David Siteman Garland – Inline to Online, at $3 Million a Year – Opt Out

David Siteman Garland – Inline to Online, at $3 Million a Year

6 years ago · 1:30:20

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David Garland has been cashing in on his personality for over a decade. The cool part is how he’s done it – from a start at a job with a pro inline hockey league, to a radio show, a local TV show, and only eventually to the internet. Today, his business TheRiseToTheTop is an Inc 500 honoree with over $3 million in yearly revenue and 4 employees.

This episode is a casual conversation with David on location in Las Vegas. Bear with us a little on the audio, because you’ll be a fly on the wall of a private cabana listening to a guy tell us exactly how he got to the point where he’s making 7 figures while working in his gym shorts.

Highlights from Episode 12 with David . . .

(06:38)
Telling us about his humble beginnings hosting a radio show in St. Louis about inline hockey . . . 
“I didn’t know how to put a show together. I’d never put a show together. So I literally on the first show wrote out every single word of the show. I was like, “Hello, my name is David Siteman Garland, and welcome to Get Inline, your source for professional inline hockey in Saint Louis.” No idea what I was doing..”

(12:48)
A key lesson he learned about what happens when you start something new . . .“It’s a pretty good lesson on this, because when you start at something new, any type of business, sometimes you never know who’s gonna be helpful or not. You’ve gotta get it out there what you’re trying to do, you know what I mean? A lot of people try to keep it secret or do different things. And I feel like that kills people trying to figure it out. So I literally, anyone I knew, I would go up to them and tell them, “That’s my idea. Could you help? Or can you point me in the right direction? I’m not ask for anything from anyone. Just point me in the right direction.

(22:32)
On when we figured out that hosting a podcast / interview show was a cheap, effective and lifestyle-promoting way to grow his business  . . . 
“But that was where the first of many game changing things, I think, was just like, “Oh my god.” We can create this content without needing this big budget. Without needing to be somewhere. I can sit there and do it. And for me, that was very exciting for me. Because like I said, I mean, I really like the idea of having a thing of business in your lifestyle. Not the other way around. And for me, that might excite some people to go on planes all the time. We go all over the places and doing interviews. That was not me. I wanted to have something where I could have more control, ultimately. So that’s where that shifted.”

(40:56)
Explaining his unique approach to his email copy and voice, and how it connects with his audience  . . . 
“I’ll explain this, because we have a big audience now, that’s very tight, which is good. But I get hate emails too. People say, “I hate your emails”, or whatever it might be. I get a lot of love too, so it’s both ways. But I use it as a weed-out thing. So for me, my number one rule of email is that I write the way that I speak, right? And I do not change it. It’s very similar. Because I think a big compliment that I can get, one of my favorite ones, is when someone meets you, that hasn’t met you in real life and says, “You’re just like you are in your emails. You’re just like you are in your podcast. You’re just like you are in your website.”

Transcript

Nate Broughton: 00:00:02 This episode of the Opt Out Life Podcast, from the Opt Out Media Network, was recorded on location in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is the Opt Out Life story of David Garland.
Speaker 2: 00:00:14 Welcome to the Opt Out Life Podcast. The no-bs guide to living the modern, good life. Hosted by subversive millionaires Dana Robinson and Nate Broughton. The Opt Out Life Podcast explains exactly how create hustlers are turning side-gigs into real income, and taking back control of their time. From their studio in sunny San Diego, the Opt Out Life welcomes guests who are solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, travelers and creatives, who will prove that you can choose a lifestyle over money, but still make money too.
Speaker 2: 00:00:43 If you feel like you’ve been chasing your tale, running the rat race, or stuck in a system that’s rigged against you, we’d like to offer you an alternative here, on the Opt Out Life Podcast.
Nate Broughton: 00:00:56 David Garland has been cashing in on his personality since his early 20’s. He’s got the gift of gab and the looks of a talk show host. A huge online following with the tune of 100,000 email subscribers, and a true lifestyle business that’s landed his company on the Inc. 500, with over $3million in revenue, and four employees. But like most of the stories you year on the Opt Out Life, David built his success all on his own, without outside funding, and without following a traditional business path that you can read about in a textbook.
Nate Broughton: 00:01:23 He may be a celebrated online personality now, but don’t shortchange the fact that his starting point was as a recent college grad, with a degree in Women’s Studies, and an interest in roller hockey. That’s not exactly the traditional recipe for achievement any of us would adhere to. But, with the power of the internet, a relentless attitude to try ideas, and an audacity to reach out to the biggest names in the biggest places, David Garland became DSG from his business, The Rise To The Top.
Dana Robinson: 00:01:47 We sat down with David on a hot and happening afternoon, poolside, in a private cabana, at the Vdara Hotel, in Las Vegas. The atmosphere is casual. You’ll hear music, beats, clinking margarita glasses, and maybe a few shout-outs from our wives. But we figure you’ll like being a fly on the wall, as we hang out with a guy who makes millions of dollars a year sitting in his gym shorts, and is cool enough to get mic’d up for an hour in the middle of the weekend in Vegas.
Dana Robinson: 00:02:13 You know Nate and I have opted out. Now let’s hear the story of how David did it, by turning his personality into a cash-cow, through the power of audience and online education.
Nate Broughton: 00:02:26 Opt Out Life, live from a cabana. Vdara Hotel, in suites, Las Vegas, Nevada. Here we are. We are here with our good friend David Garland. Hello.
David Garland: 00:02:40 I like the live atmosphere. It’s kind of an ‘anything might happen’ type of a …
Nate Broughton: 00:02:44 That’s right. We’ve got a …
Dana Robinson: 00:02:45 Well the drinks should show up soon, so something will happen.
Nate Broughton: 00:02:48 The drinks are on order, food is on order. It is Saturday in Vegas.
Dana Robinson: 00:02:53 95 degrees.
David Garland: 00:02:55 It’s quite hot. Feels quite good in here though.
Dana Robinson: 00:02:57 The ladies are in the pool. We got the cabana to ourselves. A little soccer playing.
Nate Broughton: 00:03:02 We’ve set the scene. This may be our best scene yet. Yeah David, I’m excited to have you on because you are a pro-podcaster. So you’re a pro-interviewer. We’re turning the mic back on you for a change there, right? Six years after you interviewed me. Good to get you back.
David Garland: 00:03:18 Kind of an OG of the online interviewing world.
Nate Broughton: 00:03:21 So we’ve got a pro.
Dana Robinson: 00:03:22 Wait, t.v too, right?
David Garland: 00:03:23 T.v too. A lot of people don’t know that actually. That’s how I kinda started, which is a weird start.
Nate Broughton: 00:03:29 I was thinking about it this morning, actually. I was thinking of a way to characterize it. And it’s almost like you’ve been cashing in on your personality since the beginning, right? That’s your business. It’s the business of you.
David Garland: 00:03:41 Yeah. I think that would probably be the best way to describe it, cause the business’s changed, it’s evolved. But that’s been the one consistent thing, has been me, if you will, for better or worse.
Nate Broughton: 00:03:52 Very few people, I think, could ever think that they could make themselves into a business. And you’ve figured out a bunch of different ways to do it over the years, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. Yeah. There’s a photo of you on late night cable access t.v in a bad suite. You were 25 years old.
David Garland: 00:04:09 Yeah, 24 or something. I had an oversized silver tie, no hair and makeup, or necessarily any skill.
Nate Broughton: 00:04:17 Were you paying for that time on the t.v?
David Garland: 00:04:19 Yeah, it wasn’t …
Nate Broughton: 00:04:20 That’s really where it started right? Or did you start on the radio?
David Garland: 00:04:21 Yeah. It was a weird way that it just kinda all started, so basically out of college. We’re going way back here. I mean, I graduated college in 2006. I was kind of, like many entrepreneurs, sort of unemployable. I had a million jobs growing up, but I just didn’t know what to do. I got involved with the weirdest, randomist niche of all time, which was inline hockey in Saint Louis, which we both played. And we actually played together as teenagers and beyond.
David Garland: 00:04:48 And basically, I ran these league in Saint Louis for two years …
Nate Broughton: 00:04:52 That was a job.
David Garland: 00:04:54 Right. And so, basically they told me there’s no money, but if I can figure out a way to make money, that I can make money. And so, what we did is sold sponsorships to different things like that for the league. But really, the opportunity was in the second year of the league. We were doing advertising. We were trying to get fans to the games. And we put out an old-school ad of [inaudible 00:05:12], in the local newspaper in Saint Louis.
David Garland: 00:05:15 And I got a call from a radio station. It was 1380, which is a sports talk radio station in Saint Louis. And they said, “We saw your ad in the post, and we see you’re doing this pro-inline. Do you guys have any interest in doing radio?” And I was like, “Well, the only problem is we kinda used all our budget there in this one ad. So we’re not gonna be really advertising on the radio or anything like that.” And he said, “No, I’m not talking about advertising.” This was a huge shift. He said, “What if you did a show about pro-inline hockey on the radio?” I said, “Well, tell me more.” I was intrigued. I didn’t know what he was talking about. And he said, “Well, you could buy airtime from us.” And it was a very nominal amount. I mean, it wasn’t anything insane.
David Garland: 00:05:55 “You can buy airtime. We have some extra time on Saturdays from 12:00 to 1:00. And you can come on and do a show. And you can have your sponsors.” And then he said, “We’ll run commercials, cause we’re gonna make money too off this and whatever. But you could have your sponsors on. You could do a show.” And that was really my introduction to content marketing, was buying a space and then filling it up, even though I had no idea what I was doing. My cousin was calling in as our caller, giving different names, like, “This is Jim. This is Greg, got a question here.” I eventually ended up getting real callers too.
David Garland: 00:06:25 But that was really kinda my first fauret into creating media, and I didn’t realize. And I had no experience, other than just me being me. I didn’t really know what I was doing.
Nate Broughton: 00:06:33 You knew you kinda had the personality for it. But then, what did you do when you went into the radio station? They gave you all the tech and you would record?
David Garland: 00:06:38 Literally, that’s exactly what happened. So I didn’t know how to put a show together. I’d never put a show together. So I literally on the first show wrote out every single word of the show. I was like, “Hello, my name is David Siteman Garland, and welcome to Get Inline, your source for professional inline hockey in Saint Louis.” No idea what I was doing. I had different segments. I just kinda made up what I had seen on the radio. And immediately when I did that though, I enjoyed it. I mean, it’s definitely a personality thing. It’s not for everyone by any means, just like everything. But, it definitely fits my personality.
David Garland: 00:07:08 So that was my first creation into me as a personality, if you will. Because before that, there wasn’t anything. I was like, “Oh, this is kinda cool.” And that’s where it kind started.
Nate Broughton: 00:07:18 But you’ve figured out ways, you’ve never had to go back and get another job since then. So this was in 2006. And we see you in 2018, and you’ve build an empire basically, around your personality, as you’ve figured out different ways to monetize it, build following, all that sort of stuff.
Nate Broughton: 00:07:35 Okay Dana, this is probably one of the most interesting starting points for someone that’s been on the Opt Out Life Podcast, and who’s gotten to the point where David’s got. I don’t have any other friends in internet marketing that’s started out as radio show hosts. Particularly in inline hockey. That is about has unique as it’s gonna get. I don’t think anyone else has that story. And it’s cool to hear David remind me, cause we’re such good friends, and I know this stuff. But to hear the story again, and appreciate it in the context of all these other people that we’ve talked to.
Nate Broughton: 00:08:04 He comes out of college, he starts working for an inline hockey league, semi-pro. I mean, that’s pretty bootleg. And he’s in charge of promotions. Some guy calls him and offers him the opportunity to buy space and start a show. And he’s just kind alike, “I don’t know.” But it’s funny because it really fits his personality, and who he is. It sets him off on this path, 12, 13 years ago, where he’s exposed to this idea of, “I can create content and I can monetize it, in this case back in the day, by selling sponsorships.” Does that on the radio. That’s his beginning. And once you hear more of the story, you see how that plays out. He’s navigated it to becoming a very successful entrepreneur. Humble beginnings we’ll say.
Dana Robinson: 00:08:46 Yeah. I think it’s a cool story to see that, we talk a lot about the first little bit that you know about something, is often the spark that lights your fire. For me, my first business was landscape, but it wasn’t like I was a contractor. I just had mowed lawns when I was a kid. So, I took what I knew into what I didn’t, which was all this business stuff. And so, you’ve got David here, he knows something. He’s doing inline roller hockey, right? I mean, this is the thing that he knows well. I didn’t even know there was pro, let alone semi-pro in this space. But he knew that. And he knows that world, he knows that business. And he had no fucking clue about radio.
