It’s not about dreams … it’s about STANDARDS
Game Changer Mentality
November 15, 2020
“You’re not the best version of yourself that you imagine in your life. You are the lowest version of yourself that you find acceptable.” On this episode of Game Changer Mentality, I talk to Rodney Flowers about how we don’t ever rise to our highest aspirations. Instead, we sink to our lowest standards. Whether it’s six figures, seven figures, an athletic goal or a lifestyle, whatever you want in life, it can’t be a “dream” or a “goal.” It has to be an undeniable standard that you set for yourself.
We also talk about the importance of being grateful for the adversity we face in life. I am genuinely sorry for trust-fund kids. Not ironically—genuinely. The earlier you face adversity, and the more adversity you take, the better prepared you are for the seasons of life that will test you. And that makes all the difference in achieving your potential.
We also discuss:
- How I got to the point where a $15,000 week would be cause for alarm.
- Why lack of business success is almost always a mindset issue.
- Why people work much harder to avoid losing $100 than they will to make $100.
- How I really feel about a “burn-the-boats” mentality.
- What business owners can learn from Roger Bannister, the first guy to run a four-minute mile.
About the Show: Rodney Flowers is the host of Game Changer Mentality.
Full Transcript
Introduction: Understanding, cultivating, and maximizing the given talents and abilities we possess is the key to living and performing above the social norm. Join best-selling author, keynote speaker, and resilience training Rodney Flowers as he shares impactful insights, tools, and strategies to assist in creating and achieving optimal results in your life and your business. Adopt the Game Changer Mentality.
Rodney Flowers: Well, hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Game Changer Mentality podcast. I am your host, Rodney Flowers, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and resilience trainer. And as always, I am excited about today’s show. I have Dylan Ogline in the studio with me today, and he has a wonderful, wonderful story that I want you guys to hear. Talk about high school dropout turned six-figure agency owner with over a million in sales, transitioned in three years, and he contributes that success to extreme focus. How about that? Who said focus isn’t important?
Dylan knows better and he’s going to talk about that today. He’s going to talk about how he built a digital marketing company. He’s a digital marketing expert, entrepreneur, and educator. And he’s going to talk to you about his business, he’s going to share with us about how he did it, his mindset, how he transitioned into the successful entrepreneur that he is today. Without further ado, let’s welcome Dylan Ogline to the Game Changer Mentality podcast. Welcome to the show, Dylan.
Dylan Ogline: Thanks for having me, man. Great intro. I’m all pumped. I’m all excited. I’m a digital marketing expert. I absolutely love that. I don’t consider myself an expert, but hey, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. Yeah, man, I’m excited. Let’s do it.
Rodney Flowers: Well, we’re excited too, man. Glad to have you here. First of all, congratulations on all of your success, and climbing out of the pit, doing all the things that you’ve done to make your business successful. And being a successful person and coming on the show to share, hey, your experience and your story with us, man. I really appreciate that. Because here, at the Game Changer Mentality headquarters we’re all about minds. What’s really interesting to me about your story is that you contributed you transition to focus. And so I want to really get into that.
Because a lot of times we start things--businesses, projects, whatever, goals and objectives--and we want to accomplish them, and we have that burning desire. And then there’s things that are messy. We feel like I’m learning, I’m trying really hard, like I’m grinding. That’s sort of the mantra around a self-development and entrepreneurs that you got to put the grind in, you got to put the work in. But here you were talking about focus. I really want to understand your story, how you got to a place where you felt like you needed to just focus, and how did that make a difference for you?
Dylan Ogline: Sure. I would actually say if we’re particularly just talking about mindset, which I think mindset is more important than any kind of business advice that anybody could give. If you’re not having success in your business, most likely it’s a mindset issue. I truly believe that. The focus is absolutely, absolutely key. But that’s more just, for me personally, when I view it it’s more just about the business focus. Because what the issue that I had was that I was going in too many different directions, wasn’t making progress because I was bouncing around chasing the shiniest object. That’s where the focus came in is I just focused on one single business, and one single product, one single service.
I don’t view that more as a mindset. For me, the mindset change that I had comes down to standards. And I believe that that is probably the more powerful thing if we’re just talking about mindset than particularly the focus. For me, what I learned is you’re not the best version of yourself that you imagine in your life. You are the lowest version of yourself that you find acceptable. And if you have goals, dreams, aspirations outside of business, and this is where this is powerful. You have dreams and you have goals, what I found is that you will do pretty much nothing to achieve them. But you will fight to the death to not breach your standards.
