Episode 14
High-School Dropout to Digital Marketing Expert, Entrepreneur, and Educator
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Show notes
Dylan Ogline has been self-employed as an entrepreneur for the greater part of his life, since he was 14 years old, selling cell phones at a profit and creating websites instead of finishing high school. In this interview, he tells the story of how he went from sitting on a plastic bucket in a basement to having a 7-figure digital agency. Dylan shares how he accomplished this by focusing on just one thing at a time; and, now, as an educator, he loves helping teach others how to find their one thing to focus on so they can start and build their own digital agency that will allow them to have more freedom, purpose, and meaning.
Dylan shares the ups and downs of the first ten years of his journey as an entrepreneur and about how he has moved back and forth between Florida and Pennsylvania a couple times. He talks about how his plan to travel the US by RV ended abruptly and why he transitioned to his current location. It ends up that he has been able to manage a virtual team seamlessly through some of these transitions.
Contact Dylan: dylanogline.com
Dylan's business: OglineDigital.com
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Transcript
April Malone:
Hello, hello. My name is April Malone and I’m with Yes, I Work from Home and this is the podcast. Today I have Dylan with me. Dylan, you’re going to have to help me with your last name.
Dylan Ogline:
Yes, we did not talk about that before the show. It's Ogline. So, it's Dylan Ogline. I apologize.
April Malone:
Ogline. I know, I had that moment where I’m like, I am going to butcher this. Thank you for telling me. You are in Florida, right?
Dylan Ogline:
That's correct. Yes, I am in the Sunshine State in Orlando.
April Malone:
We have a three hour time difference.
Dylan Ogline:
It's early for you, isn't it?
April Malone:
It's good for me because I can get this interview done before my children wake up to get ready for their online school. Today's an intense day for them because they have to turn in all their paperwork.
Dylan Ogline:
Gotcha.
April Malone:
So, I’m going to spend my whole day scanning my kindergartener's coloring sheets and things like that. It's fun times.
Dylan Ogline:
Well hey, thanks for getting up so early and having me. It's great to be here.
April Malone:
It's great to have you. So, I’m going to let you go ahead and introduce yourself. We don’t know each other in person. We've just sat here chatting for 18 minutes.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
Kind of getting to know each other a little bit. But I'll let you go ahead and talk to us a little bit about what you do. But we're going to talk more about work from home and the stigma and such. Then you'll tell us all about your business.
Dylan Ogline:
Gotcha. So, Dylan Ogline's the name. I own a digital marketing agency called Ogline Digital. Work from home, have for – let's see, probably about ten years or so. I also own an education company that I run under my personal name. My website's dylanogline.com. With that, I teach people how to start and grow their own digital agency like the one that I have. That's the very short of what I do right now.
April Malone:
Are you an employee of one and you own the other or are you running both of them?
Dylan Ogline:
I have been self-employed since I was 14, so.
April Malone:
Okay, yes.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. I’ve only ever had one job for a company that I did not own.
April Malone:
Have you always worked from home or did you ever do like, your regular job?
Dylan Ogline:
Shortly after I turned 18, the company I was involved with, we got an office. Like, that was just the dream. I was like, oh man, I'd love to have an office and everything. Before that it was working at my parents' home and what not. So then got an office and probably did that for a year or two, give or take, and absolutely hated my life. I hated everything about working from an office. It was terrible.
April Malone:
Was it so much overhead? Like, did you rent it?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, it was a rent. It was a very nice office, by all means. This was back before – this was like, 2010. So this was before coworking spaces were a common thing.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
Like, who did that? So there was overhead but it was the fact that I had to sit through traffic. I had to be at work. It wasn't like, I was required to but I had to be at work at a certain time. Prior to that, I didn’t realize how much of a luxury it was where like, if I’m doing something creative and the juices just aren't flowing, I can get up and go for a run or something.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
Whereas if you’re in an office, you just can't do that. So, I am very lucky that very quickly I learned how much I hated it and I learned at a very young age how much I hated it.
April Malone:
You were able to get out of that lease?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. It was like, a year lease or something like that. We finished the lease or whatever but I hated it. Like, it was the dream. It was the ultimate dream.
April Malone:
How many people did you have in that office?
Dylan Ogline:
I think there was four including myself.
April Malone:
Did the others hate it as much as you did?
Dylan Ogline:
I think so, yeah. I think so.
April Malone:
So, I’m really curious. What did you do when you were 14, your first business?
Dylan Ogline:
My very first business was selling cell phones on eBay.
April Malone:
You were 14?
Dylan Ogline:
I was 14, yeah. So, this was when all the smart phones of the day were made in Europe. Europe was far ahead of us in terms of smart phone technology for a certain period of time. So, I got my first cell phone when I was 13 or whatever and I paid for it. Like, mowing grass or whatever. I don’t know where I found it but I saw one on the internet, like, one of these fancy cell phones and I was like, I’ve got to have it.
I don’t know how I found it or how I ended up doing it but I ended up signing up for this wholesaler website where you could purchase like, at cost – not at cost, but wholesale priced cell phones.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
Somehow, someway they approved my application. I must have lied about my age. I don’t remember.
April Malone:
Maybe they don’t ask age because they weren't expecting 14 year olds.
Dylan Ogline:
I feel like they did though.
April Malone:
Oh.
Dylan Ogline:
I feel like they did. I don’t remember.
April Malone:
Maybe your parents had to sign off on it.
Dylan Ogline:
No, no. I know because I was like, hey guys I’m going to start a cell phone business. So what it was is say, a $300 cell phone or whatever, because we couldn't get them here in the United States, there was a mark up on them and I could get them for the European cost. So, I would buy a phone for say $300 and sell it on eBay for $400. That's the simple of it.
April Malone:
Oh.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. At the time I was making like, $1,500 or maybe $2,000 a month. I think I might have peaked at like, $3,000 a couple times. But I mean when you’re 14/15, I was making it rain. I didn’t know what to do with all the money.
April Malone:
Did your friends know you had that much money?
Dylan Ogline:
It only lasted for maybe six months because eventually it got shut down because my credit card processor found out my age. So, that didn’t last that long. But between then what happened was I know I was 14 when I started and I dropped out of high school when I was 16.
But what happened was, I started the business and I convinced my parents to let me skip every Friday. I don’t even remember why I did that or how but I would skip school every Friday and just work all day. So, I did that. Then I eventually convinced them like, hey I would love to do homeschooling so I’m not wasting my time going to school. I’m still going to get my education but let me do homeschooling, I'll pay for it. It ended up costing me like, $1,500 to $2,000. They're like, oh okay, yeah, sure thing Dylan.