Dana Robinson: 00:09:27 I mean, who under 50 would even envision ever being on the radio, right? This is an old person’s medium. And here’s this young guy, that’s kind of tipped off that maybe there’s an opportunity to create some content around that. And he’s got the personality and he’s got the voice, the enthusiasm. And he takes what he knows, which is this roller hockey, and merges it to a business opportunity, and kind just figures it out. And fakes it a little bit too, right?
Nate Broughton: 00:09:56 Yeah. Totally. He’s got some great snippets where he’s telling you, “I have no idea what I’m doing at this point. And I’m just cold-calling someone, or I’m hopping”, I can’t even say it. “Hopping on the radio.” And having his cousin call in with fake names and ask questions. I love that there’s no pretense. I mean, he went to a pretty nice school. And as you’ll hear later in the story too, he comes from a family that is kind of a famous family in Saint Louis. But it’s not part of his story at all. And there’s no help from that and there’s no pretense like, “I’m gonna come out of school and get X.” He’s like, “I’m excited to sell advertising for the roller hockey league and get on the radio.”
Nate Broughton: 00:10:31 That enthusiasm and that approach, plays out really well for him. But it’s certainly not the point you’d expect him to have started. And now he’s gonna tell us where he takes that show next. You won’t believe it.
Nate Broughton: 00:10:43 And when we met, you’d published a book around the time we had met, right? So you had picked up some momentum by starting the Rise To The Top, and did you start that mostly as an interview show?
David Garland: 00:10:52 Yeah. So, basically after pro-inline I realized I wanted to do something bigger. I mean, it was a very small niche, and deal with all kinds of difficult people. It was like getting an MBA, a real life MBA over two years, dealing with all kinds of craziness. And so I knew I kinda wanted to do something where I was in control more, because I still had other people, dealing with the rink owners, dealing with all different kinds of stuff. And I wanted to do something bigger.
David Garland: 00:11:13 So, I thought to myself, and this was just a crazy idea at the time, “What if we took that same model of buying time doing a show, having sponsors?” That was the original model. It’s very different obviously to what we do now. But I said, “What if we bring that”, I don’t know what I thought about this, cause it’s crazy, it was 2008, was television. I was like, “What if we brought something like that to local t.v?” And I could interview. I was now very interested in entrepreneurship and business and marking, things like that. “What if I interviewed different CEO’s and different entrepreneurs? And I just did a show, and we made it kind of a younger, hipper sort of business show, sort of with the original idea.”
David Garland: 00:11:51 And that was a crazy idea, but I executed I don’t know really how. It was more just being naïve and persistent and just figuring it out. So I was able to get airtime locally on ABC on the mornings, on Sunday morning after George Stephanopoulos, locally. Which is crazy …
Nate Broughton: 00:12:06 That’s a great spot.
David Garland: 00:12:08 … and also, the show would be replayed on a few different channels as well. And ended up hiring a production studio. Really put all my savings into that. I didn’t have a ton of savings. Really, I took my Bar Mitzvah money from when I was 13. I mean, this is where it all got started. I didn’t raise any money. I tried to ask family and stuff, and people were like, “Nope.” Which is a great think, I think, because it made me more resilient to try to figure this out. I mean, it would’ve been easy if you had people that could say, “Oh, here’s 50 grand or 100 grand”, or whatever it might be. I mean, I could probably have blown through that pretty good at that age. But I had to really be mindful in trying to figure this out.
Nate Broughton: 00:12:41 To get the airtime. Tell me the story about how you ended up on ABC. Did you have to cold-call …
David Garland: 00:12:46 Yeah. So my …
Nate Broughton: 00:12:47 … t.v stations, and say, “I’ve done this radio show”?
David Garland: 00:12:48 It’s a pretty good lesson on this, because when you start at something new, any type of business, sometimes you never know who’s gonna be helpful or not. You’ve gotta get it out there what you’re trying to do, you know what I mean? A lot of people try to keep it secret or do different things. And I feel like that kills people trying to figure it out. So I literally, anyone I knew, I would go up to them and tell them, “That’s my idea. Could you help? Or can you point me in the right direction? I’m not ask for anything from anyone. Just point me in the right direction.”
David Garland: 00:13:12 And so, there was an attorney friend of mine, had been a family friend for years, named Jeff Michelman. And he does entertainment law, lots of different things. And he was always kind of an unofficial adviser to me. He told me, when I was considering going to law school, he was like, “Unless you love the law, you’re gonna hate it.”
Nate Broughton: 00:13:26 Great advice.
David Garland: 00:13:26 Yeah. And I was like, “I don’t know if I love it that much.” So I went to him and I said, “I’ve got this idea, but I have no idea where to start. How do I even get to airtime. How do I this? How do I do that?” And he pointed me to a woman that he knew just randomly, named Bonni Burns, who was big at Robert’s Brothers, who were this family in Saint Louis. They own a bunch of stations. She was basically high up in their department. And he got me a meeting with her.
David Garland: 00:13:49 And I just went in there, and I said, “This is my idea.” She decided to help. She helped me negotiate the rates. That’s where I went. But it really was just trying to figure it out. I mean, I didn’t have a plan beyond that I wanted to do a show on there.
Nate Broughton: 00:14:00 I mean, that is a great story. It illustrates a lot of the same stuff that other people we’ve interviewed have told us. “There is no playbook. I didn’t know what I was doing. People told me I was crazy and I just started asking around. I went from this person to this person. And I had to send a cold email at some point.” It works right?
David Garland: 00:14:16 That’s exactly what it was.
Nate Broughton: 00:14:17 It’s almost kind of ironic that we are having this podcast, and we report to give people advice on, “Here’s the process.” And you have products like our process and the course. But a lot of ways, we just kinda all just figured it out. We didn’t buy products.
David Garland: 00:14:32 Yeah. I mean, I think being an entrepreneur and Opt Out Life, everything that we kinda talk about, passive income, all different things, there’s definitely a period of chaos. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people get stuck in that period forever. A period of working 24 hours a day, trying to figure out everything. And that’s a period that pretty much every entrepreneur’s gonna try to go through, whatever stage in your life.
David Garland: 00:14:53 But to me, I always wanted something more. I wanted to get out of that mode. I didn’t wanna just be working 24 hours a day. I wanna be able to go. I mean, we’re on this trip right now, Las Vegas. We all have kids, I mean, some older than others. But we’ve got kids that are not here on this trip. We do that intentionally on how we plan things.
David Garland: 00:15:12 In the early days though, it was much more chaotic, and how that worked and how it started. And it definitely evolved big time from obviously where it started …
Nate Broughton: 00:15:20 Yeah, I know. And I wanna talk more about that involvement. One more thing I wanna ask about when you started the t.v shows, the model was to sell sponsorships right? Did you have to sell your own sponsorships?
David Garland: 00:15:20 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nate Broughton: 00:15:28 Were you able to sell those before filming anything?
David Garland: 00:15:31 Yes. And there’s no formula to this. I’m a big formula person, cause I teach online courses. When I can find a formula for something to teach people, I love being able to do it. But when you’re starting with nothing, I had no audience, right? No idea what I was doing …
Dana Robinson: 00:15:46 No product.
David Garland: 00:15:46 … no trailer. Nothing, accept for I’ve got some airtime. I think I had enough money at the time to basically produce a pilot, and half of another episode, or something like that. That’s what I have. And what I did was, it was exact same story as how I got on the air, I just tried to talk to anyone I knew. I mean, just anyone I could talk to. And also, I took some of those sponsorships that I had hustled for over at pro-inline hockey, and I tied to say, “Listen, we were in a very specific, very small thing. I’m gonna be on t.v. Why don’t you take a $10,000 flyer on me?” Not crazy amounts or anything like that.
David Garland: 00:16:21 So we were actually, which is nice, is that, I’ve always been a believer of this, that the business, as crazy as it was, as risky as it was, all the things, was actually profitable from the beginning. Not super profitable. We were not in those years losing tons and tons of money, something like that. Maybe slight amount in the first year. But, yes. The original model was based on sponsorships and advertising is what it was. And of course doing that also on the website, which let to a lot more things as well. Yeah.
Nate Broughton: 00:16:50 And then you had to get a bunch of guests and have them on, and do the show. How long did you run the show for, a couple of years?
David Garland: 00:16:56 Couple of years, yes. So t.v had all its different challenges too. We had to change studios a couple times. A production company I was using said, “Hey, you know how much that costs us to do the show? We’re gonna actually have to do 3X that.” And by the way, the new episode was due in 10 days. So I had to scramble. Had to actually at one point go on Craigslist, putting an ad out for video editors and shooters. And I held a competition over a weekend. I gave them some unedited footage, and whoever got the best would get the job. And we did it. I needed to figure out all these things.
David Garland: 00:17:29 But yeah, did the show on t.v I think for, we broke it down into seasons. I think it was about four or five seasons, over about two-ish years, give or take. And also, while we’re doing this, of course started posting online. And that’s when things started to really change.
Nate Broughton: 00:17:45 Alright Dana, again, David’s walking us through how he went from radio to t.v, and we’re getting a little further down the path of him building up this empire. And of course it’s crazy and funny that he ends up on local t.v, on the ABC station, Sunday mornings after George Stephanopoulos. I mean, that’s just hilarious.
Dana Robinson: 00:18:04 Who woulda thought a kid who would’ve never envisioned being on radio, would end up on radio and television.
Nate Broughton: 00:18:10 Yeah. There’s a screenshot of his show, floating around the internet somewhere. Where he’s got the most hilarious mid [inaudible 00:18:16] suit. All shiny with a fat tie. And he’s got hair that makes it look like he’s 16. Standing on a sound stage. It’s great. It might even be on his site, cause he’s kind of embraced it now. But maybe you can go out and find that, see what the humble beginnings look like. But he’s also told us a few stories here, that when we listen, I think are great entrepreneurial tidbits. He says, “I didn’t know anyone in this space. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just started talking to everyone I knew about what I was doing.” And that’s a recipe for success actually, that I think we come back to a lot in the Opt Out Life. Those weekend conversations with friends and family over dinner, whatever, and you end up being surprised that someone you know as an attorney, knows someone who works at a production company. And they’re happy to make that introduction. He kind tells that story of how he got connected to someone who knew the local t.v biz, and was down to have lunch with him and listen to him run his mouth. And then gave him some advice. It’s cool that you’re kinda just, as long as you’re moving forward, you’re gonna bump around a little bit. But he navigates it and figures it out. I like hearing that, because I think it’s a common entrepreneurial tale.
Nate Broughton: 00:19:20 And then of course, the stories of, he has to put all of his money into the first pilot. He goes around and asks some people for money. And as I mentioned, this is someone who’s got probably someone who can lend him some money, and they don’t do it, which is cool. Who knows who the people who said no to him, and made him figure this out. The 20-something who had to learn on his own, how to get up from his bootstraps and start something, right?
Dana Robinson: 00:19:43 Yeah. We talk a lot about the Opt Out path, being the un-silicon valley path. And I think so many people spend time spinning their wheels trying to raise money. The business isn’t gonna launch itself. And being refused money can be a gift. Here David’s telling us, he’s glad. If he had gotten that money, he would’ve not taken the path that he took. Being forced along the bootstraps path was good for him. It forced him to be organic, to be authentic, to ensure that the business that he was building was true to himself. Instead of just having the money and going, “Alright, let’s just build this thing and see how it works.” You’re a lot less likely to fail, I think, if you do it on your own, with your own money.
Nate Broughton: 00:20:27 And he wouldn’t have got that story of the production company jacking up his rates, and he’s got to scramble to get the show shot. And he holds a competition over the weekend, as he tells us, with some other production companies, to get it done. I mean, if he had 20 grand in the bank from an investor, that just would’ve been easy-street. And yeah, it’s not only a cool story, but don’t short change the experience that it got him, and what it taught him as he moved on and built a real business.
David Garland: 00:20:50 And this was way before pod … I mean, there was a couple podcasts out at that point, right? And they were very tacky. You had to be an uber, super-nerd to have a podcast back then, 2008, 2009. I mean, it was all tech shows. That’s what it was. And so, that word, podcasting, was a very new word to me. But I was like, “If we’re gonna reach your audience and more places, maybe we won’t be limited to Saint Louis.”
