_{Dylan Ogline: This was like 1999, 2000, or something. And I remember being so nervous like typing in the credit card because I had to use my parents’ credit card. And then I was like, “I’ll pay you right after. Like I have the cash.” I don’t remember what I ordered, but it took like literally three weeks to get to my house.}

_{Dean Tedder: You’re like barefoot, running around, waiting on these shoes to come in}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. I need my shoes. I don’t know how it is in Tulsa, but here in Orlando all the time, if I buy stuff by like noon, Amazon delivers it by the end of the day.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And my wife’s always like, “What did you buy? What did you buy?” Because we have nonstop deliveries just showing up at our door nonstop, and I’m like at this point, because I’ll buy stuff for the Bug, I’ll buy stuff for the business, I buy stuff for her, my son. I’m like, “I don’t even remember what I bought.” Like whatever shows up, just open it, and it’s Christmas daily. Everyday it’s a new Christmas present. Just open it up, find out what it is, who it belongs to, throw it out. And it’s insane how fast it is now with the commerce online. I honestly, I do like going physically to a store, I just like walking around. My wife it kind of drives her crazy like I’m the aisle-to-aisle guy. Everybody has their shopping patterns.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Do you like Lowe’s? Are you a Lowe’s guy?}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. I’ve gotten bored with Lowe’s because being in construction, I know where every single thing is. I can tell you, you’ll be like, “I need a certain kind of super glue.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Aisle 15?}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, aisle 15.}

_{Dylan Ogline: About halfway down, on the right.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup. And it’s funny because I’m friends with all the ones at our local Lowe’s over here, the managers and everybody, and they know me. And they’re like, “Why won’t you apply up here?” Like because you know, I’ll be in the line, checking out, and somebody will be like, “Do you know where blah blah blah,” and I’ll yell at people and say it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And you be like, “Yup, I do.” I do a lot of home improvement stuff.}

_{Dean Tedder: They look at me like, “How in the heck does he know that?” But it’s one of those like most men, we’re always like, “Men, we go in to shop, we know what we want, we get in, we get out.” It’s always been the cliché thing.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Not at Lowe’s.}

_{Dean Tedder: Oh, no, no way. And now I become the guy the older I get, like I go in any store, even if I went there yesterday I come in and I got to go aisle-to-aisle and see every single thing on each aisle unless it’s the grocery store.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Because you’re actually seeing stuff now. You actually get to see, and touch, and becomes more and more rare.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And my wife, she’s like, “Are we doing aisle-to-aisle today are we actually going in to get what we wanted?” And I’m like, “Well, we’ll do it your way today, but next time we got to go aisle-to-aisle.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: You got to get the experience. Now it’s about the shopping experience.}

_{Dean Tedder: But this pandemic, it’s woken me up on a lot of different fronts. I’m sure with you as well in your industry. First off, yeah, your industry and any digital marketing industry through the pandemic is obviously doing a lot better because that’s just kind of what it’s designed for to meet those needs. But what’s been profound for me is watching the changes, watching how people handle the changes. A lot of people aren’t good, like you just mentioned about change. A lot of people just aren’t comfortable with change. And especially when it’s very abrupt, and it’s not in their control. Nobody has control over our local states shutting down and people are just in a panic and a frenzy, and creating more stress and anxiety than they need to.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. But I think it’s natural human emotion to be scared of change.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s emotion, yeah, yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So we talked pre-show about stoicism.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I’m no stoic, by any means, but I study it a little bit. And what it teaches you is like with the fear of change, everybody has that, it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s like immune to that fear. It’s about just simply recognizing the fear, acknowledging it, like stoicism taught me to do that. So when things are scary and changes are coming, like I fear it too, like I’m scared of that stuff too. But I recognize and I always try to think, “Am I being logical about this or am I being emotional?” And logically, everybody knows things change, and things are hanging faster and faster. And in general-- not 100% of the time, in general, 90% of the time-- change is good.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yes.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Like the fact that you can get online and you can order groceries and not have to go to the grocery store, and in like two hours, Whole Foods delivers your groceries, that’s probably a good thing.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Is it good for everybody? No. Is every change good? No. But generally, these changes are good. But emotionally you can get caught up and be like, “Oh, that’s so scary.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, but like you just need to think logically and be like, “You know hat? Logically this is a good thing. Logically, change is going to continue.” So I always have to be adaptable to these changes and recognize that even if I adapt to this new world, in the future, it will change. Like that’s 100% guaranteed.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, one thing history tells us is nothing is going to stay the same.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Nothing.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s just not. There’s nothing that’s going to stay static throughout our society. It’s going to, in some way, evolve or change into something or morph into something different.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But generally speaking, progress is not a straight line. You will have ups and downs. But generally speaking, we are heading into as things continue to get better and better. If I’m feeling that fear, which again with stoicism, like you recognize the fear. You’re not hiding it, you’re not getting rid of it, you’re recognizing it, and I just always remind myself like generally speaking, this is good, generally speaking we’re heading in a positive direction, and I’ve got to adapt to it, and in the future I’ll continue to have to adapt. So it’s just part of it.}

_{Dean Tedder: I discussed this a little bit with you before the show. We really use this platform to encourage not just self-help and self-improvement, but we encourage a lot of mental health, stability, different aspects. You spoke about meditation and stuff, and that’s one avenue. What is some advice you could maybe give to the audience that the kind of not just has helped you through this pandemic, but maybe has helped you through life that has gotten you through some hard times? Maybe advice that you would give to others.}