April Malone:
You paid for your own curriculum?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, yeah. At the time – this was the infancy of homeschooling.
April Malone:
Oh, no. I was there for the infancy of homeschooling. Unless you’re a lot older than me.
Dylan Ogline:
How old are you?
April Malone:
I’m 42, so I was doing homeschooling.
Dylan Ogline:
Oh, you’re way...
April Malone:
Yeah. I think my family started homeschooling us like, 1989.
Dylan Ogline:
I was born in 1989.
April Malone:
Yeah, so infancy blah.
Dylan Ogline:
See like, now kids like, you can just decide to do homeschool and education. Some schools give you a Mac or an iPad to do the education.
April Malone:
It just depends on how you do it, yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. Like, I had to pay the actual school. I had to buy the books and everything. So I convinced my parents to let me do that and I never even opened a single book, never took a single test. It lasted a couple months and I was like, hey guys, can we just ixnay this and I can just quit school? I don’t know why but they let me.
April Malone:
Oh wow.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. So that's how I started.
April Malone:
I’m curious. Did you ever go back and do like, a GED or anything like that?
Dylan Ogline:
When I was 17, I feel like I might have been 18, this was before the Affordable Healthcare Act. I had to get my own health insurance and it was through the SBA. Somehow, someway that's where I went to for my policy and they required you to have at least a high school equivalent.
April Malone:
Is SBA, Small Business Association or something like that?
Dylan Ogline:
Small Business Administration.
April Malone:
Administration, okay.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. I have no idea why but they required you to have at least a GED so I went back and I got my GED.
April Malone:
Was that easy for you or hard?
Dylan Ogline:
I mean, I got like, 99th percentile in math and science and everything, and I am a terrible writer so I think I got like, 60th percentile on that. But I didn’t study for it or anything.
April Malone:
It was enough to get you through.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, I wasn't a bad student. I was very rebellious.
April Malone:
You were motivated in other natures.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. Yeah, very much so.
April Malone:
Wow. Then I’m just curious, did you ever go and do any studying beyond your GED?
Dylan Ogline:
I’ve signed up for one college class, not to get a degree or anything. I don’t even remember what it was. It was just like, I would like to do this. I do feel like education overall is changing. The world of education is changing.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
But I do think I would like to go and take some college classes. I have no desire to get a degree but I’m always trying to learn new things and get educated. You can't see behind me but I’ve got a lot of books.
April Malone:
What was that?
Dylan Ogline:
I said, you can't see behind me but I’ve got a lot of books. I read all the time.
April Malone:
Oh yeah. Yeah, I think that for my generation we were always told, you have to get your four year degree to get a good job. But I feel like there's definitely a trend now of people saying, not necessarily. Experience has a lot of weight. Obviously you've been successful in many things without that degree. You can audit a lot of classes. I think you can even access MIT's classes online for free.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
I mean, there's a lot. If you’re not looking for that grade or that degree, you can learn a ton.
Dylan Ogline:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I’ve signed up for I think, Harvard classes. You can go and get them for free. For me, I actually would like just the challenge of actually taking a class just to see if it's different than just me going through the curriculum, you know?
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
But again, I have no desire to get a degree or have fancy titles behind my name.
April Malone:
And you're not feeling that you need one.
Dylan Ogline:
Oh, absolutely not. No. I mentioned that I think education overall was changing.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
So, I don’t. There's a lot of value to it but the world is changing.
April Malone:
Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about how you ended up working from home. So, you never really worked a 9:00 to 5:00 job for anyone else. You've always been this small business owner or entrepreneur.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
Talk about it. Let's hear.
Dylan Ogline:
I mean for me, the only job I ever had working for somebody else – I guess we'll start here. My girlfriend when I was 14 or so, her dad owned the local race track. I worked the cotton candy stand. What I realized very quickly was I considered myself an unemployable entrepreneur. I come in and somebody tells me, okay do step 1, 2, 3 and I’m like, actually it's more efficient to do step 3, 2, 1. I’m still getting the same result. Then they'd be like, no you can't do that. I’m like, no, that does not roll with me.
So, yeah. He actually ended up offering me the job when I was 16, to manage the race track. I ended up turning it down because I was like, I don’t want to work for somebody else. But no, for that young age, I’ve very much so realized this is not for me. I can't work for somebody else. It's because it come down to me and efficiency.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
A lot of people if you’re working for them, they're like, this is the way we do it or this is the process. If there's a more efficient way to do it, I want to do it that way. I just, I like the freedom that comes from being your own boss and owning your own business. I don’t know how people do it the other way. I can say that much.
April Malone:
I’m sure there are probably going to be young people who are listening who are going to be like, but how did he make the money? So, where did you go from running the cotton candy stand to being self-employed?
Dylan Ogline:
There was probably about ten years of absolute misery. Yeah. So after the cell phone business got shutdown, I bounced around for literally 10 or 12 years. It wasn't until I was 26 where I actually started to get some momentum. I bounced all around. I think that for me was the issue. I was always chasing the shiniest object. Oh, if I could just start this business and make an extra couple hundred dollars a month, that would change everything for me. Even though I was working all the time, I never got serious and focused on one, single business and one, single product, one, single niche. I never really focused on that stuff.
So, I bounced all around. I did web design. I talked about this yesterday in another interview where I started a Kindle publishing business. I took some program where the guy taught you how to hire writers for like, $50 or whatever on Elance back in the day, to write the book and then you chose certain key words and got a cover made. You never actually did the writing yourself but you could push out a book every day and sell them for $3 a copy. I was like, that's going to be it. Never made much money. I mean, maybe a couple hundred bucks a month.
But for me, there was always the background of, I was fascinated with the idea of marketing. I started my first business when Google Ads was just starting. That kind of just shook my world. I read a couple good books at the time. I don’t remember any of them but it just all hit me like, man, this whole digital marketing thing was the most fascinating thing ever. So, there was always that background. Always doing digital agency work. Add 12 years of suffering and misery and eventually, I finally got it to click.
April Malone:
Oh my goodness.
Dylan Ogline:
It was a lot of badness for a long time.
April Malone:
Do you have any advice for any young listeners who are like, I want to skip those 12 bad years?
Dylan Ogline:
The advice would be – I would say two main things. The first is focus just on one business. If you have to have a job to pay bills or whatever, that's fine. But then only do one business. If you have the luxury where you don’t have to work a job, only do one business. Just focus on one business and try to focus in as much as you possibly can. I’m going to give three things of advice.
April Malone:
Good point.