David Garland: 00:21:13 And that was when a crazy idea hit me about, this was kinda towards the end of 2009, was thinking, “Well, I’m going around shooting this stuff. I’m getting tired. I’m flying around with people, I don’t really wanna do. That’s not my style. That’s not what I wanna do. What if we could just shoot somewhere, while I’m sitting in my pajamas and shoot them on Skype?” Cause we were doing video at the time. So I was thinking, “You could turn on your webcam, and I could turn on my webcam. And we could shoot these videos.”
Nate Broughton: 00:21:37 That was fairly innovative at the time.
David Garland: 00:21:40 No one was doing it at the time. I mean, the closest thing eventually, cause we kind started a similar time, was Andrew Warner from [crosstalk 00:21:45]. And we were trying to jimmy-rig the thing. There wasn’t all this cool tech now, where you hit a button. Literally, it’s a button now.
Nate Broughton: 00:21:52 Yeah. You had to deal with the tech on everyone else’s side too. So you’ve got their wifi, their mic …
David Garland: 00:21:56 No one else knows that they’re doing. Half they’re eye is in the shot, you know what I mean? It’s one of those things. I actually remember the first interview I did online. This was a big thing to figure out, was with Peter Shankman. Do you know him?
Nate Broughton: 00:22:08 Mm-hmm (affirmative). HARO.
David Garland: 00:22:08 Yeah. Help a Reporter Out. And so, we did it.
Nate Broughton: 00:22:11 He’s kinda crazy.
David Garland: 00:22:12 He is a crazy guy. A crazy, funny guy. And we did it. We were like, “Awesome”, it was great, everything was perfect. We get the tech. We go into post-production, only got me. We had my side of the interview. We just have him going … mouthing words. We were like, “No.” So then he was nice enough, and he knew that we were getting PayGate. And so he was nice enough to re-shoot it, and it was fine.
David Garland: 00:22:32 But that was where the first of many game changing things, I think, was just like, “Oh my god.” We can create this content without needing this big budget. Without needing to be somewhere. I can sit there and do it. And for me, that was very exciting for me. Because like I said, I mean, I really like the idea of having a thing of business in your lifestyle. Not the other way around. And for me, that might excite some people to go on planes all the time. We go all over the places and doing interviews. That was not me. I wanted to have something where I could have more control, ultimately. So that’s where that shifted.
Nate Broughton: 00:23:03 It’s cool to hear that story, how that evolution took place, I guess. I mean, as long as I’ve known you, you’re working from home, you’re taking off at noon to go workout. And you’re very much a one-man band in a lot of ways. It goes with cashing in on your personality. That’s all you really needed. Slowly you built a small team. But, you’re also lean and mean.
David Garland: 00:23:21 Yeah, lean and mean. We’ve got four employees with the business now. I mean, two years ago there was two. So yeah, it’s run very lean, very quick. Which I like being able to do a few contractors as well. But it’s run like a lean, mean machine.
Nate Broughton: 00:23:36 I like that about the content business in general, because you don’t have to deal with licensing. I mean, you do have customers, but it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit different than running a mortgage company, lets say. And I’m drawn to that. I mean, you’re definitely part of the inspiration for me wanting to do this type of stuff. Not only because of the success you’ve seen, but just the type of business that it is. It seems like I would happily deal with the things that are stressful currently, and I’m enjoying it. But content creation and production, and the fact that you can just run it with just a few people.
David Garland: 00:24:07 Right. Let’s just say you’re doing something you don’t like. Let’s say you hated podcasting, right? But you decided you needed to do a podcast, cause you think you have to. And some people do this. And they run themselves into trouble. Next thing you know, they have a recording error, they break something on the computer, whatever happens, and they give it up. Because, “Yeah, I wasn’t into it anyway. It’s difficult.”
David Garland: 00:24:23 Because any business is gonna have challenges that come with it. But when you find something that you kind of find your groove, I feel like then you can kind of power through. And if you don’t, it’s just not gonna happen. Cause everything is gonna face … I mean, we’ve faced all kinds of challenges, all the time. It just …
Nate Broughton: 00:24:39 It’s a lot of work to do the Opt Out Life.
David Garland: 00:24:41 Absolutely.
Nate Broughton: 00:24:41 It always sounds cool to you guys listening. But it’s a lot of work.
Nate Broughton: 00:24:46 Well, I wanted to tell the story of how we re-met as adults. Because I think it comes back to some of the instructive things that you’ve done to grow your business, and will come right back to the interview and Skype stuff. So, let’s break away and tell the story of how re reconnected.
Nate Broughton: 00:24:59 So, I got an email from someone, that I think worked with me or for me, that sent me your show basically. Cause we were getting into Mixergy in the office, and they’re like, “Oh, there’s a similar one.” You were interviewing big names too. You were interviewing authors that I had books I was reading them. You were interviewing Seth Godin and shit. And you were in Saint Louis. It’s crazy. I was like, “Holy shit. This dudes’ in Saint Louis.”
Nate Broughton: 00:25:20 So I sent you a cold email, that was subject line, “Ice hockey, plus central western.” Something like that.
David Garland: 00:25:28 It was something like, “fellow entrepreneur, hockey-“, something like that. It was something like that, yeah.
Nate Broughton: 00:25:33 So we’ve been calling that ‘the audacity to reach out’. It’s a label we’ve given that. Which I displayed there by just cold emailing someone. And I did a few things right, where it was, I looked you up and figured out who you were. That you were into hockey. That I remembered you from hockey. And I used that right in the subject line. I wasn’t just some dude that’s like, “David, like your show.” A lot more compelling for you to open the email, I think, and respond. And then also try to describe that we’re the same age and in entrepreneurship. And I wrote back.
David Garland: 00:26:01 I actually remember that. It’s funny because I’m the worst person ever to cold email, because I don’t respond to anything. But back then a little more. This might sound not nice, but it’s just the reality of it, is that I guard time very preciously, because …
Dana Robinson: 00:26:01 That’s good advice.
David Garland: 00:26:16 … and I do it to a degree that can be relatively extreme. I actually looked at something. I actually had three meetings in 2017, I think I hated all of them. I seriously had three meetings. But the thing is, that’s a conscious decision by me. And it’s not that I’m working 24/7. It’s just that also, I want time for other things too, family, working out, things like that. I approach those just as important as business.
David Garland: 00:26:37 But I do remember that I got an email from you. I mean, I remembered you from hockey, which is really, honestly, probably what did it. But the other thing too, which you had a good approach on, which is a good lesson for anyone listening to this too, is that you didn’t ask for anything. People are really bad at that. It’s amazing. Even though it seems pretty ‘captain obvious’, like people saying, “Hey, I’d love this from you.” Or god forbid, “Can you promote this?”
Nate Broughton: 00:27:01 Explain their problem and say, “How can you help me with that?”
David Garland: 00:27:03 Your email was very short. I swear it was two sentences. Something like that. Great. Which is good. The longer it is, not good. You said, “Hey let’s meet up and have a coffee”, or something like that. And yeah, that was how we ended up reconnecting.
Nate Broughton: 00:27:16 It was funny because we ended up going to a coffee shop in Clayton or something. And then found out that we live next door to each other, eight miles away. We both drove there …
David Garland: 00:27:24 … and just literally walked out the door, which is crazy.
Nate Broughton: 00:27:28 Yes. Those were good times, in the old Central West end days. So yeah, it was great for us to reach out, because it led to this, our relationship, as it is today. Really is how I met Dana as well, we’ve told that story. And it’s almost funny, you say that you don’t really respond to a lot of emails, because you had to send 100’s of cold emails to get interview guys. To build your brand, your show and your following, right? So, you’re a master of the other side.
David Garland: 00:27:51 Very true.
Nate Broughton: 00:27:52 And how were you able to get some of those big guys? I know that, looking at your site, even back then, “This guy has some momentum. He knows what he’s doing.” But still, to get the time of a published author, who’s pseudo-famous, to come on your Skype show. How do you think you were able to …
David Garland: 00:28:08 And there was a method to the madness. And by the way, I also wanna clarify, I do respond to emails. It’s just that I don’t do many meetings. Does that make more sense?
Nate Broughton: 00:28:15 Yeah.
David Garland: 00:28:16 Clarify everything, “What a jackass. He doesn’t open any emails.” I open ’em all. I’m always a big believer in, you gotta find your unfair advantages. And also, there’s gotta be some luck. There’s a variety of different things that go into this. But let’s start from the beginning.
David Garland: 00:28:28 When I had the t.v show, I had no audience yet when I was getting started. But, I was borrowing the equity that comes with t.v, because people heard the word t.v, that sounds important. Do you know what I mean? When I was starting. So meaning, when I reach out to someone like Maxine Clark from Build-a-Bear, Dave Steward from World Wide Technology, and big, local entrepreneurs in Saint Louis, I was like, “Hey, I’ve got ABC. Blah blah blah.” That sounded much more important than it was.
Dana Robinson: 00:28:56 Yeah. My show’s after George Stephanopoulos.
David Garland: 00:28:59 Yes. Seven people are watching. And I’ve got three t.v’s. So there’s four other people. But the thing is, that was my first kind of unfair advantage. Now, with that as well, is that you gotta look at it with, what are people gonna do when you reach out? You gotta think about this. What are they gonna do? What’s the first person someone does when you reach out? If I reach out to you and you don’t know me from Adam, and I say, “I’d love to have you on my show”, let’s just say it’s ABC, let’s say it’s for my podcast …
Nate Broughton: 00:29:24 I’m gonna google you.
David Garland: 00:29:24 Yeah. Exactly. You’re gonna google someone, and you’re gonna go to their website. So for me, having a strong web presences very early, I’m talking about a professional looking site. I’m not talking about spending millions of dollars or anything like that. I’m just saying that a site that looks like I knew what I was doing, at least.
Nate Broughton: 00:29:41 Got that ABC logo on it.
David Garland: 00:29:43 Right …
Nate Broughton: 00:29:43 I think I remember that.
David Garland: 00:29:44 … yeah, anything I could do. A picture of me, a picture of the show. Made it look professional, because that’s an impression that people have. And this is very, very true when it comes to interviews. Because, I remember there’s a woman, she’s great, she wrote a book called The Entrepreneur Equation. Her name is Carol Roth, she’s a New York Times best selling author, lives in Chicago. Friend of mine. Actually haven’t talked in years, I should look her up.
David Garland: 00:30:05 Anyway, we had an interview where we talked about this actually. How do you decide what interviews to take? Which ones to not? Things like that. And she said that she calls something, obviously if someone reaches out and they’re extremely well known, or they’re in the New York Times, or something like that, you’re gonna say yes, right? But her other factor, she called it, the ‘give back factor’, she called it. Which was, when she looked at people that, maybe were just getting started. Maybe they were a few weeks old. But they were trying their hardest. They had the effort in there. They had a brand that they were gonna at least try. Everything looked professionally good. She would give it a shot …
Nate Broughton: 00:30:38 She’s paying it back, right?
David Garland: 00:30:40 Exactly. And she knew that wasn’t gonna drum up a huge amount of business for her, but hey, she’s helping out. She wants to help someone that kinda has it together, versus having some horrible template-looking thing, or a ‘coming soon’, or whatever it might be. So it was kinda getting a little bit of ducks in a row.
Nate Broughton: 00:30:52 That’s funny, cause we actually have talked about that on some of the content we’re creating …
David Garland: 00:30:56 Cause people google it. That’s what they do.
Nate Broughton: 00:30:58 Alright Dana, David is finally onto the internet from radio to t.v, to the dot coms. And it’s cool cause he’s given us a few good tips I think, that anyone can apply to their business even now, even though this was a while ago, about getting started online. I think one of the best ones he talks about is his tip to borrow the equity of what he’s got now. And also just taking advantage of anything that he has.
Nate Broughton: 00:31:21 He’s looking at how he’s been on the radio and t.v, and saying, “That’s actually kinda unique. And my t.v show is on ABC. ABC is a very noticeable brand and logo.” So as soon as he goes online, he launches a site that he invests in, to make sure it looks good. A lot of people I think, we do say you can just start a website on Wix or WordPress. It doesn’t really matter what it looks like. For a lot of people just getting started is okay. But for David’s business, perception was important. He’s gonna be reaching out to people to interview them, and grow this kind of media brand. So he knows that that’s something that he should invest in. And he can, so he does.
Nate Broughton: 00:31:57 He’s aways had really good phototopography too. I almost used to think it was strange, thinking back to eight, 10 years ago. “This guy does professional photo shoots in this house. What a weirdo”, or something …
Dana Robinson: 00:32:09 That coming from two guys that have had professional photo shots done, and professional videos.
