Dan and guest co-host Ryan sit down with marketing master, Mike Dillard of the Self Made Man Podcast. From his humble beginnings working at a restaurant to learning he wanted to work for himself, Mike has a wealth of wisdom to share as an entrepreneur and marketing expert.

Guests: Mike Dillard

Host: Dan Dillard, joined by Ryan Fancis

Producer: Myrriah Gossett

Music by: Scott Holms

 

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Masters and Founders Facebook Group

 

Transcript: imagine making your first million by the time you’re twenty seven Mike Dillard doesn’t have to imagine an Austin based entrepreneur Mike altered his future by teaching small business owners how to effectively market their products and services online using attraction marketing strategies Mike master a skill and found a way to monetize teaching others those skills he could use a double in many other areas in business but as always shares his best practices via his podcast self made man just a note before we jump into a conversation with Mike Dillard we had a few technical difficulties of some of the audio from myself and Ryan is a bit hard to hear but don’t worry you can hear all of Mike’s story in advice loud and clear hello everybody and we want to welcome you to masters and founders podcast we talk about masters staff master correct Mike Dillard craft were still ten thousand plus hours or founded a business we want to thank our sponsors still whiskey kind of our tiny house coffee Waterloo sparkling water and where we are hosting this podcast the Russell collection fine art gallery today we have Mike Dillard who is a businessman self made man I’m sure a lot of you have heard of this podcast the self made man and we’re really excited to learn from him Mike Dillard I’m gonna jump right in and Mike Dillard and itch and say saying I did I mean Mike Dillard Mike this is a little same last name yeah yeah yeah for sure could easily be a family gig Mike Dillard nothing’s for how many guys excited to be here thank you very much so I Mike Dillard it’s interesting you know about three years ago I was I was looking into how to make money online you came up right away I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and I already kind of know a little bit about your story but if you could tell everybody how Mike Dillard from start to finish where you were and what you tried to do really and what you’ve done and now you’re here yeah sure Mike Dillard you know it started way back in high school really Mike Dillard I used to Mike Dillard bus tables at the ritual Romano’s macaroni grill in Bernie Texas right next to the original release barbecue before became a franchise and all that good stuff so I would Mike Dillard I would bus tables on the weekends and I would mountain bike competitively Mike Dillard on the the state championship series during the week so that’s how I made money to two for that and I hated the fact that I had a boss who told me when I had to work how much I had to work and how much money was going to make and I would get home on a Friday and Saturday night at midnight smelly exhausted hot after working you know nine ten hours and I’d sit down and decompress and aha watch infomercials right now you see infomercials about about Mike Dillard twenty Robinson and how to make money sort of business and I kind of planted the seed in my head Mike Dillard started to pursue different business ideas all throughout college essentially fill that all of them and eventually realized that you have to learn a skill in order to to achieve success and get results so what what were some of the things that you tried and failed you know my first exposure entrepreneurship this is around the league nineties early two thousand Mike Dillard you know really in college it was network marketing Mike Dillard this was web one point oh this is before video what was really online just before social media and so if you’re broke college student the amount of opportunities out there for your pretty limited and Mike Dillard but that’s one business modeler industry that was really accessible so that’s what I pursued for five or six years unsuccessfully Mike Dillard I hated selling knows very shy and Mike Dillard at it again five or six years into it I realized the results are not gonna come from an opportunity not gonna come from a product were business or mentor and I finally realized that if I’m gonna get a result I have to go become one of the best in the world it’s something I have to acquire a skill set and that way I can take action I can get a positive result move forward and so I decided to master selling because that was my weakest point and I knew if I want to build a business I have to sell stuff in so that’s that’s something I need to figure out and I discovered Dan Kennedy direct response marketing and from a a shy introverted guy that was a godsend for me because I always equated selling is knocking on doors shaking hands and and going to events and here I realize that I could sit down in front of a computer in right a web page or a letter or any email that would be just as effective at selling a product or service and I could put that in front of thousands of people a day using Google and actually get people to buy Mike Dillard and so I spent about two years reading every book in course that occurred on copywriting mastering that skill set read my first ebook