If you have goals, and you have dreams, and you have aspirations like I did, the simple mindset change is that you must turn them into an undeniable standard that you have for yourself. And I know that just went off on a completely different direction than what you were expecting, but for me, if we’re just talking about mindset, that the standards is more of a mindset than the focus.
Rodney Flowers: When you talk about standards, are you talking about values? Is a standard of value or is that something separate?
Dylan Ogline: I believe that you have to come up with what your own definition of that is. The two examples that I like to give, they’re silly, and they’re stupid almost. But because it’s so simple, one it has to do with money. I remember whenever I was starting to get the business going, like the dream was six figures, which is $1,923 a week. Like I wanted to hit $1,923 a week on average. And now I’m at seven figures, which is $19,230. But what I’m getting at when I was aiming for that, I was used to making, say, $1,000 a week or whatever. And then I hit $1,923, and then it kept going, and it was $2,000, it was $3,000, it was $5,000.
And I was having this conversation with a friend once, and his business was growing too, but just about the same time that mine started to grow. And I remember we both like it was during the holidays or something, and we had this dip, and we started talking, and it was like, “Man, how much you do this month?” And it was like $10,000, or $15,000 or something like that. And we were joking that it was like, “Oh man, we have to start searching bankruptcy attorneys.” And we were just joking, it was like two guys having beers or whatever.
What I realized was is once you start to grow, and you start to realize that you’re changing your standard, you’ll start to panic when you’re not hitting that standard. For me now, as an example, like if my business dropped to, say, $15,000 a week, I would be losing my mind trying to figure out what’s going on. Because that has become the standard for the business. Whereas before, $15,000 a week, you got to be kidding me, that’s absolutely ridiculous. There’s no way I’ll ever get to that much, right?
And it was simply just the standard had changed, and then your reaction to what’s going on changes as well. I changed the standard so now I start to get more motivated, I guess, excited if things start to drop below that standard. If that makes any sense whatsoever.
Rodney Flowers: No, complete sense. How did you get to the point where that became the standard? Because a lot of times you’ve heard the phrase, “Hey, turn your annual income into your monthly income.” You probably heard that before, right? All right, boom, so now you’re like, “Okay, what I’m making monthly, that’s my standard.” To even think that I can turn what I make in a year into the standard for the month it’s like a Herculean undertaking. Like to even fix your mind to do that for a lot of people it’s like, “How am I going to do that? I can’t even see how.” The first thing they do is, “Well, how am I going to do that?”
Was it the success just being able to kind of hit those numbers repeatedly? And because you were doing it repeatedly it’s kind of easy for you to say, “Hey, right, that’s the new standard now because we’re doing this seemingly effortlessly. Boom, that’s what we’re going to do.” Or was there a mindset shift in order to get to the place where, “Hey, I’m going to make my annual income,” for example, my monthly example.
Dylan Ogline: I think what happens is, like I said with the business, the business mindset shift was really the focus. But in general, with the setting a standard, it’s related to you’ve probably heard before that people are like ten times more motivated to not lose $100 than they are to make $100. Nobody’s really willing to like get up off the couch to go make $100, but people will like go to war over losing $100. Okay, it’s very similar to that. Where once you get a certain standard you start to panic if that comes in question. For me, it was the business, I started to focus, and then you start to get that little bit of success. But recognizing that the change was the standard was really key in just seeing that mindset shift.
Rodney Flowers: What were some of the hurdles you had to overcome to sort of come from, hey, nothing, [inaudible 09: 38], and I guess that’s your story.
Dylan Ogline: High school dropout?
Rodney Flowers: Yeah, to seven-figure success.
Dylan Ogline: Looking back, and this seems so silly, but the age was a factor for me. Which a lot of people can’t relate to that, but I remember being 20 or whatever, and trying to get a client, and they would just look at me like, “There’s no way you know what you’re doing.” Or even before that, like when I was 16, 17, 18, people looked at me like I was a joker, like there’s no way this guy is serious, or he knows what he’s doing. That was certainly a hurdle.
I think talking about adversity, I look at myself as very blessed, and very lucky. I had great mentors, I had great teachers. I never won the lottery, didn’t get any money from my parents or anything like that. Sure, some people look at that, and they’re like, “That’s not lucky.” I really think that when you face adversity it’s a good thing. You never want things to be easy. One: you don’t appreciate it. And two: if things come to you too easy, you’re just not willing to fight.
Rodney Flowers: What’s the benefit in the fight? Because I mean you hear a lot of people, and there’s businesses out there right now, hey, the tagline is almost, “The quick and easy way to seven figures,” right, in a box. It’s almost like a plug and play. If you do this, boom, you’re going to be successful, right? But your philosophy is, hey, you want it to be a little tough. You want to feel a little challenged. Why do you feel that way?