Nate Broughton: 00:32:14 I’m staring at several professional photos of us, as we’re speaking right now. But, yeah, I guess I’ve come around to it, right?
Dana Robinson: 00:32:20 He was early in that. It was important. He was selling himself, right? I mean, he needed to show who he was. If you’re gonna say to somebody who’s famous, “Let me interview you”, you’ve gotta put it all out there. Look amazing. Leverage all of the things you’ve done, the best you can. I mean, don’t say, “Well, I had a local access television show about inline skating.” You put the best you can, the best spin you can on the cool shit you’ve done.
Nate Broughton: 00:32:47 Yeah, and he did that early on, and did it well. It was kinda half, ‘fake it till you make it’, sort of stuff. But he had done some cool stuff. And he shined it up to the point where it was, “This is the best foot forward that I can put.” And it worked. So can’t hate on it. Gotta say, it’s the right playbook.
Nate Broughton: 00:33:02 And he’s telling us also about initially starting to reach out to people, and figuring that out. Cause I was like, “How did you get these?” When I first found him, I was like, “He’s interviewing Seth Godin on his show, from his condo next to mine.”
Dana Robinson: 00:33:16 Yeah. I’m not sure we’ve made this perfectly clear to the lister. Can you think offhand of the kind of people that David’s interviewed?
Nate Broughton: 00:33:25 I think he runs through some names that are pretty big. I can’t remember if it’s right before this, or after. But it’s best selling authors, celebrities, Fortune 100 CEO’s, the best of the best.
Dana Robinson: 00:33:36 These are the very people that are being interviewed by Terry Gross, are being interviewed by David. Right? I mean, that’s pretty fucking cool.
Nate Broughton: 00:33:44 And he pulled that off by doing the things that we just talked about, and by having the audacity to reach out. And he talks about talking to someone who told him that sometimes people just respond and say yes because they wanna give back a little bit, right? We’ve talked a lot about what we call the ‘audacity to reach out’, and both sides of the coin of how to do it, to do it. And also the reasons why some people might say yes, where you might be surprised.
Nate Broughton: 00:34:08 I have an anecdote where my partner Brandon and I had reached out to a billionaire, and he ended up responding to the email, because we read an article about him, and had saw that he played Monopoly as a kid. And we included that in the email outreach saying we played Monopoly too, we were into it. Little things like that. And the outreach can be wins and get people to respond. Or you might just catch someone and be lucky, where they’re like, “This guy seems interesting. This young girls seems interesting. I’m gonna shoot my info back and we’re gonna talk.”
Dana Robinson: 00:34:35 I’ve got an observation about David, that I think applies to so many people that’ve succeeded in business. They’re doing things that are bigger than themselves. That are bigger than what people would ever think I could or should do. I mean, in the beginning, he’s going on radio. The guy was a Women’s Studies major, and suddenly he’s a radio personality. He didn’t know what he was doing. It’s bigger than him.T.v, same thing, bigger than him. Figure it out. Now he’s gonna interview famous people. He had no real basis on which to say why you should do this, other than he’s got a good personality, asks great questions, and he asked. He tried. He did something bigger than himself. I think a lot of people could learn from that strategy.
Nate Broughton: 00:35:15 Yeah. And now he’s gonna tell us a few more tips and tricks he learned along the way, to get these people to say yes, and come on his show.
David Garland: 00:35:22 The second thing is with the online show, once we moved on there, there was a couple things that I think were major factors. One, which I have to get out of the way, which would be, let’s call a little bit of luck, was timing. Because when I started, there were very few interview shows and very few podcasts. So this was a relatively new concept. So meaning, it wasn’t like someone was getting 50 podcast requests a week in that time. Now, it’s out of control. So you have to be that much better. I could be kinda not good, and you’d have a little bit more attention, right?
David Garland: 00:35:53 But the thing was, which I kind of mastered on it, you leverage one guest into another. So you’re saying, “Hey, I interviewed Seth Godin, would you like to come on?” And what I’ve noticed is, with the people that I would interview, I would try to time it to put it in the best terms for them. So what I mean by that is, an author is a great example of that. Authors are great people to interview. When they come out with a new book, new books coming out, whatever it might be, they’re gonna be much more willing to accept an interview. Especially if it’s traditionally published book, because they wanna show the traditional publishers that they’re actually out there doing stuff. Cause that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
David Garland: 00:36:29 So I would always try to time it. Not, “Hey, you’re helping me”, even though they are obviously. But say, “Hey, listen. I’d love to come on, talk about your new book. This or that. Quick Skype interview, just flip on the camera. We’ll do this. We’ll do 30 minutes.” And that led to the Seth Godin’s, the Tim Ferriss’, the Daymond John’s, the Barbara Corcoran’s, the Tony Hsieh’s from Zappos. I’m trying to think how many names I can drop. Is that pretty good?
Dana Robinson: 00:36:52 No, they have a motivation. At that point you’re tapping into their motivation to your advantage.
David Garland: 00:36:57 But just like your email to me Nate, is keeping it very simple. And I think where people run into trouble, is they over explain in emails. Kind of say stuff like, “Oh golly gee, I don’t have that big of an audience yet. I’m just getting started. But I love it and I love you. And it’d mean the world. And I know you’re gonna say no, but it’d be great if you said yes.” You gotta be a little bit confident with it. Just saying, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. I’d love to promote this. Here’s my website. Here’s a past guest.”
David Garland: 00:37:24 And I think a great way to start, if people are thinking that too, is starting with people that you know, that are in your network. Cause that gives you a little experience. And if you don’t have a network, go build it. And so, that was definitely how we did it. It was all via email. It was never phone calls. It was never that.
David Garland: 00:37:38 And then also one more tip there, was after the show, after it would air, I would never tell people to promote it. Some people …
Nate Broughton: 00:37:46 You wouldn’t tell the guest, you wouldn’t be like, “Hey Seth, I know you’ve got a huge following, tell people about …
David Garland: 00:37:50 Yeah. And there’s people that I know that are friends of mine, that encourage that. And to me that’s always rubbed me the wrong way. When someone says, “Here’s the interview. Now can you please share this on all your social media, your email? Tattoo is on yourself and put it all on your neighbors mailboxes?” To me, that seems kinda …
Nate Broughton: 00:38:05 Yeah. I’m using you in a way. In this scenario that we’re sitting in right now, I could do that. Like “David, can you send this to your big list please?”
David Garland: 00:38:13 Yeah, exactly. And to me, I’d do it cause I like you, cause we’re friends. But I’m saying, for most people, you’re helping them, if you frame it in that way, and then you switch it to that they’re helping you, that just used up any kind of good relationship. I think it does. Because I’m much more likely to promote something, if number one, it’s awesome. So meaning, it comes out, the final product is great. And two, someone’s not begging me to do it. Then it’s like I wanna do it, and it makes me feel right …
Nate Broughton: 00:38:37 And you’re not unique in that. That’s human nature in a lot of ways. And that’s professionalism …
David Garland: 00:38:41 And that advice though, is unfortunately out there a lot, that when you do a podcast, you have to send this kind of aggressive email afterwards saying, “Here’s all the places. Do it. Send it out.” I had someone recently say that if I did their podcast, I’d agree to send it out and all this kind of stuff. And I said to Lindsey, who is our operations [inaudible 00:38:57], I’m like “Cancel.”
David Garland: 00:38:57 But the other thing too is, what I would always do, is I’d just send someone a very simple email. Say, “Here’s the episode. It’s out. Thank you so much for coming on. It was a blast.” And that was it. I would sometimes follow up with them, a couple of days later, while it was kinda hot, it was still on their mind. And say, “By the way, if you’ve got another idea for a great guest”, you gotta be careful with this, cause you wanna make sure that you’re really asking someone that’s good, otherwise you’re gonna end up with someone maybe you don’t want, “Do you have a recommendation?” And that also led to good guest too. Someone saying, “Oh, what about blank?” And then you could get a warm introduction from a past guest, that’s gonna push you from 10% to 95%. So that’s …
Nate Broughton: 00:39:36 Snowball over time. Alright. Something else I wanna ask you. And I encourage people that listen to this to get on your email list, not cause I want them to come by your stuff, because I think that if you’re interested in entrepreneurship, you can learn not only from the tactics, but also the emails that David sends, how he sends them. And the messaging you use is actually very unique. I say that you’ve cashed in on your personality. Your personality is used in your emails in a way that I think most people will look at it and say, ” This is wrong. This isn’t the way that you should send emails.”
Nate Broughton: 00:40:03 You send long-ass emails with jokes and personal references, that should say this, that 95% of people aren’t gonna get. They’re 600 words or something, sometimes. But, it works. And I wanna ask, I know it’s on purpose and that’s just who you are. But do you just do it because it’s who you are? And if you’re gonna build an audience, they have to basically like you, if they’re gonna follow you. You’re weeding people out in a way, in doing it …
David Garland: 00:40:30 It is. Tim Ferriss used to say this, that he used to say in his blog posts and stuff. He writes these very long blog posts. That’s how he really put him on the map. He would say stuff like, he would drop a random curse word, or weird references in there, and that was a weed-out factor for him. He’s basically saying to himself, this isn’t everyone, this is just him. He’s saying, “If I curse and you don’t like it, we’re not gonna be a good fit.” That’s fine. So yeah, you’re quantifying people that are for you and not for you at all.
David Garland: 00:40:56 I’ll explain this, because we have a big audience now, that’s very tight, which is good. But I get hate emails too. People say, “I hate your emails”, or whatever it might be. I get a lot of love too, so it’s both ways. But I use it as a weed-out thing. So for me, my number one rule of email is that I write the way that I speak, right? And I do not change it. It’s very similar. Because I think a big compliment that I can get, one of my favorite ones, is when someone meets you, that hasn’t met you in real life and says, “You’re just like you are in your emails. You’re just like you are in your podcast. You’re just like you are in your website.”
David Garland: 00:41:28 Because unfortunately, and I know you know this, you have this too, there’s plenty of people where it’s very different. They have a different persona. And I’m not talking about amplifying yourself a little bit. A lot of people have to amplify. That’s normal. That’s show business, if you will. A little more you plus 10%. You plus 15%. That’s fine. But I’m talking about people that are playing a character, versus who they are in real life. And I know a lot. People are literally flashing in my head right now where you met ’em, and I’m like, “You’re completely different. Where’s that person?”
Dana Robinson: 00:41:56 Yeah, no. I know you and Nate go back a long way. And when I listened to your podcast before this interview, I thought, “This guy is himself. And the people who are around him are like friends.” It’s like you built the family, and these people are truly, you’re connected to them and you care about them. It’s like having a shop where people walk in and know your name …
David Garland: 00:42:18 That’s exactly what it is.
Dana Robinson: 00:42:18 … and you know theirs.
David Garland: 00:42:20 And with this strategy of the email though, I’ve never been a person that has done anything, I don’t wanna use that, yeah, I guess it’s the right word. You know how people teach manipulative email tactics …
Nate Broughton: 00:42:30 I wanted to ask about that, because you’ve …
David Garland: 00:42:32 … NLP and BLG and …
Nate Broughton: 00:42:34 Which is interesting to know because it’s not …
David Garland: 00:42:36 … BLT.
Dana Robinson: 00:42:37 BLT.
Nate Broughton: 00:42:37 That would be interesting regardless. But it’s more interesting because you are as successful as a lot of the people that follow those methods. And you’ve been in masterminds with them. You’re in the same crowd as all these guys that have huge lists, that have nailed this. And I know you’ve seen it. I guess you’ve just taken some of it, and you’ve always stayed true to, “This is how I’m gonna do it.”
David Garland: 00:42:59 Yeah, I mean, for me, when I write an email, first of all there’s always a purpose. There’s never, I’m just gonna write an email to write an email. There’s always a purpose to it. But the way that I like to look at it is, my rules of it are, one, I like to write like I talk, who I am, number one. And whatever’s on my mind also, as you know, pitches in that email …
Nate Broughton: 00:43:18 It’s 1000 degrees in Saint Louis this week, it sucks.
David Garland: 00:43:20 Yeah. I’ll show a random picture of a softball game. You do not know what you’re gonna get on that. And it’s funny, cause I get a lot of emails from people saying that they enjoy that. And you get also, by the way, you get occasional email from someone that’s like, “I don’t wanna know about this stuff.” Perfect, not a fit. Peace out. That’s fine with me. I’m not taking any offense to that. If you don’t wanna hear it? Fine.