essentially on attraction marketing and wrote the sales copy for that article two thousand five two thousand six and it essentially was fifty five pages I typed up in word Mike Dillard was never spell checked designed the cover art myself kind of predicting goes and spiral bound so nice yes so that Mike Dillard for thirty nine dollars a copy Mike Dillard the world responded really well to what I taught in that and within three months I was someone around fifty sixty thousand dollars a month of that book well we don’t hear what we’re only years this two thousand six Dodge two thousand sales were and crime Google adwords taught myself how to use outwards as well that was back when it was easy and and you could hear the was the wild west for sure yeah and Mike Dillard email marketing was still working really really well you know it’s probably high yeah yes yeah you know same email still number one for us today as well and what I let’s do you use now for your for your brand and when you find the most effective I had a you know I’ve always relied on email that’s our primary distribution channel Mike Dillard but now we’re moving more into Instagram social Mike Dillard but from a sales perspective I I’ve yet to find anything that’s as effective as email in whether Mars today yeah yeah anything that’s been pretty constant since you’ve been at it right you know it’s it’s finally starting to change by it’s interesting because if you’re on social would say you know you guys we start to focus on building a large Instagram presence or Facebook fan page we’ve already seen what happens there were not in charge of the algorithm right so you can have a hundred thousand followers on Instagram you might only get five six thousand impressions Mike Dillard in so it’s it’s tough because you put all of that work in money and time into building that channel and and you have no control over your reach or email it’s still a hundred percent there is no I’ve ordered rhythm there is no filter you get to the inbox and it’s up to you to build a relationship at that point you’re not fighting this a ghost writer whose whose Mike Dillard affecting you in that regard so Mike Dillard in my mind that’s the one still the one big advantage it has over all of these other networks is full ownership the central you know I never looked at it like that I agree Mike Dillard so closely to the Facebook and Instagram socially specials today and see how the term and her school Facebook zero because zero percent honey is actually just the message means like really one two percent of the time they want to change that out as you might have to your point of those viewers in only two three people to those people say you have a you I’m I make one post to Facebook a week on a fan page which is our podcast episode and I spent two hundred fifty three in a box to boost it that’s the only way gets any any views whatsoever so there was Mike Dillard interesting parts like a bird came out with the key note saying that Mike Dillard users were complaining that businesses were organically getting places and and in the beginning of Facebook it was not meant for that at all actually it kind of evolved into that and I thought that was interesting so he’s going to push back the algorithm and then we’ll have to learn again what what’s working and what’s not so so I think that’s really cool when you were a when you were deciding to build on line what what made you do what you did by teaching forces writing books why was that the thing that stuck to you are all of my business is a been found around my own personal challenges and finding solutions for those are the first one was Mike Dillard you know sales I hated hated selling so the question I asked was how can I get people to come to me ready to buy rather than me to suffer them and try to convince them right and so when I figured out the solution to that problem of you know I decided to to put in the book and teach other people who had my same issues and challenges right of the second business was in finance you know I built the eight figure company at that point Mike Dillard was thirty years old and I had no idea what to do with the money that my business had made so that was my next big challenges Hey how do I responsibly learn how to invest in and you know take care of this asset that I’ve built and so Mike Dillard that led to the elevation group and I was essentially just a private membership website were once a month I would get in front of a camera interview someone in the finance investing space Mike Dillard maybe that I personally invested with or that I wanted to learn from on a specific topic it might be investing and you know oil gas or Mike Dillard cash flow real estate or infinite banking or something along those lines and we sold access to that for ninety seven a month and in the first seven days we acquired eighty seven hundred members in our first week Mike Dillard and that was only because the previous business you know we built up an email list of about two fifty thousand people right so we had a distribution channel in place with an audience that had a lot of positive regard for myself and what we have done and Mike Dillard so to me that’s always been kind of a core my business is that is that list in that audience because everything we do that’s our distribution channel so for sure then you you more recently started your podcast