Dylan Ogline: It’s not that you want it to be tough, I think you need to feel gratitude that it is tough. Which is very tough in that moment, I get that, I recognize that. But looking back, I’m like, “I’m so thankful that I went through all that shit.”
Rodney Flowers: Why?
Dylan Ogline: Because now I just I have relentless work ethic. Because I couldn’t fail. I look at people who have trust funds or whatever, they’ve got money from their parents, or something like that. And I’m like that’s unfortunate, like that sucks, because you never had to work for it. You like never build that muscle of facing adversity. The slightest tough thing comes your way, which life will throw you tough things, like that’s just the way life is. If you’ve never faced adversity, it could just throw you off balance and completely destroy your world. But if you’ve faced at least some adversity, which everybody will at some point in their life. But the earlier you face it and the tougher the challenge is, the better off you are in the end. I’m thoroughly convinced that way.
And thinking of it in terms of gratitude, like I’m thankful I’m going through these challenges right now. Because when I come out on the other end, I will appreciate it more, and on top of that, I’ll be stronger and better in the future.
Rodney Flowers: What do you feel about COVID? That’s a gigantic challenge for the entire world.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Are we talking in terms of like business owners who are struggling right now?
Rodney Flowers: Well, I mean, yeah in all facets of COVID because it’s very challenging. It’s challenging economically for countries. It’s challenging individually. It’s challenging for the elderly. It’s challenging for people who have lost people, lost jobs. It’s challenging for people who are healthy but can’t leave the house, or they got kids that are home, and now they’re trying to navigate like their routine and their life has been turned upside down as a result of that. It’s just it’s just a challenging time.
Dylan Ogline: I agree. 100%, man.
Rodney Flowers: What’s your philosophy around that? How do you deal with that personally?
Dylan Ogline: Personally, I feel gratitude. Like for me my business went up this year. That’s undeniable. I mean that’s so incredibly lucky to have that happen. The biggest problem I face this year is that I couldn’t really travel, and I’ve been stuck in my home and I can’t really go out and play hockey. Wow, like that’s the definition of first world problems right there. Some people they complain about that, and it’s like, “Dude, no.” There’s always somebody who’s facing a tougher challenge than you.
Specifically, because I come from the business world, obviously, I look at it and I say, “This sucks right now for a lot of people, but you look at like when we have faced economic challenges before, once we get through it, there tends to be a lot of incredible companies that were started because of that.” People might have been laid off so they have more time to be at home working in the garage or working in the basement creating the next big AirBnB, or the next Tesla, or the next whatever.
The lesson I got, I think one of the first business books I ever picked up, talked about all the companies that came out of the Great Depression. The Great Depression, man. I mean that was the worst economic event we ever went through as a country globally. And still a ton of massive, incredible companies came out of that. And for me, that was really impactful because I went through ’08 like whenever it was ’08, ’09, the financial crisis whenever I was 19 and 20. That really motivated to get through that. Same thing motivates me now.
Right now I’m in a lucky position where my business went up. But I looked through and I’m like, “Man, there’s going to be some exciting things that are going to be happening over the next year or two.” People are going to create incredible companies. And you have to just make that mindset shift of, “Hey, this is adversity right now, this sucks, this is bad.” But this is how we get better by facing these tough, tough times. You have to have that attitude, I think, with everything in life, 100%.
Rodney Flowers: Do you follow David Goggins at all?
Dylan Ogline: I do not. Is he a motivational guy?
Rodney Flowers: He’s a retired SEAL and Army Ranger. I’m reading his book right now and he’s been in, I don’t know, maybe 60 marathons, ultra-triathlons, and all of these major endurance…
Dylan Ogline: The toughest man alive?
Rodney Flowers: Yeah, he’s like the hardest man alive, that’s what he calls himself.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, I’ve heard of him.
Rodney Flowers: Yeah. He talks about his book “callousing the mind.” Sort of like when you work with your hands a lot and you work with your hands so much that you begin to build these callouses over your hands. What hurt once before doesn’t really hurt anymore because you’ve built up these callouses on your hands. And then he says that’s the same thing that you do with your mind. He said, “But here’s the key.”
Dylan Ogline: 100%.
Rodney Flowers: Here’s the key. He said, “Either way you’re going to build up a callous. It doesn’t matter. Because you can’t avoid resistance, opposition, challenge. It’s going to happen. But what side of it are you going to be on? Because you can build up a callous where you become resentful, and victimized because you keep going through challenges. Or you can develop a callous where it’s like it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m numb to this. I’ve been here before and this is just another one of those things that we’re just going to get through, and we just keep going.”