David Garland: 00:43:38 So my first rule is, again, writing like I talk, writing like I am. My second rule is, the way that I approach it, is like I’m writing an email literally to a friend, my mom, someone like that. Not someone that I’m trying to sell something to. Not someone that I’m trying to convince. But I’m writing to someone that I’m trying to …
Nate Broughton: 00:43:56 Communicate with. Let’s have a conversation.
David Garland: 00:43:56 … communicate with. That’s the way I approach it. It’s interesting is that some of my emails, like you said, are very long. Some, by the way are very short. Some are in the middle. And they’re all over the place. But what you’re gonna get, is you’re gonna get a consistent tone, and you’re gonna get a consistent me coming through the emails. We have a, as you know, a wide variety of types of emails that go out. Meaning stuff that are tip based. Stuff that is selling something or promoting something obviously. And we also have emails where it’s just random stories.
David Garland: 00:44:24 I’m always fascinated about how many people love those random story emails. I’ve got one where, it’s called ‘Crying baby on a plane’ …
Nate Broughton: 00:44:32 I’ve read that, yeah. It’s a good one actually. I like it.
Dana Robinson: 00:44:34 I’ve been there.
David Garland: 00:44:35 Yeah, we’ve all been there, right.
Dana Robinson: 00:44:37 As a parent and as a recipient.
David Garland: 00:44:38 And you relate to that. And so it’s funny. I tell a story of a trip that we took, with our daughter Aviva, who’s now three. I still have a photo of her, she’s six months old in that photo, wherever it is. And we’re on a plane, and she’s crying. And then she’s crying and it gets worse and worse. And then I looked at Marcy, and I’m like, “Oh my god. This is gonna be terrible.” And she says, “It’s gonna get worse and then it’s gonna get better.” And then lo-and-behold, it got worse, I was ready to jump off a plane. And then next thing you know, passed out, and we had bloody Mary’s and it was a great flight, right?
David Garland: 00:45:07 And I use that analogy to point to business. I teach online courses, I teach creating digital products or programs. That’s what I do. But that email’s very different. It’s more of an inspirational, it’s more of a business … I said, this affects your business as well, cause it’s the exact same thing in business. If you’re sitting there saying, “I’m not getting off this ground. It’s not getting traction. It’s not doing this or that”, it might get worse before it gets better. But you’ve gotta stick it out.
David Garland: 00:45:30 It’s funny, that email, I probably wrote in 15 minutes, 20 minutes. It’s now part of our funnel, and a lot of people get it. I get more responses to that email. It’s unbelievable. People saying, “I can relate to it. My kids are 36 now, but I love it. I’ve got a two year old, I love it.” Whatever it is. It’s just amazing because, again, you’re relating to people on a personal level. And I think that at the end of the day, is what clears out in a cloud of noise in the inbox.
Dana Robinson: 00:45:54 Alright Nate. So, we’re in a business that we’re kind of in the same business as the people that follow David. We’re podcasting, we’re providing information, we’ve got membership coming up, and we’ve got products, e-learning essentially. We’ll be offering some for free, some for pay. Courses right? We want to help people to get to the point they wanna get to in their life. And to do that, you’ve gotta provide them with education, essentially, it’s courses.
Dana Robinson: 00:46:23 And there’s a lot of people out there telling you how to do it. How do you develope a list. How do you send the emails. And David’s not doing anything according to the plan. And I know you’ve been in the marketing space longer than I have. What do you think about his approach?
Nate Broughton: 00:46:36 I love his approach. I mean, it’s hard for me to talk about his approach without first coming to the fact that he’s still just going off of his own personality, and his own voice, and he’s always doing it his way. What’s cool is, he’s kind of working through building an audience, and figuring out ways to monetize that audience and build a real business, cause ultimately he has to make some money through this. And I think he starts out by doing stuff online and selling sponsorships, cause that’s what he knew from radio and t.v.
Nate Broughton: 00:47:05 And it takes him years to really come to this online course thing, that he’s gonna tell us more about here. His business is building online courses, that actually, his biggest one, his online courses that teach people how to build online courses. Which is kind of funny, but actually it’s really, really smart. Because he did it at a time where there wasn’t one of those out there. And he did it when he had a audience that was paying attention, that had seen him launch other products. I think he had created awesome online interviews, which was another project of his, cause he was the master at doing that, as we’ve described and heard.
Nate Broughton: 00:47:37 And it changed his business. It changes his business. It’s the thing. We ask him later on, where’s the demarcation point, and he might say the spark was when he learned about radio, and that model of content and sponsorship. But, the demarcation point, that big changing point was learning about online courses.
Nate Broughton: 00:47:55 And the coolest thing to me about it, and this is just me, cause I see a lot of people who have this type of business, and we’re trying to build a similar one, is that he’s never changed who he is. He sends emails where the subject lines are about his softball team. He’s talking about his daughter. Talking about the weather in Saint Louis. I mean, who gives a shit, right?
Dana Robinson: 00:48:18 And this is a guy with 100,000 people on his list. And he’s able to just connect with them, being himself. It’s not like some short hook, and get people roped in, and get them to click a link. He’s just communicating a piece of who he is to an audience that likes him.
Nate Broughton: 00:48:35 And authenticity plays well. And we talk too about how … I was like, “Why do you have your emails this way?” Cause it obviously works, and I do like it. I mean, maybe I open his emails to read that stuff. Maybe I do that subconsciously. I mean, we’re friends, so I read his emails. But it plays well. And it also separates his audience. He gives an example of Tim Ferris using curse words to kinda say, “If you’re down with this, you’re my people, and you’re gonna follow me. And if you’re not, move on.” And I think that’s kind of his attitude too.
Nate Broughton: 00:49:02 But he didn’t build an audience of 10,000. He built an audience of 110,000 and growing. So it’s cool to see that payoff. It’s such an inspirational anecdote, for anyone who wants to build that type of business. And a lot of us, no matter what business you’re in, at 2018, you’re building a following of some type. You’re communicating with an audience, followers. Cameron who’s selling t-shirts for kids, is kinda in the same business in a lot of ways, too. So I think it’s instructive for anyone who’s marketing in the age of social media and Instagram and Facebook.
Nate Broughton: 00:49:36 Look at David’s stuff, and listen to the stories’ he’s telling here, because this is the recipe to success.
David Garland: 00:49:41 What I try to highlight to people, first of all, the first important thing to highlight I think, is that there’s plenty of work involved. Because I feel like there’s that stupid internet trap, out there nowadays …
Nate Broughton: 00:49:52 Make money online.
David Garland: 00:49:52 … hit button, money, leave, trip, right? Of course there’s work. And there’s ongoing work. But I think the key that you can do, without a doubt, and I think I try to exemplify this and a lot of my customers and students do as well, who I also love to highlight, is it’s about doing it on your terms. You’re gonna work at night? Great. You wanna work in the day? Great. You wanna take the week off? Great. You can. If you wanna take every Tuesday off and call it a Taco Tuesday, and eat tacos all day? You can do it.
David Garland: 00:50:18 That’s the structure that I always try to encourage people, saying, “Listen, for me, it’s working out in the middle of the day. It’s playing softball in the middle of the day. It’s taking days off when I need to go to sporting event or whatever, go on trips, whatever it might be. That’s me.” For other people, it varies. I mean, also not missing kids things, and things like that.
David Garland: 00:50:37 And that’s always fascinated me, is being a part of it, because I always thought that was kind of a pipe dream. When I was getting started, and you’re in that chaos mode that we talked about earlier. I kinda hear about that, but I always thought that was kind of almost bs in the back of my brain. People are like, “Oh, they must be some kind of unicorn.” Or maybe they’re secretly working 100 hours a day, but they’re making it seem on social media, that they’re working for four minutes, right? But then I realize, I mean, really, my business gives us the flexibility to do that, with online courses and training, and just the way it’s structure. I was really inspired by two people when I was getting started with online courses, who I interviewed on my show, Marie Forleo and Ryan Lee. And what I loved about them, and why they loved online courses, was not only were they making a great living, they were helping people get results. Cause that’s what online course does at the end of the day, all these great things.
David Garland: 00:51:26 But the third factor was the lifestyle. Because I interviewed all these other entrepreneurs, who were like, “Oh yeah, I’m making all this great money. I haven’t had time to go to the bathroom in six weeks. And I saw my family, I think last month. And I sleep for a half hour a night.” And I was like, “I don’t want that.” And I’m sick and tired, and I’m like, “Yuk.”It seemed to me, almost every business model had that. The stressed out crazy person. Or even coaching, consulting. “When I wake up, coaching calls. Go to bed, coaching calls. In between, coaching calls. Got sick last week, no coaching calls. Lost money”, right? And I’m like, “I don’t want that either.
David Garland: 00:51:56 And so my show allowed me to also explore business models, figure out what was right. But Marie and Ryan, what I loved about them, again, besides the money, and getting the results right? Was the lifestyle. And what I was fascinated, was they had drastically different lifestyles. Drastically different. Marie is engaged, and travels the world with her fiance. They’re always taking photos in fun places, and they’re doing this and that. Ryan has count ’em, one, two, three, four kids, okay? Four kids. God bless him. And his whole thing is that he doesn’t miss ballet and soccer games and things. He likes to get his work done in the morning, and he’s helping out. He’s the Manny in the afternoon. The stay-at-home dad. That’s what he loves to do.
David Garland: 00:52:40 And so I love using those examples to show people that, that can be whatever you want. You wanna sit there and watch paint dry, great. Whatever your thing is, it allows you the freedom and flexibility to do it. And so yeah, I of course try to highlight that. And I try to highlight it in a way that isn’t that, “Do no work, just set this up on autopilot and sail the globe for the rest of your life.” I try to make sure that it’s realistic, mixed with that too.
Nate Broughton: 00:53:04 The honest mid-west story, not the flashy L.A story.
David Garland: 00:53:07 Right. Exactly.
Nate Broughton: 00:53:08 I mean, it’s great. You were describing what we call the Opt Out Life. And we’re trying to tell the same stories …
Dana Robinson: 00:53:15 It’s not the same thing. It’s different for everybody.
Nate Broughton: 00:53:16 Right. It’s different for everyone. We try to illustrate that, even with the two of us.
Dana Robinson: 00:53:19 Let me ask about your business. There seems to be, at some point, a sort of existential crises. I mean, you’re doing interviews, which is cool. You mean, you pivot from t.v, to podcasting. You’re an interview guy. Got a book.
Nate Broughton: 00:53:33 There’s a demarcation.
Dana Robinson: 00:53:34 Yeah. Now your business is courses. You have a niche marketing courses. Talk about the sort of pivot, the transition. And then tell us about the business.
David Garland: 00:53:42 Yeah. And this is so important. It was just crazy. So, through 2011, or end of 2011, my primary way of making money was sponsorships. And then I built up our audience which was nice. Our biggest sponsor at the time was Citrix. So GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting. It was about six figures in sponsorships, through them. That was about $100,000 a year, give or take. Plus some other sponsors. So we’re doing a very low overhead. And I had a book deal with Wiley Publishing, a little cash there. And I was kind of doing this speaking, a little bit of consulting, that kind of thing. But I was still trying to find the groove.
David Garland: 00:54:21 And people used to always tell me, I need to do my own online course. And it kinda was in my brain, but I kept kinda putting it off. And the thing is with the sponsorship model, you’re really dependent on someone else completely. I mean, if Citrix, they never did, but if they were to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, or someone got fired or whatever, “Ah, we don’t wanna do this.” That would be a six figure revenue loss, at something that would be …
Dana Robinson: 00:54:44 Over night.
David Garland: 00:54:44 Over night. And I knew I needed to be in control of my revenue. And when I interviewed Ryan and Marie, that cemented that I liked the idea of courses specifically, because I’m creating an asset. I’m taking my brain and turning it into a product. I’m taking my experience, I’m taking something that I know, and I’m turning it into something that can be sold over and over again, without me being there. So instead of teaching 100 people something one-on-one, I can teach 100 people at once, all over the world, by prerecording and doing this course.
David Garland: 00:55:13 And so, I researched this for a long time. I did hundreds of interviews with course creators. Bought everything I could. Researched everything I could, and I said, “2011 is now the time. I’m gonna get it out there.” And so, my first course was called, ‘Create Awesome Interviews’. Because I’d done now, close to 500 interviews. That’s what people had asked me for. All the time they were like, “Oh, how do I get a guest? How do I do this? How do you know which questions to ask?” All these different things. I was like, “Well, this is something I could put together in my sleep.” I mean, I know this stuff, right?
