Build your business for the life you want NOW

“From the beginning, charge a high price. You want to be the premium service provider.” On this episode of Powerlunch Live, Rhett Power and I talk about the importance of building your business for the lifestyle you want today. Whether that’s putting cubicles in an office, or working from a laptop in Thailand, start with that “Day One Mentality.” It’s how you avoid your business from growing into a monster of your own making.

We also talk about the importance of setting a high price. Even if you think you are overcharging, it will inspire you to over-deliver and end up justifying that price. Many people try to get their first customers by undercharging in hopes of getting referrals, but this is a “price trap.”

We discuss why, and we also discuss:

• How to set the budget for your first ad campaign.
• Why many business owners think digital marketing “doesn’t work.”
• How to pick the right digital marketing platform.
• Why you should go out and try to sell your product tonight, even if it isn’t ready.

About the Show: Rhett Power is the host of Powerlunch LIVE.

Full Transcript

_{Rhett Power: Welcome to Power Lunch Live. I’m Rhett Power, your host, good to be with you here. Cannot believe we’re already into April 2021. Been quite a year already. But welcome to Power Lunch Live. Maybe that’s an understatement, I don’t know. But it’s good to be with you. We’re going to have a great show today. And we got a packed week. We got Michelle Moore tomorrow, we’ve got Meredith Bell on Thursday, so we’ve got a big week here. It’s the first time I’ve done three shows in a week in a while. I’ve been a little lazy. But anyway, April is going to be jam-packed. We’ve got shows three or four days a week every week this month.}

_{Anyway, coming out of our post-pandemic haze, I think, something like that. But anyway, the point of Power Lunch Live is to have today’s thought leaders, best-selling authors, people who are doing amazing work in the world that we can all learn from in our businesses so that we can do our stuff better. We can be better at what we do. That’s the whole point of the show.}

_{It is interactive if you participate. You get on the computer, type in a message, we’re on LinkedIn Live, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, and whatever God knows what else. And so you can interact with us. We actually pay attention to the feed. Dylan, I’m sure, wants to answer your questions as best as he can. We’re going to get to that in just a second. Anyway, write, interact with us, get to ask your questions, that’s the whole point.}

_{Dylan Ogline is a high school dropout from a small country town in Pennsylvania. He started his first business when he was 14 selling cellphones. I find that absolutely fascinating. He’s now a leading expert in direct response advertising and business growth. He’s built multiple multimillion dollar businesses. And now he’s turned his focus to helping others start their own businesses. Dylan, welcome.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Hey, Rhett, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. I did not know that we’re on Twitch right now. That’s incredible. This is my first time being on Twitch then.}

_{Rhett Power: Is it? We’re cutting edge, leading edge here, right at Power Lunch Live.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Setting the trends. I got to be honest, I’ve done a ton of podcasts, this is the one I am most looking forward to because of the live element and getting people’s questions. I’ve only done that like two or three times before and I absolutely loved it. Looking forward to it, man.}

_{Rhett Power: Well, let’s have some fun. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people who are doing their own thing, and they’re usually pretty savvy at whatever that thing is. And it’s not usually the advertising, the digital space, it’s a technical thing. And so when we start talking about digital advertising and digital direct response, eyes kind of roll in the back of the head, and you get that kind of glazed over look like, “Oh God.” It’s tough to get your head around.}

_{Dylan Ogline: It’s complicated. They make it more and more complicated everyday.}

_{Rhett Power: I mean I come from a time, I’ve got a little gray here if you can’t notice, and where we had newspaper. And I actually worked in advertising for a bit. You had radio, TV, and you didn’t have much cable, you had a little cable, you had billboard, and you had newspaper. I mean that was about it.}

_{Dylan Ogline: You did postcards back in the day.}

_{Rhett Power: Direct mail, right, direct mail we did it. Yeah, we did. Talk about it, explain it in layman’s terms. And the other question is:  how do you get help doing it and how do you know you’re getting the right help doing it?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh. Well, explain it. I think where most people get a bad taste in their mouth is it’s so easy. Whether you’re a consultant, or an ecommerce business, or even if you’re a brick and mortar business, you’re always being bombarded with this idea of doing some kind of digital advertising. Whether it’s Google, or Facebook, or Snapchat, which I have no experience there, but YouTube ads, all these things. It’s so easy for every business to try.}