Dylan Ogline:
The second is fail fast. You want to move as fast as possible. You're going to break things. Your first version of your product, the service, the first podcast you do, the first video you put out is all going to be terrible and that's okay because you’re never going to get to that improvement, to your second version and your third version and continuously improve, until you actually put out the first version. So, your product, your service, whatever it is. Get it out as fast as you possibly can. That's advice number two.
Advice number three would probably be – I like to say be lean, mean, and scrappy. I talked about focusing. Ruthlessly cut everything unnecessary. I like telling this story. When I decided to just focus on my digital agency, it wasn't a digital agency. It was, I was kind of like an independent contractor. I would just build websites for people. You needed a banner design, I was your guy. You needed a PowerPoint built, I was your guy. Any of this digital agency work.
When I decided to do that I was like, okay, well I guess I need to get a website up. Then I needed a name, then I needed a logo. Because I got input from mentors I was like, no. I don’t need any of those things. So I just ruthlessly moved forward at the leanest, meanest, scrappiest version of the business that it could be. I mean, I had a 7-figure agency and I didn’t even have a website until earlier this year.
April Malone:
Oh my goodness.
Dylan Ogline:
The only reason I setup the website is because I have my training program and I kind of needed to reference people back to that. That was it. The only reason. That would be my quick three pointers.
April Malone:
So when you decided to go scrappy, how long did it take you to go from, I just need momentum, I need to just push through, it doesn’t have to be perfect, to the 7-figure? Because I’m sure people are like, tell me more about that part.
Dylan Ogline:
Sure. Why I decided to just focus on the digital agency was I had a conversation with a long-term mentor of mine. This is probably October/November 2016, give or take. My goal was just, man, if I can get to 6-figures. Just 6-figures, baby. If I can get there, I can actually travel and go on a vacation. Prior to that, I didn’t even know what a vacation was.
So, call it October. By March I hit, $1,923 was my average per week. It's weird. When I do my bookkeeping, I don’t try to trick myself. This is getting really technical here. I apologize. But I don’t try to trick myself. To hit 6-figures in a year, you just have to hit $1,923 in a week. Well if all of a sudden I get a check from a client for $2,000 one week I’m not like, hey I hit 6-figures. What if the next five weeks I don’t get any checks?
April Malone:
You have to have an average.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. So for me, at the time I kept a spreadsheet that was like, how much revenue did I do each week? I had my trailing 23 week average because I’m obsessed with the number 23. That's it, and it's almost half a year so it worked for me. It was about March of 2017. So, six months later that I hit that $1,923 average.
April Malone:
I’m curious if you have that number, $1,923, do you have the million dollar number? How much do you have to earn in a week to get to a million?
Dylan Ogline:
I think it's $19,230. I don’t have that spreadsheet anymore. I eventually got to the point where I’m like, okay I changed my goals. But at the time it was like, I just want to hit 6-figures. I think 2017 we might have done maybe $300 or $400, maybe a little bit more than that but 2018 we did 7-figures.
April Malone:
Wow. That's awesome.
Dylan Ogline:
But for me going back, I talked about setting up the logo, the website, and everything like that. There were so many projects I was working on where it was like, you have to get it perfect. That first version, I was so obsessed with it being perfect that so many projects I was working on never even got that first version out.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
One of the things I was working on was like, a job board. I don’t know why. It was just an idea I had. It was this job board where each individual city, there would be – I don’t even remember what the name was. Jobspittsburgh.com. Jobsorlando.com. I have no idea why that was my genius idea. But I worked on that for like, five years and it never even launched because I was always like, I’ve got to build the perfect website.
April Malone:
Yep.
Dylan Ogline:
There's got to be the perfect logo. All these different things. Dude, I’m telling you. None of that matters. Don't do it.
April Malone:
Yeah, I hear you.
Dylan Ogline:
Just get the first version out. Yesterday.
April Malone:
Even to get this podcast rolling, I was spinning my wheels for – I had the idea for well over a year. Then in doing it, I decided to have this podcast now, in two weeks. Four months later I finally was able to publish my first episode. Looking back, I wish I would have just done it in June. I didn’t have to have all these things in place yet.
Dylan Ogline:
Exactly.
April Malone:
This is not going to be the core of my business. This is a way for me to make connections and basically provide people's stories so that people don’t feel alone when they're working from home. But, yeah. I listen to a lady, Grace Lever, and she always says, massive, imperfect action.
Dylan Ogline:
Oh, I love that. That’s good.
April Malone:
Just go. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Even though I know that and that's my mantra in my head, it's still hard to implement and live it in real life.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. I mean, I’m always battling it because I’m a perfectionist. That is I would say, my biggest flaw because it has held me back so much in my life, being a perfectionist. So, I’m constantly battling it. It's not like I’ve gotten over it. I just learned the lesson and I can reference that and be like, okay stop because you’re being an idiot. Look at what you did before. Just don’t be a perfectionist.
April Malone:
So when you were working and building this business from your 6 to 7-figure and you barely even knew what a vacation was, at what point did you feel like you had? Well, we didn’t talk about how many hours you were working to get to that point. I'd like to hear about how many hours you were working and are working now. Then what is your vacation life like now?
Dylan Ogline:
Got it. I'll answer that last one first. The vacation life sucks because you can't go anywhere.
April Malone:
Right now, yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. I haven't been out of the country in over a year. This year I’ve only gone – I live in Orlando and I have family in Pennsylvania. I think I’ve gone up there two or three times and then once I went to Colorado, just a hike in the mountains. I’m trying to be safe. So, obviously we can still travel in the United States but I’m trying to be as safe as possible. I’ve got elderly parents.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
If they ever hear that, they're going to be angry. They're like, in their sixties. They're like, we're not elderly. You know, so I’ve got parents, I’ve got people around me who are in that danger zone with COVID so I try to be as safe as possible.
So as far as hours, I never really track the number of hours I work. I think, I mean, a lot. A lot. That's all I did was work to build the business and to get it going. What's the saying? If you love what you do you never work a day in your life, or something like that. There's a lot of truth to that. I love, especially now – I love what I do. It never feels like work. I am passionate to get in here and grind away.
But now I have the flexibility and the freedom where, you know, we were talking before the show. My girlfriend's like, hey there's this fun thing. Do you want to do it? It's two hours away. You know, tomorrow. I know tomorrow's Saturday but some random day. It's like, yeah sure. Let's just go do it and I don’t have that obligation. I think for me, if you don’t work in life, your life is going to be boring. You have to have something you’re passionate about, some project you’re working on. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with money. Just something you’re working on.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
For me now, I have the freedom to work when I want, on what I want, where I want. Kind of where I want. Now the world's a little bit different but prior to COVID it was where I want.