As you were speaking it just kind of took me back to that reading his book. Each experience of adversity it’s sort of like a practice session, if you will. It’s the real thing, but yet how you respond to it, what you get out of it or not, it really sets you up for how you respond to the next one that’s coming, right? It’s like how you play this game is going to affect the next game, and the next game, and the next game, and the next game, right? How you get up after this hit is going to affect the next hit, and the next hit, and the next hit.
Dylan Ogline: 110% agree with that, man. I believe that the key part is that it’s a choice. You can either sorrow, and cry the blues, or you could realize that this is an opportunity, and you just need to decide, just make the decision, put it out there into the universe, that this is an opportunity for me. I am going to become a better person. I am going to build a better business. I’m going to start that business that I’ve been thinking about. Whatever it is, when you’re facing those challenges, that adversity, you have a choice. You can choose to be negative, or you can realize that I have been blessed with this opportunity and just decide, and put out into the university, that I’m going to take advantage of this.
Rodney Flowers: Dylan, what keeps you going, right? Because facing adversity after adversity, challenge after challenge. Like I get being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. I’m an entrepreneur myself. And just like you said, you could wake up one day, and boom, there’s an issue, you’ve been making X amount of dollars, and you drop 20%, 25%, 30%.
Dylan Ogline: 50% whatever.
Rodney Flowers: 50%. You got to go figure that out. You got to run that down. And it’s almost seemingly like searching for a needle in a haystack at times. You really don’t know. And so many varying factors could affect that situations. As the business owner, it’s all on you. As the entrepreneur it’s on you. And then you have a family, you’ve got all of this stuff. You don’t have that security as you would if you had a 9: 00 to 5: 00, which is why a lot of people stay in their 9: 00 to 5: 00 because they don’t want that headache.
I love talking to entrepreneurs because there’s something about them that they stay in the fight regardless. Bruised, scarred up, beat up, beaten. But yet the next day they’re there with the tongues out, slobbering at the mouth, like ready to go again.
Dylan Ogline: Hungry.
Rodney Flowers: What is that and what would you say to people that maybe they’re in the middle of that fight right now and they’re getting their behinds kicked. Or maybe they want to get in, but they’re afraid of that very thing that I just described, what would you say to them?
Dylan Ogline: For me personally, I think where you started that at was, I think like what kept you going or something like that.
Rodney Flowers: Yeah. Yeah.
Dylan Ogline: But for me it was failure just was not an option. There was no plan B. I think there’s a lot to be said about that. That’s not smart. I mean for me personally, I didn’t have a plan B. I didn’t have parents or friends or a trust fund or anything like that. If I failed, like I’d go hungry, like there would be no food. I believe, and again this is absolutely terrible advice, but I believe it is a good idea to burn the bridge.
I don’t know if this is like a fable, or a fake story, or a fiction or whatnot. But there’s this story I heard once about like burning the boats. I’m going to butcher this story, I don’t know where it came from, but in the story this general or whatever is leading his troops on ships onto battle. And they get to the island or wherever they’re going to launch their battle. And he he has them set all the ships on fire. This might actually be a true story, I don’t know.
But he has them set all the ships on fire. And his troops are like, “What’s going on? What if we need to retreat?” And he’s like, “There is no retreating. I just removed that option. It’s done. You have to win. You cannot fail.” I believe in like the whole burning the bridge thing and just there’s no going back. Because when failure is not an option you just won’t fail. As ridiculous as that sounds.
I think there’s a lot to be said by that. Don’t follow that advice. It’s absolutely terrible advice. Don’t go burn your bridges or burn the boats. But for me, like I consider myself lucky that I didn’t have a backup plan, that there was no plan B. Failure was no an option.
Rodney Flowers: You think you would have lightened up a little bit? You wouldn’t have went as hard, you wouldn’t have tried as hard if you knew you had an alternative?
Dylan Ogline: I can’t answer that. I honestly, I cannot answer that. Again, I always use that gratitude. I come back to feeling lucky that I didn’t have a plan B. That the failure couldn’t happen for me because I would go hungry. There would be no food. The second thing is I talked about just deciding to be positive about it. If you’re looking to start your own business or you’re going through those struggles right now, just have to decide that it will work. I know that’s not the perfect advice.