_{Businesses will go on, and by default all of these platforms are designed to, I like to say, eat your money. If you don’t know what you’re doing, they’ll take your money, sure, and you’re probably not going to get results. When I’m talking to business owners that have done--especially if they’d done it themselves, they’ve played around with Google, they’ve played around with Facebook before. And they went on, they spent $100, they spent a couple hundred dollars, maybe they spent $1,000 and they got next to nothing in return. They just say, they just throw their hands up in the air and they say, “This doesn’t work.”}

_{And it’s because they’re complicated. It’s like learning a new software. It’s like learning to ride your bike again. It’s complicated stuff. Once you know what you’re doing it’s just like all of us, we have our own area of expertise. But most people, they come in, and it’s so easy to get started with it. And again, they’re designed to just eat your money in the beginning. Nearly everybody, when they start their own Facebook ads, or Google ads for their business, they get slaughtered, so it puts a bad taste in their mouth.}

_{What was your second question? How do you know how to get help?}

_{Rhett Power: Yeah, I mean I know again, you’re getting these solicitations all around.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yeah.}

_{Rhett Power: I mean I get a dozen or more a day, right? Let me help you with your SEO, or let me help with your funnels, or let me help you with all that stuff, right? And I mean I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I mean, that’s not true, but where do you go to get help? I mean if I am run my own corner bakery shop, and I’m effective on Facebook, maybe I get a lot of engagement, maybe I get a lot of traffic from that, or my website and I get a lot of take-out traffic from that, whatever, and I know I want to do some advertising, right? To grow a little bit, maybe I’ve expanded, maybe I’ve opened another store, I want to advertise it. How do I know where to go and who to ask? And what are the questions I should be asking?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Great question. First, I would just explain that nearly every business, it is important for them to be aware of just how big the opportunity is. Whether you’re the corner bakery store, you’re an ecommerce store, which most people they’re doing like ecommerce as an example, they recognize the potential. But for every business first and foremost, it is absolutely critical that they do something with their online presence. And if they can take advantage of digital marketing, the opportunity is huge.}

_{If you don’t want to do it yourself, which again it’s complicated, so it’s probably not a good idea to try to take this kind of stuff on by yourself. If somebody’s reaching out to you, the first question should be is, “Do you have experience with this?” And second is, “Do you have experience helping people like me?” Look for if you’re the corner bakery, and you recognize the potential with--I have an example, probably Facebook ads would work best for the corner bakery shop--you recognize the opportunity.}

_{You should be looking for somebody that either specifically helps businesses in your area, or better, looking for someone who specifically helps bakeries, or that’s probably going to be a little too niche, probably somebody who helps restaurants or the food industry, something like that. If you could find somebody who knows your industry, understand how to speak your language, you’re definitely heading in the right direction. I think that’s probably the most important question.}

_{Rhett Power: And are those companies usually local, or I mean is it best to work with a local company, or somebody five states away?}

_{Dylan Ogline: It used to be local was really important, but now because people are more comfortable with working. Let me backtrack this. If you go back a few years ago, even if you were an agency that only specifically helped restaurants, it was still difficult for you to get clients out of your immediate area because there was still this like stigma of working with companies that weren’t in your area. Like you don’t understand what it’s like in my area. That was like a common thing.}

_{Now, everybody’s comfortable, even the corner bakery shop is probably comfortable working with a company on the other side of the country. They don’t particularly have a problem with that. We’ve grown so accustomed to it. Because of that, a lot of agencies have really narrowed in on their niche. Specifically, only helping bakeries, or gyms, or financial advisors, or whatever. The best bet is to find somebody that specifically helps your industry. That’s the best bet.}

_{Rhett Power: And you can get really specific. I mean just, and to break this down even further, I mean you can get really specific into your zip code, into your streets. You can really narrow down your target. The more you know who your customer is the better.}