April Malone:
What about clients? Do they dictate when you have deadlines and things? Do you have to meet their needs and just push to the end until you’re done?
Dylan Ogline:
So, the work we do now is digital ad management. We're basically managing ads for Facebook and Google Ads, for our clients. Sometimes we will do a website. Like, if their website is terrible and we need to redo that. Sometimes we will do that. But I never really have any kind of deadlines or anything like that. Plus, I’ve gotten to the point where I focused on operations for a while and now I have an incredible team in place.
We were talking before the show about the 4-hour Workweek lifestyle. If my business requires, you know, the agency requires three hours or two hours of work a week, that's probably putting it pretty high. Still, every day, my morning routine is I get on and I check everything in my first hour while I’m drinking my green juice, which we talked about before the show.
April Malone:
Show us the green juice, for anyone who's watching.
Dylan Ogline:
I will advertise my green juice. My girlfriend made this. Thank you. Thank you, baby. She uses not one of the fast-moving ones. It's one that just grinds up the fruits and vegetables. Do you know what I’m talking about?
April Malone:
I don’t think I have that one.
Dylan Ogline:
Oh man. She's going to yell at me when she knows that I didn’t know what it was called.
April Malone:
It's not like, a Ninja?
Dylan Ogline:
No it's not. Maybe. I don’t know. Don't ask me. You know what, I didn’t make it.
April Malone:
I just use an old blender. Well, a blender that my mom gave me.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, so this is not made in a blender. But it's apples, celery, kale, spinach, ginger. Absolutely delicious. I absolutely love it.
April Malone:
We might need to get that recipe.
Dylan Ogline:
Yes, it is so good and it's got everything you need in it. But for me, I wake up. I can talk about it if you want me to.
April Malone:
Go for it. We'll get back to the other stuff.
Dylan Ogline:
I mean, you set the standard here on what you want to talk about.
April Malone:
Tell us about the juice and the routine.
Dylan Ogline:
So, I wake up. I actually think this is important, especially for people that are working from home. It's not a hot topic. Nobody's like, oh what's your morning routine? Nobody loves to talk about it. But I do believe, especially if you work from home, that the first and last hour of your day define your life. If you’re getting up and immediately rushing to your laptop like, I’ve got to check my emails, you’re going to be miserable. If you’re not getting up and getting ready for your day, you’re going to be miserable.
So for me, I get up. I have a stretching, kind of, yoga routine I do to get my body warmed up. Have my coffee. Have a protein shake. Get a shower. Do some meditation and then I hit the desk and start working. That first hour is just cleaning any emails, putting out any potential fires or anything, checking up with the team. I’m really making it sound like a lot of work but it's not.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
My goal is by 9:00, I’m done with any kind of obligation work. So if I wanted to for the rest of the day, I could just do whatever I want, which I do.
April Malone:
Wow. How early do you wake up to be done at 9:00?
Dylan Ogline:
7:00. Yeah. So I get up at 7:00. It takes me like, an hour to get ready and while I’m sitting here working, my girlfriend will bring me the green juice.
April Malone:
Awe.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, bust it out. Then beyond that, I typically go to the gym or I’m into cycling, so go for a ride. Then work on projects that I want to work on. Projects that I’m passionate about.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm. So, if you only needed to do one or two hours a day or one or two hours a week for your agency, how many days are you working? How many days a week are you working and how many hours a day are you working on your special projects that you’re interested in?
Dylan Ogline:
Now with COVID, it's really bad. It's probably, every day I’m working because there's really not much out to do. I mean, I spend a lot of time with my girlfriend and our dogs but there's really not much to do.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
I play hockey. I can't really go play hockey because the rink I go to is closed for construction. So, hopefully in one month – actually, it's one month from today they open back up and I’m looking forward to that. But 60 hours a week. It comes down to, it's what I want when I want.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
I struggle to give you that number because I love every minute of it.
April Malone:
So you don’t have to work 60 hours a week. You're choosing to because it's the stuff that you enjoy.
Dylan Ogline:
Absolutely. I think that is the most important part, is when people – especially right now, if you go to a 9:00 to 5:00 job or if you work for a company even if you do work from home, most people when they hear that word "work," it's misery. It's bad.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
Nobody's like, oh I’m so excited to work. It's not like something's wrong with you. It's probably because you have a job that you don’t like. You're not passionate about it. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you lazy.
April Malone:
You're there for the paycheck.
Dylan Ogline:
You are there for the paycheck. That is so true and that's why you hate the term, work. So, I think there's a lot of truth in that.
April Malone:
We could unpack that further. I had all these things like, flashing through my head and now I’m trying to figure out which one I wanted to say first. I had an opportunity and I’ve talked about this before when I’ve done my own story. But I had an opportunity when I left a job that was kind of – I was good at it but it was a desk job that I never wanted. I didn’t search out to be that. I was doing medical transcription. I was good at it. It had benefits and there are things that come like, when your husband is putting yourself through grad school, someone has to carry the health insurance and pay the bills.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
So, I did that. When they basically offered me the opportunity to leave – it wasn't like I was fired or laid off but they were like, we need to downsize. Who wants to volunteer to go first? I had already found something that was way, way, way more fun for me an followed that. I had worked more hours. I had been working 33 hours a week for the previous job and now I have to work 40 or more to replace the income at least, but it was fun. I didn’t mind.
Dylan Ogline:
Mm-hmm.
April Malone:
So, keep going. I have something else I want to say as soon as I can find it again.
Dylan Ogline:
That's actually how I got into my education company. I ended up over the years, with the agency and being in that marketing space, I would end up meeting people at conferences, industry events, or whatever. At the time, working from home was a little bit more of a novelty than what it is now.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
But I would meet people and they were miserable with their jobs. They'd be like, I want to do what you do. I’ve tried talking to my boss and they won't let me work from home. I hate my commute. I hate all these things. So that's how I started getting into mentoring, coaching, and whatnot. Just meeting people who hated their jobs and wanted to do their own thing. Work whenever they want on what they wanted to. Not be a slave to a desk.
I would also argue – I think we talked about this a little before the show. I think the definition of work itself has been changing for a long time and it becomes each year, more and more people are working from home or starting their own businesses because it's a lot easier now to do that from home. With COVID, it just ratcheted that up to 100. Where now the stigma, which we talked about that before the show, is completely gone because it had to be gone.
You go back a year and they kind of viewed people that worked from home like, they're not that serious. They don’t have a real job. Now it's like, everybody has to work from home and they're like, oh I guess those people actually were working.