_{I was just talking the other day with one of the guests on the show. This year alone I’ve lost eight people-- overdoses and suicides, nonstop, just never-ending it seems like. With a lot of the guys I grew up with and people I grew up with. Just last night I get a message from one of my friend’s mothers that he was literally having a conversation with her and dropped to the floor, cardiac arrest, he is now brain-dead, she will be taking him off life support Friday.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Wow. Sorry to hear that, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. It’s tough, and this is a good buddy of mine. I’ve had a lot of losses this year. One of my good friends and neighbor, just generally right across the street over here, just a really good guy shot himself. I had to go in there and kind of deal with that, walked in there and saw the mess, and kind of had to deal with that right in the middle of the pandemic, right in the middle of summer.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh, that’s great.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and so it’s one of those things where we just I encourage, I talk a lot about this on the show is we never know where people are at in life. Me and you can be walking through a store, just passing each other, give a nod, give a hello, whatever. I always encourage everybody on the show for one: give a smile. Give a nod. Hold the door for somebody. If you’re in a drive-thru, buy the car behind you’s meal while you’re paying for yours and drive off. There needs to be no recognition just do it.}

_{It’s literally the little things like that, but you never know when someone’s, let’s say, in a domestic abuse situation. You’re walking into a convenience store, you hold that door for that person, give them a smile, “how’s your day going,” that’s it. That might have been enough to take that woman or man out of an abusive spouse that just beat them at home. There’s just little things that we don’t realize-- depression, anxiety, that people not just the pandemic, but in their general life before the pandemic-- are dealing with. What are some things you can give, just kind of some outlets or things that you’ve used to overcome some of the hardships or downtimes in your life?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure. So I would 100% agree with what you said. And it’s becoming harder to see because, especially with politics, the world is just becoming so divided. And we always think that everybody’s an enemy. Generally speaking, most people are good. Generally speaking, most people want the same things. Generally speaking, we all want better futures for ourselves, for our families. So I think that would be like the one thing that I would say is just keep that in mind. Like even if you’re the most hardcore liberal versus the most hardcore conservative, probably like 90% of the shit we all agree on.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right. Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We’re not enemies. We’re all in this shit together. So a little bit of kindness would probably be a good thing and go a long way. And I think showing some compassion, like you mentioned man, it could be opening the door for somebody. It could be you see somebody, I’ve had this happen in like Wal-Mart or something, and somebody like forgot their credit card, and it’s like an old lady or whatever. Just pay for it, dude. Like if you have the resources, just small, simple, stupid shit. Like we’re all in this together no matter what. So I think just keep that in mind is probably always a good thing.}

_{And that certainly has helped me, I would say that. Another thing is like you mentioned about like the domestic abuse, or depression, or whatever. Realize that every single person you see, 100% of us, we’re all fighting our own battles. It could be depressing, it could be a diet issue, health issue, it could be a bad relationship, it could be maybe your parents are sick, or your child is sick, or you just walked in on your neighbor kills themselves like I think you said. Or your friend dies, like we’re all going through shit, we’re all facing our own battles. And don’t get upset about shit.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: As much as you can. Like one I always think of when somebody like cuts you off in traffic, and you’re sitting there, and I used to be this way. 100% used to be that crazy radical 16-year-old kid, like “Fuck you, like move, bitch, get out of my way.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes, I was that kid, and I think we all were at one point. But you’re on the highway, and somebody cuts you off, like just take a second and be like, maybe that dude’s late for work. Maybe he just lost his job two weeks ago and something happened, and he’s on his way to an interview.” Or maybe he’s on the way to a hospital to see his loved one for the last time. Or maybe he’s just a fucking dick.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And if he is, let him be that guy. Let him be the dick.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Let him be the dick. But just maybe, for a moment, give that dude the benefit of the doubt. Not just for his sake, but maybe for your own mental health. Like don’t hold all that aggression in and realize like maybe that dude’s going through some shit, maybe her boyfriend beats her. Which is bad, but like we’re all going through shit, man. So things that have helped me, I think just all that stuff that I just mentioned. Just recognizing that and just realizing that we’re all going through shit. Realize that one thing that I’ve always kind of reminded myself so much like more generally speaking, always heading in a positive direction, is nothing lasts. So this too shall pass. Like the the hardest thing you’ve ever gone through you will find a way through it. So I always remind myself of that like this is not as bad as it seems, and this too shall pass. And at the end of the day, hell, at least we’ll end up with a good story, right?}

_{Dean Tedder: Right. Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Like the best stories you have are probably the worst shit that you went through.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and for me, it really is. I could tell some crazy stories because I’ve lived through some real crazy stuff. But at the end of the day, the journey, I remember growing up a lot of people saying you’ve got to enjoy the journey from Point A to Point C. And a lot of people don’t, they ignore B, they just try to get right to C. And I lived that way for a long time. I was just big adrenaline junkie, it was all about getting here to here and not stepping back and enjoying the view.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Enjoy the ride, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: Exactly. And then we hear exactly what you just said is like where you’re at this moment will not be a year from now. This too shall pass. I used to hear all these things and be like, “Man, whatever. Whatever you guys are talking about, you don’t know what I’m going through.” And sometimes it just takes a little bit of self-reflection. And I think you touched on it earlier about the I over E thing. That’s really what it boils down to. Are you feeding and leading your life with emotion? Or are you feeding and leading within the black? Are you actually thinking things through with common sense and logic or are you actually just engaging the fact of how you feel and making action of that? And sometimes that kind of festers and feeds on the depression, it feeds on, I guess, the poor choices that can come out of that.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I would add one other thing is you brought up the “this too shall pass thing” again. You also need to remember that in the good times, too.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yes. Correct.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Even whenever you’re like the happiest moments.}