_{Dylan Ogline: With Google and such?}

_{Rhett Power: Yeah.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh, oh yeah, absolutely. You can do specific streets, specific zip codes, and things like that, yeah. And so that’s what I was talking about--the opportunity. Even if you’re the corner bakery, you’re probably not getting clients, or customers I should say, outside of what--five miles, ten miles outside of your area. You can target those specific people and really just continue to hit the with very targeted advertising.}

_{Now you’re not going to be able to scale up and spend $50,000 a month or something on Facebook ads, but you can continue to hit them. And you mentioned like a bakery opening another location. This is where it becomes really powerful. Where you can open that next location and you can really target everybody in that location. All of a sudden now everybody in that area has seen your ads and seen your imaging. Very quickly you can scale up the growth if you add another location or something like that.}

_{Rhett Power: I know this is an unfair question, but what kind of budget should a small or medium-sized business think about for a campaign like that?}

_{Dylan Ogline: It varies with everybody.}

_{Rhett Power: Okay.}

_{Dylan Ogline: If you’re the bakery, you’re doing $10,000 a month in revenue or something like that. I don’t know anything about bakeries, I don’t know if that’s a lot of bakery revenue or not. Maybe $500 a month is where you start or something like that. We particularly like to work with clients that are comfortable with spending their ad budget. If you’re throwing the hail Mary by spending your ad budget, you probably should lower it. It’s probably too much.}

_{But if you’re an ecommerce business and you’re doing several hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue, spending $10,000 a month on Google or Facebook should be no problem at all. Again, it really depends on everybody’s particular situation, but most important I think is you shouldn’t be uncomfortable with spending it. That’s really critical.}

_{Rhett Power: How do you know if you’re a business like that? What platforms are working for you?}

_{Dylan Ogline: This is where working with an agency that knows your industry is very, very important. If you’re not doing digital marketing, if you’re interested in this whole social media thing, I like to generally recommend like if you’re a visual business. A bakery is a great example, a gym is an incredible example, a photographer. Stuff where you can post content all the time showing visual results, showing visual customers, those are the types of people that are really going to thrive on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube as an example. If you’re a manufacturing firm, don’t waste your time on Facebook, or Instagram, or YouTube, or anything like that. Maybe for YouTube, but really it’s mostly if you’re just a visual business.}

_{Rhett Power: If you’re a service business like an office supply place, right, or some sort of services consulting business, or some sort of you might want to look at something like LinkedIn, right? You definitely don’t want to waste your time on areas where you’re not going to get any result.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Again, this is where it’s important. One of our verticals that we work in is online consulting businesses. And Facebook ads are extremely successful with that branch. Absolutely. Yeah, again, this is why it’s important to work with somebody who understands your industry and understands your niche. The verticals that I work with, I know what works, and I know what doesn’t work. I think every business should have a LinkedIn. Pretty much even the corner bakery, that business owners should have a LinkedIn. I just think it’s important. But unless you’re doing like guerilla type reaching out to people on LinkedIn, I’m more for other platforms in terms of advertising.}

_{Rhett Power: That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard a lot of consultants say they’ve been successful on business, so you and I need to talk. You talk about building things to break and how to be lean, mean and scrappy when starting a business. Talk about that a little bit.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. Talk about the consultants as an example. Most of the consultants that I’m working with are those who have training programs, online education training programs. They’re typically working with the end user, they’re not selling their consultancy to Microsoft, or Coke, or any big, big firm or anything like that. What happens is a lot of people when they’re starting that business, they will spend years. I’ve seen several people spend two, three years perfecting all the systems, and the operations, and everything to get ready to scale up.}

_{And it’s like did you ever go and sell anybody? Are you generating any revenue? Are you actually going out and getting customers? And the answer most of the time is no. This is like I’m building the business while I’m working my full-time job or something like that.}

_{I like to get out there tonight and like go try to sell customers tonight on your product, your service. Even if you don’t have it built, even if you don’t know 100% how to deliver the service yet, go out and try to sell it to people to make sure that you have product market fit. That’s a system that’ll obviously break. You’re building it to break but you’re figuring out your MVP, your minimal viable product, or your MVS, your minimal viable service., which is absolutely critical. Build it to break, get things out there into the marketplace, prove that you have that product market fit, and then fix things and scale things up from there.}

