Dana: 00:00 What people don’t see. So people see like my successes, what they don’t see is my six years of like struggling. Like not knowing if I’m going to be able to pay my rent, and then like, having success and then getting hit in the… in the gut. Right? Like, even… even like by webinar like, I’ll be full disclosure. Like that third webinar I did six figures on, and then my merchant… I broke my merchant account.
Intro: 00:29 From ABC News Radio, KIBT 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler: 00:41 Welcome out to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio here on ABC News, and podcast, and iTunes, and all those places, wherever you’re listening. I wanna welcome a special guest today, Dana Derricks. If you have not heard of Dana, you’re living under a goat list rock. So, welcome out to the show, Dana. What is the one thing everyone needs to know about you?
Dana: 01:01 Well, thank you for having me, man. I’m super excited to be here. I think that one thing that everybody should know about me, is that I have a very big passion for very special animal, and that is a goat. So, I have goats of my own, very passionate about them. I love to spread the love of goats to you all today.
Tyler: 01:19 Awesome. Now outside of goats, You’re a high level implementing marketer. Right? You get stuff done, you don’t just talk. Let’s go back to like the beginnings. Did you grow up in like an entrepreneurial world? Did you… were you born an entrepreneur or… when did you start realizing that marketing and entrepreneurship are in your blood?
Dana: 01:38 So, I love that question. So I grew up on a dairy farm. My… I’m a 12th generation farmer, which is like as far back as you can even trace it. Right?
Tyler: 01:51 Yeah. That’s like Adam, and then your…
Dana: 01:51 He’s like, he was a farmer and then he had a kid. So… yeah, so I grew up like doing farm chores and stuff. And, to be honest, like as a kid, like as you can imagine, like throwing hay bales around, like cause farms are not the way they are. Like, it wasn’t like they are now, where you have big machines do everything. Like, you had to throw hay bales, and like, I remember as a kid how much I hated that. And I just thought to myself like, “Alright, I can make 40 bucks pitching hay for the next six hours, or I can like, go on the Internet and figure out how…” I heard of people who were making money on the Internet. So I’m like, “Dude, I’ve got to figure out a better way than this, like pitching hay. So I started to, and then I just kind of like got lost in it. And just, this obsessive like, thought of like being able to make money on the internet kind of took… took over.
Tyler: 02:36 Yeah. I often say there is a very fine line between lazy and efficient. And I think that sometimes that same line is what leads us to innovation. Right? Like, I don’t want to pitch hay every day for 40 bucks. Like, what can I do differently? And some people could say, “Man, this kid’s lazy”, but you’re innovating and creating and growing and… and just working your brain instead of your fingers. So, what was your first thing? Like, what did you do first?
Dana: 03:02 So, my uncle, I was like young too, like I was like a 10 year old kid. So my uncle was a big eBay seller. eBay was pretty big at the time, or getting big. And so, he started showing me the ropes of it I think, I don’t know, I was just curious. So, then I started listing stuff on eBay, and helping him sell more stuff, and then I got like really into it. Then it got into like selling cards… baseball cards, going to garage sales, selling stuff. So, it was eBay for me, and then eBay turned into like, I was then like building computers and selling computers on eBay, and then it got into Craig’s list, and I was buying cars and flipping cars, and it just kept upping in the ante.
Tyler: 03:41 Yeah.
Dana: 03:45 So, yeah.
Tyler: 03:45 So, those are all awesome, but those are very much like finding ways to get creative and make money online. And I have a real similar journey and just figuring out things to kind of flip, but it’s hard to scale those things and turn systems around those things, and to brand around those things. What… how did you like, leverage that into something that it was kind of your first thing where you realized, “Man, this isn’t just making quick money, this is more of a business.”
Dana: 04:07 So… when I… so a big part of me, for those that know me, like, I played football as a kid growing up, because I grew up in a tiny town. We had nothing better to do. We played football. So, my first actual like product and brand that I created was… you can’t make this stuff up man. So… if you’re familiar with like, horses and cattle, and stuff, there is this product, I wish I would have had some on me, but it’s called cattle wrap. What happens is when you shave their hooves, or like they have a… like an ankle, or hoof infection, or something, or a sore, you’ll wrap it. It’s like this… it’s kind… kinda like latex, sort of, and you’ll wrap their hoof with it, and it comes in all sorts of different colors. And now, I was a football player forever, and…
Tyler: 04:56 Right.