_{Dean Tedder: Living in the moment.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Living in the moment and realize that this too shall pass, and hard times will come, the rain will come eventually.}

_{Dean Tedder: Soak up and enjoy as much of the good as you can because it will go.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, exactly, to soak it up and to have appreciation, and be like to appreciate it, man, which I think we all probably would be really served by that one. I think the last thing I’ll mention with mental health is don’t compare your chapter three to somebody else’s chapter 42.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We naturally compare ourselves to others. And I think that’s really unhealthy.}

_{Dean Tedder: It is.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You don’t know that person’s circumstances. Maybe they got lucky. Maybe they were in the right place at the right time. And this is most common with money, or business, or whatever. But maybe they were just in the right place at the right time. I think instead of comparing it to others, you just simply want to self-reflect and be like, “Am I putting in as much effort? Am I working as hard as I possibly can? Am I doing the best I can?” This doesn’t have to necessarily just do with business. This could be with your relationships. People will compare and be like, “Oh, that couple is so in love,” or whatever.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But you don’t know the shit that they’ve gone through.}

_{Dean Tedder: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You don’t know what happens behind closed doors. Don’t compare your chapter to their chapter because your story is different.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yes.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Look at am I putting in as much effort? Am I doing the best that I possibly can? And if the answer to that is yes, then thumbs up, good job. You’re moving in the right direction. But if the answer is no, then hey, that’s a good thing, you’re recognizing that I can do better and I can move in a positive direction, so.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and I think a lot of, like I just mentioned, self-reflection. Taking time to self-assess, and that goes in the business world as well. You can run a business and model a business and get it up and operating, but every day there should be, or at least you hear about the monthly meetings, or the weekly meetings. There’s a time to assess and see if everything is working the way it’s supposed to work. And you always are assessing these things and reflecting on them. And that should be our personal journey as well. And I totally love what you said about not comparing because each one of us walks an individual walk. We’re viewing things from a perspective that is only our perspective.}

_{And so we can’t really compare what we are going through and what someone else is going through, but we can assess everyday, like you said. Am I giving it my all? Am I lacking in this avenues? And if so, how can I improve those? For me, like we talked about earlier, it was one of those for me to look in the mirror and just say, “These are things I agree with in my life. These are things I don’t like about in my life or myself. And these are things I can either embrace or remove from my life.” And that’s kind of where I went with things.}

_{And so we always need to self-assess and kind of reflect on things throughout our journey. And sometimes in our society we get to a point where we are too busy reflecting and assessing others. And we draw that into ourselves, as you said, as a comparison. And I think if we focus more on self-assessment versus the criticism or the reflection that we see in other people. Because we are not the people we see, we’ve got to really look at ourselves. And I think, for some people, for me it was that was one of my biggest fears in life. And I’ve mentioned this on the show before is the hardest thing for me to deal with was to look in the mirror and to look at myself. And for some people, it’s the same thing, they can only look at other people.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s a very uncomfortable thing to do.}

_{Dean Tedder: It is. And for some people, they can only look at other people, and make comparisons. They don’t want to look at what they have as a mess in front of them.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah. I 100% think that that’s important is being honest with yourself, looking in the mirror. But I’ve talked before about maybe having a little bit of compassion. I think, yeah, you need to have compassion with other people. Like I think that’s mission critical for a happy and success life. Like try to put yourself in their shoes, and you don’t know the battles that they’re facing, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors in their life. You don’t know the challenges that they’re facing. Try to show a little bit of compassion for other people. But at the same time, also maybe show some compassion for yourself, too.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Self-care.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And people make fun of that, and say like, “Oh, that’s such a wimpy thing.” You need to walk the fine line. You want to be tough on yourself and be like, “I’m going to challenge myself, and I’m going to push myself.” But at the same time, you don’t want to take it too far, and you don’t want to push yourself, and to beat yourself down to where you’re feeling negative. If you did a workout, or athletic competition, and you didn’t win, like it’s okay to be like, “Damn it. I’ll push myself harder next time.” Like that’s probably a positive thing.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But if you’re like, “You loser,” then like you start thinking like negative thoughts and that’s probably not a thing.}

_{Dean Tedder: Thinking plays such a major part in you hear about people with depression, suicide. Self-talk, self-talk has so much of a play and a role in success. I don’t know too many successful business people that just are talking down to themselves constantly.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I don’t know any.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s always a positive. Yeah, it’s got to be a positive vision, you’ve got to be encouraging not just of others in your team, but of yourself.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Or if they do talk down themselves, they’re miserable fucks.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s recognizable.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Everybody’s like, “That Dave guy. He’s rich, but he’s a miserable fuck, and nobody likes him.”}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s that first impression thing. You’re like, “Holy, what a dickhead he is.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes. Yeah.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s very obvious.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure, they might have money or whatever, but that’s no way to live.}