April Malone:
Yeah, right. There are so many different ways that you can work from home though. I think I had an interview earlier this week where it was – I think people thought that since I worked from home that I had time flexibility and that I could work from anywhere and go to a coffee shop with a laptop. I was definitely in an organization that required me to be hard-wired with an Ethernet cord to my router and I wasn't allowed to bring it anywhere else.
So, I always want to clarify. Like, are you an entrepreneur, are you a small business owner, are you work from anywhere, or are you an employee of an organization that's requiring you to clock in and clock out?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. I talked to someone recently. They were able to work from home but the company they worked for logged their key strokes.
April Malone:
Oh yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
They had to hit a certain number of key strokes per hour.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
This is the face I was making. I was like, what is that? What is wrong with those people?
April Malone:
Oh yeah. Very micromanaging there.
Dylan Ogline:
Micromanaging, yeah.
April Malone:
My company did that. They could measure. We used a foot pedal for the transcriptions because it was kind of like the play button and you could lift it and rewind with your foot so you wouldn't have to take your fingers off the keyboard.
Dylan Ogline:
That's actually pretty cool.
April Malone:
It is, except for they could tell how long have you pushed it, what percentage of your day have you been pushing it, how long did you let go. They can see what apps or what screens you've had on your screen. Have you been spending too much time in the messenger versus the place where we were putting the documents. You always had that feeling even though you’re sitting in your home office, that basically someone's looking over your shoulder the whole day.
Dylan Ogline:
I can't even.
April Malone:
Some people love it. That's what they trained to do. They feel proud and they know that they're helping an organization because we were doing emergency notes. You're basically putting the record in there so that the doctor can do surgery. So, there is definitely a certain amount of satisfaction of doing your job well.
Dylan Ogline:
Mm-hmm.
April Malone:
But when I had the opportunity to change I was like, yeah. I am ready.
Dylan Ogline:
I have a team – it depends on what all is going on with the business – of six or seven people.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
I literally sometimes forget their names. When I bring somebody on, when I bring a team member on, I tell them I don’t want to talk to you. If you need me, at any time Skype me, send me an email, call me if there's an emergency. I am available to you. If you need to talk about anything, you just want to chat and you’re lonely, I’m there for you. But my ideal situation with my team members is to put them in a position where they can do their jobs, they don’t feel like I’m looking over their shoulder, empower them to do their jobs right, and trust that they're going to do it.
I mean, sometimes you have to look at metrics and just get a feel for, is this person doing their job? But I’ve never had somebody, at least in my personal opinion, maybe I’ve just been lucky to make the right hires. I’ve never had somebody where I was like, oh I need to start logging their key strokes. Empower people to make the right decision and do the work, and they probably will.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm. I talked with someone earlier this week as well. Probably when this episode goes live, it would have been from last week. Jonas, he's a Workologist and he was talking about how that's how the work is changing and companies are learning they don’t have to have such a short leash on their employees. The more that they trust their employees – some people are going to be an exception to the rule and try to get by with the bear minimum.
Dylan Ogline:
Mm-hmm.
April Malone:
But the more you can trust people to get the job done, oftentimes they'll do it. Their work is the proof of how productive they are or efficient.
Dylan Ogline:
Absolutely. Yeah, and I think I am okay with somebody on my team figuring out a more efficient or better way to do something.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
I talked to somebody back, before COVID. They owned an agency as well and they had somebody who – I think they focused more on web design. He had a designer or whatever who would come up with the concepts for the website. Wasn't actually building the website, just the graphics or whatever. He somehow found out that the employee was no longer actually doing the work themselves. He was paying them to do the work himself. They were outsourcing it. They weren't even working. They were delivering somebody else's work and that person was getting pay less. Like, say a quarter of what they were getting paid.
I was like, did you notice the work go down in quality? He was like, no, it was still good work. That was the problem. I’m like, so what are you complaining about? What does it matter if the person is still delivering good quality stuff? In that particular case it's a design. What does it matter if it's somebody else, if they're subbing it out? It doesn’t matter. Now if the quality drops, there's a lot to say about that. But if the quality stays the same or even goes up, who cares?
April Malone:
In some industries that works.
Dylan Ogline:
He ended up firing him.
April Malone:
Oh, he fired him?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, he got rid of the guy because he didn’t feel like he could trust him I guess. Which, there is something to say about that. When I bring somebody on, I tell them stuff like that. I’m like, I want you to figure out the most efficient way to do your job. You get paid by the hour but if you find a more efficient way, I don’t want you to feel like I have to log in during a certain time period or whatever. I'll increase your pay. Just get this job done. If it needs to be one hour a day instead of ten hours a day and you can figure out a way to do it that much more efficient and deliver the same results, then do it. All I care about is that the work gets done at the end of the day.
April Malone:
That's pretty amazing. I’m thinking of like, there could be a few places. Maybe some industries that would work better in it than others. Again, I was in the medical industry so confidentiality was a big deal.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
I know someone right now who is transcribing medical interviews. Not interviews. They are confidential interviews and she can't outsource it because there's that. You can't breach that.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
But I can see that being something. We were talking about work being something that you enjoy, and so you don’t really mind doing the 60 hour work thing. This is what I was forgetting what I was going to say earlier.
My kids are really into Minecraft. I have an eight year old. Well, I have a five year old who's into it, too. Five, eight, and nine. On the weekends if they had all of their jobs done, their room is clean and their homework had been done for the week, they just want to play Minecraft all weekend.
Dylan Ogline:
Mm-hmm.
April Malone:
They just want to play Minecraft all weekend. They're always like, mom, do you want us to teach you how to play? They have other games, too. We got a Switch last year for Christmas I think. But they're like, mom we can teach you. This is how you do the controllers. My son was like, drawing me a diagram. I’m like, thanks honey but actually, I’m really interested in what – I can see you building your stuff and I'll watch you but I’m really interested in what I’m doing. What I’m doing is researching how to have a podcast.
Dylan Ogline:
Mm-hmm.
April Malone:
Even though it's technically work, it's basically my hobby also.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
So, I’m filling my time with something that I enjoy. It's not drudgery to me. I could be playing the – I could take over the TV. Do you really want me to take your turn? But I’m with the family. This is just when I’m like, hanging out on the couch in the living room and everyone's there. I might just be reading transcripts from someone else's podcast. I don’t know, just something and to me it's still enjoyable.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. It doesn’t feel like work probably.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
You're passionate about it. Doing it any other way, I couldn't imagine. Could not imagine. For sure.
April Malone:
Let's talk about equipment for a minute. I think we maybe left a few threads of this conversation loose somewhere, but let's talk about equipment. You told me that you love your AirPods.