Dana: 04:57 You might see where I’m going here. So like, cleats… the cleats we wear when we play football, or soccer, or whatever, they get beat up, and they get destroyed, and they’re just… it’s expensive, they’re expensive, and like they get… by the end of the year they’re shot. And I’m like thinking, “Huh, there’s gotta be a product, like there’s a product for that”, and there is, it’s called spatting tape. Now, split spatting tape is though, is it essentially like you’re probably familiar with with like athletic tape.
Tyler: 05:24 Yeah
Dana: 05:24 right. It’s like stiff stuff that you would tape your wrist or, yeah. And so essentially spatting tape the stuff to cover and protect your cleats and stuff. Was that stiff athletic style tape. And it only came in one color and that was black. So it was like, wow, I don’t need to take my ankles. I just want to protect my cleats. I Huh. I’ve got this cattle rap that comes in a dozen different colors and it’s stretchy so it doesn’t restrict my ankles and it’ll cover my cleats just the same. So then boom, and then entrepreneurial Dana goes on, GoDaddy and finds out that the domain name Spattingtape.com is Ding, ding, ding, available. Wow. It and I started my first eCom business by literally I would go to fleet farm by their cattle rap. Like is I would clear off the shelf, I buy it for two bucks a roll and then I’d sell it for 12 bucks or old. And um, you got to the point where I had to find a supplier and they’re out of Iowa and I did call them and had to like, cause I called so much, they started questioning me and I had to sell them. I was a fat selling it to me. But um, yeah.
Tyler: 06:31 So I love that kind of story. Like what, so were you in high school during this time?
Dana: 06:37 Yeah, totally. Like I had all the kids on our team, like half the other, the other teams were ha like buying it. Yeah.
Tyler: 06:43 Yeah. And then, um, so you felt, I mean, you literally saw a problem that was like in your world and uh, but then you didn’t just solve it for you. You saw the entrepreneurial opportunity in it as a high school that were kind of, what kind of money was that making?
Dana: 06:57 So in high, I mean, I would probably make like maybe a couple of grand a month, something like that for me was a huge,
Tyler: 07:04 yeah, high school and making like the US average income, that’s not, yeah, that’s all right. Yeah, you’re crushing it. You got money to go to prom, you got money to do whatever you want. Right. That’s pretty awesome. What, uh, where’d you go from there? Like, did you just keep doing that and keep scaling that up? Do you still have that or do you move on?
Dana: 07:22 So funny story. I got into college and I start, had to like start really focusing because I ended up getting a football scholarship. That’s how serious I was. And um, so I was running it. What’s that?
Tyler: 07:33 Where’d you play?
Dana: 07:34 I went to a, I started my career up at division two school in Minnesota, University of Minnesota Crookston. Okay. And, um, so yeah, I started, I was selling this stuff out of my dorm room and I remember, I don’t know if they do this anymore, but they didn’t want to pair the football players together because it was like a dangerous company, like a lethal. So we get paired with just random students that are athletes. So I remember this poor kid, man, our room, our dorm room was so full of boxes and supplies and stuff and it got really out of control and I think he ended up turning me in cause like the Ras came down and she said, you got to like, you can’t live here man if you’re doing this. So I had to like shut it down and I ended up selling it. Um, so that was the first business I ever sold. And um, yeah, so I sold it to focus on school and football and stuff. And then kind of funny a couple of years ago, I wanted to just check in on it to see what was going on. You they bought it, apparently abandoned it. And so I don’t have the domain back. Isn’t it awesome?
Tyler: 08:36 I love that kind of stuff because it’s like, you know, and try now, you know, so much more. I mean, and you understood like you can leverage the crap out of that.
Dana: 08:47 Yeah. So that part, yeah.
Tyler: 08:50 Probably have somebody doing that. What a, so I know like, I don’t know you really well, which I, which is why I’m grateful that you’re here and appreciate you coming on the show. I know we have a lot of mutual friends. Um, what, uh, like what are your big passions now? Like I know you’ve written a ton of books, um, what are your big projects and like what do you do now?