_{Dean Tedder: No. Because you know deep down there’s just a dark, miserable person in there.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And again, you don’t know what their battles are.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and not wanting to be. Nobody is born and wakes up each day just wanting to be miserable. There’s things going on. We wall want to succeed. We want happiness.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We all, generally speaking, want the same things.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. We all want to be happy, and succeed, and to be able to produce for our families, and at the same time, have healthy relationships with others. That’s, to me, that’s kind of been my journey, that’s kind of been one of my key goals is building upon relationships with other people, learning how to continue to keep healthy relationships. When I was younger I did, I was very good at sabotaging relationships.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Been there.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, that was with it could be a spouse, a girlfriend, fiancé, or it could just be my friends. There came a point in my life where, no joke, my friends were like, “You’re not invited to the party.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Because you’re a dick.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. “You remember last weekend, Dean, when you came to my house for the keg party and you grabbed the keg, beat up three guys, and threw it in your truck, and drove off? And went home and drank it by yourself? Do you remember that?”}

_{Dylan Ogline: We don’t want to party with you anymore.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I’m like, “Wait a minute? Did I do that?” And they’re like, “Yeah, the keg’s sitting in your front yard, dude.” And I’m like, “Man, I was a jerk. I was a jerk. What was the point of that?” And there was a time period like for about a year in my life where like all my friends were like, “No, you’re just not welcome to come over. You’re not. If we see it, you invite us somewhere, we may or may not show up, but you are not welcome to come hang out at the parties we go to anymore because you got to get yourself under control.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: I’ve been there, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: And that wasn’t even me drinking.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I never stole a keg though. Never did that.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, that wasn’t even me drinking, that was just who I was at that time period. Even if I woke right up, I was just a jerk. And it was like I look back on that, I reflect on that. I’m like, “That’s not the person I want to be. That’s not the person I ever wanted to be.” And again, that took a lot of self-assessment or reflection on why, why was I this idiot?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Most of the time, like when I look back, it was like you had deeper anger issues.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And that’s it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And weren’t positively dealing with stuff.}

_{Dean Tedder: Healthy ways to cope.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Healthy ways to cope, and like again, that stuff like people look down on that stuff still. And they’re like, “Oh, you’re so weak for talking about mental health.” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, well you’re a dick. And you know why you’re a dick? Probably because you’re so negative.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, I have friends of mine to this day that I’ve known 30-plus years, they will call me, and they’re still sitting on bar stools, and they’re still miserable, and they’ll call me, and they’ll start in with like, “Hey, I need a little bit of advice,” and I’ll start talking to them, and they’ll literally go into the whole like, “Oh, you just softened up. Blah blah blah blah.” And I’m like, “Who is calling who for advice? Who’s still sitting on the same barstool they drank on 30 years ago out of high school? Who wants help here? Like let’s talk about the real issues here.” I’ve taken time to man up and assess things in my life. You’re still drinking your sorrows away and then blaming other people for it. Let’s talk about it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But the truth is it’s tougher to face that shit in the mirror.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s tougher to show somebody compassion. It’s tougher to forgive somebody. When that dick pulls out in front of you on the highway, it is much easier to say, “Fuck you, dude,” and slam on your horn, and throw them the bird, cut them off, try to run them off the road. To do shit like that is a lot easier than it is to just be like, “Huh, maybe that guy’s going through some shit.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. He’s having a bad day. Not my problem.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Have a good day, sir.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And yeah, me, I argue that’s the tough man stuff to do. It’s tougher to forgive people that have different wants and needs than us. I’m going to mention politics, it’s easier to say, “Those damn Conservatives or those damn Liberals. Like screw those people.” It’s a lot tougher to just say, “Hm, maybe they have a reason to think the way they think. Maybe they have a point. Maybe we’re not that far off. Maybe we should show them some compassion.” Excuse me. That stuff is a lot harder.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, and it’s environmental, and anything too. It’s, like you said, what do these people surround themselves with? Where are they getting their information from? If I’m living in a world where my information is fed to me in a certain way. I’m going to just believe that way. It’s kind of like organized religion. If you’re born into a religion, and you’re raised in that religion, and you know nothing else.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You don’t know anything different.}

_{Dean Tedder: And then you get picked up and put into like the jungle in Africa in the middle of a tribe community. You’re going to be like, “Holy moly, this is… what is this? This is crazy.” It’s environmental. It’s also what information you’re allowing in. I call it mind garbage. It’s kind of like when I watch the TV it’s kind of the same thing. The trash box. It’s sometimes you can turn things on for entertainment and sometimes things that are entertainment can just give you bad information. And that bad information, some people it gets stuck in their head, and it becomes their thinking.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Do you watch the news?}

_{Dean Tedder: I do because I’m a journalist as well. Add that to my resume. So I do, as a journalist, I do watch the news. Unfortunately, the media drives me crazy because what I find is, like for example, when we started off I was like, “Well, I wonder who wrote this article,” right? And you were like, “Well, can you find who wrote it?” And I’m scrolling down. A lot of people don’t even know where to find the sources in articles these days. And so I’m immediately like, “Yeah, let me find who wrote this.” What aggravates me the most in media these days, in journalism, that aggravates me in the industry is you could almost never nowadays find a cited source. And when I say cited source, I don’t mean the author, I don’t mean the editor, I don’t mean the media outlet. I mean they will put information in an op-ed piece and they will say certain things are factual.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sources said this and this.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, but there’s never a citation as to where I, the individual, can go find the information they are discussing and put it to paper and it’s a fact. And the problem we have is, like you said, we have the far left, the far right, everybody’s arguing. At the end of the day, it’s a big cloud to me. And this is just my perspective and my opinion, it’s a big cloud of mess where I see it as both sides are a failure. And I don’t mean both sides of the people themselves. I think the people had been fooled and kind of fed information that’s not good.}