Dylan Ogline:
Yes, I just bought these.
April Malone:
I was going to say EarPods again. What did you have before?
Dylan Ogline:
Before these I had the Bose or not Bose. Beats. The ones on a string. I don’t know what they're called.
April Malone:
Oh yeah, yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
I had those. First off, these are the AirPods Pro or something like that so it has the noise canceling, which is just life-changing. I have that and probably the other piece of equipment would be of course my Mac. If you’re on PC, what is wrong with you?
April Malone:
I’m with you. I had to learn both when I was in college. My very first semester of college, I had to use a Mac and a PC at the same time because apparently where I grew up, we just had this old dinosaur of a computer. I don’t even know what it was but it wasn't a Mac. So, I had to learn both. I had to learn the menus and the mouse, the key strokes, the shortcuts and stuff like that, at the same time. So, I’ve always been versatile in both. But if I can buy my own, I’m always going to go with Apple.
Dylan Ogline:
I grew up on PC and when I was 20, 21 or something like that, I got my first Mac. I’ve never gone back.
April Malone:
Are you on a laptop or are you on an iMac right now?
Dylan Ogline:
I have a Mac Mini, which is mounted.
April Malone:
The little square?
Dylan Ogline:
Yes. Which is mounted to the bottom of my desk. Then I have the LG 4K Ultra Something monitor.
April Malone:
How big is it?
Dylan Ogline:
27 or something inches.
April Malone:
Nice.
Dylan Ogline:
The reason I did the Mac Mini is that then I also have my MacBook Pro so that I kind of have redundancy. Prior to COVID, I would travel in sometimes sketchy places. Everything's in the cloud. If somebody were to steal my Mac, that would rock my world. I don’t know. I always think of that redundancy. A lot of things would need to go bad for me to lose my data and everything like that.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
So I have the Mac Mini. I was surprised. I think I got like, 64 gigs of RAM. It's ridiculous and it was cheaper than the MacBook Pro, so.
April Malone:
Yeah, I’ve looked at that option because I’m using my MacBook Pro. I mean, it's not a great monitor. I think my husband used it for a little while and he's like, yeah. It was our TV that we were using as a monitor for a while. It's small. A small TV. But, yeah. I’m trying to decide. I don’t have a backup computer, that's the thing. Like, yours is redundancy in case someone steals it. I’m thinking if it crashes, I just need to be able to log back in. I’m still doing some of this online teaching and they expect me to be there when I say I’m going to be.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, that's another reason why I have two. If something goes bad, I’ve got a backup.
April Malone:
Do you have the Pro as a monitor also or do you just use the one monitor?
Dylan Ogline:
No, I just use the one monitor. My Pro is... Actually, I don’t even know where it's at. It's sitting somewhere behind me. But no, I never use that unless I’m leaving the office to go do something. The other thing we talked about prior to the show is I have a Fully standing desk.
April Malone:
Yes. F-U-L-L-Y. My last interview also has one and is bamboo.
Dylan Ogline:
Yes, it is incredible. They're not cheap by all means but it is sturdy, flawlessly works. Absolutely love it. Right now I’m sitting. I did a couple interviews where I was standing and I found that I move around, so my voice would be back here. So I was like, okay I’ve got to sit for interviews. But no, I absolutely love the standing desk. It's really unhealthy to sit for so long. I find that I think clearer. If I’m doing some kind of creative work or writing something or coming up with a lesson, standing and busting it out is a lot better than sitting and my legs aching.
April Malone:
I learned it the hard way. With the pandemic we've been home and I was doing a lot of the Zoom stuff. People talk about Zoom fatigue. We've talked about this a few times in previous episodes. But what happened to me is I attended a three day summit and it was really good. I didn’t expect to watch all 36 people talk for three days. I think I missed only two.
But towards the end, it was like my tailbone felt crooked. I started to have headaches and my back felt weird. I went to the chiropractor the next day and I’m like, please let me in. He's like, did you sit a lot this week? I was like, yeah I was attending a summit. He's like, your SI joints or whatever. I don’t know what he called it. But basically my hips were getting all wonky from literally sitting so much. He's like, you've got to move and rock. I mean, I didn’t think that sitting for three days was a big deal but if you do that every week.
Dylan Ogline:
Do you get up? Like, if you sit, how long nonstop are you sitting?
April Malone:
Apparently I was doing a lot. For a while I was teaching ten hours and I would sit the whole time. I can stand here. I don’t have a fancy desk but it's manual. I can lift up the keyboard train and I just have a couple boxes I put my MacBook up on.
Dylan Ogline:
That works.
April Malone:
So, I can stand. I’ve got a map behind me. I actually have it on a photographer's stand so it goes all the way to the top of the ceiling if I want it to. So, I did that on purpose. Usually if I’m sitting, it's probably because the bottom of the map shows because I intended to be able to stand up more than I do.
Dylan Ogline:
Mm-hmm.
April Malone:
Now that my chiropractor has had a few words with me about these habits of mine, I’m actually going over to my husband's desk when he's not at it. Because a lot of times I’m working into the evening. Like, I'll be with the kids all day while they're at school, helping them get their assignments, get logged in, and all those things while my husband's doing his day job from home currently. Then I'll kind of sneak over and use his desk a bunch. He's like, just don’t leave your stuff on it. He doesn’t want to come back to his desk all cluttered because we have different habits, let's just say.
Dylan Ogline:
I would say two things on the sitting and whatnot. First is, I use an app called Howler Timer, like a wolf howling. There is a paid version. I think I just have the free version.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
What it does, it's just like a timer, and you can set it and it counts down and then this wolf howls. That's what it does. But I'll set it for an hour. When it howls, I get up. Like, if I’m in the middle of, you know.
April Malone:
A podcast interview?
Dylan Ogline:
Well, yeah. Like, right now I don’t have it running but if I’m not in the middle of something like that, I will get up and go get some water or do some stretching and stuff like that. Every hour.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
If I am sitting, I will use that app religiously. The other thing is buy a really good chair. I have one of the, is it, Herman Miller Aeron chairs. I probably just really butchered that.
April Malone:
We'll need to get the link for that so I can – because I’m in the market.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, you know what, we're going to put that in the show notes.
April Malone:
I’m using a really nice chair that's probably 30 years old that was really nice 20 or 30 years ago.
Dylan Ogline:
Listen. I told this story, talking to that mentor in 2016. I went downstairs that night in my freezing basement office and I did not have a chair. I sat on a bucket of drywall compound. That was what I sat on.
April Malone:
Did you put like, a pad on it?