Dana: 09:09 So I’m really, really passionate about something right now that is, was the missing piece to my business. Even though I did well, like I didn’t do start doing really, really well until a couple of years ago. Um, when I got really intentional about this and it’s called the dream 100. So I know you’re familiar with that, but um, for anybody that’s not, I would say checkout Chet Holmes, his book, it’s called the ultimate sales machine. Got a copy somewhere, but it’s in a mess. It’s messy. But, um, anyway, basically the gist of it is, uh, Chet was a, um, he worked for an ad, a magazine and he’s, he was in charge of selling advertising and magazine was like last place. They were not doing well, so he just wrote down a list of his dream 100 clients you’d want to sell ads to relentlessly pursued them for two years and took them from last to like top three. It was a huge, amazing thing. So that’s what I’ve been like taking his, what he invented and just going really deep on it and helping others do the same and it’s like blown everything up.
Tyler: 10:08 One thing I’ve, I’ve been fascinated with the dream 100 is when I’m working on it or what I’m helping a client work on it. One of the things I’ve realized is if they can’t define their dream 100 they’re probably not clear on their business. And it’s this weird like exercise of realizing, okay, oh, I don’t even know who I’m going after, or I don’t know who, who I, who has my audience. Right. Are you, uh, are you, do you believe kind of like there’s two dream 100 is like there’s a dream 100 customers and then like the dream 100 influencers. Do you kind of see that two sides or, yeah,
Dana: 10:39 totally. 100%. So that, that some people will use both at once. Like me personally, I use both at once. So we call it one to one. So that’s like the Chet Holmes valid. You’re going to go after your end client. That’s, that’s your one to one versus one to many. This is kind of in your Russell Brunson style, go after your people that want them, that you’d want to promote your stuff. So I use both, but you can certainly might only use one or the other.
Tyler: 11:02 And I think a lot of that depends on the type of business, right? If you’re, if you’re, if you’re in a high ticket service business where a single client has massive value, but Russell selling click funnels, right? He’s got to reach people that can reach others. Cause Kim getting one more account, you won’t even notice it. But uh, so you’re using the dream 100 and I’m, I’m super stoked about that. My Book hasn’t shown up yet, I don’t think, but I’ve ordered it so I’ve ordered it. Where can other people learn about it?
Dana: 11:31 So I do have a copy of it. I wish I could just tell port this to you somehow, but here it is dreaming of your book. Um, I wrote it, Russel wrote the forward to it. It’s unbelievable. But um, yeah, so, right. Yeah. It’s only two grand copy. So by the way, yeah, I sell books for more than more. Most people do, but worth it. Because if you think about like your dream 100 is like, let’s say that you’re going to go one to one approach, right? Let’s say that you, I don’t know how to, a service or a product that’s worth, I dunno, a grand or even overtime, maybe five, 10 grand.
Tyler: 12:07 Sure.
Dana: 12:08 Just landing one person is like worth way more than the two grand or one to many. Holy Crap. Like what’s it a potential influencer, juvenile hundred affiliate worth tens of thousands if not hundreds or millions over time. Right. Even at two grand. I mean it’s,
Tyler: 12:25 I was just talking with a friend who told me about one of her clients, they do really high-end silkscreen limited edition prints for like a posters for rolling stones or blink one 82 right. And they do these really high and posters. Anyways, they had an artist who had been like struggling and he got picked up by one group to do one poster. Oh. When they publish that, that one poster that that guy did, his entire business took off because now all of those, that group’s fans became fans of his through extension and he’s been like busy ever since. Right. And so that concept of one to many, the right one is, is so huge. And yet I agree like, you know, Russell included as the lot, the lot, the uh, the last chapter, Dotcom secrets. And I think, uh, I just think it’s like the big missing piece for a lot of people. So you said it was the missing piece for you. What business were you working on where when you just first plug that in, you saw the results?