I love Will Smith. And there’s this video of him talking about like what drove him, what was motivating him. And he says something like, “it’s just ridiculous, relentless work ethic.” When I heard this I was like, “Dude, like I so relate to that.” This is the only difference between me and somebody else is that if we get on a treadmill beside each other, you’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple. I think that right there is something. I don’t know how I could put it into better words than that is you just have to make it up in your mind that you’re going to die or you’re going to succeed.
Rodney Flowers: It’s something to be said about that. It really is. And I’ve done the same thing. I haven’t done it in business. I didn’t burn my bridge on my business before I built my business bridge. I had another bridge. Just full disclosure: I had another bridge. However, when it came to walking again after getting hurt, that was the philosophy. It was walk again or die trying. That’s it. It was 100% committed.
Dylan Ogline: You weren’t going to fail.
Rodney Flowers: It was just no option. I didn’t see anything else. It’s this is what’s going to happen or I’m going to die. Period.
Dylan Ogline: That’s it.
Rodney Flowers: Boom. And it was after that there was nothing else. It was this or that. And so every day it was boots on, strapped up, working towards walking again. Everything, everything in life was geared toward walking again. It’s sort of like before I got hurt it was all about football, right? If you want to go pro at any sport, like you have to start dedicating your life to that sport at a very young age because you got to get your 10,000 hours in, it takes that much level of commitment. And given there’s other people out there looking for that same spot, it’s very limited spots, and you got to be the best man to go into that spot. You got to come with your A-plus game, not your A-game, you’re A-plus-plus game.
And I took that same approach with walking again. I feel that if you don’t have that level of commitment and love for what it is you do, then everything else is just a wish or a dream. All those desires. It’s just a wish or a dream. If you don’t have the commitment behind your vision.
Dylan Ogline: Dedication.
Rodney Flowers: The dedication, the devotion, all of those things, it’s just a dream.
Dylan Ogline: And I think for business in particular, which is slightly easier than learning to walk again, your story and everything man, you didn’t have a choice, obviously. With business, a lot of people have that choice. They don’t have to get into business. They can go get a job. And I think a lot of people because they have that choice, they don’t recognize just how difficult it typically is. And a lot of people it’s like why is their business failing and whatnot. It’s probably because they’re just not committed to it. They’re still partying on the weekends or hanging out with friends. It’s just because they have not made the decision that this is going to work, I’m going to succeed at this.
And once you make that decision, all these distractions--hanging out with friends, partying, not working towards that goal-- saying no to that stuff becomes easy. Because it’s just I have decided that this is how it’s going to be, and I’m going to make this work, and the universe will just get out of your way, and you will just have that commitment. For people who are struggling with maybe commitment issues, or putting in the work, and putting in the effort it’s just because you just haven’t decided that you’re going to make it work. I recognize that that is just overly simplifying it. But for me, it really is that simple.
Rodney Flowers: I think it becomes down to who are you going to be in business, that’s it. Are you going to be the person that succeed or not? It’s like you said, it’s the choice. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people, and the common theme is they say it takes relentless effort, commitment, mentorship, coaching, and not willing to fail. Those are the five things. All of them say the same thing. It really comes down these people have adopted within themselves, “Hey, this is what I’m going to do, this is the type of person I’m going to be. I’m going to be that guy that’s not going to take no for an answer. I’m not going to be that guy even if I lose it all I’m going to start again. If I’m on the street, if I’m home.” Like they’re willing to go to death, basically, that’s it.
Dylan Ogline: Fight for the death.
Rodney Flowers: They are willing to go to death in order to bring that forward. Everyone that I interview, they are extremely wealthy, they’re rich, they have money, but they have something that’s driving them that’s beyond that, and that’s this unwavering effort and drive to succeed. And it’s not about money, it’s just I think it’s more about winning to me. I think it’s about not losing, not being defeated, or the commitment to who I have decided to be and what I’ve decided to bring forward. I’m going to bring that forward no matter what and everything else is a byproduct of that decision.
Dylan Ogline: That’s a very good way of putting it. I also think not proving yourself right like, “Hey, I’m right, look at me.” But like I face this challenge and I’m going to prove to myself, even if nobody else in the world sees this, I want to prove to myself that I can do this, that I face the adversity, that I face this challenge, whatever, and I got through it.
Rodney Flowers: And I think that’s very rewarding. That’s one of the reason I got into business. I love challenges. I just I do. And I love them because I like to compete. I’m a very competitive person. I don’t like to compete with other people though. I like to compete with myself.
Dylan Ogline: Compete with yourself.