_{Rhett Power: Yeah, that’s good advice. One of the things I wanted to ask you about today was your journey. And so now you’ve kind of shifted your focus, if my understanding is right, to helping others start their own agencies and their own businesses. Why’d you make that shift?}

_{Dylan Ogline: The short answer is I’m more passionate about it. I’ve had a lot of coaches, a lot of mentors. I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for those mentors and those coaches that I’ve had. They’ve had a massive impact on my life--both in business and my personal life. When I was younger, back still when I was back in high school, I was a hockey player, and I had an interest in being some kind of coach. But I didn’t really know where that would go.}

_{Rhett Power: Right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: But I didn’t want to be broke. I didn’t want to be poor. And a lot of like amateur hockey coaches, they either don’t get paid, or it literally cost them money to do it. It was like, eh, they’ll be on the back burner. Eventually started to get some success in business. And something that I found that I kept going back to was mentorship. I would be at industry events, or something like that, back pre-COVID, back when people would get together in groups. It was a really odd time.}

_{But I would meet people, and I would tell them about my business, and they’d be like, “Cool. Can you teach me,” or something like that. I was not making money from it, but I found that I kept gravitating towards that. Because it was just it’s something I’m extremely passionate about, and it’s much more fulfilling.}

_{Not that I don’t like the agency. I absolutely love my agency. It’s successful, makes a great income, I love working with the clients. But the education company and actually helping individuals is infinitely more fulfilling, personally fulfilling.}

_{Rhett Power: I can see that. It makes sense to me. One other thing that you also coach is about showing your value and stop hiding behind low prices. I mean I see this a lot in my coaching practice and in my business, particularly with start-ups, and people who are just starting in business, and really, undervaluing what they have. Talk about that. How do you coach people out of that? Because it is a mindset, right? How do you coach people out of that?}

_{Dylan Ogline: Well, I think the mindset comes from most people when they’re starting out whether they are starting an agency. I used to help people start web design businesses, web design agencies. It could be a photographer, it could be a consultant, somebody who’s just starting out in consultancy. What happens is you fall into this mindset of thinking, “Well, I need to get my first few clients, and the best way to do that is to lower my prices,” right?}

_{And in your mindset, you’re like, “I’m going to lower my prices, I’m going to get a few clients, and then I’ll get referrals from that.” Which, in theory, it works. But the problem is, is let’s say I use the example the web design business. Let’s say you do a website for somebody for half off, and you do a great job. And their friend sees that website, another business owner sees that website. The first question they ask is who did it for you? The second question they ask is how much did they charge?}

_{Rhett Power: How much?}

_{Dylan Ogline: You end up in what I like to call price trap situation. Where you’re charging below what you feel you are worth. All your business is coming from referrals. And all these people are coming into the situation with a price point in mind. And if you double your prices, like that’s odd. People aren’t going to be feeling comfortable with that. If you did a website for, say $1,000, and then this new client comes on and they’re like, “Oh, it’s $2,000.” They’re going to be like, “Wait a second. You just did John’s website for $1,000.” You end up price trapped.}

_{And you mentioned it’s a mindset, it spirals out of control from there. Where then you think, “I’m losing money, or I’m not getting what I’m worth,” and things like that. I’m a big proponent of from the beginning, charge a high price. You want to be the premium service provider. And even if you feel you’re almost overcharging, that’s okay, as long as you overdeliver. Say you’re building a website for someone and you’re charging $4,000, but you would have been comfortable with $2,000.}

_{If you’re charging them $4,000 or $5,000, you’re going to kill that project. You’re going to do an incredible job. It’s going to incentivize you to do absolute incredible work. Whereas if you’re doing $1,000 website and you’re like, “Man, I’m not getting paid enough,” and it starts to impact your mindset, you’re hiding behind those low prices and you’re delivering low quality. Charge a premium price, 100% of the time, from the beginning.}

_{Rhett Power: Makes sense to me. I preach that all the time. I love it. One of the other things that you talk a lot about is building a--I cannot speak today, I don’t know what my problem is.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Laptop lifestyle.}

_{Rhett Power: A laptop lifestyle. That’s hard to say, man. That’s a tongue twister. What is a laptop lifestyle?}