Dana: 13:26 Yeah. What most people find too is when they get like start figuring out what the dream 100 is, Dave been doing it without knowing and, and they think holy crap. Like that’s what really worked. Like I need to do more off that. And it’s like where’s this been all my life? And I’m like, I know like me too. Cause so the moment that it was like the Aha for me where it’s like I need to write a book on this because it’s so good. It was, um, I was working as a freelance copywriter, so I was doing project writing projects for clients. I started getting really burnt out from it. Um, cause I was just trading time for dollars and stuff. MMM. So I wanted to package what I was doing into a more scalable sort of deliverable. So I took what I was delivering and put it into a book.
Dana: 14:11 Instead of me doing it, I was going to teach them how to do it, um, and anyways, so I wanted it to sell it with a Webinar. So I create this Webinar and um, I get all excited cause I finished the Webinar and then I go on, grab some Facebook traffic and run ads to it and then I’d go and do the Webinar and I’m excited. And then it tanks will sales. Yeah, right. All right, I got to try this again. And um, so I went twice as hard. I bought twice as many ads and I got twice as many people on and Randy to get them all excited and then Bam, the tanks again
Dana: 14:45 and I’m like, oh my gosh dude. Like I was like, I’m not going to lie. Like I was pretty upset. Like I thought for a second there I’m like, dude, this Russell Guy’s full of crap or this doesn’t work. This is the point where most people would stop. Actually after the first, after the first one they do, I got webinars. Our webinars aren’t good. Facebook traffic’s horrible, right? So two rounds and then he wouldn’t let me quit. So I knew though I had to change something. Like Einstein would be thinking I’m insane if I kept trying the same thing. So I changed one thing. I’m like, Huh, I’ve got a guy in my network that I know has a list of people that would be interested in this, right? So I’m like, and he’s got a pretty big following. And so I’m like, hey man, I hear him, I get him on the phone or whatever.
Dana: 15:36 And I’m like, hey man, I got this awesome Webinar. Like you want to convert it, you want to promote it? And he’s like, sure. I’m like, well crap. He said, yes, this is what we’re going to have to do this now. So anyway, fast forward, we do the Webinar and he brings a lot of traffic. And the beauty is I didn’t have to pay for the traffic, but we ended up doing six figures on that Webinar. And the amazing thing, it was the same exact Webinar, just I didn’t change anything. Just the source of the cotton, like the pre frame that the people came into. Yup. Totally different because, yeah, because it’s like, think of any, anybody that you’ve, you know, like, and trust. If they tell you to go do something, you’re way more likely to do it, then if you don’t know, it’s just a cold Facebook ad.
Tyler: 16:19 Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome. And like the perfect example of how that works. What, so I want to make sure, you know, people want to learn more about that book and, and that concept. I mean, you gave him Chet Holmes this book, which I think is great, but if they wanted your book, where would they go?
Dana: 16:36 Uh, so, uh, they can go to, they can click the link below. Okay. Yeah, I’ll add the link. It, that’s perfect. So if you’re watching or if you click the link in the podcast or whatever, but in other hives, go to Dana derricks.com you can find information from Dana there. And Yeah, the reason I put it on glass by that what happens is I share link and then everybody goes crazy and we run out of books.
Tyler: 17:04 Well that’s one of them. How to do a grant. What, um, what you’ve written other books, right? Like you’re one of those guys that I think when you decided to do something you do it quickly. So what are the other books you’ve written in? Like how does that fit into like you as an entrepreneur, how is that important for you?
Dana: 17:21 Um, so I’ve written six in my day, which is weird cause I’m, I’m a farmer and I look like I can’t even really read or write. But, um, um, so for me it’s, it’s, it’s sort of like just a way that I want to continue and grow and serve people because the feedback I get from my books is so tremendous and humbling that like, I feel like I have more to give. And I hope like if I can inspire somebody out there to think like, just think about that for a second. Cause I didn’t, I didn’t always feel this way about my myself and my own life, what I have to offer. But if you can just start putting yourself out there and just serving people and putting their needs before yours, like do you want to make money? Of course, but like you’re going to make way more money if you can go get other people results with whatever you do. So that was just, I guess it’s just this burning desire where I transitioned my focus from just all about me and making money in my business to like how can I go serve others and get as much value into their hands as possible.