and how is that change the game for everything that you do and you know the podcast is interesting I started the podcast not to turn it into an audience or to build in a podcast audience I’d started it to deliver value to my existing email list Mike Dillard on a regular weekly basis right and the most time efficient manner that I could which means I’m not the one producing content our guests are Mike Dillard so that’s why I started it and then it kind of took on a life of its own it’s been the best R. O. Y. from a Mike Dillard an audience appreciation standpoint the you know the amount of people who found our brand because of the show because of recommendations the amount of good will that we’ve created with our audience because of the show’s been better than anything else I’ve ever done Mike Dillard and it’s been fantastic to be able to meet all of the guests and build relationships you know with all of the guests we’ve had right that’s a huge advantage that I wouldn’t have had otherwise so the podcast I think is a fantastic way to deliver value to an existing audience I would not want to be in a position where I’m trying to build an audience from scratch with a podcast because I think it’s unbelievably difficult to be unique these days to do it while you’re right and to be found Mike Dillard with you know the other five million podcast that are out there these days and for the most part they’re all interviews right that’s what we all do because it’s practical it’s simple Mike Dillard and so how are you going to compete in a space where there’s a and a hundred other podcasts injured it’s doing the same thing so that’s kind of how I look at it how I purchase who’s been Europe’s biggest challenges what will my for questions in general in general so starting your the staff of the founder and businesses you know learning to scaling delegated build a team and manage manager business as a CEO that’s not my personality style you know I had a I had a small team with an office at one point and I never went because I would never get anything done I do my best work when I’m alone in solitude and and I just got to think and write and create Mike Dillard I’m not super into managing people or their feelings or emotions you know on a on a daily basis and I’m just not really interested in that but I’m forcing that’s a part of building a company so for me that’s always been a huge challenge and right now I’m I’m really trying to figure out Mike Dillard how to delegate that piece out to someone else and realizing that it doesn’t have to be me and if I could just had a great conversation with GT McCormick who’s the CEO book in a box with Tucker Max right here in Austin the talk is very much like me we have very similar personalities and work styles N. talkers like I just need to bring in a CEO to run outside of the business so we brought into a two year ago and it just blown up like crazy because of that so on th you know having that realization at this point and Mike Dillard and that’s my big my big goal moving forward the reason we use huh the first I mean there’s there’s been so many writers just we’ve probably done a hundred fifty now and there’s just been a lot of really great knowledgeable people at the same time it’s pretty difficult to you I’m sure you know this we break our interviews down into three Mike Dillard you know categories or or features of a guest if you will that we look for first is are they obviously and Mike Dillard an expert on their subject matter they have to be that too are they a great storyteller on the show are the entertaining to listen to and three do they have their own audience Mike Dillard that would either bring more credibility to our show because you know like Tony Robbins our Daymond John as a guest is on Mike Dillard it you know escalates our brand value if you will and so those are the three categories that we look for in every guest has to have at least two you know meeting you don’t have to be a celebrity but you’ve got to be really interesting and and know your stuff or vice versa right and that’s really hard to find someone with all three that’s kind of a grand slam or book Mike Dillard so from the so as you’re aware there’s many people from this is the founders people because of this or people that have ideas and like a howling started some references and whatnot what would be your Mike Dillard for person starting today we want what you were you were back in two thousand yeah what would be your advice to to them a source they’re on the casting about these ideas will start executing what would be the first things that you say that yeah for me was to is it’s all going back and figure out what’s go you wanna master just master one skill because that’s what’s going to allow you to get a result and the result is going to you know give you confidence is going to help you build momentum it’s gonna lie to take the next step in the process Mike Dillard the so whenever someone asked me you know Hey how do you do this my cable what are you one of the best in the world that are we trying to become an nine times out of ten it’s nothing at that point but you look if you want to build a social media business you’ve got a master Instagram Facebook period you’ve got up literally master it well enough to where you could be your own agency and run somebody else’s campaigning for their account successfully answer I’d really