David Garland: 00:55:45 And so, my first course, “Create Awesome Interviews”, launched in 2011. And I remember this. We created a little opt-in list, and people could register. Had just 400 people on the email list. Just 400 people. And I’ve got no doubt people can build lists much bigger than that. We started with just 400. Launched that course, and it did $19,800 in revenue. Now to me, this was a game-changer. I’m not talking about necessarily retirement money here. But I’m talking about game-changer, where I was like, “Oh my god.” I can take something, record it, get it up, and people are actually interested.
David Garland: 00:56:19 Then next thing you know, I’m watching these students. And they’re now doing their own interview shows. And someone’s doing an interview show on fitness. And someone’s doing cooking. And someone’s doing this. This is the coolest thing ever. You’re actually watching people get results. Cause that’s what courses, at the end of the day, it’s all about getting someone from A to Z. It’s getting them from where they’re at now, to some kind of tangible result. That’s what a course is all about, right?
David Garland: 00:56:40 So 2011 we launched, “Create Awesome Interviews”. Then kept relaunching. It got better and better. We reached, within less than a year, 250,000 in sales back …
Nate Broughton: 00:56:49 Don’t cross over that part. You say you relaunched. Would you refine the product? Would you go out and do new marketing to build a new list? And then put it back out there?
David Garland: 00:56:56 Cause now, we got those first people in, right? We take great care of them. You always wanna do that. A lot of people miss this part, where they don’t take great care of their customers. And then that’s not gonna do anything good. I mean, we made sure that they were getting the support, the help they needed. Now I’ve got testimonials. I’m going back now, and yeah, we’re relaunching to new people and old people that missed it.
David Garland: 00:57:16 A lot of people miss this with courses. They think, “Well, if I just launch it to someone or promote it to someone once, and they don’t want it, they’ll never want it for the rest of their life.” You’d be surprised by the way how many people buy courses, the sixth, seventh, eighth time they’ve heard it. It’s fascinating.
Dana Robinson: 00:57:28 Did you have to re-shoot the course?
David Garland: 00:57:29 No, just update. Believe it or not, that exact same course, basically is still up now, “Create Awesome Interviews”, basically. With minimal optics.
Dana Robinson: 00:57:36 Some of the same audio? Some of the same pdf’s?
David Garland: 00:57:39 Some updates. But I’m saying, basically the same thing. Which is crazy. So Nate, exactly. So then I started realizing, well now, I’ve found a little niche here. So I would go and I’d pitch to myself the podcast, or blogs. And I’d go on there and write things about interviews. Tips, give advice. And by the way, if you’re interested in learning more, I have a free video series that we did at the time. Free video series on doing online interviews.
Nate Broughton: 00:58:04 Is that you on camera, or is that a screen cast?
David Garland: 00:58:07 It would be me on the camera welcoming them. And then going to a screen cast.
Nate Broughton: 00:58:09 Dripped out over seven days?
David Garland: 00:58:09 Yeah. Dripped out over a few days. Couple of days later another video. And then you’d get a pitch for the course, and then some followups, and then it would close. So we just kept kind of perfecting that, over that year. And then introduced a few more courses over the next year, very carefully. And you have to be careful with that. That’s where people get into traps, is they’ll just keep launching a bunch of new courses. You have to be careful with that because one course can be promoted all over the place, a lot better than 10 courses are minimally. So you’ve gotta be careful when you add on. I mean, a lot of people leave a lot of potential customers on the table.
David Garland: 00:58:41 Great analogy I heard once was saying that, it’d be like if you did a show in Broadway. And you spent all this time. You do all this show. And then it closes. And then you just move onto the next show. No. They move it to Vegas. They take it to Chicago. They take it to all these places. There’s other people to bring into it.
Dana Robinson: 00:58:55 Hey Nate, we’re nerding out like crazy here on the business. And I think it’s cool that David’s sharing some really specific examples. He’s gonna, in fact share a really cool story in a minute. But I wanna preview that by saying, this is a cool business. A lot of people say, “Read my book.” Or they hear this podcast and they think, “I don’t know what I could do. I don’t understand internet marketing. I don’t have anything to offer.” Online courses is a really cool Opt Out business.
Dana Robinson: 00:59:22 I mean, anything that you have an expertise in. And the more niche the better. In fact, one of the ladies that was in our crew, hanging out at the cabana afterwards, said that she was listening, and she said she had originally started a course. And the course was too broad. She realized that the course was almost useless, because courses need to be very, very specific. And her course was broad. And so, how do you market that once it’s that broad?
Dana Robinson: 00:59:50 So one of the things that you would learn, if you were in David’s course probably, would be, pick a really narrow subject. The one that you know really well. And I can’t think of anyone that I know, that wouldn’t be able to come up with something that they have an expertise in. That they could build a few hour course around. And it doesn’t need to be a $5,000 course. David’s course is $1,000. If you watch for a launch, you might get it for half off. Our course is gonna be $500. I mean, you can build a course that’s $99. Sell that 100 times, you’ve got $10,000.
Nate Broughton: 01:00:21 Yeah. I think there’s no question that there are never ending potential for a niche or a topic or an expertise. And that we all have them inside of us somehow. Even if you’ve worked the same job for 20 years. There’s something that you’ve done, or that you’re an expert in. Or maybe it’s a hobby. Maybe it’s gardening in subzero temperatures or something, depending on where you live. But that’d be a great course …
Dana Robinson: 01:00:42 That would be a great course.
Nate Broughton: 01:00:43 … millions of people would probably take. So yes, there’s specificity there. And I wanna bring it back to the generality too, of why would you want to have an online course. We talk to David a bit about this too. Part of what he’s promoting, selling in a way, is to have this lifestyle. This Opt Out lifestyle, right? And online course is something that you build once, and educates an audience. And that can be promoted and re-promoted. And sold over the course of several years. And probably not even need to be updated, depending on what it is.
Nate Broughton: 01:01:13 And the whole attractiveness of it is, yeah, you can sit down as a consultant, or a professional, and teach someone something in person. And then do it again and again. But what if you could do it 1,000 times over, and only have to have recorded it once? This is one of the ultimate hacks, the ultimate paths, to having control over your time, control over your income. And living the Opt Out Life.
Nate Broughton: 01:01:37 So it’s a great guest to have on, because he’s kind of one of the savants, the OG’s of online courses. And that’s the reason we all want to be online course creators, right? And hopefully this inspires you not to just do that, but to believe that there’s something in you that could become a course, and David’s got the tools for you to do it.
Nate Broughton: 01:01:55 Tell me a story of, maybe one of your favorite students, or people who’ve taken the course and then gone on to launch their own business. Not necessarily the most successful one. Not necessarily the cutest one, per se, on the niche or whatever. But tell us a quick story about one of your favorites.
David Garland: 01:02:12 It’s hard to pick favorites. It’s like choosing among children. I don’t know if I have a favorite child right now …
Nate Broughton: 01:02:17 We don’t characterize it as favorite. Tell me one that you like.
David Garland: 01:02:19 I got a good one, because I think this one exemplifies a lot of good things, is Rene Christine. So Rene is a very interesting case. So she was living in, actually ironically, Vegas …
Dana Robinson: 01:02:31 Where we are today.
David Garland: 01:02:32 She was a divorced single mom of three. And Rene had a stationery business that she had built up, and had eventually sold. And then ran into financial difficulty, because through a divorce and all kinds of shenanigans, she was kind of in dire straits. And she wanted to teach, she loved this stay-at-home mom business of how to sell crafts and things like that. And so she was just making YouTube videos and really spinner her wheels. If you went and looked at those YouTube videos, they were really crazy. Just her saying crazy stuff at the camera.
David Garland: 01:03:06 So she discovered the course, and she learned how to do it. And she did her first launch of her course, on teaching these stay-at-home moms how to build these craft businesses. And she did $3,000 in sales on her first launch. And this is where the story’s very interesting. So there’s $3,000 in sales. And I’ll pose this question to both of you, cause I think it’ll be also interesting to your listeners as well.
David Garland: 01:03:26 Imagine you create a product, and you do $3,000 in sales. What’s your reaction to that?
Nate Broughton: 01:03:31 I’d be sad.
David Garland: 01:03:32 You’d be sad?
Dana Robinson: 01:03:34 You know what? I’d be kinda fired up.
David Garland: 01:03:36 Guess this is yin and yang right here.
Dana Robinson: 01:03:37 I’ve never had a course [crosstalk 01:03:39].
David Garland: 01:03:39 Yin and yang. So …
Dana Robinson: 01:03:40 That’s real money. There’s people that paid that.
David Garland: 01:03:42 Exactly. And this is the thing, if I surveyed a bunch of people, and I said, “You launch your first course here. You make $3,000. Epic win? Epic fail?” You would get exactly those two opinions. You’d get people saying horrible failure, and you’d get people saying this is an epic win …
Dana Robinson: 01:03:58 If you could do 3 you could do 30. If you can do 30 you can do 300.
David Garland: 01:04:02 And this also, by the way, goes back to the internet hype crap, about the six figure, seven figure, 400 figure launches, that we hear about all the time, which are in the 0000001% at most. It’s not about that. It’s about longterm sales over time. That’s what it’s about. So Rene, thank God, who has not the Nate attitude, your attitude, which is, she said this is a win.
David Garland: 01:04:25 She sent me a video, it’s an infamous video now on the internet. They call it the ‘Crying Girl’ video. And it’s Rene balling in the video, cause she’s so excited. She was literally, and this sounds cliché, but it was true, she was literally starting to google homeless shelters, cause she didn’t know what she was gonna do. And she makes the $3,000, beyond excited about it. She said she’d just got her kids little gifts that they’d been waiting for. And she said, “You know what? I’m gonna continue to go from here.”
David Garland: 01:04:50 So she stuck with this. And she stuck with it. She kept refining it. She kept getting better. She kept finding new customers. She kept building her tribe. She did all the things right, and kept going, from that $3,000 launch. And some people would say pack it in. And her launch just kept getting better. She would send me random things in the mail. We have a photo of her sending me a giant box of steaks and meat in the mail for a launch. I have no idea why. It was awesome. We get ’em out sometimes and grill ’em, and make ’em. Rene’s big box of meat. I don’t know why. And we got closer and closer over the year.
David Garland: 01:05:20 So now, fast forward, this was in 2015, when she first launched that course. We’re in 2018 now. Not a huge gap of time, right? Last year she did $1.7million in sales.
Dana Robinson: 01:05:32 That’s amazing.
David Garland: 01:05:33 She’s got an incredible passion audience, they call them ‘besties’, they’re great. She’s like, “Hi bestie.” They’re really funny. Great audience. She’s built up just an incredible brand. She’s now kind of known as the queen of handmade business. She actually, unrelated, got married to a great guy named Tom. They now live in Connecticut. They just built a really cool house. She’s a great example of Opt Out Life too. She’s a hard worker, but she’s gotta at it.
David Garland: 01:05:54 But you look at that, that is not a super long period of time to go from $3, 000 to $1.7million. And so that’s one of my favorite stories, cause I think it exemplifies a lot of good things. And also the right attitude of saying, if you launch your first course and you’re making six, eight sales, or whatever it might be, you’re just getting the ball rolling off the hill. Now there’s a million things you could do from there to bring in more customers and make it better. And so that’s my story for it.
Nate Broughton: 01:06:19 I like that one.
Dana Robinson: 01:06:20 I love that.
Nate Broughton: 01:06:21 That ones really good.
Dana Robinson: 01:06:22 I got a personal question for you. I mean, a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they’re gonna do with their lives. And I was in an Uber yesterday. The guy was in college, talking about changing majors and what he’s gonna do with his life, “I wanna be this. Or I wanna be that.” And he’s confused. I have this sense, just from the little bit that I’ve heard in your podcast, a little bit of what we’ve learned hanging out, that you have found what you’re supposed to be doing with your life. And I think that’s cool. And so when I find somebody like that, I think it’s instructive. You didn’t go to school to become an accountant and then become an accountant and sort of have some crises of faith. You just got in and started doing cool shit, and learned. And then at some point, did you just sort of have an epiphany where you’re like, “This is my life now, and I love it”?
David Garland: 01:07:07 Yeah, I mean, you know what my major was in college?
Dana Robinson: 01:07:09 What?
David Garland: 01:07:09 Take a guess.
Nate Broughton: 01:07:09 I do.
David Garland: 01:07:13 Nate knows. Throw it out there. It has nothing to do with anything.