_{Dylan Ogline: For me, this is pre-COVID, travel was very important. It’s more about what I teach people is build your business, no matter what kind of business it is, build your business for the lifestyle that you want. You and I were talking pre-show about having an office or something like that. If you want the office, and like that’s your dream situation, you want the office with a team that’s there, and you’re going to work every morning at 8: 00, and everybody’s all together, then build that.}

_{Most people actually don’t want that though. Most people want to, like myself, travel around the world while continuing to grow and build their business. Really what I teach people is from day one, you want to build the business for the lifestyle that you want. You are the business owner. You want to be happy with what you have built. You don’t want to be miserable. And there’s a great book called, I believe it’s The Monk and the Riddle. The Monk and the Riddle, I don’t know.}

_{Rhett Power: Sounds right.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Yes. And he talks about the deferred life plan. Most people don’t use that term, but when I’m working with people who are just starting their business, I hear that all the time. Sure, I’d love to travel around the world while I build my business. I’ll do that later once I build this business, or sell it, or do something. It’s like, no, that will make you most happy. Build your business for the life that you want right now. That’s really what I’m talking about there.}

_{Rhett Power: And I think this last year, that taught us anything, right? Was that it was a perfect time to hit the reset button and to blow up your social order, your whole way that you thought about your business. The way that you looked at your business, the way you saw your business, the way you see yourself. I mean this was a perfect year to really completely rethink your whole business idea, and concept, and how you do it. And I had a lot of people that I work with, and a lot of friends, who’ve just completely blown things up, and it was the best thing that they ever could have done, right? And they’ve completely rethought their whole life. I don’t know how many people I know that moved out of New York City to somewhere else and just started over.}

_{And I think you’re absolutely right. You’ve got to constantly think that way. I’m doing a talk this week on entrepreneurship and having that day one mentality everyday. Where you come to work everyday with a day one. I mean you remember day one in all your business, I’m sure, right? I do too. And it’s an incredible feeling. And if you could look at your business like that everyday, where there are no rules, there’s no playbook, there’s no SOP. If you could think about things like that everyday, it provides you a lot of freedom to be innovative and creative, and to get your head around big problems that you face. But anyway, I digress. I hate to cut it short, man, we’re out of time.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh yeah, I guess so.}

_{Rhett Power: You wanted to say something. Go ahead. Go ahead.}

_{Dylan Ogline: No, I think I’ll try to make this as fast as I can. What you mentioned was absolutely critical. That day one mentality. And I see all the time for people that have been in their business for maybe a couple years or something like that. Because they didn’t build it for the lifestyle that they want, or they end up with this monster of their own creation. And that’s how they lose their passion.}

_{For those of you out there who are starting your own business, you’re on the ground floor, and you have that day one mentality. Make sure you design the business in such a way that it gives you the lifestyle you want because I think that is the key to not losing that passion, not losing that energy. It’s not about the money, it’s about continuing to have that passion. That’s when you really end up doing really good work and building something that’s actually worthwhile, so.}

_{Rhett Power: Right. And none of us, I don’t think any of us start a business not dreaming about what that lifestyle could be. That’s one of the reasons we all do it. And so don’t get caught up into that endless cycle, right, where you get burned out, and you get tired, because that’s a business killer right there.}

_{Dylan Ogline: That’s how they fail all the time.}

_{Rhett Power: Yeah, and that’s just as bad as working in some cubicle to me.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Oh yeah. Soul-sucking.}

_{Rhett Power: Hey, Dylan, it’s been a pleasure having you on, man. Let’s stay in touch. I’d love to pick your brain and get some help, and thought partnership on some things, so let’s do stay in touch.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely.}

_{Rhett Power: And good luck with helping others start their own businesses and continued success with the agency.}

_{Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. Thank you very much. And best of luck to you as well.}

_{Rhett Power: Yeah, thanks. And thank you for being on Power Lunch today, spending some time with us. And, like I said, we’ve got Michelle Moore tomorrow, Meredith Bell on Thursday, and so tune in at 12 noon Eastern Standard Time. We’ll see you then. Have a good day and be product.}