_{But what I see on both sides is two parties failing. That’s what I see, I see a failure in our government, and we’ve allowed these people to be the government, we put them in place. You hear people talk about vote them out at the ballot box. We don’t have to wait to vote people out of the ballot box. There is processes set up. If you don’t like a person and a politician, and he does something that’s against the law or against what the constituents want, those constituents can remove them before the election. The problem is that people have been ingrained to believe it can only happen during elections. And so we continue to allow our government to build into this corrupt, weird nest that it is.}

_{But the media, to me, has become just again, propaganda, we hear these terms thrown around all the time, more than ever now. But if you go to, if you travel, and I’m sure you’ve traveled overseas and stuff, you travel to some of these other countries where China, Hong Kong, these other countries to where you literally see the media’s feeding these people what they want, the government’s feeding people what they want them to see. There’s not a free press in a lot of these nations. North Korea is the first one that comes to mind. If you’re in North Korea, which we don’t know a lot, that’s very shielded from society but what’s going on in North Korea, those people in North Korea are like we just talked about. It’s like being in organized religion.}

_{Dylan Ogline: They live in a different version of the world than we do.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Their life is like organized religion. That’s all they know is what they’ve been taught in North Korea. So the media has become this machine that, again, will not cite sources, they could put out any information they want without having any accountability to where that information came from, or even telling me the reader where it came from so I can research it myself. And so, for me, I came out of high school as a Democrat. My first time voting, getting my voting card, I came out of high school, I was a Democrat. My grandmother, my mother, all of them voted Democrat. I was going to be the Democrat of the family too, and for many years, I was.}

_{And that changed probably, I want to say, maybe in my 30s is where I started kind of like getting a little more interested in what’s going on in our political world, and I kind of started looking. And then I changed my party to Republican. Honestly, at that time, I didn’t know why. I just kind of was like, “I don’t want to be a Democrat. I’ll be a Republican.” And there really was no like title of, “Oh, look, he’s a conservative now.” I just did it because I didn’t see the policies lining up with my lifestyle. And so I was like, “I don’t really want to be a Democrat. I think I’ll be a Republican.” I’m a Republican now.}

_{But you know what? As a Republican, I see the Republican party as a failure. Plain and simple. I don’t see either one of these parties doing anything for you, I, my family. The policies and the arguing back and forth across the aisle getting nothing done, they’re arguing now for the COVID package. So we’re waiting on a COVID package, they’re arguing over who’s going to open the taxpayer’s wallet and hand the taxpayer’s money out of their own wallet. And this has been going on how many months and there’s still low-income families that are struggling.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Struggling.}

_{Dean Tedder: And we have to sit back, and we have to sit back and watch the news and the media, and Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, and what’s the other guy, McConnell. We get to watch these guys do these press conferences and we’re going, “Okay, but we hear you guys talking politics and political theater, but there’s no action ever. Ever. And there’s no accountability when you guys are called out, or found in corrupt platforms.” And those are the things for me right now with the media, the reason literally my press passes are sitting up here is because I haven’t used them. I won’t even book to go do certain events or even do stories anymore. I’m kind of a little disgraced at the media right now. I’m kind of like I’m not sure I even want to hold my credentials anymore because they’ve given it such a bad name.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I don’t believe that it’s necessarily like the actual people in the media.}

_{Dean Tedder: I don’t either.}

_{Dylan Ogline: So I look at it like go back 40 years. Go back to when I was born, all right, where did most people get their news? They turned on their local news station, okay? Well, their local news station couldn’t really get political because it’s broadcast to a whole bunch of people, there’s only like one or two news stations, so they don’t want to piss people off. They want to get viewers. Like that’s naturally what they want to do.}

_{Dean Tedder: Got to get the ratings.}

_{Dylan Ogline: They got to get the ratings. They’re a for-profit business. So they would just report the news. They would report it and try to be as bipartisan, just they’re not going right, they’re not going left, they’re just this is the story.}

_{Dean Tedder: Middle ground and have a couple feel good stories.}

_{Dylan Ogline: This is why the newspaper endorsements used to be such a big deal. They still are, but they used to be a massive deal because newspapers needed to be very general. There was no political affiliation generally speaking. Unless there were some and like big cities like Chicago might have multiple newspapers. Or New York City would have multiple newspapers. But like where I’m from, like there was one newspaper. So they wouldn’t go either way because they don’t want to piss a bunch of people off. And then you would have the editorials where they could get political, but hey, this is an editorial, this isn’t news, this is an editorial.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, our opinion here, yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: This is an opinion piece. But what has happened is now you can go to Breitbart. Breitbart will never say a positive thing about Obama, or Biden, or any Democrat ever. They will only talk positive about Trump and Republicans. There are Democrat equivalents, I don’t know who they are so. This certainly goes on both sides of the aisle.}

_{Dean Tedder: Oh, definitely.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But what has happened is, is now people have the ability to live in an information echo chamber. Where they only hear positive things about their political party. And why do they only hear that? Because it feels better to hear that than to hear, “Oh, maybe Trump said something stupid. Or hey, maybe Biden said something stupid. Or maybe this policy’s a bad idea.” It is much better to just hear, “Oh, you’re a Republican, we’re Republicans too, and Republicans only do positive things.” That’s much more comfortable.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, I get to hear what I want to hear.}

_{Dylan Ogline: What you want to hear. That wasn’t an option 30 years ago. You couldn’t choose to hear what you want to hear. Social media really accelerated that, obviously. Now you can get on there and like the algorithm will only show you shit that’s going to make you more excited.}