Dylan Ogline:
No, I didn’t have one. It was painful. It sucked. It was terrible but that's where I was. So you don’t buy the $1,000 Aeron chair – I really hope it's called an Aeron chair or I’m going to make a fool out of myself. But yeah, you don’t buy that right away. You suffer through the bucket until you can.
April Malone:
Wow. Was that in your parents' basement?
Dylan Ogline:
The house that I lived in at that time – I bought my parents' house. It's a long story. But when I was 19, I bought my first house and then several years later – because I was in Florida. I’m condensing.
April Malone:
I’m really interested in the story, so just tell me as much as you want.
Dylan Ogline:
So, yeah. I ended up buying my first house when I was 19. I’m from Pennsylvania. Moved to Florida when I was 19.
April Malone:
So your parents are back in Pennsylvania?
Dylan Ogline:
Not now.
April Malone:
They were at the time?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. No, they moved down too.
April Malone:
Okay.
Dylan Ogline:
They moved down to Florida as well, like, at the same time. So five or so years later my parents are starting to get old, they have all kinds of health issues. They have this big house in Pennsylvania. It's old. The property taxes are just stupid. At the time my girlfriend was like, hey we should be closer to family up in Pennsylvania. So we were like, okay.
I came to them with the idea. I was like, I know you guys are trying to get out of the house. I can't really afford it but I will buy that house from you and you buy my house from me, is basically what happened.
April Malone:
Did you guys switch the Orlando/Pennsylvania locations?
Dylan Ogline:
At the time I didn’t live in Orlando. I lived in the beach area in a town called Melbourne, Florida.
April Malone:
Okay.
Dylan Ogline:
But literally like, I packed up a massive Penske truck, drove that truck to Pennsylvania. Unloaded my stuff and loaded their stuff, and drove it back down.
April Malone:
Oh my goodness.
Dylan Ogline:
Then unloaded their stuff and then got my car and drove up. There was a lot of driving that week.
April Malone:
Wow.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
And a lot of packing and unpacking.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. It was an old house. Little to no insulation. It was freezing in the basement. There was no heat in the basement.
April Malone:
I’m curious what city that was it.
Dylan Ogline:
The old house in Pennsylvania?
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
A small, little farming town called Somerset.
April Malone:
My husband actually went to college in, I think Lakeland, near Orlando.
Dylan Ogline:
Lakeland, Florida?
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, yeah.
April Malone:
After that, he and a bunch of friends moved to Pennsylvania but they lived closer to the Oil City area. So when you’re talking about houses, big, old houses, there's some big, old I think, oil houses. Yeah, there's some big houses back there.
Dylan Ogline:
Is that eastern Pennsylvania?
April Malone:
Western. Not too far. I think just north of Pittsburgh.
Dylan Ogline:
Oh. I’ve never heard of it.
April Malone:
Yeah. Oil City.
Dylan Ogline:
Like, oil?
April Malone:
Oil. Then it dried up and everyone left and they left all these huge, I guess I would call them mansions. Just huge ridiculous houses that ended up just kind of becoming decayed because no one was living in them and they were just selling them for a few $10,000. Maybe $40,000 you could buy literally, like, this freaking amazing, old house that you'd have to fix up.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah. No, it wasn't that big. It was like, 4,000 square feet.
April Malone:
That's still big.
Dylan Ogline:
Property taxes were expensive.
April Malone:
So then you guys switched locations.
Dylan Ogline:
Yes. Yeah, so that's how I ended up back there. Actually what happened was, I moved there in 2015. Renovated the house and fixed it all up. This is the first time I’ve actually talked about this on a podcast. Last year, November 12, me and my girlfriend took our two dogs, got in an RV. Traveling became a big part of our lives and we realized we've never seen our own country a lot. Bought a motorhome because I can do that and I can still home.
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
We just, we're driving west. We left in October and we were heading west with no real aim. On November 12th our house burnt down in the middle of the night. Yeah.
April Malone:
Wait, what day did you leave?
Dylan Ogline:
October 21st. I know the dates because obviously it was a dramatic life event.
April Malone:
Oh my goodness.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah.
April Malone:
So you were far away.
Dylan Ogline:
Long story short, our dog got hurt in Arkansas. She cut up her foot or whatever. I mean, she's okay. But we ended up being – we couldn't move. It was like, two weeks into our trip or whatever. The vet recommended that we not move. Like, we try to keep her stationary. At the time it was starting to get cold. We were in Arkansas. We were going through some parks or whatever. National parks. It wasn't national parks. State parks.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
It was starting to get cold and we were like, well we can't move really. So I’m like, we're driving south. So we ended up in Austin, Texas for like, two weeks. Which, I was so excited to travel around Austin. I don’t know, we were maybe there for a week or so and then randomly, November 12th in the middle of the night I get this call from ADT Security and that was that. Luckily, it ended up being – I mean, it was traumatic, terrible.
April Malone:
Could they salvage anything?
Dylan Ogline:
No. The whole house was – I mean, it was this 4,000 square foot, brick.
April Malone:
And you had just renovated the whole thing?
Dylan Ogline:
I put a lot of money into it. I had done a lot of work myself. I actually like to do it. It's kind of a hobby. We hadn't 100% finished all the renovations but yeah. It was our dream project home. But luckily, to this day I still say we're the lucky ones because we just lost possessions. My dogs were with us. Nobody got hurt.
April Malone:
Yeah. You probably brought your most important things with you in the RV. Not really?
Dylan Ogline:
I don’t really have any possessions that mean a lot to me.
April Malone:
You had your laptop.
Dylan Ogline:
I had my laptop, I had some clothes. You know, we had a little mini safe or whatever, so we didn’t lose the important documents or whatever.
April Malone:
Oh wow.
Dylan Ogline:
It was just like, all your possessions. So I go up there. Again, this is the first time I’ve ever publicly talked about this. Then I go up for a week to handle everything and make sure everything's okay. I fly back to Austin and it was like, dude, I don’t want to continue with this trip anymore. I kind of want to rebuild my life.
At the time we were actually looking to – before the RV trip, we were looking to maybe buy a condo or a smaller house in Florida, just like a getaway or whatever.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
But then we were like, okay we'll do the RV trip and maybe we'll buy something out west or something. So the fire happens and I’m like, dude, I want to rebuild my life. We can't take an RV back to Pennsylvania because they'll freeze. Well, we were talking about Florida, I guess we're heading to Florida.
April Malone:
So you never went very far west. You got to Texas and then you came back to Florida?