Rodney Flowers: Yeah. And I think it’s the greatest competition of all because I need work. I’m great at a lot of things, and there’s a lot that I can accomplish. And when I accomplish those things based on the version that I am today, there’s yet another level. In order for me to get to that level that’s weaknesses and things about myself that I have to attend to in order to get to that next level. The higher you go, the more you realize about yourself that you need work, bro. You’re not this great guy that you think you are. When you look in the mirror, like in order to get to that next level, you got to address that.
And it’s like, “Uh, I got to do that. I got to face that demon.” Because that’s what’s required to go to that next level. And for me that’s fascinating because I got to work on me. It’s a challenge for me. It’s not so much getting to the next level and everything that comes with that, but it’s addressing that thing about me that’s going to make me a better person.
Dylan Ogline: The toughest challenges you’ll face are with yourself. Business is easy. Competition, sports competition, that stuffs easy. It is just the battle within yourself. That is a hundred times harder.
Rodney Flowers: Especially when it comes to expanding your mind about what’s possible for you to accomplish. That’s a hard challenge. I think a lot of people settle for less than what they really can accomplish. And they settle because they don’t want to do the work. They don’t want to put in the hours, I think.
Dylan Ogline: This is interesting. Something you mentioned earlier, and I wanted to bring this up, but I don’t necessarily think that it’s that they want to put in the work. This is where you mentioned like mentorship and whatnot. And why I think that’s so important is if you heard--what’s the guy’s name? I’m struggling to think. Roger Bannister, is that the guy’s name?
Rodney Flowers: Yeah. The four-minute mile guy.
Dylan Ogline: The four-minute mile guy. Yeah. For me like that’s a good story that relates to business because for like all of human history it was like, “We could never run a four-minute mile.” For those of you, I’m going to tell the story for those of you who don’t know it. For all of human history we could never run a four-minute mile. And then all of a sudden Roger Bannister, which I’m hoping I’m pronouncing his name’s right, comes along and he runs a four-minute mile. Like three minutes and 58 seconds or whatever.
And since then, that was in like the ‘40s or ‘30s or something like that. Since then, like 90,000 people, I think it’s over nearly 100,000 people have ran a sub-four-minute mile. It wasn’t like humans all of a sudden developed more lung capacity. It wasn’t the development of better shoes because people have ran four-minute miles in bare feet. There was no massive development in human skeletal structure. There was nothing.
All it was, was this guy came along and he proved that it could be done. That was it. Before that people didn’t have a reference point to say, “Oh, this could happen. This can be done.” All of these people limited themselves to, “Oh, I’m happy with a 4: 10 mile because it’s impossible for a human to run under four minutes.” And then somebody proved that it could happen.
For me, where this relates to mentorship is, especially if people are like struggling with a business or whatnot is if you don’t have a reference point of somebody you know or somebody you worked with or books that you’re reading of somebody that’s made the particular business that you’re in successful, the idea in your head could creep in and be like, “This just isn’t possible. It can’t be done.” But if you’re constantly surrounded with people.
Let’s say with a podcast. Let’s use that as an example. Because we’re on one, right? If you’ve never read a book on a successful, profitable podcast, or you’ve never watched a video, you’ve never read an article, or you’ve never talked to anybody that has a profitable, successful podcast. It could start to creep into your mindset of, “This just isn’t possible.” But if you surround yourself with other successful podcast hosts, you read books about successful podcasts, you watch videos on successful podcasts, you have mentorships with successful hosts, you start to convince yourself that this is possible.
I don’t even know where we were going with that. But if it’s something you mentioned earlier, and then oh yeah, about the limiting of the mindset. I think that mentorship or just surrounding yourself with people who convince you that this is possible. This applies to all sorts of areas of life. Not just business. It could be fitness, it can be with business, it could be with anything.
Rodney Flowers: That’s the work that I’m talking about. I completely agree. And that’s considered work: reading the books, getting the mentorship.
Dylan Ogline: It takes work to surround yourself.
Rodney Flowers: Surrounding yourself. That’s the work. Because what you’re really doing is reprogramming. You’re challenging the beliefs that you have. Essentially, you’re reframing that belief by what you’re putting in. Because of who you’re around, because of what you’re reading, because of what you’re seeing and doing. Now that belief is, “Oh, maybe I can do this.” I feel that if the folks that weren’t really in tune with the fact that a four-minute mile is possible, or they didn’t feel that even though some people had ran a four-minute mile, it wasn’t possible for them to run the four-minute mile. They still never ran the four-minute mile.