Nate Broughton: 01:07:13 We’re engaging in a lot of it this weekend. You can take that however you want listeners.
Dana Robinson: 01:07:18 Wine making?
David Garland: 01:07:19 Close. It starts with a W. Women’s Studies.
Dana Robinson: 01:07:21 Oh, okay. Our view here is full of Women’s Studies from the cabana.
David Garland: 01:07:26 Women’s Studies was my major in college. And it’s funny now, by the way, one of the great funny things about that, cause my grandpa’s like, “What the heck are you gonna do with that?”, when I was at school, is I’d say about 70% of our audience is women. So that works out well. But to hit your point, a lot of entrepreneurship I think is gut and going with the right direction. And yeah, exactly. I’ve always been an action-taker, and not always the right action, but taking some. And trying to learn from it and taking the next one, right?
David Garland: 01:07:49 But in 2013, that was the big shift, and that was the wake-up call, was we at that point, over 24 months had a million in sales in online courses. And people now asking, the conversation had shifted, and people were saying, “How the heck do I do a course? You’re killing it with these course. How do I do a course on wine making? How do I do a course on kettlebell training?”, whatever it was. And so I said, “You know what? I’m gonna create a new course, we’re gonna call it, ‘Create Awesome Online Courses’, and we’re gonna get it out there”, and that was 2013.
David Garland: 01:08:18 So the initial launch of that did about, I think $275,000, or something, around that launch, which is crazy. I mean that’s a crazy number. But, something shifted in me when that happened, where I said, “Holy crap. This is what I wanna do.” I loved it. I loved the idea that I could teach people this, and then they could go create their own lifestyles. There was something that just blended everything together.
David Garland: 01:08:42 And one of the funny things was, that fall, right before that course launch, I hired my dad full-time for the company. So my dad …
Dana Robinson: 01:08:42 Nice. Go dad.
David Garland: 01:08:48 … my dad, he’s the Vice President. He also heads up the customer service side. He loves it. And I sat down with him, I remember this was great. And realize, he had just joined the company. We were doing the podcast, that’s our main thing, right? I said, “You know what? We’re gonna stop doing the podcast.” He said, “What about Citrix? They’re giving you $100,000.” I was like, “Yeah, we’re gonna tell them we’re not gonna do it anymore.”
Dana Robinson: 01:09:08 That’s bold.
David Garland: 01:09:08 I know. Bold. And I said, “We’re gonna focus solely on helping people create these digital products and programs and online courses. That’s it. That’s what we’re doing. Our company now does this. Starting now.” And it was a gamble, but I knew it was the right one. I knew it was the time to shift. And I also knew that some of our audience, that wouldn’t be a fit for them, and that’s okay. You evolve. A personal brand also evolves. And so, that was the big move that I made in 2013, was saying once that course came out, I was like, “This is it.” End of 2013, I’m like, “We’re going all in at the end of that year.”
David Garland: 01:09:39 And that, I can tell you was the big shift. And that’s when the business then kind of exponentially grew, was by focusing entirely on that market. Not just ‘Create Awesome Online Courses’, but on the things related to it. But all about courses, digital products and programs. And from there, business grew. So then, we hit over a million in 12 month period. And then over two million in a 12 month period. And then was it 2017, we’re on the Inc. which I’m super proud of, was the Inc. 5000 list. We’re number 938, which was cool. And being a super small company on there.
Nate Broughton: 01:10:09 People must love your top line and then the number of employees, cause that’s the two stats that’s shown …
David Garland: 01:10:15 I think the two flanking me had 600 and like 300 employees. And then they’re like the rise to the top, four.
Nate Broughton: 01:10:20 Okay Dana, one of my favorite things to do over the years as an entrepreneur was to get all excited when the Inc. 500 came out, now the Inc. 5000. And read through the list for hours, clicking links, looking at what everybody had been building, and what was growing fast. And it was like Christmas at the old Plus One Marketing office, in Columbia, when this would happen. And yeah, we’ve been on the list a few times. Hey, hey.
Nate Broughton: 01:10:43 But the Inc. 500 list is cool, because it tells you the fastest growing companies in the US. It’s not necessarily accurate of all the companies. You have to apply. And some people don’t wanna be on it, cause they don’t want to be oogled over by people like me. And have them try to jump into their vertical, or their industry or whatever.
Nate Broughton: 01:11:02 But David tells us that he just made the Inc. 500, with the Rise To The Top, which is pretty cool to do with this type of business. I mean, you think of tech type companies and internet startups, and the more traditional ones that make it. But it’s all about revenue growth. And his business has really taken off in the last four to five years. But, you know what the coolest thing is about the Rise To The Top being on the Inc. 500? $3million top line revenue, four employees. That is where it’s at.
Nate Broughton: 01:11:29 I was actually on a phone call today with a friend, and he was like, “I wanna start a club, where you gotta have X million in revenue, but you gotta have less than 20 employees. Those are the guys I wanna hang out with.” There’s a fair point there …
Dana Robinson: 01:11:42 That’s the Opt Out Life, right? If you want a business that’s got 40, 50 employees, it’s gonna be hard to Opt Out. It really is. I mean, people do it. But the stories I read about entrepreneurs that have hundreds of employees are, they’re reading books and strategies about how they can possibly manage their life better. And that means, really working hard to find and carve out the time to have with their family or themselves, quiet time, delegation. There’s a lot that goes into that.
Dana Robinson: 01:12:11 When you’ve got four employees and one of them is your dad, and you can call your dad and say, “Hey, take a break. Let’s go play some softball”, in the middle of the day, and you’re on the Inc. 500 list, that’s pretty rad.
David Garland: 01:12:24 As the business has grown, I also feel like my lifestyle and freedom aspects of it have also grown as well. Meaning it hasn’t been the opposite. Meaning now, we’re making great money, yay, but I haven’t slept in a month, do you know what I mean? That’s not true. It’s not. And I know people love to harp those things, especially online, it’s the hustle life, or whatever it is. Tired for life.
Dana Robinson: 01:12:45 Yeah. You’re doing stuff in the middle of the day …
David Garland: 01:12:47 Right, I mean …
Dana Robinson: 01:12:48 … softball.
David Garland: 01:12:48 I do it, and I do it under control. I know what I need to get done, and I do it. And so yeah, I would have to say that we’ve definitely hit that groove over the last few years, which has been kinda of exciting …
Nate Broughton: 01:12:57 And so far along in your story too. I mean, 2013 is seven or eight years after you’ve really already decided that you’re gonna be an entrepreneur who’s going to basically, like I said in the beginning, ride your personality and find business models that can work around that. T.v shows, radio shows, books, online courses. I’ve just been really happy for you as a friend, to see you find that success.
Nate Broughton: 01:13:19 The cool part about it is, you never looked over your shoulder really and thought, “Oh, is there another way to do this?” And that’s really interesting to me, knowing you come from a family, your grandpa was a really successful real estate developer. It’s very traditional. Your dad I don’t think is traditional. He’s full in another way. But you have an instructive mentoring story in your family lineage that’s very by the book, and successful. And you’ve never even seem to look over your shoulder at that path.
David Garland: 01:13:45 Not really. It’s a good point. I mean, cause my grandpa, who is very successful, and he’s been a great mentor to me. It’s always been interesting because I just haven’t been interested. I wanna do it kinda my way. That was my thing. I mean, I would go to his office when I was little, and I would kinda see it, and it wasn’t my cup a tea necessarily. And it’s funny because, my grandpa who’s a great guy, and I really appreciate this, he is always one great with advice. But he’s like, “You’ve gotta do this on your own.”
David Garland: 01:14:11 Some people think that with knowing him as a successful entrepreneur, coming form any kind of lineage or that, would think, “Oh, they’re just bankrolling him. He’s just getting unlimited whatever.” And that’s not the case at all with us. He was actually one of the early people I think I asked if he would help with the production of the show, and he was like, “Nope.” Which, by the way, thankfully for that. Because that makes you …
Dana Robinson: 01:14:30 It would’ve been a crutch.
David Garland: 01:14:31 It would’ve been a bad crutch. And I’m very appreciative for that. But yeah, I mean, I’ve always kinda just wanted to do it my way. And a lot of times it’s also figure out what your way is. And also, your way evolves. Meaning, getting married, having kids, those things change lots of things, in a good way. Meaning, it’s different as you grow. And I love having the freedom and flexibility, also having little kids.
David Garland: 01:14:52 Last Friday for example, just on a whim, they were going to go eat in the Central West end, where Nate and I used to live. And I just stopped what I was doing. I was like, “Alright, I’m gonna go down and have lunch.” I like having that ability to do that. And that’s really just because of the business model. Because I know my grandpa’s worked very hard, but it was very different. It was very much, get up, briefcase, office, let’s go. Maybe a little fishing. I feel like we can incorporate this more into a daily life, slash lifestyle, versus kind of a traditional method.
Nate Broughton: 01:15:24 How has that shaped you as a parent, the way that you were parented and or, not just by your dad, but also your grandpa? Talk a little bit about your parental philosophy, because we’ve asked a lot of guests about that.
David Garland: 01:15:34 Parental philosophy? I’ve never been asked about that. That’s very interesting.
Nate Broughton: 01:15:37 How do you approach raising your kids? And how do you think you will as they grow? Cause Dana’s actually been all through this. We’ve got good stories about he’s kind of been hands-off, but he’s showing the entrepreneurial way, but ultimately …
David Garland: 01:15:47 You mean, just parental philosophy in terms of business? Or parental philosophy in actually parenting?
Nate Broughton: 01:15:50 What are you gonna tell her to do and not do? What are you gonna let her do and not do?
David Garland: 01:15:53 Well, I think a big thing that my parents … and it’s funny cause my wife and I grew up very different style parents. Very different things. I think the thing that was kind of imposed to me, was that you have to do something, right? You have to do something. There’s gonna be no sitting on your tugus doing nothing. There’s gonna be none of that. But, you need to find something that you’re passionate about and enjoy. And I think a lot of that is not said too much in this world. I mean, it’s like a cliché thing. But a lot of people say for example, you need to find something steady. Or you need to find something right to choose now.
David Garland: 01:16:24 My parents were always a believer, “You need to find your path. I don’t care if you’re an opera singer, or a custodian. But you’ve gotta find something that you enjoy doing.” Cause I see too many people, and I’ve seen this, that are just miserable with what they’re doing on a daily basis. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it growing up. And I’ve also seen people that are super happy.
David Garland: 01:16:44 So my philosophy’s exactly the same towards my kids. I don’t care what it is, but I want them to find something that they enjoy doing, and they can get fulfillment from. And not just be going through the motions of some job, just because that’s what they think they should do, cause that’s the way that they were trained.
Nate Broughton: 01:17:01 Yeah. Or even if maybe that they find that they get fulfillment from a traditional job …
David Garland: 01:17:05 That’s great. That’s perfectly fine. I wouldn’t necessarily say you have to be an entrepreneur. I wouldn’t necessarily say you don’t have to be an entrepreneur. I would have to say though, that you do have to find something. And I think that your high school, your college, and your early adult years are great for that.
David Garland: 01:17:20 For me, I did lots of internships. I always had lots of jobs. And for me, I always kinda saw that as trying to figure out the puzzle. What did I like? What did I not like? I remember when I was at internships, I interned one summer in L.A, of all places. Half the time at CBS sports, and the other half at a fashion PR company. And then I interned at a magazine in New York the next summer. But I always remember, pay attention. What do you like about this company? What do you not like? Look at the boss. Do you wanna be that guy or gal? Is that someone you aspire to be? Or is that someone you don’t wanna? You look at them, and you’re like, “I don’t know if I really want that.”
David Garland: 01:17:54 And so, I think paying attention to those things are something good. Obviously learning the value of work early on is a good thing. But yeah, that’s kinda my thing with them as well.
Dana Robinson: 01:18:03 I think the process of figuring out, you landed where you’re supposed to be, many, many years later. But you had a fuckin’ blast on the journey, and learned. And it didn’t matter whether you failed. It didn’t matter whether you’re doing the thing you wanna do the rest of your life. These are barriers I think that get thrown up in front of people, by either social or family pressure.
David Garland: 01:18:23 They put a lot of pressure on themselves too. I feel like saying, I have to find my thing. A lot of times it’s more organic than that. It’s interesting cause my wife is a very different interesting philosophy on this. This is just her. I mean, she’s a psychiatrist. And she had her shizz together way earlier than pretty much anyone. Meaning, she decided in high school that she wanted to be a medical doctor, because, and this is just her again, she’s got very different thoughts on this.