Tyler: 18:24 Yeah, there’s, I’ve heard some different theories on why that concept works. One, I think just being a cool person means cool things happen, right? And then there’s, there’s some more like philosophical things where do you create a recipe like a reciprocity vacuum and all these kinds of things, but, and I, you know, whatever the actual reason is, I think it’s also just a good way to do it. If you’re out there looking to how you can add value before you try to extract value, I think people, you, you’re just going to feel better, right? Let alone things working better. What? Um, yeah, so you’ve written all these books, you’ve got a, you know, according to the image behind you, you have the Derek’s group, right? You’ve got some big stuff. What’s, what big things are happening for you in 2018.
Dana: 19:04 Wow. Um, so I’m going all in on the dream 100. I’m like, so I got two things going on. I’m going to shout from the rooftops, the dream 100 to everybody I can because everybody needs to check this out and they need to do it because this is like, I for some reason, like when people think traffic, they think Facebook ads or they think like paid ads. Like it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Dream 100, like three, 101st free customers instead. Like, it’s just so much easier. So I’m like, I’ll be speaking at funnel hacking live here in a couple of weeks, um, to spread that message. Um, so I got that going on and then I got another thing going on where, um, apparently after writing six books and selling them for hundreds if not thousands per copy, I had many people tell me, Dana, you need to help other people do the same. And then I started doing research and realized that the publishing industries like bookwise is all messed up. There are way too many books being published way, not enough people reading them and just saturate and authors are getting like, just eaten up and spit out. So, um, I’ve got another book and that is called high ticket book secrets, which basically shows people how to mmm.
Dana: 20:20 Publish their books for what they’re worth. Um, bypass all the middlemen. So that’s another thing I’m passionate about is want to help a bunch of authors, um, take the power back into their hands. Um, do books the right way. So those two things, 2018,
Tyler: 20:32 that’s good. And I think two is good. I think a lot of, uh, some people, I know myself included end up being like 10 things. So two is good, right? And it’s hard for some of us to get down to one, but to his, to his money. That’s a good spot. Yeah. What, uh, what are some, like we’ve talked about all these awesome highlights, right? What are some of the dark times, like what are some of the challenges you’ve had to face in this journey of yours?
Dana: 20:57 I mean, I love that question. So what people don’t see, so people see like my successes, what they don’t see is my six years of like struggling. Like not knowing if I’m going to be able to pay my rent and then like having a success and then getting hit in the gut. Right? Like even like my Webinar, like I’ll be full disclosure. Like that third Webinar I did six figures on and then my merchant, I broke my merchant account, right? So my ma, I had a nightmare where my merchant one process, all the sales. So I had to go and I had to, they refunded a bunch of people and like it was just like, so I guess my,
Tyler: 21:40 like I’ve just been hurt sometimes.
Dana: 21:42 Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Right. So what happens? I tell people like I, I could tell you I’m billion horror stories, but like, just know this, like as you continue to progress and um, uh, just get to where you want to be, problems aren’t going to go away. They just change, they become different and sometimes good. Like I could argue that’s a good problem. I made too much money and my merchant got mad. Right?
Tyler: 22:04 Yeah. And that, and that I think does come down to the choice that you make on how you perceive your challenges are your obstacles, right? Really your obstacle is the way or the all those kinds of things. Right. And I think that’s what really defines an entrepreneur as someone who’s just out there trying it as they, they’re willing to see each author, each challenge as an opportunity to get better or to improve the merchant account thing is somewhat something that every entrepreneur has dealt with at least once.
Tyler: 22:28 And if they haven’t, it’s on its way. Right? I mean, I just had it like last month at a merchant account, shut down for one at, because of a mastercard change wide, a ton of accounts got closed. And so they’re holding like five figures in my money, in an account somewhere. And I’m like, I would love to have that. And, and you know, I’ll get it in six months.
Dana: 22:49 My bills, I don’t know, not my problem.