Dylan Ogline:
Yes. Yeah, we never – we had so many ideas. Oh, Grand Canyon, we're going to go through all this and yeah. So then we came back here or came to Florida, rented a house and then we were able to buy a new one. Once COVID's over, I’m going to get another RV and we're going to finish that trip.
April Malone:
Right. Good gravy, that's an intense story. Thank you for sharing publicly for the first time.
Dylan Ogline:
No, I think it put a lot of things in perspective because it happened in the middle of the night. They weren't able to determine a cause so we don’t know, was it smoldering or whatever? What if we had been there?
April Malone:
Right.
Dylan Ogline:
So I look at it and I’m blessed, I’m lucky. Nobody got hurt. The dogs are okay. My girlfriend's okay. So we're the lucky ones.
April Malone:
Did your business change after that?
Dylan Ogline:
No. I didn’t even – to this day, I haven't told anybody on my team. They didn’t even know.
April Malone:
Oh wow. We're like, we're just moving to Orlando now.
Dylan Ogline:
They don’t even know that I moved. I actually don’t think – I might have talked to one of them. I might have talked to one of them about like, oh I’m in Orlando, because we were talking about COVID or something. Like, hey it's really bad here in Orlando. But other than that, they don’t even know. I think my background might have changed on Zoom calls. Oh, you've got a nice office now. Thank you.
April Malone:
Yeah, okay. See, I just tell everybody everything. I can't even imagine holding in a story like that for so long, so thank you.
Dylan Ogline:
It's not holding it in. It's just never come up I guess.
April Malone:
Yeah. Okay, so if people want to work with you or are curious more about what you do now that we've heard of all this, how can we find you?
Dylan Ogline:
Sure. Well if you’re looking for – actually, we're not accepting any clients for Ogline Digital. But my agency website is oglinedigital.com, probably going to be in the show notes. Then my personal website is dylanogline.com, just my name. There they can sign up for the waiting list to join my newest version of my agency program.
April Malone:
You were talking about an educational thing. Is that the agency program?
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, yeah. There is an LLC but it's ran under my personal name, dylanogline.com. The program, the newest version of the program is called Agency 2.0. My goal is to be able to take anybody. I use the example of a soccer mom or you mentioned somebody who's younger, in college or whatever, or somebody who just got unemployed. Knows nothing about digital marketing, knows nothing about starting their own business. They're like, I hate my job, whatever. My goal was to be able to take that person and by the end of the program they have everything in place, everything they need to build a 6-figure digital agency.
April Malone:
Where about is this going to be? 2021 or when will you possibly be opening the doors again?
Dylan Ogline:
We haven't talked about my education journey. That's fine but right now Agency 2.0, my goal was to get that out by the end of the year.
April Malone:
Okay.
Dylan Ogline:
It's my third version of an agency program. I already have students in my previous versions. But I’ve kind of been learning. I talked about minimal viable product and things like that. Just getting things out there into the marketplace. That was my previous versions of the programs.
April Malone:
Got it. Well goodness, thank you so much Dylan. I’ve really enjoyed this chat. We talked about it ahead of time. He's like, so how long are your podcasts generally running? I’m like, well it's supposed to be 45 minutes but lately the trend has been – we blew past that hour, further than we have in the past, so setting new records here.
Dylan Ogline:
I talk a lot. That happens all the time with me. I apologize.
April Malone:
I love it. If you get into a groove, definitely just run with it. It doesn’t have to be awkward or painful. All right, well let's say goodbyes. Do you have any final words you'd like to share? What advice would you give to people who are just getting started in working from home or who are looking to maybe change their situation?
Dylan Ogline:
I'll finish with this, kind of in that direction. For me, it's not about just necessarily working from home. It's about time freedom.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
Prior to COVID, traveling was a massive factor to me. I gave an interview recently. This was a print interview and they asked me a question like this. I had a younger guy I was mentoring, probably about two years ago now. I don’t know, I lose track of time. He's 18/19 years old. He works a dead-end job at fast-food, hates his job. Absolutely hates it. He's seeing my lifestyle and is like, man I would love to have that. I would love to be able to travel the world. He's from a small town and he's like, I actually want to get out into the world.
April Malone:
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Ogline:
He asked me, is it as cool as it seems or whatever? I’m like you know what, man, to tell you the truth, it's not. However cool you imagine it will be to be standing, to have the freedom, you’re standing there looking out at a city and you have a month, two months, an unlimited amount of time to explore it and do what you want. The vision you have right now of how cool, how amazing, and how life-changing that is, is so, so far wrong. You have no idea just how amazing it is.
No matter how high your expectations are, they are not high enough to actually how amazing it is. So of course, that has to do with the traveling and being able to go and see the world and whatnot. But I think working from home is similar to that kind of freedom. To me, that freedom – if you are not now already working from home and have your own business and can work whenever you want on whatever you want, if your goal is that and you have this expectation in your head, your expectation is way too low. No matter how high your expectation is. It is absolutely incredible how amazing and freeing it feels, as cliché as that sounds.
April Malone:
No, I love it. I haven't experienced that lifestyle because I have worked hourly jobs and kind of been bound to my home office, and we have kids. They have school. We could take them out and homeschool, and maybe this year that will happen based on how things are going with the pandemic.
Dylan Ogline:
Who knows?
April Malone:
Yeah, who knows. But it is interesting to think about that. Like, that's kind of a shift that I’m making more towards those freedoms, I’m hoping.
Dylan Ogline:
Yeah, you'll get there. As far as the family – that was supposed to be the last question.
April Malone:
Keep going.
Dylan Ogline:
Have you read the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss?
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
If you follow his blog or something like that, there is some guy. One of his case studies, like, a four hour workweek case study. It's this family of five or six and the guy created his own digital business or whatever. An agency. I think it had to do with music education or something like that. Him and his five kids or three or four kids, their whole family, they travel around the world. They're all homeschooled. He's spending a ton of time with his kids. I don’t have any kids yet but to me, that's the goal.
April Malone:
Yeah.
Dylan Ogline:
To be able to show your kids the world and have this certain curiosity that goes into your life instead of this dread of getting up every day and doing the same thing. The curiosity is a very good fuel for the soul.
April Malone:
Yeah, yeah. All right, well let's call it. I could keep going. I could. I have more questions. Maybe we'll have to do part two another time.
Dylan Ogline:
Absolutely.
April Malone:
Well, thank you Dylan. This is April Malone with Yes, I Work From Home with Dylan Ogline.
Dylan Ogline:
You got it.
April Malone:
I did get it, okay. Thank you so much Take care.
Dylan Ogline:
Thanks for having me. Thanks.
April Malone:
Bye-bye.
END OF RECORDING