start least we color bridge business right if you’ve got a real job these days and you want to make the leap to full time self employed all you’ve got to have a consistent source of income for the six months that you can count on seeing not freaking out and the best way to do that is to go let someone else pay you to get really great at a skill set Mike Dillard whether that’s running a podcast doing a videography growing their YouTube channel going there Instagram channel whatever maybe just make sure it’s a skill that’s aligned with your eventual goals and what you want to deploy in your business so that you can hit the ground running Mike Dillard but until you do that you’re stuck in the the ideation phase you with one of the dress one thing is I did comment to love the store now in a severe did you have any feeling for store sure hi your fear of selling was huge I used to Mike Dillard you know when I was at the point right all I can really do is call cold call leads or business cards that I picked up I would start my phone for hours like I don’t know I need a new printer cartridge and I’d find excuse to go to home depot and do anything but make those phone calls and I think I picked it up from Tony Robbins he said Mike Dillard at one point ironically people are usually willing to do something that they don’t want to do for someone else rather than themselves and so I was like okay I will put that to the test and was like I’m gonna go get a job this is right out of college that requires me to sell and and make a ton of phone calls Mike Dillard to force myself to learn the skills so I applied for a job at a company called Matt Hawkins recruiting surgeons in Dallas Texas and it’s one of those jobs were to really low base salary and then it’s performance based right I don’t know how I got the job that I got it and they sent me down to my two one day one there’s nothing in there except on my desk is up the phone and a five ring binder that’s probably five to six inches in diameter and just said you’ve got to make three hundred for local calls a day to these doctors offices get past the gate keeper and try to connect with the doctor and that’s it instead so I had to and within my second day my fear of the phone was gone well you know at that point because of the three at least three hundred act well yes at the end of the day you you talk about trying to get past the nurse to a busy doctor and that’s a tough that’s a tough gig so if you call that one of the turning point point in your career yeah without a doubt that took me you know with within within forty eight hours I get over fear that held me back for five years and that that’s turning really appreciate what the story is that or a few things you said today is that you first identified with things you worked at a and then something then you said I got really good at that well the the fear of having to go get a regular job and have that boss again was even worse than that here right so I had two choices give in on the you know what I wanted to do in my dreamer go get over it and and you know unfortunately it took me longer than I wish it had a wish I’d figure that out five years sooner but Mike Dillard knows better than number is a yeah that leads me in something Mike Dillard if you could go back and this is a cliche question but I always like to hear the answer to it if you could go back and talk to yourself what would you do different I could just kick myself in Asagoe like go do it now like it’s not going to change a month from now or you’re not gonna be the same damn obstacle just go do it now and Mike Dillard you know I’ve on a on a general scale ice was still quite successful concert I’ve for seven figure business about by the age of twenty seven but I could on a twenty two Mike Dillard if I had just taken action sooner so take action so one of the things in the the census bureau of honey civilian Albers is for sure you know I don’t really think about it that way is it still happens Mike Dillard but it’s just a what it what’s the right word for this it’s just an inconvenience I would have liked to have had a better result you know for particular project if we launch or something like that so we may have failed by the standard we have set for ourselves but I don’t at that point was like well shit now we just got to work harder and you know to get back to where we want to be but Mike Dillard you know if I don’t think about failure I don’t think about the word and Mike Dillard never use it I don’t talk about it he always and I mean just just over time are you know I think once I got over those initial fears and just started to take action that just goes away because at that point once I was self sufficient pay my bills the third I was successful years gone at that point the only thing you know afterward is of you know of a business Testor strategy that didn’t go over the way we wanted but I would win considered a failure and I just you know the words not in my vocabulary this point yeah I’ve I’ve Mike Dillard didn’t doing the interviews that we that we’ve done over the last couple years I’ve noticed in my line of just all this knowledge comes in from all these of the sewers and checkers movers Mike Dillard and noticed that I had a very low pain threshold again with a high five personal and it’s literally gone out just because you hear of what others are having to face their fears