David Garland: 01:18:48 She saw that as a well-to-do thing that she could do forever, and she would be fine. It wasn’t like she was super-passionate, came out of the womb and had the little stethoscope around her, and running around. It wasn’t like that.She’s on the more conservative approach of saying, “This is something, I’ll always have a job. I’ll like it. And that’s what I’ll do.” And she did six year medical program right out of high school. Look at me back in that day, you’ve gotta be kidding me. I wasn’t making decision on that, that could be for the rest of my life.
David Garland: 01:19:14 But kids are different. You don’t know. Some people might find that path very early. Some might not, but gotta have the willingness to … I think a lot of people would say about me, and if you ask Marcie about that, it’s just willingness to pivot. And also stick with things that are working.
Nate Broughton: 01:19:28 Alright, as we’re wrapping up here. I don’t know if it was the margaritas or what, but I started to get a little philosophical and asking David about parental philosophy. It’s actually something I try to ask a lot of our guests about. Because we wanna understand how they were parented. How it might’ve shaped what they ended up doing. And also how they are being parents to their children, if they have them. So I like talking about this stuff, and I think David was kinda surprised we asked about it.
Nate Broughton: 01:19:51 Part of the reason I wanted to ask is cause I know he went to some fancy schools. And I know that his grandpa’s name’s on buildings in the city where I grew up. But obviously, he’s very Opt Out. So, it’s …
Dana Robinson: 01:20:02 That’s the grandpa who didn’t help him.
Nate Broughton: 01:20:03 Right. Yeah. So he was parented right, coming from that background, in my opinion. And I think the proof is in who he’s become. But it’s interesting to hear that he was told that he had to do something. But that something was up to him. And he took that opportunity and kind of that freedom, to try stuff out, and keep moving forward. I think he mentioned something about how he would say, and his wife would agree, that he’s always willing to try something. And he’s always willing to pivot from that thing. And that’s exactly the story that we’ve just heard, and have been told. And it’s one of success. It take a lot of time. And there’s no way that you could really unwind and redo it. But it’s what he’s done.
Nate Broughton: 01:20:44 And his wife’s a doctor. She’s totally opposite. But that’s okay, right?
Dana Robinson: 01:20:48 Right. She knew at a young age, I think he said, right? That was the career path she wanted to be on. And I admire that. I think it’s really cool when people have a very deliberate sense of what direction they wanna go with life. And they stick with it, and they’re happy about it.
Dana Robinson: 01:21:01 I’m more weary of the philosophies in society that say you should do that. That that’s the norm. Because I think that hurts people. That is why people are getting their stomach ache on Sunday night, before they go to a job they hate. Hopefully listening to this podcast, and trying to plan their exit from that life, to the Opt Out Life. But yeah, his Opt Out Life is a great example, shining example of the constant flexibility, the pivots.
Dana Robinson: 01:21:28 And it’s cool that his family had some wealth, and still didn’t have these high expectations for him to perform. But we’ve talked a lot about this in the podcast Nate. Even if you don’t have that safety net, if you take these chances, what’s the worst that could happen? Same thing. I mean, his grandpa probably knew, “What’s the worst that can happen if he doesn’t get this thing produced and I don’t give him the money? He’ll be mad at me for a little while. But if he pulls it off, it’s gonna be awesome for him. If he doesn’t, then so what?”
Dana Robinson: 01:21:55 And it’s the same if you don’t have a safety net, and you’re making that leap. And you try this thing you’ve been wanting to do and it fails. It’s alright. You’re gonna get up and do it again.
Nate Broughton: 01:22:04 And if you stuck with us this long, hang on, cause you’re gonna get some more Vegas tips here shortly, from the cabana. Here we go.
Nate Broughton: 01:22:11 Think about what’s genius about what you did, this whole path, and I don’t know if it was intentional, was you were constantly building audience, and exposing yourself to ideas. This whole time, it had to be a little bit in the back of your mind, “As I keep adding people to my audience, I’m gonna be able to do something with that.” I don’t even care how much money you’re making, it’s pretty much a win-win to be like, “I’m getting more followers every week. I interviewing smart people that leave me some ideas that I might be interested in.” That was genius …
David Garland: 01:22:39 Right. And then later, and by total accident, there wasn’t even all that intentional. And it’s interesting because when I built that first kind of initial audience, actually there’s a lot of people still with me today from that very initial audience, is that when you’re a personal brand, your personality, things will just kinda shift. I started kind of broad. Entrepreneurship was kinda the theme. And then it got more specific over time. Meaning, if entrepreneurship’s on the one to 10 scale of broad, it’s a 10. Online courses in a one. So it’s gotten much more specific over time. But people stayed along that path. And also, by the way, some people dropped out. That’s fine. And new people came in.
David Garland: 01:23:15 I think the sooner you can get clear on your audience the better. Because then you can directly market to those people. I think a lot of people struggle with trying to figure out, “Who are my peeps?” And there’s two ways to do it. It’s kind of a ‘throw spaghetti’, and kind of figure out who the people are later. Who’s in the spaghetti here? And then the other one is to be a little more intentional and say, “Okay, well I know exactly it’s gonna be that tomato. So I’m gonna go right after only those tomatoes.”
David Garland: 01:23:42 I kinda had the, ‘build it first, figure it out’. But now, we’re much more intentional about how we do it.
Dana Robinson: 01:23:48 A little bit of fun. We’re in Vegas …
Nate Broughton: 01:23:50 My drink’s really low by the way. Did they …
Dana Robinson: 01:23:52 I reordered and it hasn’t showed up yet. So …
Nate Broughton: 01:23:55 I gotta tell you, we have to do a sever food order. Because I gotta tell you right now, we’re going to an early moonlight special dinner tonight, which I like …
Dana Robinson: 01:24:04 We’re eating with the old people at 6:00p.m.
Nate Broughton: 01:24:06 We’re gonna do a 6:00p.m dinner, which I love …
David Garland: 01:24:07 It’s four hours till dinner.
Nate Broughton: 01:24:09 But we need to eat something before that, otherwise it’s gonna be chaos. I know you don’t need anything, but at some point we’ll need something.
David Garland: 01:24:13 Come on now. Come on.
Dana Robinson: 01:24:15 Alright. So David’s top Vegas advice …
Nate Broughton: 01:24:18 What is your top Vegas advice? Because we’ve done Vegas tips. Actually, we’ll add in a couple new Vegas tips. Cause people keep telling me they liked the Vegas tips last time. So, you do a tip, and we’ll bring in a couple new ones too.
David Garland: 01:24:29 Okay. How specific do you want me to go in my tip?
Nate Broughton: 01:24:32 It doesn’t matter.
David Garland: 01:24:32 Alright. I’m gonna go hyper specific, cause this is just something I [inaudible 01:24:36] thing.
Nate Broughton: 01:24:35 You can do a couple too, if you …
David Garland: 01:24:36 Alright. I’ll go a hyper one. We’re actually staying at Vdara on the strip. I really like it here actually. Was that, if you decide to stay at Vdara, little pro tip here. When you make your reservation, they have a little upgrade option. I think it’s $75 or maybe it’s even $100. 100% worth it. It’s called a VIP upgrade. And what you do is, you get a ride from the airport. So the guy meets you at the escalator, whisks you right away. You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. You don’t have to wait in long lines or any of that stuff. Takes you right to the front. A person meets you here and takes you right up to your room, and you miss the entire check-in process, which is annoying in Vegas usually. Meaning, there’s lines and things and shenanigans. So that’s my hyper-specific level one tip.
Nate Broughton: 01:25:18 That’s a great tip actually …
David Garland: 01:25:19 I mean do it. Well worth it. They took us right here. Next thing you know, we’re up in our suite, ready to go. And didn’t have to deal with any of that stuff. That’s my tip.
Nate Broughton: 01:25:26 Yeah, cause after you land, maybe you have to get a bag, maybe not. But last thing you wanna do is go through more …
David Garland: 01:25:31 Wait in lines and then that.
Nate Broughton: 01:25:33 So that’s an add on for Vdara. And probably other MGM owned properties …
David Garland: 01:25:37 Yeah. Pay attention to that. I think it’s $75 to $100. It is well worth it. That’s my tip.
Dana Robinson: 01:25:41 I think we’re living a tip right now, which is that Vdara is surrounded by these amazing luxury hotels, that you can connect to in minutes. You can be in Cosmo having fantastic experience in the Chandelier Bar, while we’re spending a could hundred bucks a night, half the price to stay at Vdara. The pool’s amazing. The cabana is a third of the price of what you’d pay at any of these hotels. We walked to Mandarin Oriental for drinks last night. Aria’s across the street.
Nate Broughton: 01:26:12 And then you can also get to Monte Carlo, which is now called Park, incredibly easily through. It connects to Aria.
David Garland: 01:26:18 That’s a good tip.
Nate Broughton: 01:26:18 I am 100% agreeing with that tip. You can get around a lot without having to hop in cabs. It’s a great, great hotel. We’ve stayed here many times.
Nate Broughton: 01:26:26 Alright, heres a Nate Broughton tip that I learned last night actually. So, if you come to Nevada and you wanna take advantage of the legal weed situation, which many tourists, why wouldn’t they wanna do that? There are some spots on the strip. And there are some that are pretty close. But, if you get in the Uber, and you’re like, “Dude, I wanna go to the weed shop.” And he’s either not down with it for someone reason or whatever. Tell him that he can get a commission for bringing you there, right?
Nate Broughton: 01:26:51 So our guy learned that last night, amen, got paid. Just like they would taking you to strip club, get a kickback. The weed shops also do that. So you may be able to talk your Uber driver in to it. Or get him a little more excited by saying, “You’re gonna get paid.”
Dana Robinson: 01:27:04 Alright. So I’ve got one more, besides the fact that Vdara’s been amazing and a bargain for the amazing. Downtown, just east of downtown off Fremont Street, has got this burgeony hipster scene. So Fremont Street, until a couple years ago, seemed like the kinda place that people would just go to drink yard-o beer. And kinda get drunk. It was a little sleazy.
Nate Broughton: 01:27:24 Just got the crazy lights …
Dana Robinson: 01:27:25 Yeah. It’s got the Fremont Street experience, which to me is not that fascinating. But you go just a block east on Fremont Street, two blocks east, and you’re at the Ace Historical bar. They built an Ace restaurant with a celebrity chef right next to it. Amazing drinks. Amazing food. So yeah, go experience everything between where Fremont Street ends, and where you start hitting the sleazy hotels. Fantastic food, drinks. Cool experience.
Nate Broughton: 01:27:54 I like that. Must be good to go there. That’s good. So tonight, dinner’s at Momofuku. I also highly recommend Momofuku. They put one in at Cosmo, and there’re many signs …
David Garland: 01:27:54 I’m very excited for that.
Nate Broughton: 01:28:04 I had one other tip. What was it gonna be? Especially since for dinner tonight, I think we have 14 women and four guys. So if you’re ever in Vegas with a pack of 14 women, take them to Mandarin Oriental. Take them up to the sky lobby. Buy them a token. And they can use the champaign vending machine …
David Garland: 01:28:21 For those that done know the champaign vending machine at Mandarin Oriental, it is highly recommended. You literally go to the front desk, and you get a token. They’re, I think $ 25. And go you in there, and you put the token in, and there’s a whole thing there. It’s a lot of fun. They get the little champaign bottle. Then they give you actually a topper. Is that what’s it called?
Nate Broughton: 01:28:21 Yeah.
David Garland: 01:28:39 A topper. You stick it in there, and now you’re walking around drinking out of a little mini champaign bottle. So, if that’s up your alley.
Nate Broughton: 01:28:44 Very Instagram’able. It’s great for a date or surprise for her …
David Garland: 01:28:48 Huge on the ‘Gram.
Nate Broughton: 01:28:50 … when you’re here in Vegas.
Nate Broughton: 01:28:51 Alright David, thank you for taking time to …
Dana Robinson: 01:28:51 Thanks David.
David Garland: 01:28:51 Thank you. This was great.
Dana Robinson: 01:28:51 Cheers.
Nate Broughton: 01:28:58 Thanks again for listening to the Opt Out Life Podcast. If you liked this episode, or any of our episodes, we’d love to have you as a subscriber. Click the subscribe button on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Then, head over to Opt Out Life dot com. There you can enter your email address to get on our email list. So you’ll be the first to know about new podcast episodes as they come out, including handpicked highlights, links to resources we mention, and top quotes from each episode.
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