_{Dean Tedder: More fueled up.}

_{Dylan Ogline: More fueled up.}

_{Dean Tedder: Get all everything going.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And it’s all about engagement and being somebody that actually like I know how that stuff works because that’s the industry I work in.}

_{Dean Tedder: That’s the business.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I said recently in an interview that I feel that social media is the most powerful thing that humanity has developed since the atom bomb.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It has the ability to rip us apart.}

_{Dean Tedder: It has a larger impact.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Because you go back 30 years ago, everybody wants information about what’s going on in the world. We all want that. You go back 30 years ago and you were exposed to relatively speaking, like an unfiltered truth. Like the president said this, or this policy was passed. Now you have the option to go to Breitbart and you will never hear anything negative about your stuff because it’s much easier to hear that. That, social media, that shit is just scary. And like I said earlier, like dude, I’m from a very Republican, Conservative area. I’m a very liberal person. But I can tell you right now, like I know people who are like hardcore Trumpers.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Their wants, and needs, and desires, and their life are pretty much the same as mine. Yeah we’re all like 95% of us are 95% similar.}

_{Dean Tedder: I’ve said it on the show before like just because I’m a listed Republican, a lot of my policy views, like the way I really think about things are very in touch with Liberal. As far as like the climate, and our planet, and things like that, like I’m very in tune with that. I agree that there’s things that need to be in place and changed. So I totally align with a lot of those policies. When you get into the budget side of it, I kind of cringe a little bit on like how much we’re going to spend, and why we’re going to throw money at something. But at the end of the day, like I do align with a lot of my Democratic background. I do like a lot of the things that their policies say. But to me, it’s funny, a friend of mine said he goes, “It’s okay to align with both parties.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I was like, “Whoa! Mind blown!” We’re allowed to think for ourselves?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, and that’s becoming more and more of a radical idea. But like at the end of the day, dude, what do you probably want for the future? You probably want a better life for yourself, you probably want your kid to have a better life than you, you probably want your kids to have a better education, have opportunities.}

_{Dean Tedder: And it doesn’t require a party line or title.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It doesn’t require party lines. Like we all want this shit. You probably want less crime, and you probably want peace, and you probably want clean air, and clean water, and probably a good environment, and a good economy. And like you probably have a problem with homeless people, and like we shouldn’t have homeless people in this country. And like sick people should probably get healthcare. Everybody agrees on that shit.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really, to me, it’s after we’re in the year 2020 and it’s a no-brainer. Why are we even having these policy arguments and why is there even this type of division when, as a nation and as a society worldwide, these problems have been discussed since before me and you were born. And here we are at 2020 and we have a two-party political system that has not addressed either of it. And we’re all fighting over which one should take the lead, and it’s like no wait, we’ve had over a hundred-plus years with these people.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Why didn’t we sell them?}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, none of them have sold anything, so why can’t we just come to a point of agreement where it’s time to just not fall for the political party line as much as it is as a nation we come together and solve it? And maybe we the people need to step above where we’ve placed our government.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I think the coming from the marketing world, it’s crystal clear to me the best way to fire up a base to get people excited is to polarize an enemy.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yes.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We are here. And the enemy is here.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, us and them.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Us and them. That is the best way to get a base, to get a fan group to get people excited. Polarize the enemy. And what I mean by that is you have an enemy, they’re over here, and then you try to make every little thing that is different, you try to make it as far apart as possible. They’re lazy, we work hard, they’re broke, we have money. We’re white, they’re brown, or they’re Asian. We’re Christian, they’re other religion. I mean, literally every little thing that you can do, when the truth is, is there’s probably like, again, 95% of us agree.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, you could almost put them all together and they all agree.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And at the ned of the day, dude, we’re all Americans. And you want to get global? We’re all human.}

_{Dean Tedder: And at the end of the day that’s how I think is like we’re all one.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I care about the person in England who doesn’t have healthcare. Because they have universal healthcare, that’s not a case, but I care about the homeless person in England. We’re all in this shit together. So like I don’t think that there should be a single homeless person in this country. I don’t give a damn if you’re Republican or Democrat. I want both of them to be taken care of. And at the end of the day, dude, like 95% of us all agree on that shit. I think the only hope that we have is close to where you were going with it is we need to polarize the enemy, the enemy is not each other, the enemy is those trying to divide us.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, the machine that’s been created.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We are all together. Republicans, Democrats, Green Party, Liberals, Conservatives, Christians, Jews, Muslims, we’re all together. We’re all in this together. We are the people, the enemy is not each other. The enemy is those in charge who are trying to divide us.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s the enemy.}

_{Dean Tedder: And it’s back to the whole like why do I want to argue with my neighbor because he’s on a different party line? I don’t understand like I get the reason behind it, but it’s I still every day I’m like, again, I’m ashamed to even hold my credentials and go put on my little lanyard and go to a press op. I’m like, “Oh…” And I’m standing next to some guy who’s asking some really silly questions, and this guy on this side is asking some really silly questions, and then throwing back some crap. And I’m like, “I just really wanted to report on this. I didn’t really need to make it political on this side and I didn’t really need to make it about an agenda on this side. I really was just trying to report on an issue in our community.”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Get the facts out there.}

_{Dean Tedder: That’s it. And, honestly, I miss the feel good news. I think that’s what it is. I miss that great story.}