Dylan Ogline: It doesn’t end with just surrounding yourself. But if your belief system is nobody has ever ran a four-minute mile, if your aspiration is to run a sub-four minute mile, but your belief structure is that nobody’s ever done it, it’s a lot harder. Whereas if you’re like, “It’s been done before. Other people have done it. And I’m surrounded with other people who have done it.” It almost becomes that whole standard thing, where the standard has changed. Where it’s no longer an aspiration, it’s this is the standard. “Everybody else has done this. I’m surrounded by people that have done this. I can do this too.”
Rodney Flowers: Dylan, did you do that? The odds were stacked against you as a high school dropout, now turned to seven-figure producer, entrepreneur. I mean like what was your standard? Let’s not talk about, hey, the funds and the revenue that you’re making right now. Just getting to the place where, “Hey, I’m going to build a successful business to the point where it can sustain itself, it can sustain me,” what caused you to believe that you could do that given your situation?
Dylan Ogline: Relentless, ridiculous, stupid work ethic. And I also I knew other people who had successful businesses. For me it was like all those pieces were kind of there. They were kind of like on the outside like just had not been connected. And then whenever the focus came, like looking back hindsight’s 20/20, it was like it was right in front of my face. It was right there. Like you idiot I you just focused on one thing and a high profit margin business, you’re probably going to be able to build the kind of business that you want. And it was there for years, I just didn’t see it.
And that’s another thing where the mentorship came in. Is I had a mentor who basically slapped me upside the face and was like, “You’re being an idiot. You need to do this.” It was all those things were kind of there. I was surrounded by people who had successful businesses. I read books about people who had successful businesses. Within mentorship groups, and mastermind groups, and was taking training. All the pieces were there and then kind of the piece that connected them for me was the focus. Just focusing on one single thing, one single business, and being absolutely ruthless, which is cutting all the unnecessary crap.
Rodney Flowers: Let’s talk about your business. It’s a digital marketing business. Tell us a little bit about what you do and how you support others with your business.
Dylan Ogline: I have two businesses now. One is Ogline Digital, which is the digital marketing agency. And basically, we offer digital ad management services. Dumbing it down, essentially what we’re doing is we are managing a client’s Facebook, Google, and sometimes YouTube ads. We build the ad, write the copy, build the landing page, manage what the target, all that stuff. And we charge a 10% fee. The client spends $50,000 in a month, we send them an invoice for $5,000. That’s what Ogline Digital does.
My other company is my education company is ran under my personal name: dylanogline.com. And I have a training program called Agency 2.0 where I teach other people how to start and grow their own digital marketing agency.
Rodney Flowers: And how long have you been in business so far?
Dylan Ogline: I’ve owned my own business since I was 14. I’ve only ever had one job. I’ve worked at a cotton candy stand at a racetrack.
Rodney Flowers: Does that count?
Dylan Ogline: I got paid minimum wage, which I think was $5.25 an hour? And then Pennsylvania changed it, so it was like $7.15 an hour. I was just I didn’t know what to do with all the money.
Rodney Flowers: Why marketing? What made you choose marketing? Why is that so important?
Dylan Ogline: What happened I think it was just the times. Whenever I started my first business, which was selling cellphones on eBay, this was just at the time it was like the infancy of like Google AdWords. I don’t even think Facebook had launched at that time. Facebook was just a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye. I know Facebook advertising certainly wasn’t out there. And I kind of just got into marketing at the very beginning.
And it was I read in some books, or got some training, or something where I recognized at a young age that this whole like digital marketing thing is going to change the world. The concept that I really learned was now businesses have the ability to purchase trackable growth. Go back 25 years ago or whatever. If you’re any kind of business, blue collar business, doesn’t matter, and you wanted to grow your client base, you might have done some TV ads, or some billboards. And you just kind of hoped that they worked. And you were kind of like, “Oh, it looks like sales are up, so I think it’s working.”
With digital marketing, once you track it, and once you get good at it and everything, which is relatively easy, you can get to the point where you can say, “I spent $100 on whatever ads, and I generated X dollars in return.” And you can tweak things, and constantly scale up your budgets. And that, when it comes to business growth strategies just changed the world. Because now nearly every business, ecommerce business, blue collar business, training programs, doesn’t matter. You could literally track and purchase growth and that just fascinated me. And it was just at the right time. I got into it at a young age and that was it.
Rodney Flowers: What are some of the biggest challenges you had to face in your marketing business to date?’
Dylan Ogline: Once I started to focus on just marketing. Like after I started the cellphone business and then that got shut down because my merchant account got closed cause they found out I was under the age of 18. There was a long period of bouncing around between different things. I was always doing some kind of agency work. Like website design, or graphics design, or you needed a logo, Dylan was your guy. But I also was trying all these different projects, like affiliate marketing, and et cetera, et cetera trying to figure out how to be able to purchase growth and get a business going.