Tyler: 22:52 They don’t care and I get it. But the first time that happened, like learning that was brutal. Now part of the game and come up with alternatives. So I wanted to ask you about, uh, let’s see, I got some in here. Uh, you got goat con 2018, right? Isn’t this your next day? I thought this was your next big event. Maybe I was wrong. If not, I think I might have to now. Do you want to speak in it? Heck yeah. I’ll come out and you have to hold the goat though. Absolutely. I want one of those ones though that if you like, you scare him. They just stiffen up and fall over on
Dana: 23:31 all the fainting goats. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler: 23:36 But, uh, so to me, all of this stuff, all of entrepreneurship and uh, you know, marketing and everything is about building the life that you want as opposed to just reacting and receiving what’s necessarily just thrown at you. What uh, what’s one major thing like on your bucket list, maybe not business related that you want to do this year? Just because life is worth living
Dana: 23:58 and that’s so cool. I want to, this isn’t too crazy exciting, I guess it’s something like that. So I have a kid, my first kid on the way, hopefully many, many farmer that’ll help me to help me with chores. Right. And I think so when I would be proud of this year as if I could create like an environment for him, him or her to thrive in my business, crazy world I live in, that’s one thing. But I need to be able to like shut that off and then be able to go be an awesome dad. No. So that would be my thing for this year.
Tyler: 24:49 I’m always a little bit jealous of people that get like a decade of entrepreneurship under their belt before they’re starting their family. I mean, my, I started my family really young and, uh, and so like, I’m, I joke that I’m like Russell Brunson’s Jv version because like we wrestled at the same time, but I was at a junior college and he was at the big school and like, but we’re the same age and he just does everything 10 levels up. But, uh, you know, like, you know, my, I’ve got four kids and to try to balance that as hard and so, you know, if, if there is some advice I could give you, ignore the concept of work-life balance, right? It’s about mix. Find ways to just integrate your life on both sides. And I think that’s what you’ll do to find that the best way to make it thrive is just the part you don’t want to mix his distress, right?
Tyler: 25:33 Don’t bring home the stress, but bring home the involve, involve your family and everything. And I think that that’s probably what you were going to do already. But, uh, it’s, it can be awesome. And I mean, kids are great. Yeah. There’s gonna be a dozen more behind it. And so
Dana: 25:48 thank you. Now I know who to, who’s brain to pick.
Tyler: 25:53 There’s a, there’s a bunch of, you know, there’s a lot of dads is as entrepreneurs and to, and it’s all of us just figuring it out and like, hey, that just like every other part of business, right? Yeah. What worked, what didn’t share it all. We need a dream 100 concept for like parenting. All right, I need to call, what nanny do I call them now to help really good rolodex. Right. But kind of a side note that is, it’s true though. It’s like were we asked for advice in so many parts of our life?
Tyler: 26:23 But then there’s other parts of it over life that we sometimes get closed off. And I think that’s interesting. Like we don’t ask our friends that if they’re really good at something, like let’s ask him like, hey, how did you do that? You may come natural to you. Let me help me understand it. And that can be in any part of life. So, um, as we get here, kind of close to the end of the show and wrapping things up, I know you’re going to be speaking at funnel hacking live. Um, a bunch of my listeners will be there. I’ll be there. So all the court CNU, if people can go to Dana derricks and I’ll have links in everywhere that this gets posted. But what’s a, if you, you know, you’re shouting from the rooftops, you’ve got that one message that people want to connect with Dana derricks shout.
Dana: 27:03 So if there’s one bit of it, like one nugget I could give you guys right now, stay home. Yeah. Help you with your business. It would be to figure out who. So pinpoint who is in your existing network that you could have them help you to topple over the biggest domino possible. So I’m not saying that you have to say, Hey, can you do this for me? But I’m saying for me it was, okay, Facebook ads didn’t work. What’s the biggest domino I need? I need to sell, be able to sell my product. Um, my, my book. All right. So I was like, okay, who am I? Networking helped me sell this book. Oh Ding, Ding, Ding. This guy. Right? So it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t even have to be sales related. I don’t care. It can be growing a team. It could be whatever you’re at. You can find one person right now that’s already in your network, that can help you topple that giant domino. That’ll, that’ll be huge. Awesome. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for coming out, Dana, for you out there listening in the podcast and a and radio world. We appreciate you and now it’s your turn. Go out and do something.
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