of the rejection and all in the house and as those stories that you Mike Dillard it’s just the straight path we learn all the stories in this kind of the influence your life significantly yeah yeah no absolutely you know guys like like GT or west trap in that I’ve talked to who went through unbelievable amounts of abuse during their childhoods physically emotionally sexually everything I’m like you know those guys are fucking monsters you are my friends for for getting through that and and she even the results that they’ve had Mike Dillard so I’ve had it easy yeah and that’s part of it something happening to you facing fear or failing once you do that it’s it’s kind of like the stress of I am I think yeah no in a recent interview we did with with Austin Austin I hear you’ve got it you guys have got to get on the show is Keith Cunningham and you know Keith is the guy who’s on stage at all of Tony Robbins offense who teaches that his business classes right I seventy years old the guys just you know went through bankruptcy the age of forty had to start over from less than zero millions of dollars in debt and he laid out a quote that I I would just always remember which is Mike Dillard the definition of hell and that’s it meeting Mike Dillard the person you could have become on on you know your last day here and Mike Dillard and realizing all of the potential you have that you let fear get in the way of for you know whatever it may be and I was like yeah that would be that be pretty horrific Mike Dillard this to to meet that person when you’re out of time to do anything about it right so that’s awesome really standing weeks where you sit in your career right now who who influences you and and Mike Dillard you want to influence are you that’s interesting I just turned forty right so I’m in this I’m in this age category where I Mike Dillard I look up to a lot of guys who were you know like Keith right in their fifties and sixties to built a legacy and and have really Mike Dillard learned a lot and yet a lot of my audience is still in their twenties and so it’s a it’s an interesting place to be and it’s like do we talk about fun stuff like cars and lifestyle components of it or do we talk about you know creating a legacy for your family and that kind of stuff so it’s it’s been interesting but Mike Dillard you know yeah guys like Keith who you’ve been there done it especially with him after after seen him have to start over you know from zero in his forties when you’re supposed to be harvesting you know at that stage in your career and he’s haven’t Mike Dillard haven’t start from scratch again I think that was super inspiring and yeah for sure that’s right yeah just Mike Dillard totals for your notes of women over some new things to develop some of those in the mail yeah he well you know I guess a a you know on the topic of failure right my my most tangible experience of that was probably two years ago when Mike Dillard I I set out to do something completely different Mike Dillard I wanted to get out of the industry I’ve been in and and pulling you on right move into a completely new Mike Dillard area of technology so I set out to build Mike Dillard the world’s first completely automated hydroponic farm for your house essentially that would grow all of your produce for you automatically you know write your kitchen or living room I don’t know anything about that I color names on about five books about hydroponics three years ago and that started my education when it came to that that world and never developed a physical product never been in manufacturing never develop tax Mike Dillard and so I dove into that full force put every penny and accumulated into into that project multiple seven figures two and a half years and then Mike Dillard you know we got to the the prototype done which is in my living room today and I’m like okay guys how much is this really going to cost this was supposed to be a third of this by now we’re supposed to be in production and like are you another two and a half three million dollars and I’m like crap so I really got to raise money at that point Mike Dillard or at the same time a competing company whose are why combinators the really well funded they’ve been in business seven years called quicken grow came out with Mike Dillard essentially three competing models at that same point in time when I’m having to to make this big business decision and if you put our unit side by side we when we won and and looks Mike Dillard but they wanted every other category price you know Mike Dillard how much food that their units could grow versus ours everything else was like as a marketer I don’t wanna have to compete against that and I especially don’t have to do with other people’s money that that that I you know how the line so I had to make the decision to pull the plug last couple million Bucks Bucks in the process and I ended up Mike Dillard investing in them Mike Dillard they had an open bridge around and I just called up the founder and and Mike Dillard so hopefully the question is how can you turn a bad unanticipated result into a win in the long run and that was my my strategy on how to do that so yeah so hopefully in five or six years they’ll have an exit all all make back what I lost so that would be my biggest bomb and Mike Dillard the backup plan plan B. was was to go all in on self made man and turn that into in