Once I decided I’m just going to focus on a digital agency and I’m just going to focus on this one service, this one offering. The challenge is kind of there really haven’t been that many. Because once you focus on one single thing, you’re relentlessly working on it. You get better and better and better. That for me was the key is that I got better and better, and now I’m just really good at it, because it’s all I do.
Rodney Flowers: Pretty good, man. I appreciate that. Because I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs, they go in with the idea of creating multiple streams of income, which is a beautiful thing. I think you need multiple streams of income. But what they don’t tell you when they talk about that is that you want to do them one at a time. You want to master one product.
Dylan Ogline: Yes.
Rodney Flowers: Master the marketing on that product, perfect it, and then you have to know when it’s time to kind of start working on that next product. And I think that’s an art and a science, and it’s really understanding your business, understanding your customer, understanding the need before you go off and start building that other product.
Dylan Ogline: That whole multiple streams of income. The first business book I ever read was Rich Dad Poor Bad by Robert Kiyosaki. I think I talk about that in like every podcast. I am obsessed.
Rodney Flowers: It’s a good book. It’s a really good book. I recommend that book to everybody because it’s just this like foundation of money management, business, and whatnot. It does talk about it and there are like multiple streams of income. At a young age I was obsessed with that. But what you mention is you also got to have the key point of you got to focus on one, and the once that’s good, then maybe you could take some effort and put it over here. But if you’re going in 20 different directions, you’re not going to get any source of income. And I am a personal testament to that.
Rodney Flowers: Got to get that traction first. Dylan, how can people connect with you if they wanted to learn more about you?
Dylan Ogline: My website: dylanogline.com. Which Ogline is O-G-L-I-N-E. You’re probably going to include that in the show notes. And I do have an eBook that I just put up live for free. I think it was this week or last week. It’s Six Steps to a Six Figure Agency. Just go to dylanogline.com/six. I’ll spell it out, S-I-X. And you can get that book for free.
Rodney Flowers: Awesome. Dylan, thank you for coming on the show, sharing your knowledge with us, thank you for the book, providing that to the audience for free. I really appreciate that. And I guess I would like to know if there was something that you would want to leave with us regarding just dealing with some of the adversity that we talked about earlier. We talked about making it a choice, sticking to that choice, unrelentless effort.
Is there anything else that in your mind that you would want to leave with us that people should know about? When they get into entrepreneurship in their professional, corporate lives, is there anything else coming from someone who’s defied extreme odds to become successful?
Dylan Ogline: Anything else. No, I don’t have anything else. I would like to point out two things. I’m going to go with this. I would like to leave people with the thought that you need to have gratitude for the adversity that you’re facing. No matter your challenge. No matter what it is. Never look at it as an excuse. Look at it as an opportunity. I am lucky, I am grateful, I am blessed. Whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to say. Whatever challenge I’m going through--it could be health, it could be relationship, it could be family, it could be coming from difficult or not optimal means. It could be anything like that, man. You have to change it in your mind that I’m blessed, and I’m grateful, and show gratitude towards that.
And then the second thing is you just need to decide that I’m not going to fail. If I’m on that treadmill that you’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It really, really is that simple. I think those are the two things I would leave people with.
Rodney Flowers: Dylan Ogline on the Game Changer Mentality podcast. Thank you so much for stopping by.
Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. Thank you.
Rodney Flowers: Thank you for your expertise, man, it’s been a pleasure.
Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. Thank you.
Rodney Flowers: Well, there you have it, folks. Another successful episode of the Game Changer Mentality podcast. Listen, this doesn’t have to be difficult, folks. It really comes down to just a couple of things: deciding and being grateful for whatever comes your way. And it’s a beautiful form of it, right, because when you make that decision, you’re grateful for that process--the ups and the downs. It just really gives you grounding, in my opinion, to kind of deal with everything that’s going to come along.
And I think that’s the key here is you got to stay grounded, you got to stay focused, you got to stay true to who you are and steadfast to what it is that you’ve decided to do with life. And I think gratitude is the anchor. You’re grateful at all times for the ups and the downs, it just puts you in a state of mind to just head down, keep charging, grateful. Good times, grateful. Bad times, still grateful. Because you’re grounded and you’re anchored, in who you are and what you want to accomplish in life. I think, truly, that’s the game changer here, that’s the game changer.
I wish you all the best. Stay hungry. Stay focused. Stay in the game. And most of all, stay grateful. Until next time. Peace and love.
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