_{Dylan Ogline: And most people do, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Most people they’re sick and tired of turning on the news, whether it’s Fox News, or Breitbart, or MSNBC, or whatever the equivalent on the left of Breitbart is. They’re sick and tired of turning that shit on and it’s just fucking negative. People they realize that like, wow, the world isn’t that bad and we kind of want it to be a little bit better.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t think there’s anybody that’s raising their hand and going, “I wish the world would go to hell.” No.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Nobody.}

_{Dean Tedder: It’s like I don’t want my house to burn down. I don’t want all those things for my neighbor. Hey, it is what it is. But I do a lot of lives on my Facebook, on the “Two Party” podcast Facebook. And I just basically do news breakdowns and stuff on there. I do them occasionally on Instagram too. But that’s what I do. I go through, I literally just go through the news headlines. And it’s exactly what you just said, it’s that just total negative vibe. I mean I could read these headlines and it’s like consistently you can go headline to headline without even having to read the article, and it’s just like you can see the agenda.}

_{Like you said, Breitbart, it’s going to be pro-Trump. This one’s going to be pro-whatever. And it’s like that’s great if, like you said, a little echo chamber if I just want to hear myself think. But at the end of the day, like I really shoot for what’s the facts. What’s really behind the scene. I don’t want to see the op-ed. I want to see the citation of where you got that information because that’s going to determine to me. Back in the day, this shows ultimately how old I am. Back in the day, when I wanted to find a story, I’d go to my local town hall, I’d go to the clerk’s office, and I would search microfiche records to find articles and facts.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Are those like the scans of like the newspaper?}

_{Dean Tedder: The old timey like it looks like a little picture film. And, dude, we’d go through those at the courthouse.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Wow.}

_{Dean Tedder: That’s how old I am.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah, that’s old.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. And so at the end of the day, like that’s what it used to take to be a journalist is you really had to dig through archives. And when I say archives, it isn’t like we think about online we could just go look at archive files online. You had to go to a small town, to report a story in a small town you had to go to their clerk’s office, you had to go look through town records, and you were going through this. You had this big machine, and like this looked like a projector, and it literally you had these little what was called microfiche, you couldn’t read them with your eyes, but you put them in the machine and it magnifies it. And you’d scroll through thousands of pages of town history to get one story on one family of one individual to get to the facts.}

_{And you just don’t have that. Nowadays, I can hop on, I got my press credentials, therefore I’m a journalist. I can hop on and write anything I want and just put my name and then put op-ed at the bottom and it’s good. Done deal. And unfortunately, to me, it’s a real disservice to my audience to do that. It’s a disservice for me not to mention it’s an op-ed. A lot of them don’t. And it’s a disservice to, like you were saying, to just feed information that’s party line. If I’m just going to talk about this party and promote this party, I’m not being a fair journalist.}

_{At the end of the day, and the journalist that only looks for the bad stuff. Like now, of course, we’re only hearing about that Hunter Biden’s now being investigated for taxes. So if I’m the guy that’s looking for like, oh, there we go, that’s the story. I’m going to put that one up. And I’m the guy that only reports on the bad stuff. I don’t know, man, to me like it takes the integrity away from the whole industry.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I agree.}

_{Dean Tedder: And it doesn’t help feed proper information to my audience over to people that want real news. So, yeah, it’s just crazy. Crazy the political environment we live in. And like you said, change. We talked about earlier, change. This is all going to change. Doesn’t matter who the president becomes. At the end of the day, it’s going to change. Whoever this president is, it’s going to change after this president. The changes he makes will be changed by the next person. It’s not about who the president or the face of our nation is, it’s about what our nation as a whole and as a people do. And if we all sit back, and argue, and argue over political lines but we’re not willing to step up and actually do things for our nation, our homeless, people that are in low-income that have struggles right now.}

_{Dylan Ogline: People who are sick.}

_{Dean Tedder: People that are sick. If we’re not willing to step up to those challenges, we are no greater than the people that are leading us and holding our taxpayer wallet hostage. We got to pay taxes, you guys hold our tax money, but you won’t give it back to us when we need it. What’s the point of paying into these different funds that this money is earmarked for if we cannot just dish it out and you guys hash out the problems that you’re dealing with. It’s really sad. I’ll tell you what.}

_{Dylan Ogline: The thing we should end on. If you’re getting ready to end, I think I would end on I’m still optimistic, man. I still believe we live in a democracy. We’re blessed with that. Everything’s shit right now. Everything is a dumpster fire, but I still feel progress is not a straight line. And I think ten years from now till be better than what it was today. And ten years after that it will be better. We’ll have ups and downs. That is 100% guaranteed. But I remain optimistic in the world. I remain optimistic in our country, I remain optimistic in our people, I remain optimistic in democracy as a whole. I said this is an article recently. Betting against the United States has never worked.}

_{Dean Tedder: Never.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Not once}

_{Dean Tedder: No. Not at all.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s always been a bad bet the long term to bet against us. In the short term you might get some gains. If you go short. But long term, man, I still feel optimistic, I still feel positive, and I think we’ll end up better than where we are.}

_{Dean Tedder: I feel like looking at everybody else in the world as a whole, looking at all different countries and nations, and we are the only nation that has the constitution that provides us freedom of speech. We have so many F words, and I call it F words is our freedom. We have so many freedoms that other countries-- North Korea as a prime example we just discussed, Africa where there’s literally children being handed firearms to go to war and dying in villages-- there are so many things going on in different countries and worlds where there is zero freedom for humans that are living there.}