a really Mike Dillard the biggest E. learning platform we canned dedicated to entrepreneurs Mike Dillard and to take me out of it Mike Dillard you know on the day to day and really use that as a platform to feature other educators teachers and experienced entrepreneurs Mike Dillard and Mike Dillard and build it into real business rather than the Mike show if you will right right so yeah so that’s what you were yes we launched a two weeks ago and we had about twenty six thousand free Mike Dillard profile signed up in the first two weeks and now were you know the process of building out a team in our processes and all of the the boring stuff that I don’t want to have anything to do with but that has to get done and Mike Dillard and hopefully you know in three or four years we’ll we’ll have a couple hundred thousand active paid members and and you know have a nice exit out of that so record number of the person I like just asking the question really Mike Dillard hobbies what would refund our drivers course yeah yeah I got a new in two thousand eight I went on a an adventure trip with my buddy onyx over he’s a very successful entrepreneur we went down to Baja Mexico and did the whole offroad Baja trip for three days through the desert first time into an actual you know race car quite a quite a few of the roll cage in five point harness absolutely loved it for five months later went back and my very first motor sport event ever Mike Dillard was the Baja one thousand so the longest most interest rates on the planet was my very first time ever competing in a and motor sports as well Mike Dillard so that was unbelievable we had myself and three other bodies did it we split it in teams of two so my buddy Jay and I raise the first twelve hours we handed off twelve hours later to our other friends who did the twelfth next twelve so could take us for twenty four hours to finish Mike Dillard but I was totally hooked at that point and then we got the circuit of the Americas who built here in Austin or backyard which house Mike Dillard moved me into the the road racing category and so we just last week competed in Mike Dillard Mike Dillard the Porsche series here my buddy Brent tonight and yes money was no object right now and I had I could do anything I’d be racing full time and yeah and the ultimate goal is to end up to be in the mall the next five six years so Dr yes very cool yeah that’s that’s the stuff that goes along going and everything else was a just a manager you have speeds always been my my my Mike Dillard my drenalin six of choice and you know it’s unbelievably difficult you don’t realize how different of an experience it is in the car versus spectating Mike Dillard you’re in the car it’s a whole different ballgame and you’re having to calculate everything in real time Mike Dillard I say it’s it’s similar to golf in the fact that every single corner on the track is like a golf swing or every single swing is different it depends on you know the heat that day the moisture the the texture of the grass how you’re feeling Mike Dillard you know all of it and it’s the same on a track with the temperature of the track the air in your tires you know who’s in front of you and Mike Dillard if your side by side at a guide a hundred miles an hour you now got to calculate the geometry and how that’s changing in real time as you approach a corner where you’re gonna end up you know it mixed in with a person or in a wall right so Israel consequences if you make a mistake which I find really interesting I don’t like sports where there are no consequences and and there’s definitely adrenaline involved because of that so now amazing and that is Mike Dillard I’m a big car and a middle finger car business some very big portion so yeah I’ve always aspired to be a race car driver everybody as you would if it is your dream though I always say that the Mike Dillard race car driver F. one probably yeah driving around at those speeds with consequences I never heard of like that it it’s a batch waiting because your life is in your hands and and I and everybody else is right there’s there’s no room for failure there will be a Mike Dillard you know I I I wanna I wanna ask you if you want to say anything else unless them I think we’re ready to wrap up nothing we got we want to notice the extravagant having me a level you guys doing here and and the magazines awesome Mike Dillard yeah Austin street and it took quite a cool spot Richard you come home and be our guest yeah absolutely yeah thank you guys to get on the list yeah absolutely thank you guys so much as we were talking there at the end there’s so much you can learn from other people but truly mastered a skill is what sets you apart and says your for success thank you Mike for taking the time to speak with us and make sure you check out his podcast self made man for more tips and advice from Mike and his growing network the message the voters team includes me dental or the producer of Mariah Gosset thank you to Ryan Francis for co hosting this episode with me and special thanks to the whole team that found in Austin if you enjoy the show don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and please rate and review on I tunes as it really helps also if you want to check out full videos more interviews on this broadcast and beyond check out the masters and founders Facebook group thanks again for listening