_{And we take that for granted here, but like you said, that’s the things I focus on, that’s what I look at as the positive is we do live in the land of the free, we do have these freedoms. No matter what the media’s telling us was being restricted or taken away from us, we still live in the land of the free. I can still wake up and do whatever I want in my house. I can wake up, go out, and go to work. I can still provide for my family. I have an opportunity to do good things throughout my day. I have an opportunity to do bad things via freedom.}

_{Not that I encourage people doing bad things, but I have that freedom in our nation where you can’t do that in another nation. Go to China and try to break some laws. You could very likely just be dead. It’s that simple. So on a positive note, we really do live in one of the best countries and societies in the world.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We’re not perfect.}

_{Dean Tedder: We’re by no means perfect.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Far from perfect.}

_{Dean Tedder: Far from perfect. We have our own real issues here. But there is other countries and nations and human beings that are just being mistreated and treated in ways that nobody in 2020 should have to deal with.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely, man.}

_{Dean Tedder: So, Dylan, it’s been awesome having you on here. And I think we can just keep hitting topics.}

_{Dylan Ogline: We could.}

_{Dean Tedder: I’m probably going to need some lunch and I’m sure you’ve got some things you got to do.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Me too. I’m starving over here.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, I’m sitting here, I’m finishing off some pre-workout, so I’m like ready to go. It has been great having you here. I will definitely have you back as a guest in the future. We can hit on some different topics.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I’d love to do you mentioned, I’ve only done a few, I’ve done a ton of podcasts, but I’ve only done a few like live streams. I love that shit.}

_{Dean Tedder: I do too.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I do a lot of webinars with my students, which is similar. But like being exposed to a different audience, so you mention that, man. If you do it, I’d love to do a Livestream with your fan base, and your listeners.}

_{Dean Tedder: For sure. For sure.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I think that’d be pretty cool. Absolutely.}

_{Dean Tedder: Maybe we’ll hop on one time on Instagram and do a live one there.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I’ve never done one of those.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah. I love it. Actually, there’s a comedian Bobby Sausalito, Bobby Saus. I’ve been actually trying to get him on the show. We’ve been going bac and forth. He used to do a lot of the roasts and stuff. He’s really a cocky Italian dude, and so I’ve been going back and forth with this guy, trying to get him on the show, and we’ve been messaging. He’s given me a hard time kind of roasting me, and I’m in the messages like, “Hey, let’s come on, let’s roast, let’s do this.” And I’m trying to get him right now on an Instagram Live so we could just bash each other and just talk. And it’s all on good terms, it’s just going at it. He’s like, “Avoid my PR. I’m going to deal with you.” And it’s just a funny conversation we’ve been having.}

_{But I’d love to have you on live, dude. We could do it on Facebook, we could do an Instagram Live. I like going live because, again, it’s that whole unfiltered engagement. The audience gets to know you, me, conversation, how we are. And it makes it more personal for me to share that with the audience.}

_{Dylan Ogline: I love when answering just the random people’s questions. And the few that I’ve done. Because I envision the best shows are ones where the host is able to kind of think like as a listener if you’re sitting there you’re like, “Hey, hey, hey, I have this question.” When the hosts asks those questions, like that’s the best shows. But the best thing is when the listeners can actually raise their hands and say, “Hey, I got this random question about this shit.”}

_{Dean Tedder: Have you ever listened to a podcast yourself, like listened to one, and been like in the middle of the conversation you’re like, “Oh, he better ask him. He better ask him!”}

_{Dylan Ogline: Please ask this question!}

_{Dean Tedder: Like, “Oh, I want to know!” And they move on and you’re like you’re crushed.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s a missed opportunity. Yes.}

_{Dean Tedder: And it’s like, yeah, so exactly, that’s one of the awesome things about it is the audience can interact, they can ask questions of their own, and it just it makes it more personal to me. But it’s been great talking with you. I definitely am going to have you back on, and we can get a little deeper into some of the seminars you do, and the training.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure.}

_{Dean Tedder: Because that’s initially what I’d like to really kind of present to the audience is some of the things you do where they can get in touch with you.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Or we could just talk politics the whole time.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yeah, again, we could just talk politics or whatever. Again, we want to be able to be well-rounded and talk about everything. I love discussing politics with some guests because it’s like sometimes they just turn white and they’re like, “He’s going there. He’s going there.” And sometimes they’re just like you, they can engage in the conversation, they understand that this is the world we live in, and politics are part of life right now. And we all have to accept that this is what it is. It’s not about taking sides. It’s about coming up with solutions. And for me, that’s where it’s at. Tell the audience real quick a few places they could reach you, a few places where they could get some more information about some of the training stuff you do, and your digital media company.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure. So the digital marketing agency is Ogline Digital. So oglinedigital.com. But then my personal website is where I sell my training program, Agency 2.0., and the website’s just dylanogline.com. And then you can find me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook @dylanogline.}

_{Dean Tedder: Okay. Perfect. And again, I encourage everybody to check Dylan out, check some of the stuff out that he’s got going. Very talented. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely, man. It was a long one, but I like it though.}

_{Dean Tedder: It was. It was.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It was a good one.}

_{Dean Tedder: And I find myself more and more often like that’s where I lead with these. I got a 60-minute slot, but when I really enjoy a conversation, I don’t want to just cut it off. So I do I enjoy you having the extra time for me.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Sure thing.}

_{Dean Tedder: For us to discuss and, hey, go get some lunch. I’m going to go do the same thing. We’ll catch you on the next one.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely, man. Thank you so much for having me. It was a joy.}

_{Dean Tedder: Yup. Have a great day.}